Vatican News Website Promoting Heresy: Pascendi Explains Everything

Pascendi was the greatest Catholic document of the past 250 years. The simple parish priest Giuseppe Sarto explained all that had been going on in the underground of the Church since the 1789 Revolution and prophesied much of what would happen later, as we can see with our own eyes.

Saint Pius X did much to stem the tide, and we can see that his efforts lasted for decades. But, of course, there is no way to stop traitors with an "oath", because they lie through their teeth and double-dealing is their very life.

This can be seen in the following piece published Tuesday in the Vatican News website:

Traditional Latin Masses for All Saints & All Souls in Denver, Colorado

OLMC = Our Lady of Mount Carmel (FSSP), 5612 S. Hickory St., Littleton, CO 80120

All Saints, November 1  

6:30 AM: Low Mass at the Carmelite Monastery; 6138 S. Gallup St., Littleton, CO
8:30 AM: Low Mass at OLMC
7:00 PM: High Mass at OLMC with OLMC Choir

All Souls, November 2

6:30 AM: Low Requiem Mass at OLMC
8:30 AM: High Requiem Mass at OLMC with OLMC Choir
10:30 AM: Solemn High Requiem Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, 1530 Logan Street, Denver;  OLMC Choir (poster below).

De Mattei: The Synod on the Amazon, the spirit of Pachamama and the spirit of Elijah

Roberto de Mattei 

Corrispondenza Romana

October 30, 2019

What was the Amazon Synod and where will it lead us? The response to this question cannot certainly be limited to an analysis of the final document, voted on October 26, 2019. The Pan-Amazonian Synod is part of a process that should be considered in its progressive phases and context, even in the media, so as to understand its ultimate objective: the redefinition of the sacraments and hierarchical priesthood; the possibility of ordaining married men to the priesthood and women to the diaconate; but most of all the promotion of a new eco-indigenous cosmology and idolatrous cults inside the Catholic Church.

On the level of the documents produced over the last few months, the phases linked to each other in this process, in which each stage explains the preceding one and announces a new one, are: the preparatory document of June 8^th 20181.; the Instrumentum laboris of  June 17^th 20192.; the Synodal document of October 26^th 20193. and lastly, the Post-Synod Exhortation, which Pope Francis announced the publication of before the end of the year, much earlier than expected.

But equally important, is the context in which the Synod took place. The Final Document itself, in its first point, emphasized the importance of this aspect, pointing out that: “outside the Synod Hall there was a notable presence of people coming from the Amazonian world, who organized supportive acts in different activities and processions like the one at the opening, which accompanied the Holy Father with dancing and singing, from the tomb of Peter to the Synod Hall. The Via Crucis for the Amazonian martyrs had an impact, along with the significant presence of the international mass-media.”

Why Is the Liturgical Establishment Not Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Novus Ordo?

An article published at NLM last Thursday (“Lessons from the Sixties: Selective Synodality and Princely Protests”) begins thus: “It is actually astonishing how little of Paul VI’s liturgical reform, especially his Novus Ordo Missae, which he promulgated fifty years ago, is being commemorated this year.” That has been on my mind, too, for the whole of 2019.

It should strike us as exceedingly odd, at least prima facie, that liturgy committees, Vatican dicasteries, theology departments, chanceries, religious orders, and every other sort of postconciliar bureaucratic apparatus is not engaged in a huge song and dance about the golden anniversary of the new Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI on April 3, 1969, and effective in most countries on the first Sunday of Advent of that year, November 30. (In the same way, Summorum Pontificum was promulgated on 7/7/07 but did not take effect until the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14).

Certainly, one might think, if there is anything postconciliar that deserves to be toasted, fêted, and proudly clapped on the back, it would be this monumental modern makeover. Yet the number of events, nay, the number of mentions on the part of the Pauline rite’s friends and supporters could be counted on one hand. The total number of events celebrating Summorum Pontificum’s rather modest anniversaries (5 years, 10 years…), in contrast, already go up into double digits. Perhaps the most high-profile piece — and it wasn’t particular high-profile — was an article in L’Osservatore Romano on April 6, 2019, by Fr. Corrado Maggioni, S.M.M., Under-Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, published in English at PrayTell on April 17. [1]

Can we understand this perplexing silence? I think the answer can be summed up in an alternative title that I considered using for this article: “Memory Hole: On the Destruction of the Knowledge of Tradition.”

What got me thinking along these lines was an interesting exchange at Facebook, of which I will now reproduce the most valuable segments. It began this way:

I have met plenty of people who call themselves Catholic who have never had the slightest idea there ever were any changes, and have no idea what the term “Novus Ordo” even means, the rewriting of history has been so complete.

Another fellow chimed in:

When I was first at University I was vaguely aware that before Vatican II Mass was in Latin, but I thought it meant the liturgy exactly as we had it in the Steubenville chapel, but in Latin. Then I went to a TLM just out of curiosity and discovered just how wrong that idea was.

The first person replied:

I assumed precisely the same thing. The idea that they would simply brazenly concoct something new by committee was something that I had to be forcibly convinced of. It wasn’t until I had put the two texts side by side that I began to realise how we had been utterly swindled all our lives. Then I started reading Michael Davies and it was all over.

A third person chimed in:

I converted from Anglicanism, having read my way to Catholicism. The Novus Ordo (though I didn’t know it was called that at the time or for many years) was a bit of a shock, but I just thought that’s how it was, and I had to get on with it. I never even knew the Latin Mass still existed. I lapsed, came back, and I will always believe it was no coincidence that the weekday Mass I happened to stay for after my confession was a TLM. Usual stuff after that — read Michael Davies, etc., went through the whole anger, “I’ve been cheated” thing — and out the other side. Praise God.

A question was raised: “Why among Catholics is there so much ignorance not just of history in general, but even of our recent history? Fifty years ago isn’t that much time… You’d think that a Church 2,000 years old would want its members to know how great it was that the bad old dusty-musty liturgy was replaced by a shiny new model.” And to it, there came this reply:

The answer to the puzzle is that there is no longer supposed to be any knowledge that the “Novus Ordo,” as such, exists at all. It is supposed only to be “the Mass,” full stop. The fact that there were ever any changes made to the liturgy is supposed to be sliding down the Memory Hole with each passing year. The people who remember the old Mass well, who would have known just how radically different the new is from the old, and who remember how violently the changes were made — these people are dying off. That is, the ones who didn’t simply give up and leave long ago. Catholics who still practice the Faith are not supposed to know there ever was an “old rite” or that there is a “new rite” at all. The entire project of the Revolution at this stage is to deny there ever was such a thing as the Old Faith.
          Anyway, all this is why they are as furious as a bag of feral cats that there are still Traditionalists, and that the traddie movement is gaining ground. That lot was supposed to have died out or been driven out, and the fact that there are new ones, people like me who never knew the old rite in the wild, and the families now having twelve kids and going to the Missa Cantata, and all the homeschooling and whatnot... Combine that with the internet’s ability to let everyone know what’s really happening, and plenty of beautiful pictures besides, and it must be making them absolutely apoplectic.

Apoplectic, perhaps; but also strangely silent. How many websites are there that pursue a strongly reformist line? Not that many. Maybe just one: PrayTell. How many websites pursue a strongly traditionalist line? Quite a few. It seems, in short, that the progressives have run out of steam, or run out of confidence, or run out of on-board personnel, or think that talking about it too much risks introducing still further Catholics to the forbidden subjects — and thence, to possible defections.

A reader of OnePeterFive wrote to the editor:

I was already looking for God when I went to school, but the fullness, reality, and beauty of the Church and her Tradition was unknown to me until I discovered 1P5 … I say my encounter with Tradition was a second conversion because my experience immediately following my baptism and confirmation within Francis’ church was segregated from any knowledge that the Church before the 1960’s had been different than it is today.

Exactly. The success of the “transformation of all forms” ultimately depends on as many people in the Church not knowing what came before 1969, or thinking that our worship and our life could, or should, be any different from that which the Vatican, the USCCB, the chancery, or [fill in the blank] would have us think it must be.

At the moment, I am copyediting a manuscript of a translation of a very fine book by Michael Fiedrowicz, Die überlieferte Messe: Geschichte, Gestalt und Theologie des klassischen römischen Ritus, which will be published by Angelico under the title The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite. The following paragraph eloquently summarizes the points I have been making:

The celebration of the liturgy in its traditional form thus constitutes an effective counter-weight for all levelings, reductions, dilutions, and banalizations of the Faith. Many who are unfamiliar with the classical liturgy and are acquainted only with the re-created form believe that what they see and hear there is the entirety of the Faith. Scarcely anyone senses that central passages have perhaps been removed from biblical pericopes. Scarcely anyone notices if the Church’s orations no longer expressly attack error, no longer pray for the return of those who have strayed, no longer give the heavenly clear priority over the earthly, make the Saints into mere examples of morality, conceal the gravity of sin, and identify the Eucharist as only a meal. Scarcely anyone even knows what prayers the Church said over the course of centuries in place of the current “preparation of the gifts,” and how these prayers demonstrated the Church’s understanding of the Mass as a sacrifice, offered through the hands of the priest for the living and the dead.

As I discovered the traditional Latin Mass in my late teens and early twenties, I distinctly remember stumbling on important truths of the Faith — truths taught by the Bible, the Church Fathers, the Councils, and, of course, the Tridentine missal — that had become muted, invisible, or even extinct in the Novus Ordo. And subsequent study has only confirmed the extent of that systematic bias. This is why I like to say (admitting it’s a bit of an exaggeration): “my daily missal made me a traditionalist.”

Catholics who do not give themselves trustingly to the 2,000-year tradition of the Church will not be in contact with the whole doctrine and morality of Catholicism. This is hard to hear, but so is much of the teaching of Our Lord: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16, 24). The same is true, in a way, of tradition: we have to deny our modern prejudices, take up the blessed burden of our tradition, and follow it, in order to be integrally Catholic.

Joseph Ratzinger famously and repeatedly said that forgetfulness of God is the major problem of the West. In his Foreword to Dom Alcuin Reid’s The Organic Development of the Liturgy, he wrote:

If the liturgy appears first of all as the workshop for our activity, then what is essential is being forgotten: God. For the liturgy is not about us, but about God. Forgetting about God is the most imminent danger of our age. As against this, the liturgy should be setting up a sign of God’s presence. Yet what is happening, if the habit of forgetting about God makes itself at home in the liturgy itself, and if in the liturgy we are only thinking of ourselves?

The same theologian, as Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in his letter concerning the remission of the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops:

In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses “to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1) — in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.

It is still difficult for many in the Church today to realize — either because they are totally ignorant of the past (as the revolutionaries intended), or because, being aware of it, they are afraid to do their homework and connect the dots — that the changes in the liturgy have actually contributed, profoundly and lastingly, to the crisis of our forgetfulness of God, and that the primary cure for this amnesia will be the restoration of the classical Roman rite.

From the ordination of a priest of the Fraternity of St. Peter in 2017

(cross-posted from New Liturgical Movement)

Op-Ed: "Jesus, only a Man - Does Francis want to blow up Christology?"

by the Rev. Deacon Nick Donnelly

As we await the publication of the English translation of the Amazon Synod’s Final Report one of the concerns is, will it present Our Lord Jesus Christ as the one and only saviour of mankind or will it continue to push him to the margins, only referring to Him in a cursory fashion. There are grounds for this concern, as Cardinal Müller warned, ‘They have driven Jesus out of the Amazon Synod’. 

Over the three weeks of the synod the prominence of the Pachamama idols has greatly added to the anxiety that the focus of the synod fathers was not on Our Lord, but on so called Mother Earth. Furthermore, the publication of Scalfari’s interview with Francis at the opening of the synod raised the shocking prospect that Francis does not personally uphold a Catholic Christology.

If we assume the accuracy of Eugenio Scalfari’s report that Francis denies the divinity of Jesus Christ then Bergoglio has planted yet another ‘theological atomic bomb’ that this time has the capacity to destroy all Catholic Christology. (Dr. Josef Seifert warned that Amoris Laetitia is a ‘ticking “theological atomic bomb” that has the capacity to entirely destroy all Catholic moral teaching.’)

Event: Dr. Kwasniewski Speaking at All Saints in Minneapolis, November 13

At the kind invitation of All Saints, the Minneapolis parish of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, I will be giving a lecture on Wednesday, November 13, at St. Boniface Church (629 NE 2nd St): “Beyond ‘Smells and Bells’: Why We Need the Objective Content of the Usus Antiquior.” The lecture will be preceded by Low Mass at 6:30 pm at All Saints (435 4th St NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413).

De Mattei: A comment chronology of the pagan Pacha Mama events which the Angels and Saints are far more outraged about than we are

Roberto de Mattei.

RadioRomaLibera

October 27, 2019

When it ends, the Amazon Synod will go down in history as the Pacha Mama Synod.

Who is Pacha Mama? She is the Earth Goddess, a pagan divinity venerated by the Synod Fathers gathered in Rome over these past weeks. The image of  Pacha Mama [first]made its appearance in the Vatican Gardens, on October 4, on the eve of the Amazon Synod.

During a ceremony led by an Indian woman of the Amazon, in the presence of Pope Francis and some cardinals, two wooden statues of Pacha Mama, represented by two naked, pregnant women facing each other, were adored, while another statue portrayed a naked male subject, ready for the sexual act.  

On October 8, the Pacha Mama statue reappeared in the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, first of all in a basket, then in a canoe  carried into the Church during another pagan ceremony organized by the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM). In a side chapel of Santa Maria Traspontina a poster was hung to show that “everything is connected”, in line with the teachings of Pope Francis’s Laudato si. In this you can see the photo of an animal, a  small mammal, sucking the breast of an indigenous woman carrying a baby on the other arm. 

Op-Ed: "Why the Amazon Synod is an attack on Our Lord’s institution of the Apostolic Ministry"

by the Rev Deacon Nick Donnelly

The Synod’s proposal that women be admitted to the ministries of lector and acolyte at first sight appears unexceptional but in reality it signifies an assault on Our Lord’s reservation of the apostolic ministry to men. This reservation is set out in Pope St John Paul II’s Ordinatio sacerdotalis which states:

“Priestly ordination, which hands on the office entrusted by Christ to his Apostles of teaching, sanctifying and governing the faithful, has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone. This tradition has also been faithfully maintained by the Oriental Churches.” (Ordinatio sacerdotalis).

The Amazon synod’s recommendation is about beginning to formally unravel and discard this sacred Tradition by incremental steps to the long term goal of the ‘ordination’ of women. Paragraph 102 of the synod recommends that women are formally instituted into the ministries of lector and acolyte. Paragraph 102 concludes:

You Suggest: All Soul's Day requiem Mass in Philadelphia

Pachamama-Synod Final Document: Married Priests, the study of Deaconesses, and more nonsense

The ultra-progressive liberation theologians specially handpicked by Francis for his regional synod to do his bidding delivered what he wanted: a nonsensical document with two essential points. First, of course, the possibility of ordination of married men. Second, a petition for Francis to consider their views on new ministries for  women on the commission for study of Deaconesses.

The rest is a laundry list of leftist green ideology and syncretism.

The whole document is available in Spanish here.

Ecclesia Amazonica - Prepare Your Hearts: Deaconesses Coming Up Sometime in the Near Future

The Amazon Synod, indirectly bankrolled by the pro-abortion Ford Foundation via its main organizer (REPAM), ended today with an explosive decision, one that will shake the foundations of the Church even more than it did the Anglican Communion decades ago.

In his final statement to the Synod, after the final document had been approved by the participants (the document should be available within the hour), Francis announced an explosive decision: he will recreate the commission for the study of the female diaconate, and he will name its new members.

What does that mean? 

In August 2016, Francis first established a commission to study female deacons. The commission reached the only logical result, though, as fits this pontificate, a muddled one: there can be no female deacons, not in the sense of the current use of the word "deacon", because the deaconesses of biblical times were charity workers, and not in Holy Orders, as the true Order of the Diaconate has always been.

Now, prompted by his handpicked Amazon Synod, Francis has announced he will reopen the commission, pick new members, and now we can be sure they will reach whatever result he tells them to reach. Which can only be one.

And the Catholic wars will make the battles of the Anglicans look like child's play.

#SumPont2019: The ongoing Traditional Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage in Rome (updated)

Update: Pontifical Mass being celebrated at this moment at the Altar of the Chair of St Peter, in the Vatican Basilica:

***

Immorality, Heresy, Paganism: "What divine punishments will fall upon us after this Synod?"

by Prof. Luc Perrin

Le Forum Catholique

Here we are before a situation that is so horrendous that it makes us tremble.

The ancient cardinals, since the 16th century, had always refused to elect a Jesuit to the throne of Peter. The 2013 conclave broke this taboo: the Pachamama-worshippers must be aware that in non-Christian traditional religions breaking a taboo always leads to calamities.

The organizers of this Pachamama-Synod had forewarned us: nothing will be like before after this event. Indeed, after the destruction of the biblical ethics by the Sodom-defenders, a profession of semi-Arianism, and the worship of idols, all in a context filled with financial scandals of all sorts and the promotion of the sexual predation of minors and adults, there is nothing left to demolish.

When compared to the current Second Pornocracy, 1968 looks like a Thomist conference...

Let us redouble our prayers to the fiery Archangel Saint Michael so that the justice of God may speak through him. Let us beg the mercy of God for the millions of souls drowing in the mud of this "Amazon".

From Sandro Magister: Those images really break your heart

Sandro Magister received the following letter which he published on his site on October 22, 2019.

Dear Magister,

The fascination of Amazonian rites (more or less) and statues representing pregnant women may be enchanting for the Synod Fathers and those around them, but they are creating trouble for Catholics in the Southern hemisphere of the world. Given that, even in the shanties of the global peripheries, people watch YOUTUBE and spend hours on FACEBOOK, those statues, take on a significance that is complicating the lives of [Catholic] catechists and missionaries, grappling with a constant loss of the faithful.

It is the experience of anyone on a missionary journey outside Europe to find themselves faced with a great number of aggressive Evangelical Churches or millenarian sects who spend a great deal of time attacking the Catholic Church and luring the faithful away. One of their main arguments is: “Catholics adore statues” or “Catholics adore demons”. Ergo: “Catholics are not Christians, come to us.”

Well, let me tell you my experience as a simple lay Catholic, who for personal reasons frequently travels to Mindanao in the extreme south of the Philippines. This is a region in which a great number of Muslims settled centuries ago and now added to this, there is an explosion of Protestants, giving a glimpse of a Brazilian-flavored future i.e. Pentecostal, even in what is still today considered one of the most Catholic countries in the world – namely -  the Philippines.   

For the Record - Dutch Bishop; "In the synod, nonsense that would embarrass Luther and Calvin: and the Pope is looking on."

Pandora’s box 

By Bishop Robertus Mutsaerts,

Auxiliary of  's Hertogenbosch

October 21, 2019

If you follow the daily press conferences of the Amazon Synod, you will hear the same tune being played every time: new paths, listening to the indigenous people, climate change, and Mother Earth. It looks as if no one actually wants to even mention the fundamental problems. This synod is very similar in that respect to the Youth Synod (October 2018).

Is there a shortage of priests in the Amazon? Yes, there is. But the same is true in many areas (Africa, China, the Middle East). But that is not the real issue. Meanwhile, these mantras are being repeated daily, while Catholic vocabulary is almost nonexistent. The bishops and cardinals are discussing the environment, the rise of the sea level; they are saying that above all, we should listen. They speak like politicians, using the same slogans, the same cheap rhetoric. It’s strange that in a synod these kinds of topics should be the subject of discussion. It is not the specialty of the Church, it is not our core business and it is not our perspective. We want to be relevant, apparently, at the expense of our own identity. That is nowhere to be deduced from the lexicon, the jargon, and the vocabulary being used. Now and then, it even feels as though you are watching TV Kantine [a television comedy series mocking well known Dutch people]. Whereas our vocabulary once consisted of words such as “our Mother the Church,” “hellfire,” and “virtues,” now it’s all about Mother Earth, Amazonian fires, and ecology. These points of view are not at all different from those of political parties and pressure groups.

Institute of Christ the King opens apostolate in Waterbury, Conn.

Special De Mattei: The New Pact of the Catacombs: the fulfillment of Vatican II?

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

October 21, 2019

The secret testament of the Second Vatican Council has [now] become public and official. On October 20, 2019. in the Catacombs of the Domitilla ”The Pact for a poor servant Church”,  was solemnly renewed as stipulated on November 16, 1965 in the same place, by forty-two Council Fathers, some weeks before the conclusion of the Council Assembly.

Monsignor Luigi Bettazzi, Emeritus Bishop of Ivrea, the only living signatory of the Pact of the  Catacombs, revealed that the 1965 text had been written by Monsignor Hélder Câmara (1909 -1999), Archbishop of Olinda e Recife, who, however, that November 16, did not sign it as he was busy at a meeting for the final drafting of Gaudium et Spes, perhaps the most significant document of the Second Vatican Council.

From the very start of the Council, Monsignor Câmara had established an ironclad friendship with Cardinal Suenens, who, in his correspondence, is referred to by the code name “Padre Miguel”. From then on, the Câmara-Suenens tandem constituted one of the “hidden” motors behind the Council gathering. At the beginning of the second session, Helder Câmara defined Suenens “the key man of the Council, certain of the direct and personal trust of the Holy Father”.  Highlighting the path taken by the first session, he writes that not without reason the Belgian Cardinal was designated as “the world head of progressivism”. “He is my leader at the Council” wrote the Brazilian Bishop in a circular to his faithful. 

Op-ed: "Was a demon enthroned at the Amazon Synod?"

 Rev. Deacon Nick Donnelly

During the first press conference of the Amazonian synod Bishop David Martínez De Aguirre Guinea, O.P., one of the special secretaries appointed by Francis, gave a response that lends weight to reports that the shamanistic ritual conducted in the Vatican Gardens was, indeed, the worship of the pagan idol, Pachamama. Bishop Martínez said:

Christus Vincit: Bishop Schneider’s Powerful and Luminous New Book — And Its Presentation in Rome

Word is spreading quickly about Bishop Schneider’s recently released book-length interview Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age (Angelico Press).

Only professional ostriches of olympic head-burying skill can deny that the Roman Catholic Church is suffering her worst crisis since the Protestant Reformation. We can see it in the escalating conflicts between a Vatican in progressive overdrive and Catholic laity and clergy striving to remain faithful to Scripture, Tradition, and the consistent teaching of the Magisterium; oscillation between anarchy and authoritarianism in governance; multiplying accusations of heresy and schism; and worldwide exposures of clerical abuse implicating bishops all the way up to the pope. 

Of those who have dared to call the problems by their name and to seek real remedies, Bishop Schneider stands out for his forthright interventions and the clarity with which he teaches the perennial doctrine of Christ and His Church, encouraging the “little ones,” admonishing the doubtful, and rebuking the relativists, secularists, and modernists who have overrun the barque of Peter.

Christus Vincit one of the most potent books written by any bishop of the Catholic Church, not just in recent years but since the time of the Second Vatican Council. It’s like The Ratzinger Report, raised to the tenth power. No wonder the book features endorsements by an impressive lineup: Cardinal Sarah and Cardinal Burke, eminent theologian Fr. Aidan Nichols, Fr. Gerald Murray of EWTN’s “Papal Posse,” and popular author Scott Hahn.

De Mattei: But does the Pope believe in Jesus Christ the Man-God?

Roberto de Mattei 

Radio Roma Libera.org

October 13, 2019

We cannot remain silent about this unbelievable episode, which many of you are certainly aware of. The following: 

Eugenio Scalfari, former director of La Repubblica published an article last Tuesday in which he writes: “Those who have had the fortune of meeting and conversing with him in utmost cultural confidence, the way I have several times, know that Pope Francis conceives the Christ as Jesus of Nazareth,  man, not God incarnate. Once incarnated, Jesus ceases to be God and becomes man until His death on the cross.” 

So a very well-known journalist asserts in one of the most widely-read Italian newspapers that Pope Francis does not believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ. If this was true, Pope Francis would be a formal heretic, like the Arians, the Ebionites and the Socinians. 

Sermon: Saint John Henry Newman, at the Heart of Tradition

Solemn Mass of Thanksgiving for the Canonization of John Henry Newman

October 9, 2019

Church of St. Catherine of Siena, New York City

Sponsored by the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny

 Newman's Altar in his rooms at the Birmingham Oratory

From the Gospel of the Mass from St. Luke:
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Luke 12:34)

To be able to celebrate this Mass of Thanksgiving for the Canonization of John Henry Newman for me is a singular event in my life, my life as a man, my life as a Catholic, my life as a priest. Newman has played a most important role in my life and is in many ways the one person, although with so many others in their own way, that led me to the Catholic Church.  His prayers and his intellectual and spiritual guidance brought me, against all odds, to the Catholic priesthood over 35 years ago. His presence in my life has been real—not virtual or mental—but real.  It is Newman who prepared me for the so very deep relationship between the priesthood and the Cross of Jesus Christ.  Newman’s life as a Catholic priest and Oratorian was never free from attacks and misunderstandings from both leaders of the society in which he lived and from the Church. He always sought truth within the Catholic Church but without false security of that reactionary spirit that fears the world and that sees the Church as a fortress against the world.  Newman took seriously Christ’s missionary demand to bring His message, the Gospel, to the whole world, without fear, without doubt, using his God-given intellectual power and his pastoral gifts, always trusting that the truth of the Gospel would prevail over ignorance and hostility.  His treasure was the Jesus Christ and His Church, and there in the deepest sense was also his heart. 

I have given many talks about John Henry Newman. This is not one of them. This is a sermon, and so at the heart of everything I say is the person of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, Head of the Church, the Word made flesh whose presence permeates the entire created order, bringing it in His own time to its fruition when He will come again to judge the living and the dead and when He will usher in his Kingdom of truth and light.  What binds me to Newman, and what binds us all to Him here, is his love of Christ and the Catholic Church.  He understood so well the joy of being a Catholic and he understood so well the cost of discipleship within a fallen world and within a Church that is always tempted to become part of that fallen world. 

October 13: 50 years of the Seminary of Saint Pius X, in Écône, Switzerland

It was not yet in Écône, and it was not under the name of Saint Pius X.

But on October 13, 1969, exactly 50 years ago, 9 seminarians, exhausted of the insanity reigning in seminaries everywhere, asked Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (who had been constrained to resign as Superior General of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit the previous year) to be guided by him in a new seminary. 

They assembled in Fribourg, at the Saint John Bosco House at route de Marly. It was the embryo of what would become the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (Society of Saint Pius X).

Congratulations to the work of Archbishop Lefebvre on this Jubilee! (More information in French here.)

Fontgombault Sermon on Dedication of the Abbey Church: Before building a "common home", we need to acknowledge the God Who designed it

Anniversary of the Dedication of the Abbatial Church

Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau

Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault

Fontgombault, October 12, 2019

Hodie in domo tua.

Today in thy house.

(Lk 19:5)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

My dearly beloved Sons,

Today’s Mass exhibits a great scriptural richness. The readings and the sung pieces run through the Bible from its very first book, Genesis, to the last one, the Apocalypse, centred around a same theme, God’s dwelling with men. Such is indeed the place in which we are, and the consecration of which we celebrate, a dwelling of God with men.

The opening chant is taken from the book of Genesis: “How awesome is this place. This is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven.” (Gn 28:17) Jacob uttered these words after he saw in a dream a ladder set up between earth and heaven, on which angels were ascending and descending. God then gave him as his inheritance this place, which Jacob called Bethel, House of God; there he set up a stone for a pillar, a memorial for this encounter. In the lesson, the vision of the Apocalypse brings us into the heavenly Jerusalem, this place which we yearn for. This is at the end of time the new abode of God with men. God is dwelling in their midst. The Gospel takes us into the house of Zacchaeus, the place of a conversion. This tax-collector in the pay of the Romans had taken a certain advantage of his position to get rich. Jesus comes and visits him, thus bringing salvation to his house. Last, the offertory describes the episode of the building of the first Temple of Jerusalem. David had collected all its elements, but the construction was Solomon’s responsibility. At the end of the work, God took possession of the house. This text fits nicely in the liturgy at this moment, and it evokes the qualities of heart expected from those who wish to offer something to God, joy and simplicity.

All these texts depict various houses, either built by God or by man, offered to God so that He may dwell in them. For that matter, may each true abode, each house of truth, joy, and peace, be anything else than a place in which God is dwelling?

The feast of the Dedication makes us look beyond the houses of the world in which we are living. The words “a common European house” are sometimes used, without much success for that matter, to stir up interest for an administrative and economical Leviathan in the pay of global finance. There are also the nations, inheritors of their history and geography, the regions, cities and villages. Last, there is the house, the abode, the place where a family is gathered. The earth and the universe, created by God, are also abodes.

Notice: Upcoming Lectures of Dr Kwasniewski in Rhode Island on October 26 & 27

In two weeks’ time, in conjunction with the ordination of Rev. Mr. William Rock, FSSP, by His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider in Providence, RI (as announced here), I will be giving talks at two different parishes in the area. Each lecture will be followed by a Q&A and book signing.

On Saturday, October 26th, at 7:00 pm, the topic will be “The Priority of Adoration, Fear of the Lord, and the Virtue of Religion in Catholic Worship,” at The Church of the Holy Name of Jesus (99 Camp Street, Providence RI 02906: map).

On Sunday, October 27th, at 6:30 pm, the topic will be “It’s Not Just a Matter of the Heart: Why What We Do and How We Do It Matters So Much in the Liturgy,” at The Church of the Holy Ghost (316 Judson St, Tiverton, RI 02878: map).

COLUMBUS IS OURS -- Let us rejoice!

Monastery of Sant Jeroni de la Murtra, near Barcelona,
where the Catholic Monarchs welcomed Columbus back from the Indies in 1493

Now that four centuries have sped since a Ligurian first, under God's guidance, touched shores unknown beyond the Atlantic, the whole world is eager to celebrate the memory of the event, and glorify its author. Nor could a worthier reason be found where through zeal should be kindled. For the exploit is in itself the highest and grandest which any age has ever seen accomplished by man; and he who achieved it, for the greatness of his mind and heart, can be compared to but few in the history of humanity.

Feast of the Divine Maternity — or of Papa Roncalli?

Today, October 11, is a perfect illustration of the basic problem of the Catholic Church in the 20th century.

In 1931, Pope Pius XI instituted on October 11 the feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to commemorate the 1500th anniversary of the Council of Ephesus, which had bestowed on her the glorious title Theotokos or God-bearing-One. This feast was placed on October 11. Thus, it’s not an ancient feastday (as neither was Christ the King, instituted by the same Pius), but fits into that slow and loving process of amplification by which the traditional liturgy has been enriched over twenty centuries with ever-new facets of devotion.

Pope John XXIII comes along and decides to open the Second Vatican Council on October 11, precisely because it was the feast of the Divine Motherhood of Our Lady.

Fast-forward to after the Council: Bugnini’s Consilium decides to abolish the feast and to conflate it with January 1st, which had been the Octave of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ, but which would now be styled “the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God.” Lots of busy scissors and paste...

And then along comes Pope Francis, who canonizes John XXIII and declares that October 11 will be HIS feastday.

So, hey presto!, October 11 has shifted from honoring the deepest mystery of the Virgin Mary — her being the Theotokos — to honoring Vatican II’s architect as elevated by the Council’s mutant progeny, Jorge Bergoglio. As Ratzinger said in a different context, we now celebrate ourselves and our achievements rather than the mightiest works of God.

This is the kind of thing I had in mind when I maintained that the modern Church is characterized by a Nietzschean “transvaluation of all values.”

It also seems a haunting coincidence (but there are no coincidences under Divine Providence) that Pope Francis has been reported this week by Scalfari to have denied the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, making Bergoglio a sort of Nestorian (at best), with Our Lady being demoted to Christotokos, Christ-bearer, as she is for Protestants who refuse her the august title “Mother of God.” Neither the Pope nor the Vatican is willing to confront Scalfari for egregious lies or misrepresentations or amnesia; instead, the the usual non-denial denial has been issued.  Unlike his predecessor Pius XI, who cared enough about the dogmatic formulation of Ephesus to institute a feast in commemoration of its principal definition, the current Pope said two days ago, in a homily painfully reminiscent of the anti-theological mentality of the 1970s: “Do I love God or dogmatic formulations?”

The silver lining on this otherwise dark cloud is that, in spite of everything that has transpired, despite all the wickedness in high places, October 11 continues to this day to be celebrated as the feast of the Divine Maternity, in all communities and parishes that avail themselves of the traditional Missale Romanum. The feast has not perished; it has merely been eclipsed, and it will return in splendor to illuminate the Church after this night of self-celebration has passed.

De Mattei: Cardinal Hummes, the head of the “Church of an Amazonian Face”

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

October 9,2019

Ideas do not travel on their own through history: they are incarnated by men. And among the apostles of the “Church of the Amazonian face” we have Claudio Hummes, Emeritus Archbishop of San Paolo, President of the Ecclesial Pan Amazonian Network (Repam) and appointed rapporteur-general  by Pope Francis for the Synod which opened last Sunday October 6^th in the Vatican.

“The mission of the Church today in the Amazon, is the core issue of the Synod,”  explained Cardinal Claudio Hummes, at the opening of the Synod’s first General Congregation. “The Pope made it clear that the  relationship of the Church with the indigenous people and the Amazonian forest, is one of its central themes,” continued the President of Repam, whereby “the right to be protagonists of their history must be restored and guaranteed and that they be, subjects not objects in any colonial spirit and action. Their culture, languages, histories, identities and spiritualities constitute riches for humanity and must be respected and preserved in world culture.”. 

"Motus in fine velocior" - The Crisis is Gathering Speed (Roberto de Mattei)

In one week in the Vatican: pagan worship, a bizarre informal interview in which the divinity of Christ is questioned by the Pope, one of the main organizers of the Amazon synod makes clear married priests and even some kind of "ordination" for women should come out of the gathering.

Time to republish a masterly article by Professor Roberto de Mattei, that we first posted in February 2014: "Motus in fine velocior," events gather greater and greater speed at the end of historical epochs.

Motus in fine velocior

by Roberto de Mattei [Feb. 12. 2014]

February 11, 2013, is a date which has entered history. It was on that day that Benedict XVI communicated to an assembly of astonished cardinals his decision to renounce the pontificate. The announcement was received “like lightning in a serene sky,” according to the words addressed to the Pope by the cardinal deacon Angelo Sodano, and the image of lightning which, that very day, had struck the Basilica of St. Peter, spread throughout the world.

Amazonic Notes #2: It's all decided on married priests

Krautler

Obviously. And this is why this whole expensive charade was assembled.

Today, one of the main architects of the German-Austrian Synod on the Amazon region, Erwin Krautler, who was a bishop in the area for many years (years during which the majority of the population, tired of a political church, became Evangelical), said in the press conference following the session that there is “no other option” but to ordain married men as priests in the Amazon, because being unmarried is a "foreign concept" to the indigenous communities. As liberal journalist Christopher Lamb reports, Krautler affirmed that "there were many times when he travelled to indigenous communities and they asked me: 'where is your wife?' "

Priestly celibacy was a concept that confounded and still confounds most people in the Jewish world , and in the Greco-Roman world as well. 

Krautler also made clear that there is a majority of well over the two thirds of votes necessary to recommend the change. Which is obvious, since the Synod members were handpicked to reach the result desired by Francis and his friends.

Naturally, Krautler's liberal Austrian logic means that there should be married bishops and popes as well.

Francis to Favorite Journalist: "Jesus was not at all a God."

First, the actual declarations, as reported by Francis' favorite journalist, Eugenio Scalfari, published in today's edition of La Repubblica (available online since yesterday):

"Those who, as it has happened many times with me, have had the luck of meeting him and speaking to him with the greatest cultural intimacy, know that pope Francis conceives Christ as Jesus of Nazareth, man, not God incarnate. Once incarnate, Jesus stops being a God and becomes a man until his death on the cross.

[...]

"When I had the chance of discussing these sentences, pope Francis told me: 'They are the proven proof that Jesus of Nazareth, once having become a man, was, though a man of exceptional virtues, not at all a God.'"

(Main excerpts: the original page is behind a paywall)

***

Now, obviously, as it has often happened with Francis' informal interviews with Eugenio Scalfari, some will try to deny the veracity of what Scalfari, a seasoned journalist, affirms. 

Let us just recall, for the record of events, that there is no reason to doubt its general accuracy. We are way past the time of doubting the general accuracy of the Scalfari quotes. 

Not now, that the papal interviews to Scalfari have been published on the Vatican website, that they have been occasionally published by the Vatican publishing house (LEV) itself - for instance, as part of the book to the right.

WikkiMissa is back!

We are delighted to report that WikiMissa - the invaluable tool for Traditional Mass-goers worldwide which left the scene in 2015 - has been resurrected by some enterprising individuals with the aid and blessing of its original designer, Emmanuel. The revamped venue - whose title lacks a 'k' for several reasons but mainly to bring it in line with other 'Wiki's - is still a work in progress which will require some fine-tuning. This is where our readers can help. Much of the Mass information on the site has not been updated in four years. Since the site is user-editable, we urge you to visit it and verify the information for the Masses that you are familiar with. The new site is a bit more franco-centric than the former WikkiMissa, but the pages for particular countries are faithful to the languages spoken therein. In any case, any web-based translator will give you all the help you need to navigate the site. 

Perhaps now more than ever we need to keep sources like this up to date and available for those who need them. Many thanks to those who are giving their time and effort to keep WikiMissa serving Catholics the world over. 

Fongombault Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Rosary: "There is one presence that remains, that of Mary."

Feast of the Holy Rosary

Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau

Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault

Fontgombault, October 7, 2019

Fiat voluntas tua.

Thy will be done.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

My dearly beloved Sons, 

The gospel of the Annunciation to Mary should be considered as the apex of the encounters between God and mankind. These encounters are numerous. The Bible, the Gospel, the lives of Saints, our own lives, are the places where continually God’s words, requests, commandments, signs, are expecting a loving answer from our hearts and lives. 

These words of God may concern a precise event, a personal assent, as is the case for Mary, even though this event will subsequently have the stupendous and inconceivable consequences we know regarding mankind’s history. The word of God may also formulate a general rule that concerns the whole of mankind, as is the case in the first pages of the Book of Genesis, opening with the loving recommendations God gives man concerning the use of the creation. 

In a world which is not only heathen, but openly at war against its Maker, Whose rights it wants to arrogate, the word of God would seem to draw but a small response. Yet, it is comforting to see so many men and women taking to the streets to remind us that man and woman have received the mission to become fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. [Rorate note: Reference to the 'Marchons Enfants' protest march in Paris this Sunday against the introduction of surrogacy-sale of babies to same-sex "couples".]