Princess and the New York Times By Stewart Chessman On The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny
Princess and mother-figure Gloria von Thurn und Taxis possesses a courageous temperament she manages to communicate to all about her. For her, “princess” is not simply a title, but a duty…She seizes the good fortune of her birth…as a rare opportunity to live a life out of tune with her times: as both feudal princess and democratic contemporary, as pious Catholic and collector of distinctly un-holy art, as patriotic Bavarian and member of the fashionable smart set who wander the world – all at once and at the same time without ever betraying a single one of these roles. 4)
Monarchy – Royalism – And Aristocracy 2018 Archives
Remember That The Lineage Of The See of Peter Was Conceived By Christ As A Monarchy – Its Cardinals and Bishops Its Aristocracy All Ordered To The Royalism Of The Holy Family And The Kingship of Christ And Preserved As Such For Two Millennia
Royalism And The Traditional Analogous Elites Of Our Faith and Times | TCE |
Amazon’s New Co-Headquarters: A Cautionary Tale – Crisis Magazine
To put this in perspective: when Brazil—which at it’s best is a second-almost-first-world country—decided to rebuild its capital and move it from the coastal city of Rio to the more central Brasilia—it not only endured endless headaches, logistical nightmares and the rather reasonable pushback of “Is-This-Really-Necessary?!” from the populace, but ultimately met with only middling success. Make that “success,” given that the new capital city is more of a showpiece than a working “city.” And all this was in 1960!
The Holy Mass And The Restoration Of Catholic Sacred Tradition
10 Reasons Restoration Minded Catholics That Are Seeking To Help End The Crisis Should Attend The Traditional Latin Mass with Eric Sammons and Dr Marshall – On YouTube
Archbishop Pozzo on Summorum Pontificum: Hope for the Future of the Church – On Novus Motus Liturgicus
We are extremely grateful to Archbishop Guido Pozzo, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, for sharing with our readers the talk which he delivered for the Fifth Summorum Pontificum Conference in Rome. In the first part, His Excellency gives his appraisal of what has been achieved in the last ten years since the motu proprio became legally active, and in the second looks forward to prospects for the future. I would especially call your attention to these words, considering them in the light of some unfortunate polemical statements recently made against the traditional liturgy. “The restoration of the ancient Gregorian liturgy is not … a step back, but looks to the future of the Church, which can never build itself by destroying or hiding the spiritual, liturgical and doctrinal richness of its past. … To celebrate the old rite means to look with hope to the future of the Church.”
What time can Midnight Mass begin? Updated with PCED guidance. – Rorate
While it is true the obligation to hear Mass on Christmas Day can be fulfilled the night before — the result of a 1967 invention by Paul VI, codified in the post-Vatican II code of canon law, it is not true that the first Mass of Christmas propers are permitted any time before Midnight. A Mass starting at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, for example, must use the Christmas Eve propers — with violet vestments, no Gloria, no Credo and the common (or Advent) preface. The rubrics are clear enough on this point, but the new PCED letter should put to rest any existing uncertainty.
Fiddler On the Roof: Topol, Leonard Frey, Molly Picon, Norma Crane – Via Amazon
A great movie about tradition, traditional family, and the old covenant – A Jewish movie with song and dance that explains the global & cultural attack on families and tradition in a different way – A good re-watch with the family over the Christmas break
The Optional Antiphons From This Past Sunday’s Advent Expectation – Our Lady of the Expectation, Our Lady of the O, the O Antiphons – December 18 to December 23 – Plinio Correa de Oliveira commentary
Hear this, O house of Jacob called by the name Israel, sprung from the stock of Judah, You who swear by the name of the Lord and invoke the God of Israel without sincerity or justice, Though you are named after the holy city and rely on the God of Israel, whose name is the Lord of hosts.
Things of the past I foretold long ago, they went forth from my mouth, I let you hear of them; then suddenly I took action and they came to be. Because I know that you are stubborn and that your neck is an iron sinew
and your forehead bronze, I foretold them to you of old; before they took place I let you hear of them, That you might not say, “My idol did them, my statue, my molten image commanded them.” Now that you have heard, look at all this; must you not admit it?
From now on I announce new things to you, hidden events of which you knew not. Now, not long ago, they are brought into being, and beforetime you did not hear of them, so that you cannot claim to have known them; You neither heard nor knew, they did not reach your ears beforehand. Yes, I know you are utterly treacherous, a rebel you were called from birth.
For the sake of my name I restrain my anger, for the sake of my renown I hold it back from you, lest I should destroy you. See, I have refined you like silver, tested you in the furnace of affliction. For my sake, for my own sake, I do this; why should I suffer profanation? My glory I will not give to another.
From a homily In Praise of the Virgin Mother by Saint Bernard, abbot The whole world awaits Mary’s reply
You have heard, O Virgin, that you will conceive and bear a son; you have heard that it will not be by man but by the Holy Spirit. The angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us.
The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent. In the eternal Word of God we all came to be, and behold, we die. In your brief response we are to be remade in order to be recalled to life.
Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, O loving Virgin, in their exile from Paradise. Abraham begs it, David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you, as they dwell in the country of the shadow of death. This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned, indeed, salvation for all the sons of Adam, the whole of your race.
Answer quickly, O Virgin. Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord. Answer with a word, receive the Word of God. Speak your own word, conceive the divine Word. Breathe a passing word, embrace the eternal Word.
Why do you delay, why are you afraid? Believe, give praise, and receive. Let humility be bold, let modesty be confident. This is no time for virginal simplicity to forget prudence. In this matter alone, O prudent Virgin, do not fear to be presumptuous. Though modest silence is pleasing, dutiful speech is now more necessary. Open your heart to faith, O blessed Virgin, your lips to praise, your womb to the Creator. See, the desired of all nations is at your door, knocking to enter. If he should pass by because of your delay, in sorrow you would begin to seek him afresh, the One whom your soul loves. Arise, hasten, open. Arise in faith, hasten in devotion, open in praise and thanksgiving. Behold the handmaid of the Lord, she says, be it done to me according to your word.
Ember Days are here this week , let us fast and pray extra for our Pope and the Bishops as we enter deeper into the era of Apostasy
Four times a year these quarterly periods take place around the beginnings of the four natural season Weds Friday and Saturday one meal fast & partial abstinence from meat
These Quatretemps were begun by the 1st decendents of the apostles in conjunction with thousands of converted Jewish and codified in the period from St Jerome to Pope Calixtus in 221AD mirroring the four natural seasons & Jewish fulfillment Their dates can always be remembered to follow these important season changing feasts with this old mnemonic:
Sant Crux, Lucia, Cineres, Charismata Dia Ut sit in angaria quarta sequens feria.For non-Latinists, it might be easier to just remember “Lucy, Ashes, Dove, and Cross.”
Then quarter holidays follow.
The traditional Latin rite has kept them intact to this day while various Bishops Conferences like the USCCB suppressed them in the new Rite The Ember Weds in all four seasons are dedicated penance to our Lady & alms
FSSP will have candlelit Mass in St Mary Major in Rome and Holy Innocents Ny as well.
In addition to prevention of calamity of the family members and the lands of traditional families of the Faith…….the Ember days specific to December were introduced by the Apostles as a preparation for the ordinations to occur during that month. The scriptural basis for this practice is to be found in Acts 13:2
To repress the drought of pride, and in winter for to chastise the coldness of untruth and of malice.
December they be also, and they be the fourth fastings, and in this time the herbs die, and we ought to be mortified to the world. Preservation of the land from calamity, & conversion of the Jews from their current path to hell to that of paradise
In scholastic understanding of the time continuum For our souls to be aligned to body & the passing earth that is to wit, the understanding, the will, and the mind. To this then that this fasting may attemper in us four times in the year, at each time we fast three days, to the end that the number of four may be reported to the body, and the number of three to the soul
The Liturgical Science of Embertides And The Natural Seasons For Fasting
On Observing the Ember Week Fasts by Dom Guéranger On The Fatima Center
An Apostasy is surely underway, but what is really at the root of the modernists progressivist sea change. Many are misreading signs , prophesy , empty Papal chair theories , the false Prophet and on and on…….But are those that surround him in the hierarchy around the world and poised to succeed him just the same or are many of them worse . What many do not understand is that the problem is far from a bad Pope . This Pope and his Bishops are merely attempting to implement the Vatican II Council to a greater degree than the other Conciliar Popes The majority of Catholics that have not studied the Council, it’s documents or the dozens of its support documents and books don’t see it as what it was and what it is , a former silent revolution that planted time bombs whose activations are merely being remotely triggered seemingly by remote control in every discipline Our majority does not know that the majority of the periti, theologians , Priests and specialists that advised the Council contributed to its theories in every discipline of, ecclesiastics, dogmatics, doctrine, theology, exegesis using supposed history, social teaching, and Church government have either voluntarily left the Church or been censured due to heresies , not to mention the many that were under suspicion of heresy prior to the Council and were brought back. All of their cumulative teachings proclaim in every numbered article , post , essay and paper that its objective is to insist on the deposing , abolishment , suppression and upstaging of Catholicism in its current form , meaning from the Church Fathers to the Council . The reinvention of a new Catholicism in every discipline was put forth and as they said in many a proclamation sits there in a body of teaching awaiting for the first brave Pope to implement it We are at the point in Roman Catholic history where every last established teaching prior to the Council in the disciplines of , ecclesiastics, dogmatics, doctrine, theology, Sacramental theology, exegesis , monarchy, social teaching, and Church government is very close to being “officially” outlawed
Addressing The Bishop Vigano Testimony On The Mass Apostasy
A Letter to Archbishop Viganò: TEMPUS ADEST — The Time has Come – On Rorate
The Heresy OF Trying To Annul The Licit Nature Of The Death Penalty In Catholic Doctrine
Pope Francis and the Devil: Misreading the Signs of the Times — By Professor William Kilpatrick On Catholic Family News
But when it comes to the question of how the devil is most likely to take advantage of us, Pope Francis seems to deviate from the path of tradition. Indeed, he seems to think that the devil does much of his work by making use of traditional pieties.
Predictably the liberal American Jesuit magazine paints the theological consensus as ultra –conservative adversaries of Pope Francis similar to the way the freemason-run Catholic publications did against Blessed Pope Pius IX in the 1860s .Pope Francis critics continue to seek answers on ‘Amoris Laetitia’ in ‘filial correction’ | America Magazine
The Theological Hypothesis Of A Heretic Pope – The Heart Of The Crisis Also Tied Up With The Proclamation Of The Mediatrix Of All Graces And The Fatima Consecration | TCE |
Resisting the Novelties of the Conciliar Church –Now, the traditional Catholic may have studied the changes made by the post-Vatican II establishment in the other Sacraments, and may object seriously to their new mode of performing. He might also refuse to send his children to the local conciliar Catholic school with its watered down religion teaching (without the Catechism), with its notorious permissive “sex education,” and various bad examples. These are some of the worst changes in the Conciliar Church. Our traditional reader may sincerely recognize in them dangers to the Catholic Faith and to one’s holiness (the life of Sanctifying Grace). His children would likely be in still greater danger of spiritual harm. They all run the risk of eventually dying not in the state of grace. This means in the state of mortal sin. It means eternal loss in Hell.
Reasons for resistance and disobedience – Under the circumstances, may the traditional Catholic resist or disobey the Pope or Bishop who orders him to conform to the progressivist Conciliar Church?
The answer is definitely, yes, he may and should resist or disobey the new teachings or customs insofar as they are clearly contrary to the previous Magisterium and worship of the Church. St. Robert Bellarmine teaches us that
“just as it is licit to resist a Pontiff who attacks the body, it is also licit to resist a Pope who attacks the soul or …. above all, who attempts to destroy the Church. I say,” St. Robert continues, “that it is licit to resist him by not doing what he orders, and by preventing his will from being executed” (1).
Tennessee Deacon Removed After Calling for Independent Investigation Into Abuse -Bishop J. Mark Spalding backs pastor in removing Deacon Ron Deal – On CMTV
Pro-life German Politician In The Face Of A German Abortion On Demand Bill : “Cardinal Woelki, Cardinal Marx, where are you now, depraved, disgusting hypocrites!”
Michael Matt interviews the former president of Una Voce International–English barrister, Lt. Colonel James Bogleon the situation in the Church under Pope Francis, silent bishops, religious liberty, racism and Catholic culture. What built Europe? Why are so many people from all over the world fascinated by Europe? What brings tourists flocking to Europe’s greatest attractions? Two words: Catholic Church! This is a preview of the RT documentary on the Roman Forum in Italy, to be released later this month.
LAKE GARDA INTERVIEW: On Bishops, Popes and Religious Liberty – On The Remnant Newspaper TV
Yet impossible as it all me seem faithful traditional Catholics are still unshakeable in the belief of an indefectible Roman Catholic Church where the Reign Of The Kingship of Christ will be both earthly and heavenly and the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph before this end
Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just: let the earth be opened and bud forth a Savior. (Ps. 18: 2) The heavens show forth the glory of God: and the firmament declareth the work of His hands. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just: let the earth be opened and bud forth a Savior.
Isaias 2: 2-5
In those days, the prophet Isaias said: In the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go, and say: Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for the law shall come forth from Sion, and the word he Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge the Gentiles and rebuke many people: and they shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation: neither shall they be exercised any more to war. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord our God. Hasten, we beseech Thee, O Lord, tarry not: and grant us the help of Thy heavenly power, that they who trust in Thy loving kindness may be relieved by the consolations of Thy coming. Who lives and reigns, with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.
Isaias 7: 10-15
In those days the Lord spoke to Achaz, saying: Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God, either unto the depth of hell, or unto the height above. And Achaz said: I will not ask, and I will not tempt the Lord. And He said: Hear ye therefore, O house of David: Is it a small thing for you to be grievous to men, that you are grievous to my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and His Name shall be called Emmanuel. He shall eat butter and honey, that He may know to refuse the evil, and to choose the good. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord: and let all flesh bless His holy Name
From a letter by Saint Leo the Great, pope The mystery of our reconciliation with God
To speak of our Lord, the son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as true and perfect man is of no value to us if we do not believe that he is descended from the line of ancestors set out in the Gospel.
Matthew’s gospel begins by setting out the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, and then traces his human descent by bringing his ancestral line down to his mother’s husband, Joseph. On the other hand, Luke traces his parentage backward step by step to the actual father of mankind, to show that both the first and the last Adam share the same nature.
No doubt the Son of God in his omnipotence could have taught and sanctified men by appearing to them in a semblance of human form as he did to the patriarchs and prophets, when for instance he engaged in a wrestling contest or entered into conversation with them, or when he accepted their hospitality and even ate the food they set before him. But these appearances were only types, signs that mysteriously foretold the coming of one who would take a true human nature from the stock of the patriarchs who had gone before him. No mere figure, then, fulfilled the mystery of our reconciliation with God, ordained from all eternity. The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon the Virgin nor had the power of the Most High overshadowed her, so that within her spotless womb Wisdom might build itself a house and the Word become flesh. The divine nature and the nature of a servant were to be united in one person so that the Creator of time might be born in time, and he through whom all things were made might be brought forth in their midst.
For unless the new man, by being made in the likeness of sinful humanity, had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan. The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition. But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to have been born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
The Liturgical Science of Embertides And The Natural Seasons For Fasting
The Waves Of Prolife News Round Ups Are Becoming More Frequent – The laity that remain in the Body Of Christ are becoming more orthodox and tradition while the hierarchy is moving in the opposition direction
Federal judge strikes down Obamacare as unconstitutional, Trump praises decision | News | LifeSite
1,000 White Crosses Placed Outside Irish President’s OfficeMichael Higgins’ signed abortion law to go into effect on January
Obianuju Ekeocha on Twitter: “This is gripping… 1000 white crosses were planted today outside the residence of the President of Ireland as he was preparing to sign the abortion bill. The 1000 crosses represent the number of unborn babies who will be kil1https://twitter.com/obianuju/status/1074096520608260097
Ready-to-Use Admissions of Pro-Abortionists, Including Some Doctors Who Admit to ‘Killing Babies’ – On Catholicism.org
We need to have a common definition, ready to use, of human life and when it begins. We must insist when confronting pro-abortionists, especially politicians, that they DEFINE human life. And, if they are hesitant, then we must advise them not to seek office or get out of office.
At the beginning of 2017, Pope Francis set up “a study committee” to prepare for the 50th anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25th 2018). The existence of this “secret” committee was brought to light some months later by two Catholic publications Stilum Curiae* and Corrispondenza Romana*
The committee coordinated by Monsignor Gilfedo Marengo, has the task of finding the documentation in the Vatican Archives, related to the preparatory work for Humanae Vitae, which occurred during and after the Second Vatican Council. The first fruit of this work is the volume by Monsignor Marengo, The Birth of an Encyclical. Humanae Vitae in the light of the Vatican Archives, published by the Libreria Editice Vaticana. Other publications will perhaps follow and other documents will presumably be submitted, privately, to Pope Francis.
From a historiographical point of view, Monsignor Marengo’s book is disappointing. On the genesis and consequences of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, inserted into the context of the contraceptive revolution, the best book is still, in my view, Renzo Puccetti’s, The Poisons of Contraception (Edizioni Studio Domenicano, Bologna 2013). Monsignor Marengo’s study, nevertheless, contains some new things. The most relevant is the publication of the entire text of an encyclical De nascendi prolis (pp. 215-238), which, after five years of agonizing work, Paul VI approved on May 9th 1968, fixing the date of its promulgation for the Solemnity of the Ascension (May 23rd).
The encyclical that Monsignor Marego defines as “a rigorous pronunciation of moral doctrine” (p.194), was already printed in Latin when there was an unexpected turn of events. The two French translators, Monsignor Jacques Martin and Monsignor Paul Poupard, expressed strong reservations about the document’s too “traditional” approach. Paul VI, upset by the criticisms, worked personally on numerous modifications of the text, changing, most of all, its pastoral tone, which became more “open” to the cultural and social solicitations of the modern world. Two months later, De nascendi prolis, had been transformed into Humanae Vitae. The concern of the Pope was that this encyclical “would be received in the least problematic way possible” (p. 121), thanks not only to the reformulations of its language, but also to the lowering of its dogmatic nature (p.103).
Monsignor Marengo recalls that Paul VI did not accept the invitation sent to him by the then Archbishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyla, to issue “a pastoral instruction, reaffirming in no uncertain terms, the authority of the doctrine of Humanae Vitae, in face of the widespread movement of contestation to which it was subjected.
The objective, or at least the result of Monsignor Marengo’s book, seems to be that of relativizing Paul VI’s encyclical, which appears as if it were a phase in a complex historical journey and which has not been concluded by the publication of Humanae Vitae, nor with the discussions that have followed it. One cannot “claim to have said the ‘last’ word and close, if it were ever needed, decades of debate” (p.11).
On the basis of Monsignor Marengo’s historical reconstruction, the new theologians, who refer to Amoris laetititia, will say that the teaching of Humanae Vitae has not been changed, but must be understood as a whole, without reducing it to the condemnation of contraception, which is only one aspect. Pastoral care – in addition – is the criteria to interpret a document that refers to the doctrine of the Church on birth-control, but also the need to apply it according to wise pastoral discernment. In the final analysis, is it about reading Humanae Vitae in the light of Amoris laetitia.
Humanae Vitae was an encyclical that caused great anguish (this is how Paul VI himself defined it) and was certainly courageous. The essence of the ’68 revolution, was, in fact, to reject all authority and all laws, in the name of liberating instincts and desires. Humanae Vitae, by reiterating the condemnation of abortion and contraception, was a reminder that not everything could be permitted, that there is a natural law and a supreme authority, the Church, which has the right and the duty to guard it.
Humanae Vitae was not a “prophetic” encyclical. It would have been, if it had dared to oppose the false neo-Malthusian prophets with the divine words “Increase and multiply” (Genesis 1, 28; 9,27). It did not do so, as Paul VI, in fear of coming into conflict with the world, accepted the myth of the demographic explosion, launched in 1968 by Paul Erlich’s book, The Population Bomb. In 2017, this same Erlich, was invited by Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo to repeat his theories about overpopulation at the congress organized by the Pontifical Academy for Sciences on the theme: Biological Extinction. How To Save The Natural World On Which We Depend (February 27th – March 1st 2017). The author in this volume describes the catastrophic scenarios that awaited the inhabitants of the Earth, if they failed to take measures to contain population growth. What the encyclical correctly condemns is artificial contraception, but without rejecting the new “dogma” of a necessary reduction in births. Humanae Vitae thus replaces Divine Providence, which until then, had regulated the births in Christian families, with the human calculation of “responsible parenthood”.
The Magisterium of the Church, affirms however, in a dogmatic manner, that contraception needs to be condemned not only because its per se an unnatural method, but also because it is in direct opposition to the primary end of marriage, which is procreation. If the procreative purpose is not declared to prevail over the unitive, it will be possible to sustain the thesis that contraception may be licit when it jeopardizes the “intima communitas” of the spouses. John Paul II affirmed vigorously the teaching of Hunanae Vitae, but the conception of conjugal love during his pontificate is at the origins of many ambiguities. With regard to this, I would refer to the accurate analysis made by Don Pietro Leone, an excellent contemporary theologian, in his book The Family Under Attack: A Philosophical and Theological Defense of Human Society (Loreto Publications, 2015) which Maike and Robert Hickson wrote a fine review of on Rorate Caeli.***
Over the last fifty years, due also to a misleading conception of the purposes of marriage, pontifical teachings have not been applied, and among Catholics the practice of contraception and abortion, cohabitations outside of marriage and homosexuality have spread widely. The Post-Synod Exhortation represents an outcome of an itinerary which has been a long time in the making.
Repeating almost verbatim the words pronounced on October 29th 1964 by Cardinal Leo-Jospeh Suenens in the Council Hall: “Perhaps we have accentuated the words of the Scriptures: ‘increase and multiply’ to the point of neglecting the other Divine word: ‘and the two will be one flesh’, Pope Francis affirmed in Amoris laetitia “Then too, we often present marriage in such a way that its unitive meaning, its call to grow in love and its ideal of mutual assistance are overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation [36].
By turning these words around, we might say that in the last decades we have emphasized the biblical words “the two will be one flesh” almost exclusively, to the point of neglecting the other Divine Words “increase and multiply”. It is also from these Words, rich in significance, that we must start again, not only for a demographic rebirth but for a spiritual and moral regeneration of Europe and the Christian West.
Extensive Book Review: Don Pietro Leone’s “The Family Under Attack”
The Family Under Attack is available on Amazonand on Amazon UK.
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Allowing Doctrinal and Moral Questions:Don Pietro Leone’s Searching Book on the Family and the Evasion or Inversion of the Finalities
Drs. Robert & Maike Hickson
“It is difficult to gauge the number of abortions [the destruction of unborn babies] performed per year worldwide, although the World Health Organization estimates a figure of 40-55 million for clinical abortions, and an equally high figure might be estimated for abortions resulting from the use of the interuterine device [the “IUD”] and for the destruction of the unborn resulting from in vitro fertilization. As for those [destructions of life] caused by pills and chemicals in the earliest period…one might reasonably guess that their numbers amount to hundreds, thousands, or millions of millions [of deaths] per year. Such numbers of human lives destroyed each year [by abortion overall] make the genocides of Hitler…and Stalin [and Mao]…seem almost insignificant and, without any doubt whatsoever, [it] exceeds the numbers of human lives destroyed by any other method in the history of mankind. What is perhaps most remarkable about these numbers [of destroyed pre-born children] is not their sheer magnitude, but the mercy of God in allowing the world to continue to exist in light of them.” (Don Pietro Leone, The Family Under Attack (2014), pp. 175-176—my emphasis added)
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“What divides the two doctrines [the Traditional and the Novel] is their respective visions of the family: its primary finality [the “matrimoniae finis primarius”] and, consequently, its size and the possibility of limiting its size….To show that the novel doctrine is not unambiguously modernist [“the only justification for giving such confused and confusing texts a Catholic interpretation” (152)], one would have to explain [about this 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae’s “unhappy synthesis of two opposing tendencies” (152)] that it can give the finality of love priority over the finality of procreationonly chronologically; that the responsibility that it [“the novel doctrine” with its novel “natural birth control”] advocates cannot… exclude generosity, but [such mature responsibility] must entail the attitude whereby parents acceptthe numberof children that God in His Providence wishes to send, and at the time He wishes to send them. This is then how we [faithfully try to] interpret the modern [contemporary] magisterial doctrine on these issues, observing in passing that it [i.e., our strained “hermeneutic”] is a symptom of a grave crisis in the Church that the Magisterium, the function of which is to deepen and clarify Catholic doctrine, has in the last forty to fifty years been producing texts obscure or misleading, which cannot be understood without expert theological exegesis.” (Don Pietro Leone, The Family Under Attack, pp. 152-153)
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“We begin with the Declaration of the Holy See in March 1944 (AAS XXVI p. 103) concerning the modern authors who deny the absolute priority of the procreative finality of marriage. It observes inter alia that certain [modern] authors take as the primary finality: ‘the reciprocal love of the spouses and their union to be developed and perfected by the physical and spiritual gift of their own person’ [We—says Don Pietro Leone himself in this longer bracket and footnote—are not far from Familiaris Consortio here [22 November 1981]. We can trace the inversion of the finalities of marriage in the present [2014] Magisterium to the ‘modern authors’, through the personalism of Pope Paul VI…and the new theories bruited about on the floor of the [Vatican] Council [1962-1965], even by cardinals such as Léger and Suenens, which reduced the importance of the procreative purpose of marriage and opened the way to its frustration by elevating its unitive end and the gift of self to an equal or higher level (cf. Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, s.46).]” (Don Pietro Leone, The Family Under Attack, p. 133—my emphasis added, in both the main text and in the extended footnote referred to and then quoted)
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“We have been careful clearly to distinguish the natural and the supernatural orders throughout, especially in view of the tendency to confuse them prevalent in contemporary thought….In the recent teaching of the Magisterium on the themes treated in this book, the distancing from the Faith occurs principally by means of confusion of the natural and supernatural orders. This tendency was already manifest in the Second Vatican Council [because of Eclectic Ecumenism, too!]. In the first chapter of ‘Die Neue Theologie’ (Amis de St. Francois de Sales 1996), the comment of the Jesuit Fr. Henri Bouillard S.J. is quoted that: ‘The Second Vatican Council avoided the expression “supernatural” in its principal documents.’ In this connection Romano Amerio in Iota Unum points out (at paragraph 253 in chapter 35 on Ecumenism) that in the two documents Ad Gentes and Nostra Aetate (on Ecumenism and the non-Christian religions) the word ‘supernatural’ did not even appear….Ambiguity and equivocation in matters of the Faith not only confuse the mind but also make it more difficult to lead a good life. They [ambiguity and equivocation] are a danger to souls, acting insidiously in the manner of a slow poison.” (Don Pietro Leone, The Family Under Attack, pp. 1, 55, and 91—my emphasis added)
***
A recent and learned book by Don Pietro Leone, The Family Under Attack (2014), just arrived in the mail as a gift to our family, but it was sent also with a polite invitation and request. This request— made explicitly and especially to my wife—was for her to read and review this deeply thoughtful book, and even in a timely way if it were feasible.
As it turns out, it has not been feasible for my wife to do so in a timely way, in view of some challenging imponderables that surprised us, and given our larger family obligations. But, one evening, when she was looking the other way, her husband deftly snatched the book and began to read it—and then for several hours. He completed the book of 360 pages on the next day, after being especially attentive to the concluding and discerningly critical, two appendices, which were also a sort of recapitulation of the book: Appendix A—“Theology of the Body”; and Appendix B—“Limbo Called Into Question.”
For example, Don Pietro Leone—the well-known pseudonym of this faithful and well-educated Catholic Priest (dwelling now somewhere in Italy)—says about Pope John Paul II’s extensive 5-year Series of Discourses (and Weekly Wednesday Papal Allocutions) on the Theology of the Body (1979-1984), as follows:
In fine, we see clearly that Theology of the Body is a personalist, phenomenological system. As such it is concerned with the subjective realm, such as the person and love, and [it] neglects the objective realm, be it Catholic dogma (as with the doctrine that the primary end of [conjugal] sexuality and marriage [or, the “Matrimoniae Finis Primarius] is procreation [the “Bonum Prolis”]; or as with the distinction between the natural and supernatural orders), or scholastic theology [and, hence, the range, reality, and indispensability of Divine Grace], philosophy, or morality (as with the distinctions between the different forms of love [to include the concupiscentia of our wounded, fallen nature]. The outcome [of this phenomenological personalism] is a shift from the virtue of love to the passion of love [a concupiscible passion], from supernatural love to natural love, and in the final analysis from sanctity to sexuality.
In this lack of Catholicity, Theology of the Body, although presented as the praise of Catholic conjugal love, becomes instead a paean to Eros [a song of joyful, thankful, and exulting praise to Eros], with greater resonance for the World than for the Church. As such, it certainly constitutes one of the more remarkable fruits of the much vaunted rapprochement (or “aggiornamento”) between the Church and the World. (349-350—italics in the original; my bold emphasis added)
At the beginning of his Appendix B—Limbo Called Into Question—Don Pietro Leone frames the situation and the document that appeared in the Spring of 2007—not very long after John Paul II had died (on 2 April 2005) and just two years after Benedict XVI had been installed as Pope on 24 April 2005—and our author says:
At the end of the second chapter we briefly recounted the Church’s doctrine on Limbo [to include the classic, normative texts of Saint Thomas Aquinas]. How, if at all, has this doctrine been [now] affected by the document of the International Theological Commission [as a Part of the Paramagisterium? Or?] in early 2007 entitled: “The Hope of Salvation [the Spes Salutis] for Infants Dying Without Baptism”? The document was heralded by certain organs of the press [e.g., the Correire della Sera on 3 May 2007] as the abolition of Limbo [i.e., “Il Papa abolisce il Limbo”], although the document does not in fact claim to be more than a work of “speculative theology” (cf. Preface), and the Pope [Benedict XVI] did no more than approve [sic] its publication (cf. Preliminary Note). Its status should therefore be viewed rather as a theological opinion [a “theologoumenon”]—which cannot of itself be said to supersede the traditional doctrine. (351—my emphasis added)
In this above passage we see the characteristic courtesy which Don Pietro Leone so loyally reveals, and we see here even his kind “pia interpretatio” of things coming forth from the Vatican or from the Pope—reminding us, also, of how Saint Thomas himself did likewise politely disagree with Saint Augustine at times, or at least graciously demur! Moreover, here is what Don Pietro Leone now introduces and shows to be Saint Thomas’s own long-standing and traditional words about Limbo:
Thirdly [i.e., a third grave objection to this 2007 document of speculative theology is,], the document runs counter to the common patristic and theological Tradition, culminating in the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas. He presents the beatitude of unbaptized children as a union of the intellect and will with God in the enjoyment of all natural goods, a beatitude unmarred by the deprivation of the [supernatural] beatific vision of which they can have no knowledge. (Quaestio Disputata de Malo 5) (355—my emphasis added)
One page later, Don Pietro Leone quietly and politely strengthens his critique of the International Theological Commission’s subversively speculative Document:
Fourthly, the speculative theology contained in the document is at the least questionable. As far as the constant tradition of the Church is concerned, the principle of God’s universal salvific will (as well as the principles of the hierarchy of Truths) and that of extra-sacramental salvation have never been applied to unbaptized infants. St. Thomas applies the principle to non-Catholics, but not in such a way as to deny the necessity of Faith or Baptism, let alone to propose the possibility of a purely natural means of salvation…. The prima facie sense of the text [i.e., the Speculative Document’s citations of the passages] from Lumen Gentium, from the New Catechism [CCC], and the [New] Funeral Mass for an unbaptized infant, that men may be saved without Faith or baptism—whether by supernatural or natural means—cannot, in the light of this brief synthesis [of argumentation] offered above, be described as a development of Catholic [Doctrine], but rather of non-Catholic doctrine (see the discussion of Modern Doctrines in the [“Contemporary”] Magisterium in Chapter Three [i.e., entitled “A Novel Tendency in the Magisterium,” pp. 54-93]). The term sensus fidelium in this connection is [therefore] a misnomer. (356-357—my emphasis added)
As our reverent and wholehearted priestly author, showing again his palpable love for the little children, approaches the conclusion of his book—which has been so candidly attentive to the unmistakable “moral devastation” of Adultery, Abortion, and the Abortifacient Forms of “Contraception” (i.e., “Birth Prevention”)—he will draw us into some further-sobering reflections to take with us and then to act upon:
Cardinal Journet notes that exceptions to a general law cannot be presumed, but must be demonstrated….We conclude that the [International Theological] Commission has not demonstrated its case. In fact the application of God’s universal salvific will to all men regardless of Church teaching, whether dogmatic or simply traditional, manifests in the final analysis a form of naturalism, which involves ignorance of, or disregard for, the Faith. In relation to the nature of Limbo in particular, it manifests, at least partially, the attitude that Limbo is a destiny both unhappy and unjust. The Commission describes it (at least once) as “the exclusion from eternal beatitude” (s.2), whereas (according at least to Tradition and St. Thomas Aquinas) it does indeed consist of eternal beatitude (albeit of the natural order), where nothing due to such persons is lacking from this beatitude. (357—my emphasis added)
Then, with his characteristic modesty, Don Pietro Leone, proposes his own speculative theological opinion, which is, admittedly, not only in contradistinction to, but also “at variance with the position of the [International] Commission” (357), and it especially considers “the Sacramental order” within the divinely disclosed “economy of salvation.” Thus, he says:
The salvation of all unbaptized infants would detract from the excellence of the economy of salvation, as it has been revealed to us. For to this excellence belongs the excellence of the sacramental order, where the [assumed] Sacred Humanity of Christ [Himself a Divine Person] encounters the human person at once [i.e., concurrently] on the spiritual and physical levels. And in the case of Baptism, moreover, in a sacrament received, and thereby hallowed, by Christ Himself. If, however, all unbaptized infants [such as those killed in abortions] attain Paradise, then an important proportion of the Elect, that is to say all infants who will have died between conception and the use of reason, whether by natural or violent means, whether to Christian or to non-Christian parents, and from the beginning to the end of time, will have been saved without partaking in the excellence of the sacramental order. (357-358—my emphasis added)
After reflectively considering Don Pietro Leone’s own specific words, we may better appreciate his brief introductory words to his Two Appendices, and the rationale he had for including them now:
In the appendices we treat two themes of current interest [as of 2014]. The first is the “Theology of the Body,” which has touched [along with “Contraception”] the lives of millions of people, above all in America, the second is the attack on the doctrine of Limbo, which has found particular expression in a document of a Vatican theological commission. These two themes relate to the subject matter of the present book inasmuch as the first pertains to sexuality, and the second pertains to the fate [thus destiny] of aborted infants. In particular, the first theme is a clear instance of Personalism, and the second is a clear instance of the confusion of the natural and supernatural orders. (325—my emphasis added)
After reading and savoring a few of these illuminating and decisively important passages with my wife—to include some of the earlier and more difficult and abstract, philosophical considerations about Subjectivism and Naturalism and Phenomenology—she encouraged me to put some of my cumulative observations and general assessments in writing—especially as they would touch upon the lives of the Little Children and their attainment of Vita Aeterna et Beatitudo unto the Greater Glory of God Who created them.
For, I had become increasingly convinced that Don Pietro Leone’s insights about two matters, above all, should be more fully presented and deeply discussed and acted upon by others: (1) the confusion between the Natural and the Supernatural Orders; and (2) the inversion of the finalities, especially about the ends (purposes, human motivations) of Marriage.
In light of John Paul II’s own Evangelium Vitae—which is essentially only about Natural Life— we should ask: “What, then, is the purpose of Natural Life?” Or, “What is Natural Life for? What answers do we then receive? What answers should we receive? Do we not now often forget that, in the traditional Catholic Faith, the purpose of Natural Life is “to people Heaven.” That is, to people heaven with (also for the sake of) the Little Children—unto the Greater Glory of God, as well as unto the Gift, Fruit, Joy, and Communion of the Beatific Vision with its foretold Coruscation in the mysterious and unfathomable Lumen Gloriae. “Sinite Parvulos ad Me venire” dixit Jesus. Praesertim! Abundantius!
It seems now fitting to present the structure and overall organization of Don Pietro Leone’s book, especially because the book contains no Index. Part of the book’s artful presentation, however, is the author’s use of his footnotes, which are usually a counterpoint or corrective to the specific texts or Church documents he is analyzing. One could learn so much, if one would only read the footnotes of the book in sequence. That itself would be a good preparation also for the final two Appendices.
The art work on the cover is a painting of the Holy Family by Peter Paul Rubens, and entitled “The Flight into Egypt.” Don Pietro Leone’s modest Latin-Language Dedication is to Our Lady of Guadalupe and it essentially says: “If this little book contains in it anything of good, let it be (or may it be) most humbly dedicated to the Most Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe.” The Epigraph of his book, moreover, is from Pope John Paul II, namely his 25 March 1995 Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (58):
We need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name [Don Pietro Leone’s own italics and ethos of candor!], without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception.”
With these tones and marks of reverence and integrity and trenchancy before us, we may now more receptively and adequately consider, in outline, the structured contents of Don Pietro Leone’s book.
The book is divided into three parts with a total of thirteen chapters and two appendices. Part I (Chapters 1-3) deals mostly “From the Philosophical Perspective”—and with “Philosophy and Theology,” “Morality,” and “A Novel Tendency in the Magisterium,” respectively; Part II (Chapters 4-9) deals with “The Nature of Sexuality” (Marriage in Philosophical Ethics), “Contraception,” “The Expansion of Impurity,” “The Practice of Abortion,” “The Ethics of Abortion,” and “’Pro-Choice’”; and Part III (Chapters 10-13) is “From the Theological Perspective” and deals with “Marital and Non-Marital Sexuality” (“Marriage in Moral Theology”), “Chastity,” “Abortion and the Gospel of Life,” and “The Motivation and Sinfulness of Impurity and Abortion.” The final two Appendices A & B, already specifically addressed, deal with “Theology of the Body” and “Limbo Called into Question,” respectively.
Here near the end of my own portion of exposition and evaluation of Don Pietro Leone’s depiction of “the Origin, Nature, and Tendency of the Magisterial Novelties” I prefer mostly to present and accent Father’s own lucid and faithful words. My wife will then contribute more fully, and from her heart, about what she especially notes and sees—as a wife, mother and a convert to the Catholic Faith—to be the most important effects on the Children of what Don Pietro Leone calls “The Expansion of Impurity” and “the Inverted (or Evaded) Finalities of Marriage”—i.e., the divergent or sometimes misunderstood views of a Catholic Family and “The Order of the Ends of Marriage.” But, first we shall consider what Father detects to be the Novel Tendencies in some of the teaching authority of the Church, given her Munus Docendi. What Father sees to have entered the Church has indeed “crept in” and by way of unofficial opinions and equivocal speculations. It reminds one of what the Germans call a “Samtpfötchen Revolution”—a revolution coming in quietly on padded feet, or on soft “cats’ paws.” It is both a vivid feline and maritime (nautical) metaphor. (Sailors, too, especially know about “catspaws”—those light winds gently rippling or ruffling a calm sea, and sometimes suddenly arriving, and usually not too long before the stronger wind (at least a good puff of wind, or perhaps a squall) comes even soon behind it.) Let us now consider these methods in a doctrinal context.
In his lengthy Chapter 3 (54-93), entitled “A Novel Tendency in the Magisterium,” Don Pietro Leone especially notes a “radical subjectivism” and this overall “tendency to naturalize” (83) the supernatural (natural supernaturalism, as it were); and along with a deeper emotional (or sensate and sentimental) theology which places the Good before (or above) the priority of Truth. But, emphatically, he will have us understand that:
The origins of these novel doctrines [are] to be traced…to an intellectual movement of the nineteenth century (which is an expression of the spirit of the World), and not merely to the Second Vatican Council, or to the postconciliar “spirit.” (86—my emphasis added)
Furthermore, Father says:
The motivation for this [naturalizing secularized] distancing from the Faith seems to be the precedence given to a new ideal, namely the loving communion of men irrespective of their beliefs, in other words to the priority of Love over Truth: the priority of the order of the Good over the order of the Truth. This priority runs counter both to Reason and to Faith, for Reason demands that one must first know the object before one can love it, and love it in the appropriate way; and (as Romano Amerio explains in Iota Unum) Faith teaches that the Procession of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity from the Intellect of the First Person, precedes the Procession of the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity from the Will of the First and Second Persons. This priority of the Good over the True is manifest in the falsely conceived principles of “Dialogue” and “Ecumenism” where union between parties is sought even at the expense of the Truth. An example of this may be seen in the Magisterial document [John Paul II’s Encyclical] “Ut Unum Sint” (25 May 1995) in regard to “Sister Churches.” (56-57—my emphasis added)
Don Pietro Leone supports Father Georg May’s discerning insights when he recapitulates them, as follows:
Ecumenism, being above all a doctrinal matter, most obviously errs in according priority to the order of the Good over that of the True; but it also typically errs in ignoring Grace, which is a feature of the Catholic confession, of not all of the other confessions, and none of the non-Christian religions. It thereby also falls prey to the Naturalism noted above. (57—my emphasis)
Summarizing the further doubtful fruits of the tendency to give priority to the Good over the True, our author adds:
As far as the themes of this book are concerned, the aforementioned priority is particularly manifestin an approach to philosophy which we have called “Magisterial Personalism.” According to this approach, man is prized not in virtue of objective and supernatural standards, but solely in virtue of his humanity (see the section on the Dignity of Man in chapter 2); marriage is understood not in accordance with the objective moral law, but simply in terms of “love,” and is described in terms of “life and love” (chapter 4); it is insinuated that the primary end [finality] of marriage is love (chapter 5); the conjugal act is presented as “total self-giving love”; and contraception is presented as sinful on this basis (chapter 5). This form of personalism finds a particularly clear expression in the doctrine known as “Theology of the Body” (see Appendix A)….We understand personalism here as that system of ethics which is grounded in the person rather than in being. (58, 62—my emphasis added)
We propose now to consider how Don Pietro Leone understands both the origin and the fitting evaluation of these novel tendencies in the Magisterium, reminding us of the Magisterium’s Mission:
Now, the very raison d’être of the Magisterium is to teach the Catholic Faith and to condemn heresy. This it did…in Lamentabili of St. Pius X (1907) when it condemned the Modernist doctrines (Errores Modernistarum) which had crept into the Church by way of unofficial teachings of its members; but now these same errors have crept into the Magisterium itself (cf. Iota Unum s. 24), and into the teaching of a not inconsiderable sector of the hierarchy and the clergy as well, casting a veil of darkness over all things….If formal heresy was avoided [at the Second Vatican Council], Catholic doctrine was expressed with ambiguity, an ambiguity, to be precise, which favours heresy. In this connection Romano Amerio writes (Iota Unum s. 50): “These inexact formulations were deliberately introduced so that post-conciliar hermeneutics could gloss or re-inforce whichever ideas it likes. [And Father Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., explicitly stated in 1965, as follows]: ‘We will express it in a diplomatic way, but after the Council we will draw out the implicit conclusions [les conclusions implicites].’” (86-87—my emphasis added)
But, as part of our faithful vigilance, we must always remember that “to understand an ambiguous statement [especially a deliberately ambiguous one!], one must clearly understand it in both of its senses, which means in this context both its Catholic and its non-Catholic sense” (89), lest we fall prey to the condemned error of “Latitudinarism” (as Pope Pius IX understood it) or slothfully slide into Irenism and Self-Deception. Throughout his profound and perspicacious book, Don Pietro Leone has helped us generously and admirably in our own efforts to detect and resist subtle errors and to grow in our understanding of the Faith and in both intellectual and moral virtue, while striving to be in, and to remain in, a state of sanctifying grace usque ad finem. Don Pietro Leone has also taught us to try to live up to the demands of the virtue of Prudentia, without sliding slothfully into a Prudentia Carnis (Father’s phrase) or Prudentia Carnalis (the words of Pope Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Job). The Virtue of Prudence is without cunning or cowardice (i.e., neither Astutia, nor Ignavia or Timiditas). Carnal Prudence, however, is often a present danger to us, and at least an abiding temptation—especially today with Democracy and putative Tolerance and All That.
Some Reflections of a Wife and Mother and Convert to the Faith
As I (Maike Hickson now speaking) had tried to argue in a recent article in Christian Order, [1] when the Church deals with the matter of marriage and the family, she needs to be at first and persistently, very attentive to the Little Ones, the vulnerable little children who cannot defend themselves and therefore call out for the Church’s protection in her Mission to help the poor—and thus also the “Poorest of the Poor” (in the words of Gerhard Cardinal Müller), the children of divorced parents, “the orphans of divorce.”
As I have likewise written in the above-referenced Christian Order article, my motive for writing on these matters at all was, in part, that, because my own parents divorced while I was a little child, I could speak from the depth of my heart about the suffering that divorce puts into the lives of the children. Additionally, because I am also a convert to the Catholic Faith, having lived much of my life in an atheistic, secular atmosphere and those social surroundings, I could also speak with conviction about the importance of the traditional moral teaching of the Catholic Church and how it helps us who were lost to lead a better life, and not that more restricted or more inhumane life that is often indirectly and pejoratively insinuated in some of the recent arguments coming from the professed Church reformers themselves. When these reformers claim that the current moral teaching does not sufficiently respond to the needs of the people of today, then it necessarily follows that the laws of God are insufficient. Christ Himself was apparently not far-sighted enough to anticipate all of this!
In the following reflection, I thus propose to discuss two parts of Don Pietro Leone’s book, those that pertain to the themes which are also somewhat close to my own experience.
I shall start with his discussion (in chapter 6) of the increase of impurity in our surrounding and intrusive secular society. Our author clearly draws the connection between a loss of Faith and an increase in impurity—a moral devastation which will finally, and also gravely, affect the children, as we know. He says: “…the rejection of God has engendered a blindness to the objective meaning and goodness of chastity, marriage, and procreation, as well as to the supernatural graces [actual, sacramental, and sanctifying] that are available and necessary for their fulfilment.” (155) The understanding of chastity, marriage, and procreation have thereby been obscured in their meaning. What Father shows is that when love is not governed and directed by reason and a clear moral teaching, it soon turns out to be reduced to its sensible part, to its inordinately passionate part and thereby also soon coarsens and degrades it. It indeed soon turns out to be a selfish form of love that is not any more attentive to the other, but, rather, seeks to fulfil its own immediate desires. Because a world without God is in all its spheres more inhuman, love will be sought even more as a form of consolation. Father shows how selfish parents who do not follow God’s moral laws anymore tend to “neglect, abandon, and abuse their children” (157) in different ways; and they thus effectively instill in their own children the yearning for a higher form of love even more, because, in their own sensate ambiance, they have never experienced it. They may still perhaps hope, therefore, to be able to find truly the more generous forms of love (e.g., a love of benevolence, not just one of concupiscence). That love, however, is more and more likely now to be perceived and understood only in its merely passionate and sensible forms, immediately felt with their senses. A deeper, stiller, calmer love which is filled also with a sense of duty and protective and formative responsibility is, therefore, likely to be sadly lacking to them.
Don Pietro Leone himself puts it so well in his book, and provides us with so many good arguments, as well, when he counters the prevalent idea that there are “good elements” in extramarital relationships. Even though he admits that these illicit liaisons (adulteries often) may bring some healing to the heart, given the wounds inflicted by a lack of love in the past; nevertheless, they cannot heal those wounds fully, because they even add new lesions explicitly, inasmuch as the couple does not respect each other in a fuller way, as the persons bound to each other by a vow (even an irrevocable promise to God) would do in a sacramental marriage. Father adds: “And since the extramarital relationship fails to treat persons with the respect due to them, namely with a full marital love, it maltreats and abuses them: it inflicts new wounds upon them.” (160) He also portrays this love as a love that is largely governed by sexual love, and which cuts out the important moral laws of love, namely chastity, marriage, and procreation. Such extramarital affairs mostly avoid having children, since often these relationships only last as long as the passions survive, perhaps a few months, perhaps a few years. This is merely “a pale simulacrum of marriage.” (161) Yet, only a true marriage can be abidingly fruitful and good: “Procreation is only licit within the context of marriage, as only marriage can provide the foundation for the education of well-balanced and happy children.” (164—footnote) Father shows again here his special attentiveness to the children, their protection and formation.
This general problem of “love affairs” without marital bond and without the intention of any procreation of children (as a fruit of their mutual and loyal love) is that the problem is even gravely intensified by the modern media which manifoldly stir and incite the desires for sexual pleasures. Additionally, “sex-education” programmes such as those promoted by the United Nations foster a “purely hedonistic vision of sexuality.” (163) The modern world thereby reduces even the natural dignity of man and depreciates man’s capacity to form any loyal and lasting marriage bond and to sustain a higher discipline and culture by fostering its deeper and noble traditions and faithful perseverances. We are reduced to mere sensate, animal-like beings, not capable of keeping our word or an honorable bond—or a true vow (and irreversible promise!).
When we go now over to Father’s chapter on contraception (chapter 5), we will realize how the orientation toward the blessing of children gives a marriage its fruitful and enduringly purposeful direction. Don Pietro Leone shows, regrettably, how the recent teaching of the Church has been fundamentally altered concerning the Ends of Marriage, and altered to its detriment, he believes. For example, Pope Paul VI, as well as Pope John Paul II and the New Catechism and Canon Law, all state that the primary end of marriage is “love,” and not any more, as it was traditionally stated, the procreation of children. The mutual good of the spouses now comes before the good of the offspring. Quoting Pope Pius XII, Father shows how this inversion of priorities had been previously rejected by the Magisterium, showing how the perfection of husband and wife were to be subordinate to the procreation and cultivated and sustained education of the children. Our author also makes reference to Holy Scripture (especially Genesis) where it is clearly shown that God created man and woman so that they may go forth and multiply and fill the earth with children and well-reared children, as well. In this sense, sexual love serves as a means to a greater end and greater good, and this conjugal love and mutual support is to be subordinate to other and greater goods, namely “the conservation of the species.” (138) Father wisely reminds us that even the physical and psychological characteristics of man and woman prepare them for procreation, namely “the male has a natural propensity to work for keeping the family, whereas the female has a natural propensity towards the care and nurture of offspring.” (138)
Moreover, Don Pietro Leone forcefully describes the subtle change of the Ends of Marriage during the 20th century, starting already with Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Cannubii (31 December 1930). He presents a clear and convincing critique of a slightly novel development slipped into the wording of the Papal Magisterium that has brought forth much bad fruit. Indeed, he says:
Various elements of Magisterial Personalism are in evidence here: subjectivism, along with a preoccupation with psychology, love, and the person, the disregard for objectivity, along with Tradition, past Magisterial teaching, Sacred Scripture and Natural Law arguments. (142)
The reason why this shift in the teaching of the Church is so consequential is the following: when spouses enter a marriage with the main purpose to fulfill themselves and make themselves happy, they lose out of sight a sense of duty and openness to life. They will only be open to children if it suits their needs of the time, and when they feel it does not inordinately (or uncomfortably) impede their perceived happiness. In short, given our fallen nature’s sinful propensities, such a concept will tend to foster subjectivism and selfishness. Instead, when marriages are contracted with the clear sense of a long-range mission, namely to “populate heaven,” and thereby also to give greater Glory to God by giving Him more souls to praise and thank Him in the Beatitude of Eternal Life, they start their sacramental marriages with a very different attitude: one of generosity and sacrifice, too. These spouses will be oriented toward what God wants from them, not the other way around, what they want from God, or what they want for themselves.
Therefore, Father rightly puts the discussion of the Ends of Marriage into the Chapter on contraception. Once the primary purpose of marriage has been shifted away from having babies, it is only a question of time when Catholics actively start to use means to avoid having babies. But if we have an abundant love for God, and are grateful to Him for having created us, and are loyal children of God who follow His Commandments, we will not want to be found wanting in our responsive (and reciprocal) generosity. Large families are a blessing! Many children are a blessing! We speak of the Bonum Prolis, the good of offspring, the good of children. Don Pietro Leone shows beautifully in several of his quoted passages how, since ancient times, the Church had kept to this attitude of generosity which thus led, correlatively, to her very restrictive rule concerning the “calculations” of natural Birth Control. As Pope Pius XII taught, the continual use of the marriage act without openness to children without a grave reason “would be a sin against the very nature of married life.” (Pope Pius XII himself, as quoted, 147) Moreover, as Father Pietro Leone importantly points out, the fact alone that one of the spouses, from the outset of their putative marriage, has intended to avoid having babies (much less having the resolve to do it even entirely so), renders that marriage itself invalid from its inception. That is how much importance is put on the good of the children: the Bonum Prolis.
Finally, Father Pietro Leone also counterpoints once more the novel to the traditional teaching of the Church concerning the Ends of Marriage by even discussing the “pro-life” 1968 encyclical, Humane Vitae, by Pope Paul VI. The author sums up his earlier and fuller analysis of that document so:
We remark that Humanae Vitae advocates a wide use of natural birth control. We have seen in the summary above how it also praises the practice in glowing terms. We remark too that in advocating a wide use of natural birth control, it never warns against an excessive use as Pius XII had done, and that in solemn tones. (150)
To conclude my few remarks on Don Pietro Leone’s truly wonderful book, I would like once more affirm how important the traditional moral teaching of the Church is for a good life on earth, and as a fortifying preparation for the greater adventure (and risk) of attaining to Beatitude. Even only on a natural level, the doctrine of the Church makes sobering good sense, and it makes wise sense because it comes from God who made us all! (The Moral Law may even be seen as “Manufacturer’s Instructions” so as to make things work well!) This is what I came to see myself, long before I had the gift and grace of supernatural Faith. Next to the beauty of the Traditional Liturgy, I first came to see the Beauty of the Moral Teaching of the Church. It was so convincing as to its wisdom and truth. It was confirmed by my own life in a secular world, which had been so permeated by the atmosphere of cohabiting, aborting, and divorcing people. As Don Pietro Leone so clearly puts it, such a disordered and squalid life, if uncorrected, only leads downwards, not upwards. I am grateful to God to have led me out of this mud and effectively constricting asphyxiation into his spiritual spaciousness and beauty and happiness; and also to Don Pietro Leone for making these arguments in defense of the Church’s traditional teaching so clear and available for many people—not only the learned—both Catholic and non-Catholic alike, that they might finally find true happiness—without guile and without self-deception.
I consider Father’s book to be a deft form of apologetics—depending on natural, not supernatural, premises at the outset (like Saint Thomas’ own apologetics with Muslims his Summa Contra Gentiles)— concerning the moral teaching of the Catholic Church, which is so much needed today. Don Pietro Leone’s book should be printed and distributed widely and given to all the actual participants of the previous 2014 Synod and to the prospective participants of the even more important, forthcoming Synod of Bishops in 2015. Father’s book provides us with the rationale and effective arguments to convince even much of the sinning and inattentive world of today how the traditional moral guide of the Catholic Church could (and should) lead everyone to a more fruitful, a more fulfilling, and finally to a happier life on earth (and a much happier one in the promised life of Eternal Beatitude thereafter!).
Charles Dickens was a great literary genius. He had a gift for complicated plots, for colorful characters, and for emotionally evocative storytelling. As a social critic, he also penetrated into the unseemlier side of industrial capitalism, that Protestant beast that grew up in post-Reformation England and turned the merry cities and towns of that nation once known as Mary’s Dowry into appropriate backdrops for Bleak House, Oliver Twist, and Little Dorrit.
St. George Theatre By Tom McDonald, A NYC Transit retiree
St. George Theater in Staten Island, NY.
Constructed in the same era as the Loew’s Wonder Theatres, the St. George Theatre in Staten Island is another classic old hall that has been brought alive through some renovations done by very generous individuals. Located at 35 Hyatt Street, a short walk from the ferry terminal, the St. George Theatre was once considered the most magnificent theatre in the borough. Since its revival in the early 21st century, it may well be again.
Solomon Brill of the Isle Theatrical Company was an independent owner of 15 theatres in the New York City area at a time when most movie houses were built by Hollywood studios. He began construction in 1928 and the St. George opened its doors on December 4, 1929 as a movie and vaudeville house, where one could see a flick and catch a live performance in the same sitting. This two-tiered entertainment was abandoned in 1934, but revived during the 1940s to help sell war bonds. After World War II, it remained a movie palace until 1977, under the stewardship of the Fabian Theater chain, which had acquired the St. George in 1938.
Subsequent owners used the venue for a roller rink, an antique showroom, and a night club, all unsuccessful ventures. In the mid-1990s, it briefly opened as a performing arts center, but closed down quickly. The St. George Theatre remained dark until 2003, when the film “School of Rock” used it for its final scene.
In 2004, Mrs. Rosemary Cappozalo and her daughters, Luanne Sorrentino and Doreen Cugno, started a not-for-profit organization to save this historic theatre from being torn down with Cappozalo donating over a million dollars for a renovation of the site. Since re-opening in June of 2004, over 800 events have been held there, with performers like Tony Bennett, Jerry Seinfeld, Whoopi Goldberg, and Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo among the headliners.
Today, the St. George Theatre seats 1,800 people. It is a fine place to see a show of any kind, with the distinctive look of the old, classic movie palaces of the 1930s, including murals on the walls in the lobby, winding staircases to the mezzanine, and stained-glass chandeliers. The updated sound system is another attractive reason to drop by to see a show at this wonderful venue.
The 1 train to South Ferry, the 4 and 5 to Bowling Green and the R and W to Whitehall Street/South Ferry all leave you by the Manhattan entrance to the Staten Island Ferry. Upon arrival at the St. George Ferry Terminal in Staten Island, the St. George Theatre is two blocks away, at 35 Hyatt Street.
The Top 10 Secrets of the Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre | Untapped Cities
A social evening in 1909 at the restaurant Le Pré Catalan Henri_Alexandre_Gervex_-_Une_soirée_au_Pré_Catelan_-_1909
From the book of the prophet Isaiah 27:1-13 The Lord cares for his vineyard once again
On that day, The Lord will punish with his sword that is cruel, great, and strong, Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the coiled serpent; and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
On that day – The pleasant vineyard, sing about it! I, the Lord, am its keeper, I water it every moment; Lest anyone harm it, night and day I guard it.
I am not angry, but if I were to find briers and thorns, In battle I should march against them; I should burn them all. Expunging and expelling, I should strive against them, carrying them off with my cruel wind in time of storm.
In days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall sprout and blossom, covering all the world with fruit. Is he to be smitten as his smiter was smitten? or slain as his slayer was slain?
Or shall he cling to me for refuge? He must make peace with me; peace shall he make with me!
This, then, shall be the expiation of Jacob’s guilt, this the whole fruit of the removal of his sin: He shall pulverize all the stones of the altars like pieces of chalk; no sacred poles or incense altars shall stand. For the fortified city shall be desolate, an abandoned pasture, a forsaken wilderness, where calves shall browse and lie.
Its boughs shall be destroyed, its branches shall wither and be broken off, and women shall come to build a fire with them. This is not an understanding people; therefore their maker shall not spare them, nor shall he who formed them have mercy on them.
On that day, The Lord shall beat out the grainb between the Euphrates and the Wadi of Egypt, and you shall be gleaned one by one, O sons of Israel.
On that day, A great trumpet shall blow, and the lost in the land of Assyria and the outcasts in the land of Egypt Shall come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain, in Jerusalem.
From a spiritual Canticle by Saint John of the Cross, priest
Though holy doctors have uncovered many mysteries and wonders, and devout souls have understood them in this earthly condition of ours, yet the greater part still remains to be unfolded by them, and even to be understood by them.
We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides.
For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ: In him are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. The soul cannot enter into these treasures, nor attain them, unless it first crosses into and enters the thicket of suffering, enduring interior and exterior labors, and unless it first receives from God very many blessings in the intellect and in the senses, and has undergone long spiritual training.
All these are lesser things, disposing the soul for the lofty sanctuary of the knowledge of the mysteries of Christ: this is the highest wisdom attainable in this life.
Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.
Saint Paul therefore urges the Ephesians not to grow weary in the midst of tribulations, but to be rooted and grounded in love, so that they may know with all the saints the breadth, the length, the height and the depth—to know what is beyond knowledge, the love of Christ, so as to be filled with all the fullness of God. The gate that gives entry into these riches of his wisdom is the cross; because it is a narrow gate, while many seek the joys that can be gained through it, it is given to few to desire to pass through it.
France has, after all, been open to the world. It has welcomed millions of other, non-Muslim migrants — refugees from the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, Portuguese workers in the 1950s, Italian miners throughout the 20th century, and more recently, Latin Americans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Christians from black Africa and the Caribbean, Hindus, Buddhists, even Americans — without any of those migrants causing the problems that arise with Muslim immigrants, not just in France, but all over Europe.
The Two Souls of the Yellow Gilets – Professor Roberto De Mattei With Contributor Francesca Romana – On Rorate Caeli
From the historical-political viewpoint, both these concepts originate with the French Revolution, which marked the end of Christian civilization, and the rise of a “profane” political space.
The immigrants of the first, second and third generations were absent from a revolt that had the rejection of immigration among its objectives – but they won’t stay silent for long. The future scenario that sees the gilets jaunes as protagonists, appears destined to be overlapped with that suggested by Laurent Obertone in his visionary novel: Guerilla: Le jour où tout s’embrasa (tr. it. Signs Publishing 2017). While the Fifth Republic is revealing its vulnerability, the piazzas ready to explode in France are now two: the multicultural one and the sovereign-populist one. And if France explodes, Europe explodes.
Pro-Muslim English bishops voice solidarity with EU Islamic Immigrants in U.K. Settlement Scheme / News / Home / Catholic News – The Catholic Church for England and Wales
Progressivist ‘Simplification’ of the Mass Inspired by Luther – Dialogue Mass XXXVII – Dr Carol Byrne
The fruits of the MassThe doctrine that the Mass produces “fruits” – that it brings both spiritual and temporal benefits to the faithful present and those for whom they pray – was rejected by the Protestant heretics as a superstitious fable. It was their way of attacking the Church’s role in the dispensation of grace. Instead of upholding the impetratory value of the Mass on the grounds that it is Christ Who acts in it and is unfailingly heard by the Father, Jungmann joined with the Protestants in ridiculing it.
Jungmann ridicules the efficacious value of the Mass A whole section of his history of the Mass is devoted to a series of medieval caricatures in the form of anecdotal satire, i.e., “funny stories” intended to raise a few laughs at the expense of traditional Catholic piety. (5) Thus, according to Jungmann, it was popularly believed that “during the time one hears Mass one does not grow older… after hearing Mass one’s food tastes better” etc. (6)
But he made no attempt to put any of this into its proper context, ignoring the centuries-old tradition of Catholic piety, which has been in the Church since the time of the early Fathers but which has been jettisoned by the Liturgical Movement. For example, the mention of not growing any older was explained by St. Leonard of Port Maurice as a reference to a sort of spiritual youthfulness experienced by those who hear Mass devoutly. (7)
The Two Guadalupes – Mary and The Crescent Moon – On OnePeterFive
Tariq Ibn Ziyad and the armies of Islam invaded Spain in 711 AD. They embarked on a reign of terror which included not only the complete military conquest of the Iberian peninsula by 718, but the destruction and transformation of many churches into mosques, and the conversion at the point of a sword of many Catholics to Islam. Faithful Catholics — priests, religious, and laity alike — attempted to preserve their sacred places and objects as much as possible from Islam’s destruction. The Church where this ancient statue of Mary was located was destroyed and turned into a mosque along with everything in it.
Everything, that is, except the statue.
It was said that a few Catholics took the statue and hid it in an iron casket in the banks of the nearby Guadiana River, also known as the Wolf River, or in Latin, lupe. However, none could verify the story. The Extremadura province was a hotbed of fighting for centuries between Catholics and Muslims, and when the Muslims controlled the area, they kept the name given by the Spanish but referred to the local river as a wadi, or oasis. Hence, the river and the surrounding area came to be known as wadi lupe, or Guadalupe.
The statue’s story drifted away into history and legend for six centuries. The Extrama
The final conversion of the Catholic Church is now underway to change what is left from the evangelizing counter reformation Church militant into Globalism’s activist arm Social justice and advocate of changes in structures of government to Socialism
Vatican emphasizes addressing migration’s root causes And calls for proper integration in migrants’ host countries
First Dialogue: Promoting Action on the Commitments of the GCM
Panel depicting the martyrdom of St. Lucy By-_Quirizio_da_Murano
Byzantine Rite Our Lady of Guadalupe standing atop both the half moon and the serpent – Saint Juan Diego pray for us
Like the large and venomous snake below, the action of the secret forces is camouflaged everywhere in society. The the naive don’t see the danger, and don’t believe in a conspiracy against Christendom. {photo credits National Geographic, August 2004}
From the book of the prophet Isaiah 26:7-21 The song of the just. The promise of new life
The way of the just is smooth; the path of the just you make level. Yes, for your way and your judgments, O Lord, we look to you;
Your name and your title are the desire of our souls. My soul yearns for you in the night, yes, my spirit within me keeps vigil for you; When your judgment dawns upon the earth, the world’s inhabitants learn justice.
The wicked man, spared, does not learn justice; in an upright land he acts perversely, and sees not the majesty of the Lord. O Lord, your hand is uplifted, but they behold it not;
Let them be shamed when they see your zeal for your people: let the fire prepared for your enemies consume them. O Lord, you mete out peace to us, for it is you who have accomplished all we have done.
O Lord, our God, other lords than you have ruled us; it is from you only that we can call upon your name. Dead they are, they have no life, shades that cannot rise; For you have punished and destroyed them, and wiped out all memory of them.
You have increased the nation, O Lord, increased the nation to your own glory, and extended far all the borders of the land. O Lord, oppressed by your punishment, we cried out in anguish under your chastising.
As a woman about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pains, so were we in your presence, O Lord. We conceived and writhed in pain, giving birth to wind; Salvation we have not achieved for the earth, the inhabitants of the world cannot bring it forth.
But your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise; awake and sing, you who lie in the dust. For your dew is a dew of light, and the land of shades gives birth.
Go, my people, enter your chambers, and close your doors behind you; Hide yourselves for a brief moment, until the wrath is past.
See, the Lord goes forth from his place, to punish the wickedness of the earth’s inhabitants; The earth will reveal the blood upon her, and no longer conceal her slain.
From the book On Virginity by Saint Ambrose, bishop You light up your grace of body with your splendor of soul
You are one of God’s people, of God’s family, a virgin among virgins; you light up your grace of body with your splendor of soul. More than others you can be compared to the Church. When you are in your room, then, at night, think always on Christ, and wait for his coming at every moment.
This is the person Christ has loved in loving you, the person he has chosen in choosing you. He enters by the open door; he has promised to come in, and he cannot deceive. Embrace him, the one you have sought; turn to him, and be enlightened; hold him fast, ask him not to go in haste, beg him not to leave you. The Word of God moves swiftly; he is not won by the lukewarm, nor held fast by the negligent. Let your soul be attentive to his word; follow carefully the path God tells you to take, for he is swift in his passing.
What does his bride say? I sought him, and did not find him; I called him, and he did not hear me. Do not imagine that you are displeasing to him although you have called him, asked him, opened the door to him, and that this is the reason why he has gone so quickly; no, for he allows us to be constantly tested. When the crowds pressed him to stay, what does he say in the Gospel? I must preach the word of God to other cities, because for that I have been sent. But even if it seems to you that he has left you, go out and seek him once more.
Who but holy Church is to teach you how to hold Christ fast? Indeed, she has already taught you, if you only understood her words in Scripture: How short a time it was when I left them before I found him whom my soul has loved. I held him fast, and I will not let him go. How do we hold him fast? Not by restraining chains or knotted ropes but by bonds of love, by spiritual reins, by the longing of the soul.
If you also, like the bride, wish to hold him fast, seek him and be fearless of suffering. It is often easier to find him in the midst of bodily torments, in the very hands of persecutors.
His bride says: How short a time it was after I left them. In a little space, after a brief moment, when you have escaped from the hands of your persecutors without yielding to the powers of this world, Christ will come to you, and he will not allow you to be tested for long.
Whoever seeks Christ in this way, and finds him, can say: I held him fast, and I will not let him go before I bring him into my mother’s house, into the room of her who conceived me. What is this “house,” this “room,” but the deep and secret places of your heart?
Maintain this house, sweep out its secret recesses until it becomes immaculate and rises as a spiritual temple for a holy priesthood, firmly secured by Christ, the cornerstone, so that the Holy Spirit may dwell in it.
Whoever seeks Christ in this way, whoever prays to Christ in this way, is not abandoned by him; on the contrary, Christ comes again and again to visit such a person, for he is with us until the end of the world.
Rod Dreher’s Invective Against Father Munkelt And All Of Us As Intellectual Rad Trads– Via The American Conservative
Our good friend Nora Brower writes
“We’ve all lost all respect for Rod Dreher, thanks to this disgraceful responses. It’s nothing but an ad hominem attack on our good Father Munkelt. Dreher had not a single intelligent response to Father’s points, just bucketloads of contempt and disrespect. Rod has made it clear in his response, his “god” is the muckraking scoop, the dirt he can turn up on anyone, so he can feel superior to them. That’s his motivation for his investigative reporting, it doesn’t come from a hunger and thirst for justice and truth. “
The fight against sexual abuse, the rescue of the progressive and homophilic McCarrick clique and a paradigm shift in Catholic moral teaching through the recognition of homosexuality, equals a squaring of the circle – and this should also overtax Pope Francis.
An heretical document is released by the Vatican’s Holy See – – A Joint Statement By Catholics and Lutherans
Saying “we are very thankful for the spiritual and theological gifts received through the Reformation” http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2017/10/31/0753/01633.html#or in which was commemorated a document every faithful prelate and theologian in the Catholic Church objected to upon its release in 1999 The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, solemnly signed by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church in 1999, has also been signed by the World Methodist Council in 2006 and, during this Commemoration Year of the Reformation.
This tragic document further lays the ground work for the prophesized one world religion “beyond protestantism”
· Cdl. Müller: Priests ‘rightly disobey’ bishops who order them to give Protestants Communion By Maike Hickson | LifeSite
The Cult Of Man Is Seen In Every Aspect Of Protestantism And The New Religion
Immanentism: Catholicism and Religious Experience, by D.Q. McInerny, Ph.D. – Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter
By denying the transcendence of God, it of course utterly falsifies the divine nature. To deny the transcendence of God is to refuse to acknowledge the fact that He is absolutely distinct from and superior to His creatures, and the result of doing that is to end up with a knowledge which, whatever else may be said of it, is not knowledge of the one true God at all. (It becomes the cult of man parenthesis emphasis mine)
It’s a Runaway Train, and the Devil Is Driving – OnePeterFive
“You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.”–Agent Smith, The Matrix
It was announced today that the Jesuit superior general, Fr. Arturo Sosa, was elected head of the International Union of Superiors General (USG), a group that “represents religious orders and congregations of brothers and priests around the world in almost all countries” and “brings together General Superiors of the male religious orders and congregations.”
Fr. Sosa is one of the most heterodox religious leaders in the Church today. He has expressed Marxist sympathies and praised Fidel Castro. During the debate on Amoris Laetitia, he told an interviewer, regarding Jesus’s teaching on divorce, “There would have to be a lot of reflection on what Jesus really said. At that time, no one had a recorder to take down his words.” He went on to say that “the word is relative, the Gospel is written by human beings, it is accepted by the Church which is made up of human persons[.] … So it is true that no one can change the word of Jesus, but one must know what it was!” When this statement stirred up controversy – Cardinal Burke said Sosa should be “corrected” – he defiantly stood his ground.
Cardinal Müller: They Just Keep Repeating Their Old Errors –On gloria.tv Finally Cdl Müller acknowledges that “the Church is divided” [between Catholics and Progressives] and that the progressives, apart from repeating old errors, offer no forward-looking ideas.
“Those who have not lived before the Revolution do not know the sweetness of life.” So said, with great irony, Charles Maurice de Tallyrand, the renegade bishop who did as much as any individual to empower the French Revolution of 1789. He it was who largely wrote its foundational document, The Declaration of the Rights of Man. As former treasurer of the Church in France, it was also he who identified Church lands and oversaw their sale to finance the First Republic. This was before he went on to become Napoleon’s foreign minister, to help engineer Napoleon’s downfall and the restoration of the monarchy under King Louis XVIII, and then to die peacefully in his bed, insisting that he had never betrayed anyone. But this article is not about him. What I want to do here, as I said I would in the article’s first installment, is to identify the main reason why many young persons, especially in Europe, are at the heart of an unmistakable movement upward from the near bottom to which society has fallen after two centuries of the modernity that dawned with the Revolution and grew only more hellish as it continued to unfold unto now.
Ireland Announces Totalitarianism And Dozens of Irish Doctors Storm Out of Meeting After They’re Told They Must Participate in Abortions | LifeNews.com
Ready-to-Use Admissions of Pro-Abortionists, Including Some Doctors Who Admit to ‘Killing Babies’ – On Catholicism.org
Pro-abortion Faye Wattleton, former head of Planned Parenthood, admitted that it is a “baby” that is being aborted in her book How to Talk to Your Child About Sexuality;
To praise her all the tongues of heaven and earth do not suffice.” – Pope Bl. Pius IX An Italian statue made c.1680 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Watch “Pope Francis –- Homage ceremony to the largest public Statue of the Immaculate Conception 2018-12-08” From Rome’s Piazza di Spagna Square – On YouTube
Our lady Lawyers threaten to take 85-year-old woman to court over painting of the Virgin Mary | News | LifeSite The Immaculate Conception — Catholic Family News
The Immaculate Conception & The Co-Redemptrix – On Mothers Of All Peoples
On February 17, 1941, the “Property” of the Immaculata, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo, eventually leading to his martyrdom in Auschwitz. During the few hours before his arrest, Fr. Maximilian was inspired to write the heart of his unparalleled mariological ponderings regarding the “Immaculate Conception.”
The following are excerpts from this last written testimony:
The Mystery of the Immaculate Conception After the Dogmatic Proclamation – On Mothers Of All Peoples
Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins is an official of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei” in Rome, a contributing member of the Pontifical International Marian Academy and the author of Totus Tuus. He is internationally known for his numerous articles on Our Lady and for his scholarly work in the fields of dogmatic and spiritual theology.
If we seek to cleanse the Church with the political spirit similar to the mobs of the French Revolution, with anger begetting anger and blood begetting blood, we will only find ourselves farther away from the interior metanoia demanded to solve the present crisis. Mary, on the other hand, offers us the model of purifying the Body of Christ with an uncompromising zeal for true purity and renewal of life, but in a reverent manner that does no violence to the Body itself. Mary has been cleaning the Body of Jesus since he was an infant. She does so with a maternal thoroughness, but in a manner that does no harm to what is, in its very nature, of divine institution and life. She will do the same, if invited, for her Son’s Mystical Body today.
Cause of Our Joy – Our Lady of Liesse – On Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites
In 1134 three Knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, prisoners of the Muslims in Egypt, miraculously found or received in their prison a statue of Our Lady, which they named Our Lady of Joy, or Notre Dame de Liesse.
Painting of the Basilica of Notre Dame de Liesse where the Image of Our Lady of Liesse is enthroned.
From the book of the prophet Isaiah 24:1-18 The coming of the Lord on that day
Lo, the Lord empties the land and lays it waste; he turns it upside down, scattering its inhabitants:
Layman and priest alike, servant and master, The maid as her mistress, the buyer as the seller, The lender as the borrower, the creditor as the debtor. The earth is utterly laid waste, utterly stripped, for the Lord has decreed this thing.
The earth mourns and fades, the world languishes and fades; both heaven and earth languish. The earth is polluted because of its inhabitants, who have transgressed laws, violated statutes, broken the ancient covenant.
Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants pay for their guilt; Therefore they who dwell on earth turn pale, and few men are left.
The wine mourns, the vine languishes, all the merry-hearted groan. Stilled are the cheerful timbrels, ended the shouts of the jubilant, stilled is the cheerful harp.
They cannot sing and drink wine; strong drink is bitter to those who partake of it. Broken down is the city of chaos, shut against entry, every house. In the streets they cry out for lack of wine; all joy has disappeared and cheer has left the land.
In the city nothing remains but ruin; its gates are battered and desolate. Thus it is within the land, and among the peoples, As with an olive tree after it is beaten, as with a gleaning when the vintage is done.
These lift up their voice in acclaim; from the sea they proclaim the majesty of the Lord: “For this, in the coastlands, give glory to the Lord! In the coastlands of the sea, to the name of the Lord, the God of Israel!”
From the end of the earth we hear songs: “Splendor to the Just One!” But I said, “I am wasted, wasted away. Woe is me! The traitors betray: with treachery have the traitors betrayed!
Terror, pit, and trap are upon you, inhabitant of the earth; He who flees at the sound of terror will fall into the pit; He who climbs out of the pit will be caught in the trap. For the windows on high will be opened and the foundations of the earth will shake.
From a treatise on The Ascent of Mount Carmel by Saint John of the Cross, priest
Under the ancient law prophets and priests sought from God revelations and visions which indeed they needed, for faith had as yet no firm foundation and the gospel law had not yet been established. Their seeking and God’s responses were necessary. He spoke to them at one time through words and visions and revelations, at another in signs and symbols. But however he responded and what he said and revealed were mysteries of our holy faith, either partial glimpses of the whole or sure movements toward it.
But now that faith is rooted in Christ, and the law of the gospel has been proclaimed in this time of grace, there is no need to seek him in the former manner, nor for him so to respond. By giving us, as he did, his Son, his only Word, he has in that one Word said everything. There is no need for any further revelation.
This is the true meaning of Paul’s words to the Hebrews when he urged them to abandon their earlier ways of conversing with God, as laid down in the law of Moses, and to set their eyes on Christ alone: In the past God spoke to our fathers through the prophets in various ways and manners; but now in our times, the last days, he has spoken to us in his Son. In effect, Paul is saying that God has spoken so completely through his own Word that he chooses to add nothing. Although he had spoken but partially through the prophets he has now said everything in Christ. He has given us everything, his own Son.
Therefore, anyone who wished to question God or to seek some new vision or revelation from him would commit an offense, for instead of focusing his eyes entirely on Christ he would be desiring something other than Christ, or beyond him.
God could then answer: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear him. In my Word I have already said everything. Fix your eyes on him alone for in him I have revealed all and in him you will find more than you could ever ask for or desire.
I, with my Holy Spirit, came down upon him on Mount Tabor and declared: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear him. You do not need new teachings or ways of learning from me, for when I spoke before it was of Christ who was to come, and when they sought anything of me they were but seeking and hoping for the Christ in whom is every good, as the whole teaching of the evangelists and apostles clearly testifies.
