Today’s Martyrology

CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARY

in the Twilight of Reason

“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)

Mary, Conceived without Sin, Pray for us who have Recourse to Thee

Mary, Conceived without Sin,

pray for us who have recourse to Thee

THE CHIEF HERETIC IN CANADA

Francis eneters pagan ceremony in Canada

CHIEF HERETIC

The Real Renegade

Francis, in his ever-widening embrace of the heresy of Ecumenism, participated in worshipping pagan gods with indigenous Canadians while condemning the “ideological colonization” perpetrated upon native Canadians by Catholic missionaries, which, of course, includes the “North American Martyrs”, all of whom were cruelly enslaved and viciously killed by Canada’s “Native Americans” — especially the Iroquois:

Saint Isaac Jogues
Saint Jean de Brébeuf
Saint Gabriel Lalemant
Saint René Goupil
Saint Jean de Lalande
Saint Antoine Daniel
Saint Noël Chabanel
Saint Charles Garnier (see Simply Catholic and Catholic Culture.)

But Francis, in his own ecumenical fervor, would rather attack the missionaries (or, as Francis calls them, “ideological colonizers”) than their murderers. Hence he embarks on what he calls a “penitential pilgrimage” to apologize for what missionaries were explicitly commanded to do by Christ Himself in His very last commission to them before He ascended to the Father!

Unlike Francis, however, the missionaries took Christ seriously.

An indigenous elder,

summons the great “Western Grandmother” with turkey whistle

Convening with the native-Canadian Elders and Chiefs, Francis and Friends become gravely and appropriately reflective, hands over hearts as instructed by the Elder who, after blowing a “Turkey Whistle” four times: once each for the North, South, East, and West, tells the cardinals with Francis, that they are to place their hands over their hearts, each of which he describes as a “talking stick” [?] and then asks the “Western Grandmother” [?] to “give us access to the sacred circle of spirits.” At that point, every Catholic (and human being) should have fled, rightly fearing the invocation of demons.

But not Francis! Or his coterie, including men with towering titles but apparently little faith:

Cardinal Christopher Collins, Archbishop of Toronto
Gerald Lacroix, Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada
Cardinal Michael F. Czerny, S.J. prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
Cardinal Marc A. Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
Archbishop of Edmonton Richard W. Smith;
and the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Of course, as good Ecumenists, the pope and prelates obey with obviously deep emotion:

Francis with hand over heart
Cardinals and Bishops lay hands over hearts for pagan ceremony

This is not merely deeply scandalous and shameful — but is a sampling of the increasing defection from Christ, Sacred Scripture, and authentic Church Teaching (preceding Vatican II). Ecumenism, it appears, has become a “religion” in its own right, not simply a “doctrine” of the new “Post-Conciliar catholic church” that emerged from Vatican II, but as a central and defining dogma within it. It is no longer an endeavor of the Catholic Church, but has replaced it, retaining the name merely to maintain revenue through a false sense of continuity with its glorious 2000-year history — an historical continuity that no longer exists ... and all remembrance of which it absolutely detests. The “Post-Conciliar catholic church” abolished genuine Catholicism in 1962 when it chose man over God and social remediation over the salvation of immortal souls.

De-Commissioning “the Great Commission”

Of course, this rabid emphasis on Ecumenism necessarily entails the renunciation of what is called “The Great Commission”, or Christ’s very last command to His Apostles:

“All power is given to Me in Heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Saint Matthew 28.18-20)

“Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.” (Saint Mark 16.15-16)

Following the ritual, Francis delivered the speech condemning “ideological colonization” (i.e., evangelization), insisting that its complicity in fostering paganism was consonant with Ecumenism! Indeed, Francis further argued that,

“The Holy See and the local Catholic communities are concretely committed to promoting the indigenous cultures through specific and appropriate forms of spiritual accompaniment that include attention to their cultural traditions, customs, languages and educational processes, in the spirit of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

Is this Francis’s ultimate “appeal to authority” — the U.N. … not God?
Sadly, yes.

Ah, yes, the Schools!

Catholic Culture has a commendable article concerning the Church’s alleged responsibility in the matter of the Residential schools which we would be negligent not to present:

“The particular offense for which the Pontiff was busily apologizing was the role that Catholic religious orders played in the “residential schools” that took children from members of indigenous tribes away from their families, and educated them in European culture. Insofar as this program broke up families and denigrated tribal customs, it was indeed an offense. But…

First, it was not the Catholic Church that devised the plan for the residential schools; it was the Canadian government. Today the country’s government leaders, having made their own pro forma apology, are anxious to heap blame on the Church. But the Catholic religious orders involved were only carrying out the politicians’ plans.

The defects of the residential schools—the crowding, poor nutrition, inadequate health care, lax supervision—can be traced to the meager funding provided by the government. The religious orders ran these institutions as charities. Clerics and lay volunteers suffered in the cold and ate the bad food, sacrificing to help young people. Some of them died on the job, and were buried in poorly marked graves, alongside the indigenous children they had served. They do not deserve the blanket condemnation they are now receiving.

The current furor peaked more than a year ago, with sensational stories about mass graves at one residential school in British Columbia. But months later, no human remains have been found at that site! In fact the site has not even been excavated. Plenty of people have an incentive to speculate that children’s bodies are buried in mass graves; apparently no one has much incentive to discover the truth of the matter.” (emphasis by the Journal, ed.)

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

Printable PDF Version

Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Stalin

ARE WE ALL CHILDREN OF GOD ... no matter what?

Jorge Bergoglio made the following statement in 2017 — and I think it is now time to revisit it in light of his peremptory agendum of unbridled Ecumenism — a heretical concept altogether ... prior to Vatican II — and which Francis frenetically promotes at the cost of authentic Catholicism. He asks — as though the question itself is altogether rhetorical:

“Is it possible God has some children He does not love? NO! We are ALL God’s beloved children.” (pope Francis) ¹

What is more troubling still, is that this question is, in fact, received by most post-Conciliar Catholics as merely rhetorical, that is to say, as though the answer is already understood in the asking — and that answer, of course, is a resounding: “yes — of course! After all, everyone goes to Heaven! The pope himself routinely tells us so!” — despite what Christ tells us about the “hard and narrow” way to Heaven:

“Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” (Jesus Christ: Saint Matthew 7.15-23)

Oh, yes, concerning the “false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves”, may we suggest that you consider five:

John XXIII
Paul VI
John Paul I
John Paul II
and the APEX WOLF: Jorge Bergoglio (Francis).

That is to say, in short, every pontiff who instigated, promoted, or was complicit in the heresy we have come to know as Vatican II which decimated the Church and Religious Orders, contemned and vitiated Her teachings, effectively abrogated Her Sacred Tradition, laid siege to Her Sacred Deposit of Faith, outlawed her language (Latin), abolished the Mass of the Ages (Tridentine), defiled the Sanctuary with women “Ministers” of Communion (note that they are no longer designated as “Extraordinary-ministers”), secularized the Liturgy, and homosexualized Her priests, bishops, and cardinals.

Consider the following: Catholic Mass attendance was 75+% in 1955 and plunged to 20-30% in 2017. In 1970, 55 % of American Catholics went to Mass every Sunday, and in 2019 that figure dwindled to 20%.“The Center for Church Management at Villanova University projects an attendance rate in the neighborhood of 12 percent by next year or the year after.” ² “Altar girls” vastly outnumber “Altar-Boys” and both are “socially/correctly” neutered as “Altar Servers” — thereby abolishing any distinction in gender in deference to the rise of “Woman Church” and the poison of Feminism.

All this — ALL OF IT — is the fruit of Vatican II ... every effeminate and recreant priest, bishop, and cardinal; the feminization and homosexualization of nearly every aspect of the once glorious edifice of the Holy Catholic Church — has left it in ruins, pallid and prostate before the World which it loves before God. There are good and faithful traditional priests — who are persecuted mercilessly by their bishops, cardinals ... and even the pope. Good men. Manly men. Priests of Almighty God! Men who do not lisp — and who would die before kissing the Muslim Quran! Not so Francis. Not so!

Does Vatican II really sound like a success story to you? Then look here.

We might take the initial quoted citation from Holy Scripture (Saint Matthew 9.11-15) as a prologue merely to the many disagreements between Francis and Jesus Christ in this matter (and many, many others.) Consider the following:

Jesus Christ:

“You do the works of your father. They said therefore to Him: We are not born of fornication: we have one Father, even God. Jesus therefore said to them: If God were your Father, you would indeed love Me. For from God I proceeded, and came; for I came not of Myself, but He sent Me: Why do you not know My speech? Because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.” (Saint John 8.41-44)

“He that committeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God, committeth not sin: for his seed abideth in him, and he can not sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Whosoever is not just, is not of God, nor he that loveth not his brother.” (1 Saint John 3.8-10)

“Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven: but he that doth the will of My Father who is in Heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in Thy name, and cast out devils in Thy name, and done many miracles in Thy name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, you that work iniquity.” (Saint Matthew 7.21-23)

“If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” (Saint Matthew 17.17) — note the conditional “if”.

“If you love me, keep my commandments.” (Saint John 14.15) — once again, note the conditional “if”.

“What fellowship hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath the faithful with the unbeliever?” (2 Corinthians 14-15)

Citations from Holy Scripture in which Francis openly contradicts Christ are too many to enumerate. ³

Whom do we Believe?

The point is simply this: whom shall we believe? The Master or the servant? Truth Himself — Who stood before Pontius Pilate on the day He was crucified⁴ while Pilate pedantically asked, “What is Truth?” ... evenas Truth bled in his presence⁵ — or His feckless vicar who either distorts or contradicts the truth entrusted to him? In other words, are we to believe Truth Himself or His recreant proxy who speaks in open contradiction to the Truth?

Statue of Heretic Martin Luther brought into Vatican by Francis

The influence of Francis’s hero, the arch-heretic Martin Luther is unmistakable:

In 1521 Luther wrote to Philip Melanchthon (Luther’s closest collaborator in heresy) “Love God and sin boldly ... No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day.” ⁶

The correspondence between Francis’s, “Is it possible God has some children He does not love? NO! We are ALL God’s beloved children.” — and Luther’s, “Love God and sin boldly ... No sin can separate us from Him.” — is unmistakable. This is the most manifest and deadly fruit of the heresy called Ecumenism.

Let us be less textually literal and absolutely clear on the substance of these mutually corroborating statements:

Luther: “everyone goes to Heaven no matter what. There is no sin so grievous to preclude anyone from attaining salvation.”
Francis: “We are all the beloved children of God” — no matter what we do, say, promote, believe, or not believe. No sin is so heinous, no act so horrendous, no belief so criminal, no unbelief so absolute, that it can disqualify us from going to Heaven with all the other ... “saints” ... like Hitler, Joseph Mengele, Stalin, Hideki Tojo, Nero, Mao Zedong, Genghis Khan, Caligula, and Diocletian, to name a few. For Francis, these men — despite the magnitude of their malevolence and the enormity of their atrocities ... are nevertheless “God’s beloved children”.

Who can so much as conceptualize God uttering something like, “These are my beloved children: Adolf Hitler and his brothers Diocletian, Mao Zedong, Joseph Mengele, Stalin, Hideki Tojo, Nero, Genghis Khan, and Caligula.”?

Who, indeed, is their father? Are they the “beloved children of God” whom Francis Bergoglio would have us believe — or are they those of whom Christ spoke: “You are of your father the devil.” They cannot be both.

Either Christ is a deceiver — or Francis is.

However, being God with the Father and the Holy Ghost, Christ can neither deceive nor be deceived.⁶

Francis can, will, and does.

“Such a harsh, even cruel statement!”, you will reproach me.

Less harsh, I will respond, and far less frightening than the words of Christ at the Last Judgment:

“And when the Son of Man shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the seat of His majesty. And all nations shall be gathered together before Him, and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on His left. Then shall the King say to them that shall be on His right hand: Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Then He shall say to them also that shall be on His left hand: depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Saint Matthew 25.31-33 & 25.41)

The god of Francis, it turns out, is not the God of Sacred Scripture. He fabricates his god to assuage the guilt and fear of men — the better to accord with the World, the Flesh, and primeval things of darkness that have no place in the Light ...

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

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Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com

_____________________________

¹ https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/36233/we-dont-earn-gods-love-its-freely-given-pope-francis-says
^{2

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2021/04/17/the-american-church-going-going/

3}Saint John 14.24 —Saint Matthew 17.17-19 — Saint John 3.18 — Saint John 8.41-44 —1 John 3.8-10 — etc., etc., etc.
4 “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by Me.” (Saint John 14.6)
⁵ “Pilate saith to Him: What is truth?” (Saint John 18.38)
⁶ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/did-luther-really-tell-us-to-love-god-and-sin-boldly/

ADDENDUM:

AN EXTREMELY TROUBLING

— and accurate — OBSERVATION

“Pope Francis – unlike his predecessors – has not directly advocated the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Keeping to his South American theological roots, Pope Francis has called for Catholics to consider the Eucharist as an encounter with Christ – an occasion where Christ makes Himself available to the community through an act of remembrance. [all Protestants understand it merely as an act of remembrance; nothing more. — ed.] Its an opportunity to be transformed to carry out the work of Christ. The focus here is not on dogma but the action that flows from it. This is very different from the hard-core theological dogma of the Roman Catholic Church.

This is very much in line with Pope Francis’s ecumenical and inter-religious initiatives over the past five years. He has consistently spoken about Holy Communion as a “sacrament” – emphasising the communal element rather than the mystery.

The Eucharist is the summit of God’s saving action: the Lord Jesus, by becoming bread broken for us, pours upon us all of His mercy and His love, so as to renew our hearts, our lives, and our way of relating with Him and with the brethren. [it is perennial Church teaching that Christ did not “become bread — but to the contrary, transformed bread into His Sacred Body through Transubstantiation. — Ed.]

Through this teaching in the 2014 Encyclical, Pope Francis has departed from the traditional line of who can receive or participate in Eucharist and called for a more inclusive openness to our understanding and practice of Eucharist (including non-Catholics to be able to take communion), and not to make it into an exclusive practice. ... by signaling that he is willing to welcome anyone and share the Eucharist with others, Pope Francis may have charted a different path by opening up the Eucharist to non-Catholics and those who have been traditionally excluded. He is clearly moving away from the idea of the Eucharist as a directly “supernatural” experience and more towards a “unifying sacrament.”

The Conversation

Martyrology for Today

Semen est sanguis Christianorum (The blood of Christians is the seed of the Church) Tertullian, Apologeticum, 50

ROMAN MARTYROLOGY

Monday August 15^thin the Year of Grace 2022

Time after Pentecost

This Day, the Fifteenth Day of August

The Assumption of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God.

At Rome, on the Appian way, St. Tharsicius, acolyte. The Pagans accosted him as he was carrying the sacrament of Christ's body, and began to inquire what it was. But he judged it an unworthy thing to cast pearls before swine. They therefore beat him with sticks and stones until he expired. The sacrilegious searchers examined his body, but found no vestige of the sacrament of Christ, either in his hands or in his clothes. The Christians took up the body of the martyr, and buried it reverently in the cemetery of Callistus.

At Tagasta, in Africa, St. Alipius, bishop, who was the disciple of blessed Augustine, and the companion of his conversion, his colleague in the pastoral charge, his valiant fellow-soldier in combating heretics, and finally his partner in the glory of Heaven.

At Soissons, in France, St. Arnulf, bishop and confessor.

At Alba, in Hungary, St. Stephen, king of the Hungarians, whose feast is celebrated on the 2nd of September.

At Rome, St. Stanislaus Kostka, a native of Poland, confessor, of the Society of Jesus, who being made perfect in a short space, fulfilled a long time by the angelical innocence of his life. He was inscribed on the list of the saints by the Sovereign Pontiff, Benedict XIII.

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)

℟ Deo gratias (Thanks be to God)

“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**

“Scio opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I know your works ... that you have but little power, and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.” (Apocalypse 3.8)

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