'The Council and The Eclipse of God' by Don Pietro Leone - Part XIV: The Church and The State

 

In Chapter 4,  Don Pietro turns to consider the Council’s teaching on the Church and State. He explains how the Church has a duty not only to Her members, but also to the entire world. Her role in regard to the State is to guide Kings and governors to promote the best interests of their citizens, i.e. in the final analysis the attainment of eternal life in Heaven, such as has been the constant teaching of Holy Mother Church.   Readers will be amazed to learn that an entirely new political vision was to supplant this teaching, a vision which originates in Freemasonry and of which the most notable  fruits are the Declarations of the French Revolution and the American Constitution, namely, the total separation of Church and State. The genius behind this devastating work of destruction was the American Jesuit, Father John Courtney Murray, who, unbelievably, was the author of all the speeches of the five bishops calling for these changes.   F.R.

What’s Wrong with Personalism and ‘Theology of the Body’? An Interview with Don Pietro Leone by Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M

I would like to thank New Catholic for publishing the following analysis of Personalism and Theology of the Body.  My thanks also to Brother André Marie for his permission for it, as well as providing the occasion the interview gave to offer readers a more structured synthesis of the two systems. I send my priestly blessing to all readers, wishing them every Grace and happiness in the Lord.

Don Pietro Leone

What’s Wrong with Personalism and ‘Theology of the Body’?

An Interview with Don Pietro Leone

 by Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M

Bro André Marie

Catholicism Org

May 13, 2020

It was my great pleasure to interview the esteemed priest-theologian, Don Pietro Leone, on the subject of Personalism and the “Theology of the Body” (TOB). The interview was carried out via email and was kindly made possible by his English-language publisher, Loreto Publications.

I became interested in interviewing Don Pietro while reading his wonderful book, The Family Under Attack, which he mentions in this interview.

That both the Personalism of Pope John Paul II and his TOB are fully open to criticism and refutation as non-infallible philosophical and theological constructions is beyond dispute. Still, the fact is that some people may take scandal at these criticisms, which, as Don Pietro points out, are carried out “solely in the light of Faith and Reason: in the light of Truth, supernatural and natural.” The personal theology and even the “authentic Magisterium” of any pope are indeed subject to such a critique; inasmuch as the critique is carried out according to tradition and the analogy of Faith, these per se non-infallible works are just as open to criticism as are the excogitations of any other theologians or philosophers. Those confused on this point are invited to read Amoris Laetitia and the ‘Authentic Magisterium’. *

Aside from his book, which I’ve already linked to, my Reverend interlocutor also mentions in his replies a five-part essay that was published by Rorate Caeli. See below for the links to the following parts:

1. SEXUALITY IN THE EYES OF THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD

2. RECENT CHURCH MARITAL DOCTRINE UNTIL POPE FRANCIS: 1. ‘LOVE

3. RECENT CHURCH MARITAL DOCTRINE UNTIL POPE FRANCIS: 2. MORTAL SIN AND        HOLY COMMUNION 

4. AMORIS LAETITIA 

5. CONCLUSION

Here is the interview. 

Don Pietro Leone: The Coronavirus and Holy Communion in the Hand

Translated from the Italian by Francesca Romana

If honour is due to another according to his dignity, that is to say according to the excellence that he possesses, it is due to God absolutely in virtue of His infinite dignity and excellence. The name of this honour due to God is ‘Adoration’, which encompasses an attitude both of the mind and of the body.

That of the mind is defined by Bossuet as: ‘The recognition of God’s Highest Sovereignty, and of our own most profound dependence’. The attitude to be adopted by the body, by contrast, when we are in God’s presence, that is to say when we are before Our Lord Jesus Christ in church, has been established by Holy Mother Church in tems of silence, genuflections, kneeling, and deep bows. To receive Holy Communion, more precisely, it is necessary to kneel at the Communion rail and communicate on the tongue.

This second practice, introduced in the first centuries A.D. and established for the Church Universal over a thousand years ago, was abolished by the so-called ‘Reformers’ in the 16th. century. As quoted in our book ‘The Destruction of the Roman Rite, the apostate Dominican Martin Bucer states in his ‘Censura’: ‘It becomes our duty to abolish from the churches... with all purity of doctrine, any form of bread-adoration that they wish the antichrists to use and maintain in the hearts of the simpler people’. Such were the reasons for which the Reformers Zwingli and Calvin also imposed Communion standing and in the hand. Communion in the hand was subsequently to become a mile-stone in the denial of the Catholic dogma of the Real Presence.

In the 1960’s the same practice was introduced into the Catholic Church by priests in central Europe as an act of defiance against Rome, some say as a reaction to the encyclical Humanae Vitae. The practice, as we well know, proceeded to expand throughout the Catholic world.  

Taking into one’s own hand the Sacrosanct Body of the Lord - typically while standing - brushing Its fragments off the hands, swallowing It while walking – how can such behaviour possibly be described as ‘Adoration’?  Indeed it was thought out precisely in order to render adoration impossible. Both priests and people alike should refuse absolutely to participate in act of such heinous injustice.

De Mattei: The Birth of Humanae Vitae in light of the Vatican Archives

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

July 18, 2018

At the beginning of 2017, Pope Francis set up “a study committee” to prepare for the 50^th anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25^th 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. 

Now available from Loreto Publications: Don Pietro Leone’s “The Destruction of the Roman Rite”

By Don Pietro Leone

I write this brief note to avert readers of the publication of the definitive English version of the book thus entitled by Loreto Publications, now available on ‘Amazon’. Readers may remember having read it in installments on Rorate Caeli some years ago.

The Church and Asmodeus - Part 5, conclusion

By Don Pietro Leone

A spiritu fornicationis

libera nos, Domine

(invocation from the Litany of the Saints)

V

CONCLUSION

The intention in writing this essay was to investigate how the concupiscence of the flesh, or, more particularly, the spirit of fornication, or impurity, has been able to penetrate the mind of the contemporary Church. We have been at pains to trace it back, through various canons of the New Church Law and various doctrines of recent Magisterium, to the Second Vatican Council, where the spirit of Fallen Nature made its official entry into the Catholic Church.

This spirit of impurity corresponds to the World’s vision of sexuality. Quoting our earlier analysis of this vision, and alluding briefly to the period extending from the last Vatican Council to the present pontificate, we shall proceed to examine how and to what extent this spirit informs the encyclical Amoris Laetitia.

A. ‘Sexuality does not have a particular finality. Its use is pleasurable and a means for expressing love between two persons, not necessarily married to each other’

The Church and Asmodeus - Part 3 (and the fallacy of Theology of the Body)

By Don Pietro Leone

A spiritu fornicationis

libera nos, Domine

(invocation from the Litany of the Saints)

III

RECENT CHURCH MARITAL DOCTRINE UNTIL POPE FRANCIS

       2.  MORTAL SIN AND HOLY COMMUNION

The Traditional Doctrine

The Church has always warned faithful against receiving Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin. In the Maundy Thursday liturgy and in the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Church in Her Old Rite liturgy presents for our meditation the passage from chapter 11 of the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians 11 warning against the reception of Holy Communion to one’s damnation. On the latter feast, St. Thomas Aquinas himself, its author, pointedly repeats the phrase in the Communio prayer; and in the sequence Lauda Sion he unambiguously declares:

Sumunt boni sumunt mali, sorte tamen

İnaequalis, vitae vel interitus.

Mors est malis, vita bonis: vide paris

Sumptionis quam sit dispar exitus.

The good receive, the evil receive, but their destiny is different: life or death. Death is for the evil, life is for the good: see how unequal is the end of an equal reception.

The Church and Asmodeus - Part 2

By Don Pietro Leone

A spiritu fornicationis

libera nos, Domine

(invocation from the Litany of the Saints)

II

       RECENT CHURCH MARITAL DOCTRINE UNTIL POPE FRANCIS

From the beginning of Her history, the Church had taught and practiced the ascetic life. In fact this is one of the features which distinguished Her from the World, and which indeed corroborates the very authenticity of Her Faith[1]. For how could She live, and convert such multitudes to, a mortified and chaste life so at variance with Fallen Nature, if the Faith which She preached were untrue?

Until the XXth century, this spirit of asceticism had prevailed in the Church: until it began to be sapped by an opposing spirit: that of the World, namely of Fallen Nature. The latter spirit had, over the course of the centuries, grown in extent and power, and was now in the course of penetrating the minds and souls of the Churchmen themselves. Vacillating Faith, poor doctrinal formation, moral weakness, lack of courage, superficiality, and sentimentality[2] on the part of the Hierarchy certainly all played a role in their subsequent endeavours to accommodate this spirit to the Catholic Faith. The moment for its official entry into the Church was marked by the Second Vatican Council.

As far as sexuality is concerned, this spirit is manifest in a new emphasis on an undefined ‘love’ at the very heart of marital ethics.

This emphasis is first manifest in recent Magisterium in the Council document Gaudium et Spes (§ 48), and was later codified by Canon Law (CIC 1983) in terms of a reversal of the order of the ends of marriage. The teaching of the Magisterium on sexuality was later notably affected and developed by official dispositions on the reception of Holy Communion, and by ‘Theology of the Body’.

Consequently we shall now proceed to examine:

1) The new conception of love in Gaudium et Spes, and then in Canon Law;

2) The relation between mortal sin and the reception of Holy Communion;

3) Relevant elements of ‘Theology of the Body’.

The Church and Asmodeus - Part 1

Note: We will bring this great work to you over the coming days, in five parts. A special thank-you to contributor Francesca Romana, whose translations are second to none, for the extensive work involved with this series:

                                                                                                          

By Don Pietro Leone

                                                                              A spiritu fornicationis

                                                                                 libera nos, Domine 

                                                                (invocation from the Litany of the Saints)

A detail from the Ysenheimer Altar by Matthaeus Gruenewald represented an androgyne demon storming a church 

Sister Lucia of Fatima wrote to Cardinal Caffara that the final clash between the Devil and the Church would be in the area of the family and marriage. A dispassionate survey of recent Church history serves to assure us that the clash has already begun, that is to say with the entry into the Church of the Demon Asmodeus: the spirit of fornication.

The question that we wish to address in this essay is how Holy Mother Church, Who has for 2,000 years resisted, been able to overcome, and indeed been purged and exalted by, all the cruel and inhuman violence of her persecutors and all the abstruse subtleties of the heretics, is now succumbing to something as base and as primitive as the concupiscence of the flesh.

To attempt to answer this question, we shall briefly present:

    1)  The Church’s traditional attitude to sexuality, in contrast to that of the World;

   2) The attitude to sexuality of the modern Church (or rather of the modern Churchmen) from the time of the Second Vatican Council to the accession of Pope Francis; and finally

   3)  The attitude manifest in the encyclical Amoris Laetitia.

  

    I 

           SEXUALITY IN THE EYES OF THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD

a)      The Nature of Sexuality

Don Pietro Leone: Cheerfulness

By Don Pietro Leone

St. Philip Neri

“Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life. Therefore the servant of God, ought always to be in good spirits"

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, cheerfulness is a particular virtue which is a part of justice. The virtue of justice is defined as the virtue of giving the other his due, whether that other is God or man. An example of justice in the strict sense is paying back a debt. Now cheerfulness involves giving another something which is not due to him strictly, but in equity, in fairness:  namely by behaving pleasantly to those around one. Cheerfulness, like truthfulness, is completely natural, because man naturally lives in society, and without cheerfulness and truthfulness society would not last. St. Thomas quotes Aristotle in this regard: ‘No-one could abide a single day with the sad or with the joyless’.

Why cheerfulness is necessary to society is because it maintains harmony between the different members of society, both in actions and in words. Cheerfulness, apart from being a part of justice, is a form of friendliness. We can distinguish between two forms of friendliness: a particular form which springs from a particular affection for a friend; and a general form which springs from a general affection for all people. Cheerfulness is this latter form of friendliness: it is directed towards every-one. It is directed towards every-one, though not always in the same way: not with the same intimacy with a stranger as with a friend, for example, but in an appropriate way: in a way that suits the circumstances. Interestingly the book of Ecclesiasticus (4.7) particularly mentions the poor as the object of our cheerfulness or friendliness, perhaps because it can be more difficult to be friendly to the poor: ‘Make thyself affable to the congregation of the poor’. 

Ecumenism: An Essay by Don Pietro Leone

Five years after Don Pietro Leone’s first contribution to our site, on the Roman Liturgy, we are happy to present the following essay on Ecumenism. We also recommend to our readers Pius XI’s encyclical Mortalium Animos, issued on January 6, The Feast of the Epiphany, 1928, which contains everything a Catholic needs to know in order to  evaluate ecumenism correctly. Don Pietro Leone is the pen name of a priest who celebrates the traditional Mass in full and peaceful communion with his Ordinary somewhere in that great cradle of civilization known as Italy.

APOSTASY - How Suppression of Truth about God led to Depravity and Supression of Truth about Marriage and Family

Don Pietro Leone, a priest who celebrates the Traditional Mass exclusively in an Italian diocese, and who has sent so many gifts to Rorate readers, including his booklet on the destruction of the Roman Rite and his essay on Modernism, has a new Summer reading gift for our readers -- a long essay on Apostasy.

It is a booklet on Apostasy, and on how abandonment of the truth about God has led to all other evils in the Church and in Society. We strongly suggest you read, print out, send to friends, and spread it around as widely as possible, as it helps explain so much, including how a minority of perverted activists has been trying to alter the very words of Christ on the truth on marriage.

Is there hope? Read the essay to find out!

**********

APOSTASY

a special essay by Father Pietro Leone for Rorate Caeli

Watchman, what of the Night?        (Is. 21.11)

       In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

   Here in Italy the summer has reached its height: the sun beats down on the city and on the countryside by day, and by night the elderly sit outside and watch the people passing by.

   To the eyes of the Faith, by contrast, the whole of mankind is plunged in the most profound darkness, for both the Church and the World are in the throes of the gravest and most profound crisis in the history of their existence. The crisis is one of Apostasy, not so much in the formal sense of the explicit rejection of the Catholic Faith, but rather in the general sense of the falling away from God. 

    To help us understand the nature of this apostasy we shall make a brief meditation on the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (vv. 17-32), in which St. Paul refers to this same phenomenon in his own epoch. Holy Scripture is widely applicable to the events of human history: we shall see how the passage in question may usefully be applied to the circumstances of our contemporary world.

   The elements which we propose to consider in this essay are the following:

I)   The suppression of the Truth about God;

II)  The refusal to honour God;

III) Foolishness;

IV) Idolatry;

V)  Depravity.

PART 1.

   I   The Suppression of the Truth about God

   St. Paul writes (v.18) of ‘those men that detain the truth about God in injustice’. ‘Detain’ (detinere in the Latin, catechein in the Greek) signifies the suppression of that which moves the agent to the good; ‘in injustice’ signifies that this suppression is in opposition to the order that God has established; ‘the truth’, as the context shows and as we proceed to explain, is both the supernatural knowledge of God, namely the Faith, and the natural knowledge of God which is acquired by the use of reason.

   The Truth about God which is suppressed in the contemporary world belongs, like the Truth of which St. Paul treats, both to the supernatural and the natural orders.

    A.  The Suppression of the Supernatural Truth about God