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Settimo Cielodi Sandro Magister 

19 feb 20 

Francis and the Schism of Germany. History of a Nightmare

That on the Amazon is the second synod in a row in which Francis has disappointed the expectations of those awaiting the innovations that he himself, the pope, had foretold.

In the 2018 synod on young people, the issue on which the expectations and controversies had focused was homosexuality. The base document of the discussion, in its paragraph 197, explicitly admitted a possible paradigm shift in judging “homosexual couples.”

And instead nothing. When the synod gathered, Francis imposed and obtained silence on the subject. No mention was made of it in the assembly discussions, nor in the final document, much less in the post-synodal pontifical exhortation “Christus vivit.” And so that on young people – emptied of its only spicy ingredient – became the most useless and boring synod in history.

The following year, with the synod on the Amazon and especially with what followed, the disappointment of the innovators was even stronger.

Because this time at the synod the discussion did take place on the most awaited and disputed change, which was the ordination of married men. In the final document the proposal passed with more than two thirds of the votes. And still in early January many were sure that Francis would adopt and authorize it, in the post-synodal exhortation expected at any moment.

But then came, in strenuous defense of the celibate priesthood, the bombshell book by pope emeritus Benedict XVI and Cardinal Robert Sarah, received by the innovators as a disastrous omen.

And in fact shortly afterward the post-synodal exhortation “Querida Amazonia” fell like a sudden chill, with the total silence of Francis on the subject. To keep a feeble little light aflame, the innovators can only cling to the few introductory lines in which the pope invites “to read in full” the final document of the synod as well, from which “may God grant that the entire Church be enriched and challenged,” and recommends that “the pastors” of the Amazon “strive to apply it.”

But apart from this last crumbly foothold left by Francis at the disposal of the innovators, what has driven the pope to repeatedly apply the brakes in matters on which he had previously shown himself willing to innovate?

The answer is to be found in Germany.

*

Last December 1, a “synodal journey” began in Germany that explicitly aims, over the course of two years, to set aside the norm of celibacy, to confer sacred orders on women, to bless homosexual unions, and to democratize the government of the Church.

With regard to married priests and women’s ministries, the German synod had focused on the synod of the Amazon as a trailblazer. If openings had come from there, however minimal, on both issues, the way would have been paved to replicate and expand them also in the heart of Europe.

Pope Francis knew it. And he had done much last year to call the Catholic Church of Germany back to order. But without success. The double silence he has kept on married priests and women deacons in the Amazon has been seen in Germany and elsewhere as a further step taken by the pope to halt the course of the German Church toward an ever more accentuated autonomy.

The first reactions in Germany to this double silence from the pope were of disappointment, but also of defiant confirmation of the will to go forward. Cardinal Reinhard Marx (in the photo), archbishop of Munich and president of the German episcopal conference, has once again commended the openness of the Amazonian synod to married priests and the ordination of women, saying that the pope did not make “concrete decisions” on the issue – that is, he has not forbidden but has only kept silent – and that therefore “this discussion continues.”

Among the German bishops, Marx is the leader of the innovators. But it must be kept in mind that not only do the 69 members of the episcopal conference take part in the synod, but so do, with equal voting rights, just as many representatives of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZDK), plus various representatives of religious orders, deaneries, theological faculties, movements, for a total of 230 members.

And there is an overwhelming majority in favor of the changes. Among the very few dissenting lay voices was the theologian Marianne Schlosser, awarded the Ratzinger Prize in 2018, who resigned from the synod last December 21. While among the bishops the opponents can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The most prominent is Cardinal Rainer Maria Voelki, archbishop of Cologne, who has repeatedly denounced the danger of a schism.

Of course, there are three more German cardinals among the opponents. However, for reasons of age or role, they do not participate in the synod. They are cardinals Gerhard Müller, Walter Brandmüller, and Paul Josef Cordes. The first two are especially tireless in denouncing the schismatic drifts of the synod underway. A few days ago, in a comment in “Die Tagespost” translated in its entirety into English on “LifeSite News,” Brandmüller accused it of wanting to create a new regional Protestant Church, in the footsteps of Luther.

But none of these three cardinals has ever been particularly appreciated and listened to by Francis. Putting the pope on alert was instead another German cardinal, residing in Rome, this one indeed highly esteemed and with a reputation as a reformer, Cardinal Walter Kasper, 87, protagonist between 2014 and 2016 of the operation with which – through a consistory of cardinals and two deftly handled synods – Francis gave the nulla osta  to communion for the divorced and remarried.

*

Pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s attempt to tame the German synod has taken place in several stages, the first of which were carefully reconstructed by Lucas Wiegelmann in an article published at the end of 2019 in Germany in “Herder Korrespondenz” and in Italy in “Il Regno.”

The first stage dates back to last spring. The combative proclamations from across the Alps and the worried reports of the nuncio in Germany, Nikola Eterovic, led some high-level curia chiefs to apply pressure to the pope in order to convince him of the seriousness of the stakes and the need of bringing remedy.

Moving in this direction were cardinals Marc Ouellet, perfect of the congregation for bishops, Luis Ladaria, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, Beniamino Stella, prefect of the congregation for the clergy, and Pietro Parolin, secretary of state.

Ladaria was entrusted with the task of meeting with the pope and suggesting that he a cautionary letter to the German bishops’ conference. Francis accepted the proposal, but instead of just the bishops he decided to write an open letter to the whole “people of God that is in Germany.”

That brings us to the second stage. To write this letter, in June the pope asked Cardinal Kasper for help. The meeting between the two – as Kasper later reported in an interview with “Herder Korrespondenz” – is broad in scope, on the overall situation of the Church in Germany. Bergoglio drafted the letter in his native language, Spanish, and entrusted it to Cardinal Ladaria to have it translated into German. On June 29 the letter was made public. It insisted a great deal on the primary need to “evangelize,” rather than pursuing “functional” modernizations that have little or nothing to do with the mission proper to the Church.

But the effect was not what the one hoped for, as Kasper himself acknowledged with concern: “In Germany the letter was highly appreciated, but then it was set aside and things went on as as planned. But without renewal of faith any structural reform, no matter how well-intentioned, goes nowhere.”

The pope did not give up and – third stage – resumed fire through Cardinal Ouellet. Having read with concern the draft of the statutes of the synod, prepared in Germany over the summer, the prefect of the congregation for bishops, with the transparent mandate of Francis, addressed to cardinal Marx, as president of the German episcopal conference, a very severe letter, dated  September 4 but delivered on the 13th.

To make the reproach less escapable, Ouellet’s letter was accompanied by a juridical “Judgment” of the pontifical council for legislative texts, in which among other things it is specified that the issues under discussion in the synod concern not only Germany but the universal Church, and therefore “cannot be the subject of deliberations and decisions of a particular Church, without contravening what the Holy Father has expressed.”

In response, Marx and ZDK President Thomas Sternberg limited themselves to thanking the pope publicly for his June 29 letter. On September 20 Marx was received in audience, in Rome, by both Francis and Cardinal Ouellet, and stated that “a constructive dialogue took place in both talks.” In reality, the status of the synod was adjusted a bit. Everyone will have an equal vote, but the final decision will be up to the bishops only. And as for the “resolutions whose issues are the normative competence of the universal Church, these will be transmitted to the Apostolic See.”

In Rome, however, they continued to be wary. Before and during the Amazonian synod in October, two of the four top curia leaders who first alerted the pope, cardinals Ouellet and Stella, publicly spoke out on keeping intact the norm of celibacy, making it clear that Francis was on their side.

And he was. In the post-synodal exhortation “Querida Amazonia” the pope is completely silent on this explosive issue. It is the fourth and so far last broadside of his barrage against the feared drifts of the German synod.

But it will not be the last, given the far from reassuring trend – for Rome – of the first session of the synod, held in Frankfurt from January 30 to February 1.

That Francis’s concern is still serious, is also proven by the friendly handwritten card he composed on February 12 for Müller, the cardinal with whom he has had repeated conflicts – to the point of firing him in 2017 as prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith – and who has never spared criticism of this pontificate, but who is also one of the most implacable censors of the German synod.

“Dear brother,” the pope wrote to Müller, “many thanks for the book ‘The pope, mission and duty’ and for the document on the exhortation ‘Querida Amazonia,’ which I liked.”

The “document” that so “pleased” Francis is a commentary published in the “National Catholic Register” on February 12 in which the cardinal strongly appreciates the reconfirmation of the norm of celibacy made by the pope, the exact opposite of the expectations of the German innovators.

As for the storm that broke out around the book of pope emeritus Benedict XVI and cardinal Sarah, as an apologia for celibacy, it should be noted that the furious aggression against the two authors was indeed carried out by men and publications from the Bergoglian area, but has seen only one official commentary ascribable to Pope Francis, and this was the note bylined by Andrea Tornielli in “L’Osservatore Romano” of January 14, all aimed at highlighting a perfect harmony, in the matter of celibacy, between the pope emeritus and the reigning pope.

Here too with the Germanic schism in the background. Not spoken, but ever looming.

Condividi:

•  19 febbraio 2020
•  English

WATCH: Mike Bloomberg: Elderly Cancer Patients Should be Denied Treatment to Cut Costs

Billionaire and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said in a 2011 video that elderly cancer patients should be denied treatment in order to cut health care costs.

Catholics Baited into Swallowing Pagan Agenda of Apostolic Exhortation

By David Martin

On Wednesday, Pope Francis released his long-awaited Apostolic Exhortation on the Amazonian Synod, Querida Amazonia, which can best be described as an insidious attempt to secularize the Catholic Church.

Specifically, the pope in his exhortation:

• Advocates an “inculturated liturgy” that incorporates Amazonian dance and rituals, and introduces the idea of establishing an Amazonian liturgical rite.
• Recommends granting lay people formal authority over Amazonian parishes, and mentions their ability to “celebrate certain sacraments” (excluding the Eucharist and Confession).
• Says women should be given formal positions in the faith community as a result of a “commission from the bishop.”
• Endorses the Amoris Laetitia approach of allowing Communion to those living in adultery, saying there is no “room … for a [traditional] discipline that excludes and turns people away.”
• Defends the worship of the idolatrous Pachamama statue that was venerated at the Synod, saying that this is not superstition. 

Concerning the idol, Francis says that we “should esteem the indigenous mysticism that sees the interconnection and interdependence of the whole of creation, the mysticism of gratuitousness that loves life as a gift,” as well as the “sacred wonder before nature.” 

So Catholics are now exhorted to esteem “the indigenous mysticism” of the occult that is generated by “the prince of this world.” (John 12:31) Shall we esteem voodoo too?

“Ecological Conversion”

The exhortation then spearheads the Amazonian Synod’s plan to unite the Catholic Church with the world, that it might be ecological, ecumenical—one-world. For it “exhorts” the Church to bow to the planet in idolatrous fashion—a planet symbolized by Pachamama.

The historic Amazonian Synod that convened in Rome this past October 6-27 brought to fever pitch this globalist plan to merge the Church with the environment. This perfidious attempt was captured live on film in a deplorable scene inside of St. Peter’s Basilica—a nude Mother Earth idol [Pachamama] along with Pope Francis and various cardinals chanting, dancing, and praying before the statue. The synod was all about making “reparation” to “Mother Earth” for the environmental “sins” committed against her. 

In keeping with the synodal theme, the exhortation urges us to forget things eternal and to be absorbed with things terrestrial. Its clear and unabashed endorsement of profaning the liturgy with pagan dance and ritual is in itself justification for decrying it. And while its proposals are applied to the Amazon region for the moment, the Amazon is only being used as a trial balloon. As Francis himself says in his exhortation:

“I am addressing the present Exhortation to the whole world. … the Church’s concern for the problems of this area obliges us to discuss, however briefly, a number of other important issues that can assist other areas of our world in confronting their own challenges.”

The ploy was to first implement these changes in the Amazon so that other areas of the Church “deprived” of these “rights” could cry “discrimination” and clamor for these same innovations, whereupon the Vatican would concede to their wishes with the justification that the plan thus far had been “successful” in the Amazon.

Baited With Slick Political Maneuver

While the exhortation doesn’t explicitly support the idea of ordaining married men to the priesthood as some had anticipated, it appears that this was never a key part of the plan to begin with. The ploy was to initially scare conservatives with this proposal with the plan of easing up on it at the last minute in order to pacify the faithful and better gain their confidence in Francis’ environmental plan. 

This is typical of the political maneuvers used by Francis to elicit the Church’s support of controversial proposals, e.g. down-talking gay-marriage so that we will feel relieved and even  gratified by his mere endorsement of gay unions.

Pagan 

The bottom line is that “enculturating the liturgy,” giving lay persons authority over parishes, empowering women in religious matters, giving Communion to adulterers, and bowing to the Pachamama idol are heinous insults to God’s Majesty that the faithful may never accept. It is our duty to denounce these pagan innovations.

And so, while many are “counting their blessings” that Querida Amazonia hasn’t formally endorsed married priests, they should well consider that they have been baited into swallowing the gist of its message that we betray Jesus Crucified and be one with a pagan environment.  

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-pope-releases-new-exhortation-on-amazon-synod

Catholic Monitor

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Join Bishop Gracida’s Resistance & Watch his YouTube Interview

Watch “Bishop Gracida Exclusive Interview—Lay Uprising” on YouTube: 

https://youtu.be/arF9TlUVfiU

“Cardinal Burke is saying… the truth. What is more important… is for people in the pew to say:

No, that is not true!”

“It’s more important for people in the pew to raise up and say in print, in letters, in phone calls, in email, in person, in interviews… for the laity to say no that is not true… than for a Burke to say this is the truth….”

“We don’t need people to say this is the truth. What we need in the present moment is for the laity to say that is not true…”

“Just like in the fourth century when those people shouted down Arius. No, you’re wrong. He is Divine… That is what we have to do today… We have to have people stand up to the homilist, priests and bishops… No, you’re wrong.”

“You cannot give Holy Communion to the abortionists, to the abortion promoters and providers, to the divorce and remarried. You cannot do it. St. Paul said you do not feed the Eucharist to dogs…”

“Right now they [the laity] are suffering in silence. They need to object. The laity, the sensus fidelium is that common sense among the laity who have accepted the magisterial teaching of the Church which is the foundation of their faith.”

“Having accepted that when they hear something that is contradictory to the magisterial teaching of the Church, the sensus fidelium is a impulse that causes them to speak out and say no:

That is not true. Don’t say that. Stop! That is the sensus fidelium in action!”

“Not to sit and suffer in silence. That’s crazy. That’s weird. That’s wrong. Speak up! Resist! Object!”
(Church Militant video,  “Laity, Rise Up!,” April 4, 2017)

Almost all the faithful orthodox Catholic bishops and cardinals, it appears, are too cowardly to join the sensus fidilium lay resistance against the heresy of sacrilege Communion to adulterous couples promoted by Amoris Laetitia except a very few exceptions.

The one obvious exception is Bishop Rene Henry Gracida.

Bishop Gracida and theologian Dr. John R. T. Lamont, Pd. D. show us what to do to resist the Amoris Laetitia heresy. Lamont gives an overview of the crisis, shows what needs to be done and points to Gracida as a leader in the resistance:
 “The AAS statement thus settles an important and much-debated question. It establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense; that is, propositions that contradict truths that are divinely revealed and that must be believed with the assent of faith.”

“It has not only established this; it has made it a religious duty for Catholics to believe that this is the case. Pope Francis is the Pope, and as such he has the power to exercise the papal teaching authority within the limits set to that authority by divine law. In the AAS statement, he has required Catholics to give religious assent of mind and will to the assertion that Amoris laetitia contains propositions that are heretical…”

“…It would be wrong however to think that Pope Francis is the worst scourge afflicting the Church. The election of a bad man as Pope can never be entirely ruled out. In a healthy Church the problem of a heretical Pope can and will be dealt with by the Catholic bishops, just as the immune system of a healthy body will react to disease and eradicate it. The immune system of the Church at the present is not operating. The bishops of the Catholic Church have remained silent about the heresy in Amoris laetitia, and have thereby abandoned the faithful.”

“The heretical statements of Amoris laetitia have not been presented to the faithful as something that they can take or leave. Pope Francis has stated in official magisterial documents that they are papal teachings that they must accept. He has been supported in this by a large number of bishops. Pope Francis has thereby put pressure on all the Catholic faithful to reject divinely revealed truth.”

“The faithful are not protected against this pressure by the bishops of Kazakhstan, or elsewhere, issuing a statement upholding the truths that Francis is denying. When encountering a difference of opinion between a papal document and a letter from a handful of Kazakh bishops, the faithful will naturally take the papal statement to be of higher authority.”

“In order to protect the faithful from the attack on their belief and salvation that is being made through Amoris laetitia, it is necessary to address the falsehoods in that document itself, and to condemn them by appealing to an authority that justifies the rejection of a non-infallible papal letter; the authority of divine revelation expressed in the Scriptures and repeated by the magisterium of the Church.”

“This appeal does not have to be a canonical warning to Pope Francis that could serve as the first step in his deposition. Such a canonical warning would have to be addressed to the Pope himself, and warn him of the nature of his crime and the consequences of persisting in it. It would be sufficient to take the lesser step of simply addressing the faithful to condemn Amoris laetitia as heretical. Aside from Bishops Bernard Fellay and Henry Gracida, no Catholic bishops have done this.” [https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2018/02/important-guest-essay-meaning-of-amoris.html?m=1]

Bishop Emeritus of  Corpus Christi, Rene Henry Gracida said:

“Cardinal Burke is saying… the truth. What is more important… is for people in the pew to say:

No, that is not true!”

“It’s more important for people in the pew to raise up and say in print, in letters, in phone calls, in email, in person, in interviews… for the laity to say no that is not true… than for a Burke to say this is the truth….”

“We don’t need people to say this is the truth. What we need in the present moment is for the laity to say that is not true…”

“Just like in the fourth century when those people shouted down Arius. No, you’re wrong. He is Divine… That is what we have to do today… We have to have people stand up to the homilist, priests and bishops… No, you’re wrong.”

“You cannot give Holy Communion to the abortionists, to the abortion promoters and providers, to the divorce and remarried. You cannot do it. St. Paul said you do not feed the Eucharist to dogs…”

“Right now they [the laity] are suffering in silence. They need to object. The laity, the sensus fidelium is that common sense among the laity who have accepted the magisterial teaching of the Church which is the foundation of their faith.”

“Having accepted that when they hear something that is contradictory to the magisterial teaching of the Church, the sensus fidelium is a impulse that causes them to speak out and say no:

That is not true. Don’t say that. Stop! That is the sensus fidelium in action!”

“Not to sit and suffer in silence. That’s crazy. That’s weird. That’s wrong. Speak up! Resist! Object!”
(Church Militant video, “Laity, Rise Up!,” April 4, 2017)

Bishop Gracida leads by example when he says: Speak up! Resist! Object!

On December 2, 2017, Gracida on his official website declared Francis is teaching heresy:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”Whether he acknowledges it or not, Bishop Gracida became our St. Athanasius (who lead the resistance against the Arian heresy in the fourth century) when he explicitly said Amoris Laetitia is heretical and said to resist sacrilege Communions. 
Where do we go from here to join Bishop Gracida’s resistance?
 Bloggers and all faithful orthodox Catholic laity need a coordinated organized plan at all levels. 
That gets us to the brass tacks.
 You, who are reading this post right now, are one of the persons who God, Jesus Christ, is calling to defend his Bride, the Church:
 First pray and ask God what He wants you to do.
Next, pray, fast and offer up your sacrifices and sufferings for the restoration of the Church.Then do what you can do within your capacity and within your duties of life which God has called you to.
If all you can honestly do is pray and offer up your sufferings and sacrifices then do that.
That you are articulate or not doesn’t matter. Talk to those closest to you and others.
If you can write then write for the restoration.

Have you the skills and media savvy to engage the media?  Then use those skills to defend the Church in this crisis.

 If your a leader then lead those who follow you and coordinate with other leaders to help restore the Bride of Christ.
When you accept God’s call to defend the Church, then you need to do some deep praying at Mass and if possible in front of the Blessed Sacrament before starting.
 I recommend that you start praying, everyday, the Auxiliarum Christianorum prayers put together by exorcists for your spiritual protection.
 If you are a leader or media savvy person coordinating with others in this battle to defend the Bride of Christ then you need to find at least one or two advisers, priests or deeply spiritual smart persons, who you can trust and openly discuss things as they unfold.

 If you’re are a priest then you need to do the above and offer Masses for the restoration.

 This is the time to pray and act.
 Francis appears to be increasingly isolated even in the Vatican.
 We, the resistance, are haunting Francis and his inner circle’s minds.
 That is why they were recently staging those events against us and putting out Gaudete et Exsultate suddenly.
 They are clever and are not shy about using their papal and media power. But, when it comes to intelligence, they are inferior. Over and over again they are being bested.
 Their only chance is to keep the façade going that there is even the slightest chance that what they are promoting and teaching is not contrary to everything the Church has always taught infallibly. 
If by the grace of God some how we can get a majority or a large segment of good unintellectual average sincere Catholics in the pews and in the bishop chairs to turn away from their idolatry that popes are always right and to be obeyed even if they are promoting sin and sacrilege then that could by God’s grace be the tipping point in this battle.
No matter what happens in the immediate future or in our lifetime, we must do all for God in peace knowing eventually the Church will be restored.
God, and those who are with Him, always wins.Those who resist God always lose.That is why there is a heaven and hell as well as a last judgment.You, dear reader, are in my prayers.
 Pray an Our Father now that God give you the grace to do what He is calling you to do and for the conversion of those resisting God.

Fred Martinez at 2:44 PMShare

1 comment:

1. Alexis Bugnolo5:05 PMThe first step, I think is that we get a group of clergy and scholars and notable laypeople or religious to sign on to calling an international Meeting of Bishops to hear the canonical arguments regarding the impeded Apostolic See, because all the biggest problems now are coming out of the Vatican and there is a facti species case for an invalid renunciation and an invalid election and a self deposed heretic.
   
   The Conference after hearing the testimony would take a vote to call upon the entire College of Bishops as successors of the Apostles to convene an extraordinary emergency Synod to put the Vatican Back in Order and hand down canonical penalties for those who resist the norms of Canon Law. The Council would not be judging anyone as the pope, it would only be threatening with excommunication those who refused to keep the norm of Canon Law in all matters pertaining to the Apostolic See and Faith, as both the code of canon Law can canon XI of the Council of Trent, Session 13 authorizes them to do.Reply

PETER KWASNIEWSKI

BLOGS

If your Mass is defective or abusive, find another one

If you are constantly distracted from the worship of almighty God because of antics in the sanctuary, violations of rubrics, or heretical homilies, then you have an obligation to seek a different liturgy.Thu Nov 7, 2019 – 11:37 am EST 

November 7, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — The vernacularization and “options” allowed for in the modern Roman Rite enable a priest and “worshiping community” to “make the liturgy their own.” This was often touted as a great strength of the reform: its elasticity and adaptability to local communities.

This approach suffers, however, from a basic problem: the liturgy is never theirs or yours or mine to begin with; it belongs to Christ as His gift and to the Church as her inheritance. This is why the Church has always insisted that no priest has the right to deviate from the rubrics set down in the liturgical books and that every priest is obliged by his sacred office to conform his conduct to the principles and guidelines established by the Church for her public worship.

Nevertheless, as we know, far too many liberties are taken in the offering of Holy Mass. The moment the Second Vatican Council proposed what sounded like changing everything — whether it meant to tweak everything a little bit or to revamp it from the ground up (interpretations of the Council vary a great deal, indeed as much as, and in the same way as, one parish or liturgy varies from another!) — a momentum of uncontrollable “tinkeritis” has been generated that works against the conservation of many endangered species in the Catholic ecosystem, such as tradition, reverence, humility, sobriety, adoration, and contemplation.SUBSCRIBEto LifeSite’s daily headlinesSUBSCRIBEU.S. Canada World Catholic

Consequently, the prevalence of clerically driven liturgy produces a situation in which quite a few people attend a certain parish or liturgy because of what might be called a “cult of the personality” of the celebrant. They like “how he does things”; they like his storytelling or humor, his flair, his spontaneity, his singing voice, or what have you. Yet if the Mass is supposed to be the representation of the Sacrifice of Calvary by which we are ushered mystically into the celestial Paradise, the personality of a given priest, although it may have much to do with the quality of the sermon, should have almost nothing to do with the way the Mass as such is celebrated. If we took our venerable tradition of worship more seriously and put our egos off to the side, where they belong, liturgies everywhere would be solemn, dignified, beautiful, and prayerful. All the faithful would give to God the worship He deserves; all would derive from the Mass the benefits it is intended to bestow.

Many good Catholics feel understandable pain about unwarranted liberties, improvisations, distractions, bad music (amplified, no less, in imitation of every secular venue, drowning out interior quiet, reflection, or prayer), extended announcements and intercessions, and other pretenses of authenticity and solicitude. At a certain point, they are sorely tempted to stop attending a liturgy where things are done unworthily and to seek instead to find a true spiritual home. Perhaps, contrary to what Pope Francis thinks about the Lord’s Prayer, this is one of those “temptations” into which the Lord does lead us, and to which He wishes us to succumb.

To put it less cheekily: If you are constantly distracted from the worship of almighty God in the four great acts of adoration, contrition, supplication, and thanksgiving because of antics in the sanctuary, violations of rubrics, heretical homilies, hand-holding or bear-hugging neighbors, the posse of “extraordinary” ministers, or ivories jazzily tickled and strings raucously strummed, then you are not only permitted to seek, but you have an obligation to seek a different parish or liturgy, as long as you or others of similar concerns have tried, to some reasonable extent, to ameliorate the problems. To abandon a sinking ship is not cowardice or heartlessness but legitimate self-love and a desire to please His Heart. For God is the one who must be obeyed and pleased first and foremost.

Sacred liturgy should reflect and befit the Sacred Heart from which it flows in sacramental signs and to which it returns in hallowed prayers, chanted praise, clouds of incense, gestures of awe. If you go away from a disaster in search of a true home, you are not guilty of pursuing a more subtle form of the cult of personality; you are not “parish shopping” or “parish hopping.” Rather, you are rightfully searching for the sacred and for the face of Christ. He is your beloved, your High Priest, the only one who deserves a cult of (divine) personality.

Peter Kwasniewski holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Thomas Aquinas College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America. After teaching at the International Theological Institute in Austria and for the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Austrian Program, he joined the founding team of Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming, where he taught theology, philosophy, music, and art history, and directed the choir and schola. He is now a full-time author, speaker, editor, publisher, and composer.

Dr. Kwasniewski has published seven books, including Sacred Choral Works (Corpus Christi Watershed, 2014); Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis (Angelico, 2014); Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (Angelico, 2017); A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching (Cluny, 2017); and Tradition and Sanity (Angelico, 2018). Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis has been published in Czech, Polish, German, and Portuguese, and will soon appear in Spanish and Belarusian.

Kwasniewski is a scholar of The Aquinas Institute in Green Bay, which is publishing the Opera Omnia of the Angelic Doctor, a Fellow of the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies, and a Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center. He has published over 750 articles on Thomistic thought, sacramental and liturgical theology, the history and aesthetics of music, and the social doctrine of the Church. 

For news, information, article links, sacred music, and the home of Os Justi Press, please visit his personal website, www.peterkwasniewski.com.

Fr. Rutler’s Weekly Column February 16, 2020 The names of the Franciscan friars Berard of Carbio, Otho, Peter, Accursius and Adjutus, are not as familiar as that of Francis of Assisi, who said that they had become the prototypes of what he called the Friars Minor. After his own failed mission to convert the Muslims of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade in 1219, he sent them on a similar mission to Morocco where they were tortured and killed in 1220. That was exactly eight hundred years ago. Clearly, Saint Francis did not spend his days talking to birds. Nor did he and his friars risk their lives to engage in meandering “inter-religious dialogue.”     This  column is being published on the fifth anniversary of the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians. All martyrs believe, as did Saint Peter when filled with the Holy Spirit: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). This perplexes flaccid minds and scandalizes the morally compromised, but it is the engine of heroic virtue. Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote in 1967: “Enamored of our present epoch, blind to all its characteristic dangers, intoxicated with everything modern, there are many Catholics who no longer ask whether something is true, or whether it is good and beautiful, or whether it has intrinsic value: they ask only whether it is up-to-date, suitable to ‘modern man’ and the technological age, whether it is challenging, dynamic, audacious, progressive.”     About a century earlier, in his Grammar of Assent, Saint John Henry Newman had already explained: “Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.” Saint Paul disdained rhetoric and mere speculation “so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:5).    By one estimation, and it is by necessity approximate, over the centuries there have been about seventy million Christian martyrs and, astonishingly, half of them have been in roughly the last century. It is also a fact that in our present culture, one in six 18- to 64-year-olds, and one in five aged 65 and over, depend on antidepressants. The example of the martyrs is better than any chemical cure for sadness, for they testify that Christ has made life so worth living, that living and dying for him makes sense. When the ransomed bodies of those five Franciscan  martyrs were brought from Morocco to Portugal, a young priest in Coimbra was so moved by their mute witness that he consecrated his life to proclaiming the Gospel as far and wide as he could. We know him as Saint Anthony of Padua. Faithfully yours in Christ, Father George W. Rutler BOOKS by FATHER RUTLERThe collection of pastoral letters A Year with Father Rutler, originally published in a leather-bound edition, is now available in a four-volume paperback set published by Sophia Institute Press for $59.95. For more information and to order, kindly visit A Year with Fr. Rutler 4-Book Set | Sophia Institute Press on the Sophia Institute website (www.SophiaInstitute.com).

New post on Whispers of Restoration BlogOf the Monster In Rome, and the Curious Case of the Cataphrygiae; or, Does Right Worship Exist?by WhispersofRestorationWe’ve a serious ramble to take. Critical thought required.Let them that make [idols] become like unto them, and all who trust in them. (Psa 115:8)One of the last great Jesuit theologians was Francisco Suarez, whose teaching on the papacy is now being increasingly researched in an effort to explain the insanity going on in Rome of late. For reasons that will soon become clear, words of his comes to mind: “If [the Pope] gives an order contrary to right customs, he should not be obeyed,” and “the Pope could be schismatic… if he wished to overturn the rites of the Church based on Apostolic Tradition.”[1]One wonders if Suarez could ever have guessed that a brother Jesuit would one day be wearing the Roman white and participating in the same unholy rites practiced by the Peruvian Association of Shamans. Comparing the photos above, how could one ever explain to a child the difference between the “Catholic” ceremony and the “pagan” one? There is no difference. That’s just the point. As Vatican News quoted major Amazon Synod wheelman Fr. Paulo Seuss just months ago: “So what? Even if it would have been a pagan rite, then it is nevertheless a pagan worship of God.” Hold on to that.The sacrilege of the Amazon Synod reached a fever pitch around the idolatry of the Pachamama earth-goddess, to the point of offering a totem bowl in her honor on the very altar of St. Peter’s basilica at the closing Mass. Archbishop Viganó cried out from hiding that this was just another step in a much older plot within the hierarchy; and, predictably, the predetermined “discussions” of a “deeply inculturated” Amazonian liturgy have now borne fruit in Francis’ “authentic magisterium” regarding the moral category of right worship. This is worth considering carefully.For, if Amoris Laetitia only seemed to renege on the revealed truth of exceptionless moral norms, Queridia Amazonia puts the proof in the pudding, and right where it counts: the First Commandment.Among enough liberal pop-psychology, theogibberish and newspeak to make even Carroll’s Humpty Dumptyblush, one finds some revealing passages in Francis’ Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation. The body of the document is mind-numbing in the extreme (as a simple wordcount may demonstrate; “inculturation” is used more times than the holy names of Jesus and Mary combined), but the following excerpt might suffice to paint the full picture of Francis’ outlook on worship:Let us not be quick to describe as superstition or paganism certain religious practices that arise spontaneously from the life of peoples… It is possible to take up an indigenous symbol in some way, without necessarily considering it as idolatry. A myth charged with spiritual meaning can be used to advantage and not always considered a pagan error. …[W]e can take up into the liturgy many elements proper to the experience of indigenous peoples in their contact with nature, and respect native forms of expression in song, dance, rituals, gestures and symbols. The Second Vatican Council called for this effort to inculturate the liturgy among indigenous peoples; over fifty years have passed and we still have far to go along these lines.The failure to give clear instantiations of these ideas is a textbook “Vatican II time-bomb” approach; but if this isn’t also a redescription of the moral object in principle, one wonders what would be. It reduces to the claim that the First Commandment has no objective moral content. Pagan elements in Catholic worship? Sure, bring ’em on.One might mention here the fact that in Catholic nations just a few centuries back, any cleric actively participating in the kind of abovepictured violations of natural, divine, and ecclesiastical law would not only be subject to canonical penalties (consider the emergency “imperfect council” held after Pope Marcellinus’ pinch of incense), he would also have been liable to public execution for the threefold motive of satisfying the order of justice, inciting his repentance and salvation, and publicly redressing the grave scandal caused. Aquinas is typical here:“[T]he Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excommunicating him and separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death. For Jerome… says: ‘Cut off the decayed flesh, expel the mangy sheep from the fold, lest the whole house, the whole paste, the whole body, the whole flock, burn, perish, rot, die. Arius was but one spark in Alexandria, but as that spark was not at once put out, the whole earth was laid waste by its flame.’” [ST.II-II.Q11.A3]Redress of Scandal by Fire – 17th Century SpainThis is the kind of seriousness with which such crimes were regarded by Catholic nations in the ages of faith. Such are not our times.Regarding Right Worship – Awake Yet?Pagan rites employed in Catholic Churches… an unheard-of novelty? Oh, come now… a novel rite is already in use everywhere else in the world.“The Lord be with youuuuu!”If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you are quite familiar with the novel rite in question, and the seemingly endless roller coaster of official “updates” and “local adaptations” it has brought in its train. You’ve likely spent years attending this rite yourself, and even if not on an actual roller coaster (like Bishop Stolberg above, just months ago), you’ve perhaps felt a similar churning of the stomach at some glaring irreverence or another in its midst.The rite in question is of course the Novus Ordo Missae (NO) of Pope Paul VI, first promulgated in 1969 as the major step in an attempted overthrow of the traditional Roman Rite across the globe. From it’s earliest days, this liturgical devolution has needed to allow in principle for the legitimacy of all manner of non-Catholic worship elements, because the fundamental doctrines informing divine worship as a moral acthad already been subsumed, ipso facto, by the very promulgation of this New Mass. Let’s try a diagram:Being a departure from the objective liturgical tradition – as maintained on several occasions by Paul VI himself – the NO is not a tree grown in the garden of the Most Holy, tended with humility and pious devotion over centuries of organic growth; it is a thing manufactured in a lab, the “banal fabrication” (said then-Cardinal Ratzinger) of disjointed committees, collaborating with heretics and purportedly “seeking to engage modern man.” It is an alien (or, more accurately, a Frankenstein’s monster), unmoored from the broader homeland that is the governing context of Sacred Tradition.Thus the NO cannot be theologically analyzed as a ritual action apart from the notion of perpetual innovation – this is because the Novus Ordo is liturgical innovation – “incarnate,” as it were, in missal form. The die was cast decades in advance, but this liturgical revolution gained its golden key with Vatican II’s first official document (as Francis reminds us in QA!), particularly in the Council’s statement that the people’s participation was “the aim to be considered before all else.” (SC 14)This fundamental shift in principle was and remains the lynchpin of the entire sacrilegious fiasco in the bosom of the Church today: for, rather than first asking “Do our rites pay maximum reverence to the All-Holy God?,” a radically new path lay open to making of supreme importance the question: “Do our rites garner maximum participation from the community?” Rather than “How does God want us to worship Him?” the revolutionary first asks: “How do we want to worship God?”And God spake unto Moses, saying: “Thou shalt worship however thou wilst, so long as it’s relevant to the people”As we continue to see, this framework reduces the entire moral category of divine worship (the “rightness” or “wrongness,” “reverence” or “irreverence” of acts performed in religious devotion) to one of only two approaches: EITHER the arbitrary exercise of current ecclesiastical authority alone determines the moral value of such acts (liturgical positivism), OR there is no moral value in acts of divine worship at all – rather, it is all just a matter of aesthetics (liturgical preferentialism). Note that in either case, no objective moral value obtains. Both approaches are essentially relativistic – there is nothing inherently right or wrong in any given act of worship per se. Does this sound like anything you’ve read recently? Try Seuss again: “Even if it would have been a pagan rite, then it is nevertheless a pagan worship of God.” Try Francis: “Let us not be quick to describe as superstition or paganism certain religious practices…” Naturally, such a notion is utterly absent from Catholic thought prior to the mid-twentieth century; and we need to recover that traditional moral-liturgical framework if we are to retain our sanity, much less our sanctity.MS miniature of Turlupin errors burnt, c. 14th centuryReclaiming Right Worship: “Un-tricked,” or StuckPerhaps the most fascinating thing observed amid the firestorm generated by our piece on the Pope’s New Mass (e.g., see the treatment of it at 1P5 here) was the near-universal insistence on it being “a trick” – whether one lauded as a creative demonstration of a salient point, or decried as misleading, mendacious, scurrilous, schismatic, etc. One wonders what commentary it might evince now, after the sacrileges in Rome and this latest papal document.For, it wasn’t a trick. It was an un-trick.Tricks, it would seem, are only a matter of dates!Anything novel in the midst of the Church, anything “added” to the fullness of Revelation entrusted to her is always newsworthy, because every novelty is news – albeit bad news. Orthodoxy goes unreported. Cancer is a five-alarm emergency, whereas normal cell growth is seldom announced or heeded. This explains the striking hatred (palpable and potent in both the New Testament and the writings of the early Church Fathers) that led centuries of devout Catholics to practically spit the word “novelty” when noting deviations in matters of doctrine, morals, or liturgy in their own time. Their affections were rightly ordered, inasmuch as each of these errors entailed some denial of that very Good News that abides, fixed at the heart of the Christian life, the “still point of the turning world”: Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!The moral claims that flow from this Divine Fact are challenging, to say the least. Every knee must bow. Every creature must be subject to this King, and both angels and men must render Him such measure of obeisance and fealty that each and every one can only be entirely His subject, or not at all.“He that is not with me, is against me; and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth.” (Lk 11:23)WORSHIP, then – and specifically the ritual worship of SACRIFICE – has ever stood as the principal means whereby man acknowledges God as sovereign, and ultimately Christ as God and King. This is the reason for the primacy of the First Divine Commandment, revealed in fire and cloud on Mount Sinai – and for its pointed repetition by the Incarnate Son of God as the “First and Greatest Commandment” (cf. Mt 22:38). Discovering and rendering unto God that “proper” or “right” worship – that which is dignum et justum – is thus the most pressing question of human existence; particularly with regard to its external, ritual manifestation, i.e., its “liturgy.” As Archbishop Antonelli once put it: “In the liturgy, every word and every gesture conveys a theological idea.”Blessedly, God has revealed how He is to be worshipped, and that is in and through His Body, the Church. The Incarnate Son of God both is and offers that worship which alone is pleasing to the Trinity (the Eternal Sacrifice of Calvary, sacramentally re-presented via every valid Consecration), and he in turn draws men into this same act of worship – his very Kingdom, realized here below – by incorporating them into His own Mystical Body: the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church; outside of which there is no salvation. This is the underlying reason for the perennial Catholic moral teaching that all forms of non-Catholic worship are both inherently false and matters of grave sin (which may need no demonstration, but just for kicks – try two dozen Catholic catechisms on the subject here).Furthermore, it is precisely the corporate character of Christ’s Mystical Body that ensures the faithful development of those rites that ensconce this One True Sacrifice throughout history. One can’t “fast-track” the “taking up” of any cultural element into a liturgical rite, for the legal authority of the Church’s hierarchy at any given moment in time has never been the sole determining factor of a given rite’s doctrinal accuracy, its moral liceity, or its mystical signification. Rather (see diagram above), it has been due magisterial authority, wielded as custodian of a sacred mystery piously received (Cf. 1 Cor 4:1, 11:23), in continuity with the objective liturgical tradition and harmoniously received with the authentic sensus fidelium of the broader Church, which all together infallibly maintain and authentically develop holy – and truly Catholic – rites of corporate worship. Such alone are pleasing to God (His glory being their primary end) and subsequently beneficial to man.To recap:Right worship is man’s primary moral duty;the rites of which are divinely revealed in essence, exclusively Catholic, and thusnecessarily traditional in both craft and content.Suffice it to say, then, that the bare notion of the Church ever making its own new rite for divine worship, and thereafter subjecting the same novel rite to a perpetual tinkering in order to make it “more meaningful for the local community” or “more appreciative of pagan cultural heritage,” has never been a philosophically coherent – still less Catholic – idea. (It has, however, long served well for sectarians of every stripe.)Yet, as we’ve seen, this “relevance test” was the chief motive announced in the creation of the Novus Ordo, which went on to form the vast majority of self-identifying Catholics alive today. And it was a trick.As we try to show in the graph above, to accept the NO as a Catholic rite is to necessarily forgo any moral principles that once did bear upon the concept of right worship (e.g., justitia, pietate, reverentia, etc.), and thus to abandon the notion of right worship altogether. The defender of the NO’s moral legitimacy is left with only one “liceity principle” to evaluate anything he perceives as an “abuse” in its midst, namely: current clerical authority. No principle remains to determine any objective “reverence” in Catholic worship at all: only the most current(!) edition of the missal, the local(!) rubrics, and/or the presently recognized(!) ecclesiastical authority can determine that worship which is pleasing to God.To take one example, Fr. Justino Reszende – a big name bouncing around the Amazon Synod – who is fond of the shamanic administration of rapé during Catholic worship; a kind of psychoactive herbal blend, popular in the Amazon region (one wonders if he passed the pipe around in Rome). Why not?From Fr. Justino’s Facebook page. That’s him behind the… er… altar.Those holding to the liceity of the Novus Ordo cannot condemn such elements, for they have been left with a kind of moral monism: the responsible cleric approves, so God approves – and even if the Almighty spent centuries before and after His Incarnation maintaining that false worship is inherently evil, justly punished by perversion, confusion, and death, well… perhaps God changed his mind somewhere in the 1960s.Because, as we’ve seen for decades (and in spades since the Pachamama Synod), the current magisterium seems comfortable with just about anything in Catholic worship.The conclusion, then, cannot be overstated: If the Novus Ordo is morally licit, then no form of worship can be considered objectively illicit. If the NO cannot be condemned as false worship in principle, then Francis smiling at incantations around oak trees can’t be condemned, either. There can be no objective sacrilege in the NO – at most, only a relative disobedience to local authority.This is why Bishop Henao del Rio can now admit without batting an eyelash that he celebrates pagan rituals himself, inserting non-Catholic elements into the Roman Pontifical because, you know, indigenous cosmogony and stuff:“I recently ordained an indigenous deacon with Roman and indigenous rites. And you may ask: ‘But-what did you do? You ordained a sorcerer?!’ But, if you look at the cosmogony of the indigenous people…” (emphasis added, see here)Again, this cannot be surprising. How could it be illicit, when Bishop approves? When the Pope approves? Thus, the unhappy (if well-intentioned) defender of the Novus Ordo Mass – the “two forms” type, the “reform of the reform” type, the one who says “it can be done well, we just need good rubrics, reverent sensibilities, etc.” – is in principle unable to defend the Roman Rite at all. For, to do so, one must claim an ultimate “right” or “wrong” in the ceremonies of divine worship beyond the requisite form and matter for confecting the Eucharist, as we’ve illustrated elsewhere. He must admit of some standard of “reverence” that embraces more than the living ecclesiastical authority – an authority that has grown quite amenable to the formal inclusion of sundry pagan elements. After all, are such elements immoral?No, no, this is precisely what the defender of the NO cannot admit in principle. He can’t have it both ways; he can’t have the traditional use of an inherently non-traditional rite, any more than one can abuse something that is itself an abuse. The defender of the NO must become either a liturgical positivist or liturgical preferentialist (i.e., a relativist), and both positions leave him stuck.Dead stuck.One suspects they aren’t chanting Psalm 95:5, “All the gods of the Gentiles are devils.”Therefore, we must insist: Pagan rites of any kind can never be consistent with Catholic moral theology and liturgical practice – and neither can the Novus Ordo. Because it is untraditional in both craft and content, the NO cannot be considered an integrally Catholic rite in se, and for this reason the Church as a body will never be reconciled to it. It will be contentious until it is abrogated, for it is unlikely to die of natural causes.History has shown similar reactions to other novel rites in the Church, and few things illustrate the pattern better than the kind of firestorms that today arise around pieces like ours on Francis’ celebration of the New Mass, as folks continue “connecting the dots” between the Church’s present crisis of ecclesiastical implosion and the liturgical overthrow of the past half-century. This is a good thing, for the two aspects are inextricably linked – indeed, it as a directly causal relationship. It is heartening to find more and more priests making this connection. Indeed, false worship being the single gravest sin, one should not expect a healthy epoch in the life of the Church, subsequent to the near-wholesale jettisoning of her sacred rites! One should, however, expect rampant homosexual predation and intellectual confusion – at least, so say St. Paul (Rom 1) and St. Thomas on the point. The human element of the Church on earth cannot long endure without right worship fixed at the heart of Catholic life, and our continued argument is that the Novus Ordo just ain’t it.Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas over the Heretics – Lippi, c. 1490Every Heresy Has A LiturgyNo liturgy exists in a vacuum, and like Cranmer’s 16th century missal before it, the Novus Ordo itself signifies a different religious system than the Catholicism held and lived by our forebears. In both historical cases, those who set to work crafting these rites by their own admission did not hold Catholic faith in certain points of defined doctrine. In the case of Cranmer’s rite, it took a few years and subsequent editions before the missal’s calculated ambiguities would clearly express positive Protestant errors in matters of faith – but fascinatingly, clergy and laymen alike had already been condemning and avoiding this rite as intrinsically evil from the outset; well before Rome ever pronounced the exact same conclusion. Its novelty alone was enough to “hate it with a godly zeal” – in fact, it was enough for many English Catholics to die rather than attend it.To die rather than attend it. To die.What we have with the NO is the same basic dynamic, but in unprecedented cause and scope, on a longer timeline, and with a different heresy underlying it. Not Protestantism this time, friends – but modernism. Like Cranmer’s rite, the NO begins in ambiguity – perhaps no positive errors in the missal text per se, just lots of diminution and obfuscation, lots of “tending towards,” lots of “room for,” lots of “local adaptation.” And in actual use, there’s scarcely any “creative ritual expressions” made explicitly off-limits (and if there are any such today, there may not be tomorrow).So although it can and should be abrogated simply on the grounds of its being an impious violation of sacred custom (among others), the NO might dodge the expression of positive doctrinal errors in the missal text – and, like Cranmer’s rite before it, it has the capacity to effect a valid Consecration. But so what? The same could have been said to St. John Rigby on the scaffold, who chose death rather than attendance at the New Mass in his town: “Come now, don’t hang for this. After all, we still have a valid Consecration, and the New Mass doesn’t actually express any positive errors in matters of faith… be reasonable!”Besides, if it’s the modernist heresy underlying the Novus Ordo, then the trick would be wringing any positive errors out of it in the first place. For, as Pope St. Pius X knew well when he formally condemned it, this heresy of its nature thrives on ambiguity, on vacuity, on neologisms and incongruities. It never “outs” itself. It strives for formlessness, like a ghost. Like a demon. One shouldn’t expect its ritual expression to be any different.The Curious Case of the CataphrygaeNow, we come to it at last.Can any act of worship be inherently evil? This might be asked of every Catholic on the planet… the results would likely be most telling. For, if we can import a given ceremonial into the Church’s liturgy and keep a “Catholic” sign hanging on our parish door, could any rite within its precincts be immoral of itself? Is there any line that the NO-defender can objectively draw, where one is able to say “This far, and no further?” Could there ever be a ritual act, ostensibly done in honor of God, that must needs be universally precluded in itself – morally inadmissible, to coin a phrase?Well, one might hazard the example of ritual violence (why does it so often come back to sex and murder? As if those were the worst things)……in which case, it’s time for a True History Thought Experiment.That old time religionYou’re traveling, and have to visit a different church for Sunday Mass than your home parish. You haven’t been there before.You go in to pray before Mass, and the pastor announces that the chosen family for the week can come forward to meet him in the sacristy. A couple shuffles up to the sacristy by a side door, carrying a young child with them. They return just as the organ begins the entrance processional, and everyone stands. You notice that the toddler is no longer with the couple.Mass begins, and you’re quickly aware that they do things a little different at this parish.As it turns out, the toddler you didn’t see return was in the back recuperating (maybe) from ritually inflicted wounds. The child’s blood is used in the entrance procession during a local purification rite, and some is left in a bowl at the foot of the altar during the Presentation of Gifts. You don’t stick around to learn what they do with the bowl.Now, let’s say the celebrant is in “good standing,” the local bishop approves, and the current missal and rubrics allow for this horror (as the NO currently would, mind you)… Morally permissible? No?WHY NOT?Don’t you go saying “This is just gross,” you bigoted cultural supremacist, you! And don’t try that “human dignity” nonsense – don’t you know the responsible parties are doing what’s best for the child? And for heaven’s sake, none of that “no precedent in Church history” thing, as if liturgical tradition had any bearing on us today… new paradigms and all that.Besides, for the record, this does have a precedent. True History, remember?“There have been many errors regarding this Sacrament… [Such as] the error of the Cataphrygae… who drew the blood of an infant from tiny punctures in its body, and mixing this with their flour, made a bread of it; and thus asserted that they consecrated the Sacrament. This is more like the sacrifices of demons…”Thus quoth the Angelic Doctor in his Opuscula (one english rendering of which can be found here), rehashing some of the Eucharistic errors that the Church has navigated over the centuries. The vast majority of these began from among the ranks of the Catholic hierarchy – and not all pertained simply to the “essential matter and form.”See, the Cataphrygae considered themselves and their (validly!) ordained priests to be true Catholics in their time. And back then, the local bishop alone was the guarantor of fidelity to traditional liturgical form – there was no universally employed missal with accompanying rubrics. So, if they had ritual bloodletting during Mass back then… you know, it was meaningful to the local community, affirming their ancestral heritage and unity with creation and whatnot… then why would we deprive the Church of such an “Amazonian face” today?For, as it turns out, ritual violence against children is not uncommon in the Amazon. Shoot, it’s big business in Africa. Inculturation, anyone?Now then, let’s wrap up with some classic scholastic categories. We’ll call it:If Aquinas Gave the Novus Ordo Both BarrelsThe Novus Ordo is impious. The composition of a new rite in consultation with formal heretics and under the direction of men who openly expressed an intention to destroy the sacred patrimony of the Roman Rite was a failure in the devout fulfillment of the religiousobligation to respectfully receive and hand on a holy thing (=impietas). Those who offer this novel rite today perpetuate the same impiety, in refusing to pass on that fitly adorned act of worship which is most pleasing to God, the treasure of the Church, and the chief means of forming the Catholic faithful and saving souls. Those who attend it are accessory to objective impiety in greater or lesser degree. [Cf. ST.II-II.Q81, 101]The Novus Ordo is sacrilegious. Even apart from the truly limitless range of particular sacrileges permitted by its intentionally open-ended rubrics and indissoluble marriage to the principle of “inculturation,” the formal deletions of dozens of particular reverential acts in the NO (e.g., genuflections, kisses of the altar, signs of the cross, repeated pleas for mercy, prolonged kneelings, silences, etc.) were made with the declared intention to diminish reverence to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. This is to steal the glory owed to Christ in His sanctuary (=sacrilegium). Those who attend it today are accessory to objective sacrilege in greater or lesser degree. [Cf. ST.II-II.Q99]The Novus Ordo is superstitious. To worship God viz. any rite other than that prescribed by the Church and conforming to ecclesiastical custom was classically specified as a sin of superstition. Far from black cats and broken mirrors, this term denotes words and gestures overlaid or set on top (=superstitionis) of the true ritual action grown over centuries by the Holy Ghost at work in the Church. Precisely because of its novelty, then, any ritual action (especially one that could house a valid Consecration!) other than one of immemorial custom will necessarily worship God in an undue mode. Those who attend the NO today are accessory to objective superstition in greater or lesser degree. [Cf. ST.II-II.Q93.]Note that neither we nor the Angelic Doctor would here point fingers or assign individual culpability here; this is simply an exercise in describing the object of a particular moral act, namely offering or attending the Novus Ordo Missae of Paul VI.OUR CONCLUSION: Some Immediate Action Steps1) Offer/Attend the traditional rites exclusively for divine worship and the sacraments. No priest or layman requires any special permission to leave the impious novelty that got us here: the Novus Ordo Missae. This is the gravest of moral concerns. In previous centuries and again today, accessing authentically Catholic rites now requires relocation for some folks. So be it. Join “the great Catholic migration” and reclaim your heritage at the Traditional Latin Mass community near you.2) Seek deeper formation from traditional sources in all matters of faith and morals – both for oneself and one’s spiritual dependents. This should be from resources and/or pastors formed in the pre-Vatican II ethos. Not everything after Vatican II was irretrievably false or diabolically ambiguous – but much of it was, and few of us now have the time or equipment for triage. Best play it safe.3) Pray and fast. Some demons can’t be driven out otherwise, and it would seem that the fiends currently afflicting the hierarchy are legion………..[1] De Fide, Disp. X, Sec. VI, N. 16.WhispersofRestoration | February 13, 2020 at 5:30 pm | Tags: History, Liturgy, Mass, Restoration, Right Worship, Sacraments, Theology | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/p8Ne6x-3Im

NEWS

ANTONIO SOCCI: BERGOGLIO WANTS TO GAG POPE BENEDICT XVI

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

FROM ROME

EDITOR BROTHER ALEXIS BUGNOLO

First published in Libero Feb. 10, 2020 and at Antonio Socci’s blog

Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino @pellegrino2020

After seven years, Bergoglio’s “dismissal” of Archbishop Gänswein has made even the newspapers finally realize that there are two popes in the Catholic Church. Maybe it will take seven more to explain what it means.

On Sun., Feb. 9, Corriere Della Sera ran a headline on an article by Massimo Franco that read: “So Ends The Era Of The Two Popes.” The article gives Bergoglio’s spin on the latest events (just as was already done in the other newspapers). In it, the Argentinian “court” that speaks for Bergoglio tells us that Archbishop Gänswein was relieved of his post as Prefect of the Papal Household because as secretary to Benedict XVI he did not prevent the pope emeritus from being “slyly presented” as the co-author with Card. Sarah of the book defending priestly celibacy [From the Depths of Our Hearts].

And so the Bergoglians want to convey three ideas: 1) Benedict XVI let himself be used, implying that he is incapable of looking after himself and thus he must be isolated and silenced; 2) Card. Sarah has instrumentalized the pope emeritus for his personal agenda; 3) Archbishop Gänswein failed to be vigilant in preventing it.

In reality, the situation is just the opposite. Benedict XVI is perfectly lucid and aware, as everyone knows (he is still the best mind in the Catholic Church), and he intended to intervene in defense of priestly celibacy, which has been placed in discussion by the Amazon Synod.

In mid-January, when Le Figaro printed a preview of the book with Card. Sarah, Bergoglio had an outburst with Archbishop Gänswein and ordered him to “blow up” the editorial operation. Archbishop Gänswein attempted to question the presentation of the cover of the book with the double signature so that the Bergoglian drum could keep banging the news that Benedict XVI has withdrawn his signature and disassociated himself from the operation.

But this was not true. In fact, Card. Sarah revealed the letters exchanged between the two authors and Benedict XVI received him, confirming his writing and his approval. Beyond the question of the names on the cover, it is clear to everyone that the book was written by mutual agreement: Benedict XVI was not gagged.

The new book makes it clear to the Christian people that it has not been abandoned by Benedict XVI and that his paternity continues to watch over the path of the Church. His pronouncement carries with it the enormous strength of the entire Catholic tradition. His voice – quite clearly – is the voice of the Church of all time.

This is why the book had a disruptive effect. The argument made by the Bergoglian court now appears laughable: “It gave the impression,” writes Franco, “of a doctrinal contradiction between the ‘two Popes’ that irritated Pope Francis, who was accused of favoring the abolition of celibacy: although his advisors assure us that this is not so, as will be seen from his conclusions on the Synod on the Amazon.”

It’s quite easy to see how absurd this version of events is. If in fact Benedict XVI and Card. Sarah wrote things identical to what Bergoglio professes, then why was he so infuriated that he “threw” Archbishop Gänswein “out of office” over the book? In reality Bergoglio wanted to give a pick-axe blow to celibacy by permitting the ordination of “viri probati,” and for this reason he had requested that this innovation be placed into the concluding document of the Synod.

But now, after the authoritative pronouncement of Benedict XVI, Bergoglio probably will not have the courage to do so (according to what his “advisers” told Massimo Franco and what is being reported by Avvenire). Bergoglio has made Archbishop Gänswein pay for this, since he has an angry and vindictive character.  Yet even if Bergoglio does not strike a direct blow at celibacy in the post-synodal exhortation to be released in the coming hours, he can still do it through his intermediaries by means of the “revolutionary” synod of German bishops.

Bergoglio’s disappointment comes from his recognizing that everyone continues to hear the voice of Benedict XVI as the authoritative voice of the pope, while his own voice is seen as divisive and perceived as the voice of a partisan politician who does not behave like a pope.

Franco also notes the way Bergoglio and his court were annoyed by the April 2019 publication of Benedict’s essay on clergy sexual abuse, and “the enormous echo that it made.” Franco writes: “Benedict XVI’s essay proved to be a source of embarrassment for the papal circle. It was noted with disappointment how the analysis of the pope emeritus still carried so much weight and how it was used instrumentally by Bergoglio’s adversaries.”

In reality it is Bergoglio and his circle who have tried for the last seven years to exploit Benedict XVI in order to legitimize the Bergoglian ruptures (as various sensational incidents have demonstrated). But Papa Ratzinger has never allowed himself to be used by anyone. With his meekness and his wisdom he continues to exercise his ministry.

In a memorable conference given at the Gregorian University [in May 2016], Archbishop Gänswein himself explained: “Before and after his resignation, Benedict understood and understands his task as participation in such a “Petrine ministry.” He has left the papal throne and yet, with the step made on February 11, 2013, he not at all abandoned this ministry….He has not abandoned the office of Peter – something that would have been entirely impossible for him after his irrevocable acceptance of the office in April 2005.”

Thus Benedict XVI’s closest collaborator explains to us that for Joseph Ratzinger “the acceptance of the office” of Peter is “irrevocable” and to abandon it is “entirely impossible.”

Whoever has ears, let him understand.

First published in Libero Feb. 10, 2020 and at Antonio Socci’s blog

Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino @pellegrino2020

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Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar are No Moderates. They Support Abortions Up to Birth

NATIONAL   

STEVEN ERTELT  

LIFE SITE NEWS

FEB 12, 2020   |   12:48PM    WASHINGTON, DC 

To hear it from the liberal media, Democrats are deciding between a hardcore liberal in Bernie Sanders and two moderates, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar as they make the decisions on who to support for president.

But the fact of the matter is that neither of those two presidential candidates are moderate in any way, shape, or form when it comes to the issue of abortion. They both support abortions up to birth, they both support forcing Americans to pay for abortions with their taxpayer dollars, and they both have refused to condemn infanticide despite comments from Virginia Governor Ralph Northam supporting it.

Writing at Newsbusters, Brent Bozell and Tim Graham agree and noted that the Washington Post recently opined that “every major Democratic candidate is running on an agenda to the left of Mr. Obama’s. In this new leftist paradigm, President Obama is now on the conservative side, even though Newsweek greeted his ascension in 2009 with the cover story “We Are All Socialists Now.”

“This was a candid and accurate admission by the Post,” they wrote.

The same notion erupted, of all places, on National Public Radio the night before the New Hampshire primary. Reporter Scott Detrow acknowledged Sanders is proposing a “fundamental re-ordering” of the government, but said that doesn’t mean his opponents are centrists.

“I think this is the point in the conversation where we have to really stress that the moderate versus progressive divide is very relative,” said Detrow. “Every single one of these candidates – almost every single one of these candidates has put together a platform that is far more progressive than what the Obama administration was able to accomplish.”

Ultimately, they noted that every single Democrat running for president supports abortion on demand: ” They are uniformly, radically in favor of abortion on demand, with taxpayer funding.”

When it comes to Klobuchar, the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List noted that she is definitely no moderate when it comes to killing babies in abortions.

“Make no mistake: Klobuchar is still extreme & out-of-touch on abortion, consistently voting in favor of taxpayer funding of abortions, late-term abortions, and even against legislation that would protect babies born alive after failed abortions,” it said.

As the leading pro-life group in her home state notes: “Amy Klobuchar has put together an extreme and uncompromising record on abortion during her 12 years in the U.S. Senate, according to Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL), the state’s largest pro-life organization.”

Klobuchar has never voted for a pro-life bill or for a restriction on abortion, no matter how modest, earning a zero percent pro-life voting record (zero pro-life votes out of 36 chances), according to National Right to Life. Klobuchar voted for taxpayer funding of elective abortions and taxpayer funding of the abortion industry. She voted to fund groups overseas that perform or promote abortions. And she voted against protection for unborn children after 20 weeks (and thus in favor of abortion in the sixth month and later), when unborn children can feel pain as they are dismembered and killed through abortion.

Klobuchar also co-sponsored sweeping legislation that would have invalidated nearly all limits on abortion, at any stage of pregnancy.

“Sen. Klobuchar has cultivated an image that has made her popular among many Minnesotans,” says MCCL Executive Director Scott Fischbach. “But her views on abortion and unborn children are decidedly out-of-step with the views of most Minnesotans and most Americans.”

“Voters should know that Amy Klobuchar takes a no-limits approach to the killing of unborn children,” concludes Fischbach. “Both babies and their mothers deserve better than this.”

Last May, Klobuchar made her pro-abortion views clear, saying she supports abortions up to birth. In response to a question about that and infanticide she didn’t bat an eyelash in saying that she supports and unlimited right for women to have an abortion.

And when it comes to Pete Buttigieg, he recently defended abortions up to birth and infanticide, saying that “it should be up to the woman” to decide whether or not to kill her baby in an abortion. Buttigieg, in an appearance on ABC’s The View, again refused to back any limit whatsoever on abortion – even partial-birth abortion – or to support protections for babies born alive.

During the questioning, View host Meghan McCain asked him about infanticide and late-term abortions and even cited Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and his infamous defense of infanticide — saying that babies should be left o die if parents wanted that.

Buttigieg refused to condemn infanticide or Northam’s comments and dismissed that that even happens even though CDC statistics clearly show babies have been left to die after abortions.

He also misled viewers into thinking that late-term abortions are done for egregious medical conditions even though statistics clearly show 80 percent of late-term abortions are done for elective reasons on healthy mothers and healthy babies.