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| Mgr. Joseph Fenton: Our Lord's Presence in the Catholic Church |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-05-2021, 11:32 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
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OUR LORD’S PRESENCE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
by Mons. Joseph Clifford Fenton
The following is taken from the American Ecclesiastical Review July 1946.
The central, the most important fact about the Catholic Church, that which primarily differentiates it from every other religious organization on the lace of the earth, is the living presence of Jesus Christ Our Lord within it. This actual indwelling of Our Blessed Lord within the society which He founded is the great and essential glory of the Catholic Church. It is the basic reason why the Catholic Church can be and should be accurately designated as the true Church of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom and the City and the House of God. Because the fellowship and the company of Christ are to be found within this, the society of His disciples, our present Sovereign Pontiff, in his masterly encyclical Mystici Corporis, could correctly insist that “nothing more glorious, nothing nobler, nothing surely more honorable can be imagined than to belong to the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church.”1
Certainly no man can begin to realize what the Catholic Church really is until he considers it in the light of the living presence of Christ within it. Unless we become aware of the fact that Our Lord actually resides within the Church, any designation of this society as the Mystical Body of Christ or as the Spouse of Christ is bound, for all intents and purposes, to be practically meaningless to us. Furthermore, in order to love the Church as we should love it, we must also take cognizance of Our Lord’s abiding life and activity within it. Pope Pius XII reminds us of this in that section of the Mystici Corporis in which he exhorts us to love the Church.
“In order that such a solid and undivided love of the Church may abide and increase in our souls day by day, w e must accustom ourselves to see Christ Himself in the Church. For it is Christ who lives in His Church, and through her teaches, governs and sanctifies.”2
Catholics today, subject as they are bound to be to the influence of the propaganda and the attitudes of the world around them, are in some danger of failing to appreciate the complete reality of Our Lord’s presence within the visible Catholic Church. Amidst the turmoil of pressure in favor of “inter-faith” movements and the like, there is an almost inevitable tendency to imagine that Christ is in the Church only in a kind of imaginary or metaphorical way. That unfortunate tendency is sometimes aided and increased by books and instructions which, though otherwise creditable, constantly persist in employing metaphors and other figurative expressions in dealing with the Church’s relations to Our Lord. For one reason or another, modern men and women are inclined to discount as imaginary or unreal, and therefore as basically unimportant, any subject which is presented to them in predominantly metaphorical terms.
Failure to appreciate the full reality of Our Lord’s presence within the Catholic Church is responsible for one unfortunate and even dangerous phenomenon in modern religious writing. This is the habit of placing the true Church of Jesus Christ, if not on a level with other religious societies, at least in the same general class with these outside organizations. In some cases this tendency resolves itself into the essentially Protestant tactic of imagining the existence of an invisible church, an assembly of good-intentioned men and women of all religions, which is supposed to constitute the true Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.
Likewise forgetfulness of the fact that Christ really lives and acts within the Catholic Church leads to the mistaken but unfortunately all-too-prevalent belief that the essential difference between the Catholic Church and other religious societies is to be found in the fact that the Catholic Church teaches he entirety of religious truth while these other organizations present only a portion of it. Such a difference does in fact exist, but it is by no means the ultimate and essential distinction. In the last analysis the real reason why the Catholic Church is something apart from and superior to all of the other religious societies in the world is to he found in the fact that Our Lord actually dwells within this Catholic Church and within it alone. Within this society, and in no other way, do we find the fellowship of Christ, our God and our Redeemer.
CHRIST IN HIS CHURCH DURING HIS PUBLIC LIFE
It is quite impossible to appreciate the reality of Our Lord’s presence within the Church today unless we consider carefully His position within the society of His disciples prior to the time of His ascension into heaven. The fact of the matter is that, although Christ’s sacred body is now located in heaven, and hence in a place far remote from that in which His followers do His will in this world, the basic and essential relation of the Church to Our Lord remains unaltered. He lives and acts in the Church, He speaks to the world from out of the Church, in essentially the same way today as He did during the period intervening between His baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan and His ascension into heaven.
The Catholic Church, the Kingdom of God in the New Testament, started out as a band of disciples or learners, gathered around and ruled by Our Lord, acting in His capacity as the Teacher of the divinely revealed public revelation. Men and women were admitted to this group only by personal invitation, issued by Our Lord Himself. The company had neither reason for nor bond of corporate existence apart from Christ. He was not merely present within the group, but the company itself was seen and understood preeminently in terms of its association with Him. Looking back on the days of Our Lord’s public life, St. Peter could refer to the original members of the band as those “who have companied with us, all the time that the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, until the day wherein he was taken from us.”3
Knabenbauer notes that the Greek words είσήλθεν καί έξήλθεν which the Douai renders as “came in and went out” constitute an authentic Hebraism, found in many sections of the Old Testament.4 The expression signifies an intimate and continual association. The Greek τών σμνελθόντων ήμίν rendered as “who have companied with us,” involves another form of the word έσχομαι and gives point to the truth that not only the twelve, but the rest of the company of the disciples as well, were continually in the presence of the Master. Thus the Church was originally, as it is now, the group of men and women in the company of Christ.
Long before the ascension, however, Our Lord taught His disciples that He would be present among them even while they were in a place remote from that which He occupied. To the seventy-two whom He sent on a preaching mission during the course of His public life He said: “He that heareth you heareth me.”5 That notice, as it stands, contains far more than the mere declaration that these men were appointed as His representatives. It implied that these preachers who had received their mission from Him within His Church actually spoke to the people with His voice, in such a way that the persons who heard them listened to the voice of Christ.
Not only did Our Lord speak in and through the disciples whom He commissioned to preach in His name, but He habitually spoke to the multitudes from the midst of the disciples, who formed a group apart. Both St. Matthew and St. Luke make this clear in describing the setting of the Sermon on the Mount. St. Matthew tells us that “seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain. And when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them.”6 St. Luke writes that “coming down with them [the twelve apostles], he stood in a plain place: and the company of his disciples and a very great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the sea coast, both of Tyre and Sidon”7 were there to hear Him. Our Lord spoke to the multitudes in parables. He explained these parables to the disciples.
Furthermore, during the course of Our Lord’s public life, His enemies were so aware of the intimate union of the corps of the disciples with Him that they spoke in such a way as to hold Him responsible for the actions of His followers, the members of the Church, and conversely they considered the disciples responsible for Him. When the scribes and the pharisees saw Our Lord and His disciples partaking of the banquet which St. Matthew had given to celebrate his call to the company of Christ, they angrily questioned the disciples about Our Lord’s conduct and about their own.8 The question addressed to the disciples was answered by Our Lord Himself. Again, when the pharisees objected to the disciples’ practice of plucking and eating grains of wheat on the Sabbath, Christ answered for them and defended them.9
During the time of Our Lord’s public life, then, He was not only locally present among His disciples, the men and women who then constituted the Catholic Church, the true Church of the New Testament, but He also worked within this group, teaching and ruling and sanctifying the society and its individual members. He taught them directly. He taught the multitudes, the people whom He was preparing for the call into the society of the disciples, in His capacity as the Head of the company of the disciples. Furthermore He taught the multitudes Himself in and through the preaching of the disciples.
Up until the time of the ascension Our Lord was the only visible Ruler of the company of the disciples. It is perfectly true that, as a part of the course of divine instruction which He gave to his followers, He promised and announced that Peter was to possess a real primacy of jurisdiction over his fellow disciples, but even then it was made perfectly clear to Peter and to the rest that the authority was to be exercised over the Church which would always belong to Christ.10 Thus the governing authority which was promised to Peter was that of Christ’s vicar on earth. Furthermore a definite social authority was promised to the entire membership of the apostolic college, but this, too, was something subject to the power of Peter within the Church of Christ.11
It was not, however, until just before the ascension that the jurisdiction which had been promised to the Prince of the Apostles and to the apostolic college as a whole was actually given by Our Lord.12 Up until the moment of the ascension, the complete rule and direction of the society came visibly from Christ, visibly dwelling and working within that organization. Visibly and truly then, and invisibly though just as truly now, every order emanating from a superior within the Catholic Church was and is the command of Christ. Both the rule within the Catholic Church and the monarchical and hierarchical organization within which the followers of Christ are to be guided and sanctified until the end of time were the personal work of Our Lord.
Christ sanctified His society and its members, not merely by giving them the teaching of holiness, but by communicating the life of grace to the individual disciples within the Church and to the company itself as a whole. He, the Master and Lord, around whom the society itself was constructed, earned the remission of sins and the life of divine grace for men through His death on the cross. He brought that life of grace to his followers through the channels of that sacramental activity which He instituted within His Church. He gave His disciples the gift of newness of life, separating them from the world and sealing them to Himself through the Sacrament of Baptism which He inaugurated. He constituted that sign as the rite of initiation into His company in such a way that it was ready for use as a gateway into the Church and a departure from the generation ruled over by the prince of this world at the very moment of the Church’s first missionary activity after the ascension.13 Then and now it is Christ Himself who communicates the grace, and Christ Himself who is the principal agent of baptism. “The bodily ministry,” said St. Augustine, “was the contribution of the disciples. His contribution was the aid of majesty.”14 He was present and He remains present to the Church in the work of baptism.
As the perfective center of the sacramental system within the Catholic Church He instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In this rite, which is preeminently the act of the Church as His Mystical Body,15 He is truly, really, and substantially present under the accidents of bread and wine. Furthermore at every Mass He is present to His Church as the High Priest, offering this true and commemorative sacrifice through the instrumentality of his priest as the ultimate cohesive sign and force of the unity of His society. He was visibly and truly living in the Church when He instituted and first confected this Sacrament. He remains invisibly and no less truly living in the Church through this Eucharistic Sacrifice today. In His Sacerdotal Prayer, set forth in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, He petitioned the Father that the assembly of the disciples might remain one with Him. St. Paul tells us that, even in Heaven, His prayer of intercession for us continues. 16
THE DEPARTURE AND THE CONTINUED PRESENCE OF OUR LORD
With Our Lord’s ascension into heaven a new status of the Church of Jesus Christ came into being. That society had been gathered together, organized, and conducted in the visible and local presence of its divine Founder. Now, with the ascension, that visible and local presence was taken away, not to be restored to the disciples of Christ as a complete society until that day when the Church will finally see Him again and forever at His second advent. The place in which Christ dwells locally is heaven. Since His ascension, as the epistles of St. Paul especially show so well, the Church on earth labors and struggles against its spiritual and earthly adversaries in order to enjoy the visible presence of Christ once again.
To sustain the society of His disciples during the period in which it suffers the loss of the visible presence of its divine Founder, He promised and gave to the Church the indwelling Spirit of Truth and Love.17 This indwelling of the Blessed Trinity within the Catholic Church, appropriated by Our Blessed Lord Himself to the Holy Ghost, gives the Church the understanding and the fortitude requisite for its task of acting as the instrument of Christ in calling and aiding men to salvation and in overthrowing the efforts of the world against God. By reason of His divine nature Our Lord thus continues, though invisible, to reside within the Church, to guide and to instruct it, to sustain it and to give it strength. Moreover, in His human nature also, Our Lord remains within the Church. He told His disciples that they would see Him no longer,18 but He also promised them that He would be with them until the consummation of the world.19 The promise of His continued though invisible presence and the accomplishment of that promise were given to the disciples as Christ had formed them, organized into a society which is His Mystical Body on earth.
THE INDWELLING OF CHRIST IN THE CHURCH ACCORDING TO HIS DIVINE NATURE
In His divine nature Christ is in all created things according to the three ways which St. Thomas Aquinas designates as essence, presence and power.20 God can be said to be in all things in so far as He keeps them in existence, in so far as they are visible to Him and subject to His power. In this way Our Lord remains within the Church, sustaining it and preserving it for what it is and what He made it, His true Church and the sole ark of salvation on earth. He sees it, and He is available to the prayers of mankind. Since true prayer is essentially the petition of fitting things from God 21 and since a thing is truly fitting only if it is in line towards salvation and union with God in heaven, the divine work of hearing and answering prayers on earth is in itself a mode of indwelling within the Catholic Church.
This does not mean, of course, that only the prayers of those who are truly disciples of Christ and thus truly members of the Catholic Church are heard and answered by God. It is perfectly true that the prayer of the Church is always answered because this is, in the last analysis, the prayer of Christ Himself. But all true prayer has its efficacy from this central petition to God, and all true prayer is answered in so far as the essential and central good sought in the petition is concerned. This dominant petition is always for God’s glory, to be attained through the granting of eternal life to men. Since, in the providence of God, eternal salvation or the attainment of eternal life is to be achieved only through association with Christ through membership in the Catholic Church or through the sincere desire for that association, the granting of the petition of prayer by God constitutes a divine indwelling in the true Church, drawing men to this society and strengthening them in its life and in its communion.
According to this same divine presence, through the power of God the Church is kept safe from the attacks of its enemies and preserved against the dissolution which would naturally be the lot of any merely human society. The divine protection accorded to the Church is in itself easily visible to mankind. As the recipient of this protection against the forces which naturally tend to overthrow and transform merely human organizations, the Church is visible in the world as a social miracle, and thus, according to the Vatican Council, it stands as a true and perpetual motive of credibility and as a real witness of its own status as the bearer of divine revelation.22
There is one, and according to St. Thomas Aquinas, only one, distinctively supernatural and invisible mode of the divine indwelling. It is the divine presence according to the activity of sanctifying grace,23 according to which God really dwells in those creatures whom He strengthens and renders competent to live the divine life of the Beatific Vision. In this way God is present to a man who is in a position to see God as He is in Himself, rather than merely to recognize the fact of His existence by a recognition of the truth that there must be a First Cause of created things. The man who lives the life of grace in this world possesses charity, and possesses the life to which the Beatific Vision itself belongs, even though, by reason of his status as a viator, he does not exercise the act of the Beatific Vision. Christ, as God, is present in every person who has this life of grace. It is the presence of which He was speaking when He told his apostles: “If any one love me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him: and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.’’24
According to this intrinsically supernatural mode of divine presence, Our Lord lives within the Church, drawing men into it and strengthening them in its communion. Those who have the life of grace must be either members of the Church or sincerely, albeit perhaps only implicitly, intend to enter it. By dwelling in the souls of those who love Him and the Father, Christ thus lives really and actually within the visible society which He founded and over which He presides.
Moreover there is still another way in which Our Lord can truly be said to dwell within the Catholic Church according to the divine indwelling in line with the life of sanctifying grace. The life of grace and charity is more than a merely individual affair. It is something which has a corporate existence and a corporate expression. The corporate life of grace within the world is that divine charity of which the only authorized and authentic expression is the Eucharistic sacrifice. Although that sacrifice can be performed by a priest not in communion with the true Church, it remains properly and essentially the act of the Church, and the indwelling of Christ in the society of His disciples is thus the source of the Eucharistic liturgical activity, the visible sacrifice within the Church which is the expression and the manifestation of the invisible sacrifice of prayer and devotion and charity among the children of men.
THE INDWELLING OF CHRIST IN THE CHURCH ACCORDING TO HIS HUMAN NATURE
According to His sacred human nature, Our Lord remains truly though invisibly resident within the Catholic Church in governing, instructing, and sanctifying this society. He rules the disciples within the Church invisibly and directly. At time same time His divine teaching within the Church makes it perfectly clear that the judgments and the commands of the Church officers who hold their position by reason of the commission which He has given them are to be accepted by the disciples as His judgments and His commands. This presence of Christ in the Church as its supreme though invisible Ruler is the guarantee of and the reason for the Church’s indefectibility. It is manifestly impossible that a society within which Christ governs until the end of time can ever lose its identity or the substantial character which He gave to it.
Now, as during the period of His public life in this world, the Church speaks to the world with the voice of Christ. He it is who teaches within the Church and who, from out of the Church, teaches and calls the men in the world. Furthermore Christ, truly present in the Church, perfects and authenticates the divine message winch He preaches through the Church by sealing that doctrine with motive of credibility. St. Mark’s Gospel says of the apostles that “they going forth preached everywhere: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed.”25 The presence of Christ teaching within the Church is the cause an[d] the explanation of the Church’s infallibility. It is obviously impossible for an institution within which Christ will dwell until the end of time and from which He teaches to do other than set forth his teaching, accurately.
St. Clement of Rome in his epistle to the Corinthians speaks of Our Lord living in the Church as “the high priest of our offerings.” 26 In His human nature He continues to sanctify the Church by communicating the life of grace in the channels of those sacraments which He instituted and of which, in His human nature, He continues to act as the principal agent. As the high priest forever, offering the sacrifice of the New Law, He effectuates and expresses the unity of that society which He holds in existence and over which He presides.
OUR TWOFOLD BOND OF UNION WITH CHRIST
The classical Catholic ecclesiologists and more recently the Holy Father’s encyclical Mystici Corporis speak of two different kinds of forces which bring us into union with Our Lord within the Church. The first of these, the so-called external or bodily bond of union, includes those factors which together constitute a man as a true member of the society of the disciples. The second, the internal or spiritual bond, is composed of those elements which go to make a man a living member of this society. Both of these bonds bring us into contact with Our Lord dwelling within the Catholic Church. The fault which vitiated many of the earlier twentieth century writings of the Mystical Body was an absolute neglect of the external bond of unity with Christ.
A man is joined to Our Lord within the Church by the external bond of unity when he has the profession of the true divine faith, the communication of the sacraments, and subjection to his legitimate ecclesiastical superiors.27 The external profession of the true faith involves contact with Christ dwelling within the Catholic Church because it means the visible acceptance of that message which Christ teaches infallibly here and now within the Catholic Church and which men receive only from the Church. Communication of the divine sacraments is available only to one who has the baptismal character, and who, consequently, has been invited or called personally by Our Lord to enter into the company of His followers. Furthermore this communication is open only to those baptized persons who have not been cast out by the Church, and who have not abandoned that society which is the fellowship of Christ. Subjection to legitimate ecclesiastical superiors carries with it the acceptance of that authority which speaks and commands with the voice of Our Lord Himself.
Through the internal bond of union within the Catholic Church we come into vital contact with Christ residing in the Church in the possession of faith, hope, and charity.28 By faith we have in our own minds that truth which Christ comprehends as God in the divine understanding, which, as Man, He sees in the Beatific Vision, and which He preaches in the Church. Through Christian hope we long for the intuitive vision of the divine essence and for the visible presence of Christ which belongs to, and on the last day will be granted to, the Catholic Church within which He resides. By charity we love Christ who lives in our soul, and who gives us our love for God and our fellow men within the society of His disciples.
It is this life of Christ within the Catholic Church which makes this visible society a mystery of our faith. The mystery of the Church is, as it were, the center of the divine economy with mankind. The Church within which Our Lord lives and works is that visible organization within which bad members will be mingled with the good until the day of judgment. Yet it is the Church apart from which we shall not find Christ. Our Lord’s presence within this visible society is not imaginary but real and active. “Wherever Jesus Christ is,” said St. Ignatius of Antioch, “there is the Catholic Church.”29
The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C.
JOSEPH CLIFFORD FENTON
1. Acta Apostolicae Sedis, XXXV (1943), 237.
2. Ibid., 238.
3. Acts 1:21-22.
4. Cf. Commentarius in Actus Apostolorum (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1928), p.36
5. Luke 16:16; cf. Matt. 10:40.
6. Matt. 5:1.
7. Luke 6:17.
8. Cf. Matt. 9:11; Mark 2:16; Luke 5:30.
9. Cf. Matt. 12:1 ff; Mark 2:23 ff; Luke 6:1 ff.
10. Cf. Matt. 16 :18-19.
11. Cf. Matt. 18:18.
12 Cf. John 20:22-23; 21:15 ff.
13. Cf. Acts 2:41.
14. In Ioan., XV, c. 3
15. Cf. the article “The Act of the Mystical Body,” The American Ecclesiastical Review, C, 5 (May, 1939), 397 ff, and the discussion occasioned by this article, AER, CII, 4 (April, 1940), pp. 306 ff.
16. Cf. Rom. 8:34.
17. Cf John 14:16.
18. Cf. John 16:10.
19. Cf. Matt. 28:20.
20. Cf. Sum. theol., I, q. 8, a. 3.
21. Cf. St. John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa, III, c. 24, and the author’s The Theology of Prayer (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1939), pp. 1 ff.
22. Cf. DB 1794.
23. Cf. Sum. theol., 1, q. 43, a. 3.
24. John 14:23.
25. Mark 16:20.
26. Cap. 36, n. 1.
27. Cf. St. Robert Bellarmine, De controversiis christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos, Tom. I, Quartae controversiae generalis, Lib. III, De ecclesia militante, cap. 2 (Ingolstadt, 1586), col. 1264.
28. Ibid.
29. Ad Smyrnaeos, cap. 8, n. 2.
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| Mgr. Joseph Fenton: Background of the Oath Against Modernism |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-05-2021, 11:15 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
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Sacrorum Antistitum and the Background of the Oath Against Modernism
September 1 of this year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the last, and in some ways the most important, of the three main anti-Modernist pronouncements issued by the Holy See during the brilliant reign of St. Pius X. This document was the Motu proprio Sacrorum antistitum. The other two basic anti-Modernist documents are, of course, the Holy Office decree Lamentabili sane exitu, dated July 3, 1907, and the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis, issued September 8 of that same year.
The Sacrorum antistitum is best known because it contains the text of the famous anti-Modernist oath and the rules prescribing when and by whom this oath is to be taken. Because of the tremendous intrinsic importance of the oath itself and by reason of its function in the doctrinal life of the Catholic Church, the papal document containing this oath definitely deserves serious study by the present generation of theologians. The Sacrorum antistitum brings out the basic objectives, which the saintly Pius X hoped to attain through the taking of the oath. These objectives, which are also the ends St. Pius X worked to achieve through the writing of the Motu proprio itself, are expressed very clearly in the introduction and in the conclusion to this document.
Since the entire text of the Sacrorum antistitum is not very generally available here and now, it will be helpful to see a translation of its most important parts, including the introduction and conclusion. The following is a translation of the introduction to this Motu proprio.
The Introduction
We believe that no bishop is ignorant of the fact that the wily Modernists have not abandoned their plans for disturbing the peace of the Church since they were unmasked by the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. For they have not ceased to seek out new recruits and to gather them into a secret alliance. Nor have they ceased, along with their new associates, to inject the poison of their own teachings into the veins of the Christian body-politic by turning out anonymous or pseudonymous books and articles. If, after a re-reading of the above-mentioned encyclical Pascendi, this audacity, which has caused Us so much grief, be considered very carefully, it will become quite apparent that these men are just as the encyclical describes them: enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us. They are men who pervert their ministry in such a way as to bait their hooks with poisoned meat in order to catch the unwary. They carry with them a form of doctrine in which the summary of all errors is contained.
While this plague is spreading abroad over that very part of the Lord's field from which the best fruits might be expected, it is the duty of all Bishops to exert themselves in defence of the Catholic faith and most diligently to see to it that the integrity of the divine deposit suffers no loss. Likewise it is most definitely Our duty to obey the commands of Christ the Saviour, who gave to Peter, to whose position of authority We, though unworthy, have succeeded, the order: "Confirm thy brethren." Thus, so that the souls of the good may be strengthened in the present struggle, We have considered it opportune to repeat the following statements and commands of the encyclical Pascendi. 1
The last words of this introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum show that the first section of the body of this Motu proprio is a long citation from the disciplinary part of the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. To this citation is attached an appendix, having to do with legislation concerning seminaries. The second part of the body of the text of the Sacrorum antistitum contains the text of the anti-Modernist oath, together with the rules prescribing when and by whom his oath is to be taken, and the other directives, which accompanied the command to take the oath. The third section is merely a statement in Latin of a text on preaching, originally issued in Italian, on the orders of Pope Leo XIII, by the Congregation of Bishops and of Regulars, on July 31, 1894.
The introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum contains some badly needed lessons for the priests of our own time. Incidentally it contains some reminders of truths in the theological and in the historical orders, which are far too seldom insisted upon today. It will, in my judgment, be definitely helpful to take cognizance of some of these truths at this time.
(1) Basically the Sacrorum antistitum and the anti-Modernist oath it contains were intended by St. Pius X as works he was required to perform in order to carry out his own divinely imposed responsibility to confirm the faith of his fellow members of the Catholic Church and to strengthen the efforts of the Bishops to see to it that their flocks received the divinely revealed message in all its integrity and purity.
For the sake of both fidelity to revealed teaching and of historical veracity, it is absolutely imperative that our contemporary Catholic scholars take cognizance of the truth of St. Pius X's claim about his intention. Actually the responsibility, which St. Pius X had assumed when he accepted the burden of the papacy, demanded that he take the most effective means at his disposal to protect the faith of Catholics. Quite obviously the greatest danger to the faith of the members of the true Church of Jesus Christ exists when some members of this Church actually teach or even show sympathy for doctrine contradictory to or incompatible with the body of Catholic dogma without receiving any reproof from those whom God has commissioned and obligated to protect the purity and the integrity of the Catholic faith. St. Pius X was acutely conscious of the fact that many influential Catholics were teaching or encouraging erroneous doctrines opposed to the divinely revealed Catholic message long after those erroneous doctrines had been pointed out and condemned by the highest teaching authority within the Church. And the saintly Pope was brilliant enough to realize that, unless he took some sort of drastic action, a great number of Catholics might be persuaded to imagine that de facto the Church at least tacitly tolerated the doctrinal deviations of the Modernists and their sympathizers. Thus he directed the severe commands of the Sacrorum antistitum towards the protection of the Catholic faith that was his most important responsibility as the Vicar of Christ on earth.
It was and it still is the contention of the Modernists, together with their sympathizers and their dupes, that St. Pius X in some way or another went beyond the bounds imposed by prudence and charity in the war he waged against the heresy of Modernism. As a matter of fact, even after the regular investigations involved in the process of his beatification had been completed, the Sacred Congregation of Rites considered it best to commission its historical section to conduct a special investigation into the validity of this particular contention. This strict investigation, which made use of all available testimony and of the very abundant documentary material pertinent to the question, brought out very clearly the fact that St. Pius X, in issuing the Sacrorum antistitum and in taking the other steps against the Modernists and their supporters during the latter days of his pontificate, had been doing only what the demands of his high office demanded of him. 2
One of the most striking indications of this is to be found in a well-known statement attributed to Pope Benedict XV. The Disquisitio of the Historical Section of the Sacred Congregation of Rites reprints this statement in a part of the testimony offered by Msgr. Hoenning-O'Carroll in the course of the inquiry into the virtues of Pius X held in Venice.
Particularly his [Pius X's] political dealings with France and the steps he took against Modernism were attacked as imprudent and exaggerated . . . When Father Mauro Serafini was having an audience with Pope Benedict XV, the Pope said to him: "Now that I am sitting on this Chair, I see very well how right Pius X was. While I was the Sostituto in the Secretariate of State, and even while I was Archbishop of Bologna, I did not always share the thought of Pius X, but now I have to realize how right he was." 3
Monsignor Hoenning-O'Carroll testified that he learned of this statement of Pope Benedict XV from Monsignor Pescini. Despite the fact that this particular witness knew the story only through hearsay, the statement itself seems very well attested. It seems to reflect the mind of Pope Benedict XV.
In any event there is ample and compelling evidence that the Sacrorum antistitum and the other anti-Modernistic documents issued by St. Pius X were actually called for and really required by reason of the danger to the Catholic faith which had been caused by the activity of the Modernists, their sympathizers, and their dupes, within the true Church of Jesus Christ.
(2) At the time the Sacrorum antistitum was being written, the integrity of the Catholic faith itself was being seriously threatened. Within the Catholic Church itself a definite and formidable effort was being made to persuade members of the true Church to reject as antiquated and outdated certain teachings, which were actually presented by the Church's magisterium as belonging to the deposit of divine public revelation. This effort was being made by the Modernists, most of whom were members of the Catholic Church. The teachings, which these men had attempted to impose upon the Church had been specifically and authoritatively condemned by the Holy See three years before the Sacrorum antistitum was issued.
Thus it is immensely important to realize that the teachings against which the Sacrorum antistitum was directed were being put forward by an obdurate group of men whose heresies had been indicated, denounced, and condemned three years before this Motu proprio was written. This, incidentally, is quite at variance with the unhistorical statements of some contemporary sympathizers with Modernism and the Modernists. Writers of this sort have tried to delude their fellow Catholics into imagining that, upon the appearance of the Lamentabili sane exitu and the Pascendi dominici gregis, most of the men who had been teaching and defending the doctrines condemned in these two documents quickly and humbly submitted to the teaching authority of the Holy See. The text of the Sacrorum antistitum, and also, be it noted, the text of the Ad beatissimi, the inaugural encyclical of Pope Benedict XV, show that no such reaction took place. 4 The well defined group which had been proposing and favoring the propositions condemned in the Lamentabili and in the Pascendi insolently continued to work for acceptance of their errors within the Church even after St. Pius X had denounced and condemned them.
(3) In the Sacrorum antistitum St. Pius X speaks out very clearly of the existence of a secret alliance or a foedus clandestinum among the Modernists of his day. For one reason or another, this truth, observed and stated by St. Pius X, and clearly evident to any person who takes the trouble to study the history of the Modernist movement, has always been singularly distasteful to sympathizers with Modernism and with the Modernists. It seems to have been precisely in order to cause confusion on this particular point that the men who have been partial to the Modernists have gone to such extreme lengths to delude people into imagining that the opposition to Loisy, Von Hugel, and their ilk within the Catholic Church was fundamentally the work of a secret alliance of sinister and reactionary Catholics. It would certainly appear that the ridiculous and mendacious propaganda directed against the Sodalitium Pianum and against Monsignor Umberto Benigni, even over the course of the past few years, 5 can best be explained as an attempt to cover up the fact that there was a foedus clandestinum connected with and inherent in the Modernist movement.
(4) The introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum takes cognizance of the fact that most of the genuinely dangerous supporters of the Modernist movement, the men against whose efforts the Sacrorum antistitum and its commands were particularly directed, were priests active within the Catholic Church itself. St. Pius X took cognizance of the fact that such priests were actually perverting their own ministry. They were guilty of using their priestly power and their priestly position to counter, rather than to advance, the work of Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Basically the work of the priesthood is directed towards the glory of God, which is to be achieved and obtained in the salvation of souls. This objective is to be obtained only by those who pass from this life living the life of sanctifying grace. And the life of sanctifying grace cannot exist apart from the truth faith, until such time as the faith itself is replaced by the Beatific Vision. Thus the priestly ministry in the true Church of Jesus Christ necessarily seeks to induce men to accept God's supernatural teaching with the certain assent of divine faith and works to increase the perfection and the intensity of the faith in those who already possess this virtue. Hence any effort on the part of a Catholic priest to influence people to reject or to pass over a truth revealed by God and proposed as such by the Church's magisterium definitely constitutes a perversion of the sacerdotal ministry.
(5) St. Pius X describes the Modernists as men "who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us." It would be difficult indeed to appreciate the position of the Church in the twentieth century without realizing the objectivity and the shrewdness of this observation.
A man is to be feared by the Church, or by the members of the Church, in the measure that this man intends and is genuinely able to harm the Church, or to counteract and negate the salvific mission of Our Lord's Mystical Body in this world. And this happens especially when non-members of the Church are influenced not to accept its divine message and not to seek entrance into this society, and when members of the Church are pressured to reject Our Lord, or His love, or His divine teaching. It is most important to remember that the only real and serious damage to the cause of Christ is done when effective efforts are made to nullify and to counteract the work the Church does as the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ Our Lord.
With its insistence that the Modernists and their sympathizers were "enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us," the introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum takes cognizance of the fact that, during our own times at least, non-members of the Church have, generally speaking, not been able to damage the Church to any very considerable extent. Quite obviously, despite their manifest and intense ill will, people like those who used to be associated with the old Menace and the Ku Klux Klan, and those who are now associated with groups like P. . . U, are not particularly formidable adversaries of Our Lord, His Church, or His message. They have certainly helped to stir up and further to envenom antipathy towards the Catholic Church on the part of ignorant non-Catholics who were previously ill disposed towards the Church. But it would hardly seem likely that any Catholic has ever been turned against Christ or against the Church's divinely revealed message as a result of anything that has ever been said or written by these rabble-rousers. And it seems highly unlikely that any individual has been excluded from the Beatific Vision by reason of anything he has said or done by reason of their influence.
On the other hand, no one has ever been as well placed to harm the true Church and to counteract its essential work as a Catholic priest in good standing. If such a man, by his preaching, his teaching, or his writing, actually sets forth the kind of teaching condemned in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis, or if he works to discredit the loyal defenders of Catholic dogma without receiving any repudiation or reproof from those to whom the apostolic deposit of divine revelation has been entrusted, the Catholic people are in grave danger of being deceived.
The Modernists and their most influential sympathizers were, in great part, drawn from the ranks of the Catholic clergy. Thus they were, in the words of the introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum, the "enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us." These Catholics who taught or favored Modernism were the men whose influence within the true Church of Jesus Christ St. Pius X sought to counter by the teaching and the directives contained in the Sacrorum antistitum.
(6) Finally, in the introduction to this famous Motu proprio, St. Pius X makes it very clear indeed that the Bishops of the Catholic Church were bound in conscience by the obligations of their office to act energetically against this teaching that contradicted the divinely revealed truth proposed as such by the true Church. The "defence of the Catholic faith" and strenuous efforts "to see to it that the integrity of the divine deposit suffers no loss" are definitely not works of supererogation. These are the duties prescribed by Our Lord Himself for the leaders of the Church, which He has purchased by His blood.
The Conclusion To The Sacrorum Antistitum
The conclusion to this document, the last of the three great anti-Modernist declarations issued by the Holy See during the reign of St. Pius X, is even more enlightening than the introduction. In this we see how St. Pius X enunciated, more clearly than in any other document, the most fundamental position of the Modernists. The text of this conclusion follows:
Moved by the seriousness of the evil that is increasing every day, an evil, which We cannot put off confronting without the most grave danger, We have decided to issue and to repeat these commands. For it is no longer a case, as it was in the beginning, of dealing with disputants who come forward in the clothing of sheep. Now we are faced with open and bitter enemies from within our own household, who, in agreement with the outstanding opponents of the Church, are working for the overthrow of the faith. They are men whose audacity against the wisdom that has come down from heaven increases daily. They arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men.
To counter such attempts against the evangelical doctrine and the ecclesiastical tradition, there will never be sufficient vigilance or too much severity on the part of those to whom the faithful care of the sacred deposit has been entrusted. 6
In this conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum, St. Pius X expressly recognizes the fact that the Modernists and their sympathizers, the anti-anti-Modernists, were actually working, in agreement with the most-bitter enemies of the Catholic Church, for the destruction of the Catholic faith. It is interesting and highly important to note exactly what St. Pius X said. He definitely did not claim that these men were working directly to destroy the Church as a society. It is quite obvious that, given the intimate connection between the Church and the faith, a connection so close and perfect that the Church itself may be defined as the congregatio fidelium, the repudiation of the Catholic faith would inevitably lead to the dissolution of the Church. Yet, for the Modernists and for those who co-operated in their work, the immediate object of attack was always the faith itself. These individuals were perfectly willing that the Catholic Church should continue to exist as a religious society, as long as it did not insist upon the acceptance of that message which, all during the course of the previous centuries of its existence, it had proposed as a message supernaturally revealed by the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. They were willing and even anxious to retain their membership in the Catholic Church, as long as they were not obliged to accept on the authority of divine faith such unfashionable dogmas as, for example, the truth that there is truly no salvation outside of the Church.
What these men were really working for was the transformation of the Catholic Church into an essentially non-doctrinal religious body. They considered that their era would be willing to accept the Church as a kind of humanitarian institution, vaguely religious, tastefully patriotic, and eminently cultural. And they definitely intended to tailor the Church to fit the needs and the tastes of their own era.
It must be understood, of course, that the Modernists and the men who aided their efforts did not expect the Catholic Church to repudiate its age-old formulas of belief. They did not want the Church to reject or to abandon the ancient creeds, or even any of those formularies in which the necessity of the faith and the necessity of the Church are so firmly and decisively stated. What they sought was a declaration on the part of the Church's magisterium to the effect that these old formulas did not, during the first decade of the twentieth century, carry the same meaning for the believing Catholic that they had carried when these formulas had first been drawn up. Or, in other words, they sought to force or to delude the teaching authority of Christ's Church into coming out with the fatally erroneous proposition that what is accepted by divine faith in this century is objectively something different from what was believed in the Catholic Church on the authority of God revealing in previous times.
Thus the basic objective of Modernism was to reject the fact that, when he sets forth Catholic dogma, the Catholic teacher is acting precisely as an ambassador of Christ. The Modernists were men who were never quite able to grasp or to accept the truth that the teaching of the Catholic Church is, as the First Vatican Council designated the content of the Constitution Dei Filius, actually "the salutary doctrine of Christ," and not merely some kind of doctrine, which has developed out of that teaching. And, in the final analysis, the position of the Modernists constituted the ultimate repudiation of the Catholic faith. If the teaching proposed by the Church as dogma is not actually and really the doctrine supernaturally revealed by God through Jesus Christ Our Lord, through the Prophets of the Old Testament who were His heralds, or through the Apostles who were His witnesses, then there could be nothing more pitifully inane than the work of the Catholic magisterium.
It is interesting to note the parallel between what St. Pius X says about the intentions of the Modernists and what his great predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, had to say about the basic premise of the errors he pointed out and condemned in his famed letter, the Testem benevolentiae. St. Pius X declares that the Modernists "arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men." And Pope Leo XIII states:
The principles on which the new opinions We have mentioned are based may be reduced to this: that in order the more easily to bring over to Catholic doctrine those who dissent from it, the Church ought to adapt herself somewhat to our advanced civilization, and, relaxing her ancient rigor, show some indulgence to modern theories and methods. Many think that this is to be understood not only with regard to the rule of life, but also to the doctrines in which the deposit of faith is contained. For they contend that it is opportune, in order to work in a more attractive way upon the wills of those who are not in accord with us, to pass over certain heads of doctrines, as if of lesser moment, or so to soften them that they may not have the same meaning which the Church has invariably held. 7
Thus, when we examine the actual texts of the Testem benevolentiae and of the Sacrorum antistitum, it becomes quite apparent that Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were engaged in combating doctrinal deviations that actually sprang from an identical principle, the fantastically erroneous assumption that the supernatural communication of the Triune God could and should be brought up to date and given a certain respectability before modern society. The men who sustained the weird teachings condemned by Pope Leo XIII, a document, which, incidentally, did not denounce any mere phantom body of doctrine, and the men who taught and protected the doctrinal monstrosities stigmatized in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis, based their errors on a common foundation. The false Americanism and the heresy of Modernism were both offshoots of doctrinal liberal Catholicism.
This belief that the meaning of the Church's dogmatic message was in some way subject to change and capable of being improved and brought up to date was definitely not an explicit part of the original or the more naive stage of the liberal Catholic movement. The first components of liberal Catholicism, during the earlier days of the unfortunate Felicite De Lamennais, were religious indifferentism, some false concepts of human freedom, and the advocacy of a separation of Church and state as the ideal situation in a nation made up of members of the true Church. But, after these teachings had been forcefully repudiated by Pope Gregory XVI in his encyclical Mirari vos arbitramur, a new set of factors entered into this system. These were inserted into the fabric of liberal Catholicism because the leaders of this movement persisted in defending as legitimate Catholic doctrine this teaching, which had been clearly and vigorously condemned by the supreme power of the Catholic magisterium. Most prominent among these newer components of liberal Catholicism were minimism, doctrinal subjectivism, and an insistence that there had been and that there had to be at least some sort of change in the objective meaning of the Church's dogmatic message over the course of the centuries. 8
The liberal Catholic since the time of Montalembert has been well aware of the fact that the basic theses he proposes as acceptable Catholic doctrine have been specifically and vehemently repudiated by the doctrinal authority of the Roman Church. If he is to continue to propose these teachings as a member of the Church, he is obliged by the very force of self-consistency to claim that the declarations of the magisterium, which condemned his favorite theses do not at this moment mean objectively what they meant at the time they were issued. And, if such a claim is advanced about the Mirari vos arbitramur, there is very little to prevent its being put forward on the subject of the Athanasian Creed. Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were well aware of the fact that the advocates of the false Americanism and the teachers and the protectors of the Modernist heresy were employing this same discredited tactic.
This common basis of the false doctrinal Americanism and of the Modernist heresy is, like doctrinal indifferentism itself, ultimately a rejection of Catholic dogma as a genuine supernatural message or communication from the living God Himself. It would seem impossible for anyone to be blasphemous or silly enough to be convinced, on the one hand, that the dogmatic message of the Catholic Church is actually a locutio Dei ad homines, and to imagine, on the other hand, that he, a mere creature, could in some way improve that teaching or make it more respectable. The very fact that a man would be so rash as to attempt to bring the dogma of the Church up to date, or to make it more acceptable to those who are not privileged to be members of the true Church, indicates that this individual is not actually and profoundly convinced that this dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church is a supernatural communication from the living and Triune God, the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. It would be the height of blasphemy knowingly to set out to improve or to bring up to date what one would seriously consider a genuine message from the First Cause of the universe.
The conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum brings out more clearly than any other statement of the Holy See the fact that Modernism sprang from the same basic principle, as did the false Americanism pointed out and proscribed in the Testem benevolentiae of Pope Leo XIII.
The Immediate Context Of The Oath In The Sacrorum Antistitum
The main body of the first section of the Sacrorum antistitum is substantially a repetition of the legislative or disciplinary portion of the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. To this, however, in the text of the Sacrorum antistitum, is added an expression of the saintly Pontiff's concern for seminaries, ending with the vigorous command that henceforth the reading of "diaria quaevis aut commentaria, quantumvis optima" was strictly forbidden to seminarians "onerata moderatorum conscientia qui ne id accidat religiose non caverint." 9
The second section of the Sacrorum antistitum, the one which contains and which deals with the Oath against Modernism, follows immediately after the statement of the prohibition of the reading of newspapers by seminarians. The first part of this section is of particular importance in that it shows very clearly the effect, which St. Pius X wished to produce through the taking of the oath. The section begins as follows:
But in order to do away with all suspicion that Modernism may secretly enter in [to the seminaries], not only do We will that the commands listed under n. 2 above be obeyed absolutely, but We also order that all teachers, before their first lectures at the beginning of the scholastic year, must show to their Bishop the text which each shall decide to use in teaching, or the questions or theses that are to be treated, and that furthermore throughout the year itself the kind of teaching of each course be examined, and that if such teaching be found to run counter to sound doctrine, that this will result in the immediate dismissal of the teacher. Finally [We will] that over and above the profession of faith [the teacher] should take an oath before his Bishop, according to the formula that follows, and that he should sign his name. 10
The Sacrorum antistitum goes on to say that the profession of faith shall be that prescribed by Pope Pius IV, together with the additions, relative to the First Vatican Council, prescribed by the Decree of Jan. 20, 1877. And it likewise indicates the Church officials other than professors in seminaries who are bound by law to take the Oath.
Actually, then, in the immediate context of the Sacrorum antistitum, the command that seminary professors take the Oath against Modernism stands out as one of four orders directed towards the prevention of the entrance of Modernism into ecclesiastical seminaries. These four directives are: (1) the strict carrying out of the legislation set down under n. 2 of the first section of the Sacrorum antistitum, (2) the submission by individual seminary professors to their Bishops at the beginning of the scholastic year of the textbooks they are going to use and of the theses they are going to propound, (3) the investigation (obviously by the competent and proper ecclesiastical authority), of the teaching offered in the various courses being given to the seminarians, and finally (4) the making of the Tridentine-Vatican profession of faith and the taking of the Oath against Modernism. The teacher is to sign his name to the Oath he has taken. The context would seem to indicate that it was the mind of St. Pius X that this Oath should be taken every year at the beginning of the academic term.
All of the other operations, including the taking of the Oath against Modernism, are subordinated to a certain extent to the legislation set down in the second sub-section of the first part of the Sacrorum antistitum. This sub-section, it must be remembered, is part of the text of the Sacrorum antistitum, which is simply reproduced from the disciplinary portion of the Pascendi dominici gregis. The pertinent sub-section follows:
All these prescriptions, both Our own and those of Our predecessor, are to be kept in view whenever there is a question of choosing directors and teachers for seminaries and for Catholic universities. Anyone who in any way is found to be tainted with Modernism is to be excluded without compunction from these offices, whether of administration or of teaching, and those who already occupy such offices are to be removed. The same policy is to be followed with regard to those who openly or secretly lend support to Modernism, either by praising the Modernists and excusing their culpable conduct, or by carping at scholasticism, and the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, or by refusing obedience to ecclesiastical authority in any of its depositaries; and with regard to those who manifest a love of novelty in history, archeology, and biblical exegesis; and finally with regard to those who neglect the sacred sciences or appear to prefer the secular [sciences] to them. On this entire subject, Venerable Brethren, and especially with regard to the choice of teachers, you cannot be too watchful or too careful, for as a rule the students are modeled according to the pattern of their teachers. Strong in the consciousness of your duty, act always in this matter with prudence and with vigor.
Equal diligence and severity are to be used in examining and selecting candidates for Holy Orders. Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty! God hates the proud and the obstinate mind. In the future the doctorate in theology or in canon law must never be conferred on anyone who has not first of all made the regular course in scholastic philosophy. If such a doctorate be conferred, it is to be held as null and void. The rules laid down in 1896 by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars for the clerics of Italy, both secular and regular, about the frequenting of universities, We now decree to be extended to all nations. Clerics and priests inscribed in a Catholic institute or university must not in the future follow in civil universities those courses for which there are chairs in the Catholic institutes to which they belong. If this has been permitted anywhere in the past, We order that it shall not be allowed in the future. Let the Bishops who form the governing boards of such institutes or universities see to it with all care that these Our commands be constantly observed. 11
There can be no doubt whatsoever about the severity of the directives which are, in the text of the Sacrorum antistitum, immediately associated with the command that teachers in seminaries and in the ecclesiastical schools of Catholic universities take the Oath against Modernism, which appeared for the first time in that document. St. Pius X ordered that those who taught the errors condemned in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis should be dropped from any position on the administrative or on the teaching staff of any seminary or Catholic university, and that men who held such views must not, under any conditions whatsoever, be considered as prospects for membership in the administrations or in the professional corps of such institutions. Furthermore he ordered that the sympathizers with Modernism should be treated in exactly the same fashion. It is quite obvious that, in speaking of lovers of "novelties," the saintly Pontiff meant people who favored these propositions condemned by the Church and designated as Modernism.
Then there were other directives. It was decreed that the doctorate in sacred theology and in canon law must never, in the future, be conferred on any person who had not taken a regular course in scholastic philosophy. Furthermore, St. Pius X ordered that priests connected with Catholic institutions of higher learning must not, in the future, take in non-Catholic institutions of higher studies courses, which were being given in the schools with which they themselves were connected.
All of these directives went against the liberal Catholic spirit, of which Modernism was the outstanding expression. All of them were likewise unpopular, as calculated to arouse the antagonism of the enemies who attacked the Church from the outside. All of them were duly denounced and regretted as obscurantist. Catholics of mediocre intellectual attainments attracted praise to themselves for their disloyalty to Our Lord's cause and to His Church, which was manifested in their disdainful reactions against these commands of Christ's Vicar on earth. Yet certainly and incontrovertibly the cause of Christ, the cause of truth, the cause of the Catholic faith, benefited to the extent that these rigorous directives were carried out.
It must definitely be understood that the most rigorous and the most important of these directives set forth in the disciplinary part of the Pascendi dominici gregis, and afterwards in the Sacrorum antistitum, are expressions of what we may call the natural law of the supernatural order. In other words, the obligation of the individual Bishop to exclude Modernists and sympathizers with Modernism from the administrations and from the professorial staffs of seminaries and of Catholic universities definitely did not begin with the first promulgation of this law by St. Pius X. Given the position and the obligation of the Bishop within the true Church of Jesus Christ, and given the nature and the necessity of the Catholic faith, it is always the clear duty of the Bishop to exclude from the dignity of teaching in the Church in any position under his control any individual who will teach or favor the contradiction of the divinely revealed message. Modernism was and is such a contradiction. Thus it was and always will necessarily remain the duty of the Bishop to see to it that any individual who teaches or who supports Modernism in any way be excluded from any co-operation in the apostolic task of teaching the divine message of Jesus Christ within His Church.
In issuing this decree, St. Pius X was taking cognizance of the basic truth about the teaching work in the Church, which was afterwards brought out so clearly by Pope Pius XII in his allocution Si diligis. This document brings out more clearly than any other in recent years the tremendous responsibility of the Bishop in the field of teaching the divine message.
Christ Our Lord entrusted the truth, which He had brought from heaven to the Apostles, and through them to their successors. He sent His Apostles, as He had been sent by the Father, (John, 20:21), to teach all nations everything they had heard from Him (cf. Matt., 28:19 f.). The Apostles are, therefore by divine right the true doctors and teachers in the Church. Besides the lawful successors of the Apostles, namely the Roman Pontiff for the universal Church and the Bishops for the faithful entrusted to their care (cf. can. 1326), there are no other teachers divinely constituted in the Church of Christ. But both the Bishops and, first of all, the Supreme Teacher and Vicar of Christ on earth, may associate others with themselves in their work as teacher, and may use their advice. They delegate to them the faculty to teach, either by special grant, or by conferring an office to which this faculty is attached (cf. can. 1328). Those who are so called teach, not in their own name, nor by reason of their theological knowledge, but by reason of the mandate they have received from the lawful Teaching Authority. Their faculty always remains subject to that Authority, nor is it ever exercised in its own right or independently. Bishops, for their part, by conferring this faculty, are not deprived of the right to teach. They retain the very grave obligation of supervising the doctrine, which others propose, in order to help them and of seeing to its integrity and security. Therefore the legitimate Teaching Authority of the Church is guilty of no injury or no offence to any of those to whom it has given a canonical mission, if it desires to ascertain what they, to whom it has entrusted the mission of teaching, are proposing and defending in their lectures, in books, notes, and reviews intended for the use of their students, as well as in books and other publications intended for the general public. 12
In the Si diligis, Pope Pius XII explains the directives issued by St. Pius X in the Pascendi and in the Sacrorum antistitum. The members of the apostolic hierarchy of jurisdiction, the Pope and the residential Bishops throughout the world are responsible before God Himself for the teaching in the Catholic Church. All the legitimate teaching in the Church is issued by them or under their direction. They have full responsibility and full competence to see to it that the faithful of Christ receive His message in all of its purity and integrity. Naturally if they themselves contradict, or transform, or withhold any portion of the revealed truth, which has been entrusted to them, they will have been recreant to the commission they have received from Our Lord Himself. And, in precisely the same way, they are being disloyal to Our Lord if they allow those whom they use as helpers in the teaching work within the Church to deny or to adulterate any of the divinely revealed doctrines.
The power and the dignity of the apostolic Catholic hierarchy in the field of dogmatic teaching are beyond comparison. But with that dignity and with that authority goes the gravest responsibility which human beings are called upon to assume. The directives, which, in the Sacrorum antistitum, form the immediate context of the command to take the Oath against Modernism, simply take cognizance of these basic and most important facts.
In the final analysis, they are founded upon an awareness of the tremendous and vital necessity of the divine faith itself. St. Pius X directed that all professors or directors of seminaries and of Catholic universities, who taught or showed sympathy with the doctrines condemned as Modernism, should be removed from their positions, and commanded that such individuals should not be brought into such positions in the future. This order, as is quite obvious, is simply a statement of what is actually required by the constitution of the Catholic Church itself. The same obligation would have been incumbent on the Bishops of the Catholic Church even if St. Pius X had not spoken out and issued these directives.
The Sacrorum antistitum, however, goes even further. It demands that the individual teachers in seminaries and in Catholic universities submit to their Bishops the name of the textbook they intend to follow or the list of theses they intend to teach and defend in their academic lectures. Furthermore it insists that the Bishops themselves take care, during the course of the academic year, to find out exactly what is being taught in the various classes in the Catholic institutes of higher learning under their direction. And then, in order to bring out this obligation for doctrinal orthodoxy in the clearest possible way, the Sacrorum antistitum orders these teachers to make the Profession of Faith of the Council of Trent and of the First Vatican Council, and to take and sign their names to the special Oath composed by St. Pius X precisely to repudiate and to condemn the central teachings of the Modernist movement.
With this salutary severity with reference to the teachers and directors of ecclesiastical seminaries and of Catholic universities, the Sacrorum antistitum likewise contains strict directives about the candidates for Holy Orders. Men who hold Modernistic teachings or who are sympathetic towards the Modernists are not to be ordained. With his intense awareness of the pastoral mission of the Catholic priesthood, St. Pius X was all too cognizant of the harm that could and inevitably would come to the Catholic Church from a priest who would be willing to pervert his position by working against the divinely revealed teaching of Jesus Christ.
The Oath Itself
Against the background of the Sacrorum antistitum, then, the Oath against Modernism appears as something intended primarily for teachers in and directors of ecclesiastical seminaries and Catholic universities. Other dignitaries of the Catholic Church are ordered to take this Oath, along with the Tridentine Profession of the Faith. But it is something intended primarily and immediately for those who are called upon to teach or to direct candidates for Holy Orders.
Thus the Oath itself is constituted as a Profession of the Catholic belief. The man who takes this Oath makes his solemn declaration in the sight of God Himself that he firmly accepts and receives all the teachings and each individual one of the teachings "that have been defined, asserted, and declared by the infallible magisterium of the Church, especially those points of doctrine which are directly opposed to the errors of this time." 13 The most important and influential of these "errors of this time" are clearly pointed out in the formula, and the man who takes the Oath calls upon God as His Witness that he rejects these false judgments and firmly accepts the statements of Catholic doctrine opposed to them. St. Pius X ordered that the professors and administrators in seminaries and in Catholic universities sign their names to the formula of the Oath after they had taken it. Thus it would be difficult to find or even to conceive of a more effective measure for the protection of candidates for Holy Orders from the infection of Modernism than that constituted by St. Pius X in his legislation about the Oath in the Sacrorum antistitum. The man who taught or in any way aided in the dissemination or the protection of Modernistic teachings in a seminary or in a Catholic university after the issuance of the Sacrorum antistitum would mark himself, not only as a sinner against the Catholic faith, but also as a common perjurer.
Incidentally, the Oath against Modernism contained in the Sacrorum antistitum is something, which demands a certain amount of knowledge in the man who takes it seriously and religiously. We must not allow ourselves to forget that essentially an oath is an act of religion, an act in which we worship almighty God or manifest our acknowledgement of His supreme excellence and of our own complete and absolute dependence upon Him. 14 Thus an oath is definitely not something that can be taken lightly. And the man who takes the Oath against Modernism calls upon God to witness that he reverently submits and whole-heartedly assents "to all the condemnations, the declarations, and the commands which are contained in the encyclical Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili, especially to those that relate to what they call the history of dogmas." 15 It would seem to be irreverent indeed for any seminary or university professor to take this oath without knowing exactly what is condemned, what is taught, and what is commanded in these two tremendously important documents. It is quite obvious that some of the doctrines and directives contained in the Pascendi and in the Lamentabili are also brought out in the Oath against Modernism. But it is equally clear that not all of these teachings and precepts of the two 1907 documents are set forth in the Oath, and that the man who wishes to take the Oath as a religious act, to take it worthily, must exert himself to find out exactly and in detail what he is promising to accept and to believe. And it is patent that the man who does not take the time and the trouble to find out what is taught and what is commanded in the Pascendi and in the Lamentabili is being somewhat careless in calling upon the living God to witness that he will whole-heartedly abide by the doctrines and the directives contained in these two statements.
Recapitulation
The Oath against Modernism is undoubtedly, up until now, the most important and the most influential document issued by the Holy See during the course of the twentieth century. It is a magnificent statement of Catholic truth, in the face of the errors, which were being disseminated within the Church by the cleverest enemies the Mystical Body of Christ has encountered in the course of its history. It was a profession of Catholic belief intended primarily for those engaged in the spiritual and intellectual formation of candidates for Holy Orders. According to the strict command of the Sacrorum antistitum, the men for whom the Oath against Modernism was primarily intended were also obliged to show their Bishops, at the beginning of each academic year, the textbooks they were employing in class, and the theses they intended to teach and to defend. The Bishops themselves were not only reminded of their obligation, but were strictly commanded to watch over the teaching being given in the institutions of higher learning under their direction and control.
The Bishops were also commanded to see to it that no man tainted with Modernism, either as a teacher of the errors condemned in the Lamentabili and the Pascendi, or as one who supported these errors by working to discredit the teachers of Catholic truth who opposed and unmasked Modernism, was to be admitted to or permitted to remain in the professorial corps or the administration of an ecclesiastical seminary or a Catholic university. And no young man who was infected by Modernism errors was to be allowed to become or to remain a candidate for Holy Orders.
This was the rigorous and powerful direction of the Sacrorum antistitum. Quite obviously it was not and it still is not in accord with the tastes of liberal Catholics. But it was and it remains the great expression of St. Pius X's desire to accomplish his mission as Christ's Vicar on earth. It was and it remains a tremendously effective factor for the protection of the little ones of Jesus Christ against the virus of Modernism.
Endnotes
1 The Latin text of the Sacrorum antistitum is to be found in the Codicis iuris canonici fontes, cura Petri Cardinalis Gasparri editi (Typis polyglottis Vaticanis, 1933), III, 774-90. This particular section is on p. 774.
2 The documentation and the results of this investigation are contained in the Disquisitio circa quasdam obiectiones modum agendi Servi Dei [Pii Papae X] respicientes in Modernismi debellatione, una cum summario additionali ex officio compilato, which is n. 77 of the printed documents of the Sectio historica of the Sacra Rituum Congregatio. The work was edited by Father Antonelli, O.F.M. It is mentioned and used rather well by Pierre Fernessole, in his Pie X: Essai historique (Paris: Lethielleux, 1953), II, 237-51. It is employed brilliantly by Fr. Raymond Dulac in his two famous articles, "Les devoirs du journaliste catholique selon le Bienheureux Pie X," and "Simple note sur le Sodalitium Pianum," in La pensee catholique, n. 23 (1952), 68-87; 88-93.
3 Disquisitio, p. 127. Cited by Fernessole, op. cit., II, 249.
4 It is quite evident that Pope Benedict XV considered the Modernism condemned by St. Pius X as an influential movement in the Church four years after the Sacrorum antistitum was written. Thus we read in the Ad beatissimi: "And so there came into being the monstrous errors of Modernism, which Our predecessor rightly designated as the gathering together of all the heresies, and which he solemnly condemned. To the fullest extent possible, Venerable Brethren, We here renew that condemnation. And, because this pestiferous contagion has not yet been overcome, but even now creeps in here and there, even though in a hidden manner. We exhort all most diligently against any infection of this evil, to which you might rightly apply the words that Job said on another subject: 'It is a fire that devoureth even to destruction, and rooteth up all things that spring.' And We will that Catholic men should turn away in disgust, not only from the errors, but from the very mentality, or, as they call it, the spirit of the Modernists" (Cf. Codicis iuris canonici fontes. III, 842).
It must also be remembered that the errors denounced by the late Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani generis definitely were Modernistic.
5 Perhaps the most insolent and naive of these attacks is that contained in the article " 'La Sapiniere,' ou breve histoire de l'organisation integriste," written by someone who used the pseudonym "Louis Davallon," in the May 15, 1955, number of Folliet's Chronique sociale de France, pp. 241-62. A brief discussion of this unfortunate and thoroughly untrustworthy article will be found in Fenton, "Some Recent Writings in the Field of Fundamental Dogmatic Theology," Part II, in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXXIV, 5 (May, 1956), 340-45. It is tragic that an otherwise respectable book, The Life of Benedict XV, by Walter H. Peters (Milwaukee: Bruce 1959), incorporates some of this nonsensical propaganda against Monsignor Benigni into its chapter "Modernists and Integralists" (pp. 42-53).
6 The text is in Codicis iuris canonici fontes. III, 789 f.
7 The text is in Denz., n. 1967. This passage is translated in Father Wynne's edition of The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1903), p. 442.
8 Cf. Fenton, "The Components of Liberal Catholicism," in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXXIX, 1 (July, 1958), 36-53.
9 Codicis iuris canonici fontes. III, 782.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., III, 776.
12 The text and translation of the Si diligis are in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXX, 2 (Aug., 1954), 127-37. This passage is found on pp. 133 f.
13 Denz., n. 2145.
14 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 89, a. 4.
15 Denz., n. 2146.
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| UK prime minister orders new virus lockdown for England |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-05-2021, 09:06 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
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UK prime minister orders new virus lockdown for England
LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday a new national lockdown for England until at least mid-February to combat a fast-spreading new variant of the coronavirus, even as Britain ramped up its vaccination program by becoming the first nation to start using the shot developed by Oxford University and drugmaker AstraZeneca.
Johnson said people must stay at home again, as they were ordered to do so in the first wave of the pandemic in March, this time because the new virus variant was spreading in a “frustrating and alarming” way.
“As I speak to you tonight, our hospitals are under more pressure from COVID than at any time since the start of the pandemic,” he said in a televised address.
From Tuesday, primary and secondary schools and colleges will be closed for face to face learning except for the children of key workers and vulnerable pupils. University students will not be returning until at least mid-February. People were told to work from home unless it’s impossible to do so, and leave home only for essential trips.
All nonessential shops and personal care services like hairdressers will be closed, and restaurants can only operate takeout services.
As of Monday, there were 26,626 COVID-19 patients in hospitals in England, an increase of more than 30% from a week ago. That is 40% above the highest level of the first wave in the spring.
Large areas of England were already under tight restrictions as officials try to control an alarming surge in coronavirus cases in recent weeks, blamed on a new variant of COVID-19 that is more contagious than existing variants. Authorities have recorded more than 50,000 new infections daily since passing that milestone for the first time on Dec. 29. On Monday, they reported 407 virus-related deaths to push the confirmed death toll total to 75,431, one of the worst in Europe.
The U.K.’s chief medical officers warned that without further action, “there is a material risk of the National Health Service in several areas being overwhelmed over the next 21 days.” [See this article and accompanying video of a woman showing a nearly empty hospital in the UK and asking 'where are all the COVID patients?' - The Catacombs]
Hours earlier, Scotland’s leader, Nicola Sturgeon, also imposed a lockdown there with broadly similar restrictions from Tuesday until the end of January.
“I am more concerned about the situation we face now than I have been at any time since March last year,” Sturgeon said in Edinburgh.
“The weeks ahead will be the hardest yet but I really do believe that we’re entering the last phase of the struggle,” Johnson said.
Britain has secured the rights to 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is cheaper and easier to use than some of its rivals. In particular, it doesn’t require the super-cold storage needed for the Pfizer vaccine.
The new vaccine will be administered at a small number of hospitals for the first few days so authorities can watch out for any adverse reactions. Officials said hundreds of new vaccination sites — including local doctors’ offices — will open later this week, joining the more than 700 vaccination sites already in operation.
A “massive ramp-up operation” is now underway, Johnson said. The goal was that by mid-February, some 13 million people in the top priority groups — care home residents, all those over 70 years old, frontline health and social workers, and those deemed extremely clinically vulnerable — will be vaccinated, he said.
Brian Pinker, an 82-year-old dialysis patient, received the first Oxford-AstraZeneca shot early Monday at Oxford University Hospital.
“The nurses, doctors and staff today have all been brilliant, and I can now really look forward to celebrating my 48th wedding anniversary with my wife, Shirley, later this year,” Pinker said in a statement released by the National Health Service.
But aspects of Britain’s vaccination plan have spurred controversy.
Both vaccines require two shots, and Pfizer had recommended that the second dose be given within 21 days of the first. But the U.K.’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization said authorities should give the first vaccine dose to as many people as possible, rather than setting aside shots to ensure others receive two doses. It has stretched out the time between the doses from 21 days to within 12 weeks.
While two doses are required to fully protect against COVID-19, both vaccines provide high levels of protection after the first dose, the committee said. Making the first dose the priority will “maximize benefits from the vaccination program in the short term,” it said.
Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said policymakers are being forced to balance the potential risks of this change against the benefits in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
“As has become clear to everyone during 2020, delays cost lives,” Evans said. “When resources of doses and people to vaccinate are limited, then vaccinating more people with potentially less efficacy is demonstrably better than a fuller efficacy in only half.”
Monday’s urgent announcement was yet another change of course for Johnson, who had stuck with a regional alert system that stipulated varying restrictions for areas depending on the severity of local infections. London and large areas of southeast England were put under the highest level of restrictions in mid-December, and more regions soon joined them.
But it soon became clear that the regional approach wasn’t working to tamp down the spread of the virus, and critics have been clamoring for a tougher national lockdown.
And while schools in London were already closed due to high infection rates in the capital, Johnson had said that students in many parts of the country could return to classrooms on Monday after the Christmas holidays, to the dismay of teachers’ unions.
“We are relieved the government has finally bowed to the inevitable and agreed to move schools and colleges to remote education in response to alarming COVID infection rates,” said Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.
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| Massachusetts Passes 'Passive Infanticide' Bill |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-05-2021, 08:51 AM - Forum: Abortion
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Massachusetts lawmakers override governor’s veto, expand abortion access for minors
The pro-life Massachusetts Family Institute called the legislation ‘Infanticide Act.’
BOSTON, Massachusetts, January 4, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Despite efforts on the part of local pro-life activists, Massachusetts legislators last week overrode a veto of Governor Charlie Baker ® and enacted a significant expansion of decriminalized abortion access in the state.
With required supermajorities in both legislative chambers, the Massachusetts House of Representatives voted 107 to 46 on Monday, December 28th; and without a statement or any debate, the Senate followed suite the next day with a vote of 32 to 8, effectively overriding the governor’s veto.
According to the Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI), the legislation enshrines the decriminalization of abortion prior to 24 weeks for any reason, while, for all practical purposes, extending abortion access up to the moment of birth.
Massachusetts law had allowed abortion after 24 weeks if the mother’s life is at risk. Under this new provision, that exception is expanded “to preserve the patient’s physical or mental health” — criteria which can be broadly interpreted to make almost any abortion legal.
But, according to MFI, the legislation goes even further and allows “passive infanticide.” Instead of directing abortionists to “take all reasonable steps” to save a child who has survived a botched abortion, the new law “simply requires that there be life-saving equipment present, but doesn’t require that the physician actually USE it.” Thus, MFI has labeled this legislation the “Infanticide Act.”
Further, the new law no longer requires abortions procured prior to 24 weeks to be performed by a physician, but allows non-doctors such as physician assistants, nurse practitioners or nurse midwives to kill preborn babies as well.
Finally, the law lowers parental consent for a minor to obtain an abortion from the age of 18 to 16. MFI considers this a “horrifying” prospect for “any sane parent” and “[f]or those concerned about sex trafficking,” as it “allows abusers to cover their crimes by taking underage girls to a Planned Parenthood clinic themselves and keeping parents out of the picture.”
Even though he is a pro-abortion Republican, Gov. Baker expressed concerns about this latter measure, along with the expansion of access to “later-term abortions” in vetoing the bill and sending it back to the legislature on Christmas Eve.
Speaker of the Massachusetts House Bob DeLeo (D) promised on the same evening that his chamber “will seek to override the Administration’s veto,” in order to expand access to abortion, which they did on Monday, December 28.
Andrew Beckwith, president of MFI, noted the significance of these dates. In response to Baker’s veto, MFI expressed hope that a “Christmas Eve Miracle” would stop the “Infanticide Act.” Following the House override vote, Beckwith observed that December 28th “is also the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the day in the church calendar when we remember the baby boys killed by Herod’s decree.”
Beckwith concludes, “there is a deeper struggle at play here … [t]hese are all moral, spiritual battles with real, and often devastating, consequences.”
Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, stated, “Pro-lifers know setbacks. What we don’t know how to do is give up, look the other way, and allow injustice to stand.”
“We know the truth is worth pursuing!” she continued. “We know the lives we work to protect are worth every minute of our time in this life … And we look forward to continuing our work alongside the citizens of Massachusetts, who already know the value of human life and are eager to educate and support others and to ultimately illuminate the inherent right to life of the unborn.”
“As we have done since January 23, 1973, Massachusetts Citizens for Life will work tirelessly to make abortion unthinkable. And we will prevail.”
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| Moderna Likens Its Vaccine to an "Operating System" |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-05-2021, 08:40 AM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
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Moderna Likens Its Vaccine to an "Operating System"
From the Moderna Website
Our Operating System
Recognizing the broad potential of mRNA science, we set out to create an mRNA technology platform that functions very much like an operating system on a computer. It is designed so that it can plug and play interchangeably with different programs. In our case, the "program” or “app” is our mRNA drug - the unique mRNA sequence that codes for a protein.
We have a dedicated team of several hundred scientists and engineers solely focused on advancing Moderna's platform technology. They are organized around key disciplines and work in an integrated fashion to advance knowledge surrounding mRNA science and solve for challenges that are unique to mRNA drug development. Some of these disciplines include mRNA biology, chemistry, formulation & delivery, bioinformatics and protein engineering.
Our mRNA Medicines – The ‘Software of Life’
When we have a concept for a new mRNA medicine and begin research, fundamental components are already in place.
Generally, the only thing that changes from one potential mRNA medicine to another is the coding region – the actual genetic code that instructs ribosomes to make protein. Utilizing these instruction sets gives our investigational mRNA medicines a software-like quality. We also have the ability to combine different mRNA sequences encoding for different proteins in a single mRNA investigational medicine.
[Emphasis mine.]
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| +Vigano Exclusive on "The Great Reset" |
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Posted by: kelley - 01-04-2021, 09:31 PM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Exclusive Interview with Archbishop Vigano on The Great Reset
The exclusive transcript of an interview conducted by War Room show host and former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon with His Excellency Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop. The National Pulse is publishing the interview – which primarily concerns the Catholic Church, the deep state, and the key actors involved – without edits.
Bannon: Now that the Vatican has renewed its insidious secret agreement with China, a deal which you have repeatedly condemned as promoted by Bergoglio with the assistance of McCarrick, what can the “children of light” of the Great Awakening concretely do to undermine this unholy alliance with this brutal Communist regime?
Vigano: The dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party is allied to the global deep state, on the one hand so that together they can attain the goals that they have in common, on the other hand because the plans for the Great Reset are an opportunity to increase the economic power of China in the world, beginning with the invasion of national markets. At the same time that it pursues this project in its foreign policy, China is pursuing a domestic plan to restore the Maoist tyranny, which requires the cancellation of religions (primarily the Catholic religion), replacing them with a religion of the State which definitely has many elements in common with the universal religion desired by globalist ideology, whose spiritual leader is Bergoglio.
The complicity of Bergoglio’s deep church in this infernal project has deprived Chinese Catholics of the indefectible defense that the Papacy had always been for them. Up until the papacy of Benedict XVI, the papacy had not made any agreements with the Beijing dictatorship, and the Roman Pontiff retained the exclusive right to appoint bishops and govern dioceses. I recall that even at the time of the Bill Clinton administration during the 1990’s, former Cardinal McCarrick was the point of contact between the deep church and the American deep state, carrying out political missions in China on behalf of the US administration. And the suspicions that the resignation of Benedict XVI involved China are quite strong and coherent with the picture that has been emerging in recent months.
Thus we find ourselves faced with an infamous betrayal of the mission of the Church of Christ, carried out by her highest leaders in open conflict with those members of the Chinese Catholic underground hierarchy who have remained faithful to Our Lord and to His Church. My affectioned thoughts and prayers are with them and with Cardinal Zen, an eminent confessor of the faith, whom Bergoglio recently shamefully refused to receive.
We believers must act on the spiritual level by fervent prayer, asking God to give special protection to the Church in China, and also by continually denouncing the aberrations carried out by the Chinese regime. This action must be accompanied by a work of raising awareness within governments and international institutions that have not been compromised by the Chinese communist dictatorship, so that the violations of human rights and the attacks on the freedom of the Catholic Church in China may be denounced and punished with sanctions and strong diplomatic pressure. And this is the line that President Trump is pursuing with decisive courage. Beijing’s complicity with political and religious elements that are involved in murky operations of speculation and corruption must likewise be exposed. These profit-driven dealings constitute a very grave act of treason by politicians and public officials against their nation and also a grave betrayal of the Church by the men who lead her. I also think that in some cases this betrayal is not only carried out by individuals but also by the institutions themselves, as in the case of the European Union, which is currently finalizing a commercial agreement with China despite its systematic violation of human rights and its violent repression of dissent.
It would be an irreparable disaster if Joe Biden, who is heavily suspected of being complicit with the Chinese dictatorship, would be designated as President of the United States.
Bannon: You have been very confident that God desires a Trump victory in order to defeat the forces of evil inherent in the globalists’ Great Reset. What would you say to convince the naysayers who are ambivalent to the idea that this is a momentous battle between the children of light and the children of darkness?
Vigano: I simply consider who Trump’s adversary is and his numerous ties to China, the deep state, and the advocates of globalist ideology. I think of his intention to condemn us all to wear masks, as he has candidly admitted. I think of the fact that, incontestably, he is only a puppet in the hands of the elite, who are ready to remove him as soon they decide to replace him with Kamala Harris.
Beyond the political alignments, we must further understand that – above all in a complex situation like the present one – it is essential that the victory of the one who is elected President must be guaranteed in its absolute legal legitimacy, avoiding any suspicion of fraud and taking note of the overwhelming evidence of irregularities that has emerged in several states. A President who is simply proclaimed as such by the mainstream media affiliated with the deep state would be deprived of all legitimacy and would expose the nation to dangerous foreign interference, as has already been shown to have happened in the current election.
Bannon: You seem to suggest that the Trump Administration could be instrumental in helping to return the Church to a pre-Francis Catholicism. How does the Trump Administration accomplish that, and how can American Catholics work to save the world from this globalist ‘reset’?
Vigano: Bergoglio’s subservience to the globalist agenda is obvious, as well as his active support for the election of Joe Biden. In the same way, Bergoglio’s hostility to Trump and his repeated attacks against the President are evident. It is clear that Bergoglio considers Trump as his principal adversary, the obstacle that needs to be removed, so that the Great Reset can be put in motion.
Thus on the one hand we have the Trump administration and the traditional values that it holds in common with those of Catholics; on the other hand we have the deep state of the self-styled Catholic Joe Biden, who is subservient to the globalist ideology and its perverse, anti-human, antichristic, infernal agenda.
In order to put an end to the deep church and restore the Catholic Church, the extent of the involvement of the leaders of the Church with the Masonic-globalist project will have to be revealed: the nature of the corruption and crimes that these men have carried out, thereby making themselves vulnerable to blackmail, just as happens in a similar way in the political field to members of the deep state, beginning with Biden himself. Thus it is to be hoped that any proof of such crimes that is in the possession of the Secret Services would be brought to light, especially in relation to the true motives that led to the resignation of Benedict XVI and the conspiracies underlying the election of Bergoglio, thereby permitting the expulsion of the mercenaries who have seized control of the Church.
American Catholics still have time to denounce this global subversion and stop the establishment of the New Order: let them think about what sort of future they want for the coming generations, and of the destruction of society. Let them think about the responsibility that they have before God, their children, and their nation: as Catholics, as fathers and mothers of their families, and as patriots.
Bannon: Against all odds, average Americans are fighting to expose the massive and coordinated theft of our election: what advice would you give to our recalcitrant politicians about what is at stake for our nation and the world if we submit to this theft?
Vigano: The Truth can be denied by the majority for a certain amount of time, or by some people forever, but it can never be hidden from everyone forever. This is the lesson of History, which has inexorably revealed the great crimes of the past and those who perpetrated them.
Thus I invite politicians, beyond their political loyalties, to become champions of the Truth, to defend it as an indispensable treasure which alone can guarantee the credibility of institutions and the authority of the people’s representatives, in accord with the mandate they have received, the oath they have sworn to serve their country, and their moral responsibility before God. Each one of us has a role that Providence has entrusted to us, and which it would be culpable to shrink from. If the United States misses this opportunity, now, it will be wiped out from History. If it allows the idea to spread among the masses that the electoral choice of the citizens – the first expression of democracy – can be manipulated and thwarted, it will be complicit in the fraud, and will certainly deserve the execration of the entire world, which looks to America as a nation which has fought for and defended its freedom.
Bannon: In your letter to the President on October 25, the Solemnity of Christ the King, you spoke of the efforts of the deep state as “the final assault of the children of darkness.” There is a concerted effort by the globalists and their media partners to conceal and obscure the true tyrannical agenda implicit in the Great Reset, by calling it a wild conspiracy theory. What would you say to the skeptics who blissfully ignore the signs and plan to submit humanity to the domination of the global elites?
Vigano: The plan of the Great Reset makes use of the mainstream media as an indispensable ally: the media corporations are almost all actively part of the deep state and know that the power that will be guaranteed to them in the future depends exclusively on their slavish adherence to its agenda.
Labeling those who denounce the existence of a conspiracy as “conspiracy theorists” confirms, if anything, that this conspiracy exists, and that its authors are very upset at having been found out and reported to public opinion. And yet they themselves have said it: Nothing will be the same again. And also: Build Back Better, in an effort to make us believe that the radical changes they want to impose have been made necessary by a pandemic, by climate change, and by technological progress.
Years ago, those who spoke of the New World Order were called conspiracy theorists. Today, all of the world’s leaders, including Bergoglio, speak with impunity about the New World Order, describing it exactly in the terms that were identified by the so-called conspiracy theorists. It is enough to read the globalists’ declarations to understand that the conspiracy exists and that they pride themselves on being its architects, to the point of admitting the need for a pandemic in order to reach their objectives of social engineering.
To the skeptics I ask: if the models that are proposed to us today are so terrible, what will our children be able to expect when the elite will have succeeded in taking total control over the nations? Families without father and mother, polyamory, sodomy, children who can change their sex, the cancellation of Religion and the imposition of an infernal cult, abortion and euthanasia, the abolition of private property, a health dictatorship, a perpetual pandemic. Is this the world that we want, that you want for yourselves, your children, and your family and friends?
We must all become aware of how much the proponents of the New World Order and the Great Reset hate the inalienable values of our Greco-Christian civilization, such as Religion, the family, respect for life and the inviolable rights of the human person, and national sovereignty.
Bannon: You have repeatedly warned that the ‘deep state’ and ‘deep church’ have colluded to plot in various ways to overthrow Benedict as well as President Trump. Besides Theodore McCarrick, who else is behind this infernal alliance, and how do Catholics undermine and expose it?
Vigano: It is apparent that McCarrick acted on behalf of the deep state and the deep church, but he certainly did not do it alone. All of his activity suggests a very efficient organizational structure composed of people whom McCarrick had promoted and covered by other accomplices.
The events that led to the resignation of Benedict XVI still need to be clarified, but one of the members of the deep church, the deceased Cardinal Danneels, a Jesuit like Bergoglio, admitted that he was a part of the so-called Saint Gallen Mafia, which essentially worked to bring about the “springtime of the Church” which John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, wrote about in his emails published by Wikileaks.
Thus there is a group of conspirators who have worked and still work in the heart of the Church for the interests of the elite. Most of them are identifiable, but the most dangerous are those who do not expose themselves, those whom the newspaper never mentions. They will not hesitate to force Bergoglio to resign also, just like Ratzinger, if he does not obey their orders. They would like to transform the Vatican into a retirement home for popes emeriti, demolishing the papacy and securing power: exactly the same as what happens in the deep state, where, as I have already said, Biden is the equivalent of Bergoglio.
In order to bring down the deep state and the deep church, three things are essential:
- first of all, becoming aware of what globalism’s plan is, and to what extent it is instrumental to the establishment of the kingdom of the Antichrist, since it shares its principles, means, and ends;
- secondly, firmly denouncing this infernal plan and asking the Shepherds of the Church – and also the laity – to defend her, breaking their complicit silence: God will demand of them an account for their desertion;
- finally, it is necessary to pray, asking the Lord to grant each one of us the strength to resist – resistite fortes in fide, Saint Peter warns us – against the ideological tyranny that is daily imposed on us not only by the media but also by the cardinals and bishops who are under Bergoglio’s thumb.
If we can prove ourselves strong in facing this trial; if we know how to hold ourselves anchored to the rock of the Church without allowing ourselves to be seduced by false christs and false prophets, the Lord will permit us to see – at least for now – the defeat of the assault of the children of darkness against God and men. If out of fear or complicity we follow the prince of this world, denying our Baptismal promises, we will be condemned with him to inexorable defeat and eternal damnation. I tremble for those who do not realize the responsibility that they have before God for the souls that He has entrusted to them. But to those who fight courageously to defend the rights of God, the Nation, and the Family, the Lord assures his protection. He has placed His Most Holy Mother at our side, the Queen of Victories and the Help of Christians. We invoke Her faithfully during these difficult days, confidently certain of Her intervention.
Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop, Die Octavæ Nativitatis Domini, January 1st, 2021
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| St. Robert Southwell Teaches Us How to Survive |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-04-2021, 05:53 PM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
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St. Robert Southwell Teaches Us How To Survive
In the face of what looks like unprecedented crisis a good thing to do is to pick up the nearest history book and start reading in the presence of God. As the ancient Preacher said, “What is it that hath been? The same that shall be. What is it that hath been done? The same that shall be done. Nothing under the sun is new, neither is there any man able to say: Behold this is new. For it has already gone before in the ages that were before us” (Eccles. 1:9-10). The past isn’t just prologue, but the very pre-enactment of the present and the future.
People, especially the pious, often believe they are facing some dilemma no one has ever faced before. That’s because most of them don’t live more than 80 years, and a third of that had to be spent in sleeping just to keep going. And people forget. Even when they remember, they are tied to their senses and all the confusing momentary data these relay to mind and passions for tabulation. It’s normal to draw conclusions relating only to the immediate surroundings.
The devil, on the other hand, never forgets. His life span is forever, and he never sleeps. Being pure spirit he is furthermore unimpeded by matter in his thought process, and his will is set undeniably in one direction – “seeking someone to devour.” Instantly present wherever he acts, he has had thousands of years in which to study us, noting with satisfaction that human nature never changes. He better than anyone knows that man doesn’t “evolve.” This means he can use the same tricks on us over and over. When we fall for them, often as not he has persuaded us that we are confronted with a situation for which no rules have yet been worked out, and that the solution is all up to us.
Formal disobedience easily follows. Vows and laws, designed precisely in anticipation of the extraordinary – the very ropes keeping Ulysses lashed to the mast of the ship when the sirens start singing – are discarded in the name of the emergency itself. The old serpent told Mother Eve that God’s law couldn’t really apply in the case of the forbidden fruit, which could hardly cause death, for “God knows that in what day soever you [a plural pronoun in the Vulgate, by the way] shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be open” (Gen. 3:5). God, the devil implied, was waiting for Eve to grow up and show some initiative. He was simply testing her – as indeed He was.
The trick still works. Schismatics of every shade, professing the most orthodox doctrine (which is what makes them schismatics and not heretics) are proliferating among traditionalists today, setting up ecclesiastical structures of all shapes! Good Catholics seek to justify these schemes by maintaining that they have been betrayed by the heads of the Church herself, even by her Supreme Head.
So what’s new? When Adam ratified Eve’s initiative, each and every one of us was formally betrayed by the head of the whole human race long before we were ever conceived. The pattern of “revolution from above” has not changed. The Son of God himself was condemned not by underlings, but by the highest ecclesiastical and secular authorities. He showed us how to defer to their authority even unto death, all the while refusing in His actions to do “according to their works.” He showed us the Cross.
Like everyone else, the devil has to work through divinely established channels to perpetrate any real evil. He can’t create any new situations, but only shuffle the scenery. Only God can say, “Behold I make all things new” (Apo. 21:5) . . . “A new commandment I give unto you” (John 13:34). Only He can put the “new song” into our mouths, reveal our new name written or seal a new Testament in His own Precious Blood (Apo. 14:3, 2:17; Matt. 26:28). Power to produce something new is a prerogative of divine omnipotence, closely akin to forgiving sins. Where men seem to have created a new situation, we need only look under the stage dressing to find the same old one which confronted Adam and then our Lord. One succumbed to the siren song of revolution, the Other did not.
With the same thing happening all the time, prophecy comes easily to those with grace to read the past correctly. Scripture itself, says St. Paul, was given as a prefiguration of what will happen to us, “upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Cor. 10:11). Although things will be essentially the same, however, there will be this difference: they will grow steadily worse until the climax is reached. Our Lord promised us, “There shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world” (Matt. 24:21). St. Paul wrote the young Bishop Timothy, “In the last days shall come dangerous times” ( 2 Tim. 3:1), so dangerous that we have our Lord’s word for it that if those future days were not shortened by the divine mercy, no one could be saved (Matt. 24:22). As the devil gains ascendancy over sinful men, choices will narrow, deceptions become more subtle in the fading light of the eclipsing Church.
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The Jesuit martyr St. Robert Southwell thought it was bad enough in England four centuries ago when he wrote, “Now is the time in which many of our forefathers desired to live!” What would he say today?
Addressing his Catholic contemporaries, he declared,
Quote:“You it is, whom God hath allotted to be the chief actors in this contest. From your veins He means to derive the streams that shall water His Church. He hath made choice of you to delight His friends and confound His enemies, with the beauty and grace of your virtuous life and patient constancy. Now is the time come for the light of the world to blaze out; for the salt of the earth to season weak souls tending to corruption; yea, for the good shepherd to spend his life for the defense of his silly flock. The pruning-time is come, and in order that the tree of the Church may sprout out more abundantly, the branches and boughs of full growth are lopped off. Now is the time come of which Christ forewarned us: ‘It shall come to pass that he who killeth you shall think he doth God a service.’ Lo, the things that were said are now done; and now, since that is fulfilled which was foretold, that which was promised will also be performed; our Lord himself assuring us: ‘When you see all these things come to pass, then know you that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”
Where these words do not apply to some extent, there can be only one reason, for St. Paul told St. Timothy categorically that all “that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12). Where some persecution is not felt in God’s Church is where faith has come to terms with the world – if not battling to maintain the status quo in the name of religion. As Fr. Southwell wrote, “When England was Catholic, she had many glorious confessors; it is for the honor and benefit of our country that it should be well stored with a number of martyrs; and we have now, God be thanked! such martyr-makers in authority as mean, if they have their will, to make saints enough to furnish all our churches with treasure, when it shall please God to restore them to their true honors; and doubt not but either they or their posterity shall see the very prisons of execution become places of reverence and devotion.”
England as a nation has yet to return to the Faith, for although bloody martyrdoms are no longer the rule, the times have only worsened. Reading English history we can learn some of the things to expect, for the situation that pertained there can now be said to exist within the Church herself. As a seminarian in Douai and Rome, Fr. Southwell searched like us for some historical precedent to enlighten him, and found a satisfactory one in the storm which decimated the Church in North Africa in the third century. There was indeed a close resemblance between what happened there and in England, a Catholic country long known as “our Lady’s bower.” At a time when the Church in Africa appeared to be so flourishing that there seems to have been serious talk of shifting some of her Roman administration to Carthage, two persecutions were unleashed upon it, the first under the Emperor Decius, the second under Valerian.
From the first moment, thousands of Catholics, both priests and laity, rushed to the pagan temples to sacrifice or burn incense to the gods without waiting to be asked, rather than risk confiscation of their property, let alone death. The more wily among them, called the libellatici, bought certificates from the Roman magistrates stating they had complied with the government order of worship whereas in reality they had not. The martyrs – among them St. Perpetua and St. Felicity mentioned in the Holy Mass – were great, but few and far between.
St. Cyprian, native Bishop of Carthage, ran for cover during the first persecution, but vehemently excoriated both kinds of lapses. He managed to ready a valiant remnant for the second persecution, during which he laid down his own life along with many others; but as later in England, Christianity never recovered its former preeminence in Africa, being furthermore left in the grip of the Novatian schism, which raged for generations. Arising from the controversy over the canonical standing of former defectors, this schism eventually set up an anti-Pope to enforce its rigid disciplines against these lapsed Catholics, so characteristic of the schismatic mentality is merciless orthodoxy, St. Cyprian, Pope St. Cornelius and other Popes pled in vain for leniency toward those who repented.
Having never before fallen away in such unheard of numbers, many African Christians sincerely believed that this was the Great Apostasy of the last days, a normal assumption ever since then, wherever the Church herself seems to be defecting. Although many of the predicted signs are often present, and some major political figure would seem to fit the description of the Antichrist, so far the conclusive proof postulated by our Lord has been conspicuously missing, for He told the Jews, “I am come in the name of my Father, and you receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive” (John 5:43).
So far no persecutor has been publicly acclaimed by the Jews as their Messiah, although by now the time may not be far off. Even St. Cyprian, like Fr. Southwell and all of us, seemed to have expected this false Messiah momentarily. He exhorted his flock, “Nor let any one of you, beloved brethren, be so terrified by the fear of persecution, or the coming of the threatening Antichrist, as not to be found armed for all things by the evangelical exhortations and precepts, and by the heavenly warnings. Antichrist is coming, but above him comes Christ also!”
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Today, amid clearer and clearer apocalyptic signs, the number of apostates only continues to grow. Once in the thousands, they can now be counted in the millions, all the while God continues to distill His saints at His divine leisure. As Fr. Southwell looked to St. Cyprian of Carthage for inspiration in his apostolate to the abandoned sheep of Elizabethan England, we can now look to him. The afore-cited quotation from him occurs in his Epistle of Comfort. Now a spiritual classic, it survives today in a huge body of some 300 volumes of English recusant literature now thumbed almost exclusively by scholars, but which represent the Herculean efforts of Catholic writers to keep the true Faith alive and in print amid the avalanche of poisonous heretical works then only beginning to engulf the faithful the world over.
To the general run of posterity Robert Southwell is merely an English poet of acknowledged genius who authored the famous poem “The Burning Babe.” Anthologies occasionally mention his Catholic priesthood, but more likely limit themselves to pointing out his uncanny ability to make Elizabethan conceits and verse forms serve sacred subjects. His prose works, also using brilliant imagery, are always to the same religious purpose.
The English persecution can be said to have officially begun with Elizabeth’s first Parliament, which introduced by law actual changes in worship and put legal sanctions behind them. By the close of 1587 the Epistle was ready to strengthen the faithful who had taken a stand against Cranmer’s Mass, mostly by preparing them for the worst. Although its original title page read “Imprinted at Paris,” the work is printed on English paper and generally known to have been rolled off the secret press operated in the very heart of London by Fr. Southwell’s religious Superior, Fr. Henry Garnet, S.J.
Its main theme is the same as St. Thomas More’s great Dialogue of Comfort penned in the Tower nearly a half century before. Both expound the great supernatural reasons for standing firm against the enemy, but whereas the layman More approaches the problem speculatively, Fr. Southwell approaches it as a priest and pastor of souls. Exuding immediacy and urgency, the Epistle is intensely practical, and small wonder, for it began as a series of letters smuggled to the imprisoned St. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, to sustain him during the long captivity in which he finally died, bereft all the while of the Sacraments and Catholic companionship of any kind. A godson of Philip II of Spain and an erstwhile favorite of Elizabeth’s, the young Earl had cut short a worldly, pleasure-seeking court life which caused his wife much suffering, by a sudden fervent conversion to the old Faith and an impolitic refusal to attend the new church services.
The Jesuit martyr never actually met him, but a deep spiritual friendship developed between them by correspondence, and eventually both were canonized on the same day in 1970. It is his letters to the young Earl that Fr. Southwell later collected and revised for general consumption by deleting from them particulars which would have applied only to the original recipient. The Epistle makes fulsome use of what the Earl’s pious wife dubbed “the blessed Fr. Southwell’s remedy” against fear: To imagine the worst, to expect it, and to offer it up beforehand to almighty God in union with the sufferings of the Redeemer before anything happened to shake one’s resolve.
Keeping before his readers the supernatural nature of their trial, he bids them look at the four great consolations persecution offers them:
Quote:“First, it must needs be a great comfort to those that, either reclaimed from schism or heresy, or from a dissolute life to the constant profession of the Catholic faith, are for that cause persecuted by Satan and his instruments: for it is a very great sign that they are delivered out of his power and accounted by him as sheep of God’s flock, seeing that otherwise he would never so heavily pursue them. . . . It is not for us to regard the slanders of men, or to desert the service of God for them, seeing that it is but a very slender excuse to allege the fear of words of a vassal as a just impediment for not performing our duty towards our Sovereign. The friendship of this world is an enemy to God. . . .
“Secondly, we should willingly undergo persecution also because ‘whom God loveth He chastiseth, and scourgeth every child He receiveth. . . .’ The vanities of this world cast the soul into so delightsome a frenzy, and lull it so dangerously asleep, that many in a fit of licentiousness run headlong to perdition, and while they rejoice they rave; and others, in a careless and remiss kind of life, sleep themselves to death. . . . To wean us from an unnatural nurse, God anointeth her breast with the bitterness of tribulation.
“And in the third place, one . . . cannot but think that it is a most comfortable thing to suffer adversity for a good cause; seeing that it is not only the livery and cognizance of Christ, but the very garment of royalty which He chose to wear in this life. . . . And surely now is the time that we are called by Christ through fire and water, and now with loud voice doth He renew His old proclamation: ‘Whoever loveth father, mother, wife, children, house or living more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that taketh not up his cross and follow Me, cannot be My disciple. . . .’ What comfort can a man reap in a place that is governed by the Prince of darkness and peopled with our enemies and the enemies of God; where vice is advanced, virtue scorned, the bad rewarded and the good oppressed?
“But in the fourth place, to come to the principal drift of my discourse, what more forcible things can I set before your eyes as motives to comfort you in your tribulation, than the cause of your persecution, the honor of your present estate and the future reward of your patient and constant sufferance? And first, as to the cause that you defend – which is no less than the only true and Catholic religion. You defend that Church which is avouched by all antiquity; confirmed by the blood of martyrs; gainsaid by the heretics of all ages and most undoubtedly approved by all concurring testimonies. You defend that Church of Rome to which, as St. Cyprian says, ‘misbelief can have no access, and which can receive no forgery.’
“But, on the other side, two hundred founders of new sects that have been since Christ’s time, though they have for a season flourished and prevailed, having emperors and potentates to defend them, infinite books and writings to divulge their doctrines and all temporal aids to set them forward; yet we see that their memory is quite abolished, their names commonly unknown and no more mention of them than the condemnation and disproof of their errors recorded by Catholic writers. The same doubtless will be the end of the novelties of our days, which being only parts of their corruptions, revived and raked out of oblivion, as heretofore they vanished with their devisers, so will they now with their revivers. More than other things under the sun, heresy is never new!
“Yet, so ripe is heresy grown, so infinite the sects and divisions into which it has spread, besides new ones daily uprising, that the variety of religions and the uncertainty which among so many is truest, hath made the greater part of our country to believe none at all. And this, in truth, is the end and last step to which heresy bringeth a man. Seeing therefore that the ship of St. Peter now saileth, not against the wind of one evil spirit, or against the stress of one flood of heresy, but against a tide of all the pestilent spirits of former ages, and against the mainstream of all heresy; it is no less necessary than glorious for us to employ our last endeavors in the defense thereof; and think our limbs happily lost, our blood blessedly bestowed, our lives most honorably spent in this so noble and important a cause.”
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St. Robert sealed these words with his own blood and dismembered limbs at Tyburn on February 21, 1595. It would be hard to believe he wasn’t writing for us who are now at grips with an evil Pope St. Pius X labeled “the compendium of all heresies,” which has decimated Christendom not only as a political entity, but is now leaving gaping holes in every family. That so far it has had to rely so little on open physical violence is proof of its power and virulence. St. Robert reminds us,
Quote:“Your adversaries are mighty, their forces very great, their vantage not unknown, their malice experienced: but your Captain has always conquered, your cause has in the end always advanced, your predecessors never lost the field; wherefore then should you have less hope of the victory? Christianity is a warfare, and Christians spiritual soldiers. . . . Now cometh the winnower with his fan to see who is blown away like light chaff and who resists the blasts like massy wheat. . . . Many may seem faithful in the calm of the Church, but when the blasts of diversity bluster against them, few are found in the fruit of martyrdom.”
Ever envisaging the worst, St. Robert proceeds to show the tremendous spiritual advantages to be found in prison: “For though prisons in themselves be the folds of Satan, to harbor his lewd flock, yet when the cause ennobles the name of prisoner, the prisoner abolishes the dishonor of the place. What thing of old more odious than the cross? What place more abhorred than the Mount of Calvary? . . .Think not of the name prison and you will find it a retiring place fittest to serve God. . . a school of divine and hidden mysteries to God’s friends, where Joseph learned to decipher dreams, Samson recovered his strength and Manassas was converted. The saint’s knowledge of prison life was far from academic. Before undergoing torture and imprisonment himself, he had contrived to visit many prisoners secretly, even whole groups of them. His one recorded sermon and one of his finest prose works, “Mary Magdalen’s Funeral Tears,” was delivered on her feast day in London’s famous Clink only a month after his return from the Continent. So, if it comes to martyrdom, so much the better. We must all die anyway. “Why, therefore, should we fear that which cannot be avoided?. . . He dies old enough who dies good. . . . The baptism of blood surpasses that of water, for it is the greatest point of charity by God’s testimony.
Fr. Southwell concludes his Epistle by upbraiding those Catholics who have submitted to the new English religion out of false obedience to their superiors for the scandal they give “in confirming the obstinacy of misbelievers, in weakening and overthrowing the faith of the faint-hearted and wavering.” He speaks of the “danger of infection by contagious speeches that creep and corrode like canker.”
To the would-be ecumenists he says, Quote:“I wish not to expose your contempt of the canon of the Apostles, of the Council of Laodicea and others forbidding to resort to the prayers or conventicles of heretics; of the example of all antiquity condemning the same; of the verdict and common consent of the profoundest writers in Christendom; and in particular, of the choice men in the Tridentine Council who, after long sifting and examining this point, in the end found it altogether unlawful and avouched it better to suffer all kinds of torment than yield to it. Yea, although they were desired not to make this a public decree, in respect to the troubles that might arise to the Catholics in England, in whose behalf the question of going to church was proposed; yet the Legate and the aforesaid Fathers gave this answer: that they would have their resolution no less accounted of than if it were the censure of the whole Council.”
Fr. Southwell reminds his readers of their duty to give good example. “The more exquisite the rigors our enemies exercise against us, the greater is the allurement of others to our religion. . . everyone seeing such constancy is cast into some scruple. But alas, many of them, yielding before the battle. . . have not left themselves so much as this excuse – that they went to church unwillingly. They offer themselves voluntarily; they run unwittingly to their ruin and seem rather to embrace a thing before desired than to yield to an occasion they would fain have avoided. And did not your feet stumble, your eyes grow dim, your hearts quake and your bodies tremble when you came into the polluted synagogue? Could the servant of Christ abide in that place?. . . Could you come hither to offer your prayers unto God? . . . Will you seek to shelter yourselves under the pretext that you are in mind Catholics and that you come to church only to obey the law?”
He reminds these weak Catholics, “You carry also with you your dear innocents, . . . thus training your little ones to destruction, unlike the good mother in Machabees who rather exhorted her children to martyrdom than to offend by saving their lives.” He warns, “Divers heretics will be witnesses against you in the day of judgment, for,” quoting St. Cyprian, “if the faith that conquers be crowned, the perfidiousness that betrays shall be chastised.” In every age the wavering side with an illusory majority, lacking the spiritual sight of the prophet Eliseus, who reminded the Israelites besieged by the Syrian multitudes, “Fear not, for there are more with us than with them” ( 4 Kgs. 6:16).
In St. Thomas More’s Dialogue of Comfort there is a fine passage underscoring this truth:
Quote:“Now, if it were . . . that you should be brought through the broad high street of a great city and that all along the way that you were going there were on the one side of the way a rabble of ragged beggars and madmen that would despise and dispraise you, with all the shameful names that they could call you, and all the villainous words that they could say to you: and that there were then all along the other side of the same street . . . a goodly company standing in a fair range, a row of wise and worshipful folk allowing and commending you, more than fifteen times as many as that rabble of ragged beggars and railing madmen are: would you cease your progress willingly, believing that you went unto your shame because of the shameful jesting and railing of those mad, foolish wretches? Or hold on your way with a good cheer and a glad heart, thinking yourself much honored by the laud and approbation of that other honorable sort? A trenchant appraisal of the militant Catholic here below who sides with the real majority in the Church – the countless angelic hosts and multitudes of the blessed martyrs and saints who witness his trials.”
St. Robert likewise begs us not to go to perdition with the faithless “for company’s sake. . . . Let not the example of those that fall make you weaker. If they had been of us they would have stayed with us. We should rejoice when the wolves are separated from the sheep of Christ. . . Let no man imagine that the good go out of the Church. The wind carries not away the wheat, neither does the storm overthrow the trees that are strong rooted.” He closes with a description of what heaven will be like, and the words, “Not he who begins, but he who perseveres unto the end shall be saved.”
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Although responsible for many conversions in the course of the strenuous underground ministry he exercised for some six miraculous years around London before being caught, St. Robert was not concerned with non-Catholics. He saw his duty in supplying the desperate needs of the uprooted faithful who were merely trying to save their souls amid the general apostasy. He contrived to reach not only those who were incarcerated, like the Earl, and perhaps facing the death penalty, but larger numbers like the Earl’s wife, the Countess Anne Dacres, who were trying to lead good Catholic lives at large, isolated from most of society and yet courting almost certain danger by worshiping in secret. To this end he wrote the Short Rule of a Good Life, which issued from Fr. Garnet’s press shortly after its author’s martyrdom. It was coupled with the beautiful, poignant and long Letter to his Father,[1] Richard Southwell, exhorting him to return to the Faith. This gentleman had made fatal compromises in hopes of saving the family fortune, but found grace with God after his son’s sacrifice. In 1600 Fr. Garnet was able to write his Jesuit Superior, “Mr. Southwell, Robert’s father, has just died a Catholic.”
The saint’s name did not appear on the volume, but everyone knew the notorious Fr. Southwell had written it, and so great was his literary reputation throughout England that it circulated freely. After a half century of religious chaos the English were so desperate for good spiritual direction that even the heretics made use of it. Some of the editions even boasted official sanction. Purged of references to saints, mortal and venial sins and Catholic practices, the Short Rule/i] emerged in Anglican dress as the reformers’ own doctrine. This was not uncommon practice on their part, for tampering was easier and more profitable than outright suppression, always difficult to enforce. A like fate overtook Fr. Persons’ edition of Loarte’s Christian Directory, cleverly modified by a Calvinist divine.
As practical and immediate as the Epistle, the Short Rule is generally acknowledged to have been written for the Countess of Arundel. In any case her saintly personal life was a great credit to Fr. Southwell’s spiritual direction, for this gracious, valiant woman daily risked her life to help him and many other priests reach as many Catholics as possible, affording the lodging, material helps and protection without which their ministry would soon have foundered. Not the least of her contributions to the cause was the aforementioned printing press. One of the Catholic counties of Maryland bears her name to this day.
On reading the [i]Rule one is struck first by its crashing lack of originality. The work of a highly gifted, imaginative poet, its contents are pretty much an Ignatian version of hard-headed old Catholic doctrine and precepts handed down for generations. If the author were not known, it would be hard to discern from the text alone that it was written during a period of intense persecution, when the most respected, long-standing Catholic families were being systematically shattered, robbed and humiliated for refusing to accept a man made reform soon to cast out an entire Christian nation for hundreds of years from the Church Christ founded. One of the few clues to the contemporary scene occurs in a section headed “On the Care of My Children,” where parents are urged to “tell them often of the abbeys, and the virtue of the old monks and friars and other priests and religious women.” Needless to say, this passage did not escape the Anglican editor, who substituted, “tell them often of the virtue of their predecessors, and of the truth and honesty of the old time and the iniquity of ours.”
Never at any time does the author descend to personal invective or mention those laboring to destroy the Faith among his contemporaries. He lays down in the first chapter: “I cannot serve God in this world, nor go about to enjoy Him in the next, but that God’s enemies and mine will repine and seek to hinder me: which are three.” Elizabeth? Cranmer? Perhaps Sir Henry Walsingham and his bloodhound Richard Topcliffe? Hardly. The enemies he speaks of are far more formidable, and more ancient: the world, the flesh and the devil.
Quote:“Wherefore I must resolve myself and set it down as a thing undoubted that my whole life must be a continual combat with these adversaries, whom I must assuredly persuade myself do lie hourly in wait for me to seek their advantage, and that their malice is so implacable and their hatred against me so rooted in them that I must never look to have one hour secure from their assaults, but that they will from time to time, so long as there is breath in my body, still labor to make me forsake and offend God, allure me to their service and draw me to my damnation.”
Thus does he strike the nub of all persecution in England or anywhere. Had every English Catholic been living by the principles outlined in the Countess’ Rule, Cranmer and his revolution would not have collapsed, but never happened, because there would have been no need to purify their souls.
How reassuring therefore to find nothing new in all these pages! Their whole tenor is how to maintain union with God by the perfect accomplishment of His holy will. It is the ancient science of the saints, for whom God’s will soars above every other means of union, even the Eucharist.. For instance, Fr. Southwell makes no mention of spiritual Communion, a practice so useful, consoling, and so often recommended to those deprived of the Sacraments. But why should he? If the Rule is followed, one’s whole life becomes one unbroken spiritual Communion, continuing without interruption into eternity.
The baptized under persecution may not be able to attend Mass, but they can live it in their flesh by mystical union with Christ in prayer and suffering. Where it is impossible to do both, mere attendance pales by comparison in cases where God himself has removed the liturgical wraps from the essential reality. Sometimes it would seem that we must be torn periodically from the Sacraments and liturgy in order to be forcibly reminded of their divine Source. Many saints have suffered this trial. Persecution stands at the summit of the Beatitudes, for “your reward is very great in heaven” (Matt. 5:12).
St. Cyprian, who fought to preserve the same Latin Rite Mass which is proscribed nearly everywhere today, and for which Fr. Southwell laid down his life, had this to say to the heretics of his day:
Quote:“If in the sacrifice Christ offered no one is to be imitated but Christ, we must beyond doubt obey and do what Christ did, and what He commanded to be done: since in the Gospel He tells us: ‘You are my friends if you do the things I command you’ (John 15:14). . . So if Christ alone is to be listened to, we must pay no attention to what another thinks is to be done, but do what Christ who is above all first did. We are not to follow after the notions of men, but the truth of God; since God says to us by His prophet Isaiah: ‘In vain do they worship Me, teaching the doctrines and the commands of men’ (29:13).
“And in the Gospel He says this same thing: ‘Making void the word of God by your own tradition, which you have given forth’ (Mk. 4:13). And He lays it down in another place and says, ‘He therefore that shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:19). And if it is not lawful to undo even the least of the Lord’s commandments, how much more unlawful is it to break those that are so grave, so serious, so closely related to the mystery of the Lord’s Passion and to our own Redemption, or to change into something else, because of some human notion, that which has been divinely handed down to us?”
Living the Mass in prefiguration in the midst of the fiery furnace in Babylon, the good Azarias prayed, “We, O Lord, are diminished more than any nation and are brought low in all the earth this day for our sins. Neither is there at this time prince or leader, or prophet, or holocaust, or sacrifice, or oblation, or incense, or place of first-fruits before Thee, that we may find mercy: nevertheless in a contrite heart and humble spirit let us be accepted. As in holocausts of rams and bullocks, and as in thousands of fat lambs: so let our sacrifice be made in Thy sight this day, that it may please Thee: for there is no confusion to them that trust in Thee” (Dan. 4:37-40).
The picture was just as bleak for English Catholics in Fr. Southwell’s day. Although St. Pius V had excommunicated and deposed Elizabeth as Queen of England, relieving her subjects of all allegiance to her, he had died before being able to organize the military expedition designed to enforce the Bull, and the two organized by his successor Gregory XIII had both failed through treachery. The spiritual state of Europe was such that exterior means had lost all power. In the Short Rule St. Robert therefore counsels the penitent, “a perfect resignation of myself into God’s hands, with a full desire that He should me as it were to His glory, whether it were to my temporal comfort or no. And to be as ready to serve Him in misery, need and affliction as in prosperity and pleasure, thinking it my chiefest delight to be used as God will, and to have His pleasure and providence fully accomplished in me, which is the end for which I was created and for which I do now live. . . To which these considerations may help me:
“First, the end I aim at is God’s glory in this world and His reward in the next; and therefore, knowing that nothing but my voluntary sin can bar me from this end, what need I much care by what means God will have me attain it? For the means can last but a little, and the end endureth forever and is so much the more comfortable in that it has been achieved with more discomfortable toils.
“Secondly, God loves me more than I love myself, and is so wise that He best sees what is fittest for me, all present and future circumstances considered. He is so mighty that what His wisdom and love shall conclude for my good His power can put into execution; and therefore let me rather yield myself wholly to His providence than mine own desires.
“Thirdly, whatsoever moves me to fear or dislike anything which I could not frame my mind to bear, God sees it as well and far better than I, yea, and all other secret and unknown hazards that are annexed to that thing. If then He, knowing all these things, will nevertheless let it happen to me, I must assure myself that it proceeds of love and is for my greater good, and that having laid a heavy burden upon weak forces will by His grace supply all my fears, wants and frailties.”
We can imagine what impact such words must have had when the public first read them, so soon after the cruel martyrdom God had let happen to their author. Fr. Garnet’s Preface to the Reader runs, “The author of this little book, gentle reader, I nothing doubt but is very well known to thee, as also for his learning, piety, zeal, charity, fortitude and other rare singular qualities, but especially for his precious death he is renowned to the world abroad. Neither needeth there any extraordinary vision, but the sound and certain doctrine of the Catholic Church is sufficient to persuade that he is a most glorious saint in heaven. . . . But because thou shouldst not be ignorant of the way by which this valiant champion of Christ arrived unto so happy a country, he himself hath left behind him for thy benefit, and even among the last of his fruitful labors for the good of souls had designed to publish unto the world the description of this most gainful voyage to heaven . . . the Short Rule of a Good Life.
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For Fr. Southwell and many other martyrs the more apt title might have been Good Rule for a Short Life. As St. Thomas More put it in his Dialogue of Comfort, “There is no born Turk so cruel to Christian folk as is the false Christian that falleth from the faith.” Where Master Rich was not lacking to St. Thomas, nor Judas to Christ, neither were false brethren lacking to the besieged Catholics of England. Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s Secretary of State and Chief of Security, had agents even among the English seminarians studying abroad for the priesthood, who not only served as informants, but fomented every possible dissension among clergy and students.
Others, posing as Catholics and moving in the clandestine Mass groups, became adept at enrolling the weaker members in little plots and counter-plots and then denouncing them to the authorities. The most famous of these machinations by far was the so-called Babington Plot, named after the unfortunate Anthony Babington whom Walsingham chose for the role of patsy, as we would say today. Ostensibly rigged to assassinate Elizabeth and enthrone Mary Queen of Scots as the rightful English monarch, this conspiracy was entirely concocted by the enemy. It brought to ruin and the gallows not only the Catholics directly implicated, together with those who unknowingly befriended them, but provided the long sought for pretext for the execution of Mary, who had in no way promoted it, although she had been told of it.
Even Fr. Southwell, lately arrived in England, had barely escaped being innocently involved. So consummate had been the deception, he had at first believed the plot was indeed the work of Catholics. In his Humble Supplication to Her Majesty – penned to protest the Proclamation of 1591 branding priests like himself as dissolute agents of Spain – the nobly born Jesuit is able later to inform Elizabeth that Walsingham’s spy Robert Poley was “the chief instrument to contrive and prosecute the matter, to draw into the net such green wits as . . . might easily be overwrought by Mr. Secretary’s subtle and sifting wit. For Poley masking his secret intentions under the face of religion, and abusing with irreligious hypocrisy all rites and sacraments to borrow the false opinion of a Catholic, still fed the poor gentleman [Babington] with his master’s baits, and he holding the line in his hand, suffered them like silly fishes to play themselves upon the hook till they were thoroughly fastened, that then he might strike at his own pleasure, and be sure to draw them to a certain destruction.”
The destruction was thorough once the trap was sprung. In An Autobiography from the Jesuit Underground, Fr. William Weston later wrote, “On one side of my room was the public road. On the other the river Thames. Throughout the day and, I think, for several days that followed, great crowds gathered in the street cheering and making merry. They piled up masses of wood and set fire to them, then stood around talking wildly all the time against the Pope, the King of Spain, against Catholics and the Queen of Scots; and not the least, as you can guess, against the Jesuits. . . On the other side of the river the sight was more terrible still. Catholics tied hand and foot were ferried across the river, up and down between the Tower and Westminster where the trials were held. . . For the space of at least six or seven weeks this was my daily spectacle. During all that time the trials were conducted, death sentences pronounced on many gentlemen and the executions carried out.
Fr. Southwell writes in the Supplication: “All highways were watched, infinite houses searched, hues and cries raised, frights bruited in people’s ears, as though the whole realm had been on fire, whereas in truth it was but the hissing of a few green twigs of their own kindling, which they might without any such uproar have quenched with a handful of water.” And again, “As for this action of Babington, it was in truth rather a snare to entrap them than any device of their own, since it was both plotted, furthered and finished by Sir Francis Walsingham and his other complices, who laid and hatched all the particulars thereof, as they thought it would best fall out of the discredit of Catholics and cutting off the Queen of Scots.”
His personal estimation of the Scottish queen is best revealed in a stanza of a poem he composed at her death which is rarely found in anthologies:
Alive a Queen, now dead a Saint;
Once Mary called, my name now Martyr is;
From earthly reign debarred by restraint,
In lieu whereof I reign in heavenly bliss.
Using poetic license to the full, Fr. Southwell found no difficulty in canonizing England’s and Scotland’s rightful sovereign. May the Church set her seal on her in time! Like her eulogizer, Mary by God’s grace achieved the perfect solution to religious persecution. As St. Cyprian said, “This is He, our God! Not the God of all men, but of the faithful, and of those who believe in Him, who when He comes at His second coming, shall appear openly and not keep silence. . . Let us wait for Him, dearly beloved, our Judge and our Avenger; who shall revenge, together with Himself, the people of His Church and the number of all the just from the beginning of the world.”
There is no such thing as a political solution to a battle not waged against flesh and blood, beyond the sphere of politics, and Fr. Southwell never proposed any by either word or deed. In any age what is a political solution but an escape from suffering by substituting the natural for the supernatural? At the dawn of Marxism the Russian philosopher Berdyaev pointed out how this modern political solution is nothing but a categorical flight from the Cross. The Marxist, says he in The Russian Revolution, “will not accept a world whose creation is accompanied by the sufferings of human beings. He wants to destroy that world and create a new one where suffering does not exist. God created an unjust world full of suffering, and therefore He must be rejected for moral reasons. . . The only thing to pit against integral Communism, materialistic Communism, is integral Christianity.”
Like Isaias pleading with Achaz “at the conduit of the upper pool” to trust God and not come to terms with the enemies besieging Jerusalem (Is. 7), Fr. Southwell never ceased proposing integral Christianity, but he was heeded little more than the old prophet, for by the 17th century the enemy had literally poisoned the whole recusant body with the bait of political solutions. Suspicion and in-fighting reduced Catholic resistance to abject begging for peaceful co-existence with the “separated brethren.” Under Lord Baltimore the “political solution” came to America, where it soon developed into the heresy of Americanism which is now infecting the whole world.
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If Fr. Southwell, like Christ our Lord, was immune to political temptations, again like His Master, he was not immune to betrayal. He was caught at Uxenden, home of the Bellamys, a staunch Catholic family who had also befriended St. Edmund Campion, Fr. Persons, Fr. Weston, Fr. Garnet and many other underground priests. Two of its sons were put to death, a third tortured and exiled, with the mother left to die in prison, as innocent victims of the Babington Plot. Tragically, it was a daughter of the house, Anne Bellamy, who was prevailed upon to betray Robert Southwell. This unfortunate young woman had gone valiantly to prison for her faith, but was raped there by Topcliffe and became pregnant.
Christopher Devlin puts the story thus in his biography of the Saint: “Anne in her misery was to be offered the hope of saving her family from all future vexation by enticing Southwell to spend one night under their roof, informing Topcliffe meanwhile of the time and hiding-place. Thus the Bellamys would be caught in a position where only Topcliffe’s personal favor could preserve their lives and property. The ploy had actually been concocted by one Nicholas Jones, a servant of Topcliffe’s with high ambitions. Well before her child was due, Anne would be married to Nicholas Jones – but married in the Church with the blessing of her parents, and with the rich manor of Preston from the Bellamy lands as her dowry. In the event, five innocent people, three men and two women, died in great pain, and several others were ruined, in order to provide the weaver’s son [Jones] with a country-house.
It was as Mrs. Nicholas Jones that Anne Bellamy testified against St. Robert Southwell at his trial. He was executed the following day. So what’s new? He was only 34, but as he had put it to the young Earl of Arundel, “He dies old enough who dies good!”
St. Robert Southwell, pray for us!
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| The peril of buying into the big lie |
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Posted by: Scarlet - 01-04-2021, 11:59 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
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These classic children’s stories warn us of the peril of buying into the big lie — a COVID lesson
These stories provide a lens that can help us interpret events that are happening right now. They are frighteningly prophetic.
By Pete Baklinski
December 24, 2020 ( LifeSiteNews) — This might be the most surprising article you will read about the psychological, and ultimately spiritual, warfare being waged against you and your loved ones every moment of every day in the name of keeping all of us “safe” from the coronavirus.
Here is what has happened so far. The coronavirus originated in China in the latter part of 2019. COVID-19 spread throughout the world, creating a worldwide crisis. Governments around the world reacted to the crisis to stop the spread. Government reactions included lockdowns, social distance orders, mask mandates, curfews, and a push to develop a vaccine, all in the name of keeping us “safe” from the virus.
But such safety comes with a price.
Rights and freedoms have been crushed. Churches have been closed. Worshiping God in public has been banned. Many have lost their jobs. Lockdowns are destroying businesses. Economies are in shambles. People walk around in masks with fear in their eyes. Fear is everywhere. Most are controlled by it. Many have come to the point mentally and emotionally where they are willing to do almost anything to secure their safety, to live in peace and freedom once again, to go back to the way things were just one short year ago.
This is exactly the place where people, who are scared into submission out of fear to preserve their lives, are most useful to those with plans to use the crisis as a golden opportunity for social engineering and the restructuring of society.
Well crafted messaging communicated to us by so-called experts in the fields of medicine and health that influences government policy and is reinforced by mainstream media is well on the way to achieving a number of goals that are becoming more and more apparent with each passing day.
But I am jumping ahead of myself. I want to relate a children’s story that I think rather brilliantly summarizes the situation we find ourselves in today. The story provides a lens that can help us interpret events that are happening right now. The story, especially the 1943 version retold by Walt Disney, is frighteningly prophetic.
Psychological warfare
The story of Chicken Little opens in a nice, cozy little farmyard, where there thrives a community of chickens protected from wild animals by an impenetrable fence. The community includes a rooster who is headman, chicken inspector, and supervisor of egg production. There are a host of other birds who make up the well rounded community, including the do-gooders; the gossipers; the intellectuals; the irresponsible; and last, but not least, Chicken Little, who is a “little shy on brains.”
The chickens are happy and contented, knowing they are protected by a big, strong fence.
But then, one day, along comes a fox who takes a culinary interest in the chickens. Seeing the fence, the locked door, and the farmer’s gun on a nearby porch, the fox turns to “psychology” to get what he wants — not just one bird, but them all.
From a book titled Psychology, the fox reads: “To influence the masses, aim first at the least intelligent.”
He then sets upon a plan to manipulate Chicken Little into believing that the sky is falling and all are doomed.
“If you tell ’em a lie, don’t tell a little one, tell a big one,” the fox reads from Psychology, a book that reads as if it was drawn from the pages of Hitler’s Mein Kampf or Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
Grabbing a piece of a blue sign with a star painted on it, the fox throws it at Chicken Little accompanied by smoke, water, and loud noises that the fox has orchestrated for dramatic effect. The fox speaks to Chicken Little through the fence as the “voice of doom,” convincing him that the sky is falling and that he must run for his life. Chicken Little immediately races through the chicken pen, shouting to everyone who will listen that the sky is falling, pointing to the bump on his head to prove it.
The chickens are at first alarmed: “Oh, my goodness, how awful. What will we do? We’ll all be killed.”
When the rooster points out that it’s just a piece of wood that fell on Chicken Little, the fox is temporarily defeated. But, using his trusted book of Psychology, the fox begins to undermine the faith of the chickens in their leader, the rooster, by spreading falsehoods about him.
At the critical moment, the fox whispers through the fence to Chicken Little that the chickens will now listen to him and that Chicken Little was born to be their leader. Chicken Little promptly tells the chickens he’s going to save their lives by telling them what to do. The chickens, driven by fear after seeing the rooster hit on the head by a “piece of the sky,” beg Chicken Little to save them. All Chicken Little can tell them is what he heard whispered to him by the Fox: “Run to the cave!”
The chickens collectively burst through their protective fence and rush to the cave, following the carefully marked signposts that the fox has erected to point the way. The story ends with the fox eating all the chickens and paying tribute to Psychology for helping him to get what he wanted.
There are a number of important lessons to be drawn from this story:
- Creating or capitalizing on a crisis is the best way to move the masses toward a goal that has been predetermined by the controllers.
- Lies can control people, especially the ignorant and those who can’t think for themselves.
- “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
- Fear for one’s safety is the best way to motivate the masses to accept the controllers’ solution to the crisis and engage in actions that lead to the predetermined goal.
- Once the lie is bought by the masses, the solution proposed by the controllers is logical.
- There will always be obvious signs that the lies and fear-based narrative crafted by the controllers are contrary to reality, contradicting reason, common sense, and right judgment.
- The only way to escape arriving at the predetermined end is to act according to reason, common sense, and right judgment and not according to the narrative crafted by the controllers.
I’ll summarize how these lessons play out in the story of Chicken Little.
- The fox (the controller) wants to eat the chickens (predetermined goal). He manufactures a crisis (sky is falling) to move the chickens toward his goal.
- The lie that the sky is falling creates fear in the chickens that they will all die. This fear drives the chickens to submit to the control of the fox.
- The chickens come to believe the “big lie” that the sky is falling through the clever messaging of the fox and the persistence of Chicken Little.
- The chickens become willing to do anything to be kept safe from the sky falling on their heads.
- The solution of running to the cave for safety is, at first glance, a logical solution to the threat of the sky falling.
- There were numerous signs that the narrative created by the fox was false, such as the “piece of sky” really being a hunk of painted wood, such as the fact that the sky is not a material object that can fall, and such as the fact that if the Earth’s atmosphere were collapsing, running to a cave would not save anyone from the twofold doom of oxygen deprivation and sudden plummet in temperature to uninhabitable levels.
- Only the chickens who refused to run to the cave were actually the ones who, in the end, were safe.
Signs of the lie
I believe that the story of Chicken Little has much to teach us about the current situation we find ourselves in. There are many signs that we are being lied to, manipulated, and being moved to a predetermined end in the COVID-19 crisis. Who the controllers are and what their predetermined goal is are becoming more evident with each passing day.
Let’s go through the lessons we learned from the story of Chicken Little to see how they apply to the coronavirus crisis.
- When news first started to break about a new virus that was spreading like wildfire throughout the world, we were told that millions upon millions would die. Thus emerged the crisis.
- The crisis created fear in people around the world that they and their loved ones were in danger of becoming infected with the virus and could quickly and painfully die from it.
- Many people, watching mainstream media’s interpretation of the crisis, became utterly convinced of the reality of the crisis.
- The masses, driven by fear of contracting the virus and dying from it, were scared into submitting to government laws, created by newly seized powers, to keep people “safe.” Thus came the lockdowns, the mask mandates, the social distancing, the sanitizer, the vaccines.
- Many of the solutions provided, if it were true that a deadly virus was in the process of wiping out millions upon millions of the world’s inhabitants, appear at first glance to be logical.
- There are numerous signs, however, that the COVID narrative being put forward by governments around the world and being backed by mainstream media is simply not true. This point could be backed by thousands of pages of evidence. I will simply provide resources to real-world data, statements, and position papers by qualified and respected doctors and scientific studies that you can examine to ascertain for yourself that what you are being told by government and mainstream media about COVID-19 doesn’t reflect reality. If the information below is any indication that the COVID narrative put forward by government and mainstream media is not true, what this means is that the solutions to the crisis being offered by authorities may not in the end save you or anyone and may, in fact, lead to an unexpected and unpleasant result.
- Masks offer little protection from virus
- Dr. Jim Meehan: An evidence-based scientific analysis of why masks are ineffective, unnecessary, and harmful
- Neurosurgeon: Face masks pose serious risks to the healthy
- Dr. Roger Hodkinson, MA, MB, FRCPC, FCAP, CEO and medical director of Western Medical Assessments: Masks are utterly useless, COVID rules are politics playing medicine
- Masks don’t stop COVID-19 spread, peer-reviewed study finds
- Physicians: ‘Masks don’t control viruses, they control you’
- Dr. Fauci claims masks don’t provide COVID protection, only help people ‘feel…better’
- Medical doctor lays out hazards of COVID-19 face masks
- New England Journal of Medicine: ‘Wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection’
- If it’s true that we’ve been lied to and manipulated, we must resist and oppose solutions that are intended to move us little by little toward the predetermined goal.
‘Diabolic conspiracy’
A faithful Catholic priest who is an exorcist recently told LifeSiteNews that he has discerned a diabolical component to the coronavirus crisis. Some of you may be skeptical of demonic influence in the world. It’s been said that the greatest trick Satan ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.
The priest laid out what he believes is the strategy Satan is using to bring about the goal of preparing the world for the inevitable coming of the Antichrist, the lawless one, who, while being entirely opposed to God, will style himself the savior of the world and attempt to draw all men to himself (1 Thess. 5:2-3; 2 Thess. 2:4-12; 2 Jn. 7).
The priest laid out the plan this way:
- The crisis created by the coronavirus outbreak is being used by globalist financial elites to consolidate power and bring about control.
- The “great reset” agenda (here, here, and here) is ultimately a plan to bring everything under the control of the globalist financial elite. Satan has been “working towards creating a society where everybody is under control by means of the financial side of things.”
- A world controlled by the elites who run a unified economy is the “necessary precursor” for the Antichrist to come.
- When the Antichrist comes, he will rule the masses not via individual political governments, but via a unified global economy that will micromanage all things.
- COVID vaccination programs are part of a process of getting people to comply with this new world order. “This is why you have people like Bill Gates and the like talking about the necessity of having people's vaccination records connected to their bank records, and things of this sort, so that they can basically shut you off financially if you don't comply with what their dictates are.”
- The demons are using the current crisis to “drive and amplify fear” so that people will go along with the agenda.
- The Antichrist is not coming “anytime soon,” but the world is being prepared for his coming.
The priest said human beings don’t have the “intelligence and the ability” to bring about such a plan for a “great reset,” “but the demons do, and they'll drive these people [the globalist financial elite] to do this.”
The priest sees the coronavirus crisis and the global response to it as part of a “diabolic conspiracy” to prepare the way for the Antichrist. He sees that God ultimately is allowing these things to happen not only as a “chastisement” to bring people to their senses, but also as a time of “purification” to help people become detached from sin and to lead godly lives.
The priest’s warning that the consolidation of worldly powers and the control leveraged through the coronavirus crisis may be playing a part in the eventual coming of the Antichrist reminded me of a passage in the book of Revelation. In the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of the Apocalypse, we read about a future time when people will not be able to “buy or sell” unless they have a special “character” which is placed “in their right hand, or on their foreheads.”
Some governments have already floated the idea ( here, here, and here for how it works) of an “immunity passport” that would allow people to shop, go to work, travel, and go to sporting and cultural events only if they have received a COVID-19 vaccine. In other words, the day may be approaching quickly where people will not be able to “buy or sell” unless they have received such a vaccine and have proof that they have received it. For now, such proof could be a written document or an app on your phone. Later, it could be a quantum dot dye system or an implanted chip that stores not only medical, but also financial information beneath one’s skin.
While many governments are not at this moment making COVID vaccines mandatory, some are certainly threatening that those who refuse to take it will not be able to engage in the public forum. The “choice” to take the vaccine is suddenly becoming “an offer one can’t refuse.”
It remains to be seen if there is anything nefarious behind the vaccines themselves and the global push to have the world’s population vaccinated. There are many qualified doctors and researchers along with other experts who are warning people not to take the vaccine for various reasons. These include the vaccines’ rushed development, their lack of normal testing, their largely experimental nature, their use of aborted fetal cell line either in production or testing, the high number of adverse reactions, and the standard medical doctrine that you don’t vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease.
One Catholic bishop has suggested that mandating COVID vaccines connected in some way to abortion is part of Satan’s strategy to force the whole world to “collaborate” in abortion. “This is for me the last step of Satanism, that Satan and the world government — ultimately the Masonic world government — will oblige all, even the Church, to accept abortion in this way,” said Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, in an October interview.
The Catholic priest and exorcist mentioned above told LifeSiteNews that there is a “diabolic component” to mandating vaccines connected to abortion because it will make people who receive them a “physical walking offense” to God, which is “what the demons want us all to be, even if it’s not volitional on our part.”
When I was thinking about this priest’s words, it dawned on me that many of the COVID rules and protocols imposed on us by the authorities, such as mask mandates and social distancing protocols, make us physical walking offenses to God.
Mankind is created in the image and likeness of God. It is especially the face, the transparent medium of our rational soul, that reveals the divine spark that makes us different from every other creature. Heaven is described by St. Paul as a “face to face” encounter with God (1 Cor. 13:12). Masks cover the face. They obscure that part of us that especially reveals our divine origin. In the end, masks cover our true identity as children of God who are called to live not in fear, but in freedom.
Men and women are called to be in communion with one another and receive this call from the Trinitarian Communion of Persons. Jesus prays that we all “may be one” as he is in the Father and the Father is in him (Jn. 17:21). We are communal beings. We flourish when we are together. We decline when we are apart. In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes hell as a place where its inhabitants are “getting further apart” from one another because of how much they despise and hate one another. For Lewis, hell is social distancing. Treating one another as potential virus-infected killers from whom we must keep our distance is a direct assault on our divine call to communion.
One final point I want to make about a diabolic component to the coronavirus crisis is Satan’s stroke of genius in using the crisis to close churches and deny the faithful access to the sacraments, something that atheists and communists have been striving to do for a long time. It is no coincidence that assaults on freedom of worship are a consequence of coronavirus measures. From Satan’s perspective, stopping Christian worship, stopping the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, stopping the faithful from being able to access the sacraments would be one of the first main objectives in his battle plan. And, unfortunately, weak and unfaithful shepherds played right into Satan’s hands, often going above and beyond what secular authorities mandated in lockdown measures. Thus far, the major lockdowns have happened around the two most important Christian feasts of the year, Easter and Christmas.
The Christian faith teaches that Jesus Christ will one day return. But, before he does, the Church will pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. There will be persecution. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the coming of a “religious deception” that will offer men an “apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.” No one can tell if we are now beginning to live in such times, but, just as a mountain begins to rumble and smoke before the volcanic explosion, so too might many things happening today be interpreted as signs of things to come.
‘But he hasn’t got anything on’
I want to end with another classic children’s story and the important lesson it has to offer us in these times. Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes tells the story of a vain emperor exceedingly fond of clothes who is taken in by two swindlers.
One day, posing as weavers, the two swindlers offer the emperor the most magnificent clothes that have a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office or unusually stupid. The emperor falls for the trap, saying that such clothes would help him discover which men in his empire are unfit for their posts and help him tell the wise from the foolish.
The swindlers set up looms and begin their work. The emperor sends officials, and later goes himself, to examine their progress. All of them see that the looms are empty, but they pretend to see the “excellent pattern, the beautiful colors” so as to avoid being called out as fools and unfit for their offices. The weavers finally finish making the clothes and pretend to dress the emperor, preparing him for a parade in front of the entire kingdom.
“Everyone in the streets and the windows said, ‘Oh, how fine are the Emperor’s new clothes! Don’t they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!’ Nobody would confess that he couldn’t see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success.”
A child, governed by reason, common sense, and right judgment, finally exclaims: “But he hasn’t got anything on.”
It is at that moment that the citizens realize that they have been fooled.
It’s time for us to examine the evidence and to judge the situation we find ourselves in with right judgment. If the foxes of our day are telling us to run to the cave to be safe, we need to question everything and refuse to go along with their narrative if it does not correspond to reality. If the emperors of our day are telling us to go along with their schemes that in the end are contrary to plain sight, reason, and common sense, we’re the fools if we go along with it. In the end, only the truth will set us free. And it is in living according to truth that we live in freedom as children of God.
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| The Three Days of Darkness |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 01-04-2021, 12:15 AM - Forum: Catholic Prophecy
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Please note that everything in red is mine.
When the saints and mystics talk about blessed candles they are referring to the candles blessed at Candlemas, February 2nd. In their days, which is also tradition, the Church would only bless candles on Candlemas (which includes all the ones for the altars, as well as those that the laity could light in the churches) and would give a few to each faithful to have to burn for special favors, storms, etc.
I have done research on the blessed candles to ensure that God meant that it was those blessed on February 2nd. After looking in several Catholic books and researching on the internet, the conclusion is that it is those blessed at Candlemas. Any time you put in "blessed candles" in the search bar, Candlemas is what comes up immediately and when you do further research you learn that it is tradition to bless candles on February 2nd and that was the only time that the Church blessed them. It is the same as only being able to bless Holy Chrism on Holy Thursday or the Baptismal water on Holy Saturday. Now that does not mean that those blessed with the ordinary blessing done outside of Candlemas don't have any benefits, of course when you burn them they prayers are then said, for example, for the Purgatory Souls, but they aren't going to help against storms because only the prayer done for the Candlemas candles have that power.
The biggest difference between the ordinary blessing and the Candlemas blessing is that the candles done at Candlemas are good against storms, which for the Three Days of Darkness is key. (A priest was asked what the difference was between the Candlemas candles and those blessed with the ordinary blessing)
When you read the Three Days of Darkness from multiple saints and visionaries, you realize that the description of those days fit the descriptions of severe storms, so the only blessed candle that would work for those days would be the candles blessed at Candlemas.
I understand that in these times it is difficult to get candles blessed at Candlemas, but if you pray to God and Mother Mary, They will help guide you to a solution. For example, maybe a laity has some extra candles from Candlemas and God may inspire them to send some to those to have none. Another idea would be to send a candle to a priest for him to bless at Candlemas.
I tried to find when the Church started using the ordinary blessing to bless candles all the time, but I was unable to find any history or tradition of it, which is odd and a little concerning. If anyone has any information in regards to when the Church started this practice, please feel free to share. You can either reply in this thread or private messaging, which ever you prefer.
“God will send two punishments: one will be in the form of wars, revolutions and other evils; it shall originate on earth. The other will be sent from Heaven. There shall come over the whole earth an intense darkness lasting three days and three nights. Nothing can be seen, and the air will be laden with pestilence which will claim mainly, but not only, the enemies of religion. It will be impossible to use any man-made lighting during this darkness, except blessed candles (blessed at Candlemas). He, who out of curiosity, opens his window to look out, or leaves his home, will fall dead on the spot. During these three days, people should remain in their homes, pray the Rosary and beg God for mercy.”
“On this terrible occasion so many of these wicked men, enemies of His Church, and of their God, shall be killed by this divine scourge, that their corpses around Rome will be as numerous as the fishes, which a recent inundation of the Tiber had carried into the city. All the enemies of the Church, secret as well as known, will perish over the whole earth during that universal darkness, with the exception of some few, whom God will soon after convert. The air shall be infested by demons, who will appear under all sorts of hideous forms.
“After the three days of darkness, Saints Peter and Paul, having come down from heaven, will preach throughout the world and designate a new Pope. A great light will flash from their bodies and settle upon the cardinal, the future pontiff. Then Christianity will spread throughout the world. Whole nations will join the Church shortly before the reign of the Antichrist. These conversions will be amazing. Those who survive shall have to conduct themselves well. There shall be innumerable conversions of heretics, who will return to the bosom of the Church; all will note the edifying conduct of their lives, as well as that of other Catholics. Russia, England and China will come into the Church."
Blessed Anna-Maria Taigi
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| February 4th - St. Andrew Corsini and St. Jane of Valois |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 01-03-2021, 04:52 PM - Forum: February
- Replies (1)
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Saint Andrew Corsini
Bishop of Fiesole
(1302-1373)
Saint Andrew was born in Florence in 1301 of the illustrious Corsini family. A short time before the birth of Saint Andrew, his mother experienced a strange dream, in which she had given birth to a wolf which became a lamb upon entering a Carmelite church. After a dissolute youthful life Andrew repented, when one day in 1318 his desolate mother told him of her dream. He rose and went to the altar in the church where his parents had offered to God the child they hoped to obtain from His mercy; there he prayed to the Blessed Virgin with tears, then went to beg his admission to the Carmelite Order.
He began a life of great mortification. Ordained a priest in 1328, he studied in Paris and Avignon, and on his return became the Apostle of Florence, and Prior of his convent there. In 1360 he was consecrated Bishop of Fiesole, near Florence, and gained a great reputation as a peacemaker between rival political factions and for his love of the poor. He was also named papal nuncio to Bologna, where he pacified dissenting factions and won the hearts of the nobility with whom he was associating. He wrought many miracles of healing and conversion during his lifetime.
At the age of 71, while he was celebrating the midnight Mass of Christmas, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him and told him he would leave this world on the feast of the Epiphany, to meet the beloved Master he had served so faithfully. In effect, he died on that day in 1373, in the thirteenth year of his episcopacy. Miracles were so multiplied thereafter that Pope Eugenius IV permitted a public cult immediately. The city of Florence has always invoked him with confidence and happy results. He was canonized in 1629.
He is often represented holding his crosier, with a wolf and a lamb at his feet, or hovering over a battlefield on a cloud or a white steed — this in memory of his miraculous intervention in a battle the Florentine people won by his assistance.
Saint Jane of Valois
Queen
(1464-1505)
Born of the royal blood of France, herself a queen, Jane of Valois led a life remarkable for its humiliations even in the annals of the Saints. Her father, Louis XI, who had hoped for a son to succeed him, banished Jane from his palace, and, it is said, even attempted her life. At the age of five the neglected child offered her whole heart to God, and yearned to do some special service in honor of His blessed Mother. At the king's wish, though against her own inclination, she was married to the Duke of Orleans.
Towards an indifferent and unworthy husband her conduct was always patient and dutiful. Her prayers and tears saved him from a traitor's death and shortened a captivity which his rebellion had merited. Still nothing could win a heart which was already given to another. When her husband ascended the throne as Louis XII, his first act was to repudiate, by false representations, one who through twenty-two years of cruel neglect had been his true and loyal wife. At the final sentence of separation, the saintly queen exclaimed, God be praised who has allowed this, that I may serve Him better than I have heretofore done.
Retiring to Bourges, she there undertook to realize her long-formed desire of founding the Order of the Annunciation, in honor of the Mother of God. Under the guidance of Saint Francis of Paula, the director of her childhood, Saint Jane was enabled to overcome the serious obstacles which even good people raised against the foundation of her new Order. In 1501 the rule of the Annunciation was finally approved by Alexander VI. The chief aim of the institute was to imitate the ten virtues practiced by Our Lady in the mystery of the Incarnation. Its Superior was called Ancelle, handmaid, in honor of Mary's humility. Saint Jane built and endowed the first convent of the Order in 1502. She died in heroic sanctity in 1505, and was buried in the royal crown and purple, beneath which she wore the habit of her Order.
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| February 3rd - St. Blaise |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 01-03-2021, 04:49 PM - Forum: February
- Replies (1)
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Saint Blaise
Bishop and Martyr
(† 316)
Saint Blaise devoted the earlier years of his life to the study of philosophy, and afterwards became a physician. In the practice of his profession he saw so much of the miseries of life and the hollowness of worldly pleasures, that he resolved to spend the rest of his days in the service of God. From being a healer of bodily ailments, he became a physician of souls, then retired for a time, by divine inspiration, to a cavern where he remained in prayer.
When the bishop of Sebaste in Armenia died, Blaise, much to the gratification of the inhabitants of that city, was chosen to succeed him. Saint Blaise at once began to instruct his people, as much by his example as by his words, and the great virtues and sanctity of the servant of God were attested by many miracles. From all parts, the people came flocking to him for the cure of bodily and spiritual ills.
When the governor of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia, Agricolaus, began a persecution by order of the Emperor Licinius, Saint Blaise was seized. After interrogation and a severe scourging, he was hurried off to prison. While he was under custody, a distraught mother, whose only child was dying of a throat disease, threw herself at his feet and implored his intercession. Touched at her grief, he offered up his prayers, and the child was cured.
The prisoner was brought before Agricolaus again for further questioning, and again was whipped while tied to a pillar. He was spared from drowning when thrown into a lake; the governor ordered then that he be beheaded. At the execution site he prayed aloud to God for his persecutors, and asked that in the future those who would invoke him might be aided, as he had been permitted to assist them during his lifetime. Our Lord appeared to him and said in a voice which all bystanders heard, that He granted his prayer. Since that time his intercession has often been effectually solicited, especially in cases of all kinds of throat problems.
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| Vatican City set to launch COVID-19 vaccinations in January 2021 |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-03-2021, 12:27 PM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Spiritual]
- No Replies
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Vatican City set to launch COVID-19 vaccinations this month
Vatican City, Jan 2, 2021 / 09:00 am MT (CNA).- Coronavirus vaccines are scheduled to arrive in Vatican City next week, according to the Vatican director of health and hygiene.
In a statement released Jan. 2, the head of the Vatican health service, Dr. Andrea Arcangeli, said that the Vatican has purchased a low temperature refrigerator to store the vaccine and expects to begin administering vaccinations in the second half of January in the atrium of Paul VI Hall.
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Audience Hall of Pope Paul VI
“Priority will be given to health and public safety personnel, to the elderly and to personnel most frequently in contact with the public,” he said.
The Vatican health service director added that Vatican City State expects to receive enough vaccine doses in the second week of January to cover the needs of the Holy See and the Vatican City State.
Vatican City State, the world’s smallest independent nation-state, has a population of only around 800 people, but together with the Holy See, the sovereign entity that predates it, it employed 4,618 people in 2019.
In an interview with Vatican News last month, Arcangeli said the Pfizer vaccine was expected to be made available to Vatican City residents, employees and their family members over the age of 18 in the first months of 2021.
“We believe it is very important that even in our small community a vaccination campaign against the virus responsible for COVID-19 is started as soon as possible,” he said.
“In fact, only through widespread and widespread immunization of the population can real benefits in terms of public health be obtained to gain control of the pandemic.”
Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, a total of 27 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Vatican City State. Among them, at least 11 members of the Swiss Guard tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Vatican statement did not say if or when Pope Francis might be administered the vaccine, but stated that vaccinations will be provided on a voluntary basis.
Pope Francis has repeatedly appealed to international leaders to grant the poor access to vaccines against the coronavirus which has claimed more than 1.8 million lives worldwide as of Jan. 2.
In his Christmas “Urbi et Orbi” address, Pope Francis said: “Today, in this time of darkness and uncertainty regarding the pandemic, various lights of hope appear, such as the discovery of vaccines. But for these lights to illuminate and bring hope to all, they need to be available to all. We cannot allow the various forms of nationalism closed in on themselves to prevent us from living as the truly human family that we are.”
“Nor can we allow the virus of radical individualism to get the better of us and make us indifferent to the suffering of other brothers and sisters. I cannot place myself ahead of others, letting the law of the marketplace and patents take precedence over the law of love and the health of humanity.”
“I ask everyone -- government leaders, businesses, international organizations -- to foster cooperation and not competition, and to seek a solution for everyone: vaccines for all, especially for the most vulnerable and needy of all regions of the planet. Before all others: the most vulnerable and needy.”
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| Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-03-2021, 10:01 AM - Forum: Christmas
- Replies (8)
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FEAST OF THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS
(Sunday after the Octave of the Nativity or January 2)
Who instituted this festival?
Pope Innocent XIII in the year 1721 commanded that the most Holy Name of Jesus should be solemnly honored throughout the Catholic world. St. Bernard, with the sanction of the Apostolic See, had established the solemn veneration of this most Holy Name in his order a few centuries before.
In the Introit of this day's Mass, the Church proclaims the glory of this name:
INTROIT In the name of Jesus let every knee bow of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and let every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:10-11). O Lord our Lord, how wonderful is thy name in the whole earth! (Ps. 8:2). Glory be to the Father.
COLLECT O God, Who didst ordain Thine only-begotten Son to be the Savior of mankind, and didst command that he should be called Jesus: mercifully grant that we may enjoy in heaven the blessed vision of him whose holy name we venerate upon earth. Through our Lord.
EPISTLE (Acts 4:8-12). In those days, Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said: Ye princes of the people and ancients, hear: If we this day are examined concerning the good deed done to the infirm man, by what means he hath been made whole, be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God hath raised from the dead, even by him this man standeth here before you whole. This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders; which is become the head of the corner: neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.
EXPLANATION This Epistle speaks of the omnipotent power of the name of Jesus, through which miracles are not only performed, but also on which our salvation depends. Jesus alone can give us redemption and happiness; He alone under heaven has been given to man by God, that through Him happiness could be reached; He alone can break the fetters of error and sin in which all mankind lies captured. He alone is the truth, He alone, as the Son of God, has power to render perfect satisfaction for sin, and to make us truly good; and the good alone can be saved. Cling, therefore, ever faithfully and firmly to Jesus, and depart not from Him; without Him you can accomplish nothing; with Him, through Him, you can accomplish all things.
GOSPEL (Lk. 2:21). At that time, after eight days were accomplished that the child should be circumcised, his name was called Jesus, which was called by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
REMARKS OF ST. BERNARD ON THE SWEET NAME OF JESUS
The sweet name of Jesus produces in us holy thoughts, fills the soul with noble sentiments, strengthens virtue, begets good works, and nourishes pure affections. All spiritual food leaves the soul dry, if it contain not that penetrating oil, the name Jesus. When you take your pen, write the name Jesus: if you write books, let the name of Jesus be contained in them, else they will possess no charm or attraction for me; you may speak, or you may reply, but if the name of Jesus sounds not from your lips, you are without unction and without charm. Jesus is honey in our mouth, light in our eyes, a flame in our heart. This name is the cure for all diseases of the soul. Are you troubled? think but of Jesus, speak but the name of Jesus, the clouds disperse, and peace descends anew from heaven. Have you fallen into sin? so that you fear death? invoke the name of Jesus, and you will soon feel life returning. No obduracy of the soul, no weakness, no coldness of heart can resist this holy name; there is no heart which will not soften and open in tears at this holy name. Are you surrounded by sorrow and danger? invoke the name of Jesus, and your fears will vanish. Never yet was human being in urgent need, and on the point of perishing, who invoked this help-giving name, and was not powerfully sustained. It was given us for the cure of all our ills; to soften the impetuosity of anger, to quench the fire of concupiscence, to conquer pride, to mitigate the pain of our wounds, to overcome the thirst of avarice, to quiet sensual passions, and the desires of low pleasures. If we call to our minds the name of Jesus, it brings before us His most meek and humble heart, and gives us a new knowledge of His most loving and tender compassion. The name of Jesus is the purest, and holiest, the noblest and most indulgent of names, the name of all blessings and of all virtues; it is the name of the God-Man, of sanctity itself. To think of Jesus is to think of the great, infinite God Who, having given us His life as an example, has also bestowed the necessary understanding, energy and assistance to enable us to follow and imitate Him, in our thoughts, inclinations, words and actions. If the name of Jesus reaches the depths of our heart, it leaves heavenly virtue there. We say, therefore, with our great master, St. Paul the Apostle: If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema (I Cor. 16:22).
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| Antipolice Protesters Graffiti St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC on New Year’s Day |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-03-2021, 08:36 AM - Forum: Anti-Catholic Violence
- Replies (1)
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Police: Protesters Graffiti St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC on New Year’s Day
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Breitbart |2 Jan 20210
Approximately 150 protesters blocked traffic Friday in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, and someone graffitied the front of the church, according to police.
Officers responded to the disorderly group gathered at 51st Street and Fifth Avenue at about 1:30 a.m., the New York Post reported.
Freelance reporter Oliya Scootercaster tweeted video footage of the demonstration, showing protesters surrounding a New York Police Department (NYPD) vehicle:
Quote:Protesters confront NYPD by stopping them and banging on the hood of the cars in Manhattan outside St Patrick's Cathedral
Video by @ScooterCasterNY (FNTV https://t.co/KCfJ0kwvkq) desk@freedomnews.tv for pic.twitter.com/bKXw8g8Lz3
At one point, the protesters began banging on the car’s hood.
Scootercaster also shared a video clip of someone trying to wipe the spraypainted letters “ACAB” off the cathedral’s wall:
Quote:pic.twitter.com/RN5kbxjALy
The Post article continued:
Quote:The protesters, affiliated with Black Lives Matter Brooklyn and Justice for George, started marching at the Stonewall Inn and had stopped at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, police sources said. While inspecting the scene, cops found the letters “ACAB” — which stands for “All cops are bastards” — newly graffitied in pink, about 2 feet by 4 feet, on the facade of the cathedral, police said.
The group later dispersed, and no arrests were made at the scene, according to authorities.
Earlier on New Year’s Eve, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife danced together in Times Square while keeping other New Yorkers out thanks to his coronavirus restrictions.
As Reuters reported:
Quote:Mayor Bill de Blasio and police officials have told New Yorkers and out-of-towners alike to stay away and watch pared-down festivities on television. A large contingent of police officers will barricade the area to prevent unauthorized people from gathering, aiming to prevent an event that could accelerate the spread of the virus in a city already struggling to contain it.
“It’s going to be actually, arguably, the most special, the most poignant, the most moving New Year’s Eve,” de Blasio, who will push the button to start the crystal’s ball descent, told reporters. “In 2021, we’re going to show people what it looks like to recover, to come back.”
However, Twitter users expressed their disagreement with the restrictions and apparent double standard:
Quote:"Stay at home, save lives" oh and you're not allowed to go to church. Unless you're De Blasio, then you can do anything you want. pic.twitter.com/6UDXSAxEqW
“If you don’t see communism in New York City, You should reevaluate yourself immediately,” wrote user Joel Fischer:
Quote:Ladies and gentlemen: Everybody should stay home this year. You cannot come to Times Square.
Also, Ladies and gentlemen: Bill de Blasio will be dancing in Times Square.
If you don't see communism in New York City, You should reevaluate yourself immediately. https://t.co/CHP3fbGCRO
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