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Today’s Martyrology
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“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) |
CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARY
Looking for Catholic Prayers in Latin and English?
“Know you not that the friendship
of this world is the enemy of God?
Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becomes an enemy
of God.”
Mary, Conceived without Sin,
pray for us who have recourse to Thee
The Despotism of Francis
an evil man
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We do not argue that the Seat
of Saint Peter is empty — which is to say that we
are not Sedevacantists (from the Latin “sede
vacante”, “the chair being vacant”)
Indeed, we maintain that the Chair is, in fact, occupied.
That it is presently occupied by a heretic,
pantheist and madman, in no way invalidates the statement
that the papacy is indeed occupied.
Some popes have been saints. Some have been scoundrels. Jorge Bergoglio, regrettably, is certainly and most notoriously among the latter.
The “Cathedra
Petri” is not and has never been empty (apart, of course,
from the interregnum between the death of a pope and the
nomination of his successor — the longest of which was 3
years (1268-1271) With Francis occupying the Cathedra
Petri since 2013 however, this position has become increasingly
untenable. At what point does a man — including a pope —
cease to be in communion with the Church? At what point
does he cease to be Catholic? If he does not hold what the
Church teaches, what Sacred Scripture teaches, what Sacred
Tradition teaches, what the authentic Magisterium of the
Church has taught for 2000 years — in what sense do we hold
him to be in communion with what he has openly
repudiated — even suppressed?
Is the Pope Catholic?
Many Catholics and non-Catholics have, for some time now, nevertheless asked themselves what was once an amusing question intended to be a litmus test for the faithfulness of a Catholic. “How can you possibly question her fidelity to the Church? She’s as Catholic as the pope!” This, of course, presupposes that the pope is the paradigmatic Catholic entrusted with preserving and promoting Catholic teaching, dogma, the Sacred Deposit of Faith, the authentic and unbroken Catholic Magisterium, and millennia of Catholic Tradition.
This question can legitimately be asked — but without anticipating a positive response. Indeed, under the papacy of Francis, to be “as Catholic as the pope” is to be an uncertain, uncommitted Catholic, unsure of the credentials of the Catholic Church and uncertain of the morality historically predicated of Her and derived from Sacred Scripture. A
non-creedal Unitarian Universalist would be more in keeping with the mind of Francis than Catholicism as it has been historically understood.Before we attempt to make sense of this apparent paradox, there are a few things that we must be clear about; harsh as they may appear, they are quite nearly incontrovertible:
Francis is not a proponent of Catholicism , but an ideologue whose primary concern is an elusive and esoteric notion of “encounter” with all that is alien to Catholicism and most often antagonistic toward it — a program of assimilating other cultures by repudiating Catholic dogma and identity. For Francis there is nothing specific in the way of identity — essentially there is no differentiation—nothing is unique, nothing idiomatic: it is only sameness expressed in other terms that can never be incongruent. Uniqueness is anathema — even if that means sacrificing millennia old Catholic beliefs inseparable from the unique identity of Catholicism. Catholicism is an obstacle and if it is not consonant with every other belief system, it is Catholicism that must yield. Remember the absurd “Encounter Groups” which proliferated in the 60’s? (not coincidentally the era of Vatican II) These were even more flexible than Francis’s obscure — and rigid vision of the notion of Encounter. Yes, “rigid!” — the very epithet that Francis solely reserves for Traditional Catholics.
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/francis-orban-trade-jibes-at-historic-meet“Faced with cultural, ethnic, political and religious differences, we can close ourselves in a rigid defense of our so-called identity or open ourselves to the encounter with the other and cultivate together the dream of a fraternal society”, Francis pleaded.”
A “so-called” Catholic identity?
Why “so-called”? It appears that for Francis there is no unique “Catholic identity” that is distinguishable from every and any other social and religious identity. Each is simply a culturally inflected iteration of the other.
A “fraternal society” (much as Masons envision) rather than a Communion of Saints binding every Catholic to every other Catholic in the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant in Heaven with the singular goal of reaching Heaven, rather than “perfecting society on earth” as the Communists envision? Every member of a “fraternal society” will eventually perish. But not so for those who cleave to the Body of Christ (His Church) — and not the World — and who will not perish, but have everlasting life. (Saint John 3.15)
The Most Compelling Question is this: Given Francis’s Malfeasance, Why does God Allow it?
To clearly understand the predicament into which Francis’s papacy has placed us, we must first come to terms with what are called:
I. God’s Active Will and
II. God’s Permissive Will
Let us look at paradigms of each.
The ACTIVE WILL of God is always, in and of itself, absolutely good, for it is integral with God Himself Who is all-Good.
God does not actively will “relative” goods — that is to say, goods limited by other considerations and apportioned only as possibility allows.
• In Himself pure actuality (there is no potentiality in God: He cannot potentially be “more” than what He actually is), there is nothing that can constrain His active willing, as though He were compelled to will lesser goods within a spectrum of possible goods to which He is confined.
• God is absolutely free — without limitation or confinement; for these concepts are impossible to predicate of God as omnipotent. Each and every expression of God’s active will is ordered to the unmitigated good. “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness.” (1 Saint John 1.5).
• Our first paradigm would actually be two-fold: the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:2–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21) and the Sermon on the Mount (Saint Matthew, chapters 5- 7) in which we find the Active Will of God: “This is what I want you to do and to refrain from doing.” This is God’s express will.
The PERMISSIVE WILL of God
The most succinct definition of the next paradigm — the Permissive Will of God — is as follows:
In light of God’s conferring Free Will on man (God’s creation of man without this perfection would consequently be an imperfect creation by an all-good and all-powerful God, for freedom of will is an incontestable good — the privation of which results in an amoral world in which there is nothing meritorious and nothing blameworthy — much as we understand the operations of a machine that cannot do otherwise than its designer intended — a mere automaton to which we cannot ascribe any moral predicates.
As a consequence, man, possessing the perfection of free will, is free to choose what he wills, good or evil, and not what God wills. The same freedom may align man to God’s Express Will (he chooses to do what he knows God commands him to do — rather than that which he may otherwise be inclined to do — which is to say that his own will is freely aligned with the perfect will of God — before which he can plead no ignorance). What is more, God cannot revoke this perfect gift of free will without simultaneously abrogating that singular perfection with which He endowed man — and then re-create man as imperfect (without a free will).
Even a Pope I Given the Free Will
to do what he wills — rather than What God
wills
This is the great mystery of
the power of free will. So indefeasible and
necessary to man’s created perfection (as noted above),
God even permits man’s repudiation of God Himself!
It is absolutely autonomous, uncoerced, and
In a word,
it is completely independent, self-referent,
and completely free. However faithfully or unfaithfully
a pope executes his Petrine Office is largely determined
by the man. He may be good or he may be evil. In either
case — even given the exalted office conferred upon
him — he is withal and necessarily exercising
his own free will. Even a pope is free to do what
he wills, rather than what God wills. He can incorporate
and exercise the legitimate responsibilities of his
office, or he can be despotic and utterly ignore them,
and with them, God. It is up to the man.
When the free will is consonant with God’s will
it is holy, for God is holy. When the free will
not consonant with God’s will it is evil
(for there is nothing good apart from God. 4)
It is quite simple, really.
WHY?
That God may actively or permissively
will the Petrine Office to be occupied by the feckless
despot Jorge Bergoglio as a scourge to a perverse
and faithless generation, a generation which,
unable to make God in their image, contrived
to make His Vicar in their image instead — is
altogether and increasingly likely.
We must equally
remember two episodes, one from the Old Testament, and
one from the New Testament in which we find God
bringing good even out of evil:
In Genesis 15.18-20 we find the Patriarch Joseph thrown
into a dry well to die by his eleven brothers, to whom
he said when they were reunited,
“You thought evil against me: but God turned it into good, that he might exalt me, as at present you see, and might save many people.
Pilate surely believed that it was in his power to crucify Christ or to free Him — but Jesus responds:
“Thou shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above.” (Saint John 19.11)
These are two striking examples of God’s Permissive Will — not simply respecting the free will He conferred upon man, but of His power to bring a seemingly impossible good out of the evil devices of men. Most often we do not see the end to which his benevolent, Permissive Will, is directed — and may not in this life at all. We are left with the assurance by Saint Paul:
(Romans 8.28)“And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be saints.”
It is true
that Jorge has uttered some things good and true — but
because one utters some things that are true
and good, we cannot infer that the one saying them is
himself good ... or true.
An Apposite and Frightening Paradigm
Here our
paradigm is no one less than satan, who himself quoted
Scripture in the Temptations of Christ (Saint
Matthew 4.1-11) What he said was true in his unsuccessful
attempts to seduce Christ from redeeming the souls of
men, but because he quoted directly from Holy Scripture
itself in no way mitigates his evil.
Some things that Bergoglio (Francis) says are both good
and true (when comprehensible — but far too many
are arrogant, evil and unjust) — and just as Lucifer
can take the form of an angel of light *,
so Francis can take the form of an apostle of
Christ!
Like Satan, Francis can quote Scripture, too …
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1 https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/francis-orban-trade-jibes-at-historic-meet
2 An intensional definition gives the meaning of a term by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for when the term should be used by denoting the properties that an object requires in order to be understood as a referent of the term. For example, an intensional definition of the word “bachelor” is an “unmarried man”.
3 a
tautology is the uttering of the same thing twice in different words.4
“Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.” (Saint James 1.17)
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Martyrology for Today
PV2 = Enrolled prior to Vatican II and deleted after Vatican II
ROMAN MARTYROLOGY
Sunday
May 29th in the Year of Grace 2022 EASTER TIME
In Umbria, the passion of fifteen
hundred and twenty-five holy martyrs. At Verona, St. Maximus, bishop. At Arcanum, in Campania, St. Eleutherius,
confessor. Response: Thanks be to God.
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“Semen est sanguis Christianorum” — Tertullian
Roman Martyrology by Month
| January | February | March | April | May | June |
| July | August | September | October | November | December |
New: the Roman Martyrology can now be downloaded entirely as either a or as a Microsoft Word File
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!)
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
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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.
Totally Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of
Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
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