| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 138 online users.
» 0 Member(s) | 136 Guest(s)
Bing, Google
|
| Latest Threads |
Fr. Ruiz: 2025 04 20 EL E...
Forum: Fr. Ruiz's Sermons April 2025
Last Post: Deus Vult
10 hours ago
» Replies: 0
» Views: 37
|
St. Alphonsus Liguori: Da...
Forum: Easter
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 06:38 AM
» Replies: 7
» Views: 9,972
|
Easter Week [Monday thru ...
Forum: Easter
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 06:38 AM
» Replies: 8
» Views: 24,022
|
Pope Francis has died age...
Forum: Pope Francis
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 06:35 AM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 141
|
Fr. Hesse: Decline of Cha...
Forum: Add'nl Clergy
Last Post: Stone
04-20-2025, 05:45 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 115
|
Keeping the Faith Without...
Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
Last Post: Stone
04-20-2025, 05:43 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 114
|
Easter Sunday
Forum: Easter
Last Post: Stone
04-20-2025, 04:52 AM
» Replies: 7
» Views: 20,171
|
St. Gregory the Great: Se...
Forum: Easter
Last Post: Stone
04-20-2025, 04:47 AM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 6,640
|
Dom Guéranger: The Histor...
Forum: Easter
Last Post: Stone
04-20-2025, 04:45 AM
» Replies: 2
» Views: 4,760
|
Season of Paschal Tide
Forum: Easter
Last Post: Stone
04-20-2025, 04:44 AM
» Replies: 3
» Views: 12,462
|
|
|
| Solange Hertz: Apocalypse Now! Global Democracy & the Rise of the Antichrist |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-09-2024, 08:10 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
- No Replies
|
 |
A portion of this 2006 article written for The Remnant Newspaper was reprinted on that site November 5, 2024.
The entire article is presented below in its entirety.
APOCALYPSE NOW! Global Democracy & the Rise of the Antichrist
by Solange Hertz
![[Image: antichrist.jpg]](https://www.remnantnewspaper.com/images/antichrist.jpg)
Editor’s Introduction: Perhaps the following article will not be easy to read for some. It’s an analysis of the philosophical and theological errors that were long ago insinuated into the root system of modern political thought. Born of the Protestant Revolution, these errors would ultimately bring the great tree of Christendom crashing to the ground. Included within this analysis is a penetrating look at how some of these fundamentally Protestant ideas made their way into the founding documents of our own country.
It is never easy to see faults in ourselves or in those we love, and it is no less difficult to recognize them in the land of our birth and childhood, hearth and home. Patriotism is a Christian virtue. Love of country is part of what builds integrity and honor in decent men. But love of country is not always synonymous with love of government, especially when governments deviate from Catholic principles as egregiously as has ours.
Just as we traditional Catholics must sometimes distinguish between the Church we revere above all else and the modern-day Vatican apparatus, so, too, Catholic Americans must recognize a distinction between the America we revere—the land of our birth, claimed as her own by Our Lady of Guadalupe, Empress of the Americas, discovered by the Catholic Columbus, colonized by the Catholic Spanish, Portuguese and French, generous beyond description in modern times, independent, resourceful, spirited—and the federal, centralized government which was founded by revolution-minded Protestants, who, while having some good and noble ideas, were nevertheless opposed to the Catholic Church and the social reign of Christ the King. (To admit this is not to insult or serve up calumny against our Founding Fathers; it is a mere statement of the historic reality, over which no serious historian would quibble. Our Founders were not Catholic and theirs was a “novus ordo seculorum” which was to replace the aging Catholic order of Christendom.)
And now, almost 230 years later, we American Catholics, living in the post-Christian era, must somehow sort out where we stand and how we are to reconcile the love and patriotism we all feel in our hearts for a land that has sustained us in bountiful plenty, with the dark side of our man-made government which has never shared our Faith and which is trying to impose secular democracy as a religion on the rest of the world.
Mrs. Hertz—a patriot, a Catholic American whose family goes back many generations in this country, a woman whose husband, a U.S. official, was among the first of the civilian hostages taken by the enemy in Vietnam and, in fact, died there in a Communist prison camp—has attempted in the present article to face the hard facts and contradictions that exist between scripture/Catholic teaching and the religion of global democracy, which, like it or not, spent its childhood in the wonderful, utopian, almost enchanted world we Americans call home.
America is not beyond hope. Her soil has run red with the blood of martyrs many times. But Christ the King is the only threat the King of Darkness recognizes, even here in America. Unless we get back to our Catholic roots, America—the great city on the hill—will first be placed in a position where she will do more to welcome the Antichrist and his New World Order than drive it back into the sea; and then she will be destroyed.
I encourage the reader to proceed with an open mind. The myths and fairy tales for adults that we’ve all been spoon fed for two hundred plus years are nearly impossible to overcome for many sincere and good Catholic Americans. But if we wish to know what’s really going on in the world today and what our children are really up against, then we must begin to look beyond the history written by Protestant victors to see what forces have long been at work even here in the land we love. If you’re ready to do that and perhaps even suffer some painful abrasions as the blindfold is removed, then read on . . . MJM
The true source of the godless democracy now overrunning the world and the Church is not hard to discover, for it is revealed in a vivid tableau which unfolds before the eyes of any reader of Chapter 9 of St. John’s Apocalypse: After the Fifth Angel sounds the trumpet ushering in the great age of heresy now coming to full climax at the dawn of our twenty-first century, the Apostle sees him given a key to hell’s “bottomless pit.” When the Angel opens it, ”the smoke of the pit ascended as the smoke of a great furnace: and the sun was darkened, and the air,” by the smothering fumes. We may take this to signify a worldwide darkness in which certainties can no longer be clearly discerned, the divine light having been obscured, and stifling error disseminated in the very air we breathe. In 1971 Pope Paul VI declared that this “smoke of Satan” had somehow or other penetrated the Temple of God.
The spectacle relates directly to the prophecy made by our Lord foretelling the tribulations of the days prior to His second coming, when He “shall send his Angels with a trumpet” and “the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light” (Matt. 24:29,31). The whole human environment being charged and penetrated by a miasma generated in hell, the Church, represented by the moon, is hobbled in her ministry and no longer able to reflect God’s truth clearly to the nations. At the close of her own little apocalypse confided to Mélanie Calvat at La Salette, our Lady declared that this was already happening way back in 1846: “It is time. The sun is darkening. . . The time is at hand. The abyss is opening,” and she predicted, “Only the faith will survive.”
But the blinding smoke of the pit isn’t the worst of the infestation, for the vision in the Apocalypse tells us that out of its billows there streamed hordes of “locusts upon the earth, and power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power” to torment “the men who have not the sign of God on their foreheads.” The shapes of these locusts, which the Church Fathers generally believed represented violent heretics, are described as “like to horses prepared for battle; and on their heads as it were crowns of gold: and their faces as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions: and they had breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like scorpions, and stings were in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.”
In other words these creatures, like earthly scorpions, possessed only natural means of doing harm. Wielding no supernatural power from heaven, they were not only prevented from doing injury to the elect who bore God’s sign, but even where their legitimate victims were concerned, their power was limited, for “it was given to them that they should not kill them; but that they should torment them five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man.” Whatever period of time these five months signify, it will be fearsome while it lasts, for the text goes on to say that “in those days men shall seek death and shall not find it: and they shall desire to die, and death shall fly from them.”
Again, our Lady echoed these words at La Salette when she said, “Men will beat their heads against the walls; they will call on death, yet death will constitute their torment; blood will flow on all sides. Who could overcome, if God doesn’t shorten the time of trial?” And our Lord himself had already predicted, “Unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect, those days shall be shortened” (Matt. 24:22). Although merely temporal and confined to the natural order, the pain and havoc caused by the locusts will be nearly unendurable.
As historical events unfold on the world stage, the symbolism of St. John’s vision becomes ever clearer. One detail leaps out starkly above all the rest, and that is the golden crowns on the heads of the locusts. They are not like the ones worn by the twenty-four ancients pictured elsewhere in the Apocalypse who cast them down before God’s throne acknowledging, “Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power: because thou hast created all things!” (4:10-11). Those worn by the locusts remain firmly fixed to their heads and are furthermore described only “as it were” of gold. In other words they are made of something that passes for gold but really isn’t. It would seem therefore that the locusts’ crowns are, for all their glitter, counterfeit. They are spurious symbols of the true authority which crowns are meant to represent and which can only be bestowed from above. As St. Paul says, “there is no power but from God” (Rom. 13:1).
A more graphic portrayal of the onslaught of the unbridled lust for self-government now ravaging the earth, can hardly be imagined than these troops of unisex crowned locusts “with the faces of men,” and “hair as the hair of women,” every one like another, yet each one a mini-king in its own right. Yet, despite their individual crowns and their appearance of autonomy, Scripture is careful to inform us that “they had over them a king.” And this king, we are told, is none other than “the Angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon; and in Greek Apollyon; in Latin Exterminans.” That the sacred text declares the name of this leader in the same three liturgical languages in which Jesus of Nazareth’s title as King of the Judeans was inscribed on the Cross cannot be happenstance. It would seem specifically to designate our Lord’s satanic counterpart the Antichrist, whose name in all languages is “Destroyer,” his essential mission being the destruction of Christ’s kingdom on earth.
His advent will have been well prepared by militant Democracy, the systematic revolt against God which began when the Fifth Trumpet announced the first stirrings of Protestantism and modern man began claiming the right to worship as he pleased and interpret Scripture for himself by the light of his own intellect. The same independent spirit gradually pervaded all fields of learning, which one by one separated themselves from the beneficent light of revelation and began operating on their own, spawning major scientific and social errors of every kind in the process. Gradually the new liberated man undertook the creation of a whole new reality for himself, hatched in his own mind apart from and presumably better than the reality created for him by God. He displaced the Earth as the center of the universe, replacing it first by the sun, and soon by nothing at all. Matter began moving of itself according to its own attractions without outside spiritual propulsion, and was soon credited with the power of producing life. Absolutes became relative almost overnight, not only in the material sphere, but in the moral as well.
After the discovery of electricity a whole new man-made world based on these novel ideas and operated by a completely new power source came into being. Natural substances created by God for man’s use on earth being now everywhere replaced by “better” artificial substitutes contrived by human means, the mechanical began replacing the organic everywhere at an accelerated pace. In ordinary common life automobiles were substituted for horses and mechanical appliances for domestic servants. Astounded at the marvels of his own progress in providing for himself, man found less and less reason to have recourse to divine Providence. The whole realm of the supernatural, become redundant at best, is now regarded by many as non-existent, to such a point that the New York Times for October 12, 2003 can feature an article by a correspondent from the Holy City of Rome declaring to the world, “Faith Fades Where It Once Burned Strong.”
+
This being the state of affairs, it was only to be expected that human lust for freedom would find political expression. As Auguste Comte pointed out, revolutionary ideas are nothing more than the social application of the principle of religious liberty. The religious subjectivism of Protestantism automatically prevented the imposition of any transcendent order on politics, so that the people soon became their own sovereign source of authority. Preaching a gospel of freedom and human rights apart from God and the Church He instituted, a new artificial form of government devoid of any outside moral restraints was soon invented by men inspired by the locust hordes from hell.
Formally inaugurated as the United States of America, it proved to be a veritable abomi-Nation, a social incarnation of the primordial Non serviam by which Lucifer first declared independence from God in heaven. Infecting nation after nation with the new satanic democracy, it has by now succeeded in subtracting nearly all organized human society from the dominion of Christ the King and the Church He founded. One of its Presidents, Woodrow Wilson, who fathered the first international League of Nations patterned in its image, summed up its apostolate thus: “America has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind. Democracy is a religion. Americans are now missionaries to the world, its President a priest!”
[Editor’s Note: This is the same President who ignored Pope Benedict XV’s calls for peace and who rejected the brilliant peace plan of the great Catholic Emperor Charles I of Austria-Hungary just as World War I was underway. (Emperor Charles I was recently canonized a saint). At the time, the Emperor had thwarted the Kaiser’s will by insisting on trying to deal with the United States to establish peace in Europe. This last of the great Holy Roman Emperors was one who truly wanted peace; had he been listened to, he would have saved Europe. And why did President Wilson reject the Emperor’s peace plan? Because, as Wilson put it, Emperor Charles was not an “elected leader”…Austria was not a democracy. Charles was defeated, Europe fell into chaos, the Soviet Union was off to the races, the seeds of brutal, Godless Nazism were planted, and millions and millions lost their lives. The Holy Roman Empire gasped its last trying to prevent the Great War that assisted so diligently at the birthing table of the New World Order. MJM]
The spread of a universal godless republic whose sole Gospel is freedom was predicted four centuries ago by Our Lady of Good Success to a Conceptionist nun in Quito, Ecuador. She told her that during the 19th and 20th centuries it would gradually “extinguish the precious light of Faith in souls by the almost total corruption of customs.” Later at La Salette she would point out to Mélanie Calvat some of the results to be expected: “With God’s holy Faith forgotten, each individual will want to direct himself and rise above his peers. Civil and ecclesiastical authority will be abolished, all order and justice will be trampled underfoot. Only murders, hatred, jealousy, lying and discord will be seen, with no love of country or family. . . . Civil governments will all have the same objective, which will be to abolish and make every religious principle disappear, to make way for materialism, atheism, spiritism and vices of all kinds.”
Let us hasten to say at this juncture that modern satanic democracy is far from the kind of democracy which held sway in classical times as, for example in ancient Greece, where it rested upon a huge slave base and was restricted to a relatively small number of privileged citizens subscribing to a common state religion. It is even farther from the limited democracy which was always practiced in Christendom at all levels of society in smaller components of government within the greater hierarchical framework dictated by natural law. Monks in their monasteries, for instance, were often free to elect their superiors, but once they had designated them, they had no power to depose them, that being the sole prerogative of higher authority. For underlings to control their superiors once they have been elected, and especially to remove them from office – as Democracy empowers the people to do – would have spelled rebellion pure and simple and was not tolerated.
Until modern times, man labored under no illusions that authority might originate from below. All the governments of the world, even among pagans, were originally patterned on, and were indeed derived from the human family as created by God. Their structure was strictly hierarchical, with a father-figure at the top who exercised the final authority as king or supreme leader over his subjects in much the same way a father ruled his wife and children. This did not mean that authority could be exercised arbitrarily, according to personal whim, for from the king on down everyone was subject (at least theoretically) to the same moral laws and national customs.
The basic cell of government was never the individual, but the family, which operated on the lowest level of society as a political unit in its own right. Under his immediate political superiors, the father was legally responsible for the behavior of his household, in Roman times even possessing the right to put his children to death. The principle of subsidiarity played a major role throughout the body politic, which means that no higher authority was supposed to do what a lower authority could accomplish for itself. God created the human body on this principle, as He did the family, where each member is responsible for tasks in accordance with his ability to perform them, and good government is built along similar lines.
In the history of the US, the gradual usurpation of states’ rights by an increasingly centralized authority supplies a clear and flagrant example of how the disregard of subsidiarity inevitably leads from the qualitative to the quantitative into totalitarianism. The Constitution attempted to obviate this possibility by the last Article in the Bill of Rights, which reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” but over the years, especially after the bloody Civil War fought over this very question, more and more power has been concentrated in the federal authority at the expense of states’ autonomy, not to mention the rights of individuals.
Where government is firmly anchored in natural law, regard for individual and local differences is more easily maintained, for a nation is nothing less than a family of families, and an empire is a family of national families. All live, breathe and grow as living organisms under laws resting on the Fourth Commandment, which orders us to honor not only our parents, but any other representatives of the divine authority which governs the universe and to which all citizens are ultimately responsible. In the vast majority of cases the supreme human authority was hereditary, passing from father to son as it does in the family, permitting leaders to implement long-term policies without concern for periodic reelections or radical changes of administration.
Alliances between nations were cemented not so much by legal agreements as by marriages between ruling families, chief among whom would figure those of the Davidic dynasty designated by God to head Christian nations. Furthermore, most of the heirs to royal thrones were subjected from the cradle to a rigorous education designed to prepare them for rule. There was little if any government by amateurs such as we have today in the do-it-yourself society where “you can be anything you want to be,” and public entertainers can be elected to the highest offices.
Historically hereditary monarchy has produced so high a degree of stability, continuity, cohesion and prosperity throughout human society as a whole that St. Thomas Aquinas was led to declare it “the best of governments.” Because it was human it was not perfect, but it worked very well. The French Davidic monarchy, on which all the other Christian monarchies depended, was founded in the Faith in the fifth century by King Clovis of the Franks and perdured in unbroken salic succession for nearly fourteen hundred years. Had it not been for the swarm of crowned locusts pouring out of hell, it would presumably have remained in power till now.
+
The immediate source of the change proved to be England, where modern, satanic democracy was hatched. It broke out violently in England with the regicide of Charles I. The crowned locusts apparently had found the readiest tools for their purpose among the English, the empire which to this day does not consider itself part of old Catholic Europe, and which as a nation has yet to repent of the criminal execution of Joan of Arc, the saint sent by God to save the pivotal French monarchy from English usurpation. Foreseeing little more than a limited success for democracy under the “constitutional” monarchy with a state religion which the English had agreed upon after the fall of Cromwell and the Restoration under Charles II, the astute locusts shifted their center of operations to the heretical English colonies wedged strategically (and illegally according to the international law then in force) between the French and Spanish territories in Catholic America.
There democratic ideology soon took root, transplanted from the mother country by a handful of radical English Freemasons who hoped to achieve, on new terrain far removed from the political centers of Christendom, what had so far proved impractical at home. Back in England under Henry VIII the locusts had already effected one nation’s independence from the Catholic Church, but in America, under cover of rebellion against the vestigial monarch George III – a God-fearing, upright Anglican who hated Freemasonry – they would sting their victims into concocting out of whole cloth a new man-made nation which would be independent of any religion at all, and whose written constitution would provide the blueprint countless others would follow.
Goaded by the scorpion-stings of their tormentors from the pit, representatives from the thirteen British colonies on July 4, 1776 “in general congress assembled” and acting solely “by authority of the good people of these Colonies,” began emancipating themselves from the God of revelation by promulgating a formal Declaration of Independence from the British Crown. Carefully eschewing any references to Jesus Christ or the Blessed Trinity, they were content to request a nameless deity designated as “the Supreme Judge of the World” to ratify “the rectitude of our intentions” in their momentous undertaking.
Although it opens with an appeal to “the Laws of Nature” and “Nature’s God,” the document proceeds to enunciate false principles which are in fact diametrically contrary to natural law: that all men are equal and the source of authority over themselves. Scorning supporting proof of any kind, the signers of the Declaration deemed it sufficient to state that “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” and to enumerate them, beginning with three propositions: that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” and “that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
We might note here that the first draft of the Declaration read “the pursuit of property.” According to John Locke, one of Democracy’s foremost architects, the state is not an organic institution geared to natural human necessities deriving its authority from God, but a civil contract set up between men by their common consent. In his Second Treatise on Government, he states furthermore that its “great and chief end. . . is the preservation of their property.” Elsewhere he says, “The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving and advancing of their own civil interests. Civil interests I call life, liberty, health and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things such as money, lands, houses, furniture and the like.”
In other words, men are rational animals, all equal by nature and possessing an “inalienable” innate right to govern themselves as they please without looking for any higher validation. They have furthermore a right and duty to rebel against any regime of which they do not approve or which they find unduly onerous. The Declaration canonizes revolution in the following terms: “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Against despotism it is in fact “their duty to throw off such government.”
This is quintessential democracy, a whole new political system built on a purely rational construction existing entirely in men’s minds without reference to the way things really are. In a universe created by God on hierarchy as principle, where “star differeth from star in glory” (1 Cor. 15:41) and there is an “up” and “down” to everything, where big fish eat little and no two creatures, from snowflakes to canonized saints, have ever been found to be alike, all men were suddenly and summarily declared equal. In the democratic scheme of things, any woman could have been the Mother of God, and her husband St. Joseph was like every other man.
The rest is history. With hierarchy leveled, verticals were horizontalized. Authority being no longer bestowed from above, it was, like its satanic inspiration, drawn from below. The colonies in question quickly morphed into autonomous States and proclaimed themselves the United States of America, a nation dedicated and built on the false principles proclaimed in the Declaration. By the very nature of its flawed Constitution, it carries within itself the seeds of its own disintegration and demise. Before a century had elapsed it began seriously coming apart, its unity being preserved only at the price of a bloody conflict which forced one half of the nation to submit to the other at gun point. That the political monster has lasted as long as it has – albeit not in its original form – can only be attributed to the remains of the Christian heritage perseverating in the body politic and still giving it some semblance of life.
+
The function of government being to promote the common good, Christian governments were designed to order man’s temporal life on earth in view of his eternal destiny in heaven. Democracy, on the other hand, would totally absolve itself of this responsibility by rigorously separating Church and state and devoting itself exclusively to his material well-being. Truth is not government’s concern. As Locke noted, “The business of the laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth and of every particular man’s goods and person.”
According to the apocalyptic vision, the stings of the scorpion-like locusts were located “in their tails,” indicating that Democracy’s real power for evil would manifest itself not so much on first contact as in its long term, delayed results. And so it proved. As an ideology based solely on human reason, it has only natural means at its disposal wherewith to accomplish its objectives, but nothing more is necessary to create a whole new climate from which God and the things of God are ruthlessly excluded. Confined by law to the private sector, religion was not openly denied, but rendered politically irrelevant in the everyday public life of every individual.
Subjecting itself on principle to no outside moral arbiter, Democracy actually created its own Magisterium by empowering a supreme court composed of judges appointed by itself to determine the rectitude and proper application of its laws. Right and wrong being reduced merely to what it deemed “constitutional” or “unconstitutional,” gross vices such as usury, divorce, contraception, abortion and sodomy have one by one been cleared of moral censure by simple legal approval. The only “sin” possible in such a framework is infraction of the Constitution as interpreted by this judiciary body. As the Constitution’s own Article VI baldly states, “This Constitution . . . shall be the supreme law of the land.” Not even the Ten Commandments may supersede it. As a matter of fact to display them on any courthouse premises is viewed as an infringement of the Constitution.
As structuring principles of man’s social life, a nation’s civil laws are powerful factors in forming his thinking and behavior. They can in fact change the whole organization of his environment. Laws rooted in the Gospels have the power to raise the level of public morality and promote all the Christian virtues, whereas laws enacted without reference to revealed truth are bound to do the exact opposite. Morality’s downward plunge with the advent of Democracy is recorded fact, and as Democracy continues to gain ground over the world, the level of morality falls to ever lower levels. Clergy and other moral leaders can remonstrate and threaten all they please on the sidelines, but they have no legal power whatever to rectify matters in a society where Church and state enjoy no working relationship with each other.
It was not without reason that Bl. Pius IX solemnly condemned in his Syllabus of Errors the proposition that “The Church ought to be separated from the State and the State from the Church.” Their separation has removed all possibility of effectively correcting the deadly errors on which Democracy rests, one of the deadliest of them being the myth that given a level playing field, truth will automatically win out over error. Pius IX’s successor Leo XIII, viewing the freedom which the Church enjoyed to preach the Faith in the United States, was unfortunately led to believe this.
Although he never faltered in traditional doctrine, he erred in practical judgment by directing the French bishops to face facts and rally to democracy as a political system, expecting that under its rule Catholic candidates could be elected who in due time would restore Catholic society by enacting laws based on Catholic principles. The results of this policy soon became abundantly clear. The Catholic parties gradually disintegrated under the force of their compromises they had to make with the enemy in order to gain office, and eventually disappeared from the political scene altogether.
As for the Faith in the U.S., almost from the beginning it fell into Americanism, led into a fatal collusion with the revolutionary objectives of Democracy by prelates following the lead of its first Bishop John Carroll, friend of Benjamin Franklin. A later Primate, Cardinal Gibbons, would eventually lay down in a Pastoral Letter to the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore that “there is no antagonism between the laws, institutions and spirit of our country,” and “that our country’s heroes were instruments of the God of Nations in establishing this home of freedom,” denying that “there is aught in the free spirit of our American institutions incompatible with perfect docility to the Church of Christ.” In other words, the Faith that thrived for a while so gloriously in the U.S. was not the integral Catholic Faith of the Apostles, but one diluted by the false principles of democracy.
The hard reality is that truth must be protected in order to survive in its integrity in this world. If it is not, it is trampled to death by the same forces which crucified Christ. A Catholic Church demands a Catholic state to safeguard it and apply its doctrines to temporal society. Their cooperation is what produced the glories of Christendom, which would still be ours today if Christ’s enemies had not succeeded in dismantling the Catholic state. Once that was accomplished, they had easy access to the Church’s spiritual treasures, indeed to the deposit of Faith itself which was the mainspring of Christendom. Cardinal Suenens spoke truly when he declared that the Second Vatican Council was “1789 in the Church.” He might just as easily have said “1776.”
One of the most deplorable results of declaring all men equal is the extinction of the family as God created it to be. Not only was it replaced by the individual as the basic political unit of society, denying the divinely ordained political role of fathers of families, but it destroyed the family’s internal unity by leveling its hierarchical structure, making of marriage a partnership where the sexes are also equal, and one no longer exercises authority over the other. Furthermore, under democratic law marriage is not recognized as a Sacrament between a man and a woman, but merely a civil contract between individuals who wish to cohabit. It can be legally dissolved like any other such commitment. So why be surprised that same-sex unions are now seeking recognition as legal marriages and claiming the same social benefits?
Didn’t our Lady declare at Quito that “Masonry... will enact iniquitous laws with the objective of doing away with this Sacrament, making it easy for everyone to live in sin, encouraging the procreation of illegitimate children born without being incorporated into the Church?” Needless to say, as she also pointed out at Quito, in order to achieve generalized corruption, the new political system “will focus particularly on the children. . . . Woe to the children of these times! It will be difficult to receive the Sacrament of Baptism and also that of Confirmation. Making use of persons in authority, the devil will assiduously try to destroy the Sacrament of Confession. . . The same will happen with Holy Communion. ”
As we know, by force of the egalitarian principles they professed, democratic governments were drawn to establish public school systems geared to providing equal educational opportunities to all children indiscriminately, and this in schools from which religious teaching is rigorously excluded, where any semblance of moral training must be limited to a hard fisted imposition of so-called “social” values. The noxious results need not be enumerated. They can be summed up in simply noting that today a police presence is necessary to keep order among the young in these alleged halls of learning.
Another long term effect of declaring all men equal which deserves mention, and which is generally overlooked, is the blanket enfranchisement of pagans and atheists, who until the rise of democracy and the abolition of Christian oaths of office, were quite properly denied an active role in the government of Christian nations. How indeed could people who denied Christ be expected to frame, let alone conscientiously enforce laws which were essentially rooted in the spirit of the Gospels? By according them equality with Christian citizens, Democracy not only let loose profoundly anti-Christian forces into the very veins of society, but actually empowered them to legislate for Christians, in many cases wielding legal authority over them. Is it any wonder that entire Catholic nations have suffered progressive de-Christianization, with the substitution of judaized, pagan ethics for the supernatural Catholic values on which these nations had been founded?
+
Usurping the place of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost by arrogating to itself on its own authority the executive, legislative and judicial powers proper to divinity, Democracy has made a mockery of the Fourth Commandment on which all real government rests, and Scripture teaches us that the specific punishment for infringing this Commandment is nothing less than slavery. For showing disrespect to his father Noah by laughing at his drunken nakedness, Cham and all his posterity incurred the paternal curse which declared him “A servant of servants . . . to his brethren” (Gen. 9:25). As slavery is the proper consequence of belittling the authority of God the Father even in His earthly representatives, it is a foregone conclusion that Democracy will lead the whole world into enforced servitude of a kind never seen before.
The United States, the much vaunted “Land of the free” which has appointed itself to preach freedom to the whole world and has risen to world leadership by the demonic power of democracy’s crowned locusts, is visibly becoming the “Home of the slave.” All the while extolling the blessings of self-government, its citizens are forging for themselves legal and economic shackles which eventually will trammel not only their every move but their very thoughts, where even now they are learning to live their lives under constant electronic surveillance. How many Americans manage to earn a living today without indenturing their bodies, if not their souls, to the “company store?”
Despite all the flashy successes of the democratic process, natural law nonetheless is bound to reassert itself, because natural law is true reality and there is no gainsaying it. Operating invisibly through all channels of the electorate, it is not elected legislatures, but dynasties of wealthy families who already head the powerful oligarchies which actually dictate national and international policies, guiding the course of governments behind the scenes. Historically democracies have inevitably ended in dictatorship, for like any other living body the body politic cannot be governed by its feet and remain functioning for long. It must have a head to direct its operations, and the great one world Democracy now taking shape can be no exception.
Craving by natural instinct a monarch in whom leadership can be concentrated and exercised over whatever lies below it, it should very soon acclaim by democratic vote the rule of the supreme Slavemaster, the “son of perdition” prophesied in Scripture who is Antichrist the King. At La Salette our Lady characterized him as “the devil incarnate” and even then declared his arrival imminent, telling the young shepherdess Mélanie: “Here is the king of the kings of darkness. Here is the beast with its subjects, calling itself the savior of the world!” The next age, looming just ahead and soon to be announced by the blast of the Sixth Trumpet, can therefore be expected to witness a formal declaration of independence from the Creator on the part of all mankind under the rule of the Antichrist, the triple-titled king of the hellish locusts, the “Angel of the bottomless pit.”
He will sum up democracy in his person much as one of his prototypes, Napoleon Bonaparte, summed up the French Revolution by declaring “La Revolution, c’est moi!” Being “lifted up above all that is called God or that is worshipped. . . showing himself as if he were God ”(2 Thess. 2:4), he will personify that same arrogant spirit of Democracy which during our Lord’s Passion voted to reprieve the robber Barabbas rather the innocent Christ the Redeemer.
The evangelists tell us that when Pontius Pilate, sitting on the judgment seat in the governor’s hall, asked the constituency assembled before him, “What shall I do then with Jesus that is called Christ?” they all replied unanimously, “Let him be crucified!” When Pilate, finding “no cause of death in him,” tried to remonstrate with them, “they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified: and their voices prevailed . . . Away with him, away with him. Crucify him!” (Matt. 27:22; Luke 23:23; John 19:15). Now, that was democracy in action, openly pursuing the objective for which it was forged to begin with: to get rid of God!
|
|
|
| Pope Francis makes personal visit to notorious abortionist Emma Bonino |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-06-2024, 07:37 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
- No Replies
|
|
Pope Francis makes personal visit to notorious abortionist Emma Bonino
Pope Francis has often praised Emma Bonino as one of the nation’s 'forgotten greats,' despite her prolific abortion activism and her claim to have performed abortions herself.
![[Image: PF-EM.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/PF-EM.jpg)
Pope Francis leaving Emma Bonino's house, Nov 2024.
Quotidio Nationale/Video screenshot
Nov 5, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted]) — Pope Francis made a private visit to notorious Italian abortionist Emma Bonino today after she was recently discharged from hospital following breathing problems.
Late Tuesday morning, Pope Francis made an unannounced visit to Bonino at her residence in Rome. Francis had left the Vatican to be present at the Pontifical Gregorian University for a series of public meetings with the university community earlier in the morning.
Shortly after, his cavalcade made the short drive through the historic center to Bonino’s home. According to La Repubblica – an Italian daily with left-leaning communist origins – Francis told reporters outside that Bonino was “very well,” when asked about her health. Bonino had been hospitalized in intensive care earlier in October after experiencing breathing difficulties.
Francis commented that the visit was a “cordial” one.
Bonino is widely acknowledged as one of the key lobbyists and leading voices who brought about the legalization of abortion in Italy. Notwithstanding this, Francis has repeatedly praised her during his pontificate, most recently saying in 2022 that he has “great respect for her,” though adding he did not “share her ideas.”
Bonino, who has publicly supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 U.S. election, had an illegal abortion when she was 27 years old, and after spending four months abroad evading arrest, returned to Italy where she served a 10-day prison term. Bonino credited her arrest with causing the topic of abortion to take center stage in Italy.
She subsequently became a heroine in the eyes of the left-wing media, and notorious for performing abortions with a homemade device, operated by a bicycle pump. She founded the Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion (CISA) in 1975, which lobbied to promote abortion in Italy before its legalization in 1978.
As such, she was described in 2017 as being at least partially responsible for over 6 million abortions since 1978 and has personally boasted that she and her group committed 10,141 illegal abortions.
Bonino is a career politician, having been a member of the European Parliament. She spent many terms in the Italian Chamber of Deputies and was appointed as Italy’s foreign minister in 2013.
Francis first praised her in February 2016 in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere Della Serra. He described the notorious abortion advocate as one of the nation’s “forgotten greats,” comparing her with great historical figures such as Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman.
Acknowledging her differing views, Francis said, “true, but never mind. We have to look at people, at what they do.”
Some months later in November 2016, Francis then received Bonino in a private audience in her capacity as minister of Foreign Affairs. According to the Holy See Press Office at the time, the meeting was “mostly on the topics of the influx of migrants, of welcoming migrants, and their integration.”
July 2017 saw Bonino speak in a Catholic church in northern Italy, after praise from Pope Francis, while pro-life advocates were ejected from the church due to their protests at her presence.
Yet the history of Pope Francis and Bonino goes further back than 2016. As foreign minister, Bonino, along with President Georgio Napolitano and his key ministers, were granted an audience with Francis on June 8, 2013, only two months after he ascended to the papacy.
READ: Pope claims he speaks out often against abortion, his actions suggest otherwise
In April 2014, Bonino called Pope Francis to help end the hunger strike of Radical Party leader Marco Pannella. The Pope made the call and promised to join Pannella in his bid to better conditions in Italian prisons.
In May 2015, the Vatican Insider reported that Pope Francis personally invited Bonino to an audience in the Paul VI Hall within the Vatican City state.
Indeed, in a now-archived 2018 report in The Guardian, Bonino described a regular and close relationship with Pope Francis, with The Guardian calling Francis an “ally” for Bonino. According to that report, “The two, she says with a grin, are in touch. ‘We have some connections, so we pass messages quite often, through friends.’”
After the 2023 overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court, Bonino argued that the ruling “makes the USA jump back 50 years.” “The Supreme Court ruling that after 50 years cancels the right to abortion in the USA is a strong reminder also for us, women and men in Italy and in Europe: on rights you can never stand still, if you do not go forward, you risk going back,” she said.
|
|
|
|
| Pius XII’s Fatima vision and the widespread apostasy we see today |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-05-2024, 06:55 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- No Replies
|
|
Pius XII’s Fatima vision and the widespread apostasy we see today
When explaining what his 1954 vision of Fatima’s miracle of the sun meant, Pope Pius XII replied with one word: apostasy.
![[Image: shutterstock_756365818-e1713875618258-810x500.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/shutterstock_756365818-e1713875618258-810x500.png)
Our Lady of Fatima
Shutterstock
Robert Morrison
Nov 4, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — On a recent episode of Faith & Reason, Fr. Charles Murr told John-Henry Westen about Pope Pius XII’s vision of Fatima’s miracle of the sun. As Fr. Murr recounted, Pius XII had the vision while walking in the Vatican gardens in 1954. When asked what it meant, the pope replied with one word: apostasy.
Pope Pius XII was not the only high-ranking cleric to use the word “apostasy” in connection with Fatima. In his The Secret Still Hidden, Christopher Ferrara quoted two cardinals who used the same term in connection with the Third Secret of Fatima: - Cardinal Luigi Ciappi: “In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church begins at the top.” (p. 43)
- Cardinal Silvio Oddi. “[The Third Secret] has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against apostasy in the Church.” (p. 42)
Although these cardinals used the word apostasy in connection with Fatima, Pope Pius XII’s reference appears unique because he was speaking of the miracle of the sun rather than the Third Secret of Fatima. This invites us to consider whether there might be some deeper connection between the miracle of the sun and the Third Secret of Fatima.
Miracle of the Sun
Dr. José Maria de Almeida Garrett, professor at the Faculty of Sciences of Coimbra, Portugal, witnessed the miracle of the sun at Fatima and described it as follows:
Quote:… I could see the sun, like a very clear disc, with its sharp edge, which gleamed without hurting the sight. It could not be confused with the sun seen through a fog (there was no fog at that moment), for it was neither veiled nor dim. At Fatima, it kept its light and heat, and stood out clearly in the sky, with a sharp edge, like a large gaming table. . . During the solar phenomenon, which I have just described, there were also changes of color in the atmosphere. . . . Everything both near and far had changed, taking on the color of old yellow damask. People looked as if they were suffering from jaundice and I recall a sensation of amusement at seeing them look so ugly and unattractive. My own hand was the same color. Then, suddenly, one heard a clamor, a cry of anguish breaking from all the people. The sun, whirling wildly, seemed all at once to loosen itself from the firmament and, blood red, advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge and fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was truly terrible.
In this description, the loosening of the sun from its firmament appears to correspond to Pius XII’s vision of the dancing of the sun. After the sun appeared to dance, people witnessed it plummet toward the earth before it was restored to its previous position, stable in the sky.
Metaphorical connection between the Sun and the Church
If there is indeed some connection between the miracle of the sun and the Third Secret of Fatima, we would need to see some basis for seeing the sun as representing the Church. In his Catena Aurea, St. Thomas Aquinas cited St. Augustine’s commentary on the following passage from the Gospel of St. Luke:
Quote:And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves. (Luke 21:25)
As we can see from the following commentary, St. Augustine likened the Church to the sun, the moon, and the stars:
Quote:But that the Lord may not seem to have foretold as extraordinary those things concerning His second coming, which were wont to happen to this world even before His first coming, and that we may not be laughed at by those who have read more and greater events than these in the history of nations, I think what has been said may be better understood to apply to the Church. For the Church is the sun, the moon, and the stars, to whom it was said, Fair as the moon, elect as the sun. (Cant. 6:10.) And she will then not be seen for the unbounded rage of the persecutors.
Thus, St. Augustine saw a metaphorical connection between the sun and the Church. This connection does not conflict with the more common associations of Our Lord with the sun. Indeed, because the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, it is fitting to associate it with many of the same symbols that represent Jesus.
Applying this to the miracle of the sun at Fatima, we can say that a dancing sun could correspond metaphorically to a situation in which the Church appears to abandon its immutable nature and begin to follow beliefs and practices that are contrary to what it has always taught and practiced. We must say that this abandonment of immutable truth is only apparent because the Church itself cannot err or fundamentally change. For an eloquent and prophetic description of what this apparent abandonment of immutable truth might look like, we can turn to the words of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) while he was Pope Pius XI’s Secretary of State:
Quote:I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to little Lucia of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the faith, in her liturgy, her theology and her soul . . . I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments and make her feel remorse for her historical past. (The Secret Still Hidden, p. 31)
These words appear to describe the current situation with Francis and his Synodal Church, but we know that these changes did not happen overnight. Already during his papacy, Pius XII was fighting the evils he had foreseen during his time as Secretary of State.
Pius XII’s Humani Generis
In 1950, Pope Pius XII wrote his encyclical “concerning some false opinions threatening to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine,” Humani Generis. Professor Romano Amerio wrote the following about Pius XII’s Humani Generis in his Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth Century:
Quote:The encyclical reproves the modern mentality, not inasmuch as it is modern, but inasmuch as it claims to detach itself from the firmament of unchangeable values, and to give itself over wholly and solely to present existence. Even with corrections, this mentally cannot be reconciled with Catholic dogma. The following articles [in the encyclical] trace the descent of further errors, relating them all back to the error of creaturely independence. Historicism, being the consideration of existence detached from any fixed essence, finds reality only in movement, and gives rise to a universal mobilism. (p. 43)
Professor Amerio’s description reminds us of the dancing sun metaphor: Pius XII was fighting against the errors that threatened to detach Catholic dogma from “the firmament of unchangeable values,” leading to a mobilism, which Professor Amerio described as follows:
Quote:Mobilism is a characteristic of the post-conciliar Church, in which as Cardinal Alfrink says, everything has been put in motion and no part of the Catholic system is free from change. (p. 360)
Going back to the metaphor as the Catholic Church as the sun, Pope Pius XII’s encyclical sought to preserve the Catholic doctrine in its position of stability by condemning the errors that sought to “free dogma,” setting it in motion to follow the modern world.
Aside from this high-level consideration of the purpose of Humani Generis, it is worth noting one of the specific errors Pius XII addressed, relating to the need for souls to belong to the Catholic Church:
Quote:Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. Others finally belittle the reasonable character of the credibility of Christian faith.
As we know today, the proponents of false ecumenism have sought to eliminate the requirement that members of the Mystical Body of Christ “profess the true faith” — but of course no human consensus can change what God has established for His Church. Pius XII’s Humani Generis was the last papal opposition to the false ecumenism that has been pushed on Catholics for over sixty years, but his words remain true today and always will.
John XXIII’s rejection of the warnings of Humani Generis
John XXIII delivered his opening address of Vatican II on October 11, 1962. In it, he set aside the Church’s constant practice of condemning the errors opposed to the Faith:
Quote:The Church has always opposed these errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays, however, the spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations. Not, certainly, that there is a lack of fallacious teaching, opinions and dangerous concepts to be guarded against and dissipated.
Whereas Pius XII and his predecessors had continuously insisted that shepherds must guard their flocks against ravening wolves by forcefully opposing errors, John XXIII opened the Council with a new orientation toward accommodation of the wolves. Even worse, John XXIII took several theologians who had been condemned under Pius XII and made them Council experts, including Hans Küng, Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, and Yves Congar.
Why might John XXIII have done this? In hindsight, we can see that these previously condemned theologians attempted to break Catholic doctrine from the constraints that stood in the way of the ecumenical goals John XXIII announced in his opening address:
Quote:In this regard, it is a source of considerable sorrow to see that the greater part of the human race—although all men who are born were redeemed by the blood of Christ—does not yet participate in those sources of divine grace which exist in the Catholic Church. . . Venerable brothers, such is the aim of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which, while bringing together the Church’s best energies and striving to have men welcome more favorably the good tidings of salvation, prepares, as it were, and consolidates the path toward that unity of mankind which is required as a necessary foundation in order that the earthly city may be brought to the resemblance of that heavenly city where truth reigns, charity is the law, and whose extent is eternity (cfr. St. Augustine, Epistle 138, 3).
Pius XII and his predecessors had insisted that the path to achieving unity consisted of non-Catholics accepting the entirety of Catholic teaching — the Church cannot evolve to suit error, so those in error must convert to the truth. Conversely, John XXIII and many of the Council’s leading figures believed that it would be far more effective for the Church to do precisely what Pius XII had condemned in Humani Generis, which amounts to breaking free of fixed doctrine to embrace the perpetual change needed to satisfy those outside the Church:
Quote:In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. . . Moreover, they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that his can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted.
Over and over — during Vatican II and in its aftermath — the proponents of ecumenism have told us that this is the necessary path for the Church: no longer can it remain “fixed in the firmament” as it was prior to the Council; it must have the doctrinal mobility to satisfy modern needs and unify mankind. Like the sun at Fatima, the religion of the post-conciliar innovators must be free to dance around.
Yves Congar’s assessment of the Council
The trajectory of Yves Congar’s career and legacy tells us much of what we need to know about the crisis in the Church. Although Humani Generis did not name any theologians, Congar was among those whose ideas were condemned by Pius XII. As mentioned above, John XXIII rehabilitated Congar, who became one of the leading figures of the Council.
In his small book from 1976 attacking Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Congar reflected on how Vatican II had ended the “inflexibility” that prevailed under Pius XII:
Quote:By the frankness and openness of its debates, the Council has put an end to what may be described as the inflexibility of the system. We take ‘system’ to mean a coherent set of codified teachings, casuistically-specified rules of procedure, a detailed and very hierarchic organization, means of control and surveillance, rubrics regulating worship — all this is the legacy of scholasticism, the Counter-reformation and the Catholic Restoration of the nineteenth century, subjected to an effective Roman discipline. It will be recalled that Pius XII is supposed to have said: ‘I will be the last Pope to keep all this going.’ (Challenge to the Church: The Case of Archbishop Lefebvre, pp. 51-52)
With these words, Congar was gloating that he and his fellow innovators had successfully achieved what Pius XII sought to prevent. In his mind, the Church was no longer stuck with the inflexibility that stifled development under Pius XII.
Congar was even more clear in his revised preface to True and False Reform in the Church:
Quote:Between 1947, when the book was first written, and 1950 the church—especially in France—sought to respond pastorally to the actual situation in which it found itself. But some initiatives worried Rome. Pius XII, a great pope, was not fundamentally opposed to change, but he wanted strict control over any change and even wanted all initiatives for change to be his alone. . . In a few short weeks John XXIII created a new climate in the church, and then came the council. This most significant breakthrough came from on high. All of a sudden, forces for renewal which had scarcely had room to breathe found ways to be expressed. The cautious suggestions for reform mentioned in my text of 1950 have been surpassed by far. What is happening right now, insofar as it is positive, is certainly in line with what I had intended, yet it goes a great deal further, well beyond what one could have hoped for in 1950. . . But more than anything, two great changes already characterize the climate within the church and will continue to do so more and more: an ecclesiology based on the ‘People of God’ and ecumenism.
From Congar’s perspective, John XXIII and his Council overcame the stultifying control exerted by Pius XII and his predecessors, leaving free rein for the forces of “renewal” that have dominated for the past sixty years. If we see widespread apostasy today, which corresponds to Pius XII’s explanation of the meaning of his vision of the sun, we can thank the “new climate in the church” created by John XXIII.
Waiting for restoration
Of course the miracle of the sun did not end with the dancing of the sun — the sun then plummeted toward the earth before being restored to its stable position in the Fatima sky. In the eyes of many, it appears that the Church (in its human element) is plummeting, threatening to bring great calamity to mankind. God alone knows how much worse it will get. But if Pope Pius XII had been shown a vision of Francis’s Synodal Church, which is inspired by Congar’s dream of creating a “different church,” it seems that he might respond with one word: apostasy.
What would restoration look like? Even if we dismiss the possible connection between the miracle of the sun and the current crisis, it seems entirely reasonable to believe that restoration will consist of eliminating all of those errors that Pius XII condemned in 1950 with his Humani Generis. And if that is the case, then perhaps we can better understand why God is permitting the crisis to grow worse: we are learning by painful experience that Pius XII was correct, so we should be more convinced than ever that we must cling to the immutable Catholic Faith and combat all the errors opposed to it. If we do that, we have every reason for confidence in God’s Providence, even if we reach a point at which all seems lost. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
|
|
|
|
| A Masonic Echo in Dignitas Infinita? |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-05-2024, 06:13 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
- No Replies
|
|
A Masonic Echo in Dignitas Infinita?
Gaetano Masciullo, The Remnant Newspaper | November 4, 2024
The Declaration Dignitas Infinita "on human dignity," issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández on April 2, 2024, and approved by the Holy Father ex audientia (thus, without an explicit signature), presents itself as a document examining human dignity. This document would fall under the so-called authentic magisterium of Pope Francis, meaning it constitutes teaching that, although not engaging infallibility with a definitive act, still requires, according to the Code of Canon Law, "a religious submission of the intellect and will" (CIC 752). This leaves a certain degree of freedom for theological debate and analysis.
Let us, then, examine the points in this document that merit rigorous critical analysis in light of Catholic doctrine, particularly regarding the risk of ambiguity and departure from the Church's magisterial Tradition.
One of the primary issues lies in the document's failure to define the term "dignity" within itself. Despite the central theme being human dignity, the document proposes the existence of four specific types of dignity—ontological, social, moral, and existential—without sufficiently clarifying (1) what "dignity" means and (2) what these four forms of dignity consist of. Among these, the document asserts that only human "ontological dignity" is infinite. This claim resonates alarmingly with the Masonic idea that man possesses an unlimited intrinsic value, a belief that aspires to elevate man to the level of God.
In contrast, St. Thomas Aquinas provides a clear and faith-consistent definition: dignitas is "the intrinsic goodness of a being" (In Sent. III, d. 35, q. 1, a. 4, q. 1, c.). If human dignity were infinite, then human rights would logically also be infinite. This assertion is dangerous because, in essence, it attributes to man an attribute exclusive to the divine: infinity (S.Th. I, q.7, a.1). According to Catholic doctrine, however, man is a creature who, although created in God's image and likeness, remains finite and, regrettably, marked by original sin. By declaring the infinity of human dignity, the document seems to implicitly deny the dogma of original sin, suggesting that man retains a perfect and limitless goodness—a notion incompatible with Christian anthropology.
Man may indeed aspire to union with God through grace, but his dignity does not become infinite in itself except by virtue of Jesus Christ. Therefore, referring to an "infinite" dignity of man represents a serious theological error and may open the door to anthropocentric tendencies, where man is deluded into thinking he possesses a kind of absolute autonomy, contrary to the recognition of his dependence on God. As the Liturgy reminds us, we are saved “through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ.” There are no other ways!
St. Thomas Aquinas, in De rationibus fidei, further clarifies: "No mere man has an infinite dignity, capable of adequately satisfying an offense against God." Original sin has severely compromised man’s goodness, introducing a wound to his nature that necessitates Redemption. If man possessed an infinite dignity, he would be able to atone for the infinite guilt of sin by himself. Instead, Catholic doctrine teaches that only God, by assuming human nature in Christ, was able to redeem humanity.
Therefore, the claim of an infinite dignity undermines, in its ultimate implications, the logical and theological necessity of the Incarnation and the Redemption accomplished by Christ. The entire theological structure of sin and salvation is called into question here. The real question becomes, then: do the authors of this document believe in original sin and the need for a Redeemer?
Another highly damaging consequence for Catholic theology is the denial of hell. If, in fact, every person possesses infinite dignity and can claim infinite rights, even before God (we emphasize: dignity is the source of rights), then every person can atone for their own guilt and save themselves without the necessity of the Divine Mediator.
Furthermore, the Declaration suggests that human dignity, being infinite, serves as the basis to avoid violence toward others. Such a statement implies that human dignity is immutable and not subject to degradation. However, this is false. Catholic Tradition teaches that mortal sin degrades an individual's dignity. An infinite dignity, on the other hand, would render man immune to any conditioning or diminishment. Such a notion eliminates all theological and even philosophical justification for social and civil penalties, including the death penalty, which, although permitted only in very precise and exceptional cases, has always been recognized as legitimate in traditional doctrine.
By emphasizing the "infinite dignity" of man, the document also seems to promote a view of human nature that risks being Neo-Pelagian, placing excessive confidence in man's natural abilities without the necessary aid of divine grace. This view was condemned centuries ago by the Council of Orange (529 AD), which reaffirmed the need for grace for salvation and for every good deed performed by man. Catholic doctrine affirms that man, wounded by original sin, needs grace to be elevated toward God (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2001).
Finally, the citation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an "authoritative echo" of human dignity raises significant concerns. The Church, as the sole bearer of divine Truth, cannot and must not seek validation from a world organization that represents a secular and relativistic view of dignity and rights. The UN, in fact, promotes an idea of human rights that often conflicts with Christian principles, as evidenced by its positions on abortion and sexuality. What should be a doctrinal proclamation of the Church paradoxically ends up seeking legitimacy from an external source.
The Declaration Dignitas infinita risks distancing the Church from her authentic evangelical message and aligning her with principles foreign to Christian doctrine. Instead of relying on the authority of the Magisterium and Scripture, the document appears to adopt anthropological views close to modernism and Freemasonry, which see man as the measure of all things. According to the Catholic perspective, man is a noble yet finite creature, marked by sin and in need of redemption. His dignity is not infinite but depends entirely on his relationship with the Creator, and it is fully realized only in divine grace.
Rather than becoming an “authoritative echo” of worldly principles, the Church must remind the world that the only infinite dignity belongs to God and that only through Christ and the sacramental life in the Catholic Church man can be elevated, purified, and saved. Only in this way the Church may continue to be a beacon of truth and a guardian of human dignity according to God's design.
|
|
|
|
| After Fifty Years, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s “1974 Declaration” Is More Vital Than Ever |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-05-2024, 05:56 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
- No Replies
|
|
After Fifty Years, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s “1974 Declaration” Is More Vital Than Ever
![[Image: 37365d86a2107e76a977ee3cea38b482_L.jpg]](https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/media/k2/items/cache/37365d86a2107e76a977ee3cea38b482_L.jpg)
Robert Morrison, Remnant Columnist | November 1, 2024
After Fifty Years, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s “1974 Declaration” Is More Vital Than Ever
Almost fifty years ago, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre wrote his famous “1974 Declaration,” a brief defense of the immutable Catholic Faith which was so powerful that the liberals in Rome realized they must immediately attack the archbishop. In his Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, Michael Davies described the difference between how orthodox Catholics and Rome’s anti-Catholics saw the 1974 Declaration:
Quote:“It is difficult to see how any orthodox Catholic could possibly disagree with Mgr. Lefebvre concerning this. It is all the more significant, therefore, that the Commission of Cardinals subsequently stated that the Declaration ‘seemed unacceptable to them on all points.’”
These two perspectives remain fifty years later: as we will see below, everything in the 1974 Declaration is even more sensible today in the eyes of orthodox Catholics; and the Church’s liberal enemies are more opposed to those ideas now than ever. Unfortunately, the crisis in the Church has persisted, and even worsened, over the past fifty years largely because the Church’s enemies have succeeded in convincing some faithful Catholics that, in the name of obedience, they cannot accept Archbishop Lefebvre’s intransigent defense of the Faith. If more bishops had stood with Archbishop Lefebvre in 1974, we may never have heard of Francis or his Synod on Synodality.
Before considering how the 1974 Declaration has become more vital over the past fifty years, it is worth briefly recalling the history of why Archbishop Lefebvre wrote it. The late Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais described the impetus for the 1974 Declaration in his biography of Archbishop Lefebvre:
Quote:“The storm broke suddenly on November 11, 1974: after breakfast the Archbishop gathered together the Ecône community to announce that they would that very day receive two apostolic visitors who were coming to conduct an inquiry on behalf of three Roman Congregations, following orders from Paul VI himself. In the corridor of the cloister while waiting for the visitors, Archbishop Lefebvre confided to Fr. Aulagnier: ‘I well suspected that our refusal to accept the New Mass would sooner or later be a stumbling block, but I would have preferred to die rather than have to confront Rome and the Pope!’” (p. 478)
Then, as now, few things raise the suspicion of Roman authorities more than adherence to the Traditional Latin Mass. Bishop Tissier continued his description of the Apostolic Visitation:
Quote:“Msgr. Albert Descamps, secretary for the Biblical Commission, and Msgr. Guillaume Onclin, under-secretary of the Commission for the Revision of the Code of Canon Law, arrived at nine o’clock in the morning. For three days the two Belgians would question the priests and seminarians, and make theologically questionable remarks to them. They thought the ordination of married men was normal and inevitable, they did not admit that truth is immutable, and they expressed doubts concerning the physical reality of Christ’s Resurrection.” (pp. 478-479)
In 2024, it may no longer surprise us to hear heretical statements from Roman prelates, but in 1974 the scandal was enough to spur Archbishop Lefebvre to write his famous declaration, dated November 21, 1974. As Dr. David Allen White described in his The Horn of the Unicorn: A Mosaic of the Life of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the declaration was written for the benefit of the seminarians:
Quote:“The Declaration was penned to quiet the apprehensions of the seminarians and to assure them of the intended direction of the seminary. It was not meant to be an attack on Rome, nor was it intended as a public pronouncement. The Declaration was leaked to the public without Archbishop Lefebvre’s knowledge or permission, and instantly phrases and fragments were broken off from it to slash the Society at its founder. Learning that the Declaration had become public and knowing the uses to which it would be put, he released it himself in its complete form.” (p. 182)
Even though Archbishop Lefebvre did not intend the declaration “to be an attack on Rome,” the seminarians understood that it was most certainly an attack on the errors threatening the Faith, as Bishop Tissier described:
Quote:“Archbishop Lefebvre had not even finished reading his declaration when the seminarians, aware of the importance of the moment, began to applaud. Scorning all human prudence and drawing on a vision of faith, the Archbishop had openly declared war on all the post-conciliar reforms.” (p. 480)
As we can see from the text below, the 1974 Declaration is indeed a declaration of war against the post-conciliar reforms. However stunning the declaration might have been in 1974, though, the experience of the past fifty years likely colors our perception of it today. With fifty years of worsening fruits from the Vatican II revolution, his words ring more true than ever, and are presented below with no additional commentary other than to identify the topic of each portion of the declaration:
Adherence to the Catholic Church. “We hold firmly with all our heart and with all our mind to Catholic Rome, Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to the maintenance of this faith, to the eternal Rome, mistress of wisdom and truth.”
Rejection of Everything That Opposes the Catholic Church. “We refuse on the other hand, and have always refused, to follow the Rome of Neo-Modernist and Neo-Protestant tendencies, which became clearly manifest during the Second Vatican Council, and after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from it.”
Evil Fruits of the Vatican II Revolution. “In effect, all these reforms have contributed and continue to contribute to the destruction of the Church, to the ruin of the priesthood, to the abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments, to the disappearance of the religious life, and to a naturalistic and Teilhardian education in the universities, in the seminaries, in catechetics: an education deriving from Liberalism and Protestantism which had been condemned many times by the solemn Magisterium of the Church.”
Rule for Keeping the Faith. “No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy, can compel us to abandon or to diminish our Catholic Faith, so clearly expressed and professed by the Church's Magisterium for nineteen centuries.”
Quote:“"Friends," said St. Paul, "though it were we ourselves, though it were an angel from heaven that should preach to you a gospel other than the gospel we have preached to you, a curse upon him" (Gal. 1:8).”
“Is it not this that the Holy Father is repeating to us today? And if there is a certain contradiction manifest in his words and deeds as well as in the acts of the dicasteries, then we cleave to what has always been taught and we turn a deaf ear to the novelties which destroy the Church.”
Reason Why the Revolution is Evil. “It is impossible to profoundly modify the Lex Orandi without modifying the Lex Credendi. To the New Mass there corresponds the new catechism, the new priesthood, the new seminaries, the new universities, the ‘Charismatic' Church, Pentecostalism: all of them opposed to orthodoxy and the never-changing Magisterium.”
Quote:“This reformation, deriving as it does from Liberalism and Modernism, is entirely corrupted; it derives from heresy and results in heresy, even if all its acts are not formally heretical.”
Duty of Catholics to Reject the Revolution. “It is therefore impossible for any conscientious and faithful Catholic to espouse this reformation and to submit to it in any way whatsoever.”
Quote:“The only attitude of fidelity to the Church and to Catholic doctrine appropriate for our salvation is a categorical refusal to accept this reformation.”
Determination to Keep Fighting. “That is why, without any rebellion, bitterness, or resentment, we pursue our work of priestly formation under the guidance of the never-changing Magisterium, convinced as we are that we cannot possibly render a greater service to the Holy Catholic Church, to the Sovereign Pontiff, and to posterity.”
Quote:“That is why we hold firmly to everything that has been consistently taught and practiced by the Church (and codified in books published before the Modernist influence of the Council) concerning faith, morals, divine worship, catechetics, priestly formation, and the institution of the Church, until such time as the true light of tradition dissipates the gloom which obscures the sky of the eternal Rome.”
This is the Path of Remaining Faithful. “Doing this, with the grace of God, the help of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and St. Pius X, we are certain that we are being faithful to the Catholic and Roman Church, to all of Peter's successors, and of being the Fideles Dispensatores Mysteriorum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi In Spiritu Sancto.”
As Michael Davies wrote, “it is difficult to see how any orthodox Catholic could possibly disagree with Mgr. Lefebvre concerning this.” Even those who may object to Archbishop Lefebvre’s decision to consecrate bishops without Rome’s approval in 1988 should have no reason to disagree with the ideas in the 1974 Declaration.
The Church is in a much different situation than it was in 1974, but the cause of the crisis and the nature of the corrective action remain the same, although Archbishop Lefebvre would also tell us that we need to fight the spiritual battle as saints. We do not need to look for other answers to Francis, his Synodal Church, or whatever scandals and tyrannical moves Rome sends us next — the greatest service we can render to the Church is to remain faithful to “everything that has been consistently taught and practiced by the Church (and codified in books published before the Modernist influence of the Council) concerning faith, morals, divine worship, catechetics, priestly formation, and the institution of the Church.”
We can even see that this determination to remain faithful to everything that the Church taught and practiced prior to the Council should be less controversial now than in 1974. As confusing as the situation was in 1974, many faithful Catholics were still convinced that Paul VI and the hierarchy were not actively trying to destroy the Church. We can have no such illusions today thanks to Francis’s most egregious initiatives: Fiducia Supplicans, Pachamama, Amoris Laetitia, Traditionis Custodes, the Synodal Church, his partnership with the anti-Catholic globalists, etc. The wrong-way signs of the Vatican II revolution may have been relatively hidden in 1974 but today they are so prominent that anyone with eyes to see cannot miss them.
God gave us the example of Archbishop Lefebvre not only for the time in which he lived but also so that we can learn how to combat the evils facing the Church today. All of us — priests or laity, friends of the Society of St. Pius X or not, those who think Francis is pope or anti-pope — are called to fight against the enemies trying to destroy the Church from within. We know they will never succeed and that God wins in the end, but it should also be clear that God calls us all to fight. Archbishop Lefebvre’s 1974 Declaration is the battle plan and call to arms that we need. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
|
|
|
|
| Archbishop Viganò: Message to the People of Valencia |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-05-2024, 05:41 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- No Replies
|
|
![[Image: miniatura-241104-2-eng.jpg]](https://exsurgedomine.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/miniatura-241104-2-eng.jpg)
Mons. Carlo Maria Viganò
Message to the People of Valencia
and all Spaniards among the devastating cataclysm that struck the Valencian Community
Parce, Domine:
parce populo tuo!
Joel 2, 17
In the past few days, after the tremendous cataclysm that struck the Valencia region of Spain, we have witnessed with dismay and horror the Spanish government’s deliberate prevention of any relief action, not only by the bodies in charge, but also by volunteers and citizens. The absence of timely action was accompanied by the prohibition of relief and sending first aid, offered even by foreign states. Affected populations were left for three days without food, water and electricity. And while survivors remained isolated along with the corpses of their loved ones, with shameless cynicism Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez refused to declare a state of emergency and retorted to the media: “If the Valencians need help, just ask for it.” Members of law enforcement and firefighters denounced their hierarchical superiors for expressly instructing them not to intervene. And on Sunday, the Royals of Spain and the Prime Minister went to the scene of the disaster and were harshly challenged for their scandalous absconding. Sanchez vanished before the reaction of the outraged population, which was justifiably furious.
This, as even the mainstream now admits, is yet another disastrous event scientifically planned by countries subservient to the Word Economic Forum, whose emissaries in the governments are the main proponents of the 2030 Agenda. Last August, there were reports in the international press that the impact of the extensive geoengineering projects officially adopted by Morocco could have a destructive impact on Spain’s climate conditions, and that the scientific community had expressed strong concerns and called for close monitoring of weather phenomena on the Iberian Peninsula. We know that these projects are largely funded by the European Union and other private entities aligned on the fraudulent climate change narrative. We also know, from patents filed and projects disseminated globally, that cloud seeding results in the release of highly toxic substances, such as aluminum, barium, strontium, into the air – and thus on people, water and crops. In addition to this, the HAARP – High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program – is widely used as an unconventional weapon because of the devastating impact of high frequencies on climate, seismic phenomena and volcanic activity. Monitoring in the days leading up to the flood and during the hours when the rainfall was occurring show anomalies that experts recognize as unequivocally the effect of human, not natural, interventions.
Spain is, unfortunately, not the first nation affected by these deliberately provoked phenomena. The criminal will to do as much damage as possible to populations is all too evident. Think of the insane green management of reservoirs and dams, almost all of which have been torn down in recent years; or that of canals and waterways, which European regulations prohibit dredging and clearing of logs and brushwood. And again: the reckless policies of destroying agriculture, livestock and fisheries for the benefit of the intensive production of multinational corporations; the planning of famines and droughts through geoengineering, so as to convert fields taken away from cultivation into photovoltaic installations to power data centers with which to control our every movement. Multinational corporations are appropriating water management, under the pretext of climate change, for the sole purpose of using it for the cooling systems of the same data centers.
All this is happening everywhere, in the complicit silence of a press owned by the same big investment funds: BlackRock, Vanguard, StateStreet. Everything is in their hands: the banks, the debts of states, information, food, health, weapons, the very air we breathe, the very light of the sun, which we increasingly see obscured by a blanket of clouds.
But despite the fact that this conspiracy against humanity is evident and even admitted by its perpetrators – first and foremost, Klaus Schwab – any critical voice, any form of dissent, is disqualified as conspiracy. The pandemic farce should have incontrovertibly shown the criminal intentions of those who imposed an experimental serum, knowing that it would result in permanent genetic mutation, as well as infertility, serious adverse effects including the revival of cancers and death. What did that experiment in social engineering teach us? And what image came out of it of our rulers, now that we know they were acting deliberately against their fellow citizens? Criminals in the pay of an increasingly powerful and invasive, increasingly arrogant and violent subversive elite.
Dear Valencians! And you, people of all Spain! In the face of this immense disaster that has struck you so brutally and mercilessly; in the face of the betrayal of those who should serve you and instead manifestly want your evil, I ask you to rediscover your Catholic soul to which your Nation is heir, giving proof of that bond of Christian brotherhood that unites us with Our Lord Jesus Christ to the one Eternal Father. Be proud witnesses of your Faith, with Hope, in Charity. Find again, even and especially among the mud and debris, the strength to help your neighbor, who is precisely the person who is close to you, who is in need. And pray: pray together, together pray the Rosary as you dig, as you recompose your deceased loved ones.
May the Blessed Virgin de los Desamparados console you, protect you and give you strength. May the Archangel Saint Michael accompany to Heaven the souls of those who have found death in this tremendous cataclysm caused by criminals in the service of Satan.
Know that I am spiritually close to you in prayer. I invoke upon you all, dear Valencians, and upon all of you Spaniards, the Blessing of God and the Grace of the Consoling Spirit. Viva Cristo Rey!
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
November 3, MMXXIV a. D.ñi
Tertia die infra Octavam Omnium Sanctorum
|
|
|
|
| Prominent COVID jab critic examines the amazing evidence for the Shroud of Turin |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-04-2024, 07:58 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- No Replies
|
|
Prominent COVID jab critic examines the amazing evidence for the Shroud of Turin
Dr. John Campbell’s analysis of the Turin Shroud highlights profound links to Gospel descriptions of Christ's suffering while showcasing pollen and soil samples that align with the place and time of the crucifixion.
![[Image: Untitled-25.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Untitled-25.png)
Shroud of Turin
Screenshot
Nov 2, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — Our world is full of sensational claims, the glittering promises of which produce disappointment – or even death and despair. This was the case with the “100 percent safe and effective” so-called “vaccines,” the terrible impact of which was documented in the U.K. by Dr. John Campbell.
Campbell has now turned his analytical skills to the Turin Shroud. In a remarkable video published on October 28, “Shroud Studies” shows that the application of the latest scientific techniques prove its authenticity – but cannot explain how the image itself was formed.
Even with modern technology, no one has managed to reproduce it.
READ: Shroud of Turin experts reveal its stunning connection to the Gospels
Campbell begins his summary of many studies of the shroud with a striking observation:
Quote:There’ve been thousands of millions of shrouds through history, but this is the only one with an image on it.
He explains that the image of Our Lord on the shroud is only “nanometers thick.” Attempts to recreate the effect with modern technology have failed. “Even now in 2024 there are no chemical or physical methods known which can account for the image,” says Campbell, showing how claims the shroud is painted have been disproven. Pollen, soil, and mineral samples all agree with the place and time of Our Lord’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection, yet no known process can explain the image itself.
“Nor can any combination of physical, chemical, biological, or medical circumstances explain the image adequately,” says Campbell, “And that remains true today.”
He adds that “this image is a total enigma,” as he summarizes the explanation for how it came to be:
Quote:[The image of Our Lord] appears to be produced by a very short flash of high-intensity light radiation.
Though Campbell says this resembles a photographic negative, the method of making such an image is unknown. “If there were another way it was produced, it still hasn’t been elucidated and can’t be replicated today.”
The miraculous image of Our Lord is only one aspect of the shroud which Campbell examines. His account covers the attempt to carbon-date the shroud, showing evidence that the sample taken for examination contained fibers added to repair the shroud in the Middle Ages.
How can we know the shroud is genuine? Campbell cites an abundance of evidence.
Pollen samples taken from the shroud correspond not only to the region in which Our Lord was crucified, but also to the season of His Passion. “The shroud contains pollen from Jerusalem, north and south Turkey, France and Italy. This is consistent with the known history of the shroud,” Campbell says.
READ: 2-year-old study traces Shroud of Turin to time of Jesus in first-century Middle East
Campbell offers “just one example” of the pollen “fingerprint” which places the shroud at the correct location and time of the crucifixion of Christ. He notes that “there’s a lot of pollen from Gundelia tournefort. It flowers in the Jerusalem area February to May – which of course is the time of the Jewish Passover.”
“The death of Jesus was at the time of the Jewish Passover,” he clarifies.
Samples of dirt from the shroud also support the Gospel’s account of Christ’s path along the Via Dolorosa to Calvary:
Quote:The shroud contains Jerusalem dirt found on the soles of the feet, [and] the left knee from where He fell.
Campbell relates that the 1978 team tasked with analyzing the shroud also found the same soil on the area of Christ’s nose, which “so alarmingly” revives how Christ fell with such violence, as remembered in the Stations of the Cross.
“To think that as Jesus was carrying the cross – He fell over and His nose would hit the ground,” said Campbell, who applied his medical training to an examination of the evidence of Christ’s wounds.
The evidence of scourging confirms the accounts given in the Gospels, says Campbell.
Quote:We see that the man of the shroud has a broken nose, a swollen face. Part of the beard has been plucked out – tearing wounds produced by the scourging.
Wounds from the crown of thorns, bruises on the shoulder which, if we believe if this is indeed Jesus of Nazareth, from carrying the weight of a cross again is consistent.
Campbell lists further correspondences to the Gospel accounts of the death of Christ – evidenced by the shroud: “Knee injuries from repeated falls. Nail wounds from Roman crucifixion – and an oval wound between the fifth and the sixth rib on the right-hand side.”
He concludes: “Again, these are the wounds that have been known about from the sufferings of Christ Himself.”
Yet Campbell is far from alone in this discovery. In his book, A Doctor at Calvary, French military surgeon and Catholic Pierre Barbet said correspondence to the Gospel accounts is unarguable:
Quote:The markings on this image are so clear and medically accurate that the pathological facts which they reflect concerning the suffering and death of the man depicted here are in my opinion beyond dispute.
Campbell states that “many hundreds have agreed with this,” as he noted a 2024 Italian study which used novel X-Ray technology – proving the shroud came from the time of Christ.
A visibly moved Campbell said that all the evidence supports the claim that this is the cloth witnessed by Saint Peter as he entered the tomb of the risen Christ.
Again, consistent with the New Testament – Simon Peter went straight into the tomb … he saw the cloth was still lying in its place – so that could well be this cloth.
In his striking summary of the evidence for the authenticity of the shroud, Campbell has noted the miraculous production of the image and that the blood, dirt, cloth, and pollen all corroborate the accounts given of the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
As science has progressed, it appears to reveal the mystery of Christ as well as the material reality of his incarnation – and His profound suffering in the cause of our salvation.
“While the shroud could be appreciated in earlier centuries – no one knew it was a photographic negative until photography was invented,” he said, describing the image of Christ produced by an inexplicable burst of light.
Curiously, the technology which has revealed the complexities of the shroud was first used to investigate the heavens.
“No one knew it had three-dimensional information until people started wanting to interpret the topography of distant planets,” Campbell explained, noting, “There are so many things that science is revealing about this quite extraordinary artefact.”
At the end of this sober yet awe inspiring analysis, Campbell indicates the significance of the mystery of Jesus Christ the Saviour, as transmitted through the shroud of Turin:
Quote:A lot of things aren’t looking very hopeful at the moment. It’s almost like that this is a message for later times.
This is a message which the world urgently needs to hear today. It is the message of Christ, and in Campbell’s analysis viewers will find the medical, the material, and the miraculous all in agreement with the story of His presence among us.
|
|
|
|
| Purgatory Explained by the Lives and Legends of the Saints |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-03-2024, 07:48 AM - Forum: Resources Online
- Replies (106)
|
|
Purgatory Explained by the Lives and Legends of the Saints
by Fr. F. X. Shouppe, S.J.
Published 1893
Taken from here.
Author's Preface
Object of the Work - To what Class of Readers it is Addressed
- What we are Obliged to Believe, what we may Piously Believe, and what we are at Liberty not to Admit - Visions and Apparitions - Blind Credulity and Exaggerated Incredulity
The Dogma of Purgatory is too much forgotten by the majority of the faithful; the Church Suffering, where theyhave so many brethren to succor, whither they foresee that they themselves must one day go, seems a strange land to them.
This truly deplorable forgetfulness was a great sorrow to Saint Francis de Sales. "Alas!" said this pious doctor of the Church, "we do not sufficiently remember our dear departed; their memory seems to perish with the sound of the funeral bells."
The principal causes of this are ignorance and lack of faith; our notions on the subject of Purgatory are too vague, our faith is too feeble.
In order, then, that our ideas may become more distinct and our faith enlivened, we must take a closer view of this life beyond the tomb, this intermediate state of the just souls, not yet worthy to enter the Heavenly Jerusalem.
This is the object of the present work: we propose not to prove the existence of Purgatory to skeptical minds, but to make it better known to the pious faithful who believe with a divine faith this dogma revealed of God. It is to them, properly speaking, that this book is addressed, to give them a less confused idea of Purgatory. I say purposely a clearer idea than people generally have, by placing this great truth in the strongest possible light.
To produce this effect we possess three very distinct sources of light: first, the dogmatic doctrine of the Church; then the doctrine as explained by the doctors of the Church; in the third place, the revelations and apparitions of the saints, which serve to confirm the teachings of the doctors.
1. The dogmatic doctrine of the Church on the subject of Purgatory comprises two articles, of which we shall speak later on. These two articles are of faith, and must be believed by every Catholic.
2. The teaching of the doctors and theologians, or rather their opinions on several questions relative to Purgatory, and their explanations of them, are not imposed as articles of faith; we are free to reject them without ceasing to be Catholic. Nevertheless, it would be imprudent, and even rash, to reject them, and it is the spirit of the Church to follow the opinions commonly held by the doctors.
3. The revelations of the saints, called also particular revelations, do not belong to the deposit of faith confided by Jesus Christ to His Church; they are historical facts, based upon human testimony. It is permitted to believe them, and piety finds wholesome food in them. We may, however, disbelieve them without sinning against faith; but they are authenticated, and we cannot reject them without offending against reason; because sound reason demands that all men should give assent to truth when it is sufficiently demonstrated.
To illustrate this subject more clearly, let us, in the first place, explain the nature of the revelations of which we speak.
Particular revelations are of two kinds: the one consists in visions, the other in apparitions. They are called particular, because they differ from those found in Holy Scripture, not forming part of the doctrine revealed for mankind, and not being proposed by the Church to our belief as dogmas of faith.
Visions, properly so called, are subjective lights, infused by God into the understanding of His creatures, in order to discover to them His mysteries. Such are the visions of the prophets, those of Saint Paul, of Saint Bridget, and many other saints. These visions usually take place when the subject is in a state of ecstasy; they consist in certain mysterious representations, which appear to the eyes of the soul, and which must not always be taken literally.
Frequently they are figures, symbolic images, which represent in a manner proportionate to the capacity of our understanding, things purely spiritual, of which ordinary language is incapable of conveying an idea.
Apparitions, at least frequently, are objective phenomena which have a real exterior object. Such was the apparition of Moses and Elias on Mount Thabor; that of Samuel evoked by the Witch of Endor; that of the Angel Raphael to Tobias; those of many other angels; in fine, such are the apparitions of the souls in Purgatory.
That the spirits of the dead sometimes appear to the living is a fact that cannot be denied. Does not the Gospel clearly suppose it? When the risen Jesus appeared for the first time to His assembled apostles, they supposed they saw a spirit. Our Saviour, far from saying that spirits appear not, spoke to them thus: Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see Me to have. {Luke 24:37, etc.).
Apparitions of the souls that are in Purgatory are of frequent occurrence. We find them in great numbers in the "Lives of the Saints"; they happen sometimes to the ordinary faithful. We have collected those which appear best qualified to instruct or to edify, and we now present them to the reader. But, it may be asked, are all these facts historically certain? We have selected the best authenticated. If, among the number, the reader finds any which he thinks could not stand the rigor of criticism, he need not admit them In order to avoid an excessive severity, one which is akin to incredulity, it is good to remark that, generally speaking,
apparitions of souls occur, and that they frequently occur cannot be doubted. "Apparitions of this kind," says the Abbe Ribet, "are not uncommon. God permits them for the relief of souls in order to excite our compassion, and also to make us sensible of how terrible are the rigors of His Justice against those faults which we consider trivial." (La Mystique Divine, distinguee des Contrefaqons Diaboliques et des Analogies Humaines. Paris, Poussielgue). Saint Gregory in his Dialogues cites several examples, of which, it is true, we may dispute the full authenticity; but which, in the mouth of this holy doctor, prove at least that he believed in the possibility of the existence of these phenomena. A great number of other authors, not less reliable than Saint Gregory, both on account of sanctity and learning, relate similar instances. Moreover, incidents of this sort abound in the lives of the saints. To be convinced of this, it suffices to peruse the Acta Sanctorum.
The Church Suffering has ever implored the suffrages of the Church Militant; and this intercourse, bearing the impress of sadness, yet also full of instruction, is for the one a source of inexhaustible relief, and for the other a powerful incitement to sanctity.
The vision of Purgatory has been granted to many holy souls. Saint Catherine de Ricci descended in spirit into Purgatory every Sunday night; Saint Lidwina, during her raptures, penetrated into this place of expiation, and, conducted by her angel guardian, visited the souls in their torments. In like manner, an angel led Blessed Osanne of Mantua through this dismal abyss.
Blessed Veronica of Binasco, Saint Frances of Rome, and many others had visions exactly similar, with impressions of terror.
More frequently it is the souls themselves that appear to the living and implore their intercession. Many appeared in this manner to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, and to a great number of other holy persons. The souls departed frequently besought the intercession of Denis the Carthusian. This great servant of God was one day asked how many times the holy souls appeared to him "Oh! hundreds of times," he replied.
Saint Catherine of Siena, in order to spare her father the pains of Purgatory, offered herself to the Divine Justice to suffer in his stead during her whole life. God accepted her offer, inflicted the most excruciating torments upon her, which lasted until her death, and admitted the soul of her father into eternal glory. In return this blessed soul frequently appeared to his daughter to thank her, and to make to her many useful revelations.
When the souls in Purgatory appear to the living, they always present themselves in an attitude which excites compassion; now with the features which they had during life or at their death, with a sad countenance and imploring looks, in garments of mourning, with an expression of extreme suffering; then like a mist, a light, a shadow, or some kind of fantastic figure, accompanied by a sign or word by which they may be recognized. At other times they betray their presence by moans, sobs, sighs, or hurried respiration and plaintive accents. They often appear enveloped in flames. When they speak, it is to manifest their sufferings, to deplore their past faults, to ask suffrages, or even to address reproaches to those who ought to succor them Another kind of revelation, adds the same author, is made by invisible blows which the living receive, by the violent shutting of doors, the rattling of chains, and the sounds of voices.
These facts are too multiplied to admit of doubt; the only difficulty is to establish their connection with the world of expiation. But when these manifestations coincide with the death of persons dear to us, when they cease after prayers and reparations have been made to God in their behalf, is it not reasonable to see therein signs by which the souls make known their distress?
In the various phenomena to which we have just drawn attention we recognize the souls in Purgatory. But there is a case when the apparition should be held in suspicion; it is when a notorious sinner, unexpectedly carried away by a sudden death, comes to implore the prayers of the living that he may be delivered from Purgatory. The devil is interested in making us believe that we can live in the greatest disorders until the moment of our death and yet escape Hell. However, even in such instances, it is not forbidden to think that the soul which appears has repented, and that it is in the temporary flames of expiation; nor, consequently, is it forbidden to pray for it, but it is proper to observe the greatest caution in regard to visions of this kind, and the credit which we give to them.
The details into which we have entered suffice to justify in the eyes of the reader the quotation of facts which he will find in the course of this work.
Let us add that the Christian must guard against too great incredulity in supernatural facts connected with dogmas of faith. Saint Paul tells us that Charity believes all things (1 Corinthians 13:7), that is to say, as interpreters explain it, all that which we may prudently believe, and of which the belief will not be prejudicial. If it is true that prudence rejects a blind and superstitious credulity, it is also true that we must avoid another extreme, that with which our Saviour reproached the Apostle Saint Thomas. You believe. He said to him, because you have seen and touched; it were better to have believed the testimony of your brethren. In exacting more, you have been guilty of incredulity; this is a fault that all My disciples should avoid. Blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed. Be not faithless, but believing. (John 20:27,29).
The theologian who expounds dogmas of faith must be severe in the choice of his proofs; the historian must proceed with rigorous circumspection in the narration of facts, but the ascetic writer, who cites examples to illustrate truths and edify the faithful, is not held to this strict rigor. The best authorized persons in the Church, such as Saint Gregory, Saint Bernard, Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Bellarmine, and many others, as much distinguished for their learning as for their piety, when writing their excellent works knew nothing of the fastidious requirements of the present day - requirements which in nowise constitute progress.
In fact, if the spirit of our fathers in the faith was more simple, what is the cause of the disappearance of that ancient simplicity in the present time? Is it not the Protestant Rationalism with which, in our day, so many of our Catholics are infected? Is it not the spirit of reasoning and criticism that emanated from the Lutheran Reformation, propagated by French Philosophism, which, leading them to consider the things of God from a purely human point of view, makes them cold, and alienates them from the Spirit of God? The Venerable Louis of Blois, speaking of the Revelations of Saint Gertrude, says: "This book contains treasures. Proud and carnal men," he adds, "who understand nothing of the Spirit of God, treat as reveries the writings of the holy virgin Gertrude, of Saint Mechtilde, Saint Hildegarde, and others; it is because they are ignorant of the familiarity with which God communicates Himself to humble, simple, and loving souls, and how in these intimate communications He is pleased to illumine these souls with the pure light of truth, without any shadow of error." (Louis of Blois, Epist. ad Florentium).
These words of Louis of Blois are serious. We did not wish to incur the reproach of this great master in the spiritual life, and, whilst avoiding a blameworthy credulity, we have collected with a certain kind of liberty those which seem to us at once the best authenticated and the most instructive. May they increase in those who read them devotion towards the faithful departed. May they profoundly inspire all who read them with a holy and salutary fear of Purgatory.
Note: It is from the lives of the saints, honored as such by the Church, and other illustrious servants of God, that we have taken the greater part of the examples herein cited. The reader who wishes to investigate these facts, in order to give them their just value, may without difficulty have recourse to the originals by the aid of our references. If the incident is drawn from the life of a saint, we indicate the day on which his name is entered in the martyrology, which is sufficient for consulting the Acta Sanctorum. If we mention any venerable personage, such as Father Joseph Anchieta, Apostle and Thaumaturgus of Brazil, whose life is not inserted in the volumes of the Bollandists, they must then have recourse to biographies and particular histories. For the examples borrowed from Father Rossignoli, Merveilles Divine dans les Ames du Purgatoire (trans. Postel; Toumai, Castennan), we content ourselves by marking the number of the Merveille. because the author has there indicated one or more sources whence he himself has drawn.
Translator's Preface
The author of this work is the well-known writer, Father Francis Xavier Schouppe, of the Society of Jesus. The reverend author scarcely needs any introduction to English readers, as several of his valuable works have been already translated from French into English. To the reverend clergy the author is best known through his works on Dogmatic Theology and Sacred Scripture, which, in the judgment of competent critics, possess the very highest order of merit. In this work on Purgatory they will find the same fullness and solidity of thought and judgment, joined with wonderful clearness and simplicity of diction, which distinguish the above works. We are confident that the reverend clergy will hail with delight the appearance of this work in an English garb, and will give it their esteemed encouragement.
A profound theologian and Scriptural scholar, acquainted as only very few are with the writings of the Fathers, the author was specially equipped for writing a work of this kind. A faithful and devoted son of the Church, his works are ever guided by a Catholic instinct, which keeps them in harmony with Catholic faith and Catholic practice.
The subject of this book is at once dear and interesting to every Catholic heart. About the existence of this intermediate state Catholics have no more doubt than of the existence of Heaven or Hell. The Church, by her authoritative teaching, has decided the matter for all time. "The Catholic Church," says the Council of Trent, "instructed by the Holy Ghost, has, from the sacred writings and the ancient tradition of the Fathers, taught in sacred councils, and very recently in the Ecumenical Synod, that there is a Purgatory, and that the souls there detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful, but principally by the acceptable Sacrifice of the Altar." (Sess. 25).
The pious reader cannot fail to have his faith nourished and strengthened after reading a chapter of this book; and realizing how much help and comfort he can bring to the poor souls, his charity will prompt him to come to their assistance and rescue. Their cries, wafted hither on the wings of faith from the shore of eternity, will not appeal to him in vain. A new interest will spring up within him for that realm of pain yet also of hope, where those not wholly pure are cleansed and prepared for everlasting joys.
This work has been translated into English at the earnest request of the author. Wishing that devotion for the holy souls might grow and flourish in many hearts, he considered that his purpose would be best attained by having this work translated into English, for the benefit of English-speaking readers. It may also interest the readers of this book to know that the learned author is at present laboring for the salvation of souls among the pagan people of India.
The translator has specially aimed at giving the exact sense of the author, without any attempt at style or literary finish. Such an attempt, she believes, would detract from the value of the work as a whole.
For the rest, should this work contribute even in a small measure to the greater glory of God and of Holy Church; should it make the doctrine of Purgatory better understood; should it convince its readers of the excellence of devotion for the holy souls, and inspire at least some of them with a holy zeal to practice it, then indeed would the ambition of the author and translator be realized.
-J.J. 5.
Protestation of the Author
In conformity to the decree of Urban VIII, Sanctissimum, of March 13, 1525, we declare that if in this work we have cited facts represented to be supernatural, nothing but a personal and private authority is to be attached to our opinion; the discernment of facts of this kind belongs to the supreme authority of the Church.
CANON XXX. SESSION VI. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 13 JANUARY 1547
If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged, either in this world or in Purgatory, before the gates of Heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.
DECREE CONCERNING PURGATORY. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. SESSION XXV. 4 DECEMBER 1563
Since the Catholic Church, instructed by the Holy Ghost, has, following the sacred writings and the ancient tradition of the Fathers, taught in sacred councils and very recently in this ecumenical council, that there is a Purgatory, and that the souls there detained are aided by the suffrages of the faithful and chiefly by the Acceptable Sacrifice of the Altar, the Holy Council commands the bishops that they strive diligently to the end that the sound doctrine of Purgatory, transmitted by the Fathers and sacred councils, be believed and maintained by the faithful of Christ, and be everywhere taught and preached.
CANONS CONCERNING THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. SESSION XIV, 25 NOVEMBER 1551
Canon 12. If anyone says that God always pardons the whole penalty together with the guilt and that the satisfaction of penitents is nothing else than the faith by which they perceive that Christ has satisfied for them, let him be anathema.
Canon 13. If anyone says that satisfaction for sins, as to their temporal punishment, is in no way made to God through the merits of Christ by the punishments inflicted by Him and patiently borne, or by those imposed by the priest, or even those voluntarily undertaken, as by fasts, prayers, almsgiving or other works of piety, and that therefore the best penance is merely a new life, let him be anathema.
Canon 14. If anyone says that the satisfactions by which penitents atone for their sins through Christ are not a worship of God but traditions of men, which obscure the doctrine of grace and the true worship of God and the beneficence itself of the death of Christ, let him be anathema.
Canon 15. If anyone says that the keys have been given to the Church only to loose and not also to bind, and that therefore priests, when imposing penalties on those who confess, act contrary to the purpose of the keys and to the institution of Christ, and that it is a fiction that there remains often a temporal punishment to be discharged after the eternal punishment has by virtue of the keys been removed, let him be anathema.
CHAPTER IX - ON THE WORKS OF SATISFACTION. SESSION XIV. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 25 NOVEMBER 1551
It [the Council] teaches furthermore that the liberality of the divine munificence is so great that we are able through Jesus Christ to make satisfaction to God the Father, not only by punishments voluntarily undertaken by ourselves to atone for sins, or by those imposed by the judgment of the priest according to the measure of our offense, but also, and this is the greatest proof of love, by the temporal afflictions imposed by God and borne patiently by us.
|
|
|
|
| From Fr. Shouppe's 'Purgatory': Emperor Maurice Asks to Atone for His Sin on Earth |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-03-2024, 06:16 AM - Forum: Resources Online
- No Replies
|
|
Emperor Maurice Asks to Atone for His Sin on Earth
Adapted from Purgatory by Fr. F.X. Shouppe, S.J.,
London, 1920, pp 52-53
![[Image: H270_Mau.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H270_Mau.jpg)
Emperor Maurice, as represented in the Rulers of the Byzantine Empire by Kibea
TIA | November 2, 2024
To prefer the fire of Purgatory to making penance and prayer in this life is the greatest of follies. The Byzantine Emperor Maurice (582-602) understood this and acted wisely. History relates that this Prince, notwithstanding his good qualities which had endeared him to St. Gregory the Great, towards the close of his reign committed a grave fault, and atoned for it by an exemplary repentance.
His was a reign marked by constant warfare against the Avars and Slavs in the Balkans, Lombards in Italy and the Persians from the East. This outstanding General helped transform the shattered late Roman Empire into a new and well-organized medieval Byzantine Empire.
Having lost a battle against the Khan or King of the Avars in 599, Maurice refused to pay the ransom of the prisoners, although he was asked but the sixth part of a gold coin, which is a mere pittance.
This mean refusal put the barbarous conqueror into such a violent rage that he ordered the immediate massacre of all of the 12,000 Roman soldiers.
Then the Emperor acknowledged his fault, and felt it so keenly, that he sent money and candles to the principal churches and monasteries, to beg that God would be pleased to punish him in this life rather than in the next.
These prayers were heard. In the year 602, after ordering his troops to pass the winter beyond the Danube because of shortage of funds to return them home, a mutiny arose among them. They drove away their general, and proclaimed their leader Phocas as Emperor and marched on Constantinople, which ceded to them, deserting the Emperor Maurice.
![[Image: H270_son.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H270_son.jpg)
His five sons were killed before Maurice's eyes
Maurice was obliged to fly in the night, after having divested himself of all marks of royalty. Nevertheless, he was recognized. He was taken, together with his wife, five of his sons, and his three daughters – that is to say, his whole family with the exception of his eldest son.
Maurice and his five sons were unmercifully slaughtered near Chalcedon. The carnage began with the youngest of the Princes, who was put to death before the eyes of the unfortunate father, without uttering a word of complaint. The rest were then beheaded, and finally the Emperor himself.
Remembering the pains of the other world, Maurice esteemed himself happy to suffer in the present life, and throughout the massacre of all of his five sons, he spoke no other words than those of the Psalmist, Thou art just, O Lord, and Thy judgment is right (Ps. 118:137).
![[Image: H270_Coi.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H270_Coi.jpg)
Maurice, portrait on a solidus |
|
|
|
| Archbishop Viganò: Homily for the Feast of All Saints |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-03-2024, 06:11 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- No Replies
|
|
Placare, Christe
Homily on the Feast of All Saints
![[Image: miniatura-241101-eng.jpg]](https://exsurgedomine.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/miniatura-241101-eng.jpg)
Auferte gentem perfidam
credentium de finibus,
ut unus omnes unicum
ovile nos Pastor regat.
The race perfidious expel
from regions where the faithful dwell
let one sole shepherd be our guide
all Christians in one fold abide.
- Hymn. Placare Christe servulis
Only a few days ago the Divine Liturgy intoned the praises of the King of kings, proclaiming the Divine and Universal Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Today the Holy Church celebrates His Heavenly Court: Most Holy Mary, Queen; the nine angelic Hierarchies: Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim; the Prophets of the Old Testament; the Apostles, the Martyrs, the Confessors of the Faith, the Doctors, the Holy Virgins, the Monks and Hermits, and all that infinite host of blessed souls who populate the Heavenly Jerusalem, beata pacis visio.
The hymn of Vespers of this feast, Placare Christe Servulis, is a song to our comrades in arms, to the knights of the Incarnate Word and of the most august Virgin, to the cœlicoli, the inhabitants of Heaven who enjoy the beatific vision in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity. Saint John, in his vision on Patmos, contemplates turbam magnam, quam dinumerare nemo poterat (Rev 7:9), and it is significant how he notes that these are people ex omni tribu, et lingua, et populo, et natione – of every tribe, and language, and people, and nation. An immense multiracial and multiethnic army, but united by the profession of the same Faith: They all stood before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes, and had palm branches in their hands (Rev 7:9). The angels, the elders, and the four living creatures prostrated themselves before the throne of the Divine Majesty, saying: Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen (Rev 7:12).
These words recall those that the Holy Church intones during the Canon of the Mass, a few moments before the Consecration: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of armies arrayed for battle! The heavens and the earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. And with the eyes of the spirit we see all creatures bowing to the Holy of Holies, from angelic pure spirits to human beings, from animals to plants, whose perfections are a ray of the supreme perfections of God. That wonderful Canticle of the Three Children (Dan 3:52-90) which we priests recite at Lauds comes to mind: Benedicite, cæli, Domino… Benedicite aquæ omnes, sol et luna, stellæ cæli, omnis imber et ros, ignis et æstus, rores et pruina, gelu et frigus, glacies et nives, noctes et dies, lux et tenebræ, fulgura et nubes, montes et colles, universa germinantia in terra, fontes, maria et flumina, cete, omnes volucres cæli, omnes bestiæ et pecora… laudate et superexaltate eum in sæcula.
Joining in the praise that rises up from Creation, there are the sons of men, the priests of the Lord, His servants, the spirits and souls of the just, the saints and the humble of heart, and the three youths who face the flames of the furnace unharmed: Benedicite, Anania, Azaria, Misaël, Domino: laudate et superexaltate eum in saecula: quia eruit nos de inferno, et salvos fecit de manu mortis: et liberavit nos de medio ardentis flammae, et de medio ignis eruit nos: for He has freed us from hell and saved us from the grip of death; He has freed us from the burning flames and saved us from the fire.
This wonderful vision, in which we almost perceive the beatitude enjoyed by our companions the Saints, is certainly consoling for us who have daily before our eyes not the Civitas Dei, but the Civitas diaboli. Down here everything is falsehood, vice, fornication, murder, sin, ugliness, death, and chaos. But what could we expect from the world – of which Satan is prince – when the Lordship of Our Lord Jesus Christ is denied and blasphemed, and the societas christiana is betrayed and despised? When the Nations prefer the abject tyranny of Satan to the gentle yoke of Christ the King and High Priest?
The Feasts of Christ the King and All Saints – together with tomorrow’s Commemoration of the Faithful Departed – remind us that we are exsules, citizens of a homeland from which we are still far away from and to which we must return; exsules filii Evæ, wounded by original sin and restored to Grace in Mary Most Holy, the new Eve; in hac lacrimarum valle, which is a dark and cold valley, full of pain and trials; a valley that we pass through gementes et flentes, considering what we have lost with sin and looking with hope to what awaits us, if only we listen to the voice of Him who loved us so much that He became Incarnate, suffered and died for our Redemption and so that we might merit, while we are in this life, the enjoyment of His eternal triumph in the next.
I recalled this in my homily for the Feast of Christ the King, quoting the words of Our Lord: You say, I am King. I was born for this, and for this I came into the world: to bear witness to the Truth; Whoever comes from the truth listens to My voice (Jn 18:37). Whoever comes from the truth listens to the voice of Christ, because in Him he recognizes his God, Lord, and King, and to Whom he recognizes sovereign divine rights, both of lineage and of conquest. You are my friends, if you do what I command you (Jn 15:14).
The Saints that the Church celebrates and honors are her true children and our true friends. Their heroic example is not a remote and unachievable model, but the proof that in our nothingness we can make ourselves docile to the action of Grace and be inflamed with Charity to the point of giving our very lives, facing the burning furnace, undergoing exile and prison. Even today there are Catholics who die or suffer for Christ; and in the once-Christian West many souls testify to their fidelity to the point of being arrested because they pray in silence in front of an abortion clinic, because they oppose gender ideology, because they denounce the crimes of their governments.
Each of us, in these times of tribulation, may possibly be called to the privilege of a sanctity conquered by Martyrdom. We must not think that it is always other Catholics, in distant lands, who have placed before them the choice between apostasy and death, because the time is over in which society was well-ordered and recognized the Lordship of Christ and His Law. This is the time of preparation and combat; it is the time of trial and persecution before the return in the glory of Our Lord. And when sin abounds, Grace abounds all the more.
The Mystery of the Communion of Saints unites in Charity the souls of the elect to their Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, restoring the Divine Order that Satan once shattered. We invoke our heavenly Patrons, and first of all our Advocate and Lady, Regina Crucis: Placare, Christe, servulis, quibus Patris clementiam tuae ad tribunal gratiae Patrona Virgo postulat – O Christ, look favorably upon your servants, for whom the Virgin Patroness invokes your clemency, at the tribunal of the Father’s grace. And so may it be.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
1 November MMXXIV
Omnium Sanctorum
|
|
|
|
| The Dominican 'Libera me, Domine' |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-02-2024, 07:31 AM - Forum: Catholic Hymns
- No Replies
|
|
The Dominican Libera me, Domine
Gregory DiPippo, NLM | November 2, 2024
One of the most beautiful and beloved pieces of the Gregorian chant repertoire is the last responsory of Matins of the Dead, Libera me, Domine, which is also sung during the Absolution at the catafalque. The Roman version, certainly the best known, is one of the rare examples of a responsory with more than one verse; another very prominent example is the very first responsory of the liturgical year, Aspiciens a longe on the First Sunday of Advent. Many medieval Uses expanded Libera me by adding more verses, and dozens of variants are attested. Here is the text of the Dominican version as sung on All Souls’ Day, which has three additional verses; the last and longest of these is particularly beautiful. Note that the verses Tremens factus sum and Dies illa are in the opposite order from the Roman version, and the Dominicans do not sing the words Requiem aeternam ... luceat eis with any of the responsories in their Office of the Dead. The verses Quid ego miserrimus and Nunc Christe are sung only on November 2.
R. Líbera me, Dómine, de morte aeterna in die illa tremenda, * Quando caeli movendi sunt et terra, * Dum véneris judicáre sáeculum per ignem.
V. j Dies illa, dies irae, calamitátis et miseriæ, dies magna et amára valde. Quando.
V. ij Tremens factus sum ego et tímeo, dum discussio vénerit atque ventúra ira. Dum.
V. iij Quid ego misérrimus, quid dicam, vel quid faciam, cum nil boni pérferam ante tantum júdicem? Quando.
V. iv Nunc, Christe, te pétimus, miserére, quæsumus; qui venisti redímere pérditos, noli damnáre redemptos. Dum.
V. v Creátor omnium rerum Deus, qui me de limo terrae formasti, et mirabíliter proprio sánguine redemisti, corpusque meum, licet modo putrescat, de sepulchro facies in die judicii resuscitári: exaudi, exaudi me, ut ánimam meam in sinu Abrahae, Patriarchae tui, júbeas collocári.
Repetitur R. Líbera me.
R. Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death on that awful day * when the heavens and the earth shall be shaken, * when Thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.
V. j That day shall be a day of wrath, of calamity and misery, a great day, and exceeding bitter. When the heavens...
V. ij Trembling do I become, and fearful, when the trial and wrath shall come. When Thou shalt come...
V. iij What shall I say or do, most wretched man that I am, since I have no good to bring before so great a judge? When the heavens...
V. iv Now, o Christ, we ask Thee, have mercy, we beseech Thee; Thou who came to redeem the lost, condemn not the redeemed. When Thou shalt come....
V. v Creator of all things, o God, Who formed me from the slime of the earth, and wondrously redeemed me with Thy own Blood, and, although it now rot, will cause my body to be raised up from the grave on the day of judgment: hear, o hear me, that Thou may command my soul to be placed in the bosom of Abraham, Thy Patriarch.
Deliver me, o Lord...
|
|
|
|
| Abp. Viganò uses AI to show how Communion in the hand destroys belief in the Real Presence |
|
Posted by: Stone - 11-02-2024, 05:27 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- No Replies
|
|
EXCLUSIVE: Abp. Viganò uses AI to show how Communion in the hand destroys belief in the Real Presence
In an exclusive piece for LifeSiteNews, Archbishop Viganò said that when he asked ChatGPT how a pope could undermine belief in the Real Presence of the Eucharist, the AI gave answers nearly identical to the Modernist reforms implemented after Vatican II.
![[Image: Vigano_foto.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Vigano_foto.jpg)
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
Oct 31, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — The following is a brief reflection given by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò after he was asked if he could comment on the findings of the largest survey of Catholics in the United States which found that the #1 reason for loss of faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is communion in the hand.
The poll conducted by the Real Presence Coalition confirms what was already evident when Paul VI authorized the modification of the discipline in this matter. First of all, it was clear that the so-called “reforms” imposed by a group of subversives Modernists did not respond to any request “from the grass roots.” Neither the Novus Ordo nor the new ways of administering Communion were the fruit of a real need of the ecclesial body. The opposite is true, however, that the so-called liturgical reform was intended to help spread the doctrine it contained among the clergy and the faithful, causing the πρᾶξις (praxis) to influence the δόξα (belief). The concept summarized by the adage Lex orandi, lex credendi has been widely adopted by the proponents of the conciliar reform, but in reverse and maliciously: in this case it is not in fact the oρθοδοξία (orthodoxy) that determines the ὀρθοπραξία (orthopraxy), but the ἑτεροπραξία (heteropraxy) that shapes the ἑτεροδοξία (heterodoxy).
The faithful who are asked to kneel to receive Holy Communion in the mouth are led by the gestures they make to recognize the Real Presence in the Sacred Species and to adhere to the corresponding Catholic doctrine. Similarly, the faithful who are asked not to kneel and to touch the Host with their hands end up believing the heterodox doctrine insinuated by the Reformed rites. This doctrinal change is further favored when the ritual change replaces an entirely opposite practice.
This shows unequivocally that those who meddled with the Liturgy after the Council knew very well what would be the disruptive scope of the Novus Ordo in corrupting the Faith of the people of God. They did not explicitly modify the lex credendi, but wanted to express their deviations in the lex orandi, knowing full well that it would have been much easier to make people lose faith in the Real Presence by making them receive Communion standing and in their hands, rather than preaching these errors from the pulpits while continuing to administer Communion on their knees and in the mouth. The fact that the Hierarchy has imposed standing and holding Communion on the faithful has been perceived as a repudiation of the past and a rejection of previous doctrine.
The evidence for this reasoning is confirmed by an unusual source: ChatGPT, a conversational “artificial intelligence” app. I tried to interrogate ChatGTP not because I consider it a true form of intelligence but because its data processing system identifies causal relationships on the mathematical model and it is therefore interesting to see how an algorithm is able to detect what the mainstream narrative pretends not to see.
This is the question I asked:
If a Pope wanted to weaken the faith of Catholics in the Real Presence, how should he modify the rite of Communion?
This is the answer I got:
If a Pope wanted to weaken the Catholic faith in the Real Presence, he might consider some changes to the rite of Communion, such as:
- Simplified rituals: Reduce the number of ritual elements that emphasize the sacredness of Communion, such as worship or genuflection.
- Symbolic elements: Promote an emphasis on the symbolism of the bread and wine, rather than on their transformation into the Body and Blood of Christ.
- Verbal communication: Use language that highlights Communion as a commemorative act rather than an actual encounter with Christ.
- Modification of prayers: Change prayers and liturgical texts to reflect a more symbolic vision of Communion, minimizing references to the Real Presence.
- Flexibility in administration: Allow alternative forms of receiving Communion that may seem less sacramental, such as receiving it in a more informal form or without liturgical celebration.
These changes could contribute to a more muted view of the Real Presence among the faithful.
We know very well that so-called “artificial intelligence” is nothing more than a very fast computer system for the collection and analysis of a huge amount of data; but precisely for this reason we can understand how a machine without conscience knows how to answer a question clearly, revealing the premeditation and malice of those who have tampered with the Liturgy of the Church in order to tamper with the Church’s Faith.
In the face of the evidence of the subversive intentions of the conciliar revolution and the even more evident disaster that it has caused in the faithful and in the entire ecclesial body, it is indispensable to oppose a contrary action, which must necessarily consist, on the one hand, in the sine glossa rejection of the Novus Ordo and of the doctrinal and ecclesiological structure that underlies it; and on the other hand, in a full return to the traditional Apostolic Rite, which by the very admission of the proponents of Vatican II is incompatible with their “church.” This liturgical restoration cannot and must not be motivated by mere aesthetic or taste preferences, but by the awareness that the only lex orandi of the Catholic Church is the one sanctioned by two thousand years of uninterrupted and integral profession of the same Faith, and not the fruit of a heretical bricolage cobbled together by Freemasons and Protestants.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
October 30, 2024
|
|
|
|
|
![[Image: Picture-1-4.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Picture-1-4.png)
