JOHN-HENRY WESTEN

From the desk of the editor. 

BLOGS Mon Nov 4, 2019 – 8:24 am EST

BREAKING: Man who threw Pachamama idol into Tiber speaks out

  Alexander Tschugguel, Amazon Synod, John-Henry Westen, Pachamama, Pope Francis, St. Boniface, The John-Henry Westen Show, Vatican

November 4, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — The man who tossed the infamous Pachamama statue into the Tiber River has revealed his identity today in a video explaining why he removed the “pagan idol” from Santa Maria in Transpontina church near the Vatican last month.

Alexander Tschugguel, 26, of Vienna, Austria, spoke to LifeSite co-founder John-Henry Westen, telling him, “for me, it was really bad, because I saw in those statues and in those idols…a break of the First Commandment.” He says he was motivated simply by the desire to “bring pagan things out of a Catholic Church.”

A convert from Lutheranism who embraced the faith 10 years ago, Tschugguel, who was in Rome covering the Amazonian Synod, told LifeSite that he consulted with a priest and prayed many rosaries with his wife before going through with it. “The spiritual preparation was everything,” he said.

When he arrived at the church, he discovered it was still closed. He decided to pray the rosary and the door was soon unlocked, entering the second it was opened. He stated that he was not worried about the consequences or if things didn’t go as planned. 

“If we always think about what happens afterward, and if we always think that way, we will never get anything done.” If there is something bad happening in a Catholic Church “we have to act,” he said. “Whatever can happen, it can never be that bad.” The “worst thing” that could happen is to not get into heaven.

Watch his video statement about why he removed the statue below:

Tschugguel, who is active on twitter, has since established the St. Boniface Institute, an organization for Catholic laymen who want the Church to live out its traditional teachings. “Our idea is not to be quiet any more,” he said. St. Boniface is an 8th-century monk perhaps best known for chopping down an oak tree esteemed by German pagans.

Tschugguel says he removed the statue not out of a desire to offend anyone but because he wants the Amazonian people themselves “to have the truth of Christ” and not some “mock Christian religion.” He denied he was trying to draw attention to himself in any way but admitted “it’s fantastic to see” the many supportive voices that have come out since his video was published, especially clergy. At present, more than 20,000 signatures have been added to a LifeSite petiton supporting the removal of pagan symbols from Vatican property.

Tschugguel told LifeSite it is the duty of all Catholics to respect the pope and that in no way does he hate Pope Francis, as some have alleged. “It is our duty to pray for the pope and to support him and respect his authority,” he said. “If we would hate the pope, why would I pray for him?”

“Please, Holy Father,” he continued, “understand this, as Catholics, we just don’t want pagan things in the Catholic Church. We want our churches to be clean and pure about the faith and we want the Church to follow Jesus Christ and that’s it.”

Tschugguel said he rejects the idea that what he did was theft because the objects were “pagan idols” that didn’t belong in a Catholic Church. “I will face any legal challenges in the same way, calm…I am not frightened. I’m not really afraid.” He also said he has other videos and photos proving he is the one who did this, and not someone else.

Tschugguel’s analysis of the Synod is that it left him feeling “very disappointed.” It was “a big mixture of wrong ideas…social justice…liberation theology,” he said. The Synod “goes hand in hand with the globalist agenda, too.”

When asked what sort of advice he had for young Catholics, Tschugguel said they should attend the local traditional Church, pray “tons” of rosaries, and then study the faith so they can defend it in public. He also reccommended they go to their families, friends, nearby pro-life groups, and make their voices heard. If something “is not Catholic, speak up!…We are part of the battle between the Kingdom of God and the reign of the devil.”

Traditional Catholic parishes grow even as US Catholicism declines

by Jeffrey Cimmino | November 02, 2019 12:00 AM 

Inside the Magazine: October 29NEXT00:0000:57

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Traditional Catholic parishes run by one society of priests are growing in the United States, defying the trend of decline in the broader American church over previous decades.

Over the past year, parishes run by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a society of priests dedicated to celebrating the traditional Latin form of the Catholic liturgy, have reported large increases in Sunday Mass attendance. The traditional liturgy that draws attendees is the form of the Mass celebrated before the reforms instituted at the Second Vatican Council, a meeting of the church’s bishops in the 1960s.

In Los Angeles, the fraternity did not have their own church until 2018, but Mass attendance over the past year doubled from 250 per Sunday to 500. The parish’s pastor, Fr. James Fryar, commented for the fraternity’s website that, after his parish added a fourth Mass on Sunday, “another 200 people came.”

The Naples, Florida, parish has been around for less than two years, but close to 400 people attend every Sunday, an increase of 20% from 2018. The pastor, Fr. James Romanoski, told the Washington Examiner the parish has been “averaging a new household — sometimes a family, sometimes an individual — every week” for over a year.

Romanoski said people are attracted to the liturgy and the strong community, which includes groups for men and women, young and old alike, and monthly potlucks.

“It’s a great place for their kids, the priests are very involved with all the people, and the people themselves can gel like a family,” said Romanoski.

Romanoski added that people often join from other parishes, and even daily Masses get an average of about 50 parishioners in attendance.

One Naples parishioner, Greg Colker, was a Protestant who converted to Catholicism but first attended a “standard” American Catholic parish, “not at all particularly traditional, not at all particularly liberal,” he told the Washington Examiner.

The traditional liturgy proved transformative for him, and he described it as “something that has formed from the heart of the church to form us into better people.” He added, “There’s this big lie that the traditional stuff is legalistic and rigid. I have found it to be anything but. I have found the teaching to be clear and useful.”

Sunday Mass attendance at the fraternity’s parish in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho increased by about 29% in the past two years, while the parish in Atlanta has grown by 30% in the last year.

It is difficult to gauge the total number of Catholics affiliated with the fraternity’s parishes or who regularly attend traditional liturgies, as neither the church nor the fraternity provide public information about attendance. The popularity of the fraternity among American Catholics can be approximated through other factors, including priestly ordinations and the society’s presence in dioceses around the country.

The fraternity has witnessed a steady increase in the number of priests in the society since its founding in 1988, and ordinations continue to grow. Between 2007 and 2012, an average of 10 seminarians were ordained priests each year. Between 2013 and 2018, that number has jumped to an average of almost 15 per year. Annual reports provided to the Washington Examiner by the society show the number of the fraternity’s personal parishes has tripled from 11 to 33 in the U.S. since 2008. A personal parish is a Catholic community recognized by bishops based on a special feature of the group, such as commitment to celebrating the Latin liturgy, rather than geographical location.

Social media pages offer a less conventional way of gauging interest in traditional Catholicism, with humorous pages such as TradCatholic Memes and Traditional Catholic Memes for Working Class Teens garnering 12,000 and 9,000 likes, respectively. Another page, The Beauty of Catholicism, which frequently posts images of the traditional liturgy, has almost 130,000 likes.

The growth of FSSP parishes comes amid decades of decline in the Catholic Church in the U.S., which has been marred by sexual abuse scandals. Since 1970, the number of priests in the U.S. has declined by about 38% to 36,580 in 2018.

In absolute terms, the Catholic population has grown from 54.1 million in 1970 to 76.3 million in 2018, although that is down from a high of 81.2 million in 2005. In relative terms, however, the Catholic population has declined as a share of the overall U.S. population over the past decade, from 24% in 2007 to 20% in 2019. The number of people identifying as former Catholics has skyrocketed from 1.8 million in 1975 to 26.1 million in 2018.

Former Catholics tend to leave the church at a young age, with one survey showing almost 80% of erstwhile Catholics abandon the faith before age 23. About half of millennials, those born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, who were raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic. 

Two surveys of former Catholics from the past decade found people who left usually did so because they slowly lost interest in religion, stopped believing the church’s teachings, and did not have their spiritual needs met.

A survey from 2018 found weekly Mass attendance across U.S. parishes declined 6 percentage points from 2005 to 2017. An average of 39% of American Catholics attended Mass weekly from 2014-2017, whereas weekly Mass attendance was at 75% in 1955.

Colker wondered whether less traditional Catholicism could account for the decline in faith.

“I think the jury is still out on whether or not more modern forms of Catholicism are doing a good job at transmitting the faith,” said Colker.

Saturday, November 02, 2019

http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2019/11/in-honor-of-tiber-cristeros-here-is.html

In Honor of the Tiber Cristeros here is the Play about Fr. Pro & the Original Cristeros 

All faithful Catholics who stand in solidarity and support of the heroes called “Cristeros” who extracted the sacrilegious pagan idols in the Vatican and plummeted them into the Tiber River are now called “I am Cristeros.”

All faithful Catholics are joining the “#IamCristeros” movement which it appears was started by Deacon Nick Donnelly on Twitter when it was learned that officials who apparently are connected to the Vatican were attempting to capture and punish the heroes called the “Cristeros.”

Around the world, Catholics are who are in solidarity with the heroes are saying:

“I am Cristeros.” Come get I me. I did it. Viva Cristo Rey!
In honor of the new “Cristeros,” I thought I’d give a taste of the original Cristeros and Fr. Miguel Pro by giving a preview of a draft of a prologue for a play I did that playwright Cal Gallagher hammered out into a real play called “Viva Cristo Rey!” and honored me by saying I was co-playwright:

A Three Act Play on Father Miguel Pro [which became “Viva Cristo Rey!”]:
By Fred Martinez 

Prologue

The child, Miguel, is in a bed coughing. His Dad is silent, his Mom (Josefa) is crying and an arrogant doctor is standing by her. There is a big picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the room.

Josefa (Crying)-His burning up! Miguel is going to die!

Don Miguel-He will not die, yet!

Josefa-Are you crazy! Look at him!

Doctor Mateo-She’s right. His death is imminent. Get a priest, now!

Josefa- (Crying again)-Get a priest!

Don Miguel (Goes to his wife and hugs her)-Not yet!

Doctor Mateo-Are you crazy!

Don Miguel (Moving away from his wife he goes to his son and picks him up.)

Doctor Mateo-Put him down, now!

Don Miguel (Ignoring the doctor, he carries his son to the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and cries out)-My Mother give me back my son!

Miguel (Silence for three to six seconds, then, the boy shudders and vomits a bloody mass of phlegm.)

Don Miguel- He will not die, yet.

Doctor Mateo (The doctor moves to Miguel and puts his hand on his forehead.)-The fever is gone.

Miguel- (Stands and hugs his Dad.)

Josepha (Comes and hugs both Don Miguel and Miguel.)

Here is a email exchange Cal and I had about Miguel Pro’s cousins opinion of the play:

Thanks be to God. Keep up the good work. You are in my prayers.

Fred

Just back from LA. We did two encore performances Saturday
of Fr. Miguel Pro play at San Gabriel Playhouse. Great turnout.
500 at Matinee and over 600 at evening show. Fine theater with 
Box Seats etc.  

Miguel Pro’s cousins in attendance. Needless to say I was a bit 
concerned about their reaction. But they loved the play and thanked
everyone involved. See you at the next meeting.

Cal Gallagher

“Although I have read the story of Fr Miguel Pro and his martyrdom, no book compares with watching the play performed by the GK Chesterton Theatre Company. 

Absolutely riveting, I was on the edge of my seat. When it was all said and done, my faith was renewed, revived and taken to another level. 

This play transported me back in time and I felt like I was there. What a roller coaster ride!”

-Jesse Romero

Nationally Respected Lay Evangelist/ Speaker and Talk Show Host

“After many years of reading the life of Bl. Miguel Pro and his brave effort to minister to all Catholics during the most-fierce persecution Mexico has ever seen, 

I found myself in complete awe of the work of art Viva Cristo Rey truly is. 

As I followed each scene with excitement and joy, I came to realize that it was as if Fr. Pro had been brought back to life!! 

Congratulations!”

-Ruben Quezada

Keynote Speaker & Cristero Historian and Director of The Catholic Resource Center 

Catholic playwright works to impact culture by showcasing heroic sanctity

Catholic News Agency, Aug 13, 2009

A Catholic California playwright says that theatre is “the grassroots of entertainment” that can have a “profound impact” on young people. He points to his own plays and productions as examples of efforts to bring portrayals of heroism and sanctity to the secular culture.

 

Cathal Gallagher, author of more than ten plays, was born in County Donegal, Ireland in 1938. He served in the U.S. Air Force and lived in Denver, Colorado before moving to San Jose, California in 1963.

In a Tuesday e-mail interview he told CNA that he had been writing comedies for the stage when he read about Cardinal Josef Mindszenty, a Hungarian prelate who suffered under Communist persecution. Gallagher said he was so moved by the cardinal’s heroism that he decided to write a play about him.

Though Gallagher had thought he could submit the play to a Catholic theatre company, he could not find one. This led him and some fellow playwrights and directors to found Quo Vadis Theatre Company.

Gallagher explained that the company decided to put on its plays in city theatres, not church halls.

“By staging plays about heroic characters, it enabled us to engage the secular culture,” he told CNA, saying his choice of venue exposed many theatergoers to Catholic saints and martyrs for the first time.

Gallagher also sees his work as a way to evangelize.

“A Hollywood producer has stated that movies have more influence on kids than parents do.

“I would go further. We have lost our youth to entertainment. They have been swallowed by the culture. It’s going to get worse. I have seen some Hollywood scripts and they are atrocious.

“Our answer is to show heroic characters on stage. Young people imitate their heroes.”

While movies cost millions to make, plays are the “grassroots of entertainment,” Gallagher explained. He noted that they can have a “profound impact” on college and high school students.

“Great plays become movies and then DVDs and enter the marketplace of ideas,” he added.

Last year, urged by some Los Angeles-area Catholics to go “right to the heart of Tinseltown,” Gallagher and his son Peter founded G.K. Chesterton Theatre Company in Santa Monica.

Because some non-Catholics would not attend a Quo Vadis production, the new company was secular in nature to appeal to a wider audience. However, its plays are in the same genre of inspiring stories about heroes, saints and martyrs.

The new company’s first production was “Malcolm and Teresa,” a play Gallagher wrote based on British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge’s conversion, which resulted from his encounters with Mother Teresa.

It received “excellent reviews,” Gallagher told CNA, explaining that it had a six-week run. Some theatergoers returned for a second viewing and others asked that its run be extended.

G.K. Chesterton Theatre Company* is seeking permanent space in Los Angeles, Gallagher said, and needs financial support from the business community.

“A theatre of our own would serve as an oasis in a pretty sordid world. It would enable us to train new playwrights and screenwriters and maybe bring about a Catholic renaissance in the arts,” he said.

Other plays Gallagher has produced include “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” about the Mexican Jesuit martyr Blessed Miguel Pro, as well as a drama based on a priest’s account of a death row inmate’s conversion in 1944 Mississippi. His play “The Pearl of York” depicts the 16th century English martyr St. Margaret C

“Margaret of Castello,” his next production, portrays the life of the young Italian woman who led a life of sanctity in 13th century Florence despite being born blind, lame and a hunchback, and also being abandoned by her parents.

“The theme is obviously pro-life,” Gallagher told CNA. “Every human being has worth and a God-given place in the human family.

The play opens October 8 at the Historic Hoover Theater in San Jose, California, with tickets going on sale October 1.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church.

Posted by Fred Martinez 

Fr. Brian W. Harrison, O.S.

---

• Fri Nov 1, 2019 – 11:08 am EST

Cardinal Müller denounces Roman ‘Pachamama’ events

  Amazon Synod, Eugenio Scalfari, Gerhard Müller, Pachamama, Pope Francis

November 1, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – At the recent “Faithful Echo” conference for priests held in Denver, Colorado, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued his strongest denunciation to date of the pagan and syncretistic “Pachamama” cult activities that took place in Rome during the recent Amazon Synod of Bishops.

His Eminence’s remarks came in an October 30 homily that clearly came straight from his heart – preached extemporaneously without a written text or notes at St. Thomas More church in the Denver suburb of Englewood. Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, another conference speaker, concelebrated this Mass along with the other 60 or so priests, including myself, who participated in the conference. The conference was hosted jointly by Catholic Action for Faith and Family and the California-based Napa Institute. Later, during the final address of the conference, Cardinal Burke, speaking on the priceless spiritual value of priestly celibacy, expressed his appreciation for Cardinal Müller’s homily earlier that morning.

Cardinal Müller began by criticizing the Vatican’s lukewarm response to the recent article by Eugenio Scalfari in the secularist Roman daily La Repubblica, in which the paper’s 94-year-old atheist editor claimed that Pope Francis had told him in conversation that Jesus, during His time on earth, was just a great man and not the Son of God. The Vatican eventually issued a rebuttal of Scalfari’s shocking claim, saying that Pope Francis never said this and firmly professed the Church’s faith in the divinity of Christ. But Müller, recalling the first Pope’s immortal words to our Lord – “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” – said that in this situation we should have heard that profession of faith coming immediately and directly from the lips of Peter’s successor himself, not just a Vatican press officer.

Müller then went on to condemn sharply the recent occurrence of pagan and syncretistic cult activities centered on the statuettes of Pachamama (an “Earth Mother” deity worshipped by some indigenous Amazonians). These rituals took place in the Vatican gardens in the presence of Pope Francis and other Vatican dignitaries, and later, during the synod, in the Roman church of Santa Maria in Traspontina. His Eminence asserted that it was a grave abuse that such animistic rites were permitted in these places, and applied to them the thundering biblical denunciation of pagan gods as being in reality demons (cf. Dt. 32:17; Ps. 95:5, 10, 105:37; I Cor. 10:20). The cardinal emphasized that the one Spouse of the Church is Christ, her Bridegroom, and that she does not look to alien deities or spirits for further enlightenment. 

Cardinal Müller added that cultic activities such as the recent Pachamama rituals had “nothing to do with authentic inculturation” of the Gospel. For they represent a regression to pagan myths instead of purifying and elevating the traditional indigenous culture in the light of Christ’s message. Müller recalled that as Christianity gradually became embedded into the ancient Greek and Roman cultures, the Church did not attempt to continue or revive any worship of the male and female deities of the classical pantheon, or to somehow mix these into Catholic worship. Rather, he said, referring to Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio(“Faith and Reason”), the Church took the best elements of these cultures – especially the profound insights of human reason discerned by great philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle – and used them to explain and promote more effectively God’s supreme revelation in Christ. 

Cardinal Müller concluded his powerful homily by emphasizing that the central pillar of every culture that is authentically formed by the Gospel is not the assimilation of humans into an exaggerated “interconnectedness” with animals, plants, rivers, and the earth, but rather, a recognition of the unique dignity of the human person as made in the image of God, and raised by Christ’s Incarnation and Redeeming sacrifice to the supernatural dignity of God’s adopted sons and daughters.

WHY DID JESUS FOLD THE NAPKIN?

Why did Jesus fold the facial linen burial cloth after His resurrection??????

The Gospel of John {20:1-7} tells us that the napkin, which was placed over the face of Jesus, was not just thrown aside like the grave clothes.  The Bible takes an entire verse to tell us that the napkin was neatly folded, and was placed at the head of that stony coffin.

Early Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance.

She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved.  She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and I don’t know where they have put Him!”

Peter and the other disciple ran to the tomb to see.

The other disciple outran Peter and got there first.

He stooped and looked in and saw the linen cloth lying there, but he did not go in.

Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside.  He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying to the side.

Is that important?  Absolutely!  Is it really significant?  Yes! 

In order to understand the significance of the folded napkin, you have to understand a little bit about Hebrew tradition of that day.  The folded napkin had to do with the Master and Servant, and every Jewish boy knew this tradition.  When the servant set the dinner table for the master, he made sure that it was exactly the way the master wanted it.  The table was furnished perfectly, and the servant would wait, just out of sight, until the master had finished eating, and the servant would not dare touch the table until the master was finished.  Now if the master was finished eating, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers, his mouth, and clean his beard, and would wad up that napkin and toss it onto the table.  The servant would then know to clear the table.  For in those days, the wadded napkin meant, “I’m done.”  BUT if the master got up from the table, and folded his napkin, and laid it beside his plate, the servant would not dare touch the table, because ….

THE FOLDED NAPKIN MEANT, “I’M COMING BACK!!!!”

Hat Tip: John Funk

With Twelfth Hour Love

Elizabeth A. Mitchell

THE CATHOLIC THING

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2019

Note: Today Robert Royal files his final report on the Amazon Synod. Click here to read “Lost in a Dark Wood.”

In the midst of bustling London, on a sliver of pavement at the intersection of Edgware and Bayswater Roads, not far from the well-known Marble Arch, stands a marker, which reads, “The site of Tyburn Tree.”

In an abandoned cell, inside the now derelict Auschwitz Prison Block 11, is an image of the Sacred Heart, etched by a prisoner’s hands.

Those who suffered for their beliefs in these places of infamy, including the Tyburn martyrs and St. Maximilian Kolbe, have long since gone before us.  Silenced for their beliefs by regimes much stronger than their poor capacity to resist, their voices should have been extinguished forever.  These simple markers should be the only remnant of their overpowered and seemingly futile witness.

And yet, it is the tyrants and regimes themselves which have fallen away, powerless and defeated.  The gates to Auschwitz-Birkenau today swing open, empty and deserted.  The all-encompassing power that manned the guard towers and supervised the trains has long since passed away.  The gates of Hampton Court now welcome day visitors, its hallowed tenant, Henry VIII, reduced to empty legend.

But the gates of Tyburn Convent joyfully welcome consecrated souls offering their lives in prayer for that Faith and Truth, which all the King’s horses and all the Queen’s men could never conquer.

The crypt of Tyburn Convent houses the Martyr’s Chapel, a stunning collection of precious relics of the brave men and women – lay faithful, priests, and religious, who preserved the Faith in England under the reign of terror.  Among the quotes inscribed upon the crypt walls are words spoken by Carthusian Prior John Houghton. “I am bound in conscience, and am ready and willing to suffer every kind of torture rather than deny a doctrine of the Church,” he declared from the scaffold of Tyburn Hill, London, on May 4, 1535.

From his cell in Bell Tower, St. Thomas More, himself soon to be martyred, famously witnessed the procession to Tyburn of these Carthusian martyrs, noting to his daughter Margaret, “these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to a marriage.”

One of the great temptations, when we risk everything for the truth, is to think our sacrifice will be futile.  We will give all, and it will not have mattered.  The object will be lost, the world will forget, and we will be forgotten.  Even Our Lord, we fear, will forget our act of love, and generosity.  It will be useless and fruitless.  And so we waver.

But Our Lord will never forget.  The self-immolation will itself be the cause of the fruit; the offering will have power because it is absolute.  Only in holding nothing back, in giving everything, can we hope to gain anything worth keeping.

Saint Paul, having endured intense sufferings and facing a martyr’s death, declared with confidence in the reward of righteousness, that only one thing mattered: to fight the good fight, to stay the course, to keep the faith. (2 Timothy 4: 7-8)

“To love is to give of one’s all, including oneself,” St. Thérèse of Lisieux assures us.

In a letter written to her Mother Prioress on Passion Sunday, March 26th, 1939, a few brief years before her own death in Auschwitz, St. Edith Stein requested, “Please will Your Reverence allow me to offer myself to the heart of Jesus as a sacrifice of propitiation for true peace, that the dominion of the Antichrist may collapse?. . .I would like my request granted this very day because it is the twelfth hour.  I know that I am nothing, but Jesus desires it, and surely He will call many others to do likewise in these days.”

The twelfth hour.  We so often speak of the eleventh – that moment in which a glimmer of hope still remains.  But Christ delights in twelfth-hour love.  He allows us to see the dream die, and the fight to be lost, and then. . .He acts.  He demands hope when all hope is lost.

“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac […]. He considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead; hence he did receive him back and this was a symbol.” (Hebrews 11:17-19)

Lazarus has died (John 11:1-44); Jairus’ daughter has breathed her last (Mark 5:21–43, Matthew 9:18–26, Luke 8:40–56).  Christ, it seems, has come too late.  We can throw up our hands and declare that all is lost, or we can raise up our hands and declare in faith, Lord, to You is the Victory.  The sanctuary lamp of Our Lady’s heart glows ardent and undimmed in the Upper Room, even as He lies in the tomb.

To join the Wedding Procession of the Lamb requires our stepping out in faith.  To go ahead today requires heroic love, a “perfect love,” which “casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18)  As the narrator declares in the final Act of Karol Wojtyla’s The Jeweler’s Shop, “Love was stronger than fear, and today they went ahead.”

Christ and His Church need our courageous love and witness, today, at this hour.  As we offer Him our lives, through a love stronger than fear, stronger even than death, He will give us all we cannot keep except by losing, in Him.  We give our hearts to Him with twelfth-hour love, and watch His saving power achieve the ultimate Victory.

*Image (above): The Carthusian Martyrs at Tyburn by Andrew Brown Donaldson, c. 1900 [London Charterhouse]

Catholic priest was correct to deny communion to Joe Biden — here’s why

BY EDWARD PETERS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —  10/31/19 03:00 PM EDT 373THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL 1,557  

© Getty Images

Last week a Catholic pastor ruled on a request by a Catholic layman for a Catholic sacrament. The priest’s decision, turning upon considerations purely internal to the Church, should have been about as newsworthy as his announcement of the Rosary Society bake sale, but for two things.

First, the layman making the request was presidential hopeful Joseph Biden, heir of a political alliance forged 50 years ago between bishops and Democrats, albeit an alliance battered by the Democrats’ decades-long drift to the left and weakened in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. Still, if any Democrat plausibly chasing the nomination for president might be taken as a Catholic, it is Joe Biden.

Second, and more significantly, the pastor’s ruling on Biden’s request for the sacrament, specifically a request for holy communion, was negative. A priest withheld from a layman the most tangible sign of one’s communion with the church. Those factors drove the story national and make it worthy of a closer look. 

Fundamental here is the Catholic belief that the eucharist is – not represents, but is – the body and blood of the Lord Jesus. Catholics regard the eucharist as “the source and summit of the Christian life,” to quote the “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” and they see it as “powerful medicine for the weak,” to quote Pope Francis. At the same time, Catholics recall St. Paul’s warning that unworthy reception of holy communion is a grievous offense smacking of sacrilege and scandal. In short, Catholics hold that receiving holy communion can be wonderfully right or terribly wrong but cannot be a matter of indifference.

These principles are summarized in Canons 915-916 of the “Code of Canon Law.” If read purely as disciplinary norms, however, these canons can make sacramental regulation come across as a legalistic exercise rather than as a marker of sound religious observance. Compounding a de-contextualized reading of sacramental law, moreover, are the growing ignorance of church teaching on holy communion among Catholic faithful, a secular media happy to exploit internal conflicts in the church and not a few Catholic pundits eager to refashion church teaching and practice in their own image.

But, however the decision to withhold holy communion from Biden made headlines, it was unquestionably the pastor’s decision to make and he made it, in my view, correctly.

Canon 916 requires a believer not to approach for holy communion with a guilty conscience (a norm that, when observed correctly, prevents most problems in this area). Canon 915 positively requires ministers of holy communion, especially pastors, to withhold the sacrament from Catholics “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin.” Public support for abortion, its preservation in law, and/or its public funding, are sinful acts under Catholic moral analysis. Thus, even if Biden is not the most egregious offender among Catholic politicians regarding abortion (a case that can be made), such a defense favors him only in comparison with fanatics such as Nancy Pelosi.

While there are relatively few examples of pastors withholding holy communion from Catholic politicians who support abortion, the refusal that Biden experienced should not have come as a surprise. He had been warned about approaching for holy communion in 2008 by Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton, who told Biden that, because of his support for abortion, he would be refused holy communion if he approached that prelate, and by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput (then of Denver, now of Philadelphia), who implied likewise.

Furthermore, lest the enormity of abortion under Catholic moral analysis result in the impression that only a politician’s support for abortion falls within canon law’s notion of actionable “grave sin,” note that many things can qualify as “grave sin” and that, in Biden’s case, other misdeeds could figure in a decision to withhold the sacrament. For example, in 2016 Biden capped many years of public support for same-sex marriage by officiating at such a ceremony between White House staffers while vice president, an act perceived as a deliberate thumb in the eye of the church for teaching that marriage can exist only between a man and a woman. Biden thus compounded his open conflicts with church teachings.

Two groups will chastise the pastor: The secular Left that objects to any suggestion that its own should be liable to faith-based correction, and activist Catholics interested in breaking down barriers to sacramental sharing based on one’s acceptance, or rejection, of church teaching. However one might respond to the first group, the second warrants a word here. 

By far the reddest herring employed by Catholics against the enforcement of objective criteria for sacraments is that recited by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, late of Washington, which implies that withholding holy communion requires a minister to peer into the soul of a would-be recipient and judge it unworthy. Nonsense. To confuse the private examination of one’s conscience as envisioned by Canon 916 with the recognition that some public acts warrant public consequences under Canon 915 is to show either ignorance of or indifference to well-established Catholic pastoral and sacramental practice. 

Whether the Biden episode is a pastoral one-off or portends a turn in church practice is impossible to say. What one can say is that the results achieved by largely ignoring Canon 915 have thus far been meager.

Edward Peters teaches canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.

Speaker Pelosi’s Defeat

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Newt Gingrich no-reply@gingrich360.com via gmail.mcsv.net	6:03 PM (55 minutes ago)
to me

View it in your browser.I recorded a special podcast for Newt’s Inner Circle members sharing my take on yesterday’s impeachment resolution vote and what it means next for the Democrats.Listen and subscribe here>>Speaker Pelosi’s DefeatThe Halloween vote for impeachment was an enormous strategic defeat for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.She admitted seven months ago, in a March 6 interview with the The Washington Post, that a purely partisan impeachment vote was wrong and dangerous. She was right. Here are her own words:“I’m not for impeachment. This is news. I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this, impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”Measured by that standard, the Thursday vote was a terrible failure. The House voted in an entirely partisan manner except for two Democrats who split to vote no with the Republicans. Months of leaks, secret investigations, news media hysteria, and a parade of witnesses failed to move a single Republican to vote yes.The so-called whistleblower has decayed into a potential liability so much the Democrats are now talking about never bringing him to testify.Senate Republicans have been so turned off by the House Democrats that Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, one of President Trump’s more outspoken Republican members, has called their effort “a partisan clown show.”The contrast with the last impeachment vote is striking. In 1998, 31 Democrats voted with the Republicans to create a bipartisan 257-176 majority for moving forward with impeachment.By contrast not only did no Republicans vote for the Pelosi impeachment, she lost two Democrats despite enormous pressure within the caucus.The American people understand the difference between a fair and an unfair process. As Ron Faucheux reported in the October 32 Lunchtime Politics, there is an Economist/YouGov poll (October 27-29) which reported that 49 percent of Americans thought the Clinton impeachment proceedings were fair. Only 25 percent thought they were unfair and 27 percent weren’t sure.Of those who thought the process was fair in the 1990s, 37 percent were Democrats, 42 percent were independents, and 73 percent were Republicans.In answer to the question: “Do you think trying to impeach Bill Clinton and remove him from office back in the 1990s was a type of coup?” 55 percent of respondents said no (18 percent said yes, and 27 percent were not sure).When I was Speaker, we followed the bipartisan impeachment rules pioneered by Democratic Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino in 1973 (see Catching Our Flag by former Congressman Jim Rogan for a detailed day-by-day outline of Rodino’s impact on our efforts in 1998).The result was that – by 2:1 – the American people thought Republicans were fair in 1998.Furthermore, because the Clinton impeachment was initiated by Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s report that President Clinton had committed 11 potential offenses – including perjury (which is a felony) – the American people concluded the impeachment was not primarily partisan. By 3:1 people believed the 1998 effort was not an attempted coup.By contrast, because Speaker Pelosi has allowed her left-wing to drive her into an entirely partisan, secret, and one-sided witch hunt, there is overwhelming belief among Republicans and many independents that this effort is a coup d’etat, which is a sore losers’ effort rather than an impeachment based on the merits.Just yesterday Ron Faucheux reported on a Suffolk University/USA Today poll (October 23-26) that asserted only 36 percent favored impeaching President Trump.Speaker Pelosi had seven months with total control of the investigative machinery. During that time, her team should have produced adequate information to convince the vast majority of Americans that impeachment was necessary or they should have confronted their own failure and quietly dropped the impeachment effort.The Speaker Pelosi of March was strategically correct in her assessment that impeachment is inherently a crisis of government since one branch is seeking to overturn the votes of the American people.Measured against her own standard, the vote on Halloween was a terrible defeat which is likely to haunt the House Democrats through the 2020 election.That vote will cost a lot of Democrats their seats next year. When combined with the radicalism of the national Democratic candidates for president, and the continued economic growth under President Trump’s policies, it is likely that Thursday’s vote guaranteed this would be a one-term Democratic majority, and we will be hearing from Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2021.Your Friend,  Newt

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Dear Bishop Gracida,

As you know, I am not able to leave a comment on your page. Today, after viewing the short video posted on Abyssum of the Byzantine Catholic Bishop, I am prompted to send this email.  As we can see, the battle intensifies and has reached a completely new level. We find ourselves on the very threshold, indeed we seem to be now passing through the doorway to the Abomination of Desolation. Catholics increasingly feel it, even as the confusion continues to pour out of Rome. Satan has now run out of time.

It is appropriate at this time to recall, and in prayer reflect on, the words of St. Francis of Assisi, provided in the book “Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis of Assisi,” which on page 248 begins:

“A short time before the holy Father’s death, he called together his Children and warned them of the coming troubles, saying: ‘Act bravely, my Brethren; take courage, and trust in the Lord. The time is fast approaching in which there will be great trials and afflictions; perplexities and dissensions, both spiritual and temporal, will abound; the charity of many will grow cold, and the malice of the wicked will increase. The devils will have unusual power, the immaculate purity of our Order, and of others, will be so much obscured that there will be very few Christians who will obey the true Sovereign Pontiff’ and the Roman Church with loyal hearts and perfect charity.

At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavour to draw many into error and death. Then scandals will be multiplied, our Order will be divided, and many others will be entirely destroyed, because they will consent to error instead of opposing it. There will be such diversity of opinions and schisms among the people, the religious and the clergy, that, except those days were shortened, according to the words of the· Gospel, even the elect would be led into error, were they not specially guided, amid such great confusion, by the immense mercy of God. 

Then our Rule and manner of life will be violently opposed by some, and terrible trials will come upon us. Those who are found faithful will receive the crown of life; but woe to those who, trusting solely in their Order, shall fall into tepidity, for they will not be able to support the temptations permitted for the proving or the elect. Those who preserve their fervour and adhere to virtue with love and zeal for the truth, will suffer injuries and persecutions as rebels and schismatics; for their persecutors, urged on by the evil spirits, will say they are rendering a great service to God by destroying such pestilent men from the face of the earth. But the Lord will be the refuge of the afflicted, and will save all who trust in Him. And in order to be like their Head, these, the elect, will act with confidence, and by their death will purchase for themselves eternal life; choosing to obey God rather than man, they will fear nothing, and they will ·prefer to perish rather than consent to falsehood and perfidy. Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Our Lord Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.”

This book was published in 1882 with the Imprimatur issued by the Most Reverend William Bernard, Archbishop of Birmingham United Kingdom.

May we all receive the Grace to recognize the “destroyer” who has indeed arrived and who carries out the very plans of our adversary. Pray that through the intercession of Mother of Salvation, the Queen of Heaven, all God’s Children, and especially God’s Sacred Servants, may receive the Grace to recognize, accept, and proclaim the Light of Truth which is Jesus Christ. Finally, we pray that God will tie the hands, bind the feet, blind the sight and foil the plans of all who endeavor to harm the innocent.

Bishop Gracida, God bless you in your tireless work for Truth!