The dangers that we must avoid are basically two: on the one hand, modernism and spiritual slackening, on the other, rigourism, rigidity, bitterness and excessive severity. This is why Father Felice Cappello (1879-1962) could become a model to imitate for traditional militants(both the consecrated and the faithful). This ardent follower of St. Ignatius of Loyola was one of the most sought after confessors in Rome. He was not a “lax” priest but attracted droves of penitents with his sweetness, affability, courtesy and goodness (like St. Francis of Sales and St. Leopoldo Mandic). Father Felice Maria Cappello was also very learned, as he knew how to resolve efficaciously the most tangled up moral situations, imparting serenity to the consciences of his penitents. He always made the effort to be a “just” confessor, but never severe. The following are some thoughts from his writings:
“In your counsels and decisions never use severity: Our Lord doesn’t want it. Be just always, never severe. Always give the solution that allows souls to breath. Never tire in insisting about trust. Be persuaded that above all, souls need to be encouraged and believe increasingly in God’s love, which is immense.”
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| "Hi ! We're from the German Bishops' Conference and we're here to help !" |
Press Release5 May 2015Revision of the Church's Labor LawBishops Pass an Amendment to the “Constitution of the Ecclesial Service within the Frame of the Church's Labor Conditions”On April 27, 2015, the Plenary Assembly of the Association of the German Dioceses (VDD) passed a revision of the “Constitution of the ecclesial service within the Frame of the Church's Labor Conditions” (Constitution – Const). During the recent years, this current decision was prepared for by an episcopal working group and already discussed several times by the bishops themselves. The amendment concerns the collective, as well as the individual, Labor Law:
A Mass in the Extraordinary Form that will be celebrated in San Francisco as a part of the Archbishop Cordileone Support Day Family Picnic activities on Saturday, May 16. The Mass will be celebrated in the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, which is in the heart of North Beach at 610 Vallejo Street (at Columbus Avenue), not far from the picnic site at Washington Street and the Embarcadero. The Mass will begin at 9:30 AM.
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| Fr. Brad Sweet says Mass for the Souls. Find Fr Sweet on Twitter, @bradbradsweet |
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| Rome, Open City - and German niceties |
[C]an anyone fail to see that there is no surer or more direct road than by Mary for uniting all mankind in Christ and obtaining through Him the perfect adoption of sons, that we may be holy and immaculate in the sight of God? For if to Mary it was truly said: "Blessed art thou who hast believed because in thee shall be fulfilled the things that have been told thee by the Lord" (Luke i., 45); or in other words, that she would conceive and bring forth the Son of God and if she did receive in her breast Him who is by nature Truth itself in order that "He, generated in a new order and with a new nativity, though invisible in Himself, might become visible in our flesh" (St. Leo the Great, Ser. 2, De Nativ. Dom.): the Son of God made man, being the "author and consummator of our faith"; it surely follows that His Mother most holy should be recognized as participating in the divine mysteries and as being in a manner the guardian of them, and that upon her as upon a foundation, the noblest after Christ, rises the edifice of the faith of all centuries.
“How much I would like us to kneel in veneration before the poor in church.”
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| A traditional Missa Cantata on a Sunday at St Bede's, Clapham Park |
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| Working monks - Fontfroide Abbey |
God the Father wishes Mary to be the mother of his children until the end of time and so he says to her, "Dwell in Jacob", that is to say, take up your abode permanently in my children, in my holy ones represented by Jacob, and not in the children of the devil and sinners represented by Esau.
Just as in natural and bodily generation there is a father and a mother, so in the supernatural and spiritual generation there is a father who is God and a mother who is Mary. All true children of God have God for their father and Mary for their mother; anyone who does not have Mary for his mother, does not have God for his father. This is why the reprobate, such as heretics and schismatics, who hate, despise or ignore the Blessed Virgin, do not have God for their father though they arrogantly claim they have, because they do not have Mary for their mother. Indeed if they had her for their mother they would love and honor her as good and true children naturally love and honor the mother who gave them life.
An infallible and unmistakable sign by which we can distinguish a heretic, a man of false doctrine, an enemy of God, from one of God's true friends is that the heretic and the hardened sinner show nothing but contempt and indifference for Our Lady. He endeavors by word and example, openly or insidiously - sometimes under specious pretexts - to belittle the love and veneration shown to her. God the Father has not told Mary to dwell in them because they are, alas, other Esaus.
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| 1970: Communist daily Avanti celebrates the approval of divorce in Italy |
Catholics and quick divorceSandro MagisterSettimo Cielo
April 27, 2015
Greeted enthusiastically by the chorus from the mass-media, quick divorce shows itself to be a pitiless test and perhaps a definitive end of what was considered for years “the Italian exception”: i.e. this country’s ability through political Catholicism in the public forum, to go effectively against the mainstream on the key issues of life and family.
“Avvenire” the Italian Episcopal Conference’s daily newspaper, with its editorial, commenting on the law in words of unequivocal condemnation, carried the headlines “Quick divorce, an uncivilized goal. A devastating, anti-family slippery-slope”. Yet, this “wingding” in the secular news-media was indexed as “the wrath of Catholics” and immediately dismissed.
Indeed, the numbers of the votes that approved the law are eloquent in themselves: 398 voted yes, 28 voted no and there were 6 abstainers. This, in a parliament crammed with Catholics; in a government where numerous ministers and the Prime Minster are Catholics and the proposer of the new law, Alessia Morani, a lawyer specializing in marriage law, defining herself as a “mature, democratic Catholic.”
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| Saint Adelaide Catholic Church in Geldern, North Rhine-Westphalia, Diocese of Münster - demolished in 2008 to give way to a senior center |
these [sc. traditional] religions are the living expression of the soul of vast groups of people.[2]
look inside yourselves. Look to the riches of your own traditions; look to the faith which we are celebrating in this assembly.[3]
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| Armenians executed by Ottoman authorities in Aleppo, 1916 (Aleppo, where Christians are being exterminated once again 100 years later) |
This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you. I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.
You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit; and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also.
The tiny transept had its little altar, with a Greek cross in relief against a purple disk. Overhead the enormous curve of the vaulting hung heavy, and so low that a man could touch it by stretching an arm; it was as black as the mouth of a chimney, and scorched by the fires that had consumed the cathedrals built above it.
Presently the clap-clap of sabots became audible, and then the smothered footfall of nuns; there was silence but for sneezing and nose-blowing stifled by pocket-handkerchiefs, and then all was still.
Many are aware of the role of French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as the consecrator of bishops in the events that took place in Écône, Switzerland, on June 30, 1988, in a climate of extreme tension with the Holy See. What is less well known is his work as the most important character of the Church in the continent where its growth is truly explosive in our age -- Africa -- in the crucial decades of deconolization, and that he set in place around forty dioceses in the continent, before being a leading figure during the Second Vatican Council.
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| Bp. Robert Finn |
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| The Pope greeting Bishop Juan Barros Madrid |
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| click for larger view |
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| The 19 Holy Martyrs of Gorkum, hanged and mutilated by Protestants on July 9, 1572, in Brielle, Holland |
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| Pontifical Mass at Mariawald (source) |
Die TagespostMay 23, 2013
Most Reverend Father Abbot, four years ago, you changed your abbey over to the Extraordinary Form. What changes did this bring to your monastery?
We were able to celebrate the first Solemn Mass in the classical Roman Rite here in Mariawald, in January 2009. And then, one month later, we began to celebrate Conventual Mass in the Extraordinary Form. At first, not all the Brethren welcomed this change. But in the meantime, the situation has somewhat improved. Of course, as a Priest, one had to learn how to celebrate the Rite, which was demanding and far from easy. An also, one had to refamiliarize oneself with Latin. Little by little, we completed the change. The second step was to sing the office of Terce in the traditional form, on Sundays, before Holy Mass. In this way we were able to establish liturgical unity. And then, we gradually changed over the Little Hours, Sext, None and Compline. Later, we did the same with Vespers and Laudes. And then, finally, from 2009 to 2010 we did the same with Vigils. This meant giving ourselves wholly to this Liturgy, with its more intensive theocentric character, which suites our contemplative vocation in a special way.What Kind of spiritual development have you noticed since then? What has been the effect of this change to the Extraordinary Form on your Community?
And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: "Son of man, what shall be made of the wood of the vine, out of all the trees of the woods that are among the trees of the forests? Shall wood be taken of it, to do any work, or shall a pin be made of it for any vessel to hang thereon?" Behold it is cast into the fire for fuel: the fire hath consumed both ends thereof, and the midst thereof is reduced to ashes: shall it be useful for any work? Even when it was whole it was not fit for work: how much less, when the fire hath devoured and consumed it, shall any work be made of it?
Therefore thus saith the Lord God: "As the vine tree among the trees of the forests which I have given to the fire to be consumed, so will I deliver up the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And I will set my face against them: they shall go out from fire, and fire shall consume them: and you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have set my face against them. And I shall have made their land a wilderness, and desolate, because they have been transgressors," saith the Lord God.
Corrispondenza RomanaApril 14, 2015
“The divorced and remarried cannot make spiritual communion” , Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, President of the Polish Episcopal Conference affirmed in an intervention at the Convention “What God joined together…” Marriage, Family and Sexuality in the Context of the Synod of Bishops 2014-2015” which took place on April 14that the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. Archbishop Gadecki, who stood out during the Synod of Bishops in 2014 for his defense of Catholic morality, wanted to respond to those, such as Cardinal Kasper who sustain that if the divorced and remarried can receive spiritual communion, they can also receive the Sacrament. The use that is made of the term “spiritual communion” in order to justify the admittance of the divorced and remarried to the Sacraments is absolutely improper, explained Archbishop Gadecki. Spiritual communion refers, in fact, to people in a state of grace, who, on account of a physical impediment, cannot receive Communion (as happened for example, in the part of Poland occupied by the Soviets after the Second World War).
Question: Marriage cannot any more be taken for granted in certain circles today. The Church's idea of marriage is questioned more and more. How should one now act? Would you say that the Church abandons her ideal of marriage if she more and more adapts to present trends?
Spaemann: Yes. The tendency is strong to adapt to all trends, so that the people do not run away. But one always has to look into the Gospels. The masses ran after Jesus, but then he spoke about giving His Body to eat and His Blood to drink. He did not try to make it look attractively pleasant, and the people were shocked and ran away. Jesus asked the apostles: "Do you also want to run away?" But St. Peter answered: "No, Lord, even though we did not understand you, either, but you have words of eternal life, and where else should we go?" That should be the reaction of the people.[…]
Also in the question of divorce it should not be about following the great masses and strong tendencies, but to give witness about the fact that there are other and much more beautiful ways of life. One also should not only start with it at marriage-preparation courses, but rather much earlier. Already in school one has to be taught what the Christian manner of living is. Then also such a prohibition of divorce, as it has been very clearly and unambiguously taught by Christ, would become attractive.
