 “Salus animarum supemus
lex esto” — ”the
salvation of souls must be the supreme law in the Church.” (Canon
Law 1752) |
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HOLY SEASON OF LENT
“Cor mundum crea in me, Deus,et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis ”(PSALM 50.12)
Vatican II:
the Great Apostasy
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“I-believe-in-God-the-Father-Almighty-Creator-of-Heaven-and-earth- and-in-Jesus Christ-His-only-Son-Our Lord-Who-was-conceived-by- the-Holy-Spirit-born-of the-Virgin-Mary-suffered-under-Pontius-Pilate -was-crucified-died-and-was-buried-He-descended-into-Hell-the-third- day-He-rose-again-from-the-dead-He-ascended-into-Heaven-and-sitteth -at-the-righ-hand-of-God-the-Father-almighty-from-thence-He-shall- come-to-judge-the-living-and-the-dead-I-believe-in-the-Holy-Spirit-the- holy-Catholic-Church-the-Communion-of-Saints-the-forgiveness-of- sins-the-resurrection-of-the-body-and-life-everlasting-Amen.” |
All spoken as one sentence as quickly as possible — to get
through it.
Worse still is the prayer to the very Mother of God, Mary
Most Holy, ESPECIALLY as it is “recited” — rather than
“prayed” in that beautiful prayer called the Angelic
Salutation, but better known simply as the Hail Mary:
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“HailMaryfullofgracetheLordiswiththeeblessedartthouamongstwomen andblessedisthefruitofthywombJesusHolyMaryMotherofGodprayforus sinnersnowandatthehourofourdeathAmen.” |
Within 14 seconds flat! … and ten times between each sacred
Mystery!
REALLY?
Is that how you approach God in prayer?
As fast as
humanly possible?
Is that how you speak to your wife, your husband, your
children — your friends and neighbors? If so, you either
have none, and you never will!
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“HelloJohnhowareyoulongtimenoseebythewayhowisLydiaIamwellwillyou beabletocometomyson’sschoolplayOandIamsorrythatyourdogissickI hopehegetsbetterItwasnicetallkingtoyoubye.” |
I am not an expert in Mariology — but I am human, as
Mary was and is — and even with so few credentials I cannot
imagine that either God or Mary are especially impressed
with my piety or devotion when I speak to them, pray to
them, much like a 33 rpm record incorrectly played at either 45
rpm or 78 rpm. Try it:
Playing Praying at the Wrong Speed
The point of this short essay is simply this: GOD IS A
PERSON — and so is Mary. I do not believe that they esteem
you more holy or are in the least impressed with the speed
of your prayers, or the number of your
prayers-recited-as-in-a marathon. In fact, Christ Himself
warned us against this:
| “And when you are praying, speak not much, as the heathens. For they think that in their much speaking they may be heard. Be not you therefore like to them, for your Father knoweth what is needful for you, before you ask Him.” (Saint Matthew 6.7-8) |
Is this to derogate from formal and structured prayers such
as the Holy Rosary or the litanies of the Saints? By no
means! Nor is it written to diminish the piety of the one
praying. No. No. No!
This is the point: when you “pray” do not make your prayer a
rote “recitation” to be sped through as quickly as possible.
Repetition is meaningful — or it can be useless.
Dwell on the words you pray.
Utter them in the same way as you would when sincerely
talking to ANY person before you.
In fact, you ARE! You are speaking to God Most High — from
your heart.
One single decade of one single Mystery of the Holy Rosary
prayed to Mary, and through Mary, to the PERSON of GOD — ex corde (from the heart) in the recognition that
you are
addressing a real PERSON who is listening to you — exceeds
all the decades of all the Rosaries recited since Mary
brought this devotion to Saint Dominic in the 13th century.
The beautiful complexities latent within the Holy Rosary are
many. Meditating upon a holy Mystery while simultaneously
praying the Hail Mary as more than simply words accompanying
our meditation is no small feat. It is — dare I say — grace;
the grace of simultaneity that proximates what we glimpse of
eternity.
Simply because the prayers may be many and
identical does not preclude their being uttered in absolute
devotion each time… for they extend beyond time to eternity
… and are offered in union with Mary to God Who sees the
hearts and knows the thoughts of men.
Pray — but only as sincerely as you talk!
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
February 12, 2020
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
“It is written: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.” (Saint Matthew 26.31)
“I will strike
the shepherd, and the
sheep of the flock shall be scattered.”1 We
have often heard this. It pertains to the imminent Passion of
Jesus Christ on the very night before He was betrayed into the
hands of sinful men. He, the Good Shepherd, would be struck (in
fact, repeatedly ...) and the Apostles, the Disciples, and the
Faithful would be scattered — they would abandon Him, flee for
their lives, and their unity in Him would be broken. Their
Shepherd, in Whose fold they were one flock, had been struck!
What the will become of the sheep? How much anxiety rends them!
But now, in some incomprehensible and ghastly apocalyptic
narrative unfolding before our very eyes, the shepherd
himself
strikes the
sheep — and they are scattered! Unfaithful to his trust
and careless of the sheep entrusted to him, the shepherd not
only abandons them to the wolves who have prowled the fences for
500 years … but he himself strikes them so that they are
forced to leave the sheepfold; with his staff he strikes the
necks and the backs of the defenseless sheep — not even sparing
the Little Lambs — who cry out in their pain as they flee,
seeking a fold where they will find pasture and protection. They
are confused and frightened, and no other shepherd seems to
have the courage to gather the lost and the scattered — not
one other shepherd! Homeless and shelterless they are prey to
wolves — wolves even more remorseless than the wolves who drove
them from the sheepfold.
In the gathering darkness they huddle and tremble, lacerated by a betrayal too appalling to grasp. Behold a vignette of the Holy Catholic Church of this day, under the tyranny of Francis who turns out the faithful to welcome those whose gods are idols and earth. What a terrible pronouncement mutters on the horizon!
Let us not fear. We know Whom we follow even when the hireling has fled. We know the voice of the Good Shepherd — and will not follow another.
He will not abandon us.
Let nothing obscure the glory of God — let nothing come between us and the vision of unapproachable glory in the face of Christ Jesus. All that is on the earth and of the earth — will pass away as it came: like breath on wintery glass, and its pretension will come to nothing. The seat of power that evil men have taken to themselves, the desecration of sacred places and sacred things, the betrayal of innocence to things corrupt and vile, the scattering of the sheep who are struck by the shepherd and driven from pasture ... all this is known unto God ... and our littleness and powerlessness before it. For a time we must bend before this infamous wind, but we will not bow ... nor break, nor lose faith. Those that now ruthlessly tower like the cedars of Lebanon, in a time will no longer find their place among us ... nor we among them.
We will not, then, be troubled by recreant men. We are called to glory. What is the fecklessness of man before so great a calling? Let us not be troubled by those who have lost God and trampled His Vineyard. We know the voice of the Shepherd and will not follow another. It may seem that we are bound, hand and foot, like lambs delivered to those who would make a sacrifice of us to false gods, and we are anxious. Let it not be so. Christ goes before us, and we go with Christ to the Father. We need not fear. Has He not told us that none may take us from His Father’s hand?
Away, then, usurpers and liars!
We have more pressing concerns than your feeble quest for petty
power. We must to God! And we will let no one and nothing
persuade us — or drive us away — from that pledge of glory to which
we are called in Christ!
_______________________________________
1 Saint Matthew 26.31
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Francis as the Prince of this World and the Logical Conclusion of Vatican II
The Art of Plausible Deniability: Closing Thoughts on Amoris Laetitia
Is Francis the Great Divider in the Post Modern Catholic Church?
Against Pharisees: by Bishop Athanasius Schneider concerning Amoris Laetitia
A Tale of Two Popes: The Newest Paradigm — The Emeriti, Resignation, and Dissolution
Quotations from Chairman Francis and other Philosophical Absurdities
The State vs. Frankie: a Case of Institutionalized Sexual Corruption
A Sober Reflection on “Laudato si”— an Encyclical Defective in Authority
Pope Francis: Man must obey the U.N. (despite its contradiction to Christ and the Church
This is the “gaze of Love” — of which Francis effusively speaks in his defective, and often heretical, encyclical Laudato Si — “The Joy of Love” (given his insistence on abrogating the 6th Commandment, it is an appropriately salacious title).
Francis’s critics, and those to whom he accords less than this “gaze of love”, are quite familiar with it — especially those “rigid Catholics” whom he denigrates as suffering from “coprophilia, or arousal from excrement, and ... coprophagia, or eating excrement” http://www.boston-catholic-journal.com/carefully-crafted-bad-language-pope-francis-to-his-detractors.htm
But Francis can — and will — stoop to less in the upcoming Synod aptly called “Amazonia: New Paths for The Church and for an Integral Ecology.” No, that is not a misprint: it is not “Integral Theology” — that would be nonsensical enough, but the pope and the Church clambering aboard the secular band-wagon of ecology?
Little wonder that among those personally
invited by Francis are:
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Pro-abortion, pro-lesbian/pro-gay/pro-bisexual/pro-transsexual
ex-United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, |
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Pro-homosexual and left-wing
propagandist Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego |
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Renegade Cardinal Reinhard
Marx of Germany |
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“Father” Eleazar López Hernández,
Mexican liberation theologian and proponent of “indigenous
Indian theology” — that has absolutely nothing to do with
the Gospels. |
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Amazonized German Fathers (“we can
discover God’s Revelation among these indigenous peoples”) “Father” Paulo Suess
(right) with “Bishop” Krautler (who refuses to
baptize anyone and proudly has not in 40 tears) |
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Jewish American ECONOMIST
Jeffrey Sachs, who advocates abortion and Malthusian
population control, and who was a key contributor
to Laudato Si, Francis's Encyclical confusing environmentalism
with worship. (photo source: Remnant Newspaper) |
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Moon, Soros, Sachs |
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Last — but pre-eminent:
Pachamama: the indispensible
Amazonian pagan
fertility god — ritually worshipped by priest, prelate,
and pontiff alike in the Vatican Gardens at the close of
the Pan-Amazon Synod.
It was the logical and
necessary conclusion of the“Ecumenism”
of Vatican II: pantheism,
paganism, earth-worship, nature worship, the
primacy
of “Aboriginal
Wisdom”,
and listening to the earth rather than God.
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A pro-everything (except Pro-Life) non-Catholic UN Secretary, Moon who at least hints at his own confusion: “To those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual,or transgender, let me say — you are not alone. ... decriminalize consensual same-sex relationships, ban discrimination and educate the public” — and whose attempts to state anything profound and memorable (“Terrorism is a threat to peace and security”) do not quite attain to the Analects of Confucius ...
Bishop Robert McElroy insists that “Many times, our discussions in the life of the Church suggest that chastity has a singularly powerful role in determining our moral character, or our relationship with God. It does not.” Hmmmm. The bishop, clearly, is no Biblical exegete. Moreover, consider the following, “We have to reflect upon the question as to how to assess in a differentiated manner a relationship between two homosexual persons,” he says. “Is there not so much positive and good and right so that we have to be more just?”
Cardinal Reinhard Marx — oddly, much like Moon and McElroy — has an odd fixation on male genitalia: “If a same-sex couple are faithful, care for one another and intend to stay together for life God won't say 'All that doesn't interest me.”
Father Eleazar López Hernández: Is an outspoken proponent of indigenous and pre-Christian “Indian Theology” (pagan spirituality) insistent on “nourishing in the faithful expectations contrary to the Magisterium and Tradition, as in the case of a permanent diaconate oriented towards a married priesthood.”
Father Paulo Hess, it appears, has found no need for the Synoptic Gospels — or, far that matter, Sacred Scripture itself — which has been regressively “aufheben” or abolished by the — ready for this word? “aucthonomus” (a big word meaning nothing more than native, but sounding so much more learned!) religions and spiritualities that are held to have preceded Christianity itself — which is warrant enough to imply that it is more authentic in virtue of being presumably older (history and even historiography were not fields of study in Amazonian culture. Apart from oral tradition and crude artifacts there is no Amazonian history preceding Christianity which brought this reflexive concept with it. In this sense “aucthonomus” Egyptian religion circa 2050 B.C. with its polytheistic deities (including animals) is superior to divinely revealed and rationally articulated Christianity. Because it is older. Older = wiser = more authentic = “aucthonomus” which = native, which = older. Rather circular reasonong, but you get the point.
Jeffrey Sachs — an economist? — will likely be pontificating on a religion he does not believe in the way that Francis pontificates on economies he has no understanding of. It is a matter of competence which neither seems to grasp — to say nothing of widespread perception.
In a way reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s famous mantra to his field workers, “It’s the economy, stupid!” when his political machine swerved from the central issue in canvassing for the votes that he was sure would get him elected, the absence of moral credentials in those especially invited by Francis is quite beside the point. The “Pan-Amazon Synod” is not about morals. Still less is it about promoting Catholicism in a continent quickly being lost to Evangelical Protestants through the religious vacuum that resulted from the absence — and in Francis's case, the prohibition against — Catholic Missionary zeal since Vatican II. In this case “it’s Ecumenism, stupid”. But no one is listening. The planet must be saved! An ecological apocalypse is upon us — now! And the Amazon, we are told, has “the Lungs” even if the Catholic episcopate does not have “the Brains” to distinguish between socio-political flatus and a clearly distinguishable reality.
In what Gospel, we ask, did Christ proclaim that ecological mandate?
Are endangered souls a concern to “the church” any longer
... or just endangered species and tribal affinities
for a summum bonum understood as being “close to the earth”
rather than close to God?
Must we now confess (were Confession acknowledged as a vital Sacrament since Vatican II) our “sins against Mother Earth, Sister Sun, and Brother Moon” — and will two of the three constitute ecological incest?! Perhaps that is the sin for which there is no forgiveness in the New church-of-Accompaniment that supplanted the Holy Catholic Church in 1969? — in addition, of course, to the “religious imperialism” that Catholic Missionaries in centuries past inflicted — oddly, at great cost to themselves — on this advanced culture — “with a perfectly good religion of their own”— notwithstanding human and animal sacrifice, the subjugation of women, and the enslavement of enemies with whom they warred ceaselessly.
In the meanwhile, let us strive to cultivate “the gaze of love” on all that moves upon the earth — except the Catholics who have kept the Faith against every persecutor in the “church” since 1960 — you know, the gaze that so suffuses the countenance of its principle proponent (see above). What’s not to love?
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* Holy Mother the Catholic Church is completely opposed to Secular Humanism which embraces atheism, evolution, naturalism, religious and ethical relativism and which ascribes to no absolute moral code.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
October 5, 2019
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
The
REAL
Goal
of the LGBT Movement is DIABOLICAL:
Why?
Just as Satan cannot create, but only mimic, imitate, in the LGBT Movement we find his (Satan’s) effort to contrive a spurious — a completely counterfeit and totally perverse mockery — of the genuine family. It is a diabolical attempt to pass off what is a fiction for what is real — with the willing collaboration of a profoundly sexually and militantly perverse community.
But there is an impediment to this epic exploit in Western culture as it devolves into de-civilization and debauchery: the family.
As long as the nuclear family of husband, wife and children still remains intact, it is an indictment of the sterile sexual perversity that the LGBT fascists embrace and promote. It stands as an unassailable reproach to the counterfeit, for it is genuinely procreative and naturally perpetuates itself — as every other species has from the dawn of creation.
The family — one man and one woman, one husband and one wife, with children of their own flesh as the natural fruit of their marital love — exists naturally, not artificially. It is not the product of science, sociology, or legislation: indeed, without the traditional nuclear family as it has always been understood, mankind ineluctably ceases to be. It is the natural hedge against the delusional. Not all the artificial appurtenances, appendages, cosmetics, or clothing can so much as approximate this natural biological unit. However subtle science and surgery, elements of the counterfeit remain and invoke an instinctive revulsion to the artificially abnormal — it is inescapable! The most convincing robot engineered to virtually resemble a human being in every way — remains no more than that: a robot. Even if it is made by other robots, it never attains to being human. Ever.
No legislation or law that depraved man can implement or advocate to assuage the guilt of his perversity can ever be authentically internalized. However strident his social expression, however forceful the apparatus of the state, and despite every effort at pretension and dissemblance, the perverse is instinctively apperceived — and loathed.
It is a self-loathing so profound that it attempts to extinguish its own identity and become completely another. Not simply another gender, but another person — which is precisely what another gender is! It is someone apart from who one is; so much so that even the gender must be eradicated and artificially reassigned to its polar opposite. This is self-loathing.
The devil, as it is said, is not simply in the details — but in the fabrication itself! In a word, it is diabolical. The devil has no gender, and no “skin in the game.” That is why he can equally work both sides: male and female, pit them against each other, even against themselves, for whatever the aftermath, and however ugly, ultimately it is against God — and for Satan, a win! He mocks the Holy Family with the instigation of the unholy family of his fabrication: the homosexual “marriage”. Playing into our own pride that we will determine what is good and what is evil — not God — he makes us masters of our own destruction.
Oh, yes, he finally gets the last laugh, too, telling us in our smug insolence that we are not pagan gods after all — that pride is his dominion, not ours in all our pretension. We can pathetically tell him to go to Hell, but it is extremely likely that he will only politely, if mordantly, reply: “after you!”
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
August 26, 2019
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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The
Face
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Look carefully at this emblematic
vision of Vatican II in the Pope
Paul VI Audience Hall. It is, for want of any other aesthetic description, demonic and blasphemous, hideous and frightening — a sign of times to come — that are now here. |
Hideous — is it not?
It has not changed much — apart from its growing defection from what the Holy Catholic Church taught for 2000 years before that most pernicious council.
It is increasingly elderly, gray, and disheveled. Its children — fewer and fewer every year — are largely the children of the world, checking off the boxes branded on their young minds by a perverse generation that has lost its Catholic Faith and Identity: for Abortion (yes), Homosexuality (yes), Lesbianism (yes), Transgenderism (yes), Gender Identity Choices (yes), Gender Re-assignment (yes), Euthanasia (yes), Cremation (yes), Pre-Marital Sex (yes), Co-Habitation (yes), “Social Justice” Issues (yes!) — the proper formation of a Catholic Conscience (NO!), Chastity (NO!) Virginity until Marriage (NO!) Sanctity (NO), learning the most fundamental aspects of the Catholic Religion into which they were summarily Baptized (NO!) the Priesthood (NO!), Religious Life (NO!) — Missionary zeal and the conversion of sinners and those who do not know Christ — which Francis (perhaps heretically) calls “solemn nonsense.” (NO!) When they look about them at their fellow “Catholics” and” Priests”, “Nuns” and “Religious” — even the papacy of Francis and the current Episcopacy (bishops and cardinals) — who can blame them? The Faith is not even authentically lived out by the highest prelates — and sadly enough by Francis himself who gives scandal on a routine basis.
A Lie too Big to Possibly Refute?
They would tell us that our conception of the Holy Catholic Church prior to Vatican II is naïve and simplistic — that it has no correspondence with reality and never did. Revisionist history, however, has become an ideology — an iconoclastic tool for suppressing what is not consistent with prevailing values in academia: principal among which is that absolutely nothing in the past was really as it had been taught us. We have all been deceived. All academics and historians preceding the present Ideological Revisionists were not scholars at all; they were biased, mendacious, and inept, with a vested interest in perpetuating myths and lies — although this vested interest is never explained, and cannot possibly be without indicting the present generation of Historical Ideologues as well. Indeed, we no longer have historians at all, but an ideological cadre of iconoclastic “historiographers”, ready to discredit any actually contemporary description of history as it was lived by those contemporaneous with it. It is, after all, their “job”, their income, to discredit anything that had been held as true and authentic. This is what any good “historiographer” does: he speculates upon the most exiguous and often specious evidence to disprove that what actually was ... actually was not what it actually was. The “good guys” become the “villains”, and the “villains” the “good guys”.
Catholicism became “imperialistic” when it abolished human sacrifice in the Aztec ... “faith community” ... as it would now be called. “Let them do their own thing without imposing your colonial values on others!” As Francis might say, they lived “closer to the earth” … and were, eo ipso, better than other cultures that valued women, children and human life several feet above it. Ripping the still-beating hearts of its victims and then hurling them down the temple made of thousands of human skulls to appease the pagan god Huitzilopochtli 1 is more acceptable by far, you understand, than the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ — especially the Sermon on the Mount. It was foreign to their “culture” after all …
To return to our contention, we must ask, was the Catholic Church prior to its paganization subsequent to Vatican II really a better Church, a holier Church? Was the Faith really taken very seriously? Did it actually produce saints? Was it unsparing in apostolic zeal, in the formation of holy priests, missionaries, nuns, and Religious sisters? Absolutely! Unquestionably! By any metric it flourished and was flourishing — until the convocation of Second Vatican Council ...
It is not the case that the Church
quite suddenly attained to the apex of her mission
and mandate in 1960 and was ready to usher in the
Parousia — after which its religious and moral decline
was inevitable. It was thriving! Whence,
then, the extraordinarily serious
measure of convoking a council in 1962 (given that
the 17th century Cardinal Pallavicini — the
noted historian of the Council of Trent
itself — had famously warned that to propose
to convoke any General Council, except
through direst necessity, is to tempt God
Himself! 2)
There was, however, an excruciating question
in the mind of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (John XXIII):
a question never quite settled; and it was
a question, a doubt, that relentlessly tormented
him: was the
“inspiration”
to convoke a council, which he had experienced—
divine or diabolical? Very clearly, as
we had noted, there was no dire necessity
in 1962. The Church was thriving in Her members,
Her seminaries, in Her Religious and Missionary
Orders, and consequently in conversions to the Holy
Catholic Faith. Whatever manic episode, or turgid
epiphany “inspired”
Roncalli to move beyond the excruciating doubt that
afflicted him (that is to say, as to whether the
impetus that motivated him was divine or
diabolical) — by the Age of Aquarius,
John XXIII, infatuated with the world, rashly and
needlessly convoked a Council to deal with a problem
that did not exist until he created it.
We invite you to view a vignette of the Holy Catholic Church as it really was — and is no longer. The pictures indeed speak more than any words: http://www.boston-catholic-journal.com/the-real-legacy-of-vatican-II-a-renewal-that-became-a-requiem-the-death-of-two-monasteries.htm. And, while I think of it, Vatican II as the Model of the Failed Corporation: http://www.boston-catholic-journal.com/vatican-ii-the-model-of-the-failed-corporation.htm
We also invite you to return to the image at the top of this page — to the time when the poisons called Modernism and Ecumenism were first injected into the Body of Christ — and to behold a prophetic vision of what it would become. It is frightening. All that is counterfeit and ugly always is.
________________________
1 https://www.history.com/news/aztec-human-sacrifice-religion
2 History of the Council of Trent, by Cardinal Francesco Maria Sforza Pallavicini, translated to Latin by Fr. Giattini, SJ (Antwerp, 1670)
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-jounal.com
Boston Catholic Journal
www.boston-catholic-journal.com
September 3, 2019
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
ROMAN MARTYROLOGY
Wednesday February 26th in the Year of Grace 2020 SEASON OF LENT ASH WEDNESDAY
And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors,
and holy virgins.
Response: Thanks be to God.
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V2 = Enrolled prior to Vatican II and deleted after Vatican II
| January | February | March | April | May | June |
| July | August | September | October | November | December |
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
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.
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
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(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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