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Home ... the One, True, Holy, Catholic Church
“That
understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually
retained, which Holy
Mother Church once declared; and there must never be
a recession from that meaning under the specious name
of a deeper understanding”
(Blessed Pope Pius IX, 1st Vatican Council, S.3, C.2
on Revelation, 1870 ex cathedra)
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“We are not worthy of persecution. We are Christians
not worth killing.”
Matthew Walsh
"AN ENEMY HAS DONE THIS"
The Weeds and the Wheat
A Parable for the Crisis in the Church
“The Kingdom of
Heaven is likened to a man that sowed good
seeds in his field. But while men were asleep,
his enemy came and over-sowed weeds among
the wheat and went his way. And when
the blade was sprung up, and had brought
forth fruit, then appeared also the weeds.
And the servants of the master of the house
coming said to him: Sir, did you not sow
good seed in thy field? Whence then has
it weeds? And he said to them: An enemy
has done this. And the servants said
to him: Will you that we go and gather it
up? And he said: No, lest perhaps gathering
up the weeds, you root up the wheat also
together with it. Allow both to grow until
the harvest, and in the time of the harvest
I will say to the reapers: Gather up first
the weeds, and bind it into bundles to burn,
but the wheat gather into my barn.”
(Saint Matthew 13.29-30)
Quite
nearly everything that is occurring in the Church today is outlined
in this brief but enormously important parable. The parable
explains how it happened and who is responsible
for it. It is striking in both its brevity and its scope.
What is happening in the Church,
right now, is horrific! It is historically unprecedented and
morally execrable. Never has the Church been so afflicted since
the great Arian heresies in the 3rd century
almost two millennia ago. Even the Protestant Revolt
instigated by Martin Luther is not comparable in the intrinsic
evil and the devastation it wrought — to the Body of Christ,
the Church, and to the world around it.
While others speak in
terms of the Faithful’s “frustration” and “concerns”
— let us describe it in terms of our lived experience:
We are not “frustrated”—
we are outraged!
We are not “concerned”— we are horrified, shamed, scandalized,
and perhaps
above all we are
angry! — angry
at the seemingly “routine” way that it is being trivialized
by our bishops, our priests, and, for all his pretensions,
Francis himself!
“Put this on the calendar” to be addressed at
the next meeting” — months from now.
ARE YOU KIDDING?
Catholics are scared! We are
afraid of what is being done not only to our children, but our
Church! We want heads to fly! We want Birettas placed
down in shame. We want guilty priests defrocked — immediately
— and jailed! We want complicit cardinals to be removed
from office at once, silent bishops to be dismissed
from the episcopacy and all that responsibility of which they
have proven themselves unworthy or unequal — and if not
subsequently laicized then at the very least educated
on basic morality and the difference between sanctity and sin
— based on the Sacred Depository of Faith, and authentic
and established doctrine: not the whims of “pop” theologians
who make a living off the Church even while despising her.
WHAT WE DO NOT WANT:
No!
No longer!
No more! The sociological rhetoric in which they are
increasingly addressed and inevitably culminate will
never suffice to accomplish anything. The time of
showmanship is past. It is now a very dangerous matter of
brinkmanship.
Much has been lost and
much more stands to be lost.
We
want action to be taken
— and not “sometime
in the future”, but NOW! THIS DAY! THIS MOMENT!
The crisis
IS that serious
... and the hierarchy — to the very top
— seems too obtuse or simply too stupid to recognize it! Or
… more frightening still, and much more darkly … unwilling
to — because to address it would be to implicate themselves!
This is where the devil comes in
Let us look more closely at
this extremely important and eschatological (pertaining to the
end of the world) Parable:
“his enemy came
and over-sowed weeds among the wheat and went his way.”
Who is the enemy? The
devil of course! It is satan! It is he who sowed the weeds among
the wheat.
How and why?
First we must ask ourselves
the most basic question about this parable: what is a weed?
Interestingly, and succinctly, Wikipedia nails it on the head:
A weed is a plant considered undesirable
in a particular situation, “a plant in the wrong place”.
This is actually an admirable
description and entirely appropriate to our purposes.
A weed is not of itself evil.
It is simply a plant among other plants. But in Christ’s Parable we
must take note that an “enemy came and over-sowed
weeds among the wheat” They were not native to that group of
plants. Wheat does not become weed. It remains wheat. The weed,
we find, is surreptitiously introduced among the desirable plants:
in this case, wheat. The wheat is “sown-over” for a purpose: to
fester among it and to impede and eventually destroy the wheat.
There was a purpose to its planting by the evil one just as there
was a purpose to God’s planting of the wheat — the purpose of the
latter, the wheat, was to nourish other things. Of the former, the
weed, it was to destroy, to crowd out, to entangle and kill the
wheat — and with the wheat, all that it nourishes.
The “particular situation”
referred to as “undesirable” in Wikipedia is, in the case of the parable,
the Field that nourishes, which is the Church —
and the wheat, Her priesthood together with the Faithful. It
is, after all, through the Church that Christ comes to man in
the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Church is the indispensable
means of salvation for all men. Destroy the Field (the Church) through
the depredation of weeds and you destroy the means of salvation. Is
this not the sole objective of satan — that none
should attain to salvation, but perish everlastingly in the "Lake of
the Second Death", in Hell, together with him and those who serve
him — among which are not only the demons, but men?
Holy Soil
You may reply that
the same soil nourishes and feeds wheat and weed alike.
True. But the wheat in the Field (the Good seed
2) was planted by God Himself to be nourished
and grow and to further nourish unto Eternal Life. The weeds deplete the
soil of what the wheat needs to grow: it steals nourishment intended
for the wheat.
God Himself established the
Field and planted each seed of wheat — but this was not so of the weed.
It had to be planted by
someone else other than the Master of the Field. The parable explicitly
and pointedly states that
“it was the enemy who had
done this.” Finding
that he could not destroy the Field, the enemy secretly infiltrated it, planting
weeds among the wheat which, in time, would choke it and kill it.
This is precisely what happened
within the Church following Vatican II. The priesthood, Religious life,
vocations and the fidelity of the Faithful had flourished. The “plant
considered undesirable in a particular situation” — specifically
homosexuals — rather than being excluded from, were cultivated in the seminaries and houses of Religious
life. People who had no business in the Field — the “plants in the wrong
place” — were permitted to flourish to the detriment of the wheat.
As
the weeds flourished, the wheat withered.
This is a concise summary
of the present situation concerning priests and seminarians. The
weeds choked out the wheat until a Field that was largely wheat became
a desolate Field that was largely weed with little wheat remaining.
It is a queer weed, lavender and pink with flowery petals that reek
of decay, rooting deeply and spreading aggressively. But few are willing
to call it a weed preferring to call it a flower ...
“The
dragon
— that old serpent, who is the devil,
satan” 3 — we would do well
to be clear about the enemy and name him for what he is: vicious, deadly,
“ the prince of this world”
4 who has no place in God’s Church. He does not treat or parley: he drags off to
Hell whom he can … and deceives the rest that he is just a twinkle
in a predator’s eye
... those whom he has over sown in our seminaries, monasteries,
rectories, and chanceries. The dismissive voices that would call the
charade simply “progress” and a “gay” affair at that — despite
its manifestly deadly consequences, are now without excuse ... or
concealment.
Are we alone is this
frightful indictment? We think not — even apart from
Archbishop
Viago’s
explosive revelations of the homosexual predatory network in the
Church, Bishop Mutsaerts — of the Netherlands, appointed by
the Dutch Bishop’s
Conference to attend the Youth Synod in Rome in October, has refused
to attend for clearly articulated reasons in an interview with
Lifesite News yesterday (21 September 2018) that underscore the
absence of accountability in this grave situation:
LifeSite: “Excellency, why
did you decide not to go to Rome where you were to have
joined the youth Synod in October?”
Bishop Mutsaerts: “To put things briefly, it comes
down to this: given all the recent difficulties and lack of
openness, the whole thing will lack credibility. We are
going to talk about young people, no less, even though it
appears that we are not even capable of offering them
security. We all know of the difficulties in Rome, we also
know of the Pope's letter about Ireland, with its mea culpa
and “forgiveness” and all, but
there is not a
single word about what we are going to do about it,
who are the culprits and what are we going to do with
them. It would totally discredit us if in this
situation, we go and talk about youth. If it were
another subject, it would be different. But we need openness
about this business. What we need is the truth, only it will
serve us. That will only be possible if there is openness,
and well, we can't have openness without an independent
investigation. That is also what Archbishop Chaput said.”
[American Archbishop Chaput, chairman of the Committee on
Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops has urged Francis to
cancel the Synod on Young People altogether, given the
lack of confidence in the credibility of the bishops, while
others such as Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler Texas, New
York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Bishop Edward Burns, of Dallas
Texas, Bishop Philip Egan, bishop of Portsmouth, England,
among others who wish, instead, to address the most
critical issue of the clerical abuse that has shattered
the Church.]
LifeSite: “But you would prefer that the whole
affair be scrapped, in order first to let light shine on
everything that's coming out right now.”
Bishop Mutsaerts: “Yes, we need light to shine
on all that. Our credibility is in jeopardy. And we
shouldn’t do it ourselves. I understand from the Pope that
he identifies clericalism as the main cause. That's probably
true to some extent, but the greater part of the problem is
somewhere completely different.”
LifeSite: “Where is the problem, then?”
“When I read the
reports of the scientific institute of the New York
University, almost 80 percent of the people involved have
something to do with homosexuality. It’s a tricky
subject, but we have to name it
because if you
don’t name it, you can’t judge it properly and you can’t
investigate it properly, and take measures. I’m not saying
that’s the cause, I don't know how I should interpret those
figures, just don’t sweep it away, just take them into
account.”
What did Shakespeare say
about “A Rose by any other name ...”?
Another Synod — as
we see above — has been called for instead: a Synod of the
Bishops — concerning their job description
... and their abject failure in fulfilling it.
But don’t count on Francis
summoning it: he is too heavily vested in the very causes that
demand it!
1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weed
2 Saint Matthew 13.38
3 Apocalypse 20.2
4 Saint John 14.30
The State vs. Frankie
Capo di tutti
capi
“Pope
Francis’
sexual abuse prevention summit planned for winter’s end
[next year!] in Rome
with the world’s bishops
will apparently not address protections for
the demographic found in recent months to be at significant
risk from sexual predators in the Church:
seminarians.”
Lifesite
news
“Your Excellency! ...
the House in on fire!”
“Forsooth! Convene a council next year to look
into the matter!”
“But, my lord, we did that 20 years ago when
we smelled the smoke then and left it smoldering. It is now
a conflagration that threatens the entire Castle!”
“Just do as you’re told, man!”
This
is a vignette of the state of the Church today
under Francis and the cardinals and bishops complicit with him.
In other words,
while the house is on fire
and crumbling around us, Francis will schedule yet another
... “conference” —
next
February ...
five months away...
to “look into” the issue —
rather than address the
disaster NOW!
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, MAN — literally —
DO SOMETHING — NOW!!!
This is nothing less than madness, insanity,
irresponsibility, deafness, blindness — commitment to
a “progressive” agenda at all costs. I reiterate, it
is MADNESS! And if it is not madness, worse still it is complicity.
In the meanwhile, shall we pretend that it is not happening
(as we have pretended for over 50 years) until — to our
everlasting shame — the arm of the State in the form
of Grand Juries and subpoenas forces the Church’s hand
to comply with Justice (a Cardinal Virtue, remember?)
and turn over to competent authorities what documents they have
not yet shredded — but in the ensuing 5 months will have plenty
of time to.
If the Church obstinately refuses to punish her own children
for crimes, then the State will address what are no less
than felons unsparingly — as it should. No one should
get a pass, no matter the color of his biretta or the trim of
his robe — from priest to pope! Put them right in the slammer
— for God’s sake if only to protect the young and innocent.
What a parody of the Church: the State must
occupy the moral high ground and attempt to justly
incarcerate those whom the Church has no manifest intention
of defrocking or denouncing as reprobate — and expelling
them from the Body of Christ! There are sins that incur
automatic excommunication no matter
what ecclesiastical office is occupied! That is the interior
court of Justice that cannot be escaped and in which there is
no plea-bargaining. One may cleverly elude the State, but remains
on intimate terms with his guilt — which will exact its
tribute. Now or later. With apodictic certainty.
Consider the following:
Pennsylvania: over a thousand children and youths were
raped by over 300 homosexual priests. Three hundred! Three
hundred! The number is staggering!
MASSACHUSETTS: If the Archdiocese ever comes clean,
the numbers in Pennsylvania will pall before the overwhelming
predation of children, minors, youths, and young men that has
occurred here. Over the years in my own parish (typical Novus
Ordo) I knew, over the years, that certain priests were
homosexual (the sashaying, lisping, the feminine hand gestures,
the many movements we associate with women) and was once even
propositioned in the Confessional in a Church the next town
over.
One priest at my parish left the priesthood (presumably) to
“marry” another priest. I would never have suspected him. Never.
And that is scary. No feminine gestures. No clues — which means
that you cannot tell — until the hand is on your thigh. At Saint
John’s Seminary in Brighton in the late 70’s I attended some
“Days of Recollection” for young men considering the priesthood.
At once I could sense, see, the femininity of the young men
— and more troubling still, the priests themselves who led the
“Days of Recollection.” After attending several times I found
myself set apart and alone …. marginalized — presumably because
it must have been apparent that I was not one of the girls.
The atmosphere was permeated by homosexuality … without
the merest hint of the “odor of sanctity”.
FUMIGATE IT!
Saint John’s Seminary was in desperate need of fumigation.
It reeked of homosexuality. I considered contacting the Chancery
about this openly scandalous state of affairs but had learned
that any letter to any bishop was answered politely but dismissively
by one of his assistants (who himself may have been homosexual
and not particularly sympathetic to any request for addressing
the issue.)
Talking with other young men later — who were married and with
children — their experience was the same. They chose
the vocation to the priesthood but were not allowed
to go beyond the pink doors — because they were straight, or
worse still, straight and adherent to Church teaching.
After much soul-searching they found their vocation elsewhere
— just as I did. There were, I found, lots of
vocations to the priesthood — but their fidelity and masculinity
were an impediment that did not sit well with those who made
the decisions. No scent of Lavender? Then the Pink Door slams
in your face.
Religious Orders? Fumigate them, too
As I searched and searched for a Religious Order (surely Religious
Orders were not infected …) as an External Postulant for the
Capuchin Franciscans (who, at the time, had a monastery in Milton)
my Vocation Director, a certain Father Matthias, asked me if
I believed all that the Church taught. Unhesitatingly I truthfully
answered “yes”. WRONG ANSWER! “No”, he replied at once. “We
must question.” The Catholic Church? As a philosophy
student in graduate school I knew the intricacies of inquiry
and the spurious “imperative” that a scholar — especially
in philosophy — accept that nothing is certain (the “doctrine”
of nearly every university in America). “That is not good”,
Father Matthias continued — as I processed in my mind everything
from Saints Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Saint Anselm
and a dozen others as we walked. I briefly wondered if I had
wandered into a Jesuit retreat house. They, too, lost God after
Vatican II. But Father Matthias wore a habit — that more
than likely cloaked his disbelief. Jesuits do not and are generally
contemptuously unapologetic about it. I thought of a Barren
Fig Tree.
But Father Matthias was the one whose skewed and illogical “spirituality”
I had to get around if I hoped to make it to the Order’s
main monastery in Garrison, NY (now
The Garrison
Institute for Transformational and Contemplative Ecology
— a non-sectarian pseudo-sanitarium dedicated to “The Science
of Contemplative Practice and neuroplasticity” where people
actually pay to be indoctrinated with “climate change
and environmental advocacy, neuro-, behavioral and evolutionary
economics, psychology, social networking, policy-making, and
investing and social media to work together on ways to shift
behavior on a large enough scale to realize substantial emissions
reductions.” It’s true.
I never made it to Garrison because God had other plans for
me that included a wife and four children — I never looked back.
But now, over my shoulder, and with inexpressible anguish in
my heart — I see Rome burning. And Nero fiddling.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
for the Boston Catholic Journal
September 16, 2018
Printable
PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Philadelphia as Boston:
A Shameful and Deadly Remix
Do good priests share your outrage?
And THIS
is the man Francis hand-picked to address the problem
Church-wide?
(Those who
ignore warnings probably have a vested interest in ignoring
them — and collaborate when the berm is breached. Will it work
this time?)
“We remain shamed by these egregious failures
to protect children and those who are vulnerable and affirm
our commitment that these failures will never be repeated.”
(Cardinal O’Malley of Boston — 16 August 2018)
“O’Malley,
chairman of Pope Francis’ Pontifical Commission for the Protection
of Minors, faces
accusations of ignoring a priest’s letter trying to
warn him three
years ago about now-disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick”
Boston Herald 28 August
2018
“Failures”? …“Failures”? ...
I really bristled at this.
What hypocrisy!
What hogwash!
Who
can believe that? Who in Boston? In Brighton? On Planet Earth?
He came here, to Boston, in 2003 — 15 years ago — to
“correct” the criminal behavior, the homosexual deviancy that
infested the priesthood and raped our children — and especially
festered at Saint John’s Seminary where, if you could not pass
the Color Pink, you would never see Holy Orders. Why? Because
it was the seedbed of the homosexual culture that infiltrated,
dominated, shamed, and broke the Church in Boston — and then
the rest of the world.
Where
do you first look when attempting to uncover widespread crime?
How about a Criminal Organization? If it is theft, a gang of
thieves! If it is political corruption, the State House and
the Legislature!
If
it is perversion in the priesthood — how about the seminary?
“Elementary,
my dear Watson.”
NEVER AGAIN?
He
came. He saw. He “conquered” — and left Saint John’s Seminary
as filthy as it was when he arrived as the Vatican’s “White
Knight” in 2003. And now he wishes to
“affirm our commitment that these
failures will never be repeated” even as he himself now
stands in the shadow of
complicity.
Did
he not say something of that nature 15 years ago?
He
is, reportedly, putting together yet ANOTHER
... “PANEL”
... to investigate what was already “investigated”
long before. According to
NECN,
“Cardinal
Sean O’Malley from the Archdiocese of Boston says he’s not able
to verify or disprove these allegations,
but wants the investigation to start as soon as possible
… Cardinal O’Malley said in a statement,
“The allegations made
this week are a source of serious concern to me as Archbishop
of Boston.”
He must be scratching his head:
“Haven’t I heard something like this before?” As we see, O’Malley
is STILL only tentatively scandalized
by homosexual predators in the Episcopacy and the priesthood!
He is yet — some 15 years after the loathsome
scandal broke in Boston — simply “unable
to verify or disprove these allegations”,
you understand.
No, you are not in some parallel dimension. Fifteen years
after this nauseating and pandemic putrescence in the Church
burst like a vesicle ... a boil ... from a diseased Body
— O'Malley is not yet ready (as Francis famously
was not in the priest-bishop-homosexual pedophilia scandal in
Chile) to give credence to the such ... “allegations”
... however many, and however grave the scandal to the Faithful.
Perhaps he misunderstood Christ:
“But
he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe
in Me,
it
were better
for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and
that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
(Saint Matthew 18.6)
Let us offer our clueless Cardinal
in absentia … a few clues obvious to most Catholics,
but apparently opaque to most cardinals:
Doesn’t a cardinal or
bishop have to be a priest first? And do
not priests first have to be seminarians? And
do not seminarians attend places like Saint John’s Seminary?
“Elementary, my dear Watson”.
How about “starting that the
beginning”, O’Malley? You know, like the people responsible
for admitting candidates to the seminary? And the teachers
who instruct them? The bishops who consecrate
them? Surely none of them were among the homosexual predators
... too?
You MUST have been there before.
It is on Lake Street in Brighton. Of course we know that you
share the habits of Francis — who is enamored of you — by living
in a simple residence, and maybe you cook your own meals, too?
But how about the weightier matters? The Faith? The Flock? Remember
them? “The Little Ones” … you remember them, too?
Ask yourself: when was the last
time you saw O’Malley? At a photo-op with Francis?
You have listened to his “sermons” — mostly monetary appeals
— ON RECORDINGS in your parish — in place of a homily embodied
in a physical presence?
Did you ever write him about
an abuse in your parish? If you did, you never heard from him.
You heard from his “secretary” who told you that Father so-and-so
was held in O’Malley’s “highest esteem”. In other words, GFY!
This is a Catholic Journal so I will not spell it out for you.
“INSINCERITY”
iS tOO kIND, tOO gENEROUS a wORD
O’Malley is the poster boy of
all the insincerity we now find in the Church. He talks
the talk. He kind of looks the part. But face it, by
now it is apparent that he is most likely one of the Old-Boys
from the 60’s culture that devastated the Church and has no
real intention of correcting a vicious crime. Wasn't he famously
brought in 20 years ago to clean this mess up? But it hadn't
been “cleaned up”. It festered like a boil until the suppuration
(the foul and putrescent pus) finally burst in a scandalously
ugly mess that no amount of editorial “sanitizing” could keep
the reek away from any sentient being. And you come again
to rectify it — a second time? We suggest that
it is time to “Lawyer-up”,
O'Malley!
The horror that emerged from Pennsylvania will teach
“the
hierarchy”
nothing: 300 priest-homosexual-predators
identified (so far) and over 1000 children — not to count
the pre-and-post-pubescent, the seminarians, the young adults
preyed upon by priest, bishop, and cardinal alike. “Surely
the “hierarchy would have acted had it known ...” but
the problem was the hierarchy and the systematic
cover-up of crimes too horrible, too shameful to stain the pages
of any Catholic journal.
Francis — himself now suspect
of cover-up should have acted — but could not
without indicting himself ... and very likely many of his “closest
advisors” like the homosexual apologist and pro LBGT Father
James Martin, S.J who Francis invited to speak in Ireland
at (of all things) the World meeting of Families about
“Showing Welcome
and Respect in our Parishes for ‘LGBT’ People and their Families”
while at the same time denouncing “Homophobic pastors”.
But that would mean gathering the criminals and clapping them
in irons! Who, then … would “man” the emptying churches which,
since Vatican II, have been largely emptied of meaning anyway.
If this concatenation of absurdities does not point to the
End of the World, as some frightfully sober men suggest,
it is, at the very least, the End of Sanity in the World
— at least the world inhabited by rational Catholics ... whose
Warden at the moment is the principal Inmate.
Salus animarum? The Salvation
of souls? That is last on the list of O’Malley, just as it is
last on the list of Francis. The Beatle’s song “Imagine”
invokes two things indispensable to both men from that hallucinogenic
era of the 60s: imagine a world of “the brotherhood of man”
and “no religion too?” This is the “Post-Conciliar” Church.
This is Vatican II. This is Francis — and, apparently, O’Malley.
God? Heaven? Hell? Salvation?
All such silliness was stamped out by Vatican II — and both
men are eminent products of that “Council” that became the ecclesiastical
equivalent of Dresden. Once again O’Malley comes, not as a shepherd,
but to collect the ashes of faith, mix them with the tears of
the sodomized, and somehow to mold a monument to this crushing
horror with the promise, yet again, that “these
failures will never be repeated.”
“Failures”?
You call them mere “failures”? How dare you?!
The
rest of us— your “Eminence”— call them our “Children”.
Vae vobis!
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
September 3, 2018
Printable
PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Further Reading on the
Papacy of Francis:
Francis as
“the Prince”
and the
Logical Conclusion
of Vatican II
Francis
is the logical conclusion of the Second Vatican Council understood
as the Assisted Suicide of the Church. He is the logical consequent
of nearly every flawed statement, every questionable postulate,
and every sophistical premise either substantive or implicit,
within Vatican II as so many antecedents to a catastrophically
spurious argument. As he himself stated as early as 2013
— but not before a rude slap in the face to all
his predecessors (one still alive: Pope “Emeritus” Benedict):
“In the interview, Francis denounced the
“Vatican-centric” nature of the Holy See administration
and acknowledged that popes past had been infatuated
with the pomp of the
Vatican and its “courtesans.”
and then:
“He said the Second Vatican
Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the
church into the modern world, had promised such
an opening to people of other faiths and non-believers,
but that the church hadn’t made progress since
then.”
1
He then went
further, to make the paradoxical claim that:
“I have the
humility and ambition to do so,” he said.”
1
In other words,
“I, Francis the celebrated, acclaimed,
and famously humble and unpretentious — propose to fully
actualize all the nonsense embodied in the equally celebrated
(albeit spurious) ‘Spirit of Vatican II’ because
I alone among
all my predecessors have the real
humility — and ambition — that
they lacked — and the iron will to do so!
Bet on it.”
Let us
ponder that for a moment, for it is fraught with significance.
Does a humble
man boast of his humility? Of course not, for he sees
the contradiction inherent in such a question.
More troubling
still is the question: is ambition consonant with
humility in a pope?
At the apex of power (at which Francis now sits)
ambition can dangerously verge on Machiavellian. As Niccolo
observed in his famous work, The Prince,
“Ambition is so powerful a passion in the heart, that however
high we reach we are never satisfied.” 1
How Far?
Machiavelli
was a vehement atheist. Francis is an unbridled progressivist
(radical liberal). In both cases, however otherwise divergent,
the pressing question appears identical: “How far can
I go? What can I get away with? To what extent can I push
the limits of this power vested in me? To the point where power
prevails over truth?”
These are serious questions, especially as they pertain
to the Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth.
Has the Church, as Francis insists, really been stagnant
for 50 years — until the epiphany of Francis who alone
can achieve what Vatican II proposed — because he alone
has the humility to accomplish this, coupled with an
unbending determination? Is there something disconcerting
about this statement? Even contradictory?
What is more, we need only look at the anemic state of the Church
following Vatican II: the dearth of clergy, religious,
seminarians — the aging and emptying pews … to see that no such
“stagnation” in the Church occurred. To the contrary,
prior to Vatican II it was a Church full of vitality
in every conceivable metric — and growing exponentially!
To understand how Francis arrives at this spurious conclusion
we must first understand that Francis is the quintessential
product of a unique generation. He is among the last of
that now dwindling generation (thank God) who themselves were
products of the psychotropic culture of the 1960’s — which,
in our rear-view mirror — is a now barely visible, and from
which we cannot speed away fast enough. It has long begun
to fade to fatuity. Most of us have, by now, come to our senses
and recognize this.
A Deadly Age
It was a deadly
age, a noxious age whose poison still leeches into Western society.
At a given stratum it will be percolated through reason,
eventually strained of its poison, and become the historical
nonsense it was — even if it contaminated so much and so many
lives before it was bleached out of our consciousness and finally
became innocuous , together with the psychedelic caricature
of a reality it had never known. Timothy Leary, et alia, “Turned
on, tuned in, dropped out” and in alignment with his not-so-famous
literary micropiece “Design for Dying — Dying? Throw a House
Party! ” — dropped dead.
The Age of Aquarius and the Psilocybin
mushroom are dead and what is left of that sad crop are dying
leaves on a withering tree, fretted by songs still strummed
by the arthritic hands of the elderly on guitars three times
the age of the audience. They are pathetic figures clinging
to a youth that betrayed them to an old age that wasn’t supposed
to happen in the euphoric Flower Days.
In truth it was a miserable age that opiated America; an age that filled
the valleys and made the mountains low — for the coming of
the Flower Child who littered it with filth. It was Woodstock
after the rain and the music stopped: a wasteland of plastic
trash, condoms and roach clips.
The Segue into
Vatican II
Same time, same culture, same euphoria, same mantra against inhibition, same
contempt for authority, same disdain for absolutes. It was the
time to experiment with society, with minds, and — most
sadly — with souls. While students occupied the chancellor’s
office at the university, “liberated” Catholic theologians,
together with Avant-guard bishops and their ecumenically requisite
Protestant advisors occupied the Vatican.
“The Establishment” was shut out — in academic, ecclesiastic
and civil society. “Old school” was out. “New school” was in:
a new and radical school of theology and spirituality; new interpretation,
“exegesis”, “hermeneutics”, and now “discernment”. “Dogma”
became “anathema” and “anathema” was finally scrubbed from the
Catholic lexicon altogether: both became something pejorative:
nothing was incontrovertibly true (itself a reflexive contradiction).
Latin as an Ecclesiastical Marker or Identifier was out. Banality was in.
Priests spoke the vernacular and finally realized that they
had nothing to say. Homily became comedy. Comedy became skit.
The Guitar is King! — no longer Christ Jesus.
And the only Choir we know is not of Angels: they ceased their
accompaniment with us when “Liturgists” discarded Gregorian
Chant in favor of the insipid ditties of Marty Haugen who is
Lutheran or the “Saint
Louis Jesuits (not all of whom remain Jesuits, or priests, or
even Christians.”1)
No going back: DNR and the
Church as a Hospice
New vestments, new language(s), new Mass, new spirituality that emphasized
man through a unilateral (Catholics gave up virtually
everything. Protestants relinquished nothing) effort at a newly-reformulated
notion of “ecumenism” instead of salvation. Nun’s and
Sister’s Habits were shortened, then abbreviated, then thrown
out. The new “cool” was the collarless priest, the unidentifiable
Sister. The various “Conferences of Catholic Bishops” (which
have no binding authority) became social, then political. The
Church effectively became the
“field hospital” envisioned by Francis — but it was also the only patient —
mortally wounded, and strapped to it was the purple rescript
DNR (“Do Not Resuscitate or Revive”) upon the inauguration
of Francis as pope with a ready hand on the plug. Vatican II,
it turns out, was really an act of Assisted Suicide as
Francis has more than amply demonstrated and the Church has
become less a “field hospital” than a hospice. “Better that
the one true Church die than acknowledge our mistakes and return
to the business of saving souls as we had done for the
2000 years preceding Vatican II.”
But even the model of a hospice is inadequate, for after the
last Catholic dies, the hospice itself altogether ceases to
be. This is nihilism — not Catholicism — and it has been for
some time.
The Birth of
Theo-Politics
Theo-politics
was born. Peace, Poverty, Immigration, Inclusiveness, Equality,
Linguistic Neuterization in the Liturgy, Feminism, and “Ministries”
without meaning or number became the New Evangel.
“The salvation
of souls”?
Not a chance. That outdated mandate belonged to the 2000 years
prior to the Second Vatican Council — and is something of an
embarrassment to contemporary Catholic priests, theologians,
scholars, and … yes … laymen. Ask yourself: when was the last
time you so much as even heard that phrase at Church?
Modernism — that
“synthesis of all heresies” — replaced every
vestige of the theological concept of Tradition
that is inseparable from the identity of the Church especially
as it is articulated through infallible Church Teaching and
Dogma.
The Kingdom of God became the Polity of Man. Language
was purged of “salvation”, “soul”, “Hell”, “Penance”,
“repentance”, “Mary”, woman, virgin, man, he, she, her, hers,
his, gender, evil, the devil, conversion, sin,
suffering, chastity, mortification — anything that stifled
the desires of men and the ambitions of women. Heaven now has
Open Borders — and they are coterminous with earth.
A Replica or
a Counterfeit?
We built a simulacrum, a meretricious and largely plastic replica of the Kingdom
of Heaven and placed in on earth — complete with electric votive
candles. And yet, for all its semblance we secretly fear
it is counterfeit. It is little wonder that we fear dying
and leaving our Kingdom … for, perhaps, another
and fabled Kingdom of which we heard long ago where Someone
else ruled and in which the totality of man did not abide,
given his sin, selfishness, cruelty, malice and indifference
to God — a place of ceaseless Light and no fire divided from
a chasm of ceaseless fire with no Light.
But we know that Vatican II — or at least it’s true “spirit” abolished
all that 50 years ago. “Everyone and everything goes
to “Heaven” — despite the explicit teaching of
Christ to the contrary (Saint Matthew 7.13-14).
Does this
appalling vision offend you? Have I injured your “sensibilities”?
Reality is like
that — much like the “Reality TV Shows” that you probably watch.
Not every episode has a good ending. Many do not even have a
good beginning — much like Vatican II — and even more apropos
of the spectacle that is Francis as its culmination.
__________________________________________
1
Associated
Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2013/10/pope_francis_urges_reform_want.html
2
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otr.cfm?id=3844
3
Niccolo
Machiavelli — The Prince
Geoffrey K. Mondello
for the Boston Catholic Journal
April 19, 2018
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Martyrology
for today:
EMBER
DAYS BEGAN Wednesday 19 September and continues
until, and including, Saturday the 22nd
Fasting and abstinence by observant Catholics
is required of us by Holy Mother Church
ROMAN MARTYROLOGY
Monday September 24th
in the Year of Grace 2018
Time after Pentecost
This Day, the Twenty-Fourth Day of September
The Feast of our Lady of Ransom.
At Autun, the birthday of the holy martyrs, Andochius,
priest, Thyrsus, deacon, and Felix, who were sent from the East
by blessed Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, to preach in Gaul, where they
were most severely scourged, hanged up a whole day by the hands, and
cast into the fire. Remaining uninjured, they had their necks broken
with heavy bars, and thus won a most glorious crown.
In Egypt, the holy martyrs Paphnutius and his
companions. Whilst leading a solitary life, St. Paphnutius heard
that many Christians were kept in bonds, and, moved by the spirit of
God, he voluntarily offered himself to the prefect, and freely confessed
the Christian faith. He was bound with iron chains, and a long
time tortured on the rack. Then, being sent with many others to Diocletian,
he was fastened by his order to a palm tree, and the rest were struck
with the sword.
At Chalcedon, forty-nine holy martyrs,
who, after the martyrdom of St. Euphemia, under the emperor Diocletian,
were condemned to be devoured by the beasts, but being miraculously
delivered, were finally struck with the sword, and went to Heaven.
In Hungary, St. Gerard, bishop and martyr,
called the Apostle of the Hungarians. He belonged to the nobility of
Venice, and was the first to shed upon his country the glory of martyrdom.
At Clermont, in Auvergne, the departure out of this life of
St. Rusticus, bishop and confessor. In
the diocese of Beauvais, St. Geremarus, abbot.
And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors,
and holy virgins.
Omnes sancti Mártyres,
oráte pro nobis. ("All ye Holy Martyrs, pray for us", from the
Litaniae Sanctorum, the Litany of the Saints)
Response: Thanks be to God.
|
Roman Martyrology
by Month
Why the
Martyrs Matter
Each day we
bring you a calendar, a list really,
of the holy Martyrs who had suffered
and died for Christ, for His Bride the
Church, and for our holy Catholic Faith;
men and women for whom — and well they
knew — their Profession of Faith would
cost them their lives.
They could have repudiated all three
(Christ, Church, and Catholic Faith)
and kept their lives for a short time
longer (even the lapsi only postponed
their death — and at so great a cost!).1
What would motivate men, women, even
children and entire families to willingly
undergo the most evil and painfully
devised tortures; to suffer death rather
than denial?
Why did they not renounce their Catholic
Faith when the first flame licked at
their feet, after the first eye was
plucked out, or after they were “baptized”
in mockery by boiling water or molten
lead poured over their heads? Why did
they not flee to offer incense to the
pagan gods since such a ritual concession
would be merely perfunctory, having
been done, after all, under duress,
exacted by the compulsion of the state?
What is a little burned incense and
a few words uttered without conviction,
compared to your own life and the lives
of those you love? Surely God knows
that you are merely placating the state
with empty gestures …
Did they love their wives, husbands,
children — their mothers, fathers and
friends less than we do? Did they value
their own lives less? Were they less
sensitive to pain than we are? In a
word, what did they possess that we
do not?
Nothing. They possessed what we ourselves
are given in the Sacrament of Confirmation
— but cleaved to it in far greater measure
than we do: Faith and faithfulness;
fortitude and valor, uncompromising
belief in the invincible reality of
God, of life eternal in Him for the
faithful, of damnation everlasting apart
from Him for the unfaithful; of the
ephemerality of this passing world and
all within it, and lives lived in total
accord with that adamant belief.
We are the Martyrs to come. What made
them so will make us so. What they suffered
we will suffer. What they died for,
we will die for. If only we will! For
most us, life will be a bloodless martyrdom,
a suffering for Christ, for the sake
of Christ, for the sake of the Church
in a thousand ways outside the arena.
The road to Heaven is lined on both
sides with Crosses, and upon the Crosses
people, people who suffered unknown
to the world, but known to God. Catholics
living in partibus infidelium, under
the scourge of Islam. Loveless marriages.
Injustices on all sides. Poverty. Illness.
Old age. Dependency. They are the cruciform!
Those whose lives became Crosses because
they would not flee God, the Church,
the call to, the demand for, holiness
in the most ordinary things of life
made extraordinary through the grace
of God. The Martyrology we celebrate
each day is just a vignette, a small,
immeasurably small, sampling of the
martyrdom that has been the lives of
countless men and women whom Christ
and the Angels know, but whom the world
does not know.
“Exemplum enim
dedi vobis”, Christ said to His
Apostles: “I have given you an example.”
And His Martyrs give one to us — and
that is why the Martyrs matter.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Contributing Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Note: We suggest that you explore
our newly edited and revised
“De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus — The Torments
and Tortures of the Christian Martyrs”
for an in-depth historical account of
the sufferings of the Martyrs.
|
INTRODUCTION TO THE ROMAN
MARTYROLOGY
By
J. Cardinal
Gibbons, Archbishop Baltimore
THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY is an official
and accredited record, on the pages of which are
set forth in simple and brief, but impressive words,
the glorious deeds of the Soldiers of Christ
in all ages of the Church; of the illustrious Heroes
and Heroines of the Cross, whom her solemn verdict
has beatified or canonized. In making up this long
roll of honor, the Church has been actuated by that
instinctive wisdom with which the Spirit of God,
who abides in her and teaches her all truth, has
endowed her, and which permeates through and guides
all her actions. She is the Spouse of Christ, without
spot or wrinkle or blemish, wholly glorious and
undefiled, whom He loved, for whom He died, and
to whom He promised the Spirit of Truth, to comfort
her in her dreary pilgrimage through this valley
of tears, and to abide with her forever. She is
one with Him in Spirit and in love, she is subject
to Him in all things; she loves what He loves, she
teaches and practices what He commands.
If the world has
its
“Legions
of Honor”,
why should not also the Church of the Living God,
the pillar and the ground of the truth? If men who
have been stained with blood, and women who have
been tainted with vice, have had their memory consecrated
in prose and in verse, and monuments erected to
their memory, because they exhibited extraordinary
talents, achieved great success, or were, to a greater
or less extent, benefactors of their race in the
temporal order, which passeth away, why should not
the true Heroes and Heroines of Jesus, who, imitating
His example, have overcome themselves, risen superior
to and trampled upon the world, have aspired, in
all their thoughts, words, and actions, to a heavenly
crown, and have moreover labored with disinterested
zeal and self-forgetting love for the good of their
fellow-men, have their memories likewise consecrated
and embalmed in the minds and hearts of the people
of God? If time have its heroes, why should not
eternity; if man, why should not God?
“Thy
friends, O Lord, are exceedingly honored; their
principality is exceedingly exalted.”
Whom
His Father so dearly loved, the world crucified;
whom the world neglects, despises, and crucifies,
God, through His Church, exceedingly honors and
exalts. Their praises are sung forth, with jubilation
of heart, in the Church of God for ages on ages.
The wisdom of the
Church of God in honoring her Saints is equaled
only by the great utility of the practice thus consecrated.
The Saints are not merely heroes; they are models.
Christ lived in them, and Christ yet speaks through
them. They were the living temples of the Holy Ghost,
in whose mortal bodies dwelt all the riches of His
wisdom and grace. They were in life consecrated
human exemplars of divine excellence and perfection.
Their example still appeals to our minds and to
our hearts, more eloquently even than did their
words to the men of their own generation, while
they were in the tabernacle of the flesh. Though
dead, they still speak. Their relics are instinct
with sanctity, and through them they continue to
breathe forth the sweet odor of Christ. The immortality
into which they have entered still lingers in their
bones, and seems to breathe in their mortal remains.
As many an ardent, spirit has been induced to rush
to the cannon's mouth by reading the exploits of
earthly heroes, so many a generous Christian soul
has been fired with heavenly ardor, and been impelled
to rush to the crown of martyrdom, by reading the
lives and heroic achievements of the Saints and
Martyrs of Christ. Example, in its silent appeal,
is more potent in its influence on the human heart
and conduct than are words in their most eloquent
utterances.
The Church knows
and feels all this, in the Spirit of God with whom
she is replenished ; and hence she sets forth, with
holy joy and exultant hope, her bright and ever-increasing
Calendar of Sanctity of just men and women made
perfect and rendered glorious, under her unearthly
and sublime teachings. In reading this roll of consecrated
holiness, our instinctive conclusion is, precisely
that which the great soul of St. Augustine reached
at the very crisis of his life, the moment of his
conversion
“If
other men like me have attained to such sanctity,
why not I? Shall the poor, the afflicted, the despised
of the World, bear away the palm of victory, the
crown of immortality, while I lie buried in my sloth
and dead in my sins, and thus lose the brilliant
and glorious mansion already prepared for me in
heaven? Shall all the gifts, which God has lavished
upon me, be ingloriously spent and foolishly wasted,
in the petty contest for this world's evanescent
honors and riches, while the poor and contemned
lay up treasures in heaven, and secure the prize
of immortal glory? Shall others be the friends of
God, whom He delights to honor, while I alone remain
His enemy, and an alien from His blessed Kingdom?”
It is a consoling
evidence of progress in the spiritual life in this
country to find the Martyrology here published,
for the first time, in English, and thereby made
accessible, in its rich treasures of Sanctity, to
all classes of our population. It will prove highly
edifying and useful, not only to the members of
our numerous religious Communities of both sexes,
but also to the laity generally. Every day has here
its record of Sanctity; and there is scarcely a
Christian, no matter how lowly or how much occupied,
who may not be able to daily peruse, with faith
and with great profit, the brief page of each day's
models of Holiness. These belong to all classes
and callings of life; from the throne to the hovel,
from the Pontiff to the lowest cleric, from the
philosopher to the peasant, from the busy walks
of life to the dreary wastes of the desert.
Let all, then, procure
and read daily the appropriate portions of this
Martyrology. Its daily and pious perusal will console
us in affliction, will animate us in despondency,
will make our souls glow with the love of God in
coldness, and will lift up our minds and hearts
from this dull and ever-changing earth to the bright
and everlasting mansions prepared for us in Heaven!
Imprimatur,
J. Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Baltimore, Maryland
1916
Printable PDF
Version
THE APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION
“QUO
PRIMUM
”
(and what
“Forever”
really means)
“From
the very first,
upon Our elevation to the chief Apostleship,
We gladly turned our mind and energies
and directed all out thoughts to those
matters which concerned the preservation
of a pure liturgy, and We strove with
God's help, by every means in our power,
to accomplish this purpose. For, besides
other decrees of the sacred Council
of Trent, there were stipulations for
Us to revise and re-edit the sacred
books: the Catechism, the Missal and
the Breviary. With the Catechism published
for the instruction of the faithful,
by God's help, and the Breviary thoroughly
revised for the worthy praise of God,
in order that the Missal and Breviary
may be in perfect harmony, as fitting
and proper —
for it is most
becoming that there be in the Church
only one appropriate manner of reciting
the Psalms and
only one rite for the
celebration of Mass
— We deemed
it necessary to give our immediate attention
to what still remained to be done,
viz, the re-editing of the Missal
as soon as possible.
Hence, We decided to entrust this work
to learned men of our selection. They
very carefully collated all their work
with the ancient codices in Our Vatican
Library and with reliable, preserved
or emended codices from elsewhere. Besides
this, these men consulted the works
of ancient and approved authors concerning
the same sacred rites; and thus
they have restored the Missal itself
to the original form and rite of the
holy Fathers. When this work
has been gone over numerous times and
further emended, after serious study
and reflection, We commanded that the
finished product be printed and published
as soon as possible, so that all might
enjoy the fruits of this labor; and
thus, priests would know which prayers
to use and which rites and ceremonies
they were required to observe from now
on in the celebration of Masses.
Let all everywhere adopt and observe
what has been handed down by the Holy
Roman Church, the Mother and Teacher
of the other churches, and let
Masses not be sung or read according
to any other formula than that
of this Missal published by Us.
This ordinance applies
henceforth, now, and
forever,
throughout all the provinces of the
Christian world, to all patriarchs,
cathedral churches, collegiate and parish
churches, be they secular or religious,
both of men and of women — even of military
orders — and of churches or chapels
without a specific congregation in which
conventual Masses are sung aloud in
choir or read privately in accord with
the rites and customs of the Roman Church.
This Missal is to be used by all churches,
even by those which in their authorization
are made exempt, whether by Apostolic
indult, custom, or privilege, or even
if by oath or official confirmation
of the Holy See, or have their rights
and faculties guaranteed to them by
any other manner whatsoever.
This new rite alone is to be used
unless approval of the practice of saying
Mass differently was given at the very
time of the institution and confirmation
of the church by Apostolic See at least
200 years ago, or unless there has prevailed
a custom of a similar kind which has
been continuously followed for a period
of not less than 200 years, in which
most cases We in no wise rescind their
above-mentioned prerogative or custom.
However, if this Missal, which we have
seen fit to publish, be more agreeable
to these latter, We grant them permission
to celebrate Mass according to its rite,
provided they have the consent of their
bishop or prelate or of their whole
Chapter, everything else to the contrary
notwithstanding.
All other of the churches referred to
above, however, are hereby denied the
use of other missals, which are to be
discontinued entirely and absolutely;
whereas, by
this present Constitution,
which will be valid henceforth, now,
and
forever,
We order and enjoin that nothing must
be added to Our recently published Missal,
nothing omitted from it, nor anything
whatsoever be changed within it under
the penalty of Our displeasure.
We specifically command each and every
patriarch, administrator, and all other
persons or whatever ecclesiastical dignity
they may be, be they even cardinals
of the Holy Roman Church, or possessed
of any other rank or pre-eminence, and
We order them in virtue of holy
obedience to chant or to read the Mass
according to the rite and manner and
norm herewith laid down by Us
and, hereafter, to discontinue and completely
discard all other rubrics and rites
of other missals, however ancient, which
they have customarily followed; and
they must not in celebrating Mass presume
to introduce any ceremonies or recite
any prayers other than those contained
in this Missal.
Furthermore, by these presents [this
law], in virtue of Our Apostolic authority,
We grant and concede in perpetuity that,
for the chanting or reading of the Mass
in any church whatsoever,
this Missal is hereafter to be followed
absolutely, without any scruple of conscience
or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment,
or censure, and may freely and lawfully
be used. Nor are superiors,
administrators, canons, chaplains, and
other secular priests, or religious,
of whatever title designated, obliged
to celebrate the Mass otherwise than
as enjoined by Us. We likewise declare
and ordain that no one whosoever is
forced or coerced to alter this Missal,
and that
this present document
cannot be revoked or modified,
but remains always valid and retain
its full force
notwithstanding
the previous constitutions and decrees
of the Holy See, as well as any general
or special constitutions or edicts of
provincial or synodal councils, and
notwithstanding the practice and custom
of the aforesaid churches, established
by long and immemorial prescription
— except, however, if more than two
hundred years' standing.
It is Our will, therefore, and by the
same authority, We decree that, after
We publish this constitution and the
edition of the Missal, the priests of
the Roman Curia are, after thirty days,
obliged to chant or read the Mass according
to it; all others south of the Alps,
after three months; and those beyond
the Alps either within six months or
whenever the Missal is available for
sale. Wherefore, in order that
the Missal be preserved incorrupt throughout
the whole world and kept free of flaws
and errors, the penalty for
nonobservance for printers, whether
mediately or immediately subject to
Our dominion, and that of the Holy Roman
Church, will be the forfeiting of their
books and a fine of one hundred gold
ducats, payable ipso facto to the Apostolic
Treasury. Further, as for those located
in other parts of the world, the penalty
is excommunication latae sententiae,
and such other penalties as may in Our
judgment be imposed; and We decree by
this law that they must not dare or
presume either to print or to publish
or to sell, or in any way to accept
books of this nature without Our approval
and consent, or without the express
consent of the Apostolic Commissaries
of those places, who will be appointed
by Us. Said printer must receive a standard
Missal and agree faithfully with it
and in no wise vary from the Roman Missal
of the large type (secundum magnum
impressionem).
Accordingly, since it would be difficult
for this present pronouncement to be
sent to all parts of the Christian world
and simultaneously come to light everywhere,
We direct that it be, as usual, posted
and published at the doors of the Basilica
of the Prince of the Apostles, also
at the Apostolic Chancery, and on the
street at Campo Flora; furthermore,
We direct that printed copies of this
same edict signed by a notary public
and made official by an ecclesiastical
dignitary possess the same indubitable
validity everywhere and in every nation,
as if Our manuscript were shown there.
Therefore, no one whosoever
is permitted to alter this notice of
Our permission, statute, ordinance,
command, precept, grant, indult, declaration,
will, decree, and prohibition. Should
anyone dare to contravene it, know that
he will incur the wrath of Almighty
God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter
and Paul.”
Given at St. Peter’s
in the year of the Lord's Incarnation,
1570, on the 14th of July of the Fifth
year of Our Pontificate.
Printable PDF Version
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