De Mattei: A mild epidemic behind which we glimpse the Hand of God

 Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

September 2, 2020

2020 will be remembered as the year of a historical turning-point in the everyday life of the world. And while it appears increasingly likely that the Coronavirus was produced by the genetic engineering of Communist China (the book by Joseph Tritto, China Covid 19. The Chimera that Changed the World, Siena 2020, is the most convincing with regard to this), the existence of “social engineering” on a large scale seems likewise clear, to steer public opinion into a situation - perhaps even surprising for the revolutionary forces themselves who presume to govern the destinies of the world.

 

One of the most successful results of this social engineering is the artificial division created by the Mass-Media, between those living in terror at being infected and those, fearing the economic consequences of the pandemic, minimize the reality of its contagiousness.  The first define themselves as “the prudent” and call the others “the deniers”. The latter accuse “the prudent” of wanting to subject themselves to a “sanitary-dictatorship” over society. For the former, health is the priority, since for them, the greatest good is the physical life, and everything must be done to avoid dying; for the latter the priority is the economy, since [for them] the supreme good is material prosperity and everything must be done to live comfortably. What is common to the two parts is a cultural horizon from which the spirit of sacrifice and the supernatural dimension have been definitively expunged. The slogan  “Dying of Coronavirus or hunger?” sums up this false alternative, presented as an agonizing quandary.

"Towards a global dictatorship! In Italy ‘The New World Order’ is now being taught at school."

 Translation of a post by

Chiesa e Post Concilio 

August 20, 2020

Many years have passed since we first heard people talking about the New World Order, and until only the other day,  those who spoke of this openly in public were ridiculed by friends, relatives, acquaintances and labeled as paranoid conspiracy theorists.  

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: The Western Civilization is daughter of the Catholic Church | Looking forward to TLM as Ordinary Form

by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla
St. Mary's, Norwalk, Connecticut

Together we look forward to the time when the Traditional Roman Mass 
will once again be the Ordinary Form of the Mass

And who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?  But even if you suffer anything for justice’s sake, blessed are you  So have no fear of their fear and do not be troubled; but hallow the Lord Christ in your hearts.   (I Peter 3: 14-15)

We have a president of this country who acts sometimes like a bull in a china shop.  One cannot help but wonder what he will say at the G-20 summit in Hamburg.  But he did give a speech in Poland a few days ago that caused quite a stir.  The Poles were quite stirred by the speech and liked it. The liberal press was stirred to attack what he said, especially in one part of the speech.  He asked whether the West had the courage and grit to defend Western civilization against those whose values are inimical to that civilization.  And he mentioned faith as a part of that civilization, and without being more specific he meant the Christian faith. 

I happened to be listening to NPR on my drive home through the back roads so I could avoid the eternal traffic on 95.  Late every afternoon they have a series on topical questions and choose one person from the left and another from the quasi-right, quasi because NPR seems to associate conservatives with red-neck Neanderthals who would be invited.  There was a woman from the Boston Globe as one of the participants-I need not say which side she represented.  The other was David Brooks from the New York Times, who, for that paper of record is a centrist, and does not always tow the Times line.  The woman chided Trump for his speech as being nationalistic and narrow and exclusionary, this based on his mention of Western civilization and as something worth fighting for.  David Brooks, to my pleasant surprise, said that he thought it a good speech and saw nothing wrong in Trump’s positive assessment of Western civilization that is worth fighting for.  He the civilization of Plato and Aristotle, of Rome, of the moral, teaching that was the basis for cultural and civic traditions that came from the ancients and were developed through two millennia:  this is something very real, and although far from perfect, was something Brooks is happy to be a part of.

What Brooks did not say, and probably dared not say, is that without the Christian appropriation of ancient Western culture, which deepened that culture in so many ways, the culture of which we are an integral part would not exist.  And to be more specific:  without the Catholic Church the past two thousand years would be incomprehensible and void of much meaning.  The Church’s strong influence in every facet of culture—from government to inventing the hospital, from the art and music that was inspired and supported by the Church to the development of rational thought that made possible modern science, but above all for the truly civilizing influence of the Church that turned barbarians into the English and the French.

"Spotlight"? Filled with Malice and Hiding the Deep Causes of the Abuse Crisis

Opinions and Customs

Juan Manuel de Prada

ABC (Madrid)

February 28, 2016 (excerpts)

American cinema has stopped being memorable for a long while; yet, as it happens with dead stars that once shone greatly, it produces once in a while sparks that keep alive the illusion of its power. Many of the films that were nominated for the Oscars this year were but subproducts created to smooth the way for the social engineering designed by Globalism, according to the formula established by Rousseau: "Correct the opinions of men, and their customs will be purified by themselves."

EXCLUSIVE: CARD. MÜLLER'S pre-Synod presentation of Card. Sarah's book in Germany - Liturgy, Grace, Marriage, and the New Danger of Schism

"SCHISM"

Since the date of Cardinal Gerhard Müller's presentation of the German translation of Cardinal Robert Sarah's book "God or Nothing" in Regensburg, much has been said of his dire warnings that the Catholic Church may be on the verge of schism, once again originating from a confusion originated in Germany, today as in 1517.

In his September 1, 2015, lecture, Müller, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the presence of Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, had much more to say - a strong lesson on how true, actual poverty (as exemplified by the life and strong and orthodox beliefs of Cardinal Sarah) is translated into "full apostolic candor and zeal", not in a false doctrine that bends to the whim of the current preference of the post-modern European. That will not do.

We leave you with our exclusive translation of the main excerpts of the original German text provided by the Vatican website:

God or Nothing

Thoughts Concerning the Book by Cardinal Robert Sarah

by Cardinal Gerhard Müller

First of all, I would like to thank Cardinal Robert Sarah for his witness to the Faith, which he presents with his book Dieu ou rien. Entretien sur la foi, which has been published just this year. At the same time, I congratulate the German-speaking world that is able now to get to know in their own language the richness of thought of a great theologian and spiritual man.

[…]

In ten circles of questions, the Cardinal reflects theologically and spiritually upon the situation of the Catholic Church in the world of today and offers not only a diagnosis, but also a therapy for the postmodern man who has no orientation any more: that is to say, the Faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Redeemer of the whole world. […]

In the liturgy, the Faith expresses itself as an immediate response to the Triune God Who reveals Himself to each person in His Incarnate Word, in His Son Jesus Christ, and Who means Himself to be seen as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. […] It is not about an external staging of rites and symbols in which man plays with himself, turns around himself, honors and adores himself – but still without crossing over into the true transcendence of God. In the liturgy, there happens the elevation of man through Grace. Because it is the opposite of an egotistical trip full of self-pity; the liturgy means to elevate one's heart to God, Whom alone deserves adoration and glorification; it is not like in a Pagan cult and myth where man flatters the gods in a servile manner, or revolts against them in a Promethean way, but it is, rather, as in Christ, where God and man encounter each other. That is how Christians worship God. “The Glory of God lives in man (who lives in Grace), but man lives in the vision of God.” That is how Saint Irenaeus of Lyon put it in the 2nd century (Adv. Haer. IV, 20, 7: Gloria enim Dei vivens homo, vita autem hominis visio Dei). The Triune God is adored, glorified, and loved, He Who Himself Assumed our flesh and Who in Jesus Christ in His truly human nature, in His human history, in His sacrificial death for us on the Cross and in His real Resurrection from the dead overcame death and the separation from God. This is the same Jesus Christ Who as the Exalted Lord meets us historically, bodily, and communally, in the Church and in Her Sacraments realistically from person to person. […]

In the age of the creeping or noisy de-Christianization of the Global Society, the true understanding of the liturgy and of its dignified celebration becomes a crucial question of survival for Christianity in the world of today and tomorrow. In order to be able to fulfill this task, one needs more than a professional knowledge of the art of the liturgy in the stricter sense. The intellectual horizon of a Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship has to have permeated intellectually the philosophical, fundamentally theological, the dogmatic and cultural, as well as political preconditions and conditions of being a Christian in modern and postmodern times. Only a deep and thorough diagnosis of the spiritual and cultural structure of the globalized world can also lead to the development of a therapy which overcomes the Nihilism – as the common denominator of all expectations and yearnings of a world without God – and thus can make the Faith in God as the reason and purpose for man to shine anew. The liturgical incapacity of the modern man – of which Romano Guardini already spoke in 1948 at the Katholikentag in Mainz – and the “crisis of the sacramental idea” in a conscience which is reduced only to the aspect of immanence (as observed by Joseph Ratzinger), both have their roots in the monistic system of a naturalism which denies the transcendental dependency of man – both in spirit and in freedom – upon the Mystery of God. Consequently, this naturalism limits man one-dimensionally and intra-worldly and it is not capable of seeing man as a listener of the word that points to a supernatural Revelation of God in the world, in history and in the spirit of man. […]

Man is oriented toward the absolute. Only where God is above and in man, there is truth in freedom and justice in love. Where man tries to take power over the absolute, he turns himself into an idol who, with the help of the clench for a totalitarian dominance, brings man sternly into line and thus enslaves him by means of a political exercise of power which makes use of the media. […]

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

"Islam is a Religion, only another Religion can beat it." "The Lay Catholic Masses are stunning, but the Hierarchy is inactive."

Hungarian edition of
"Submission"

Michel Houellebecq's Submission (Soumission, Flammarion, 2015 - earlier review here), a novel based on a possible takeover of the France polity by an Islamic political party through democratic means, has been one of the great editorial successes of 2015.

In the most recent issue of the venerable Revue des Deux Mondes, dedicated to "prophetic writers" (that is, writers who express acutely the fears of their own times), Houellebecq, who would surely have become a Catholic convert in more confident times..., speaks on Islam and what is needed to stop it: namely, another religion.

Excerpts:

Revue des Deux Mondes – But, since its enemies have declared war to Western Civilization, is a reaction possible among us? In the West, even in France? Or are you pessimistic even on this point?

Michel Houellebecq – It is not clear [what is needed] in order for this reaction to be efficacious. It is not an easy thing to combat a religious sect. Policemen, at the current time, defuse not a small number of attacks, but a purely police-based response to a religious sect is not assured to win it. In general, religions are the ones that beat other religions.

Church Labor Law in Germany and Same Sex "Unions" - Three Voices in the German Desert: "We Will Not Accept Self-Secularization Here"

For the background on the iniquitous change (enacted by the German Bishops' Conference itself, without having been prompted by any outside force), see our previous post.

***

Bishop Stefan Oster of  Passau, Facebook Entry, 22 July, 2015

The Church's Labor Law – a Few Thoughts From Passau About This Matter

[A Map of the Dioceses of Germany: Passau, Regensburg and Eichstätt are neighboring
dioceses in Bavaria, in the Southeast (lower right), next to Cardinal Marx's Munich-Freising.]

The bishops of Passau, Regensburg, and Eichstätt [Bishops Stefan Oster, Rudolf Vorderholzer, and Gregor Hanke] are in the process of checking whether and, if yes, when they will implement the revised Labor Law of the Church. Because of this, they are now variously called by public commentators as being either backward or as being those who put on the brakes; or as those who intend to dupe the other bishops; or as representatives of the “pure teaching”; or as those who, because of this, are acting in a way that does not relate any more to the life and the Faith of the people – which consequently helps to increase the numbers of people who leave the Church, etc., etc. Thus, I would like to add a few thoughts – from my own viewpoint, as well as from the viewpoint of Passau – for the sake of differentiation.

Cardinal Takes Part in Pagan Worship in Argentina

"Pachamama" is the animist/pagan "goddess" of the earth for a number of Andean tribes. It remained mostly dormant or mythical for centuries with the successful evangelization of the Altiplano and the Andes by Spanish and native missionaries, but the efforts of different groups in the past few decades (including radical liberal "Catholic" religious) have strongly revived this pagan worship.

In a trip to the pope's native land of Argentina for the "Ecumenical Social Forum" in November 2014, (in San Marcos Sierras, Province of Córdoba, western Argentina), Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture and who was created a cardinal by Benedict XVI, spent a few minutes worshiping and presenting his homage to the goddess Pachamama, as the video below recorded. The video was released only very recently:

Islamic Jihadists' main target has always been Rome

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

July 1, 2015

The first Islamic decapitation on western European soil since the times of the Battle of Vienna (1683) took place on June 26,2015, while the “champion” of the West, Barack Obama, was triumphantly celebrating the legalization of homosexual “marriages” imposed on all the States of the Union by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Exactly twenty years before, on June 21, 1995, the Islamic Mosque in Rome was officially inaugurated – the biggest in Europe, presented as a centre for ecumenical dialogue and religious peace. The only voice of protest heard in Italy at that time was the one of the Lepanto Cultural Centre, which promoted a Rosary of reparation in the church of St. Luigi Gonzaga, right next to the mosque, defining the construction of the Islamic centre in the heart of Rome as “a symbolic act of unspeakable gravity. Rome is the centre of the Catholic Faith: Islam at its very roots, denies the fundamental truths of our faith and intends to implant its dominion on the ruins that was once western Christian Civilization.”

Liberal World Order and Jihadists: Different Struggles, Same Victim - History's light of hatred against the Church of God

 

EQUIDISTANCE

Juan Manuel de Prada

[Spanish daily] ABC

April 6, 2015

The Jihadists, who know quite well that the New World Order is antichristical, do not direct their attacks against organizations and authorities, but against Christians.

It will not have failed to call the attention of anyone that the recent slaughter in Garissa University, Kenya, did not lead to the same lamentations among Western leaders as, for example, the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists; it did not unleash the explosion of outcries and manifestos to which the annoying intellectuals, of both left and right, have got us used to; and not even were large protests assembled with solidarity posters ("Je suis This or That"), so that the dumbed-down masses could release their little tear and go back home very proud of getting to know each other.

Radicati Editorial: Modernized Catholicism offers Modernity to Muslims - and they understandably reject it

It won't be a Liberal religion that will save us from Islam

Editorial: Radicati nella fede, March 2015

Newsletter of the Catholic community of

Vocogno, Diocese of Novara, Italy

We must pray a lot to St. Joseph during this month dedicated to him: for us, for Holy Church and for the work that God asks of Her in the world.

Protector Sanctae Ecclesiae, is the last title of invocation in St. Joseph’s litany - Protector of Holy Church.

The Holy Church must be protected from all Her enemies, who are the same enemies of Our Lord - enemies inside and outside the Church. Perhaps, during these really difficult times, we have to pray to St. Joseph, in particular, to protect the Church from the enemies inside who are certainly the most dangerous.

Contemporary "Art": Defilement of a Sacred Building with the Blessing of a Cardinal (guest-post)

“Corporeity and Sexuality”

A peculiar art exhibit in one of Vienna’s great churches:

Some thoughts from the point of view of art history and art theology

Tibor I. Szabó [First English version]

Built following a failed assassination attempt on the Emperor Francis Joseph in 1853, Vienna’s Votive Church (Votivkirche) is one of the preeminent monuments of the Austrian Capital. From 25 April to 15 June 2014, a bizarre exhibit was held there, under the auspices of Viennese Archbishop Christoph Card. Schönborn. The homepage of the Votive Church had the following information to offer on the matter:

“This exhibit puts art at the center of a critical dialogue between religious and non-religious perspectives on human sexuality, the body, desire, and relationships. The artworks do not take up religious themes. Yet by exhibiting them in a church, they can take on a religious dimension, to be found not so much in the objects themselves, as in the context of the overall experience. The concept behind this exhibit is based on the premise that churches are more than a mere backdrop for liturgical functions. […] The exhibit aims to create a basis for dialogue between contemporary art and the so-called ‘theology of the body’. […] That is why each installation is carefully integrated into the church’s architecture and its religious significance has been respected, both in whole and in part. Visitors profit from contemplating, and engaging critically with, the experience the exhibit creates, from comparing their own experiences with those inspired by this dialogue, as well as from ensuing impressions.”¹

Some thoughts on the experience

The Real Root of Extremism - by Vittorio Messori

The Real Root of Extremism

Vittorio Messori

Corriere della Sera

January 14, 2015

I have always appreciated the sincerity of Rabbi Giuseppe Laras (renowned in Italian Judaism not only for his culture but also for his religious sensitivity) when he voices his opinions. So, in yesterday’s article in this newspaper, he doesn’t hesitate from the start in affirming that “we are at war, we are just at the beginning and yet we don’t want to admit it.”

As a realist, I would be inclined to agree with him. The third world war (called “cold” but always a war) ended, because of the enemy’s collapse and deserting of the field, but after that there was the new Pearl Harbor on a September 11th morn in New York City. Here, let’s say it with the clarity of Laras – [we have] the fourth world war. The hypocrisy of the dominant ideology today - political correctness – has been attempting exorcisms and in order to tranquilize us they have built an ideal of “moderate Islamism” encouragingly increasing it by repeating the mantra of “dialogue”. Nevertheless, those who know the Koran, those who know history and the society that has given it form over a thousand and a half years, know that those Muslims we call “extremists” (to use our Western categories) are not wrong in shouting (Kalashnikov in hand) that a “moderate” Muslim is a bad Muslim. Or, at least, he is a coward and that Allah will punish him. How many among those who are scandalized by this have read, without mental censures, the Koran entirely and maybe also the monumental collections of hadith - the sayings attributed to the Prophet?

The Pope speaks on freedom to blaspheme: "If a close friend insulted your mother, you might punch him, right?"

In his airplane interview in the flight taking him from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, Pope Francis commented on the limits of freedom of speech:

[Question] Yesterday morning, during mass, you spoke of religious liberty as a fundamental human right. With respect to the different religions, up to what point can we go in terms of freedom of speech, that also is a fundamental human right?

[Pope:] Thank you for this intelligent question! I believe that they are both fundamental human rights: religious freedom and freedom of speech. We cannot...you are French, right? Well, then, let's go Paris, let's speak clearly. We cannot hide a truth today: each one has the right to practice his religion, without causing offense, freely, and we all wish to do this.

Secondly, we cannot offend, make war, kill, in the name of religion, that is, in the name of God.

That which is happening today surprises us, but let us always think of our history: how many wars of religion have we known! Think only of the Night of Saint Bartholomew [St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre]! How can we understand that. We also have had our sinners regarding this, but we cannot murder in the name of God, it's an aberration. To murder in the name of God is an aberration. I believe that is the main thing on religious liberty: we must practice it in liberty, without causing offense, but without imposing or murdering.

Book Review: "Submission" - a novel on Islam and the decomposition of Western Europe

Soumission [Submission] (publisher: Flammarion), the latest novel by Michel Houellebecq, reaches bookstores on January 7. For François Maillot, director of the La Procure [religious] bookstore in Paris, such a work prompts Christians to wake up.

François Maillot
[French Christian weekly] La Vie 
January 5, 2015

[...]

This book has not yet been released, and everyone already knows the plot. It is about France in 2022, which witnesses the confrontation, in the second round of the presidential elections, of the candidate of the National Front and the chairman of the Muslim party, Mohamed Ben Abbes. The narrator, François (I cannot but see in the choice of this name the designation of this character as the archetypal Frenchman...), a university professor who is a Huysman* expert, but who remained an atheist, witnesses this incredible electoral conclusion, while completely tied down in the problems of his personal life, limited to his university career and the angst of not being anymore capable of seducing women[...]. Faced with this political storm, a mysterious character of the secret services, Alain Tanneur, will give him the comprehension keys that will lead him to accept the idea of submitting himself to Muslim domination.

Christ Crucified: Scandal to the Muslims, Foolishness to the Secularists - by Roberto de Mattei

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

January 14, 2015

Marcher contre la Terreur, “March against Terror”, was the title which “Le Monde” the “Corriere della Sera” and the major Western newspapers used to present the grand, secularist demonstration of January 11th. Never has there been a slogan more hypocritical than this one, imposed by the mass-media as a reaction to the massacre in Paris on January 7^th. What sense is there in speaking about Terror without adding the adjective “Islamic”? The attack on the editorial staff at “Charlie Hebdo” was carried out to the yell of “Allah akbar!”vindicating Mohamed, insulted by the caricatures and behind the terrorists’ kalashnikof there is a precise vision of the world: the Muslim one.

It is only now that Western secret services are beginning to take seriously the threats by Abdu Muhamad al Adnani published in a multi-lingual communiqué spread widely on September 21^st 2014 by the on-line daily “The Long War Journal”. “We will conquer Rome, we will break its crucifixes, we will make slaves of the women, with the permission of Allah, the Exalted One”, the spokesman of “the Islamic State” declared to his followers and he didn’t simply replicate the extermination of the “infidels” wherever they may be, but also indicated the procedures: “Place explosives in their streets. Attack their bases, irrupt into their homes. Cut off their heads. So that they don’t feel safe anywhere! If you can’t find the explosive or the ammunitions single out the American infidels, the French infidels or any of their allies: smash their craniums with a rock, kill them with a knife, run them over with your cars, hurl them into mid-air, suffocate them or poison them.”

Bizarre Silence on Muslim Persecution from a Very Talkative Rome

Asia Bibi, our Catholic sister
condemned to death for "blasphemy" in Pakistan

Antonio Socci

Libero

November 9, 2014

Italian Paper Editorial: "Let's stop beating around the bush: With Islam it is a War of Religion"

With Islam it is a War of Religion

Editorial for Il Foglio

September 5, 2014

Coexist Culture in Vatican Radio

Radio Vaticana - Aug 27, 2014