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April 15th - St. Peter Gonzales and St. Paternus |
Posted by: Elizabeth - 03-03-2021, 11:43 PM - Forum: April
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Saint Peter Gonzales
Dominican Priest
(1190-1240)
Saint Peter Gonzales was born in Spain in 1190, of parents both rich and noble. He was brought up by his maternal uncle, a bishop in the region of Astorga, and while still young was named a canon of his cathedral. Soon he was chosen to be head of the cathedral chapter; but when he came to take possession of that office, mounted on a finely arrayed horse, the animal by a false step threw him into the mud. And then he was surrounded not by honors, but by laughter and mocking words. This for the young man was a special grace which enlightened him on the value of the world's dignities, and he decided to enter the Dominican Order at Palencia.
Saint Peter worked toward his perfection with fervor, and while still a novice manifested great generosity, ready to offer his services whenever an occasion presented itself. He later studied theology to serve his neighbor in the spirit of his Order, and became so competent that he was sent to preach and hear confessions. In so doing he won many souls for Christ. Everywhere he exhorted to penance, exalting the state of grace and painting in fearful terms that of mortal sin, with such efficacy that he overcame the most hardened hearts.
King Ferdinand III, desiring to put the Moors out of his kingdom, called the famous preacher to his court to benefit from his counsels and prayers. Saint Peter, fortified by the confidence of the prince, was able to revitalize the faith of the court and the army. But jealous ones set a trap for him; a courtesan was sent to him, apparently to make her confession, but in reality to try to seduce him. When he recognized her design, he went to an adjoining room and wrapping himself in his cloak, stood unharmed amid a great fire which he had lit there; then he called her to come. She and his false friends were converted at the sight of this prodigy, and thereafter all showed themselves filled with veneration for the priest.
When the King won many military victories and took Cordova from the Moors in 1236, Saint Peter moderated the ill-directed energies of the conquerors and saw to the transformation of its great mosque into a cathedral. He left the court when it seemed his presence was less necessary, and continued his preaching elsewhere. God honored him with the gift of healing and miracles, and above all gave him the grace to make the truths of salvation understood by the poor and simple folk. He fell ill during Holy Week and died on the day of our Lord's Resurrection in 1248.
Saint Peter saw to the building of a bridge over a river, at a place where many had perished. He is often depicted walking on the waters with a torch in hand. He has appeared to mariners in danger, and is invoked in particular by those in peril on the seas, always with happy results.
Saint Paternus
Bishop of Avranches
(482-565)
Saint Paternus was born at Poitiers, of illustrious Christian parents, about the year 482. His father, Patranus, with the consent of his wife went to Ireland to end his days as a hermit in holy solitude. Paternus, fired by his father's example, embraced monastic life in the Abbey of Marnes, France. After some time, desiring to attain the perfection of Christian virtue by a life of penance in solitude, he retired with a companion monk of the Abbey, Saint Scubilion, and in the forests of the diocese of Coutances near the sea, embraced an austere anchorite's life resembling that of Angels more than of men. An abbot of that region who knew of him recommended Paternus to the bishop of Coutances, who ordained him a deacon and then a priest in 512. He and Saint Scubilion then evangelized the western coasts and established several monasteries, of which he was the abbot general. Many miracles honored his apostolate among the pagan populations.
In his old age he was consecrated bishop of Avranches while his former companion, Saint Scubilion, had become abbot of a monastery founded by the two missionaries. When Saint Paternus fell ill he felt his end was near, and he sent to his dear friend to come and assist him in his last illness. But the same fate had befallen Scubilion, who for his part had sent a messenger to Paternus. The two hermit-missionaries, each of whom had become the spiritual father of many, departed this life on the same day, April 16, 565, the thirteenth year of the pontificate of Saint Paternus. They were afterwards buried on the same day in the church of the monastery of Scicy, a region they had evangelized together.
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Bp. Tissier de Mallerais [2002]: The Dogmas of the New Conciliar Religion |
Posted by: Stone - 03-03-2021, 08:03 PM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition
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The Dogmas of the New [Conciliar] Religion
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Your Grace, the Superior General, My dear Lords, Dear Rector, My dear colleagues in the priesthood, Dear ordinands, Our dear faithful,
In a few moments during this ordination ceremony of deacons and priests, the bishop will pronounce these words: To the deacons he will say, "You are from now on the cooperators of the Body and Blood of the Lord," and to each priest after ordination he will say, "Receive the power to offer the Sacrifice to God and to celebrate Mass for the living and the dead."
These words of our very simple Catholic faith, which seem almost commonplace, which express the object of the priesthood which is the consecration of the Body and Blood of Our Lord to renew in a non-bloody manner His Divine Passion, these words are now suppressed in the new pontifical of ordination for deacons and priests. This disappearance is very significant. It means that the New Religion no longer wishes to express the transmission of the power to consecrate the Body and Blood of Christ and of the power of renewing the Passion of Calvary. Therefore, my most dear ordinands, I am obviously quite certain that during your six years of seminary training you have deeply penetrated the Catholic doctrine, ignored now by the majority of priests in the New Religion. Because this change of the rite of ordination expresses precisely a New Religion. In this suppression of the power to offer and to consecrate the Body and Blood of Christ is expressed precisely the New Religion, in which are found the large majority of Catholics, albeit unwillingly, but they are in this new religion which consists not only of a new religion, but of a new doctrine. Thus, if you would, dear faithful, in a few words I shall describe first of all the new doctrine of this New Religion, and then its new worship.
First of all, the new dogmas: Firstly, sin, which practically no longer exists since it no longer offends God. We are told that sin does not offend God, but harms only the sinner; sin, in fact, cannot harm the divine nature, which is incorruptible. Sin means nothing to God; sin only harms the sinner, causing him to lose the divine life–they concede that–and it equally offends human solidarity. In these conditions sin no longer has the characteristic of offense, of destroying God's honor, His glory, His praise. It no longer has the characteristic of disobeying the law of God. Consequently, they deny that God has a right to demand of His creatures not only praise, but also submission to His divine law, as St. Ignatius says in his exercises: "Man is created to praise, reverence and serve God to save his own soul." Well, praising, reverencing and serving God no longer exist in the New Religion. Since sin no longer destroys the external glory of God, sin only harms man. You can now see how this new religion destroys the notion of sin itself, how it destroys God's glory, how it destroys the notion of sin as the supreme injustice, since it considers only human injustices: but the notion of injustice toward God, of sin against the Justice of God, they do not want anymore.
Next, we are told that by sin human dignity is not lost, man keeps his dignity after sin. Man remains dignified, friendly, and sympathetic. No matter what man does in the religious order, whether he honors a false god, or by a false worship, the true God matters not, he keeps his dignity. He is thus worthy of regard and respect, and we must respect his religion. We must consequently collaborate with other religions, since human dignity is not damaged by sin. This is a second very serious error, which thus justifies ecumenism and religious liberty. Man is dignified, since he remains sympathetic. Well! God continues to love the sinner, keeping him in his love and favor. Nothing has changed between God and the sinner. God is presented to us as an unmoved, easy-going Lord who accepts all his children's fancies. His charity is thus ridiculed. God continues to love the sinner without distinction or precision.
Next we are told, consequently, that God does not punish sin with a temporal or eternal punishment. Since sin does not offend God, God does not punish. God remains goodness itself. How could God inflict punishments on the sinner? No, it is man who punishes himself by subjection to the consequences of his faults. And hell, if ever one goes there, is merely exclusion–auto-exclusion–of divine love. Therefore hell is no longer a punishment inflicted by God. God no longer has the right to punish. Consequently man is absolved of the duty of reparation towards God. What we call in our catechism satisfaction for sin, the need of the sinner to expiate his sins to repair the honor of God, no longer exists. Man must only repair his spiritual health. However, repairing God's glory, cooperating to relieve the fallen creature from sin, to raise it again, they want none of it.
You know, on the other hand, that the beautiful Catholic doctrine of satisfaction is all for the greater glory of God, since the sinful man can recover and give back glory and praise to God and rebuild his fallen nature, by satisfaction, by the punishment he undergoes voluntarily. However this new doctrine, which wants neither sin, nor expiation and satisfaction, goes much further since it will distort the meaning of suffering and the Redemptive Passion of our Savior. Thus it will distort the dogma of the Redemption.
It is this central dogma which the modernists have attacked. They will say to us: the sufferings of our Lord on the Cross were intended only to reveal God's persevering love, but not to satisfy the divine justice in the place of sinful men. Our Lord on the Cross did not offer to his Father any satisfaction, rather He only revealed to man the love of God His Father. Thus they go altogether contrary to the dogma of the Precious Blood, this law which God put down in the Old Testament, that without the shedding of blood there is no remission. They refuse the Blood shed by Our Lord with all its expiatory value for the forgiveness of sins, considering it but a free gift by which the Father sent without any reason His Son to die, simply to reveal the love of the Father. This is the most abominable cruelty! The Father sent His Son to a most abominable death, simply to show His Love. They have distorted, emptied the dogma of the Redemption, and they blaspheme even the holy Passion of our Savior.
To the contrary, our catechism teaches that by His Passion our Lord offered to His Father a superabundant satisfaction for our innumerable sins, partly because of the dignity of the divine Person suffering on the Cross, and also because of the extreme charity and obedience by which our Lord suffered, and finally because of the extreme pain suffered on the Cross. He was then able to offer to His Father for us, in our place, a superabundant satisfaction... It is beautiful to contemplate the Cross: to see our Salvation, our Redemption, our relief, and not only the love of the Father, but firstly the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In every fashion, we are told in this new religion: what good is the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ? At most it was to reveal the love of the Father, but it was not for our salvation, since all are saved anyway. It is certain that, as stated in the Vatican Council II's Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, by His Incarnation the Son of God united Himself in a special way with every man. All men have become Christ-like (Christianized) by the Incarnation, therefore all are saved. That is what Pope John Paul II alludes to in one of his books, that hell is probably empty; all are saved. Thus you see the annihilation of the dogma of the Redemption, its complete falsification. Sin being suppressed, even God's justice being suppressed, they suppress the Redemption, the atonement of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
These are the dogmas of the New Religion.
Let us move on, if you would, to the new worship which corresponds to the new dogmas. Well! First of all, in the new worship we are told that the principal act of the Redemption of our Lord, the first Mass that He celebrated on the Cross after the Mass of the Last Supper, thus the principal act of the Redemption, does not consist in the Cross of our Savior, but rather in the glorious Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord. It is by His Resurrection and Ascension that our Savior would save us. In effect God crowns the work of the Redemption and plainly manifests His love, the love of the Father for us, in resurrecting His Son, since God is not the God of the dead but of the living. That is all. This is what Pope John Paul II declares. Thus the Cross of Christ is a rather secondary event in the Redemption, the essential work being the Resurrection and Ascension of our Savior.
Then we are told that the principal act of the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ as priest does not consist in the bloody offering of His sacrifice on the Cross, but essentially in His heavenly priesthood by which, crossing the tent of the heavenly sanctuary, He presents Himself to His Father with His Blood. Thus they will deny that the principal act of the priesthood is to offer the sacrifice of our Lord on His Cross. In speaking, they will put the accent on the heavenly priesthood. This is not new. Since 1958, this teaching was professed by Fr. Joseph Lecuyer, the successor of His Grace Marcel Lefebvre to the head of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost Fathers. These heresies date before the Council. They were propagated by the Council and after the Council.
Then we are told that the Mass is not a non-bloody renewal of the Passion, that we can no longer say this. Rather, the Mass is a memorial of the great feats of Christ throughout His life, thus not only of His Passion, but also His Resurrection, His Ascension and, why not, His Incarnation, His Presentation in the Temple–in brief, all the great feats of Christ. The Mass would consist in making a memorial of them. Except that our catechism teaches us that it is the Consecration which makes the Mass, and theology explains to us what is signified by the separate Consecration of the bread and the wine, the Body and Blood of Christ. What is signified is produced mysteriously: the sacramental immolation is realized, that is, the separation of the Body and Blood by the power of the priest's words. Under the appearance of bread is directly the Body, while under the appearance of wine is directly the Precious Blood of Christ. Certainly they are not separated in reality, since by real concomitance they are both under each of the two species. Nevertheless, by the force of words, what is realized is truly a separation of the Body and Blood of Christ, a sacramental separation. Consequently, they nullify absolutely the role of the Consecration in the Mass. It is simply a memorial.
A few months ago we were told by Cardinal Ratzinger, "The Mass is valid without the words of Consecration." You have all read this, we have explained it. [See "Rome, the Society of Saint Pius X, Campos, Assisi,...etc." The Angelus, May 2002.–Ed.] It is a recent declaration by Cardinal Ratzinger and the International Theological Commission: the Mass is valid even without the words of consecration! So, what good is a priest? Indeed, the laity could celebrate the Mass; the priest serves for hardly anything since he does not even have to pronounce the words of Christ for the Mass to be valid.
Next we are told that in the course of the Mass Christ is made present, yes, but made present with all His salvific mysteries and not by the "magical" work of the Consecration, but by the reality of the liturgical action of the community which "objectivizes" the mysteries of Christ. Thus in this way, the mystery of Christ, in particular the Paschal mystery, becomes the mystery of worship. That is what they tell us, in particular His Eminence Monsignor Annibale Bugnini, principal agent of the liturgical reform: It does not consist in consecrating the Body and Blood of Christ, but in evoking together, actively, as a community, liturgically the entire mystery of Christ, in particular His Paschal mystery, thus by highlighting the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ.
Finally, the last heresy, my dear faithful–I am absolutely filled with grief by this flood of heresies which is hardly worthy of a sermon evidently–the common priesthood of the faithful operates throughout the course of the Eucharistic memorial. It is thus advisable to give more place to the active participation of the faithful so they can exercise their common priesthood, the priest need simply preside over the words of the memorial.
I conclude that, as much in its dogmas as in its worship, the new religion has emptied our Catholic religion of its substance. The Passion of our Lord is used only to reveal in a very intellectual and abstract way the love of God the Father for us. As for the love of Christ for His Father or for us, one knows nothing of it. And then, in addition, Catholic worship is only a memorial, a becoming aware in sum of the great work of the great feats of Christ by taking so much care that this work becomes present in the assembly in prayer, like a common auto-consciousness.
This New Religion is nothing else, my dear faithful, than a gnostic sect. I think that this is the word that characterizes it perfectly, since it is a religion without sin, without justice, without mercy, without penance, without conversion, without virtue, without sacrifice, without effort, but simply a self-consciousness. It is a purely "intellectualist" religion, it is a pure gnostic sect.
Then my dear future deacons and priests, be sure that I ordain you neither deacons nor priests to be deacons and priests of this gnostic religion. And I am persuaded that your intention also was to receive the Catholic priesthood today, from the hands of the Catholic Church, and not to receive the gnostic priesthood from the hands of I know not what gnostic system.
Reject with horror, my dear faithful, my dear ordinands, this natural religion, this intellectualist religion, which has nothing to do with the Catholic religion, and, on the contrary, be always more firmly persuaded of the reason for our combat and for our priesthood.
Dear ordinands, you are proud to receive your priesthood in the Catholic Church from the hands of a Catholic bishop, of all these bishops who have succeeded in transmitting the Catholic priesthood in its doctrinal purity, from which follows its genuine pastoral charity. Be glad today to receive, in the Catholic Church, the Catholic priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the priesthood of a St. Padre Pio, of all saintly priests, of the saintly Curé of Ars, of the Apostles, which the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose beautiful feast we celebrate today, lived and supported.
Let us make supplications to the very blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Priesthood, Mother of the High Priest, and Mother of priests, to keep us faithful to the Catholic priesthood, so that we communicate the Catholic religion. Amen.
[Emphasis mine.]
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The Six Marks of the Novus Ordo Mass |
Posted by: Stone - 03-03-2021, 07:38 PM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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The Six Marks of the Novus Ordo Mass
At the Good Friday trial of Jesus, Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" To this day, people are still wondering about truth, and where to find it. When St. John the Apostle wrote the introduction to this Gospel, he said to us, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word of God ... and (this) Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we (Apostles) saw his glory ... full of grace and truth. Jesus, the Word of God, is full of truth. We must constantly refer to Jesus to know the Truth.
In the very first prayer of the traditional Roman Canon of the Mass, we pray God the Father to bless our sacrifice which is offered for the whole Church, including all right-thinking believers and teachers of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith.
Thus in every Mass, we recall that Jesus is full of truth, and has given us a faith that makes us right-thinking believers. Let me remind you of one article of our Catholic Faith. This article or truth is spelled out in the Secret Prayer of a Sunday Mass after Pentecost. This truth is that God has enacted one perfect sacrifice, that of Jesus His Son, in place of all the victims that were sacrificed under the Old Testament before Christ. We pray God to receive this one perfect sacrifice and to sanctify it in order to help us all to attain salvation.
So, briefly: Jesus, full of truth, has given us a right-thinking Faith that says the Mass is a perfect sacrifice of Jesus' very Body and Blood, that replaces all the Old Testament sacrifices.
It is sad that the Protestants do not accept this notion that the Mass is a true, though bloodless, sacrifice of the real Body and Blood of Christ. For Protestants, the Eucharist is merely a religious meal that is a symbol and memorial of the Last Supper of Jesus. It is not a true victim-sacrifice offered by an actual priest. This contradiction of our Catholic faith means that we cannot expect Protestants to be right-thinking believers, even though we may pray for their conversion. What is more, you know that there are other notions or articles of the Catholic Faith that Protestants do not accept. Examples are the Seven Sacraments, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Holy Mary, and the Infallibility of the Pope.
But let us return to the Mass. In 1969, Max Thurian, an important protestant theologian, who helped found the ecumenical Taizé community in France, made this statement:
Quote:"It is now theologically possible for Protestants to use the same Mass as Catholics." (1)
Protestants offering the same Mass as Catholics? How is this possible? How can we all be right-thinking believers?
To answer these questions, remember that the Liturgy Commission set up by the Paul VI in early 1964 was mandated to prepare a reform of the Mass and all the other liturgy services of the Catholic Church. This commission, called Consilium, did in fact reform the Mass, quite promptly, and the Pope did approve and promulgate this New Order or Novus Ordo of Mass on April 3, 1969. We have the English version of this new Mass that is used in Catholic churches thence forth around the world. It is quite different in many respects from the Tridentine Latin Mass. How should right-thinking Catholic believers evaluate this new Mass of Vatican II? What should we, as Catholics, think of the Novus Ordo Mass?
To answer this serious question, let us briefly describe the new Mass in the language of expert theologians and liturgists.
First, they describe it as ecumenical. This means designed to foster unity and agreement with non-Catholic beliefs. Thus it becomes important to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative." One must emphasize what we believe in common, and tone down the beliefs we do not share. The New Mass has changed many prayers, especially the Collects, to speak less of Hell, less of eternal punishment, less of the world as the enemy of God, less of the need to fast, and so on.
The Novus Ordo Mass is next [second] described as antiquarian. This means emphasizing the alleged early, original features of the Mass in the time of the Fathers, that is, the first four to six centuries of the History of the Church. It means recovering supposed early simplicity of worship, and other primitive qualities. It means diminishing or removing the enrichments of the Catholic Mass that were developed in medieval, baroque, and post-reformation times. It means a more austere, more bare-bones and elemental kind of worship.
Some of these simplifications include less bows or genuflections by the priest, shorter prayers, less use of bells and incense, less feasts of saints, less statues and holy water, and so forth. This then is the antiquarian aspect of the new liturgy.
The third quality is to be community-based. Now the community is the horizontal dimension, that is, around us. The alternative is the vertical dimension, that is, above us. It means pointing to God, to heaven, to the angels. The Novus Ordo tends to emphasize the community more than God, here more than hereafter, goodness in human society rather than in the mystical body of Christ. Notice that new churches, that is, mass buildings, are wider and lower, with little or no tower that points up. Notice the big entrance lobby for people to meet and chat, horizontally, rather than to pray to Heaven, vertically. Notice the new sign of peace, when the congregation has a surge of hand-shaking. The New Mass, then, is community-based.
The next [fourth] quality is that of a democratic church. This means literally government by the people, rather than by priests and Bishops and Pope, which is hierarchic, not democratic. It means that the Mass should be led not just by the priest, but by many lectors or readers taking turns, by many communion ministers, including women and even teenagers, by many ushers or so-called ministers of hospitality, and above all by a parish liturgy committee that decides the style and structure of the various Masses. The cantor or song leader is another player on the team of the democratic liturgy.
A fifth trait of Novus Ordo is to be desacralized. This means rendered less sacred. It means signs of reverence or mystery, of transcendence or heaven should be reduced to a minimum or removed. Some of these eliminations in the Mass were mentioned earlier, under the antiquarian quality of keeping the gestures of only the early age of the Church.
Other trimmings of the sacred: we see in no more communion railing, no more Latin language, simpler less ornate vestments, and in priests who do not even wear some of the proper vestments, but remain more casual. Many priests no longer wear clerical attire even outside the Mass. They celebrate Mass facing the people, not God. They act more as a chairman or president of a meeting, rather than as a sacred minister before God. This is the desacralized liturgy.
The sixth and last adjective to describe the Vatican II Mass is Protestantized, that is, harmonized more with Protestant views and practices. This is a theological area, that is, it touches on what we are taught and do believe about God, the Sacraments, the Church and so forth. Because of the ecumenical urge, and also the urge of the Modernist heresy, the designers of the new liturgy have certainly made Catholic worship more Protestant in tone and content. We could call this quality deviance, because liturgists are deviating from traditional Catholic belief. Here are some specific examples:
A doctrine that is toned down is that of the real presence, the reality of Our Lord’s Body and Blood under the appearance of bread and wine. Thus the Tabernacle is off in a corner or even in a separate room out of sight. One receives Communion not kneeling and on the tongue, but standing and in the hand. One must fast not three hours or from midnight, but only one hour. The word transubstantiation is omitted from documents on the Mass.
The practice and doctrine of Confession, almost unknown among Protestants, is surviving less and less among Catholics, and the risk of sacrilegious communions is now chronic, that is, Holy Communions received in the state of mortal sin or without prior absolution by the priest.
The ministerial role of the priest is much diminished as mentioned in the democratic emphasis in the new Mass. The priest is actually a man chosen apart and made sacred for a holy task of offering worship and sacrifice, even if only few faithful are present.
But the new concept of priest is more that of a functionary, an elected or appointed official, a president or master of ceremonies, even sometimes an entertainer. No wonder there are few young men today answering the call to such an uninspiring, humanist kind of priest.
We already noted that the sacrificial character of the Mass has been largely lost. The Mass is merely a "sacrifice of praise" now, an offering of holy words to God. One quality of true sacrifice is to be propitiatory, that is, appeasing God's anger over our sins. If we believe that God is too kind and loving to demand atonement for sin, or if we believe that God is too magnificent to be offended by our puny sins, then we have lost the Catholic Faith, and, in this case, a propitiatory sacrifice would make no sense.
These are the six qualities of the New Order of the Mass: ecumenical, antiquarian, community-based, democratic, desacralized, and Protestantized. By contrast with Catholic tradition up to Vatican II, it features numerous changes, reversals, and opposites, and it is hardly a Mass for right-thinking believers. It makes us understand why a strong and holy movement to preserve and restore the traditional Latin Catholic Mass sprang up after Vatican Council II.
I hope the reader will follow up this short meditation by prayer and study, so that we all become or remain right-thinking believers, and faithful disciples of traditional, Catholic Truth.
1. D. Bonneterre, The Liturgical Movement, p.100. To this writer the present article also owes the schema of six marks of the new Mass.
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Pius XI condemned Ecumenism, the Assisi meetings, and the Pachamama |
Posted by: Stone - 03-03-2021, 07:26 PM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition
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Pius XI condemned Ecumenism, the Assisi meetings, and the Pachamama
Never, perhaps, in the past, have the minds of men been seized as hard as we see them today, of the desire to strengthen and extend for the common good of human society the fraternal relations which bind us together. because of our community of origin and nature.
The people, in fact, do not yet fully enjoy the benefits of peace; and even, here and there, old and new discords provoke the eruption of seditions and civil wars. Moreover, most, certainly, controversies that affect the tranquility and prosperity of peoples can not in any way receive a solution without the concerted action and efforts of Heads of States and those who manage and pursue them. the interests. It is therefore easy to understand, and all the more so because no one refuses to admit the unity of the human race, why most men wish to see, in the name of this universal fraternity, the various peoples uniting with each other by links each day closer.
It is a similar result that some strive to obtain in things that look at the new order of the Law, brought by Christ our Lord. Convinced that it is very rare to meet men devoid of any religious meaning, we see them harboring the hope that it would be possible to bring without difficulty the peoples, despite their religious differences, to a fraternal understanding of the profession. certain doctrines considered as a common foundation of spiritual life.
Therefore, they begin to hold congresses, meetings, conferences attended by a significant number of listeners, and, in their discussions, they invite all men indiscriminately, the infidels of all kinds as the faithful of the Christ, and even those who, unfortunately, have separated from Christ or who, with bitterness and obstinacy, deny the divinity of his nature and his mission.
Such enterprises can not, in any way, be approved by Catholics , since they are based on the erroneous theory that religions are all more or less good and praiseworthy, in the sense that all too, although in different ways manifest and signify the natural and innate feeling that leads us to God and urges us to respectfully acknowledge His power. In truth, the partisans of this theory go astray in error, but moreover, by perverting the notion of the true religion they repudiate it, and they pour in stages in naturalism and atheism.
The conclusion is clear: to join the partisans and propagators of such doctrines is to move away completely from divinely revealed religion.
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62 Reasons to Reject the Novus Ordo Mass |
Posted by: Stone - 03-03-2021, 07:11 PM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition
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62 Reasons to Reject the Novus Ordo Mass
Adapted from here.
The following summary is attributed to the Priests of Campos. If this information is true, it must have been made before 2002 when the ensemble of those Priests, under the leadership of Bishop Fernando Rifan, accepted the New Mass and Vatican II. The asterisk at the end of a number indicates that the same reason was given in a letter written by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani and Cardinal Antonio Bacci to Paul VI dated Rome, September 25, 1969.
62 Reasons to Reject the N.O.
1. Because the New Mass is not an unequivocal Profession of the Catholic Faith (which the traditional Mass is), it is ambiguous and with a Protestant flavor. Therefore since we pray as we believe, it follows that we cannot pray with the New Mass in Protestant fashion and still believe as Catholics!
2. Because the changes were not just slight ones but actually "deal with a fundamental renovation ... a total change ... a new creation." (Msgr. A. Bugnini, co-author of the New Mass)
3. Because the New Mass leads us to think "that truths ... can be changed or ignored without infidelity to that sacred deposit of doctrine to which the Catholic Faith is bound forever." *
4. Because the New Mass represents "a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent" which, in fixing the "canons," provided an "insurmountable barrier to any heresy against the integrity of the Mystery." *
5. Because the difference between the two is not simply one of mere detail or just modification of ceremony, but "all that is of perennial value finds only a minor place (in the New Mass), if it subsists at all." *
6. Because "Recent reforms have amply demonstrated that fresh changes in the liturgy could lead to nothing but complete bewilderment in the faithful who already show signs of uneasiness and lessening of Faith." *
7. Because in times of confusion such as now, we are guided by the words of our Lord: "By their fruits you shall know them." Fruits of the New Mass are: 30% decrease in Sunday Mass attendance in U.S. (NY Times, 5/24/75), 43% decrease in France (Cardinal Marty), 50% decrease in Holland (NY Times, 1/5/76).
8. Because "amongst the best of the clergy the practical result (of the New Mass) is an agonizing crisis of conscience..." *
9. Because in less than seven years after the introduction of the New Mass, priests in the world decreased from 413,438 to 243,307 - almost 50%! (Holy See Statistics)
10. Because "The pastoral reasons adduced to support such a grave break with tradition ... do not seem to us sufficient." *
11. Because the New Mass does not manifest Faith in the Real Presence of our Lord - the Traditional Mass manifests it unmistakably.
12. Because the New Mass confuses the REAL Presence of Christ in the Eucharist with His MYSTICAL Presence among us (proximating Protestant doctrine).
13. Because the New Mass blurs what ought to be a sharp difference between the HIERARCHIC Priesthood and the common priesthood of the people (as does Protestantism).
14. Because the New Mass favors the heretical theory that it is THE FAITH of the people and not THE WORDS OF THE PRIEST which makes Christ present in the Eucharist.
15. Because the insertion of the Lutheran :"Prayer of the Faithful" in the New Mass follows and puts forth the Protestant error that all the people are priests.
16. Because the New Mass does away with the Confiteor of the priest, makes it collective with the people, thus promoting Luther's refusal to accept the Catholic teaching that the priest is judge, witness and intercessor with God.
17. Because the New Mass gives us to understand that the people concelebrate with the priest - which is against Catholic theology!
18. Because six Protestant ministers collaborated in making up the New Mass: George, Jasper, Shepherd, Kunneth, Smith and Thurian.
19. Because just as Luther did away with the Offertory - since it very clearly expressed the sacrificial, propitiatory character of the Mass - so also the inventors of the New Mass did away with it, reducing it to a simple Preparation of the Gifts.
20. Because enough Catholic theology has been removed that Protestants can, while keeping their antipathy for the True Roman Catholic Church, use the text of the New Mass without difficulty. Protestant Minister Thurian (co-consultor for the 'New Mass' project) said that a fruit of the New mass "will perhaps be that the non-Catholic communities will be ale to celebrate the Lord's Supper using the same prayers as the Catholic Church." (La Croix, 4/30/69)
21. Because the narrative manner of the Consecration in the New Mass infers that it is only a memorial and not a true sacrifice (Protestant thesis)
22. Because by grave omissions, the New Mass leads us to believe that it is only a meal (Protestant doctrine) and not a sacrifice for the remission of sins (Catholic Doctrine).
23. Because the changes such as: table instead of altar; facing people instead of tabernacle; Communion in the hand, etc., emphasize Protestant doctrines (e.g., Mass is only a meal; priest only a president of the assembly; Eucharist is NOT the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, but merely a piece of bread, etc.)
24. Because Protestants themselves have said "the new Catholic Eucharistic prayers have abandoned the false (sic) perspective of sacrifice offered to God." (La Croix, 12/10/69)
25. Because we are faced with the dilemma: either we become Protestantized by worshipping with the New Mass, or else we preserve our Catholic Faith by adhering faithfully to the traditional Mass, the "Mass of All Time."
26. Because the New Mass was made in accordance with the Protestant definition of the Mass: "The Lord's Supper or Mass is a sacred synaxis or assembly of the people of God which gathers together under the presidency of the priest to celebrate the memorial of the Lord." (Par. 7, Intro. to the New Missal, defining the New Mass, 4/6/69)
27. Because by means of ambiguity, the New Mass pretends to please Catholics while pleasing Protestants; thus it is "double-tongued" and offensive to God who abhors any kind of hypocrisy: "Cursed be ... the double-tongued for they destroy the peace of many." (Ecclesiasticus 28:13)
28. Because beautiful, familiar Catholic hymns which have inspired people for centuries, have been thrown out and replaced with new hymns strongly Protestant in sentiment, further deepening the already distinct impression that one is no longer attending a Catholic function.
29. Because the New Mass contains ambiguities subtly favoring heresy, which is more dangerous than if it were clearly heretical since a half-heresy half resembles the Truth!
30. Because Christ has only one Spouse, the Catholic Church, and her worship service cannot also serve religions that are at enmity with her.
31. Because the New Mass follows the format of Cranmer's heretical Anglican Mass, and the methods used to promote it follow precisely the methods of the English heretics.
32. Because Holy Mother Church canonized numerous English Martyrs who were killed because they refused to participate in a Mass such as the New Mass!
33. Because Protestants who once converted to Catholicism are scandalized to see that the New Mass is the same as the one they attended as Protestants. One of them, Julien Green, asks: "Why did we convert?"
34. Because statistics show a great decrease in conversions to Catholicism following the use of the New Mass. Conversions, which were up to 100,000 a year in the U.S., have decreased to less than 10,000! And the number of people leaving the Church far exceeds those coming in.
35. Because the Traditional Mass has forged many saints. "Innumerable saints have been fed abundantly with the proper piety towards God by it ..." (Pope Paul VI, Const. Apost. Missale Romanum)
36. Because the nature of the New Mass is such as to facilitate profanations of the Holy Eucharist, which occur with a frequency unheard of with the Traditional Mass.
37. Because the New Mass, despite appearances, conveys a New Faith, not the Catholic Faith. It conveys Modernism and follows exactly the tactics of Modernism, using vague terminology in order to insinuate and advance error.
38. Because by introducing optional variations, the New Mass undermines the unity of the liturgy, with each priest liable to deviate as he fancies under the guise of creativity. Disorder inevitably results, accompanied by lack of respect and irreverence.
39. Because many good Catholic theologians, canonists and priests do not accept the New Mass, and affirm that they are unable to celebrate it in good conscience.
40. Because the New Mass has eliminated such things as: genuflections (only three remain), purification of the priests fingers in the chalice, preservation from all profane contact of priest's fingers after Consecration, sacred altar stone and relics, three altar clothes (reduced to one), all of which "only serve to emphasize how outrageously faith in the dogma of the Real Presence is implicitly repudiated." *
41. Because the traditional Mass, enriched and matured by centuries of Sacred Tradition, was codified (not invented) by a Pope who was a saint, Pius V; whereas the New Mass was artificially fabricated by six Protestant ministers and Msgr. Annibale Bugnini suspect of being a Freemason.
42. Because the errors of the New Mass which are accentuated in the vernacular version are even present in the Latin text of the New Mass.
43. Because the New Mass, with its ambiguity and permissiveness, exposes us to the wrath of God by facilitating the risk of invalid consecrations: "Will priests of the near future who have not received the traditional formation, and who rely on the Novus Ordo Missae with the intention of 'doing what the Church does,' consecrate validly? One may be allowed to doubt it!" *
44. Because the abolition of the Traditional Mass recalls the prophecy of Daniel 8:12: "And he was given power against the perpetual sacrifice because of the sins of the people" and the observation of St. Alphonsus de Liguori that because the Mass is the best and most beautiful thing which exists in the Church here below, the devil has always tried by means of heretics to deprive us of it.
45. Because in places where the Traditional Mass is preserved, the Faith and fervor of the people are greater. Whereas the opposite is true where the New Mass reigns (Report on the Mass, Diocese of Campos, Roma, Buenos Aires #69, 8/81)
46. Because along with the New Mass goes also a new catechism, a new morality, new prayers, new Code of Canon law, new calendar, -- in a word, a NEW CHURCH, a complete revolution from the old. "The liturgical reform ... do not be deceived, this is where the revolution begins." (Msgr. Dwyer, Archbishop of Birmingham, spokesman of Episcopal Synod)
47. Because the intrinsic beauty of the Traditional Mass attracts souls by itself; whereas the New Mass, lacking any attractiveness of its own, has to invent novelties and entertainment in order to appeal to the people.
48. Because the New mass embodies numerous errors condemned by Pope St. Pius V at the Council of Trent (Mass totally in vernacular, words of Consecration spoken aloud, etc. See Condemnation of Jansenist Synod of Pistoia), and errors condemned by Pope Pius XII (e.g., altar in form of table. See Mediator Dei).
49. Because the New Mass attempts to transform the Catholic Church into a new, ecumenical church embracing all ideologies and all religions - right and wrong, truth and error - a goal long dreamt of by the enemies of the Catholic Church.
50. Because the New Mass, in removing the salutations and final blessing when the priest celebrates alone, shows a denial of, and disbelief in the dogma of the Communion of Saints.
51. Because the altar and tabernacle are now separated, thus marking a division between Christ in His priest-and-Sacrifice-on-the-altar, from Christ in His Real Presence in the tabernacle, "two things which of their very nature, must remain together." (Pius XII)
52. Because the New Mass no longer constitutes a vertical worship between God and man, but rather a horizontal worship between man and man.
53. Because the New Mass, although appearing to conform to the dispositions of Vatican Council II, in reality opposes its instructions, since the Council itself declared its desire to conserve and promote the Traditional Rite.
54. Because the Traditional Latin Mass of Pope St. Pius V has never been legally abrogated and therefore remains a true rite of the Roman Catholic Church by which the faithful may fulfill their Sunday obligation.
55. Because Pope St. Pius V granted a perpetual indult, valid "for always," to celebrate the Traditional Mass freely, licitly, without scruple of conscience, punishment, sentence or censure (Papal Bull Quo Primum)
56. Because Pope Paul VI, when promulgating the New Mass, himself declared. "The rite ... by itself is NOT a dogmatic definition ..." (11/19/69)
57. Because Pope Paul VI, when asked by Cardinal Heenan of England, if he was abrogating or prohibiting the Tridentine Mass, answered: "It is not our intention to prohibit absolutely the Tridentine Mass."
58. Because "In the Libera nos of the New Mass, the Blessed Virgin, the Apostles and all the Saints are no longer mentioned; her and their intercession thus no longer asked, even in time of peril." *
59. Because in none of the three new Eucharistic Prayers (of the New Mass) is there any reference ... to the state of suffering of those who have died, in none the possibility of a particular Memento, thus undermining faith in the redemptive nature of the Sacrifice.*
60. Because we recognize the Holy Father's supreme authority in his universal government of Holy Mother Church, but we know that even this authority cannot impose upon us a practice which is so CLEARLY against the Faith: a Mass that is equivocal and favoring heresy and therefore disagreeable to God.
61. Because, as stated in Vatican Council I, the "Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter, that by His revelation they might make new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of Faith delivered through the Apostles." (Dnz 3070)
62. Because heresy, or whatever clearly favors heresy, cannot be a matter for obedience. Obedience is at the service of Faith and not Faith at the service of obedience! In this foregoing case then, "One must obey God before men." (Acts 5:29)
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62 Reasons to Reject the Novus Ordo Mass |
Posted by: Stone - 03-03-2021, 07:11 PM - Forum: New Rite Sacraments
- Replies (1)
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62 Reasons to Reject the Novus Ordo Mass
Adapted from here.
The following summary is attributed to the Priests of Campos. If this information is true, it must have been made before 2002 when the ensemble of those Priests, under the leadership of Bishop Fernando Rifan, accepted the New Mass and Vatican II. The asterisk at the end of a number indicates that the same reason was given in a letter written by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani and Cardinal Antonio Bacci to Paul VI dated Rome, September 25, 1969.
62 Reasons to Reject the N.O.
1. Because the New Mass is not an unequivocal Profession of the Catholic Faith (which the traditional Mass is), it is ambiguous and with a Protestant flavor. Therefore since we pray as we believe, it follows that we cannot pray with the New Mass in Protestant fashion and still believe as Catholics!
2. Because the changes were not just slight ones but actually "deal with a fundamental renovation ... a total change ... a new creation." (Msgr. A. Bugnini, co-author of the New Mass)
3. Because the New Mass leads us to think "that truths ... can be changed or ignored without infidelity to that sacred deposit of doctrine to which the Catholic Faith is bound forever." *
4. Because the New Mass represents "a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent" which, in fixing the "canons," provided an "insurmountable barrier to any heresy against the integrity of the Mystery." *
5. Because the difference between the two is not simply one of mere detail or just modification of ceremony, but "all that is of perennial value finds only a minor place (in the New Mass), if it subsists at all." *
6. Because "Recent reforms have amply demonstrated that fresh changes in the liturgy could lead to nothing but complete bewilderment in the faithful who already show signs of uneasiness and lessening of Faith." *
7. Because in times of confusion such as now, we are guided by the words of our Lord: "By their fruits you shall know them." Fruits of the New Mass are: 30% decrease in Sunday Mass attendance in U.S. (NY Times, 5/24/75), 43% decrease in France (Cardinal Marty), 50% decrease in Holland (NY Times, 1/5/76).
8. Because "amongst the best of the clergy the practical result (of the New Mass) is an agonizing crisis of conscience..." *
9. Because in less than seven years after the introduction of the New Mass, priests in the world decreased from 413,438 to 243,307 - almost 50%! (Holy See Statistics)
10. Because "The pastoral reasons adduced to support such a grave break with tradition ... do not seem to us sufficient." *
11. Because the New Mass does not manifest Faith in the Real Presence of our Lord - the Traditional Mass manifests it unmistakably.
12. Because the New Mass confuses the REAL Presence of Christ in the Eucharist with His MYSTICAL Presence among us (proximating Protestant doctrine).
13. Because the New Mass blurs what ought to be a sharp difference between the HIERARCHIC Priesthood and the common priesthood of the people (as does Protestantism).
14. Because the New Mass favors the heretical theory that it is THE FAITH of the people and not THE WORDS OF THE PRIEST which makes Christ present in the Eucharist.
15. Because the insertion of the Lutheran :"Prayer of the Faithful" in the New Mass follows and puts forth the Protestant error that all the people are priests.
16. Because the New Mass does away with the Confiteor of the priest, makes it collective with the people, thus promoting Luther's refusal to accept the Catholic teaching that the priest is judge, witness and intercessor with God.
17. Because the New Mass gives us to understand that the people concelebrate with the priest - which is against Catholic theology!
18. Because six Protestant ministers collaborated in making up the New Mass: George, Jasper, Shepherd, Kunneth, Smith and Thurian.
19. Because just as Luther did away with the Offertory - since it very clearly expressed the sacrificial, propitiatory character of the Mass - so also the inventors of the New Mass did away with it, reducing it to a simple Preparation of the Gifts.
20. Because enough Catholic theology has been removed that Protestants can, while keeping their antipathy for the True Roman Catholic Church, use the text of the New Mass without difficulty. Protestant Minister Thurian (co-consultor for the 'New Mass' project) said that a fruit of the New mass "will perhaps be that the non-Catholic communities will be ale to celebrate the Lord's Supper using the same prayers as the Catholic Church." (La Croix, 4/30/69)
21. Because the narrative manner of the Consecration in the New Mass infers that it is only a memorial and not a true sacrifice (Protestant thesis)
22. Because by grave omissions, the New Mass leads us to believe that it is only a meal (Protestant doctrine) and not a sacrifice for the remission of sins (Catholic Doctrine).
23. Because the changes such as: table instead of altar; facing people instead of tabernacle; Communion in the hand, etc., emphasize Protestant doctrines (e.g., Mass is only a meal; priest only a president of the assembly; Eucharist is NOT the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, but merely a piece of bread, etc.)
24. Because Protestants themselves have said "the new Catholic Eucharistic prayers have abandoned the false (sic) perspective of sacrifice offered to God." (La Croix, 12/10/69)
25. Because we are faced with the dilemma: either we become Protestantized by worshipping with the New Mass, or else we preserve our Catholic Faith by adhering faithfully to the traditional Mass, the "Mass of All Time."
26. Because the New Mass was made in accordance with the Protestant definition of the Mass: "The Lord's Supper or Mass is a sacred synaxis or assembly of the people of God which gathers together under the presidency of the priest to celebrate the memorial of the Lord." (Par. 7, Intro. to the New Missal, defining the New Mass, 4/6/69)
27. Because by means of ambiguity, the New Mass pretends to please Catholics while pleasing Protestants; thus it is "double-tongued" and offensive to God who abhors any kind of hypocrisy: "Cursed be ... the double-tongued for they destroy the peace of many." (Ecclesiasticus 28:13)
28. Because beautiful, familiar Catholic hymns which have inspired people for centuries, have been thrown out and replaced with new hymns strongly Protestant in sentiment, further deepening the already distinct impression that one is no longer attending a Catholic function.
29. Because the New Mass contains ambiguities subtly favoring heresy, which is more dangerous than if it were clearly heretical since a half-heresy half resembles the Truth!
30. Because Christ has only one Spouse, the Catholic Church, and her worship service cannot also serve religions that are at enmity with her.
31. Because the New Mass follows the format of Cranmer's heretical Anglican Mass, and the methods used to promote it follow precisely the methods of the English heretics.
32. Because Holy Mother Church canonized numerous English Martyrs who were killed because they refused to participate in a Mass such as the New Mass!
33. Because Protestants who once converted to Catholicism are scandalized to see that the New Mass is the same as the one they attended as Protestants. One of them, Julien Green, asks: "Why did we convert?"
34. Because statistics show a great decrease in conversions to Catholicism following the use of the New Mass. Conversions, which were up to 100,000 a year in the U.S., have decreased to less than 10,000! And the number of people leaving the Church far exceeds those coming in.
35. Because the Traditional Mass has forged many saints. "Innumerable saints have been fed abundantly with the proper piety towards God by it ..." (Pope Paul VI, Const. Apost. Missale Romanum)
36. Because the nature of the New Mass is such as to facilitate profanations of the Holy Eucharist, which occur with a frequency unheard of with the Traditional Mass.
37. Because the New Mass, despite appearances, conveys a New Faith, not the Catholic Faith. It conveys Modernism and follows exactly the tactics of Modernism, using vague terminology in order to insinuate and advance error.
38. Because by introducing optional variations, the New Mass undermines the unity of the liturgy, with each priest liable to deviate as he fancies under the guise of creativity. Disorder inevitably results, accompanied by lack of respect and irreverence.
39. Because many good Catholic theologians, canonists and priests do not accept the New Mass, and affirm that they are unable to celebrate it in good conscience.
40. Because the New Mass has eliminated such things as: genuflections (only three remain), purification of the priests fingers in the chalice, preservation from all profane contact of priest's fingers after Consecration, sacred altar stone and relics, three altar clothes (reduced to one), all of which "only serve to emphasize how outrageously faith in the dogma of the Real Presence is implicitly repudiated." *
41. Because the traditional Mass, enriched and matured by centuries of Sacred Tradition, was codified (not invented) by a Pope who was a saint, Pius V; whereas the New Mass was artificially fabricated by six Protestant ministers and Msgr. Annibale Bugnini suspect of being a Freemason.
42. Because the errors of the New Mass which are accentuated in the vernacular version are even present in the Latin text of the New Mass.
43. Because the New Mass, with its ambiguity and permissiveness, exposes us to the wrath of God by facilitating the risk of invalid consecrations: "Will priests of the near future who have not received the traditional formation, and who rely on the Novus Ordo Missae with the intention of 'doing what the Church does,' consecrate validly? One may be allowed to doubt it!" *
44. Because the abolition of the Traditional Mass recalls the prophecy of Daniel 8:12: "And he was given power against the perpetual sacrifice because of the sins of the people" and the observation of St. Alphonsus de Liguori that because the Mass is the best and most beautiful thing which exists in the Church here below, the devil has always tried by means of heretics to deprive us of it.
45. Because in places where the Traditional Mass is preserved, the Faith and fervor of the people are greater. Whereas the opposite is true where the New Mass reigns (Report on the Mass, Diocese of Campos, Roma, Buenos Aires #69, 8/81)
46. Because along with the New Mass goes also a new catechism, a new morality, new prayers, new Code of Canon law, new calendar, -- in a word, a NEW CHURCH, a complete revolution from the old. "The liturgical reform ... do not be deceived, this is where the revolution begins." (Msgr. Dwyer, Archbishop of Birmingham, spokesman of Episcopal Synod)
47. Because the intrinsic beauty of the Traditional Mass attracts souls by itself; whereas the New Mass, lacking any attractiveness of its own, has to invent novelties and entertainment in order to appeal to the people.
48. Because the New mass embodies numerous errors condemned by Pope St. Pius V at the Council of Trent (Mass totally in vernacular, words of Consecration spoken aloud, etc. See Condemnation of Jansenist Synod of Pistoia), and errors condemned by Pope Pius XII (e.g., altar in form of table. See Mediator Dei).
49. Because the New Mass attempts to transform the Catholic Church into a new, ecumenical church embracing all ideologies and all religions - right and wrong, truth and error - a goal long dreamt of by the enemies of the Catholic Church.
50. Because the New Mass, in removing the salutations and final blessing when the priest celebrates alone, shows a denial of, and disbelief in the dogma of the Communion of Saints.
51. Because the altar and tabernacle are now separated, thus marking a division between Christ in His priest-and-Sacrifice-on-the-altar, from Christ in His Real Presence in the tabernacle, "two things which of their very nature, must remain together." (Pius XII)
52. Because the New Mass no longer constitutes a vertical worship between God and man, but rather a horizontal worship between man and man.
53. Because the New Mass, although appearing to conform to the dispositions of Vatican Council II, in reality opposes its instructions, since the Council itself declared its desire to conserve and promote the Traditional Rite.
54. Because the Traditional Latin Mass of Pope St. Pius V has never been legally abrogated and therefore remains a true rite of the Roman Catholic Church by which the faithful may fulfill their Sunday obligation.
55. Because Pope St. Pius V granted a perpetual indult, valid "for always," to celebrate the Traditional Mass freely, licitly, without scruple of conscience, punishment, sentence or censure (Papal Bull Quo Primum)
56. Because Pope Paul VI, when promulgating the New Mass, himself declared. "The rite ... by itself is NOT a dogmatic definition ..." (11/19/69)
57. Because Pope Paul VI, when asked by Cardinal Heenan of England, if he was abrogating or prohibiting the Tridentine Mass, answered: "It is not our intention to prohibit absolutely the Tridentine Mass."
58. Because "In the Libera nos of the New Mass, the Blessed Virgin, the Apostles and all the Saints are no longer mentioned; her and their intercession thus no longer asked, even in time of peril." *
59. Because in none of the three new Eucharistic Prayers (of the New Mass) is there any reference ... to the state of suffering of those who have died, in none the possibility of a particular Memento, thus undermining faith in the redemptive nature of the Sacrifice.*
60. Because we recognize the Holy Father's supreme authority in his universal government of Holy Mother Church, but we know that even this authority cannot impose upon us a practice which is so CLEARLY against the Faith: a Mass that is equivocal and favoring heresy and therefore disagreeable to God.
61. Because, as stated in Vatican Council I, the "Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter, that by His revelation they might make new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of Faith delivered through the Apostles." (Dnz 3070)
62. Because heresy, or whatever clearly favors heresy, cannot be a matter for obedience. Obedience is at the service of Faith and not Faith at the service of obedience! In this foregoing case then, "One must obey God before men." (Acts 5:29)
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Who’s behind global effort to silence critics of the ‘Great Reset’? |
Posted by: Stone - 03-03-2021, 01:03 PM - Forum: Great Reset
- No Replies
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Who’s behind global effort to silence critics of the ‘Great Reset’?
The Publicis Groupe, an international PR firm, is a partner with the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a “reset” of the global economy.
Publicis represents tech, pharma and banking corporations, all of which have partnerships with the U.S. government and global NGOs.
Story at a glance:
- The Publicis Groupe, a leading PR firm, represents major companies within the technology, pharmaceutical and banking industries. These companies, in turn, have various partnerships with the U.S. government and global nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
- Publicis is a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a “reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life. As such, Publicis appears to be playing an important role, coordinating the suppression of information that runs counter to the technocratic narrative.
- The role of the free press is to counter industry propaganda. That role has been effectively subverted through advertising. News outlets rarely report on something that might damage their advertisers.
- Publicis connects to the drug industry, banking industry, NewsGuard/HealthGuard, educational institutions, Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Bing, the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense, global technocratic institutions like the World Health Organization, national and global NGOs like the CCDH and the World Economic Forum, and dominating health websites like WebMD and Medscape.
- These connections, taken together, explain how certain views can be so effectively erased. The answer to this dilemma is transparency. We must expose the machinations that allow this agenda to be pushed forward.
March 3, 2021 (Children’s Health Defense) — Any strategy that successfully manipulates public opinion is bound to be repeated, and we can now clearly see how the tobacco industry’s playbook is being used to shape the public narrative about COVID-19 and the projected post-COVID era.
In 2011, after many years of raising awareness regarding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and industrial agriculture, we decided we needed a new game plan. Educating people through our newsletter was great, but we realized the best way to expose Monsanto — a leading GMO advocate and patented seed owner at the time — was to get them to engage directly and ensure national attention.
To that end, Mercola.com funded the signature gathering in California that initiated Proposition 37, the right to know what’s in your food by ensuring proper GMO labeling. We spent more than $1 million for the Prop 37 initiative, plus several million dollars more for GMO labeling initiatives in other U.S. states in the following years.
This initiative forced Monsanto to engage with the public directly to defend their toxic products and dangerous business practices, all while receiving national coverage in the process.
The Monsanto case
Monsanto spent tens of millions of dollars attacking anyone in their way, but they did so indirectly, just like the tobacco industry did before them. This is the core take-home of what I’m about to describe next.
They used a public relations team to do most of their dirty work — paying scientists and academics to voice their “independent opinions,” influencing scientific journals, and getting journalists and editorial boards to write favorable and influential pieces to help them maintain their lies and influence minds.
Still, while the spending of tens of millions of dollars to influence voters resulted in a narrow defeat of Prop 37, the new, widespread awareness of GMOs, pesticides and industrial agriculture eventually led to Monsanto’s demise.
In 2013, in a last-ditch effort to salvage its tarnished image, Monsanto hired the PR firm Ketchum. As noted in a HuffPost article by Paul Thacker, “Monsanto hit reboot with Ketchum,” which “created a campaign called GMO Answers, and used social media and third-party scientists to offer a counter narrative to allay concern about Monsanto’s products.”
The GMO Answers’ website is set up to allow professors at public universities to answer GMO questions from the public — supposedly without remuneration from the industry. But over the years, evidence emerged showing that these academics are far from independent, and often end up getting paid for their contributions via hidden means, such as unrestricted grants.
University of Florida professor Kevin Folta is one prominent example described in my 2016 article “Scientific American — Another Monsanto Bedfellow.” In that article, I also review how GMO Answers co-sponsored a panel discussion about GMOs in March that year with the media and partnerships division of Scientific American.
At the time, Jeremy Abatte, vice president and publisher of Scientific American, insisted the event was not a Ketchum event but a Scientific American event. Few bought his reasoning though, and many ended up filing Scientific American into the chemical biotech shill category.
Having purchased Monsanto at the end of 2016, Bayer continued the strategy to rely on PR firms for public acceptance. In the article “Bayer’s Shady PR Firms: Fleishmanhillard, Ketchum, FTI Consulting,” U.S. Right to Know reviews the many deception scandals involving these firms. A key discovery was evidence showing “there are objective strategies to silence strong voices.”
After investigating the strategies used by Monsanto and Bayer, we can now see that the same playbook is being used by Big Tech and Big Pharma to shape the public narratives about COVID-19 and the Great Reset. Again, a central facet of these campaigns is to silence critics, in particular those with large online followings, including yours truly.
I have been publicly labeled a “national security threat” to the U.K. by Imran Ahmed, a member of the Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force under the British government’s Commission for Countering Extremism and the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
According to Ahmed, I and others who question the safety and necessity of a COVID-19 vaccine may be prone to violent extremism. This defamatory statement clearly has no basis in reality whatsoever. Rather, it’s part of the propaganda aimed at destroying the opposition — in this case the opposition to the technocrats driving the Great Reset agenda, which spans across social, economic and health related sectors.
As reported by the National Vaccine Information Center, which was also on the CCDH list of national security threats:
Quote:The anonymously funded CCDH also has an office in Washington, D.C. and the defamatory publicity campaign created in December 2020 was designed to not only discredit NVIC’s four-decade public record of working within the U.S. democratic system to secure vaccine safety and informed consent protections in public health policies and laws, but to destroy our small charity.
Publicis is an organizing force in the Great Reset deception
Public deception is now being carried out at a mass scale, and the whole thing appears to be led and organized by another major PR firm, this time the Publicis Groupe, self-described as
“one of the world’s largest communications groups,” which represents major companies within the technology, pharmaceutical and banking industries.
These companies, in turn, have various partnerships with the U.S. government and global nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Publicis itself is also a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a “reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life. As you will see, Publicis’ fingerprints can be found throughout the net of censorship and misdirection that is now being cast across the digital landscape.
The Publicis Groupe has manipulated what people think about commercial products for nearly a century. Over that century, they have bought or partnered with targeted advertising avenues, beginning with newspapers, followed by radio, TV, cinema and the internet. More recently, they’ve branched into Big Data acquisitions and artificial intelligence platforms.
To understand the power PR companies such as Publicis have today, you need to understand the role of the free press. While pro-industry advertising worked well for decades, there was still the irksome problem of the Fourth Estate, a term that refers to the press.
The problem for industry was that professional investigative journalists working for magazines, newspapers and broadcast outlets would write in-depth exposés, outing the truth behind deceptive advertising and countering industry propaganda with science, statistics and other documented facts — and when a free press with honest reporting based on verifiable facts actually does its job, ineffective or toxic products are driven off the market.
The answer that industry came up with in the late 20th century to combat truth in journalism was, pure and simple, to control the Fourth Estate with advertising dollars. News organizations will simply not run reports that might harm the bottom line of its advertisers.
By further partnering with the “big guns” of media — such as the Paley Center for Media — Publicis and its industry clients have been able to influence and control the press to restrict, indeed virtually eliminate, your ability to get the truth on many important issues.
Publicis, Big Pharma and NewsGuard
To start off this sprawling web of industry connections surrounding Publicis, let’s look at its connections to the self-appointed internet watchdog NewsGuard. NewsGuard rates websites on criteria of “credibility” and “transparency,” ostensibly to guide viewers to the most reliable sources of news and information.
In reality, however, NewsGuard ends up acting as a gatekeeper with a mission to barricade unpopular truth and differences of opinion behind closed gates. Its clearly biased ranking system easily dissuades people from perusing information from low-rated sites, mine included.
NewsGuard received a large chunk of its startup capital from Publicis. NewsGuard also has ties to The Paley Center for Media, mentioned earlier. For clarification, The Paley Center is composed of every major media in the world, including Microsoft, AOL, CBS, Fox and Tribune Media. One of its activities is to sponsor an annual global forum for industry leaders.
NewsGuard is housed in The Paley Center in New York City. In November 2015, Publicis’ chairman of North America, Susan Gianinno, joined The Paley Center’s board of trustees.
Leo Hindery, a former business partner of the co-CEOs of NewsGuard, Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, is also a former trustee and director of The Paley Center. Taken together, NewsGuard has fairly influential connections to The Paley Center besides being a tenant in their building.
As mentioned, Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world, and since so much of its revenue comes from the drug industry, it’s not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard’s ratings of drug industry competitors, such as alternative health sites.
Publicis, Big Pharma, NewsGuard and Big Tech
Next, let’s add a layer of Big Tech into the mix. Publicis, which represents Big Pharma, not only has the ability to influence the public through NewsGuard, but it’s also a Google partner, which allows it even greater ability to bury undesirable views that might hurt its clientele.
NewsGuard is also partnered with Microsoft, initially through Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program. Through an expanded partnership announced in 2020, Microsoft Edge users gained access to NewsGuard for free, and Microsoft Bing gained access to NewsGuard’s data.
Publicis, pharma, NewsGuard, Big Tech, government and NGOs
Expanding the web further onto government and NGO territory, we find that NewsGuard is also connected to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense and the World Health Organization. All three are listed as NewsGuard partners. NewsGuard is also partnered with:
- Trend Micro and many others
To summarize, the web around Publicis now includes international drug companies, NewsGuard, Google, Microsoft, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), the WHO and the World Economic Forum. Mind you, this is not a comprehensive review of links. It’s merely a sampling of entities to give you an idea of the breadth of these connections, which when taken together explain how certain views can be so effectively erased.
Add in ‘anti-hate’ group and Google-trusted health sites
But we’re not done yet. NewsGuard’s health-related service called HealthGuard is also partnered with WebMD, Medscape and the CCDH — the progressive cancel-culture leader with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that recently labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as national security threats.
In 2017, WebMD was acquired by Internet Brands, a company under the global investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) umbrella. KKR also owns several other health-related internet brands. Since WebMD owned Medscape, it too now belongs to the KKR Internet Brands as well.
Together, HealthGuard, CCDH, WebMD and Medscape have launched a public service campaign called VaxFacts. The goal of the campaign is to “provide facts and tools to help consumers make informed decisions about vaccines,” WebMD reports.
In tandem with that campaign, Google is funding fact-checking organizations to the tune of $3 million, with the aim of countering “vaccine misinformation,” and NewsGuard maintains a “Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center” that includes a “Top COVID-19 Vaccine Myths Tracker.”
WebMD dominates health searches done through Google and shares user information with Google’s advertising arm and other third-party firms — a practice that is illegal in Europe.
What this means is DoubleClick, Google’s ad service, knows which prescriptions you’ve searched for on the site, thus providing you with personalized drug ads, and Facebook knows what you’ve searched for in WebMD’s symptom checker, as well as any medical diagnoses you received. I reviewed these findings in “WebMD and Healthline exposed Violating Your Privacy.”
Since most of its revenue comes from advertising, WebMD is far from an independent source of well-researched health news. For example, it has been caught shilling for Monsanto, publishing industry-friendly “articles” that are really paid advertisements known in the media world as advertorials.
Ten years ago, WebMD was also caught publishing a fake online depression screening test. In actuality, it was an advertising trick for the antidepressant Cymbalta, and there was no way for test takers to get a clean bill of mental health.
Summary
So, to recap, we find connections between the drug industry, NewsGuard/HealthGuard, educational institutions, Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Bing, the U.S. State Department and DOD, global technocratic institutions like the WHO, national and global NGOs like the CCDH and the World Economic Forum, and dominating health websites like WebMD and Medscape.
Again, this is far from an exhaustive investigation of these kinds of connections. It’s merely a small sampling of readily obvious relationships. Toward the center of this web is the Publicis Groupe, the clients of which include major drug companies, Big Tech companies and financial institutions in more than 100 countries.
By the way, Publicis also began investing in artificial intelligence technology in 2017 and partnered with Microsoft in 2018 to develop a global AI platform. It also purchased the data firm Epsilon in 2019, thereby establishing ownership of first-party data — a crucially valuable resource when it comes to the use of AI.
As detailed on its website, the firm’s expertise is concentrated within four main activities: communication, media, data and technology (including AI services), and all clients have access to its expertise in all of these areas.
While it’s easy to dismiss Publicis as just another ad agency, I believe it would be foolish to underestimate its power to organize the kind of coordination required to shut down vaccine concerns, anti-lockdown proponents and people trying to educate their fellow man about the dangers of the Great Reset, which is being brought forth as a “necessary” post-COVID step.
While these things may seem unrelated, they’re really not. As mentioned, the Great Reset involves everything — including health, education, government, economics, redistribution of wealth, business practices, environmental “protections” and much more.
Originally published by Mercola.
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The Sacrament of Penance |
Posted by: Stone - 03-03-2021, 12:09 PM - Forum: Church Doctrine & Teaching
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Catholic Encyclopedia > The Sacrament of Penance
The Sacrament of Penance
Penance is a sacrament of the New Law instituted by Christ in which forgiveness of sins committed after baptism is granted through the priest's absolution to those who with true sorrow confess their sins and promise to satisfy for the same. It is called a "sacrament" not simply a function or ceremony, because it is an outward sign instituted by Christ to impart grace to the soul. As an outward sign it comprises the actions of the penitent in presenting himself to the priest and accusing himself of his sins, and the actions of the priest in pronouncing absolution and imposing satisfaction. This whole procedure is usually called, from one of its parts, "confession", and it is said to take place in the "tribunal of penance", because it is a judicial process in which the penitent is at once the accuser, the person accused, and the witness, while the priest pronounces judgment and sentence. The grace conferred is deliverance from the guilt of sin and, in the case of mortal sin, from its eternal punishment; hence also reconciliation with God, justification. Finally, the confession is made not in the secrecy of the penitent's heart nor to a layman as friend and advocate, nor to a representative of human authority, but to a duly ordained priest with requisite jurisdiction and with the "power of the keys", i.e., the power to forgive sins which Christ granted to His Church.
By way of further explanation it is needful to correct certain erroneous views regarding this sacrament which not only misrepresent the actual practice of the Church but also lead to a false interpretation of theological statement and historical evidence. From what has been said it should be clear:
- that penance is not a mere human invention devised by the Church to secure power over consciences or to relieve the emotional strain of troubled souls; it is the ordinary means appointed by Christ for the remission of sin. Man indeed is free to obey or disobey, but once he has sinned, he must seek pardon not on conditions of his own choosing but on those which God has determined, and these for the Christian are embodied in the Sacrament of Penance.
- No Catholic believes that a priest, simply as an individual man, however pious or learned, has power to forgive sins. This power belongs to God alone; but He can and does exercise it through the ministration of men. Since He has seen fit to exercise it by means of this sacrament, it cannot be said that the Church or the priest interferes between the soul and God; on the contrary, penance is the removal of the one obstacle that keeps the soul away from God.
- It is not true that for the Catholic the mere "telling of one's sins" suffices to obtain their forgiveness. Without sincere sorrow and purpose of amendment, confession avails nothing, the pronouncement of absolution is of no effect, and the guilt of the sinner is greater than before.
- While this sacrament as a dispensation of Divine mercy facilitates the pardoning of sin, it by no means renders sin less hateful or its consequences less dreadful to the Christian mind; much less does it imply permission to commit sin in the future. In paying ordinary debts, as e.g., by monthly settlements, the intention of contracting new debts with the same creditor is perfectly legitimate; a similar intention on the part of him who confesses his sins would not only be wrong in itself but would nullify the sacrament and prevent the forgiveness of sins then and there confessed.
- Strangely enough, the opposite charge is often heard, viz., that the confession of sin is intolerable and hard and therefore alien to the spirit of Christianity and the loving kindness of its Founder. But this view, in the first place, overlooks the fact that Christ, though merciful, is also just and exacting. Furthermore, however painful or humiliating confession may be, it is but a light penalty for the violation of God's law. Finally, those who are in earnest about their salvation count no hardship too great whereby they can win back God's friendship.
Both these accusations, of too great leniency and too great severity, proceed as a rule from those who have no experience with the sacrament and only the vaguest ideas of what the Church teaches or of the power to forgive sins which the Church received from Christ.
Teaching of the Church
The Council of Trent (1551) declares:
Quote:As a means of regaining grace and justice, penance was at all times necessary for those who had defiled their souls with any mortal sin. . . . Before the coming of Christ, penance was not a sacrament, nor is it since His coming a sacrament for those who are not baptized. But the Lord then principally instituted the Sacrament of Penance, when, being raised from the dead, he breathed upon His disciples saying: 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained' (John 20:22-23). By which action so signal and words so clear the consent of all the Fathers has ever understood that the power of forgiving and retaining sins was communicated to the Apostles and to their lawful successors, for the reconciling of the faithful who have fallen after Baptism. (Sess. XIV, c. i)
Farther on the council expressly states that Christ left priests, His own vicars, as judges (praesides et judices), unto whom all the mortal crimes into which the faithful may have fallen should be revealed in order that, in accordance with the power of the keys, they may pronounce the sentence of forgiveness or retention of sins" (Sess. XIV, c. v)
Power to forgive sins
It is noteworthy that the fundamental objection so often urged against the Sacrament of Penance was first thought of by the Scribes when Christ said to the sick man of the palsy: "Thy sins are forgiven thee." "And there were some of the scribes sitting there, and thinking in their hearts: Why doth this man speak thus? he blasphemeth. Who can forgive sins but God only?" But Jesus seeing their thoughts, said to them: "Which is easier to say to the sick of the palsy: Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, take up thy bed and walk? But that you may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say to thee: Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house" (Mark 2:5-11; Matthew 9:2-7). Christ wrought a miracle to show that He had power to forgive sins and that this power could be exerted not only in heaven but also on earth. This power, moreover, He transmitted to Peter and the other Apostles. To Peter He says: "And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matthew 16:19). Later He says to all the Apostles: "Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matthew 18:18). As to the meaning of these texts, it should be noted:
- that the "binding" and "loosing" refers not to physical but to spiritual or moral bonds among which sin is certainly included; the more so because
- the power here granted is unlimited — "whatsoever you shall bind, . . . whatsoever you shall loose";
- the power is judicial, i.e., the Apostles are authorized to bind and to loose;
- whether they bind or loose, their action is ratified in heaven. In healing the palsied man Christ declared that "the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins"; here He promises that what these men, the Apostles, bind or loose on earth, God in heaven will likewise bind or loose. (Cf. also POWER OF THE KEYS.)
But as the Council of Trent declares, Christ principally instituted the Sacrament of Penance after His Resurrection, a miracle greater than that of healing the sick. "As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained' (John 20:21-23). While the sense of these words is quite obvious, the following points are to be considered:
- Christ here reiterates in the plainest terms — "sins", "forgive", "retain" — what He had previously stated in figurative language, "bind" and "loose", so that this text specifies and distinctly applies to sin the power of loosing and binding.
- He prefaces this grant of power by declaring that the mission of the Apostles is similar to that which He had received from the Father and which He had fulfilled: "As the Father hath sent me". Now it is beyond doubt that He came into the world to destroy sin and that on various occasions He explicitly forgave sin (Matthew 9:2-8; Luke 5:20; 7:47; Revelation 1:5), hence the forgiving of sin is to be included in the mission of the Apostles.
- Christ not only declared that sins were forgiven, but really and actually forgave them; hence, the Apostles are empowered not merely to announce to the sinner that his sins are forgiven but to grant him forgiveness—"whose sins you shall forgive". If their power were limited to the declaration "God pardons you", they would need a special revelation in each case to make the declaration valid.
- The power is twofold — to forgive or to retain, i.e., the Apostles are not told to grant or withhold forgiveness nondiscriminately; they must act judicially, forgiving or retaining according as the sinner deserves.
- The exercise of this power in either form (forgiving or retaining) is not restricted: no distinction is made or even suggested between one kind of sin and another, or between one class of sinners and all the rest: Christ simply says "whose sins".
- The sentence pronounced by the Apostles (remission or retention) is also God's sentence — "they are forgiven . . . they are retained".
It is therefore clear from the words of Christ that the Apostles had power to forgive sins. But this was not a personal prerogative that was to erase at their death; it was granted to them in their official capacity and hence as a permanent institution in the Church — no less permanent than the mission to teach and baptize all nations. Christ foresaw that even those who received faith and baptism, whether during the lifetime of the Apostles or later, would fall into sin and therefore would need forgiveness in order to be saved. He must, then, have intended that the power to forgive should be transmitted from the Apostles to their successors and be used as long as there would be sinners in the Church, and that means to the end of time. It is true that in baptism also sins are forgiven, but this does not warrant the view that the power to forgive is simply the power to baptize. In the first place, as appears from the texts cited above, the power to forgive is also the power to retain; its exercise involves a judicial action. But no such action is implied in the commission to baptize (Matthew 28:18-20); in fact, as the Council of Trent affirms, the Church does not pass judgment on those who are not yet members of the Church, and membership is obtained through baptism. Furthermore, baptism, because it is a new birth, cannot be repeated, whereas the power to forgive sins (penance) is to be used as often as the sinner may need it. Hence the condemnation, by the same Council, of any one "who, confounding the sacraments, should say that baptism itself is the Sacrament of Penance, as though these two sacraments were not distinct and as though penance were not rightly called the second plank after shipwreck" (Sess. XIV, can. 2 de sac. poen.).
These pronouncements were directed against the Protestant teaching which held that penance was merely a sort of repeated baptism; and as baptism effected no real forgiveness of sin but only an external covering over of sin through faith alone, the same, it was alleged, must be the case with penance. This, then, as a sacrament is superfluous; absolution is only a declaration that sin is forgiven through faith, and satisfaction is needless because Christ has satisfied once for all men. This was the first sweeping and radical denial of the Sacrament of Penance. Some of the earlier sects had claimed that only priests in the state of grace could validly absolve, but they had not denied the existence of the power to forgive. During all the preceding centuries, Catholic belief in this power had been so clear and strong that in order to set it aside Protestantism was obliged to strike at the very constitution of the Church and reject the whole content of Tradition.
Belief and practice of the early Church
Among the modernistic propositions condemned by Pius X in the Decree "Lamentabili sane" (3 July, 1907) are the following:
- "In the primitive Church there was no concept of the reconciliation of the Christian sinner by the authority of the Church, but the Church by very slow degrees only grew accustomed to this concept. Moreover, even after penance came to be recognized as an institution of the Church, it was not called by the name of sacrament, because it was regarded as an odious sacrament." (46)
- "The Lord's words: 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain they are retained' (John 20:22-23), in no way refer to the Sacrament of Penance, whatever the Fathers of Trent may have been pleased to assert." (47)
According to the Council of Trent, the consensus of all the Fathers always understood that by the words of Christ just cited, the power of forgiving and retaining sins was communicated to the Apostles and their lawful successors (Sess. XIV, c. i). It is therefore Catholic doctrine that the Church from the earliest times believed in the power to forgive sins as granted by Christ to the Apostles. Such a belief in fact was clearly inculcated by the words with which Christ granted the power, and it would have been inexplicable to the early Christians if any one who professed faith in Christ had questioned the existence of that power in the Church. But if, contrariwise, we suppose that no such belief existed from the beginning, we encounter a still greater difficulty: the first mention of that power would have been regarded as an innovation both needless and intolerable; it would have shown little practical wisdom on the part of those who were endeavouring to draw men to Christ; and it would have raised a protest or led to a schism which would certainly have gone on record as plainly at least as did early divisions on matters of less importance. But no such record is found; even those who sought to limit the power itself presupposed its existence, and their very attempt at limitation put them in opposition to the prevalent Catholic belief.
Turning now to evidence of a positive sort, we have to note that the statements of any Father or orthodox ecclesiastical writer regarding penance present not merely his own personal view, but the commonly accepted belief; and furthermore that the belief which they record was no novelty at the time, but was the traditional doctrine handed down by the regular teaching of the Church and embodied in her practice. In other words, each witness speaks for a past that reaches back to the beginning, even when he does not expressly appeal to tradition.
- St. Augustine (d. 430) warns the faithful: "Let us not listen to those who deny that the Church of God has power to forgive all sins" (De agon. Christ., iii).
- St. Ambrose (d. 397) rebukes the Novatianists who "professed to show reverence for the Lord by reserving to Him alone the power of forgiving sins. Greater wrong could not be done than what they do in seeking to rescind His commands and fling back the office He bestowed. . . . The Church obeys Him in both respects, by binding sin and by loosing it; for the Lord willed that for both the power should be equal" (On Penance I.2.6).
- Again he teaches that this power was to be a function of the priesthood. "It seemed impossible that sins should be forgiven through penance; Christ granted this (power) to the Apostles and from the Apostles it has been transmitted to the office of priests" (On Penance II.2.12).
- The power to forgive extends to all sins: "God makes no distinction; He promised mercy to all and to His priests He granted the authority to pardon without any exception" (On Penance I.3.10).
- Against the same heretics St. Pacian, Bishop of Barcelona (d. 390), wrote to Sympronianus, one of their leaders: "This (forgiving sins), you say, only God can do. Quite true: but what He does through His priests is the doing of His own power" (Ep. I ad Sympron., 6 in P.L., XIII, 1057).
- In the East during the same period we have the testimony of St. Cyril of Alexandria (d. 447): "Men filled with the spirit of God (i.e. priests) forgive sins in two ways, either by admitting to baptism those who are worthy or by pardoning the penitent children of the Church" (In Joan., 1, 12 in P.G., LXXIV, 722).
- St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) after declaring that neither angels nor archangels have received such power, and after showing that earthly rulers can bind only the bodies of men, declares that the priest's power of forgiving sins "penetrates to the soul and reaches up to heaven". Wherefore, he concludes, "it were manifest folly to condemn so great a power without which we can neither obtain heaven nor come to the fulfillment of the promises. . . . Not only when they (the priests) regenerate us (baptism), but also after our new birth, they can forgive us our sins" (On the Priesthood III.5 sq.).
- St. Athanasius (d. 373): "As the man whom the priest baptizes is enlightened by the grace of the Holy Ghost, so does he who in penance confesses his sins, receive through the priest forgiveness in virtue of the grace of Christ" (Frag. contra Novat. in P.G., XXVI, 1315).
These extracts show that the Fathers recognized in penance a power and a utility quite distinct from that of baptism. Repeatedly they compare in figurative language the two means of obtaining pardon; or regarding baptism as spiritual birth, they describe penance as the remedy for the ills of the soul contracted after that birth. But a more important fact is that both in the West and in the East, the Fathers constantly appeal to the words of Christ and given them the same interpretation that was given eleven centuries later by the Council of Trent. In this respect they simply echoed the teachings of the earlier Fathers who had defended Catholic doctrine against the heretics of the third and second centuries. Thus St. Cyprian in his "De lapsis" (A.D. 251) rebukes those who had fallen away in time of persecution, but he also exhorts them to penance: "Let each confess his sin while he is still in this world, while his confession can be received, while satisfaction and the forgiveness granted by the priests is acceptable to God" (c. xxix). (See LAPSI.) The heretic Novatian, on the contrary, asserted that "it is unlawful to admit apostates to the communion of the Church; their forgiveness must be left with God who alone can grant it" (Socrates, Church History V.28). Novatian and his party did not at first deny the power of the Church to absolve from sin; they affirmed that apostasy placed the sinner beyond the reach of that power — an error which was condemned by a synod at Rome in 251 (See NOVATIANISM.)
The distinction between sins that could be forgiven and others that could not, originated in the latter half of the second century as the doctrine of the Montanists, and especially of Tertullian. While still a Catholic, Tertullian wrote (A.D. 200-6) his "De poenitentia" in which he distinguishes two kinds of penance, one as a preparation for baptism, the other to obtain forgiveness of certain grievous sins committed after baptism, i.e., apostasy, murder, and adultery. For these, however, he allows only one forgiveness: "Foreseeing these poisons of the Evil One, God, although the gate of forgiveness has been shut and fastened up with the bar of baptism, has permitted it still to stand somewhat open. In the vestibule He has stationed a second repentance for opening to such as knock; but now once for all, because now for the second time; but never more, because the last time it had been in vain. . . . However, if any do incur the debt of a second repentance, his spirit is not to be forthwith cut down and undermined by despair. Let it be irksome to sin again, but let it not be irksome to repent again; let it be irksome to imperil oneself again, but let no one be ashamed to be set free again. Repeated sickness must have repeated medicine" (On Penance 7). Tertullian does not deny that the Church can forgive sins; he warns sinners against relapse, yet exhorts them to repent in case they should fall. His attitude at the time was not surprising, since in the early days the sins above mentioned were severely dealt with; this was done for disciplinary reasons, not because the Church lacked power to forgive.
In the minds, however, of some people the idea was developing that not only the exercise of the power but the power itself was limited. Against this false notion Pope Callistus (218-22) published his "peremptory edict" in which he declares: "I forgive the sins both of adultery and of fornication to those who have done penance." Thereupon Tertullian, now become a Montanist, wrote his "De pudicitia" (A.D. 217-22). In this work he rejects without scruple what he had taught as a Catholic: "I blush not at an error which I have cast off because I am delighted at being rid of it . . . one is not ashamed of his own improvement." The "error" which he imputes to Callistus and the Catholics was that the Church could forgive all sins: this, therefore, was the orthodox doctrine which Tertullian the heretic denied. In place of it he sets up the distinction between lighter sins which the bishop could forgive and more grievous sins which God alone could forgive. Though in an earlier treatise, "Scorpiace" (chapter 10), he had said that "the Lord left here to Peter and through him to the Church the keys of heaven" he now denies that the power granted to Peter had been transmitted to the Church, i.e., to the numerus episcoporum or body of bishops. Yet he claims this power for the "spirituals" (pneumatici), although these, for prudential reasons, do not make use of it. To the arguments of the "Psychici", as he termed the Catholics, he replies: "But the Church, you say, has the power to forgive sin. This I, even more than you, acknowledge and adjudge. I who in the new prophets have the Paraclete saying: 'The Church can forgive sin, but I will not do that (forgive) lest they (who are forgiven) fall into other sins" (On Pudicity 21.7). Thus Tertullian, by the accusation which he makes against the pope and by the restriction which he places upon the exercise of the power of forgiving sin, bears witness to the existence of that power in the Church which he had abandoned.
Not content with assailing Callistus and his doctrine, Tertullian refers to the "Shepherd" (Pastor), a work written A.D. 140-54, and takes its author Hermas to task for favouring the pardon of adulterers. In the days of Hermas there was evidently a school of rigorists who insisted that there was no pardon for sin committed after baptism (Similitude VIII.6). Against this school the author of the "Pastor" takes a resolute stand. He teaches that by penance the sinner may hope for reconciliation with God and with the Church. "Go and tell all to repent and they shall live unto God. Because the Lord having had compassion, has sent me to give repentance to all men, although some are not worthy of it on account of their works" (Similitude VIII.2). Hermas, however, seems to give but one opportunity for such reconciliation, for in Mandate IV.1, he seems to state categorically that "there is but one repentance for the servants of God", and further on in Mandate IV.3 he says the Lord has had mercy on the work of his hands and hath set repentance for them; "and he has entrusted to me the power of this repentance. And therefore I say to you, if any one has sinned . . he has opportunity to repent once". Repentance is therefore possible at least once in virtue of a power vested in the priest of God. That Hermas here intends to say that the sinner could be absolved only once in his whole life is by no means a necessary conclusion. His words may well be understood as referring to public penance (see below) and as thus understood they imply no limitation on the sacramental power itself. The same interpretation applies to the statement of Clement of Alexandria (d. circa A.D. 215): "For God being very merciful has vouchsafed in the case of those who, though in faith, have fallen into transgression, a second repentance, so that should anyone be tempted after his calling, he may still receive a penance not to be repented of" (Stromata II.13).
The existence of a regular system of penance is also hinted at in the work of Clement, "Who is the rich man that shall be saved?", where he tells the story of the Apostle John and his journey after the young bandit. John pledged his word that the youthful robber would find forgiveness from the Saviour; but even then a long serious penance was necessary before he could be restored to the Church. And when Clement concludes that "he who welcomes the angel of penance . . . will not be ashamed when he sees the Saviour", most commentators think he alludes to the bishop or priest who presided over the ceremony of public penance. Even earlier, Dionysius of Corinth (d. circa A.D. 170), setting himself against certain growing Marcionistic traditions, taught not only that Christ has left to His Church the power of pardon, but that no sin is so great as to be excluded from the exercise of that power. For this we have the authority of Eusebius, who says (Church History IV.23): "And writing to the Church which is in Amastris, together with those in Pontus, he commands them to receive those who come back after any fall, whether it be delinquency or heresy".
The Didache written at the close of the first century or early in the second, in 4.14 and again in 14.1, commands an individual confession in the congregation: "In the congregation thou shalt confess thy transgressions"; or again: "On the Lord's Day come together and break bread . . . having confessed your transgressions that your sacrifice may be pure." Clement I (d. 99) in his Epistle to the Corinthians not only exhorts to repentance, but begs the seditious to "submit themselves to the presbyters and receive correction so as to repent" (chapter 57), and Ignatius of Antioch at the close of the first century speaks of the mercy of God to sinners, provided they return" with one consent to the unity of Christ and the communion of the bishop". The clause "communion of the bishop" evidently means the bishop with his council of presbyters as assessors. He also says (Letter to the Philadelphians) "that the bishop presides over penance".
The transmission of this power is plainly expressed in the prayer used at the consecration of a bishop as recorded in the Canons of Hippolytus: "Grant him, 0 Lord, the episcopate and the spirit of clemency and the power to forgive sins" (c. xvii). Still more explicit is the formula cited in the "Apostolic Constitutions": "Grant him, O Lord almighty, through Thy Christ, the participation of Thy Holy Spirit, in order that he may have the power to remit sins according to Thy precept and Thy command, and to loosen every bond, whatsoever it be, according to the power which Thou hast granted to the Apostles." (Apostolic Constitutions VIII.5). For the meaning of "episcopus", "sacerdos", "presbyter", as used in ancient documents, see BISHOP; HIERARCHY.
Exercise of the power
The granting by Christ of the power to forgive sins is the first essential of the Sacrament of Penance; in the actual exercise of this power are included the other essentials. The sacrament as such and on its own account has a matter and a form and it produces certain effects; the power of the keys is exercised by a minister (confessor) who must possess the proper qualifications, and the effects are wrought in the soul of the recipient, i.e., the penitent who with the necessary dispositions must perform certain actions (confession, satisfaction).
Matter and form
According to St. Thomas (Summa Theologiæ III.84.2) "the acts of the penitent are the proximate matter of this sacrament". This is also the teaching of Eugenius IV in the "Decretum pro Armenis" (Council of Florence, 1439) which calls the act's "quasi materia" of penance and enumerates them as contrition, confession, and satisfaction (Denzinger-Bannwart, "Enchir.", 699). The Thomists in general and other eminent theologians, e.g., Bellarmine, Toletus, Francisco Suárez, and De Lugo, hold the same opinion. According to Scotus (In IV Sent., d. 16, q. 1, n. 7) "the Sacrament of Penance is the absolution imparted with certain words" while the acts of the penitent are required for the worthy reception of the sacrament. The absolution as an external ceremony is the matter, and, as possessing significant force, the form. Among the advocates of this theory are St. Bonaventure, Capreolus, Andreas Vega, and Maldonatus. The Council of Trent (Sess. XIV, c. 3) declares: "the acts of the penitent, namely contrition, confession, and satisfaction, are the quasi materia of this sacrament".
The Roman Catechism used in 1913 (II, v, 13) says: "These actions are called by the Council quasi materia not because they have not the nature of true matter, but because they are not the sort of matter which is employed externally as water in baptism and chrism in confirmation". For the theological discussion see Palmieri, op. cit., p. 144 sqq.; Pesch, "Praelectiones dogmaticae", Freiburg, 1897; De San, "De poenitentia", Bruges, 1899; Pohle, "Lehrb. d. Dogmatik". Regarding the form of the sacrament, both the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent teach that it consists in the words of absolution. "The form of the Sacrament of penance, wherein its force principally consists, is placed in those words of the minister: "I absolve thee, etc."; to these words indeed, in accordance with the usage of Holy Church, certain prayers are laudably added, but they do not pertain to the essence of the form nor are they necessary for the administration of the sacrament" (Council of Trent, Sess. XIV, c. 3). Concerning these additional prayers, the use of the Eastern and Western Churches, and the question whether the form is deprecatory or indicative and personal, see ABSOLUTION. Cf. also the writers referred to in the preceding paragraph.
Effect
"The effect of this sacrament is deliverance from sin" (Council of Florence). The same definition in somewhat different terms is given by the Council of Trent (Sess. XIV, c. 3): "So far as pertains to its force and efficacy, the effect (res et effectus) of this sacrament is reconciliation with God, upon which there sometimes follows, in pious and devout recipients, peace and calm of conscience with intense consolation of spirit". This reconciliation implies first of all that the guilt of sin is remitted, and consequently also the eternal punishment due to mortal sin. As the Council of Trent declares, penance requires the performance of satisfaction "not indeed for the eternal penalty which is remitted together with the guilt either by the sacrament or by the desire of receiving the sacrament, but for the temporal penalty which, as the Scriptures teach, is not always forgiven entirely as it is in baptism" (Sess. VI, c. 14). In other words baptism frees the soul not only from all sin but also from all indebtedness to Divine justice, whereas after the reception of absolution in penance, there may and usually does remain some temporal debt to be discharged by works of satisfaction (see below). "Venial sins by which we are not deprived of the grace of God and into which we very frequently fall are rightly and usefully declared in confession; but mention of them may, without any fault, be omitted and they can be expiated by many other remedies" (Council of Trent, Sess. XIV, c. 3). Thus, an act of contrition suffices to obtain forgiveness of venial sin, and the same effect is produced by the worthy reception of sacraments other than penance, e.g., by Holy Communion.
The reconciliation of the sinner with God has as a further consequence the revival of those merits which he had obtained before committing grievous sin. Good works performed in the state of grace deserve a reward from God, but this is forfeited by mortal sin, so that if the sinner should die unforgiven his good deeds avail him nothing. So long as he remains in sin, he is incapable of meriting: even works which are good in themselves are, in his case, worthless: they cannot revive, because they never were alive. But once his sin is cancelled by penance, he regains not only the state of grace but also the entire store of merit which had, before his sin, been placed to his credit. On this point theologians are practically unanimous: the only hindrance to obtaining reward is sin, and when this is removed, the former title, so to speak, is revalidated. On the other hand, if there were no such revalidation, the loss of merit once acquired would be equivalent to an eternal punishment, which is incompatible with the forgiveness effected by penance. As to the further question regarding the manner and extent of the revival of merit, various opinions have been proposed; but that which is generally accepted holds with Francisco Suárez (De reviviscentia meritorum) that the revival is complete, i.e., the forgiven penitent has to his credit as much merit as though he had never sinned. See De Augustinis, "De re sacramentaria", II, Rome, 1887; Pesch, op. cit., VII; Göttler, "Der hl. Thomas v. Aquin u. die vortridentinischen Thomisten über die Wirkungen d. Bussakramentes", Freiburg, 1904.
The minister (i.e., the confessor)
From the judicial character of this sacrament it follows that not every member of the Church is qualified to forgive sins; the administration of penance is reserved to those who are invested with authority. That this power does not belong to the laity is evident from the Bull of Martin V "Inter cunctas" (1418) which among other questions to be answered by the followers of Wyclif and Huss, has this: "whether he believes that the Christian . . . is bound as a necessary means of salvation to confess to a priest only and not to a layman or to laymen however good and devout" (Denzinger-Bannwart, "Enchir.", 670). Luther's proposition, that "any Christian, even a woman or a child" could in the absence of a priest absolve as well as pope or bishop, was condemned (1520) by Leo X in the Bull "Exurge Domine" (Enchir., 753). The Council of Trent (Sess. XIV, c. 6) condemns as "false and as at variance with the truth of the Gospel all doctrines which extend the ministry of the keys to any others than bishops and priests, imagining that the words of the Lord (Matthew 18:18; John 20:23) were, contrary to the institution of this sacrament, addressed to all the faithful of Christ in such wise that each and every one has the power of remitting sin". The Catholic doctrine, therefore, is that only bishops and priests can exercise the power.
These decrees moreover put an end, practically, to the usage, which had sprung up and lasted for some time in the Middle Ages, of confessing to a layman in case of necessity. This custom originated in the conviction that he who had sinned was obliged to make known his sin to some one — to a priest if possible, otherwise to a layman. In the work "On true penance and false" (De vera et falsa poenitentia), erroneously ascribed to St. Augustine, the counsel is given: "So great is the power of confession that if a priest be not at hand, let him (the person desiring to confess) confess to his neighbour." But in the same place the explanation is given: "although he to whom the confession is made has no power to absolve, nevertheless he who confesses to his fellow (socio) becomes worthy of pardon through his desire of confessing to a priest" (P.L., XL, 1113). Lea, who cites (I, 220) the assertion of the Pseudo-Augustine about confession to one's neighbour, passes over the explanation. He consequently sets in a wrong light a series of incidents illustrating the practice and gives but an imperfect idea of the theological discussion which it aroused. Though Albertus Magnus (In IV Sent., dist. 17, art. 58) regarded as sacramental the absolution granted by a layman while St. Thomas (IV Sent., d. 17, q. 3, a. 3, sol. 2) speaks of it as "quodammodo sacramentalis", other great theologians took a quite different view. Alexander of Hales (Summa, Q. xix, De confessione memb., I, a. 1) says that it is an "imploring of absolution"; St. Bonaventure ("Opera', VII, p. 345, Lyons, 1668) that such a confession even in cases of necessity is not obligatory, but merely a sign of contrition; Scotus (IV Sent., d. 14, q. 4) that there is no precept obliging one to confess to a layman and that this practice may be very detrimental; Durandus of St. Pourcain (IV Sent., d. 17, q. 12) that in the absence of a priest, who alone can absolve in the tribunal of penance, there is no obligation to confess; Prierias (Summa Silv., s.v. Confessor, I, 1) that if absolution is given by a layman, the confession must be repeated whenever possible; this in fact was the general opinion. It is not then surprising that Dominicus Soto, writing in 1564, should find it difficult to believe that such a custom ever existed: "since (in confession to a layman) there was no sacrament . . . it is incredible that men, of their own accord and with no profit to themselves, should reveal to others the secrets of their conscience" (IV Sent., d. 18, q. 4, a. 1). Since, therefore, the weight of theological opinion gradually turned against the practice and since the practice never received the sanction of the Church, it cannot be urged as a proof that the power to forgive sins belonged at any time to the laity. What the practice does show is that both people and theologians realized keenly the obligation of confessing their sins not to God alone but to some human listener, even though the latter possessed no power to absolve.
The same exaggerated notion appears in the practice of confessing to the deacons in case of necessity. They were naturally preferred to laymen when no priest was accessible because in virtue of their office they administered Holy Communion. Moreover, some of the earlier councils (Elvira, A.D. 300; Toledo, 400) and penitentials (Theodore) seemed to grant the power of penance to the deacon (in the priest's absence). The Council of Tribur (895) declared in regard to bandits that if, when captured or wounded they confessed to a priest or a deacon, they should not be denied communion; and this expression "presbytero vel diacono" was incorporated in the Decree of Gratian and in many later documents from the tenth century to the thirteenth. The Council of York (1195) decreed that except in the gravest necessity the deacon should not baptize, give communion, or "impose penance on one who confessed". Substantially the same enactments are found in the Councils of London (1200) and Rouen (1231), the constitutions of St. Edmund of Canterbury (1236), and those of Walter of Kirkham, Bishop of Durham (1255). All these enactments, though stringent enough as regards ordinary circumstances, make exception for urgent necessity. No such exception is allowed in the decree of the Synod of Poitiers (1280): "desiring to root out an erroneous abuse which has grown up in our diocese through dangerous ignorance, we forbid deacons to hear confessions or to give absolution in the tribunal of penance: for it is certain and beyond doubt that they cannot absolve, since they have not the keys which are conferred only in the priestly order". This "abuse" probably disappeared in the fourteenth or fifteenth century; at all events no direct mention is made of it by the Council of Trent, though the reservation to bishops and priests of the absolving power shows plainly that the Council excluded deacons.
The authorization which the medieval councils gave the deacon in case of necessity did not confer the power to forgive sins. In some of the decrees it is expressly stated that the deacon has not the keys — claves non habent. In other enactments he is forbidden except in cases of necessity to "give" or "impose penance", poenitentiam dare, imponere. His function then was limited to the forum externum; in the absence of a priest he could "reconcile" the sinner, i.e., restore him to the communion of the Church; but he did not and could not give the sacramental absolution which a priest would have given (Palmieri, Pesch). Another explanation emphasizes the fact that the deacon could faithfully administer the Holy Eucharist. The faithful were under a strict obligation to receive Communion at the approach of death, and on the other hand the reception of this sacrament sufficed to blot out even mortal sin provided the communicant had the requisite dispositions. The deacon could hear their confession simply to assure himself that they were properly disposed, but not for the purpose of giving them absolution. If he went further and "imposed penance" in the stricter, sacramental sense, he exceeded his power, and any authorization to this effect granted by the bishop merely showed that the bishop was in error (Laurain, "De l'intervention des laïques, des diacres et des abbesses dans l'administration de la pénitence", Paris, 1897). In any case, the prohibitory enactments which finally abolished the practice did not deprive the deacon of a power which was his by virtue of his office; but they brought into clearer light the traditional belief that only bishops and priests can administer the Sacrament of Penance. (See below under Confession.)
For valid administration, a twofold power is necessary: the power of order and the power of jurisdiction. The former is conferred by ordination, the latter by ecclesiastical authority (see JURISDICTION). At his ordination a priest receives the power to consecrate the Holy Eucharist, and for valid consecration he needs no jurisdiction. As regards penance, the case is different: "because the nature and character of a judgment requires that sentence be pronounced only on those who are subjects (of the judge) the Church of God has always held, and this Council affirms it to be most true, that the absolution which a priest pronounces upon one over whom he has not either ordinary or delegated jurisdiction, is of no effect" (Council of Trent, Sess. XIV, c. 7). Ordinary jurisdiction is that which one has by reason of his office as involving the care of souls; the pope has it over the whole Church, the bishop within his diocese, the pastor within his parish. Delegated jurisdiction is that which is granted by an ecclesiastical superior to one who does not possess it by virtue of his office. The need of jurisdiction for administering this sacrament is usually expressed by saying that a priest must have "faculties" to hear confession (see FACULTIES). Hence it is that a priest visiting in a diocese other than his own cannot hear confession without special authorization from the bishop. Every priest, however, can absolve anyone who is at the point of death, because under those circumstances the Church gives all priests jurisdiction. As the bishop grants jurisdiction, he can also limit it by "reserving" certain cases (see RESERVATION) and he can even withdraw it entirely.
Recipient (i.e., the penitent)
The Sacrament of Penance was instituted by Christ for the remission of sins committed after baptism. Hence, no unbaptized person, however deep and sincere his sorrow, can be validly absolved. Baptism, in other words, is the first essential requisite on the part of the penitent. This does not imply that in the sins committed by an unbaptized person there is a special enormity or any other element that places them beyond the power of the keys; but that one must first be a member of the Church before he can submit himself and his sins to the judicial process of sacramental Penance.
Contrition and attrition
Without sorrow for sin there is no forgiveness. Hence the Council of Trent (Sess. XIV, c. 4): "Contrition, which holds the first place among the acts of the penitent, is sorrow of heart and detestation for sin committed, with the resolve to sin no more". The Council (ibid.) furthermore distinguishes perfect contrition from imperfect contrition, which is called attrition, and which arises from the consideration of the turpitude of sin or from the fear of hell and punishment. See ATTRITION; CONTRITION, where these two kinds of sorrow are more fully explained and an account is given of the principal discussions and opinions. See also treatises by Pesch, Palmieri, Pohle. For the present purpose it need only be stated that attrition, with the Sacrament of Penance, suffices to obtain forgiveness of sin. The Council of Trent further teaches (ibid.): "though it sometimes happens that this contrition is perfect and that it reconciles man with God before the actual reception of this sacrament, still the reconciliation is not to be ascribed to the contrition itself apart from the desire of the sacrament which it (contrition) includes". In accordance with this teaching Pius V condemned (1567) the proposition of Baius asserting that even perfect contrition does not, except in case of necessity or of martyrdom, remit sin without the actual reception of the sacrament (Denzinger-Bannwart, "Enchir.", 1071). It should be noted, however, that the contrition of which the Council speaks is perfect in the sense that it includes the desire (votum) to receive the sacrament. Whoever in fact repents of his sin out of love for God must be willing to comply with the Divine ordinance regarding penance, i.e., he would confess if a confessor were accessible, and he realizes that he is obliged to confess when he has the opportunity. But it does not follow that the penitent is at liberty to choose between two modes of obtaining forgiveness, one by an act of contrition independently of the sacrament, the other by confession and absolution. This view was put forward by Peter Martinez (de Osma) in the proposition: "mortal sins as regards their guilt and their punishment in the other world, are blotted out by contrition alone without any reference to the keys"; and the proposition was condemned by Sixtus IV in 1479 (Denzinger-Bannwart, "Enchir.", 724). Hence it is clear that not even heartfelt sorrow based on the highest motives, can, in the present order of salvation, dispense with the power of the keys, i.e., with the Sacrament of Penance.
Confession (necessity)
"For those who after baptism have fallen into sin, the Sacrament of Penance is as necessary unto salvation as is baptism itself for those who have not yet been regenerated" (Council of Trent, Sess. XIV, c. 2). Penance, therefore, is not an institution the use of which was left to the option of each sinner so that he might, if he preferred, hold aloof from the Church and secure forgiveness by some other means, e.g., by acknowledging his sin in the privacy of his own mind. As already stated, the power granted by Christ to the Apostles is twofold, to forgive and to retain, in such a way that what they forgive God forgives and what they retain God retains. But this grant would be nullified if, in case the Church retained the sins of penitent, he could, as it were, take appeal to God's tribunal and obtain pardon. Nor would the power to retain have any meaning if the sinner, passing over the Church, went in the first instance to God, since by the very terms of the grant, God retains sin once committed so long as it is not remitted by the Church. It would indeed have been strangely inconsistent if Christ in conferring this twofold power on the Apostles had intended to provide some other means of forgiveness such as confessing "to God alone". Not only the Apostles, but any one with an elementary knowledge of human nature would have perceived at once that the easier means would be chosen and that the grant of power so formally and solemnly made by Christ had no real significance (Palmieri, op. cit., thesis X). On the other hand, once it is admitted that the grant was effectual and consequently that the sacrament is necessary in order to obtain forgiveness, it plainly follows that the penitent must in some way make known his sin to those who exercise the power. This is conceded even by those who reject the Sacrament of Penance as a Divine institution. "Such remission was manifestly impossible without the declaration of the offences to be forgiven" (Lea, "History etc.", I, p. 182). The Council of Trent, after declaring that Christ left his priests as His vicars unto whom as rulers and judges the faithful must make known their sins, adds: "It is evident that the priests could not have exercised this judgment without knowledge of the cause, nor could they have observed justice in enjoining satisfaction if (the faithful) had declared their sins in a general way only and not specifically and in detail" (Sess. XIV, c. 5).
Since the priest in the pardoning of sin exercises a strict judicial function, Christ must will that such tremendous power be used wisely and prudently. Moreover, in virtue of the grant of Christ the priest can forgive all sins without distinction, quoecumque solveritis. How can a wise and prudent judgment be rendered if the priest be in ignorance of the cause on which judgment is pronounced? And how can he obtain the requisite knowledge unless it come from the spontaneous acknowledgment of the sinner? This necessity of manifestation is all the clearer if satisfaction for sin, which from the beginning has been part of the penitential discipline, is to be imposed not only wisely but also justly. That there is a necessary connection between the prudent judgment of the confessor and the detailed confession of sins is evident from the nature of a judicial procedure and especially from a full analysis of the grant of Christ in the light of tradition. No judge may release or condemn without full knowledge of the case. And again the tradition of the earliest time sees in the words of Christ not only the office of the judge sitting in judgment, but the kindness of a father who weeps with the repentant child (Aphraates, "Ep. de Poenitentia", dem. 7) and the skill of the physician who after the manner of Christ heals the wounds of the soul (Origen in P.G., XII, 418; P.L., XII, 1086). Clearly, therefore, the words of Christ imply the doctrine of the external manifestation of conscience to a priest in order to obtain pardon.
Confession (various kinds)
Confession is the avowal of one's own sins made to a duly authorized priest for the purpose of obtaining their forgiveness through the power of the keys. Virtual confession is simply the will to confess even where, owing to circumstances, declaration of sin is impossible; actual confession is any action by which the penitent manifests his sin. It may be made in general terms, e.g., by reciting the "Confiteor", or it may consist in a more or less detailed statement of one's sins; when the statement is complete, the confession is distinct. Public confession, as made in the hearing of a number of people (e.g. a congregation) differs from private, or secret, confession which is made to the priest alone and is often called auricular, i.e., spoken into the ear of the confessor. We are here concerned mainly with actual distinct confession which is the usual practice in the Church and which so far as the validity of the sacrament is concerned, may be either public or private. "As regards the method of confessing secretly to the priest alone, though Christ did not forbid that any one, in punishment of his crimes and for his own humiliation as also to give others an example and to edify the Church, should confess his sins publicly, still, this has not been commanded by Divine precept nor would it be prudent to decree by any human law that sins, especially secret sins, should be publicly confessed. Since, then, secret sacramental confession, which from the beginning has been and even now is the usage of the Church, was always commended with great and unanimous consent by the holiest and most ancient Fathers; thereby is plainly refuted the foolish calumny of those who make bold to teach that it (secret confession) is something foreign to the Divine command, a human invention devised by the Fathers assembled in the Lateran Council" (Council of Trent, Sess. XIV, c. 5). It is therefore Catholic doctrine, first, that Christ did not prescribe public confession, salutary as it might be, nor did He forbid it; second, that secret confession, sacramental in character, has been the practice of the Church from the earliest days.
Traditional belief and practice
How firmly rooted in the Catholic mind is the belief in the efficacy and necessity of confession, appears clearly from the fact that the Sacrament of Penance endures in the Church after the countless attacks to which it has been subjected during the last four centuries. If at the Reformation or since the Church could have surrendered a doctrine or abandoned a practice for the sake of peace and to soften a "hard saying", confession would have been the first to disappear. Yet it is precisely during this period that the Church has defined in the most exact terms the nature of penance and most vigorously insisted on the necessity of confession. It will not of course be denied that at the beginning of the sixteenth century confession was generally practised throughout the Christian world. The Reformers themselves, notably Calvin, admitted that it had been in existence for three centuries when they attributed its origin to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). At that time, according to Lea (op. cit., I, 228), the necessity of confession "became a new article of faith" and the canon, omnis utriusque sexus, "is perhaps the most important legislative act in the history of the Church" (ibid., 230). But, as the Council of Trent affirms, "the Church did not through the Lateran Council prescribe that the faithful of Christ should confess — a thing which it knew to be by Divine right necessary and established — but that the precept of confessing at least once a year should be complied with by all and every one when they reached the age of discretion" (Sess., XIV, c. 5). The Lateran edict presupposed the necessity of confession as an article of Catholic belief and laid down a law as to the minimum frequency of confession — at least once a year.
In the Middle Ages
In constructing their systems of theology, the medieval doctors discuss at length the various problems connected with the Sacrament of Penance. They are practically unanimous in holding that confession is obligatory; the only notable exception in the twelfth century is Gratian, who gives the arguments for and against the necessity of confessing to a priest and leaves the question open (Decretum, p. II, De poen., d. 1, in P.L., CLXXXVII, 1519-63). Peter Lombard (d. about 1150) takes up the authorities cited by Gratian and by means of them proves that "without confession there is no pardon" . . . "no entrance into paradise" (IV Sent., d. XVII, 4, in P.L., CXCII, 880-2). The principal debate, in which Hugh of St. Victor, Abelard, Robert Pullus, and Peter of Poitiers took the leading parts, concerned the origin and sanction of the obligation, and the value of the different Scriptural texts cited to prove the institution of penance. This question passed on to the thirteenth century and received its solution in very plain terms from St. Thomas Aquinas. Treating (Contra Gentes, IV, 72) of the necessity of penance and its parts, he shows that "the institution of confession was necessary in order that the sin of the penitent might be revealed to Christ's minister; hence the minister to whom the confession is made must have judicial power as representing Christ, the Judge of the living and the dead. This power again requires two things: authority of knowledge and power to absolve or to condemn. These are called the two keys of the Church which the Lord entrusted to Peter (Matthew 16:19). But they were not given to Peter to be held by him alone, but to be handed on through him to others; else sufficient provision would not have been made for the salvation of the faithful. These keys derive their efficacy from the passion of Christ whereby He opened to us the gate of the heavenly kingdom". And he adds that as no one can be saved without baptism either by actual reception or by desire, so they who sin after baptism cannot be saved unless they submit to the keys of the Church either by actually confessing or by the resolve to confess when opportunity permits. Furthermore, as the rulers of the Church cannot dispense any one from baptism as a means of salvation neither can they give a dispensation whereby the sinner may be forgiven without confession and absolution. The same explanation and reasoning is given by all the Scholastics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They were in practical agreement as to the necessity of jurisdiction in the confessor. Regarding the time at which confession had to be made, some held with William of Auvergne that one was obliged to confess as soon as possible after sinning; others with Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas that it sufficed to confess within the time limits prescribed by the Church (Paschal Time); and this more lenient view finally prevailed. Further subjects of discussion during this period were the choice of confessor; the obligation of confessing before receiving other sacraments, especially the Eucharist; the integrity of confession; the obligation of secrecy on the part of the confessor, i.e., the seal of confession. The careful and minute treatment of these points and the frank expression of divergent opinions were characteristic of the Schoolmen but they also brought out more clearly the central truths regarding penance and they opened the way to the conciliar pronouncements at Florence and Trent which gave to Catholic doctrine a more precise formulation. See Vacandard and Bernard in "Dict. de theol. cath.", s.v. Confession; Turmel, "Hist. de la théologie positive", Paris, 1904; Cambier, "De divina institutione confessionis sacramentalis", Louvain, 1884.
Not only was the obligation recognized in the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages, but the schismatic Greeks held the same belief and still hold it. They fell into schism under Photius in 869, but retained confession, which therefore must have been in use for some time previous to the ninth century. The practice, moreover, was regulated in detail by the Penitential Books, which prescribed the canonical penance for each sin, and minute questions for the examination of the penitent. The most famous of these books among the Greeks were those attributed to John the Faster and to John the Monk. In the West similar works were written by the Irish monks St. Columbanus (d. 615) and Cummian, and by the Englishmen Ven. Bede (d. 735), Egbert (d. 767), and Theodore of Canterbury (d. 690). Besides the councils mentioned above (Minister) decrees pertaining to confession were enacted at Worms (868), Paris (820), Châlons (813, 650), Tours (813), Reims (1113). The Council of Chaleuth (785) says: "if any one (which God forbid) should depart this life without penance or confession he is not to be prayed for". The significant feature about these enactments is that they do not introduce confession as a new practice, but take it for granted and regulate its administration. Hereby they put into practical effect what had been handed down by tradition.
St. Gregory the Great (d. 604) teaches "the affliction of penance is efficacious in blotting out sins when it is enjoined by the sentence of the priest when the burden of it is decided by him in proportion to the offence after weighing the deeds of those who confess" (In I Reg., III, v, n. 13 in P.L., LXXIX, 207); Pope Leo the Great (440-61), who is often credited with the institution of confession, refers to it as an "Apostolic rule". Writing to the bishops of Campania he forbids as an abuse "contrary to the Apostolic rule" (contra apostolicam regulam) the reading out in public of a written statement of their sins drawn up by the faithful, because, he declares, "it suffices that the guilt of conscience be manifested to priests alone in secret confession" (Ep. clxviii in P.L., LIV, 1210). In another letter (Epistle 108), after declaring that by Divine ordinance the mercy of God can be obtained only through the supplications of the priests, he adds: "the mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus, gave the rulers of the Church this power that they should impose penance on those who confess and admit them when purified by salutary satisfaction to the communion of the sacraments through the gateway of reconciliation. "The earlier Fathers frequently speak of sin as a disease which needs treatment, something drastic, at the hands of the spiritual physician or surgeon. St. Augustine (d. 450) tells the sinner: "an abscess had formed in your conscience; it tormented you and gave you no rest. . . . confess, and in confession let the pus come out and flow away" (Enarration on Psalm 66, no. 6). St. Jerome (d. 420) comparing the priests of the New Law with those of the Old who decided between leprosy and leprosy, says: "likewise in the New Testament the bishops and the priest bind or loose . . . in virtue of their office", having heard various sorts of sinners, they know who is to be bound and who is to be loosed" . . . (In Matt., xvi, 19); in his "Sermon on Penance" he says: "let no one find it irksome to show his wound vulnus confiteri) because without confession it cannot be healed." St. Ambrose (d. 397): "this right (of loosing and binding) has been conferred on priests only" (On Penance I.2.7); St. Basil (d. 397): "As men do not make known their bodily ailments to anybody and everybody, but only to those who are skilled in healing, so confession of sin ought to be made to those who can cure it" (Reg. brevior., 229).
For those who sought to escape the obligation of confession it was natural enough to assert that repentance was the affair of the soul alone with its Maker, and that no intermediary was needed. It is this pretext that St. Augustine sweeps aside in one of his sermons: "Let no one say I do penance secretly; I perform it in the sight of God, and He who is to pardon me knows that in my heart I repent". Whereupon St. Augustine asks: "Was it then said to no purpose, 'What you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed in heaven?' Was it for nothing that the keys were given to the Church?" (Sermo cccxcii, n. 3, in P.L., XXXIX, 1711). The Fathers, of course, do not deny that sin must be confessed to God; at times, indeed, in exhorting the faithful to confess, they make no mention of the priest; but such passages must be taken in connection with the general teaching of the Fathers and with the traditional belief of the Church. Their real meaning is expressed, e.g., by Anastasius Sinaita (seventh century): "Confess your sins to Christ through the priest" (De sacra synaxi), and by Egbert, Archbishop of York (d. 766): "Let the sinner confess his evil deeds to God, that the priest may know what penance to impose" (Mansi, Coll. Conc., XII, 232). For the passages in St. John Chrysostom, see Hurter, "Theol. dogmat.", III, 454; Pesch, "Praelectiones", VII, 165.
The Fathers, knowing well that one great difficulty which the sinner has to overcome is shame, encourage him in spite of it to confess. "I appeal to you, my brethren", says St. Pacian (d. 391), ". . . you who are not ashamed to sin and yet are ashamed to confess . . . I beseech you, cease to hide your wounded conscience. Sick people who are prudent do not fear the physician, though he cut and burn even the secret parts of the body" (Paraenesis ad poenit., n. 6, 8). St. John Chrysostom (d. 347) pleads eloquently with the sinner: "Be not ashamed to approach (the priest) because you have sinned, nay rather, for this very reason approach. No one says: Because I have an ulcer, I will not go near a physician or take medicine; on the contrary, it is just this that makes it needful to call in physicians and apply remedies. We (priests) know well how to pardon, because we ourselves are liable to sin. This is why God did not give us angels to be our doctors, nor send down Gabriel to rule the flock, but from the fold itself he chooses the shepherds, from among the sheep He appoints the leader, in order that he may be inclined to pardon his followers and, keeping in mind his own fault, may not set himself in hardness against the members of the flock" (Hom. "On Frequent Assembly" in P.G., LXIII, 463).
Tertullian had already used the same argument with those who, for fear of exposing their sins, put off their confession from day to day — "mindful more of their shame than of their salvation, like those who hide from the physician the malady they suffer in the secret parts of the body, and thus perish through bashfulness. . . . because we withhold anything from the knowledge of men, do we thereby conceal it from God? . . . Is it better to hide and be damned than to be openly absolved?" (On Penance 10). St. Cyprian (d. 258) pleads for greater mildness in the treatment of sinners, "since we find that no one ought to be forbidden to do penance and that to those who implore the mercy of God peace can be granted through His priests. . . . And because in hell there is no confession, nor can exomologesis be made there, they who repent with their whole heart and ask for it, should be received into the Church and therein saved unto the Lord" (Epistle 51, no. 29). Elsewhere he says that many who do not do penance or confess their guilt are filled with unclean spirits; and by contrast he praises the greater faith and more wholesome fear of those who, though not guilty of any idolatrous action, "nevertheless, because they thought of [such action], confess [their thought] in sorrow and simplicity to the priests of God, make the exomologesis of their conscience, lay bare the burden of their soul, and seek a salutary remedy even for wounds that are slight" (De Lapsis 26 sqq.). Origen (d. 154) compares the sinner to those whose stomachs are overloaded with undigested food or with excess of humours and phlegm if they vomit, they are relieved, "so, too, those who have sinned, if they conceal and keep the sin within, they are distressed and almost choked by its humour or phlegm. But if they accuse themselves and confess, they at the same time vomit the sin and cast off every cause of disease" (Homil. on Ps. xxxvii, n. 6, in P.G., XII, 1386). St. Irenæus (130-102) relates the case of certain women whom the Gnostic Marcus had led into sin. "Some of them", he says, "perform their exomologesis openly also [etiam in manifesto], while others, afraid to do this, draw back in silence, despairing to regain the life of God" (Against Heresies I.13.7). This etiam in manifesto suggests at least that they had confessed privately, but could not bring themselves to make a public confession. The advantage of confession as against the concealment of sin is shown in the words of St. Clement of Rome in his letter to the Corinthians: "It is better for a man to confess his sins than to harden his heart" (Epistle 1, no. 51.1).
This outline of the patristic teaching shows:
- that the Fathers insisted on a manifestation of sin as the necessary means of unburdening the soul and regaining the friendship of God;
- that the confession was to be made not to a layman but to priests;
- that priests exercise the power of absolving in virtue of a Divine commission, i.e., as representatives of Christ;
- that the sinner, if he would be saved, must overcome his shame and repugnance to confession.
And since the series of witnesses goes back to the latter part of the first century, the practice of confession must have existed from the earliest days. St. Leo had good reason for appealing to the "Apostolic rule" which made secret confession to the priest sufficient without the necessity of a public declaration. Nor is it surprising that Lactantius (d. c. 330) should have pointed to the practice of confession as a characteristic of the true Church: "That is the true Church in which there is confession and penance, which applies a wholesome remedy to the sins and wounds whereunto the weakness of the flesh is subject" (Divine Institutes IV.30).
What sins are to be confessed
Among the propositions condemned by the Council of Trent is the following: "That to obtain forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of Penance, it is not necessary by Divine law to confess each and every mortal sin which is called to mind by due and careful examination, to confess even hidden sins and those that are against the last two precepts of the Decalogue, together with the circumstances that change the specific nature of the sin; such confession is only useful for the instruction and consolation of the penitent, and of old was practised merely in order to impose canonical satisfaction" (Can de poenit., vii). The Catholic teaching consequently is: that all mortal sins must be confessed of which the penitent is conscious, for these are so related that no one of them can be remitted until all are remitted. Remission means that the soul is restored to the friendship of God; and this is obviously impossible if there remain unforgiven even a single mortal sin. Hence, the penitent, who in confession willfully conceals a mortal sin, derives no benefit whatever; on the contrary, he makes void the sacrament and thereby incurs the guilt of sacrilege. If, however, the sin be omitted, not through any fault of the penitent, but through forgetfulness, it is forgiven indirectly; but it must be declared at the next confession and thus submitted to the power of the keys.
While mortal sin is the necessary matter of confession, venial sin is sufficient matter, as are also the mortal sins already forgiven in previous confessions. This is the common teaching of theologians, in accord with the condemnation pronounced by Leo X on Luther's assertion, 'By no means presume to confess venial sins . . . in the primitive Church only manifest mortal sins were confessed" (Bull, "Exurge Domine"; Denzinger, "Enchir.", 748). In the constitution "Inter cunctas" (17 Feb., 1304), Benedict XI, after stating that penitents who had confessed to a priest belonging to a religious order are not obliged to reiterate the confession to their own priest, adds: "Though it is not necessary to confess the same sins over again, nevertheless we regard it as salutary to repeat the confession, because of the shame it involves, which is a great part of penance; hence we strictly enjoin the Brothers (Dominicans and Franciscans] to admonish their penitents and in sermons 'exhort them that they confess to their own priests at least once a year, assuring them that this will undoubtedly conduce to their spiritual welfare" (Denzinger, "Enchir.", 470). St. Thomas gives the same reason for this practice: the oftener one confesses the more is the (temporal) penalty reduced; hence one might confess over and over again until the whole penalty is cancelled, nor would he thereby offer any injury to the sacrament" (IV Sent., d. xvii, q. 3, sol. 5 ad 4).
Satisfaction
As stated above, the absolution given by the priest to a penitent who confesses his sins with the proper dispositions remits both the guilt and the eternal punishment (of mortal sin). There remains, however, some indebtedness to Divine justice which must be cancelled here or hereafter (see PURGATORY). In order to have it cancelled here, the penitent receives from his confessor what is usually called his "penance", usually in the form of certain prayers which he is to say, or of certain actions which he is to perform, such as visits to a church, the Stations of the Cross, etc. Alms deeds, fasting, and prayer are the chief means of satisfaction, but other penitential works may also be enjoined. The quality and extent of the penance is determined by the confessor according to the nature of the sins revealed, the special circumstances of the penitent, his liability to relapse, and the need of eradicating evil habits.
Sometimes the penance is such that it may be performed at once; in other cases it may require a more or less considerable period, as, e.g., where it is prescribed for each day during a week or a month. But even then the penitent may receive another sacrament (e.g., Holy Communion) immediately after confession, since absolution restores him to the state of grace. He is nevertheless under obligation to continue the performance of his penance until it is completed.
In theological language, this penance is called satisfaction and is defined, in the words of St. Thomas: "The payment of the temporal punishment due on account of the offence committed against God by sin" (Summa Theologicæ Supplement.12.3). It is an act of justice whereby the injury done to the honour of God is required, so far at least as the sinner is able to make reparation (poena vindicativa); it is also a preventive remedy, inasmuch as it is meant to hinder the further commission of sin (poena medicinalis). Satisfaction is not, like contrition and confession, an essential part of the sacrament, because the primary effect, i.e., remission of guilt and eternal punishment — is obtained without satisfaction; but it is an integral part, because it is requisite for obtaining the secondary effect — i.e., remission of the temporal punishment. The Catholic doctrine on this point is set forth by the Council of Trent, which condemns the proposition: "That the entire punishment is always remitted by God together with the guilt, and the satisfaction required of penitents is no other than faith whereby they believe that Christ has satisfied for them"; and further the proposition: "That the keys were given to the Church for loosing only and not for binding as well; that therefore in enjoining penance on those who confess, priests act contrary to the purpose of the keys and the institution of Christ; that it is a fiction [to say] that after the eternal punishment has been remitted in virtue of the keys, there usually remains to be paid a temporal penalty" (Can. "de Sac. poenit.", 12, 15; Denzinger, "Enchir.", 922, 925).
As against the errors contained in these statements, the Council (Sess. XIV, c. viii) cites conspicuous examples from Holy Scripture. The most notable of these is the judgment pronounced upon David: "And Nathan said to David: the Lord also hath taken away thy sin: thou shalt not die. Nevertheless, because thou hast given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, for this thing, the child that is born to thee, shall surely die" (2 Samuel 12:13, 14; cf. Genesis 3:17; Numbers 20:11 sqq.). David's sin was forgiven and yet he had to suffer punishment in the loss of his child. The same truth is taught by St. Paul (1 Corinthians 11:32): "But whilst we are judged, we are chastised by the Lord, that we be not condemned with this world". The chastisement here mentioned is a temporal punishment, but a punishment unto Salvation.
"Of all the parts of penance", says the Council of Trent (loc. cit.), "satisfaction was constantly recommended to the Christian people by our Fathers". This the Reformers themselves admitted. Calvin (Instit., III, iv, 38) says he makes little account of what the ancient writings contain in regard to satisfaction because "nearly all whose books are extant went astray on this point or spoke too severely". Chemnitius ("Examen C. Trident.", 4) acknowledges that Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine extolled the value of penitential works; and Flacius Illyricus, in the "Centuries", has a long list of Fathers and early writers who, as he admits, bear witness to the doctrine of satisfaction. Some of the texts already cited (Confession) expressly mention satisfaction as a part of sacramental penance. To these may be added St. Augustine, who says that "Man is forced to suffer even after his sins are forgiven, though it was sin that brought down on him this penalty. For the punishment outlasts the guilt, lest the guilt should be thought slight if with its forgiveness the punishment also came to an end" (Tractate 124 on the Gospel of John, no. 5); St. Ambrose: "So efficacious is the medicine of penance that [in view of it] God seems to revoke His sentence" (On Penance II.6.48); Caesarius of Arles: "If in tribulation we give not thanks to God nor redeem our faults by good works, we shall be detained in the fire of purgatory until our slightest sins are burned away like wood or straw" (Sermo civ, n. 4). Among the motives for doing penance on which the Fathers most frequently insist is this: If you punish your own sin, God will spare you; but in any case the sin will not go unpunished. Or again they declare that God wants us to perform satisfaction in order that we may clear off our indebtedness to His justice. It is therefore with good reason that the earlier councils — e.g., Laodicaea (A.D. 372) and Carthage IV (397) — teach that satisfaction is to be imposed on penitents; and the Council of Trent but reiterates the traditional belief and practice when it makes the giving of "penance" obligatory on the confessor. Hence, too, the practice of granting indulgences, whereby the Church comes to the penitent's assistance and places at his disposal the treasury of Christ's merits. Though closely connected with penance, indulgences are not a part of the sacrament; they presuppose confession and absolution, and are properly called an extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment incurred by sin. (See INDULGENCES.)
Seal of confession
Regarding the sins revealed to him in sacramental confession, the priest is bound to inviolable secrecy. From this obligation he cannot be excused either to save his own life or good name, to save the life of another, to further the ends of human justice, or to avert any public calamity. No law can compel him to divulge the sins confessed to him, or any oath which he takes — e.g., as a witness in court. He cannot reveal them either directly — i.e., by repeating them in so many words — or indirectly — i.e., by any sign or action, or by giving information based on what he knows through confession. The only possible release from the obligation of secrecy is the permission to speak of the sins given freely and formally by the penitent himself. Without such permission, the violation of the seal of confession would not only be a grievous sin, but also a sacrilege. It would be contrary to the natural law because it would be an abuse of the penitent's confidence and an injury, very serious perhaps, to his reputation. It would also violate the Divine law, which, while imposing the obligation to confess, likewise forbids the revelation of that which is confessed. That it would infringe ecclesiastical law is evident from the strict prohibition and the severe penalties enacted in this matter by the Church. "Let him beware of betraying the sinner by word or sign or in any other way whatsoever. . . we decree that he who dares to reveal a sin made known to him in the tribunal of penance shall not only be deposed from the priestly office, but shall moreover be subjected to close confinement in a monastery and the performance of perpetual penance" (Fourth Lateran Council, cap. xxi; Denzinger, "Enchir.", 438). Furthermore, by a decree of the Holy Office (18 Nov., 1682), confessors are forbidden, even where there would be no revelation direct or indirect, to make any use of the knowledge obtained in confession that would displease the penitent, even though the non-use would occasion him greater displeasure.
These prohibitions, as well as the general obligation of secrecy, apply only to what the confessor learns through confession made as part of the sacrament. He is not bound by the seal as regards what may be told him by a person who, he is sure, has no intention of making a sacramental confession but merely speaks to him "in confidence"; prudence, however, may impose silence concerning what he learns in this way. Nor does the obligation of the seal prevent the confessor from speaking of things which he has learned outside confession, though the same things have also been told him in confession; here again, however, other reasons may oblige him to observe secrecy. The same obligation, with the limitations indicated, rests upon all those who in one way or another acquire a knowledge of what is said in confession, e.g., an interpreter who translates for the priest the words of the penitent, a person who either accidentally or intentionally overhears the confession, an ecclesiastical superior (e.g., a bishop) to whom the confessor applies for authorization to absolve the penitent from a reserved case. Even the penitent, according to some theologians, is bound to secrecy; but the more general opinion leaves him free; as he can authorize the confessor to speak of what he has confessed, he can also, of his own accord, speak to others. But he is obliged to take care that what he reveals shall cast no blame or suspicion on the confessor, since the latter cannot defend himself. In a word, it is more in keeping with the intention of the Church and with the reverence due to the sacrament that the penitent himself should refrain from speaking of his confession. Such, undoubtedly, was the motive that prompted St. Leo to condemn the practice of letting the penitent read in public a written statement of his sins (see above); and it needs scarcely be added that the Church, while recognizing the validity of public confession, by no means requires it; as the Council of Trent declares, it would be imprudent to prescribe such a confession by any human enactment. (For provisions of the civil law regarding this matter, see SEAL OF CONFESSION.)
Public penance
An undeniable proof both of the practice of confession and of the necessity of satisfaction is found in the usage of the early Church according to which severe and often prolonged penance was prescribed and performed. The elaborate system of penance exhibited in the "Penitentials" and conciliar decrees, referred to above, was of course the outcome of a long development; but it simply expressed in greater detail the principles and the general attitude towards sin and satisfaction which had prevailed from the beginning. Frequently enough the latter statutes refer to the earlier practice either in explicit terms or by reiterating what had been enacted long before. At times, also, they allude to documents which were then extant, but which have not yet come down to us, e.g., the libellus mentioned in the African synods of 251 and 255 as containing singula capitum placita, i.e., the details of previous legislation (St. Cyprian, Epistle 21). Or again, they point to a system of penance that was already in operation and needed only to be applied to particular cases, like that of the Corinthians to whom Clement of Rome wrote his First Epistle about A.D. 96, exhorting them: "Be subject in obedience to the priests (presbyteris) and receive discipline [correctionem) unto penance, bending the knees of your hearts" (Epistle to the Corinthians 57). At the close, therefore, of the first century, the performance of penance was required, and the nature of that penance was determined, not by the penitent himself, but by ecclesiastical authority. (See EXCOMMUNICATION.)
Three kinds of penance are to be distinguished canonical, prescribed by councils or bishops in the form of "canons" for graver offences. This might be either private, i.e., performed secretly or public i.e., performed in the presence of bishop, clergy and people. When accompanied by certain rites as prescribed in the Canons, it was solemn penance. The public penance was not necessarily canonical; it might be undertaken by the penitent of his own accord. Solemn penance, the most severe of all, was inflicted for the worst offences only, notably for adultery, murder, and idolatry, the "capital sins". The name of penitent was applied especially to those who performed public canonical penance. "There is a harder and more grievous penance, the doers of which are properly called in the Church penitents; they are excluded from participation in the sacraments of the altar, lest by unworthily receiving they eat and drink judgment unto themselves "(St. Augustine, "De utilitate agendae poenit.", ser. cccxxxii, c. iii).
The penitential process included a series of acts, the first of which was confession. Regarding this, Origen, after speaking of baptism, tells us: "There is a yet more severe and arduous pardon of sins by penance, when the sinner washes his couch with tears, and when he blushes not to disclose his sin to the priest of the Lord and seeks the remedy" (Homil. "In Levit.", ii, 4, in P.G., XII, 418). Again he says: "They who have sinned, if they hide and retain their sin within their breast, are grievously tormented; but if the sinner becomes his own accuser, while he does this, he discharges the cause of all his malady. Only let him carefully consider to whom he should confess his sin; what is the character of the physician; if he be one who will be weak with the weak, who will weep with the sorrowful, and who understands the discipline of condolence and fellow-feeling. So that when his skill shall be known and his pity felt, you may follow what he shall advise. Should he think your disease to be such that it should be declared in the assembly of the faithful—whereby others may be edified, and yourself easily reformed—this must be done with much deliberation and the skillful advice of the physician" (Homil. "In Ps. xxxvii", n. 6, in P.G., XII, 1386). Origen here states quite plainly the relation between confession and public penance. The sinner must first make known his sins to the priest, who will decide whether any further manifestation is called for.
Public penance did not necessarily include a public avowal of sin. As St. Augustine also declares, "If his sin is not only grievous in itself, but involves scandal given to others, and if the bishop [antistes] judges that it will be useful to the Church [to have the sin published], let not the sinner refuse to do penance in the sight of many or even of the people at large, let him not resist, nor through shame add to his mortal wound a greater evil" (Sermo cli, n. 3). It was therefore the duty of the confessor to determine how far the process of penance should go beyond sacramental confession. It lay with him also to fix the quality and duration of the penance: "Satisfaction", says Tertullian, "is determined by confession; penance is born of confession, and by penance God is appeased" (On Penance 8). In the East there existed from the earliest times (Sozomen, Church History VII.16) or at least from the outbreak of the Novatianist schism (Socrates, Church History V.19) a functionary known as presbyter penitentiarius, i.e., a priest especially appointed on account of his prudence and reserve to hear confessions and impose public penance. If the confessor deemed it necessary, he obliged the penitent to appear before the bishop and his council [presbyterium) and these again decided whether the crime was of such a nature that it ought to be confessed in presence of the people. Then followed, usually on Ash Wednesday, the imposition of public penance whereby the sinner was excluded for a longer or shorter period from the communion of the Church and in addition was obliged to perform certain penitential exercises, the exomologesis. This term, however, had various meanings: it designated sometimes the entire process of penance (Tertullian), or again the avowal of sin at the beginning or, finally, the public avowal which was made at the end — i.e., after the performance of the penitential exercises.
The nature of these exercises varied according to the sin for which they were prescribed. According to Tertullian (On Penance 9), "Exomologesis is the discipline which obliges a man to prostrate and humiliate himself and to adopt a manner of life that will draw down mercy. As regards dress and food, it prescribes that he shall lie in sackcloth and ashes, clothe his body in rags, plunge his soul in sorrow, correct his faults by harsh treatment of himself, use the plainest meat and drink for the sake of his soul and not of his belly: usually he shall nourish prayer by fasting, whole days and nights together he shall moan, and weep, and wail to the Lord his God, cast himself at the feet of the priests, fall on his knees before those who are dear to God, and beseech them to plead in his behalf". At a very early period, the exomologesis was divided into four parts or "stations", and the penitents were grouped in as many different classes according to their progress in penance. The lower class, the flentes (weeping) remained outside the church door and besought the intercession of the faithful as these passed into the church. The audientes (hearers) were stationed in the narthex of the church behind the catechumens and were permitted to remain during the Mass of the Catechumens, i.e., until the end of the sermon. The substrati (prostrate), or genuflectentes (kneeling), occupied the space between the door and the ambo, where they received the imposition of the bishop's hands or his blessing. Finally, the consistentes were so called because they were allowed to hear the whole Mass without communicating, or because they remained at their place while the faithful approached the Holy Table. This grouping into stations originated in the East, where at least the three higher groups are mentioned about A.D. 263 by Gregory Thaumaturgus, and the first or lowest group by St. Basil (Epistle 199, chapter 22 and Epistle 217, chapter 56). In the West the classification did not exist, or at any rate the different stations were not so clearly marked; the penitents were treated pretty much as the catechumens.
The exomologesis terminated with the reconciliation, a solemn function which took place on Holy Thursday just before Mass. The bishop presided, assisted by his priests and deacons. A consultation (concilium) was held to determine which of the penitents deserved readmission; the Penitential Psalms and the litanies were recited at the foot of the altar; the bishop in a brief address reminded the penitents of their obligation to lead henceforth an upright life; the penitents, lighted candles in hand, were then led into the church; prayers, antiphons and responses were said, and, finally, the public absolution was given. (See Schmitz, "Die Bussbucher u. die Bussdisciplin d. Kirche", Mainz, 1883; Funk in "Kirchenlex.", s.v. "Bussdisciplin"; Pohle in "Kirchl. Handlex.", s.v. "Bussdisciplin"; Tixeront, "Hist. des dogmes", Paris, 1905; Eng. tr., St. Louis, 1910.) Regarding the nature of this absolution given by the bishop, various opinions have been put forward. According to one view, it was the remission, not of guilt but of the temporal punishment; the guilt had already been remitted by the absolution which the penitent received in confession before he entered on the public penance. This finds support in the fact that the reconciliation could be effected by a deacon in case of necessity and in the absence of a priest, as appears from St. Cyprian (Epistle 18).
Speaking of those who had received libelli from the martyrs he says: "If they are overtaken by illness, they need not wait for our coming, but may make the exomologesis of their sin before any priest, or, if no priest be at hand, and death is imminent, before a deacon, that thus, by the imposition of his hands unto penance, they may come to the Lord with the peace which the martyrs had besought us by letters to grant." On the other hand, the deacon could not give sacramental absolution; consequently, his function in such cases was to absolve the penitent from punishment; and, as he was authorized herein to do what the bishop did by the public absolution, this could not have been sacramental. There is the further consideration that the bishop did not necessarily hear the confessions of those whom he absolved at the time of reconciliation, and moreover the ancient formularies prescribe that at this time a priest shall hear the confession, and that the bishop, after that, shall pronounce absolution. But sacramental absolution can be given only by him who hears the confession. And again, the public penance often lasted many years; consequently, if the penitent were not absolved at the beginning, he would have remained during all that time in the state of sin, incapable of meriting anything for heaven by his penitential exercises, and exposed to the danger of sudden death (Pesch, op. cit., p. 110 sq. Cf. Palmieri, op. cit., p. 459; Pignataro, "De disciplina poenitentiali", Rome, 1904, p. 100; Di Dario, "II sacramento della penitenza nei primi secoli del cristianesimo", Naples, 1908, p. 81).
The writers who hold that the final absolution was sacramental, insist that there is no documentary evidence of a secret confession; that if this had been in existence, the harder way of the public penance would have been abandoned; that the argument from prescription loses its force if the sacramental character of public penance be denied; and that this penance contained all that is required in a sacrament. (Boudinhon, "Sur l'histoire de la pénitence" in "Revue d'histoire et de litterature religieuses", II, 1897, p. 306 sq. Cf. Hogan in "Am. Cath. Q. Rev.", July, 1900; Batiffol, "Etudes d'histoire et de théologie positive", Paris, 1902, p. 195 sq.; Vacandard in "Dict. de theol.", s.v. "Absolution", 156-61; O'Donnell, "Penance in the Early Church", Dublin 1907, p. 95 sq.) While this discussion concerns the practice under ordinary circumstances, it is commonly admitted that sacramental absolution was granted at the time of confession to those who were in danger of death. The Church, in fact, did not, in her universal practice, refuse absolution at the last moment even in the case of those who had committed grievous sin. St. Leo, writing in 442 to Theodore, Bishop of Fréjus, says: "Neither satisfaction is to be forbidden nor reconciliation denied to those who in time of need and imminent danger implore the aid of penance and then of reconciliation." After pointing out that penance should not be deferred from day to day until the moment "when there is hardly space either for the confession of the penitent or his reconciliation by the priest"; he adds that even in these circumstances "the action of penance and the grace of communion should not be denied if asked for by the penitent" (Ep. cviii, c. iv, in P.L., LIV, 1011). St. Leo states expressly that he was applying the ecclesiastical rule (ecclesiastica regula).
Shortly before, St. Celestine (428) had expressed his horror at learning that "penance was refused the dying and that the desire of those was not granted who in the hour of death sought this remedy for their soul"; this, he says, is "adding death to death and killing with cruelty the soul that is not absolved" (Letter to the bishops of the provinces of Vienne and Narbonne, c. ii). That such a refusal was not in accordance with the earlier practice is evident from the words of the Council of Nicaea (325): "With respect to the dying, the ancient canonical law shall now also be observed, namely, that if any one depart from this life, he shall by no means be deprived of the last and most necessary viaticum" (canon 13). If the dying person could receive the Eucharist, absolution certainly could not be denied. If at times greater severity seems to be shown, this consisted in the refusal, not of absolution but of communion; such was the penalty prescribed by the Council of Elvira (306) for those who after baptism had fallen into idolatry. The same is true of the canon (22) of the Council of Arles (314) which enacts that communion shall not be given to "those who apostatize, but never appear before the Church, nor even seek to do penance, and yet afterwards, when attacked by illness, request communion". The council lays stress on the lack of proper disposition in such sinners, as does also St. Cyprian when he forbids that they who "do no penance nor manifest heartfelt sorrow" be admitted to communion and peace if in illness and danger they ask for it; for what prompts them to seek (communion) is, not repentance for their sin, but the fear of approaching death" (Epistle 51, no. 23).
A further evidence of the severity with which public penance, and especially its solemn form, was administered is the fact that it could be performed only once. This is evident from some of the texts quoted above (Tertullian, Hermas). Origen also says: "For the graver crimes, there is only one opportunity of penance" (Hom. xv, "In Levit.", c. ii); and St. Ambrose: "As there is one baptism so there is one penance, which, however, is performed publicly" (On Penance II.10.95). St. Augustine gives the reason: "Although, by a wise and salutary provision, opportunity for performing that humblest kind of penance is granted but once in the Church, lest the remedy, become common, should be less efficacious for the sick . . . yet who will dare to say to God: Wherefore dost thou once more spare this man who after a first penance has again bound himself in the fetters of sin?" (Ep. cliii, "Ad Macedonium"). It may well be admitted that the discipline of the earliest days was rigorous, and that in some Churches or by individual bishops it was carried to extremes. This is plainly stated by Pope St. Innocent (405) in his letter (Ep. vi, c. ii) to Exuperius, Bishop of Toulouse. The question had been raised as to what should be done with those who, after a lifetime of licentious indulgence, begged at the end for penance and communion. "Regarding these", writes the pope, "the earlier practice was more severe, the later more tempered with mercy. The former custom was that penance should be granted, but communion denied; for in those times persecutions were frequent, hence, lest the easy admission to communion should fail to bring back from their evil ways men who were sure of reconciliation, very rightly communion was refused, while penance was granted in order that the refusal might not be total. . . . But after Our Lord had restored peace to his Churches, and terror had ceased, it was judged well that communion be given the dying lest we should seem to follow the harshness and sternness of the heretic Novatian in denying pardon. Communion, therefore, shall be given at the last along with penance, that these men, if only in the supreme moment of death, may, with the permission of Our Saviour, be rescued from eternal destruction."
The mitigation of public penance which this passage indicates continued throughout the subsequent period, especially the Middle Ages. The office of poenitentiarius had already (390) been abolished in the East by Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, in consequence of a scandal that grew out of public confession. Soon afterwards, the four "stations" disappeared, and public penance fell into disuse. ln the West it underwent a more gradual transformation. Excommunication continued in use, and the interdict was frequently resorted to. The performance of penance was left in large measure to the zeal and good will of the penitent; increasing clemency was shown by allowing the reconciliation to take place somewhat before the prescribed time was completed; and the practice was introduced of commuting the enjoined penance into other exercises or works of piety, such as prayer and almsgiving. According to a decree of the Council of Clermont (1095), those who joined a crusade were freed from all obligation in the matter of penance. Finally it became customary to let the reconciliation follow immediately after confession. With these modifications the ancient usage had practically disappeared by the middle of the sixteenth century. Some attempts were made to revive it after the Council of Trent, but these were isolated and of short duration.
In the British and Irish Churches
The penitential system in these countries was established simultaneously with the introduction of Christianity, was rapidly developed by episcopal decrees and synodal enactments, and was reduced to definite form in the Penitentials. These books exerted such an influence on the practice in Continental Europe that, according to one opinion, they "first brought order and unity into ecclesiastical discipline in these matters" (Wasserschleben, "Bussordnungen d. abendlandischen Kirche", Halle, 1851, p. 4. — For a different view see Schmitz, "Die Bussbucher u. die Bussdisciplin d. Kirche", Mainz, 1888, p. 187). In any case, it is beyond question that in their belief and practice the Churches of Ireland, England, and Scotland were at one with Rome. The so-called Synod of St. Patrick decrees that a Christian who commits any of the capital sins shall perform a year's penance for each offence and at the end shall "come with witnesses and be absolved by the priest" (Wilkins, "Concilia", I, p. 3). Another synod of St. Patrick ordains that "the Abbot shall decide to whom the power of binding and loosing be committed, but forgiveness is more in keeping with the examples of Scripture; let penance be short, with weeping and lamentation, and a mournful garb, rather than long and tempered with relaxations "(Wilkins, ibid., p. 4). For various opinions regarding the date and origin of the synods, see Haddan and Stubbs, "Councils", II, 331; Bury, "Life of St. Patrick", London, 1905. The confessor was called anmchara (animae carus), i.e., "soul's friend". St. Columba was anmchara to Aidan, Lord of Dalraida, A.D. 574 (Adamnan's "Life of St. Columba", ed. Reeves, p. lxxvi); and Adamnan was "soul's friend" to Finnsnechta, Monarch of Ireland, A.D. 675 (ibid., p. xliii). The "Life of St. Columba" relates the coming of Feachnaus to Iona, where, with weeping and lamentation, he fell at Columba's feet and "before all who were present confessed his sins. Then the Saint weeping with him, said to him: 'Arise, my son and be comforted; thy sins which thou hast committed are forgiven; because, as it is written, a contrite and humble heart God doth not despise,'" (ibid., I, 30). The need and effects of confession are explained in the Leabhar Breac: "Penance frees from all the sins committed after baptism. Every one desirous of a cure for his soul and happiness with the Lord must make an humble and sorrowful confession; and the confession with the prayers of the Church are as baptisms to him. As sickness injures the body, so sin injures the soul; and as there is a cure for the disease of the body, so there is balm for that of the soul. And as the wounds of the body are shown to a physician, so, too, the sores of the soul must be exposed. As he who takes poison is saved by a vomit, so, too, the soul is healed by confession and declaration of his sins with sorrow, and by the prayers of the Church, and a determination henceforth to observe the laws of the Church of God. . . . Because Christ left to His Apostles and Church, to the end of the world, the power of loosing and binding."
That confession was required before Communion is evident from the penitential ascribed to St. Columbanus, which orders (can. xxx) "that confessions be given with all diligence, especially concerning commotions of the mind, before going to Mass, lest perchance any one approach the altar unworthily, that is, if he have not a clean heart. For it is better to wait till the heart be sound and free from scandal and envy, than daringly to approach the judgment of the tribunal; for the altar is the tribunal of Christ, and His Body, even there with His Blood, judges those who approach unworthily. As, therefore, we must beware of capital sins before communicating, so, also, from the more uncertain defects and diseases of a languid soul, it is necessary for us to abstain and to be cleansed before going to that which is a conjunction with true peace and a joining with eternal salvation". In the "Life of St. Maedoc of Ferns" it is said of the murdered King Brandubh: "And so he departed without confession and the communication of the Eucharist." But the saint restored him to life for a while, and then, "having made his confession and received absolution and the viaticum of the Body of Christ, King Brandubh went to heaven, and was interred in the city of St. Maedoc which is called Ferns, where the kings of that land are buried" (Acta SS. Hib., col. 482). The metrical "Rule of St. Carthach", translated by Eugene O'Curry, gives this direction to the priest: "If you go to give communion at the awful point of death, you must receive confession without shame, without reserve." In the prayer for giving communion to the sick (Corpus Christi Missal) we read: "O God, who hast willed that sins should be forgiven by the imposition of the hands of the priest . . ." and then follows the absolution: "We absolve thee as representatives of blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, to whom the Lord gave the power of binding and loosing." That confession was regularly a part of the preparation for death is attested by the Council of Cashel (1172) which commands the faithful in case of illness to make their will "in the presence of their confessor and neighbours", and prescribes that to those who die "with a good confession" due tribute shall be paid in the form of Masses and burial (can. vi, vii).
The practice of public penance was regulated in great detail by the Penitentials. That of St. Cummian prescribes that "if any priest refuses penance to the dying, he is guilty of the loss of their souls . . . for there can be true conversion at the last moment, since God has regard not of time alone, but of the heart also, and the thief gained Paradise in the last hour of his confession" (C. xiv, 2). Other Penitentials bear the names of St. Finnian, Sts. David and Gildas, St. Columbanus, Adamnan. The collection of canons known as the "Hibernensis" is especially important, as it cites, under the head of "Penance" (bk. XLVII), the teaching of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and other Fathers, thus showing the continuity of the Irish faith and observance with that of the early Church. (See Lanigan, "Eccl. Hist. of Ireland", Dublin, 1829; Moran, "Essays on the Early Irish Church", Dublin, 1864; Malone, "Church Hist. of Ireland", Dublin, 1880; Warren, "The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church", Oxford, 1881; Salmon, "The Ancient Irish Church", Dublin, 1897.)
In the Anglo-Saxon Church
In the Anglo-Saxon Church penance was called behreowsung, from the verb hreowan, whence our word "to rue". The confessor was the scrift; confession, scrift spraec; and the parish itself was the scriftscir, i.e., "confession district" — a term which shows plainly the close relation between confession and the work of religion in general. The practice in England can be traced back to the times immediately following the country's conversion. Ven. Bede (H.E., IV, 23 [25]) gives the story of Adamnan, an Irish monk of the seventh century, who belonged to the monastery of Coldingham, England. In his youth, having committed some sin, he went to a priest, confessed, and was given a penance to be performed until the priest should return. But the priest went to Ireland and died there, and Adamnan continued his penance to the end of his days. When St. Cuthbert (635-87) on his missionary tours preached to the people, "they all confessed openly what they had done, . . . and what they confessed they expiated; as he commanded them, by worthy fruits of penance" (Bede, op. cit., IV, 25). Alcuin (735-804) declares that "without confession there is no pardon" (P.L., C, 337); that "he who accuses himself of his sins will not have the devil for an accuser in the day of judgment" (P.L., CI, 621); that "he who conceals his sins and is ashamed to make wholesome confession, has God as witness now and will have him again as avenger" (ibid., 622). Lanfranc (1005-89) has a treatise, "De celunda confessione", i.e., on keeping confession secret, in which he rebukes those who give the slightest intimation of what they have heard in confession (P.L., CL, 626).
The penitentials were known as scrift bocs. The one attributed to Archbishop Theodore (602-90) says: "The deacon is not allowed to impose penance on a layman; this should be done by the bishop or priests" (bk. II, 2): and further; "According to the canons, penitents should not receive communion until their penance is completed; but we, for mercy's sake, allow them to receive at the end of a year or six months" (I, 12). An important statement is that "public reconciliation is not established in this province, for the reason that there is no public penance"—which shows that the minute prescriptions contained in the penitential were meant for the guidance of the priest in giving penance privately, i.e., in confession. Among the excerptiones, or extracts, from the canons which bear the name of Archbishop Egbert of York (d. 766), canon xlvi says that the bishop shall hear no cause without the presence of his clergy, except in case of confession (Wilkins, "Concilia", I, 104). His Penitential prescribes (IX) that "a bishop or priest shall not refuse confession to those who desire it, though they be guilty of many sins" (ibid., 126). The Council of Chalcuth (A.D. 787): "If any one depart this life without penance or confession, he shall not be prayed for" (can. xx). The canons published under King Edgar (960) have a special section "On Confession" which begins: "When one wishes to confess his sins, let him act manfully, and not be ashamed to confess his misdeeds and crimes, accusing himself; because hence comes pardon, and because without confession there is no pardon; confession heals; confession justifies" (ibid., 229). The Council of Eanham (1009): "Let every Christian do as behooves him, strictly keep his Christianity, accustom himself to frequent confession, fearlessly confess his sins, and carefully make amends according as he is directed" (can. xvii, Wilkins, ibid., 289). Among the ecclesiastical laws enacted (1033) by King Canute, we find this exhortation: "Let us with all diligence turn back from our sins, and let us each confess our sins to our confessor, and ever [after] refrain from evil-doing and mend our ways" (XVIII, Wilkins, ibid., 303).
The Council of Durham (c. 1220): "How necessary is the sacrament of penance, those words of the Gospel prove: Whose sins, etc. . . . But since we obtain the pardon of our sins by true confession, we prescribe in accordance with the canonical statutes that the priest in giving penance shall carefully consider the amount of the penance, the quality of the sin, the place, time, cause, duration and other circumstances of the sin; and especially the devotion of the penitent and the signs of contrition." Similar directions are given by the Council of Oxford (1222), which adds after various admonitions: "Let no priest dare, either out of anger or even through fear of death, to reveal the confession of anyone by word or sign . . . and should he be convicted of doing this he ought deservedly to be degraded without hope of relaxation" (Wilkins, ibid., 595). The Scottish Council (c. 1227) repeats these injunctions and prescribes "that once a year the faithful shall confess all their sins either to their own [parish] priest or, with his permission, to some other priest" (can. lvii). Explicit instructions for the confessor are found in the statutes of Alexander, Bishop of Coventry (1237), especially in regard to the manner of questioning the penitent and enjoining penance. The Council of Lambeth (1261) declares: "Since the sacrament of confession and penance, the second plank after shipwreck, the last part of man's seafaring, the final refuge, is for every sinner most necessary unto salvation, we strictly forbid, under pain of excommunication, that anyone should presume to hinder the free administration of this sacrament to each who asks for it" (Wilkins, ibid., 754).
To give some idea of the ancient discipline, the penalties attached to graver crimes are cited here from the English and Irish Penitentials. For stealing, Cummian prescribes that a layman shall do one year of penance; a cleric, two; a subdeacon three; a deacon, four; a priest, five; a bishop, six. For murder or perjury, the penance lasted three, five, six, seven, ten or twelve years according to the criminal's rank. Theodore commands that if any one leave the Catholic Church, join the heretics, and induce others to do the same, he shall, in case he repent, do penance for twelve years. For the perjurer who swears by the Church, the Gospel, or the relics of the saints, Egbert prescribes seven or eleven years of penance. Usury entailed three years; infanticide, fifteen; idolatry or demon-worship, ten. Violations of the sixth commandment were punished with great severity; the penance varied, according to the nature of the sin, from three to fifteen years, the extreme penalty being prescribed for incest, i.e., fifteen to twenty-five years. Whatever its duration, the penance included fasting on bread and water, either for the whole period or for a specified portion. Those who could not fast were obliged instead to recite daily a certain number of psalms, to give alms, take the discipline (scourging) or perform some other penitential exercise as determined by the confessor. (See Lingard, "Hist. and Antiq. of the Anglo-Saxon Church", London, 1845; Thurston, "Confession in England before the Conquest" in "The Tablet", February and March, 1905.)
Confession in the Anglican Church
In the Anglican Church, according to the rule laid down in the "Prayer Book", there is a general confession prescribed for morning and evening Service, also for Holy Communion; this confession is followed by a general absolution like the one in use in the Catholic Church. Also in the "Prayer Book" confession is counselled for the quieting of conscience and for the good that comes from absolution and the peace that arises from the fatherly direction of the minister of God. There is also mention of private confession in the office for the sick: "Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which the priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort: 'Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left the power to his Church' etc." Since the beginning of the Oxford Movement confession after the manner practised in the Catholic Church has become more frequent among those of the High Church party. In 1873 a petition was sent to the Convocation of the Archdiocese of Canterbury asking provision for the education and authorization of priests for the work of the confessional. In the joint letter of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York disapprobation of such course was markedly expressed and the determination not to encourage the practice of private confession openly avowed. The Puseyites replied citing the authority of the "Prayer Book" as given above. In our time among the High Church folk one notices confessionals in the churches and one hears of discourses made to the people enjoining confession as a necessity to pardon. Those who hear confessions make use generally of the rules and directions laid down in Catholic "Manuals", and especially popular is the "Manual" of the Abbé Gaume (A.G. Mortimer "Confession and Absolution", London, 1906).
Utility of Confession
Mr. Lea ("A History of Auricular Confession", Vol. II, p. 456) says: "No one can deny that there is truth in Cardinal Newman's argument: 'How many souls are there in distress, anxiety and loneliness, whose one need is to find a being to whom they can pour out their feelings unheard by the world. They want to tell them and not to tell them, they wish to tell them to one who is strong enough to hear them, and yet not too strong so as to despise them'"; and then Mr. Lea adds: "It is this weakness of humanity on which the Church has speculated, the weakness of those unable to bear their burdens . . . who find comfort in the system built up through the experience of the ages", etc. It has been made clear that the Church has simply carried out the mind of Christ: "Whatever you shall loose shall be loosed"; still we do not hesitate to accept Mr. Lea's reason, that this institution answers in large measure to the needs of men, who morally are indeed weak and in darkness. True, Mr. Lea denies the probability of finding men capable of exercising aright this great ministry, and he prefers to enumerate the rare abuses which the weakness of priests has caused, rather than to listen to the millions who have found in the tribunal of penance a remedy for their anxieties of mind, and a peace and security of conscience the value of which is untold. The very abuses of which he speaks at such length have been the occasion of greater care, greater diligence, on the part of the Church. The few inconveniences arising from the perversity of men, which the Church has met with admirable legislation, should not blind men to the great good that confession has brought, not only to the individual, but even to society.
Thinking men even outside the Church have acknowledged the usefulness to society of the tribunal of penance. Amongst these the words of Leibniz are not unknown ("Systema theologicum", Paris, 1819, p. 270): "This whole work of sacramental penance is indeed worthy of the Divine wisdom and if aught else in the Christian dispensation is meritorious of praise, surely this wondrous institution. For the necessity of confessing one's sins deters a man from committing them, and hope is given to him who may have fallen again after expiation. The pious and prudent confessor is in very deed a great instrument in the hands of God for man's regeneration. For the kindly advice of God's priest helps man to control his passions, to know the lurking places of sin, to avoid the occasions of evil doing, to restore ill-gotten goods, to have hope after depression and doubt, to have peace after affliction, in a word, to remove or at least lessen all evil, and if there is no pleasure on earth like unto a faithful friend, what must be the esteem a man must have for him, who is in very deed a friend in the hour of his direst need?"
Nor is Leibniz alone in expressing this feeling of the great benefits that may come from the use of confession. Protestant theologians realize, not only the value of the Catholic theological position, but also the need of the confessional for the spiritual regeneration of their subjects. Dr. Martensen, in his "Christian Dogmatics" (Edinburgh, 1890), p. 443, thus outlines his views: "Absolution in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, derived from the full power of binding and loosing which the church has inherited from the apostles, is not unconditional, but depends on the same condition on which the gospel itself adjudges the forgiveness of sins, namely, change of heart and faith. If reform is to take place here, it must be effected either by endeavouring to revive private confession, or, as has been proposed, by doing away with the union between confession and the Lord's Supper, omitting, that is, the solemn absolution, because what it presupposes (personal confession of sin) has fallen into disuse, and retaining only the words of preparation, with the exhortation to self-examination, a testifying of the comfortable promises of the gospel, and a wish for a blessing upon the communicants." Under the head of "Observations" he states: "It cannot easily be denied that confession meets a deep need of human nature. There is a great psychological truth in the saying of Pascal, that a man often attains for the first time a true sense of sin, and a true stayedness in his good purpose, when he confesses his sins to his fellow man, as well as to God. Catholicism has often been commended because by confession it affords an opportunity of depositing the confession of his sins in the breast of another man where it remains kept under the seal of the most sacred secrecy, and whence the consolation of the forgiveness of sins is given him in the very name of the Lord."
True, he believes that this great need is met more fully with the kind of confession practised in Lutheranism, but he does not hesitate to add: "It is a matter of regret that private confession, as an institution, meeting as it does this want in a regular manner, has fallen into disuse; and that the objective point of union is wanting for the many, who desire to unburden their souls by confessing not to God only but to a fellowman, and who feel their need of comfort and of forgiveness, which anyone indeed may draw for himself from the gospel, but which in many instances he may desire to hear spoken by a man, who speaks in virtue of the authority of his holy office."
About this page
Hanna, E. (1911). The Sacrament of Penance. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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Dominicans of Avrillé: The Fall and Drift of Le Barroux |
Posted by: Stone - 03-03-2021, 11:02 AM - Forum: The New-Conciliar SSPX
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While this article is about the Fall of the Monastery of Le Barroux (which ended up make a 'deal with Modernist Rome') and not about the Conciliar SSPX, the similarities in the approaches of both Dom Gerard and Bishop Fellay in trying to seek acceptance from their followers for essentially the same 'deal with Rome' are striking.
Taken from The Recusant - Issue 19 [August 2014]
The Fall and Drift of Le Barroux
[Editor’s note - The following is an extract from an article by Père Bruno O.S.B in the spring 2014 issue of the Le Sel de La Terre, published by the Dominicans of Avrillé. In the article, Père Bruno recounts Dom Gérard’s signing of an agreement with Rome and then explains three factors that changed the way of thinking of the monks in that community. These factors are: 1) the internal influence: the role of the superior; 2) the external influence: contamination; and 3) the cessation of combat. The extract below deals with the first of these three. The second extract is taken from the well known interview of Archbishop Lefebvre with Fideliter, in 1988, in which he comments on the defection of Le Barroux to modern Rome.]
How did the Community Change?
1)The internal influence: the role of the superior
The example of le Barroux shows that when a superior wants to join with Rome, he can prepare his subjects in order to lead them in this direction, even if many are at first opposed to it (which was the case at le Barroux). He can, in different ways, and more or less consciously, condition his community. This explains why the monastery, as a whole, followed Dom Gerard.
The superior filters information (I spoke of periodicals suppressed at the community table, and replaced by others) and presents news in his own way.
The superior uses a double language in order to please everyone. He adapts to the person he is speaking to or to his audience: he is hard with the hard, and soft with the soft. If you manifest your distress to him, he replies: “I understand you, I am vigilant.” If, on the contrary, you find that things are not progressing fast enough: “Be patient, we are advancing, but we must go slowly.” This double language can sometimes go as far as lying.
The superior endeavours to reassure those who are worried. Dom Gerard often told me: “The community is in good health, we are strong, so don’t be worried!” I replied that the community was really not in good health, and I gave him some examples.
The superior insists on the obligation of trusting him: relations with Rome come under the prudential domain, we must therefore trust authority. And if we are not completely in agreement, we submit. Trust and obedience…
The superior often reminds of the duty of sanctifying oneself, which is obviously of the utmost importance. But for him, it is a question of sanctifying oneself without taking into account the crisis; whereas we must sanctify ourselves in the crisis and by the crisis. The crisis is an occasion of sanctifying ourselves: at first sight, it is an obstacle, but God changes obstacles into means. In a monastery, in a period of crisis, we cannot therefore content ourselves with living the religious life well, as if there was no crisis.
The superior changes the problems. “There are so many things going wrong in France, in the world, in the Church, that we must not dwell on petty quarrels over details. We have to expand our horizons.”
The superior benefits (consciously or not) of the fact that his subjects trust him and are attached to his person. At le Barroux, many could not imagine that Dom Gerard could one day go astray. This is an opportunity to stress that we must be committed to principles more than to people. Why? Because people can change, whereas principles do not change. We can recover from the failures, even serious failures, of a person, we do not recover from the abandonment of principles. It was Mgr. Freppel who said, “We never recover from the sacrifice of principles.”
The superior makes those who resist the orientation that he endeavours to impose feel guilty about their position; he reproaches them for disturbing the community, as if the trouble wasn’t the result of the actions and words of the authority, but of those who are worried about it, and rightly so.
The superior repeats that we have to keep the sense of the Church: “Beware of the dangers of schism and of sedevacantism!” (A spectre that is raised frequently today…).
How did the community of le Barroux react? For most, trust was necessary because Dom Gerard was the leader, thus he had the graces of state. If, despite everything, we asked questions, if we did not agree, we had to in any case not propagate a bad spirit, so as to preserve the unity of the community. Unity became more important than truth. But when you put unity above truth, you lose both: you lose the truth, and you also lose unity. This is what happened at le Barroux.
One of the fathers of the monastery, who had important responsibilities, was personally opposed to concelebrating in the new rite, but he especially did not want to criticize his superior, Dom Gerard. He thus held a good principle: no compromise with the new mass; but he remained attached to a person who contradicted this principle. He finally gave in and concelebrated, when he had vowed that he would never do it. He accepted at least once. This was the case with most of them. I think two or three of them never did it and would never want to. That being said, not concelebrating the new mass oneself was not enough: one also had to protest against those who did it. This was one of the reasons for my departure: I could not bear knowing that my fellow brothers participated in concelebrations, particularly a father ordained at the same time as me in Écône on June 27, 1986, who did it quite often. Not only was it out of the question that I use the new rite (they would never have dared to ask it of me), but I could not stay in a community where it had become a normal thing.
In this type of situation, the superior does not necessarily ask you to be in agreement on all points with him; he simply asks you to be quiet: “If you have any reluctance or reservations, keep quiet, do not speak of them.” If, in effect, you keep quiet, that allows him to continue to advance in his direction, without any obstacles. And he who agrees to keep quiet, by keeping quiet, and by not expressing his convictions, slowly ends up losing them. He one day accepts to take a first step, and we know that the first step is the hardest.
[Emphasis mine.]
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April 14th - St. Lydwina of Schiedam and St. Benezet |
Posted by: Elizabeth - 03-02-2021, 11:18 PM - Forum: April
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Saint Lydwina of Schiedam
Virgin
(1380-1433)
Saint Lydwina was born in Holland of virtuous but poor parents, the only daughter among nine children. Her name means suffer in plenitude, and indeed her entire life was nothing but a continuous suffering. Even in the cradle a grievous illness afflicted her.
At twelve years of age her beauty was admired by all; her father wanted her to marry, but she told him she had already given herself to the divine Spouse of virgins. When at the age of fifteen she fell on the ice, she suffered a broken rib; and this injury, spreading, it would seem, to other parts of her body, reduced her to the state of an invalid for the last thirty-eight years of her life. For seventeen years, she could move no part of her body except, very slightly, her head and left arm. For a long time she could scarcely take any nourishment, and finally could no longer support any food at all. In this state she remained for nineteen years.
After her mother's death, she sold the furnishings she had inherited to give the price to the poor; and all the alms she received were also given to them. A purse containing money which she had placed there to pay the debts of one of her brothers who had died with many orphaned children and many unpaid obligations, was never afterwards found without at least forty francs, regardless of the amount distributed.
All the most dreaded illnesses seemed to have joined together to persecute Saint Lydwina, that she might endure in every one of the conjoined parts of her body, all that it could possibly bear. Despite her wounds, she was surrounded by an agreeable fragrance. Our Lord kept Lydwina company in her sufferings, and at times transported her in spirit elsewhere; she saw the pains of the damned and those of the souls in purgatory. For the latter she prayed much and delivered many, having suffered their torments for them. Our Saviour granted her His stigmata, but she prayed that they might remain invisible, in order not to derive any attention from them.
He taught us all a lesson through His Saint, when she became too afflicted by the death of a dear brother. He sent to her a holy hermit to tell her that the servants of Christ must be purified from the too tender affections of human nature, even though these are not unreasonable and are not condemned by Holy Scripture.
She was permitted to receive Holy Communion every two weeks, as it was observed that this gave her strength; and when she was nearing her end, four or five times a week that consolation was granted her. After the death of this servant of God on April 14, 1433 her body which had been covered with ulcers and deformed became straight and very beautiful. She was buried in the parish church of Saint John the Baptist in Schiedam. Her relics were later taken to Brussels and placed in the collegial church of Saint Gudule. Her life was written by three persons who knew her personally, and an abridged life was prepared by Thomas a Kempis.
Saint Benezet
Confessor
(1165-1184)
Saint Benezet kept his mother's sheep in the country, and while still a young child was devoted to practices of piety. In his day many persons were being drowned when crossing the Rhone, and Benezet was instructed by God to build a bridge over that rapid river at Avignon. He obtained the approbation of the bishop, proving his mission by miracles, and in 1177 began the work, which he directed during seven years. He died when the major difficulties of the undertaking were over, in 1184.
This remarkable feat of a young boy is attested by public monuments drawn up at that time and still preserved at Avignon, where the story is still known to all. His body was buried upon the bridge itself, which was not finished until four years after his decease. Its construction was attended with miracles from the first laying of the foundations until it was completed in 1188. Other miracles wrought afterwards at his tomb induced the city to build, on the bridge itself, a chapel, and there his body lay for nearly five hundred years. But in 1669, after the greater part of the bridge had fallen through the impetuosity of the waters, the coffin was taken up and opened in 1670, in the presence of the Church's authorities. The body was found entire, without the least sign of corruption; all was perfectly sound, and the color of the eyes still bright, even though, through the dampness of the surroundings, the iron bars around the coffin were much damaged with rust.
Saint Benezet's body was found in the same condition again in 1674, by the Archbishop of Avignon at the time when, accompanied by the Bishop of Orange and a great concourse of nobility, he carried out its translation with great pomp into the Church of the Celestines. That Order had obtained from Louis XIV the honor of being entrusted with the custody of his relics, until such time as the bridge and chapel should be rebuilt.
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April 13th - St. Hermenegild |
Posted by: Elizabeth - 03-02-2021, 11:14 PM - Forum: April
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Saint Hermenegild
Martyr
(† 586)
Leovigild, Arian King of the Visigoths, had two sons, Hermenegild and Recared, who were reigning conjointly with him. All were Arians, but Hermenegild married a zealous Catholic, the daughter of Sigebert, King of France, and by her holy example was converted to the faith. His father, on hearing the news, denounced him as a traitor, and marched to seize his person. Hermenegild tried to rally the Catholics of Spain in his defense, but they were too weak to make any stand; and after a two years' fruitless struggle, Hermenegild surrendered on the assurance of a free pardon. Once he was safely in the royal camp, the king had him loaded with fetters and cast into a foul dungeon at Seville.
Tortures and bribes were in turn employed to shake his faith, but Hermenegild wrote to his father that he regarded the crown as nothing, and preferred to lose scepter and life rather than betray the truth of God. At length, on Easter night, an Arian bishop entered his cell, and promised him his father's pardon if he would receive Communion from his hands. Hermenegild indignantly rejected the offer, and knelt with joy for his death-stroke, praying for his persecutors. The same night a light streaming from his cell told the Christians keeping vigil nearby that the martyr had won his crown and was celebrating the Resurrection of the Lord with the Saints in glory.
King Leovigild, on his death-bed, was changed interiorly. He had been witness to the miracles that had occurred after his son's cruel death, and he told his son and successor Recared to seek out Saint Leander, whom he himself had persecuted. Recared should follow Hermenegild's example, said the king, and be received by the bishop into the Church. Recared did so; and although his father himself had not had the courage to renounce the false faith publicly, after his father's death the new king labored so earnestly for the extirpation of Arianism that he brought over the whole nation of the Visigoths to the Church. Nor is it to be wondered, says Saint Gregory, that he came thus to be a preacher of the true faith, since he was the brother of a martyr, whose merits helped him to bring so many into the haven of God's Church.
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Fr. Ruiz: Open Letter to the Faithful of Mexico City [2013] |
Posted by: Stone - 03-02-2021, 08:57 PM - Forum: Rev. Father Hugo Ruiz Vallejo
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“ When the salt loses its flavour...”
An Open Letter from Fr. Hugo Ruiz Vallejo to the Faithful of Mexico City
March 22, 2013
Dear Friends in Christ,
Some of you are already aware of my departure and my taking up residence here in St. Joseph's House, here in Mexico. In order to avoid any misunderstanding or perplexity on your part, it is not only important but also necessary for me to give you an explanation of the serious reasons which have created this necessity for me.
Nobody from among you should be ignorant of the very serious motives which have guided what is known as the Traditional movement, present at the beginning in various parts of the world, but now principally in the Society of St. Pius X, the work of an exemplary Bishop, Abp. Marcel Lefebvre, who tried to save the values of the Catholic Church from the Modernist invasion which hit the Church of Christ, above all by that which we call Vatican II, and by all the reforms of the Church which this council caused.
This attack provoked a totally legitimate defensive movement of faithful Catholics, a movement which is in itself very natural and necessary. The struggle, the war against the doctrinal errors of the modern world which was waged by the Popes of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries, by Pope St. Pius X in particular, is the same one which we wished to take on and try to wage in our turn.
Nonetheless, those Traditionalists in particular who have known the beginning of this fight are the ones to state that our superiors have lowered the tone of our demands and of our fight for the defence of the Faith. To begin with, it was argued that this was a means of converting Rome: not only the fact of no longer denouncing as strongly the deviations of Churchmen, but also a way of coming closer and closer to the official Church. The question is: is all this a proportionate means of converting Rome? Or is it a mere illusion? Can one convert someone to the truth by hiding that same truth? Can one convert someone by leaning in the direction of their errors and dialectic?
With increasing concern, we see on the part of many SSPX priests and faithful, as well as allied religious orders, an omission which takes on ever greater and more misleading proportions. A silence which is more and more noticeable.
The fact is that the Romans have renounced not one of their very serious errors of Vatican II, nor the New Mass (Novus Ordo Missae), nor any one of the reforms which are a consequence of this Council and which affect the life of the whole Church. Rome has merely made some concessions of a political nature to bring the Society closer, little concessions which are not sufficient to serve as proof that there has been a real change of direction in Rome, in other words in the direction of Tradition. Quite the contrary, we find in all these negotiations and dialoguing a diplomacy which is full of duplicity. We cannot base our important decisions solely on rumours or facts which comprise no proof at all of the churchmen's conversion.
The fact is that, despite the famous failure of the doctrinal discussions, supposedly conducted in order to convert Rome, (and which remain unpublished to this day), we are still trying to go full steam ahead towards an agreement with Rome at any price, in extremely dangerous conditions. And to crown it all, there are already today those who think that the Society ought to make an agreement to submit Rome, whether or not Rome has converted! (“I would even say that, in front of this sublime reality, any talk of whether or not we have an agreement with Rome is a trifling matter... defending the Faith, keeping the Faith, dying in the Faith, that's what's important!” - Bp. Fellay, Paris, 30th January, 2013).
But perhaps we want to be dependent on those who do not have the same Catholic principles as us? Is it possible to have a good pastoral ministry without having good doctrine? Perhaps those who do not have sound doctrine could be in charge of the Traditionalist pastoral ministry? How can we understand one another regarding practice of the Faith if we do not have the same principles regarding Faith and Morals?
Perhaps Francis, the new Pope, didn't begin his Pontificate by recommending a book by the heretic Kasper in his Urbi et Orbi in St. Peter's Square! And wouldn’t it be a very pious idea to live in a cave with Ali Baba and the 40 thieves in order to convert Ali Baba and the 40 thieves...? A very pious idea, full of realism...!
The conclusions of the Society's last General Chapter have only dramatically confirmed our fears, because in its official conclusion the leaders of the Society declared what will be the six conditions for us to accept an agreement with Rome or a ‘regularisation’ inside the Roman system. According to these, three are necessary, and the three others “desirable”, which means that even if the Pope doesn't let us have them, we will still accept the “agreement”. I might mention at this point that one of the “desirable” conditions isn't really a condition. Much could be said about these conditions, but the worst is to be found in the first of these three “desirable” conditions: the decisions of our ecclesiastical tribunals could be overturned by the tribunals of the conciliar Church; and with our agreement too! In other words, they with their modernist principles would make decisions affecting the pastoral ministry of Traditional priests! What's more, in the second “desirable” condition we accept the possibility of having to depend on local bishops, even though we’re well aware of the extent to which they would like to have an opportunity to make us submit to the ideas and pastoral practice of Vatican II. A real programmed suicide of Tradition! In addition, in the third of these conditions we also
accept the possibility of the man in charge of the commission which represents us to the Pope not being himself a Traditionalist. But how could someone who does not think like
us, and who is not one of us, represent us? Fr. Mario Trejo, the District Superior of Mexico, recently said in the District newsletter (‘Dios Nunca Muere’, no.41, p.7) that in the declaration of the last General Chapter of the Society, “Every phrase, every word was weighed and examined in order to give testimony to the Faith of all time.” Well, with these conditions, how can the Faith of all time be defended by people who no longer profess it?
In any case, it has now become clear that there is now a new attitude towards Rome and its errors on the part of those who now run the SSPX, a new position full of omissions and
ready to make very serious compromises which, even if it hasn’t yet been brought about, brings to light a more than worrying state of mind. There is a gradual omission of any reference to our combat, or the objectives which Abp. Lefebvre gave the Society, An external policy corresponds to an internal ‘policy’: which is to say that within the Society, each time in an increasingly obvious way, the existence of a policy of repression against anyone who does not agree with the new orientation of the Society is confirmed. Pressuring, harassing, discrediting and punishing in various different ways anyone who shows that they disagree. Many more disturbing statements and actions could be added. Like, for example, what Fr. Raphael Arizaga heard from the mouth of Bishop Fellay in a conference to seminarians at Winona, on 21st December last year: “Because I wanted to preserve the internal unity of the Society, I withdrew the document in which I said 'I do not reject all of Vatican II' - which is what I really said.”
Abp. Lefebvre counselled against going to Indult Masses as well as those groups with an atmosphere such as the Fraternity of St. Peter, because such atmospheres are corrupted at
their root, in the sense that what is taught and promoted in the short- or long-term tends towards assimilation with the conciliar Church. But if the Society of St. Pius X changes its
spirit and its objectives, could it not also end up being in a similar state, equal or worse, even if the agreement with Rome has, for the moment, not been made concrete?
I myself have commented on how many priests have changed their attitude towards the combat of Tradition against the enemy, and unfortunately this has been more frequently
the case with new priests. I am myself a victim of this new line from our superiors, a line full of omissions about struggle and our combat. Already, they're not seeing many enemies in Rome; optimism has little by little replaced the distrust which one ought naturally to feel towards the destroyers of the Church. My District Superior, Fr. Mario Trejo, has forbidden me to speak about these subjects: not just in sermons, but also in private! Whether it be with the faithful or with other priests, and that with the threat of transfer and severe punishments.
And since I cannot accomplish my mission as a priest from within the Society, a mission which consists of showing forth the truth and denouncing danger which threatens souls, I
have decided to continue my ministry outside the structure of the Society, although I continue to be a member of it, and this is for the good of the faithful who are in Mexico City and who wish to have recourse to my priestly ministry. I hope that you, as well as my fellow priests, will understand the reasons for this serious decision.
May God, through Our Lady of Guadalupe, bless and enlighten you,
Fr. Hugo Ruiz Vallejo, SSPX
22nd March, 2013 - In memory of the Seven Dolours of Our Lady
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The Recusant: Letter to Our Fellow Priests By a French Priest of the SSPX [2013] |
Posted by: Stone - 03-02-2021, 05:38 PM - Forum: True vs. False Resistance
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The Recusant - Issue 5 [March 2013]
Letter to Our Fellow Priests
By a French Priest of the SSPX
[Editor’s note: At the start of February we took this article from the French website AntiModernisme.info and had it translated into English. A week or two later that same website disappeared for good and with it, the original French article. Our English translation survives on TheRecusant.com Since then, a new French website has appeared as a replacement, which we recommend to our readers as an excellent resource: LaSapiniere.info]
Our articles of association recommend that we avoid “modern errors carefully, specifically liberalism and all its substitutes.” Our articles of association are binding on the Superior General and on the Assistants so that they make sure that the Society does not fall “into tepidity” nor “into compromise with the world frame of mind”. By the light of teachings of our founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, and that of our Superior General, Bishop Fellay, we are setting out to work in such direction.
The General Council reminded the three bishops, on April 14 2012, of the need to make “necessary distinctions” “about the liberal” in order to avoid “a ‘total’ hardening”. Indeed, the ‘conciliar liberal’ seeks a compromise between the Church and the world whereas the ‘traditionalist liberal’ seeks a compromise between Catholic Tradition and the conciliar Church which is a friend of the world. In a conference given in Ecône in December 1973, Archbishop Lefebvre noted that our “drama” is today “infinitely more severe” than in the past, because “liberals are nowadays widespread within the Church to such extent that one wonders who is not a liberal! Soon, we will be able to count on our fingers the few individuals that truly respect the Church’s doctrine!” The arguments of “liberal Catholics” were:
“The Church must find an agreement with the society in which we live, we cannot continue to live on the fringes of society, the Church must in the end accept the world such as it is, in order to penetrate inside the world and supposedly convert the world … The separation between Church and the State, the Church on equal footing with other religions, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience …, it is not possible to continue to fight against those things. These things are now admitted by everybody, even by priests!”
Quote:“But”, replied Archbishop Lefebvre, “one must take it or leave it. Either this is the end of Catholicism, or we defend truly Our Lord Jesus Christ and the whole Church and the whole Catholic religion … If we begin to cohabit with evil, to discuss endlessly with evil, to make compromises with evil, then we've lost, we've lost!”
I) To study liberalism is a pastoral duty
The Chapter insisted several times on the grave duty for a priest to study. Among topics that need to be studied, liberalism plays an important role. During a retreat that took place in Ecône, on September 22 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre expressed his astonishment regarding the “number of encyclicals about Freemasonry”. “Why talk about those things in a seminary, as if this be the knowledge needed to be acquired in a seminary, as if this be what was needed to be taught to the faithful? But if we did not know the source of errors, of what destroys societies, souls and the Church, we would be incompetent shepherds …it is an absolute requirement to study liberalism and to understand it well and I believe that many of those that left us ‘to rejoin Rome’ so-say, did not understand what liberalism is and how the Roman authorities since the Council are infested with these errors. If they had understood it, they would have fled from it and would have stayed with us. This is serious, because by coming close to these authorities, one is necessarily contaminated. They represent the authority and we are subordinates … they impose on us their principles … so long as they do not rid themselves of these errors of liberalism, there is no way one can find an agreement with them, it is just not possible.”
Fellow priests “in favour of an agreement” and priests that find favour with the director of DICI – by the way, this director is also a founder member of GREC – have they read and understood references recommended by Archbishop Lefebvre on this topic? If yes, how could they wish to subject Tradition to Roman authority? Rome deceives the world, humiliates the Church and instead of denouncing this imposture, we are asking Rome to acknowledge us “as we are”(1)? And this, knowing that “discussions have showed profound disagreement on almost all topics discussed”(2)? What can explain such self-delusion, if it is not ignorance of liberalism?
II) The liberal is an illogical individual
“We are so much tempted by illogicality which is very close to liberalism. The liberal is one that would be tempted not to follow his intelligence when it needs to be put into practice because it is difficult, because it is hard work. He understands, but in practice, he compromises. He makes compromises with himself, but this compromise is a sin. We are illogical when we sin … there are always reasons to say: “it was a good thing in the past, it probably will be a good thing in the future, but today no … there are some truths that one should not say, that one should not assert”. Thus, about this attitude, it is imperative that this not be our attitude in our lives. We must avoid being illogical, being people who make things up…” (3).
And yet Bishop Fellay and his Council wrote to the three bishops: “For the common good of the Society, we would prefer by far the current interim solution of the status quo, but obviously Rome no longer tolerates this situation”. (Bishop Fellay, letter dated April 14, 2012)
III) The virtue of Prudence
[Archbishop Lefebvre:]
Quote:“Catholic liberals have kept on saying that their will for orthodoxy is equivalent of the most hard-line people. The compromise they have sought is not theoretical but practical. … They always come back to this reasoning. They tell us: “You see, we are shepherds. We accept the reality, we are concrete people, we are practical!” But what are practicalities? Practicalities are the implementation of principles with the help of the virtue of prudence, nothing else than that. What are practicalities when principles are missing? … “Yes, yes, yes, we agree, we share the same Credo, etc. Yes, but when we find ourselves in the world, then one must adjust oneself to the level of others, one must live with others, otherwise you will never convert others”. To say this is a total error! … Popes have perceived the danger of those Catholics that are almost elusive because they claim when one wants to corner them: “No, no, I agree”. But afterwards, they come to terms with enemies of the Church … They are traitors … more dreadful than avowed enemies … they divide minds, destroy unity, weaken strengths that instead should be combined all together against the enemy … You will be told that it is you who cause division, but it is not possible to divide when one abides by the truth … those who divide are those who try to diminish the truth in order to find agreement with everyone … Those that have it wrong must convert themselves to the truth and should not try to find common ground between truth and error …” (4)
During the Council, liberals put Catholics to sleep by telling them that dogma would remain untouched and that the Council was only taking care of pastoral matters. During the ‘SSPX Council’ [the General Chapter - Ed.], liberals among us put us to sleep by saying that Catholic principles are not being reviewed but that “this is not about a human prudence,” this is about a supernatural prudence, this is about “an equilibrium that is very fragile, that requires the assistance of the Holy Ghost and the Gift of Counsel” (5).
Archbishop Lefebvre, in a conference in 1978 (assisted by the Holy Ghost?) claimed:
Quote: “I think that during the next meeting, it will be me who will ask them questions. I will be the one who will interrogate them and I will ask them: ‘What Church are you? Which Church are we dealing with here? I would like to know if I am talking to the Catholic Church or if I am speaking with another Church, with a counter-Church, with a counterfeit Church?’ ...I sincerely believe that we are currently dealing with a counterfeit Church and not with the Catholic Church. Why do I say this? Because they no longer teach the Catholic Faith. They no longer defend the Catholic Faith. They are leading the Church into something other than the Catholic Church. It is no longer the Catholic Church. They sit on the chair of their predecessors, but they are not continuing their predecessors.”
Bishop Fellay does not think that way:
Quote:“we are not talking about a Church that does not exist materially! We are talking about the Church that exists, really exists, that is in front of us, that has a hierarchy, with a pope. It is not the product of our imagination: the Church is there, the Church truly is there, it is the Roman Catholic Church. We claim and we must confess that this Church is holy, is one, because faith requires us to do so.” (6)
IV) Is this ‘Concrete Church’ Catholic ?
Archbishop Lefebvre wished “to reintegrate into the official and standard structure of the Church”.
And yet:
Quote:“I believe,” he used to say, “that we are in the Church and that we are the true sons of the Church, and that others are not. They are not the true sons of the Church, because liberalism is not a son of the Church. Liberalism is against the Church, liberalism operates to destroy the Church, in that sense they cannot claim that they are sons of the Church … some are prepared to sacrifice the fight for the faith by saying: “Let us first re-enter the Church! Let us first do everything to integrate the official, public structure of the Church. Let us be silent about dogmatic issues. Let us be silent about the malice of the [New] Mass. Let us keep quiet over the issues of religious freedom, Human Rights, ecumenism. And, once we are inside the Church, we will be able to do this, we will be able to achieve that …” That's absolutely false! You don't enter into a structure, under superiors, by claiming that you will overthrow everything as soon as you are inside, whereas they have all the means to suppress us! They have all the authority. What matters to us first and foremost it is to maintain the Catholic Faith. That's what we are fighting for. So the canonical issue, this purely public and exterior issue in the Church, is secondary. What matters, it is to stay within the Church … inside the Church, in other words, in the Catholic Faith of all time, in the true priesthood, in the true Mass, in the true sacraments, and the same catechism, with the same Bible. That's what matters to us. That's what the Church is. Public recognition is a secondary issue. Thus we should not seek what is secondary by losing what is primary, by losing what is the primary goal of our fight! “Once we are recognised,” you say, “we will be able to act from within the Church.” This is completely wrong; it is to totally misunderstand the minds of those in the present hierarchy! To realise this, one need only read that much talked about remark of Cardinal Ratzinger… I'll now read to you the sentence which is essential in his interview: “The problem of the nineteen sixties was to acquire for the Church the best values expressed during two centuries of liberal culture … this objective has been attained”. Yet the principles of two centuries of liberal culture are ecumenism and the declaration of Human Rights, religious liberty! And Cardinal Ratzinger recognizes them. He says: “this has been done!” … That's extremely serious! It condemns everything he says in his interview, because that is the heart of his thoughts, and that is what we have a problem with, it's what we do not want. We cannot place ourselves under an authority whose ideas are liberal and who little by little would condemn us, by the logic of the thing, to accept these liberal ideas and all the consequences of these liberal ideas, which are the new Mass, changes in the liturgy, changes in the Bible, changes in catechism, all these changes … Some say: “but they have fought against the catechism!” … yes, but they simply put the brakes on, because the changes were going so far that they even had to slow it down a bit. The consequences of their own principles scare them. Thus they put on the brakes at times, but they nevertheless continue to want to keep liberal ideas. Changing their liberal ideas is out of the question!”(7)
But Bishop Fellay stated:
Quote:“Priests or bishops [and the pope?] are leading souls to hell […] And the Church, even in that state, remains holy, remains capable of sanctifying. If today, dear faithful, we receive sacraments, grace, faith, it is through this Roman Catholic Church, not through its faults, but through this real concrete Church. […] The Church is today capable of transmitting the faith, of communicating grace, the sacraments.”(8)
The illegitimate Mass? The heresies of the new code and of the new catechism ? The sins against the faith in Assisi …? That's not the way Archbishop Lefebvre preached:
Quote:“I think you need to be convinced of this: you truly represent the Catholic Church … lately, we are being told that it is necessary that Tradition enters into the visible Church. I think a very, very serious error is committed here. Where is the visible Church ? … Where are the true marks of the Church? … Clearly we are the ones who preserve the Unity of the Faith, which has disappeared from the official Church … we are the ones who have the marks of the visible Church … it is not us but the modernists who leave the Church. And about the expression “to leave the visible Church”, it is an error to equate official Church with visible Church … is it therefore necessary to leave the official Church? To some extent, yes, it is obvious. One is obliged to leave the environment of these bishops, if one does not want to lose one’s soul. But this will not suffice because it is in Rome that heresy has settled. If bishops are heretics, it is not without the influence of Rome.” (9)
Bishop Fellay sharply distances himself from the ecclesiology of Archbishop Lefebvre. On the pretext of ‘a mystery’, he mixes up and amalgamates the Catholic Church and the conciliar Church in one unique “very concrete Church … that is in a miserable state.” (10)
V) To publicly rebuke those responsible for liberal errors
Our articles of association ask us to be attached “unfailingly to the Roman Church and to the successor of Peter who is acting as a true Successor of Peter”, but not to the conciliar Church: neither to a modernist who offers as an example of holiness a sacrilegious pope who kisses the Koran, nor to a pope who invites Julia Kriteva, representing the nonbelievers, in order “to pray for peace” (sic). This woman, after having praised John Paul II as apostle of Human Rights, declared: “thanks go to Pope Benedict XVI for having invited for the first time in these locations humanists among your ranks.” This woman wanted, in the sanctuary, “a world government that is ethical, universal and solidarity based.” How is it possible that some superiors remained silent and sought an agreement with this conciliar Church when our patron saint warned the Catholic Church against this Quote:“vast movement of apostasy organized, in all countries, for the establishment of a universal Church.” (11)
The Chapter wants the Society to continue to “freely” “rebuke even publicly those responsible for liberal errors and their consequences”. Yet, let's not delude ourselves, if the head of the Church is modernist, the head of the Society is today seriously tainted with liberalism. All of us, particularly our superiors, have to examine our own conscience: will not each of us be, from our own place, responsible of the rise of liberalism in our own congregation?
Not long ago, Bishop Fellay explained to us that in 2006, “Heresies are spreading quickly” and “the authorities are propagating the modern and modernist spirit of Vatican II”, but that in year 2012, there is a restoration of the Church, ad intra, by Benedict XVI.
And that “this requires us to take a new positioning with regards to the official Church … it is about a supernatural view on the Church.” (12) How can he have written these lines after Assisi III? Is Benedict XVI restoring the Faith ad intra by organizing ad extra interreligious gatherings condemned by the Church, with on top of this, the help of humanist atheists to work for the “promotion of the true good of humanity”? One of our theologians who participated in the Roman discussions confided to one fellow priest: “Bishop Fellay's head is rotten but the Chapter will prevent him from signing. We'll just have to somehow make it through the next 6 years.” Is that such a sure thing? Is that enough? How many members of the Chapter are prepared to profess publicly the Catholic faith with all its consequences:
Quote: “We have never wanted to belong to that system that calls itself the ‘Conciliar Church’, and which defines itself by the Novus Ordo Missae, ecumenism disengaged from the Catholic cause and the widespread secularisation of all of society.”(13)
Archbishop Lefebvre was deceived in May 1988. In September 2012, in spite of his grace of state and in spite of his Council, in spite also of “the assistance of the Holy Ghost and the Gift of Counsel”, Bishop Fellay admitted that he was deceived regarding the intentions of the Pope. But, in reality, there is no deception, because Benedict XVI never hid his intentions. The problem comes from a hazy concept of the “real Church” which is “a very, very serious error.”
Errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum! The liberalism of our superiors is a punishment for our congregation. Do we not share responsibility in that sin because of our negligence and failure to live from the treasure transmitted by our founder, because of our laxity, because of our worldly ties and because of our clerical presumption swollen with pride?
Vigilate et orate.
Footnotes
1 Bishop Fellay, Cor unum, number 102, Summer 2012
2 Bishop Fellay, Cor unum, number 101, March 2012
3 Archbishop Lefebvre, retreat in Ecône, September 17, 1981
4 Archbishop Lefebvre, spiritual conference, Ecône, January 1974
5 Bishop Fellay, Cor unum, number 102, Summer 2012
6 Bishop Fellay, conference in Flavigny, September 2, 2012
7 Archbishop Lefebvre, spiritual conference, Ecône, December 21, 1984
8 Bishop Fellay, November 1, 2012, Ecône
9 Ecône, September 9, 1988
10 Bishop Fellay, conference in Flavigny, September 2, 2012
11 Pie X, Notre charge apostolique, August 25, 191
12 Bishop Fellay, Cor Unum, number 101, March 2012
13 Open letter of SSPX superiors to Cardinal Gantin, Ecône, July 6, 1988
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The Recusant [2014]: A Questionnaire for Understanding What Has Happened in the SSPX |
Posted by: Stone - 03-02-2021, 02:34 PM - Forum: The New-Conciliar SSPX
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The Recusant - Issue 13 [January 2014]
YES or NO?
A Questionnaire for understanding what has happened in the SSPX
[Original by Fr. Rioult - translated from www.LaSapiniere.info by The Recusant]
This questionnaire offers you facts and questions. It is up to you, alone and according to your conscience, to answer them.
Read it, make copies of it, give it to others (friends, relatives, people you know from Mass, etc.)
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Mark 4,9)
The 2006 General Chapter
1. “The contacts made from time to time with the authorities in Rome have no other purpose than to help them embrace once again that Tradition which the Church cannot repudiate without losing her identity, and not just to benefit the Society, nor to arrive at some merely practical impossible agreement.”
With these words, did the General Chapter of 2006 forbid any practical agreement without doctrinal agreement? YES or NO?
2. Bearing in mind that, “What the General Chapter decides is a law which is in force all the way up to the next Chapter” (Bp. Fellay, Écône September 2012), was this law forbidding any purely practical agreement still in force from the General Chapter of July 2006 until the General Chapter of July 2012? YES or NO?
The Disobedience of the General Council
3. In April 2012, writing to the three bishops: “Let it be noted in passing that we did not look for a practical agreement. That is false. All we have done is not refusing a priori, as you ask, to consider the offer of the Pope.” – Did the General Council let it be understood that it was prepared to break the law of the 2006 Chapter? YES or NO?
4. In writing to Benedict XVI, on 17th June 2012: “I had believed that you were disposed to leave till a later date the resolution of outstanding disagreements over certain points of the Council and liturgical reform [...] in order to achieve union and I committed myself in this perspective despite the fairly strong opposition in the ranks of the Society and at the price of substantial disruption. And I fully intend to continue to do my best to pursue this path to reach the necessary clarifications.” Did Bishop Fellay disobey the law of the 2006 Chapter? YES or NO?
The Sedition of the General Council
5. Given Bishop de Galarreta’s intervention in 2011: “For the good of the Society and of Tradition, we must shut this Pandora’s Box as quickly as possible, so as to avoid the discrediting and demolition of authority, disputes, discord and division, from which perhaps there may be no going back.” (Bp. de Galarreta, Albano, October 2011).
And given the intervention of the three Bishops in 2012: “Your Excellency, Fathers, take care! You are leading the Society to a point where it will no longer be able to turn back, to a profound division from which there will be no return and, if you end up arriving at such an agreement, at powerful and destructive influences whose influence the Society will not be able to resist.”(Letter of the three Bishops to Menzingen, April 2012) Can it be said that the General Council had been alerted to the serious consequences of their policy? YES or NO?
6. In writing to the three Bishops, “For the good of the Society, we would have by far preferred the present solution of an intermediary status quo, but it is manifestly clear that Rome will put up with it no longer,” did the General Council have the good of the Society in mind? YES or NO?
7. Given the following words: “We know that there will be some casualties, but we’re going to continue all the way to the end” (said by one of Bishop Fellay’s assistants, in his presence, in May 2012, to the superiors of the Benedictines, Capuchins and Dominicans) and: “I cannot exclude that there may be a split” (Bp. Fellay, CNS interview, 12/05/12), can we say that Bishop Fellay was aware of the division that was being caused? YES or NO?
8. Can it be said that the General Council, in knowingly going against the good of the Society, was guilty of sedition, in other words that it knowingly caused division amongst the members in order to impose its own will which was contrary to the demands of a higher authority (the 2006 Chapter)? YES or NO?
The Subversion during and after the Chapter
9. At the July 2012 Chapter, Fr. de Journa proved that Bishop Fellay’s Doctrinal Declaration was nothing other than Benedict XVI’s ‘hermeneutic of continuity.’ His conclusion said:
“This declaration is therefore profoundly ambiguous and it sins by omission of a clear and sharp denunciation of the main errors which are still running rampant inside the Church and destroying the faith of the faithful. This declaration, as it stands, allows it to be believed that we accept the premise of the ‘hermeneutic of continuity.’ Used as the foundation for an agreement, such a document would make that same question unclear from the very beginning and would favour all the sliding that would follow.”
His presentation was met with not a single objection from any of the other members. After this presentation, Fr. Pagliarani stood up to support Bishop Fellay with the words:
“Dear colleagues! Surely we’re not going to give our Superior General a slap in the face by forcing him to retract it! The retraction will be implicit in the final declaration of the Chapter.”
Then the Chapter moved on to other business. The General House [Menzingen] gave them to understand that the Declaration had been withdrawn and its author implicitly frowned upon thereby.
Bishop Tisser thought so, along with everyone else. In a letter of 29th March, 2013, he said that: “It was tacitly concluded that there was no need to insist on the issue, since it was obvious that the Superior General was sorry for his mistake was determined ‘not to do it again.’” (Appendix to Circular Letter, 2013-04) And yet, since then, Bishop Fellay has not ceased from trying to defend the contents of his seditious Doctrinal Declaration. He talks about an “extremely delicate” text which “did not achieve unanimity in the Society” “to such an
extent that I said to Rome, that’s it, I’m withdrawing it, it’s not going to be any use if it’s not even understood by our own people, because, well, perhaps it was a bit too subtle. Well, too bad, we’re withdrawing it.” (Bp. Fellay, Lille, 7th May, 2013) “A minimalist text, which could have led to some confusion in our ranks.” (Bp. Fellay, Cor Unum 102) A text which “was not sufficiently clear” (Bp. Fellay, Écône, 07/09/2012) A Doctrinal Declaration which “excluded any ambiguity regarding our judgement of the Council, including the famous ‘hermeneutic of continuity’.” A Declaration which “was not understood by several high-ranking members of the Society, who saw in it an ambiguity, or even a false compromise with the idea of the hermeneutic of continuity.” (Bp. Fellay, Cor Unum 104, ‘Note on the Doctrinal Declaration of April 15th 2012’) Does Bishop Fellay’s description correspond to reality? YES or NO?
Is it moral to take advantage of the oath of silence sworn by the Chapter members so as to present an ‘official version’ of things which contradicts reality? YES or NO?
Is Menzingen’s official version (‘not understood by our own people,’ ‘too bad, we’re withdrawing it,’ ‘sufficiently clear’) doctrinally satisfactory? YES or NO?
Can we oppose the General Council?
10. On 8th October, 1988, at Écône, Archbishop Lefebvre pronounced the following words: “They’ve been put under the authority of the conciliar Church. It’s really amazing to think that, in spite of all the things they ought to see and take note of, they stay put. They don’t think of leaving to found another monastery or of demanding that Dom Gerard step down and be replaced. No, nothing. We’re obedient. [...] It’s pathetic to see how easily a monastery which was part of Tradition goes under the modernist, conciliar authorities. And everyone just stays
put. It’s a shame, and it’s really sad to see. [...] This transfer of authority is what is really serious, it’s excessively grave. It’s not enough simply to say ‘We haven’t changed anything in practice...’ It’s this transfer of authority which is so serious, because the intention of these authorities is to destroy Tradition.”
With these words, was Archbishop Lefebvre encouraging priests and religious to sedition and disobedience? YES or NO?
Wasn’t he rather calling for the survival and defence of the Faith? YES or NO?
11. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that: “Those however who defend the common good and withstand the seditious party are not themselves seditious, any more than a man may be called quarrelsome because he defends himself.” (II, II Q.42, Art 2c) As a result therefore, can Bishop Williamson and the priests who opposed the sedition of Menzingen (which went against the common good of the Society) be accused justly and truly of sedition and rebellion? YES or NO?
The means employed by the General House (Menzingen) to conceal its sedition
12. During the disciplinary trial of Fr. Pinaud, Fr. Quilton wrote a ‘narration of the facts’ in which he tells us that: “Fr. Waillez created for himself the fake email address, nicolas_pinaud@yahoo.fr in the name of Fr. Pinaud and made use of it between 3 and 5 times to entrap colleagues and faithful implicated in the rebellion.”
That: “At the same time, Fr. Wailliez, helped by Fr. Thouvenot, easily gained access to Fr. Rioult’s inbox, rather like finding the badly hidden keys to a safe,” and that, “having gained complete access to and control of the email account, Fr. Waillez was able to get hold of all the documents sent to and from Fr. Rioult, still present on the Yahoo server. He then left it to the General house to whatever use they wished of all the available material. Fr. Waillez undertook all these actions with the total agreement of the General House.”
Is it acceptable that a District Superior, with the help of the Secretary General and the agreement of Menzingen, steals private correspondence, engages in identity theft, making a fraudulent use of someone else’s identity so as to harm the priests who were opposing the sedition of Menzingen? YES or NO?
13. Is it just for Fr. Pinaud, after eight months of isolation, to be condemned by Fr. Wuilloud and forbidden to say Mass ever again or to hear confessions... because he thought that one can oppose an authority which endangers the Faith, even if that authority is called Bishop Fellay? YES or NO?
Conclusion: “When just men increase, the people shall rejoice: when the wicked shall bear rule, the people shall mourn.” (Proverbs 29,2) YES or NO?
“Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a provoking house: who have eyes to see, and see not: and ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a provoking house.” (Ez 12,2)
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Interview with Ratzinger: "There are not two Popes." |
Posted by: Stone - 03-02-2021, 01:49 PM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Interview with Ratzinger: «There are not two Popes. The resignation of 8 years ago? I think I did well"
Benedict XVI's message to those who do not give up and to Bergoglio's fans who fear his shadow. “It was a painful decision, but I think I did well. My conscience is fine "
Corriere Della Sera [computer translated from the Italian]| March 1, 2021
" There are two popes. The Pope is only one… ». Joseph Ratzinger says it in a faint voice, striving to articulate every word well. He is seated on one of the two light leather armchairs which, together with a sofa, furnish the living room on the first floor of the Mater Ecclesiae cloistered monastery.: the place where he retired, far from everything, in March 2013. His reading glasses are placed on the bedside table, next to an ancient wooden statuette depicting a Madonna and Child. «This is the Guardini Room. It is so called because it collects among other things the complete work of the Italian-German theologian Romano Guardini. It is there, behind you », explains Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, his personal secretary and Prefect of the Papal Household, pointing to the bookcase lining the walls. The editor of Corriere della Sera , Luciano Fontana, hands the Pope Emeritus a red folder containing two caricatures that Emilio Giannelli , cartoonist appreciated by Benedetto, has designed especially for him.He looks at the first for a long time, and smiles. Then he moves on to the second, and the smile widens into laughter . "Giannelli is a witty person", he glosses with papal and Bavarian aplomb.
Until 2012, the cloistered nuns lived in the twelve cells of this building, built between 1992 and 1994 and previously occupied by the Gendarmerie and papal gardeners. Now he hosts Benedict, the four "Memores", the consecrated women of Communion and Liberation who assist him, and Monsignor Gaenswein . It appears suddenly after a hairpin bend in the highest and most inaccessible part of the Vatican City. It is protected by an electric gate , beyond which an unreal silence reigns. Meeting Benedict is rare, especially in recent times. And even more unusual is the fact that you agree to address one of the most traumatic topics for the life of the Catholic Church in recent centuries. His clarification on the uniqueness of the Papacy is obvious to himbut not for some sectors of conservative Catholicism more irreducible in hostility to Francis. For this reason, he reiterates that "the Pope is only one", weakly tapping the palm of his hand on the armrest : as if he wanted to give words the strength of a definitive affirmation.
It is significant: he delivers the message to the Corriere on the eve of February 28, the same day eight years ago when his renunciation of the Papacy, announced on February 11, became effective . After a long time, the disorientation, the amazement, the gossip that accompanied that epochal gesture still stagnate. And Benedict seems to want to exorcise them. We ask if in recent years he has often thought about that day. He nods. “It was a difficult decision. But I took it fully aware, and I think I did well. Some of my slightly "fanatic" friends are still angry, they did not want to accept my choice. I think of the conspiracy theories that followed it: some said it was the fault of the Vatileaks scandal, some of a conspiracy by the gay lobby, some of the case of the conservative Lefebvrian theologian Richard Williamson. They don't want to believe in a conscious choice. But my conscience is fine ».
The sentences come out with a dropper, the voice is a breath, it comes and goes . And Monsignor Gaenswein in some rare passages repeats and "translates", while Benedict nods in approval. The mind remains clear, quick as the eyes, alert and lively. The white hair is slightly long, under the papal skullcap as white as the robe. Two very thin wrists emerge from the sleeves that underline an image of great physical fragility. Ratzinger wears a watch on his left wrist and on his right a strange contraption that looks like another watch but is actually an alarm ready to go off if something happens . What he himself defined in February 2018, in a letter to the Corriere, «This last period of my life», flows quietly, in the hermitage between the hairpin bends of the Vatican Gardens flanked by trees, waterfalls and altars, which overlooks Rome. Until February 2, in the hall where he receives us there was a nativity scene and a Christmas tree, framed between the library, the icons hung on the walls together with other sacred images: a sober room, not large, welcoming.
The rhythms are routine. Newspapers previously selected by the Vatican offices are read every day. In addition, the Osservatore romano , the Corriere della Sera and two German newspapers arrive in print . At the table, with the Memores we often discuss politics. And now the Pope Emeritus is curious about Mario Draghi. "We hope he will be able to resolve the crisis," he says. "He is a very respected man in Germany too." He mentions Sergio Mattarella, although he admits that he knows the head of state less than his predecessor, Giorgio Napolitano. "How are you?", He informs himself. And the speech slips on the Covid 19 epidemic.
Ratzinger has already been vaccinated , he received the first dose and then he was given the second, like Monsignor Gaenswein and most of the inhabitants of the Vatican City. In this respect, the small state is observed with a touch of envy in Italy and in much of Europe, where vaccines arrive slowly. The virus is frightening, and Benedict mentions the dramatic experience lived by the president of the CEI, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, who was healed after a long battle. “I just saw him again and he told me he is much better now. I found it well ». And when the Pope Emeritus is asked about Francis' next visit to Iraq, the expression becomes serious, worried . "I think it's a very important journey," he notes." Unfortunately, it falls at a very difficult time that also makes it a dangerous trip : for security reasons and for Covid. And then there is the unstable Iraqi situation. I will accompany Francis with my prayer ». Some men of the Vatican Gendarmerie and the Swiss Guards are already there to organize all possible protective measures around Pope Francis. Italian intelligence agents have also been present for weeks, but it is not clear who they are collaborating with. There are no comments on this from the monastery where Ratzinger lives. It comes naturally to think of the United States, and to observe that now, with Joe Biden in the White House replacing Donald Trump, relations with the Vatican are destined to improve.
On Biden, the second Catholic president after John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Ratzinger expresses some reservations on a religious level . “It's true, he's Catholic and observant. And personally he is against abortion, ”he observes. "But as president, he tends to present himself in continuity with the line of the Democratic Party ... And on gender politics we have not yet fully understood what his position is", he whispers, giving voice to the mistrust and hostility of a large part of the US episcopate towards Biden and his party, considered too liberal.
Forty-five minutes have passed, outside it is starting to get dark: far away, even if in reality they are less than a kilometer, you can see the lights of Rome. Benedict gives as a souvenir of the interview a commemorative medal and a bookmark with his blessing photo: both from when he was Pope. And again the paradox emerges not only of his own but of a Church immersed unwittingly in the inextricable intertwining of two papal identities. Ratzinger greets, remaining seated, with a hint of a smile, and thanks by pointing to the two cartoons by Giannelli placed on the table. In one, Benedict symbolically embraces a crowded St Peter's Square: a nostalgic reminder not only of his pontificate but of the world before Covid 19. And it is an image that contrasts with the powerful, dramatic one of Francis that on March 27, 2020 speaks from the churchyard of the same square, desertified by the coronavirus and ghostly. In the other vignette, in color, the Pope Emeritus gives the keys of the Church to a frowning Francis, adding: «I recommend…». As always when it comes to the Vatican, reality and symbolism are indissolubly linked. And the enigmas of the German Pope Emeritus and the Argentine Pontiff seem to have been made on purpose to feed the legends about ecclesiastical power and its mysteries.
Leaving the monastery, escorted by car by a plainclothes Swiss guard with a headset , one would think that when Ratzinger insists with a veil of voice "the Pope is one", he is certainly addressing the "fanatics" who do not give up. To reassure them, he speaks to the followers of Francis who fear the intellectual shadow of this old and frail theologian with age. But perhaps, after eight years, with his inner voice, the Pope Emeritus unconsciously whispers it even to himself.
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