Martyrology for Today

CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARY

in the Twilight of Reason

Mary, Conceived without Sin,

pray for us who have recourse to Thee

Advent 2024

“Come, Redeemer of the nations!”

^{Francis and the
Collapse}of the Ecumenical Project

A Grim Reflection on the Legacy of a Steward

Francis will die — although we do not wish his death, nor the death of any man — but it is … withal, the temporal end of every man, pontiff, or layman, commoner or king.

Reflecting on this as Francis will soon celebrate his 88^th birthday in December of this year, we are moved to observe something very simple about his stewardship over the House that the Lord has entrusted to him.

For 10 years now, Francis has attempted to “renovate” a House that was not his, but only placed in his care as a steward. The majestic facades the incense-imbued silence within dimly lit through the stained-glass light of a late afternoon, the soaring spires that proclaimed the great Triumph of the Cross abroad for all to see ... these were not his to depredate: they belonged to God … and to His simple servants who raised them to His glory through the coppers they gave and through the rough, calloused, hands that engraved every niche in stone by dint of a devotion every bit as indestructible as the tip of the chisel the stone yielded to.

Some of these Francis and his bishops simply tore down; others they emptied by “consolidating” them with other Catholic parishes who were equally bleeding parishioners and who sold them to Muslims whose adherents grew as exponentially as ours diminished. Some were sold to Hispanic Evangelical Protestants, others to developers who gutted them and turned them into trendy condominiums. And still others are left simply abandoned and ruined.

This was part of the “growth” spurred by the innovations of Vatican II that was supposed to bring the Church into the World but brought, instead, the World into the Church.

And the faithful fled, seeing little difference between the two.

Renovation

A far more destructive “renovation” is much closer to the heart of Francis, however … than the mere obliteration of what was symbolically holy in the external presentation of the Church.

And it concerns the very heart of the Church: its Mass and its Liturgy.

These were the two greatest impediments to the holy grail of Vatican II: Ecumenism. And inextricably bound up with them were the Sacred Deposit of Faith, and Sacred Tradition. They had been quietly but indelibly preserved in Latin despite nearly 70 years of experimentation in the Vernacular Mass that somehow had promised, but could not deliver upon, a supposed “organic evolution” of worship into something ecumenically acceptable to all men in all religions.

Perhaps the New Order of the Mass, the “Novus Ordo” constructed almost exclusively by two men alone: the Freemason Anabile Bugnini and Bishop Luca Brandolini could still lend itself as the vehicle to “a universal worship of God” under the auspices of Ecumenism: each religion to its own god to be worshipped as the one, true god … within Catholicism itself! ….. but not in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism, each of whom keep their respective gods without conflating them with any other god, especially the formerly Catholic God. To use Francis’s dismissive term for Traditional Catholics,“indietrists,” or backward-ists, are much too caught up in trifles like logic to enter emotionally into the “spirit” of Ecumenism where, apparently, the Law of Non-Contradiction is not admissible … and contradictory affirmations are compulsory.

In Francis’s New church, All are Welcome ... Except the Children ...

Without question … and without surprise … the New Order of Mass, the Novus Ordo Mass of Paul VI has proven itself to be extremely versatile and spontaneously creative, possessing nothing of that loathsome “ridigity” so detested by Francis in the “Old Latin Mass.”

We’ve all witnessed this spontaneity, this tossing off of the shackles of customary ritual in nearly every Mass; …. so much so, in fact, that we never quite know what to expect at a Mass the next town over if a Catholic Church still remains there.

It could be a “Charismatic Mass” that could compete with, or even surpass in excess, any uninhibited Protestant Revival Meeting. It could be a “Healing Mass,” or a “Children’s Mass,” or even a “Liturgical Dance Mass” (pardon me if I shudder). It may not even be in your language.

So many Masses we now have! …. except Latin Masses.

“All are welcome!” in Francis’s new church; all except Latin rite Catholics ... the unwelcome step-children of Vatican II, the only children not allowed to “walk in accompaniment” with Francis & Friends; a “privilege” reserved to “other” “kinds of” Catholics, non-Catholics, and atheists alike.

Francis's own rigid insistence on the Novus Ordo Mass to the exclusion of any Mass preceding Vatican II is, in fact, completely understandable in light of his determination to fulfill the Ecumenical pledge of Vatican II: not just the unification of all Christians in spite of doctrinal, ecclesiological, and confessional differences, but more ambitiously: the unification of all believers of all religions and no religion in some chaotic form of transcendental reality … perceived only by Francis and the few.

How Ecumenism Collapsed in Upon Itself

This Ecumenical super-reality is meant to encompass so much, so broadly, and can only be achieved at so great a logical cost, that the Ecumenical project itself becomes meaningless. Ecumenism as the endeavor to bring unity out of divergence has only — and necessarily — resulted in affirming the religious differences it implicitly denied — an implicit denial now become explicit under Francis! Under Francis as the most vigorous prosecutor of Vatican II we find that Ecumenism merely reiterates and affirms the religious divisions that it sought, not just to mitigate, but to abolish in the beginning!

Ecumenism, we find, has collapsed in upon itself! It has simply ended up restating the problem … and then declared that the problem itself was the solution! Everyone, it turns out, ecumenically — and now “synodally” — goes his own way to God in precisely the religion into which he was born! Or, as Francis succinctly stated recently, “All religions are [equal] paths to [the same] God.”

It is much like claiming to achieve an ultimate synthesis that reconciles all contradictions, but, oddly, cannot explain how, and so becomes unintelligible … and therefore worthless.

All religions, then, are good and acceptable … except Catholicism. Somehow, by keeping to the way of its fathers in the Faith from the beginning, Catholicism alone — among all religions — is in need of “atonement” before the World: the Church must implore “forgiveness” from the World; forgiveness for a host of fictional sins from the “sin against synodality”, and the “sin against creation,” to the post-Conciliar grievances of being “patriarchal,” “oppressive,” “unjust to … [insert your resentment here]” and engaged in aggressive religious and social acculturation … as well as being historically and intolerably logical and unambiguous.

For Francis to scornfully dismiss those who are not persuaded that his ecumenical agendum is the principal reason behind his growing impatience with abolishing and outlawing the Latin Mass (although he disingenuously — really, quite dishonestly — states that it is to “preserve unity” in the Church) is a failure in charity to acknowledge real and legitimate issues among the faithful concerning the very unity he pretends to seek … while actively promoting discord within it.

For Francis to claim that he is trying to preserve unity through this autocratic move is both shamefully and manifestly untruthful. That the Latin Mass, together with the irreproachable theology upon which it has been articulated, has been so thoroughly, so forcefully, repudiated by Francis is an indication of how desperate a measure he is willing to resort to in order to implement, or better yet, to force, an increasingly brittle ecumenical paradigm on clergy and laity alike. Pieces of that ecumenical puzzle that are not of Bergoglio's making either will not fit, or refuse to fit, however much force he applies to them.

A Happy Failure

It will be a happy failure that Francis could not, for all his intrigue and ill-designs, bring to an end what faithless princes and kings, heretics and apostates through 20 centuries had been unable to achieve: the destruction, and the utter removal from living memory, of the inextinguishable sanctity of the Latin Mass of all the Ages.

It will be a sad epitaph for Francis in many ways, and history will not look kindly upon his persecution of the faithful in the very house given to them … and entrusted to him for their safekeeping. It is all the more sad — not that he failed to keep them, or even that he refused to keep them — but that he sought to drive them out. Seeking to please men, he drove out the children.

It is a tragedy of great depth. It is also one that calls for deep, even the most profound prayer; prayer that must extend to the hand that strikes, as well as to the stricken.

Listening to Christ, let us remember not so much what has been done to us, but rather what remains for us to do. We must pray for Francis. Christ Himself has commanded it:

“Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven.” (St. Mat. 5.44-45)

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

October 11, 2024
Feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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The Catholic Church we once knew and recognize no longer: the destruction wrought by Vatican II

On The Imminent Passing of the Catholic Church

From All Memory

(updated Sunday October 6, 2024)

The despotic and heretical reign of Pope Francis will end. It was a papacy unlike any other, for we found in the Seat of Peter the erstwhile unimaginable ... a heretic. Not a promoter of the Faith, but a destroyer of the Faith. A man whose gods were many and whose scruples were few; who seized the House of the Master and pretended it was his own, throwing down the walls that the martyrs built and bled upon; clearing the Altar for strange new gods. He was ever a grievous wound in the side of the Church, and like all healthy bodies, the Body of Christ, which is the Church, developed a hard and ugly response to it.

As a scab that has been pulled off a wound, leaving it painful and bleeding once again ... but beginning to heal ... the ill-starred papacy of Francis, once it has been peeled away from the unblemished Body, will begin to allow the healing so desperately needed in a deeply infected body.

But it is almost equally certain that the return to a state of health will be painfully long. The Church will not soon recover from the horrific damage inflicted upon it by Francis. The foreign pathogens and deadly toxins that he inserted deeply into the body will not go away at once, or, indeed, anytime soon. His death is not likely to result in warring factions between cardinals and bishops in a stark theological divide separating traditional from progressive prelates; those faithful to a Church forged in a crucible of 2000 years of suffering and sanctity … prior to Vatican II, and those who would cast that crown of thorns and glory into the cesspool of “modern man,” eager to make a new ecumenical god to accommodate their new religion.

Would that this were so! …. that there were clear battle lines drawn between two clearly distinguishable and mutually irreconcilable camps!

But it will not be!

Why? Because in his eleven-year tenure (and counting) Francis has, to use a political term, “packed” the episcopacy with his own, hand-picked, men — men of the same radically liberal, progressive, and often-heretical mindset as Francis. And it is these men who will elect Francis’s successor … from among themselves! And we have learned today, Sunday October 6^ththat Francis will be creating 21 new Cardinals in a consistory on December 8, of this year, 2024 — the 11^thconsistory that he has called in his 11 year pontificate! By contrast, John Paul II called only 9 consistories in 27 years.

Yes, that is alarming!

To give you some perspective, in 11 years:

Francis appointed 142 of the Cardinals (soon to be 163) and 407 Bishops

That is more than twice the number of bishops in only 11 years … as John Paul II appointed during his entire papacy of 27 years — and 2/3 as many cardinals … in only 1/3 the span of time.
And nearly three times the number of bishops in 11 years as Benedict XVI — with almost 1.5 times more cardinals than Benedict … in 8 years.

Numbers like these virtually ensure that Francis’s successor will keep his distorted vision of a horizontal Church alive; a Church more deeply invested in, not God-made-man (Christ) but man-made-god, the creature ... not the Creator; an “ecclesial forum” structured around diversity, equity, inclusion, climate, indigeneity, social justice, environment, aboriginal cultures, mother earth … in a word, the “World” as we presently know it.

The Church will recover from the papacy of Francis and his predecessors, but in all likelihood — apart from Divine intervention — it will not be within our lifetime. Nor, perhaps, in the lifetime of our children. So much, so very much, remains to be undone! So much more remains to be recovered! And it seems all too likely that Francis’s successor may expand the destructive initiatives that he has already implemented; indeed, he may well exceed them! All this points to a protracted recovery — or, within the increasing realm of probability, accelerated through, not an act, but a recognition, of de facto schism — on the part of Francis & Friends.

The 11th Hour

Sobering as it is, we must come to terms with the reality most likely confronting us in the very near future: the Catholic Church as history had known it for 2000 years — as it had been lived for two millennia by saints, scholars, sinners, and the simplest of Faith — may soon be recognizable no more. As a distinct entity apart from the world, it may effectively cease to be.

That is a staggering statement ... and except for Francis, almost impossible to imagine! Yet, so deeply have things evil leached into the highest echelons of the Church, infecting every organ of the body itself, that it is almost equally impossible to imagine its continuance!

Except … except for the faithful few … for those who held steadfast to the One, True, Holy, Catholic Faith whose source and summit was, and remains, the Latin Mass of the Ages; bearing all insults and scorn, all the mockery and derision that we heaped upon them — when we, with the world, went the way of the innovators beginning with John XXIII — except for them, the true Faith, would have been extinguished in a mere generation (so virulent was and is this evil within the bosom of the Vatican II Church). Memory of the 2000 year “pre-Conciliar” Church in all its sanctity and majesty, would have been ... academic at best.

And now it is the eleventh hour. God gives us the grace to return to our true Mother, the Holy Catholic Church, and all that she ever taught and unchangingly teaches; to the Sacraments so long disparaged, disdained, and dismissed by the Post-Catholic-Conciliar Church that brought our True Mother to Her knees, weeping for her children …

Francis will certainly, one day, be no more. And so will his successors for a time. But our Holy Mother the Church remains imperishable … and ever will!

Let us cleave to her all the more closely in these evil days, whose incensed breath is the vestibule to eternity ... indeed, to Paradise.

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

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I Have a Question for You ...

“Where do We Go From Here?”

When Pope Francis Abolishes the Latin Mass

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The Holy Catholic Faith

Where is it And Who is Keeping it?

Has the Post-Conciliar Church
Lost Custody of the Faith?

All indications are that is has.

The “Dark Ages” — that disdainful term for the period in history following the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. until the 15^th century (a period correctly described as the Middle Ages) is understood by the secular world to have lasted roughly 1000 years, beginning in Florence, Italy.

Within the post-Conciliar Catholic Church, however, it appears that the term extends well beyond the 15^th century; indeed, some 500 years beyond it! According to contemporary Catholic thought articulated within the past five papacies, the “Dark Ages” really ended in 1965 at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. All the doctrines and teachings prior to that Council were only imperfectly, deficiently, and insufficiently articulated or defectively understood.

The 1000 Years of Darkness

Only the Second Vatican Council finally attained to enlightenment in the divine economy, and after 1,965 years of suspension, it alone has provided the final, sufficient, and correct understanding of God and Church, man and nature. Prior to that, according to post-Conciliar thought, Catholics had essentially lived in darkness, specifically the darkness of the “pre-Conciliar Dark Ages.” It may be said that where the Rational Enlightenment “saved the world from religion,” Vatican II saved the Church from Catholicism.

This argument — that God concealed the “real” truth from us for either 1500 years on the one hand (concerning Protestants) or for 2000 years on other (concerning Vatican II) does not, of course, speak well of God’s munificence, truth, or goodness — and that it is the very argument to be brought against Protestants by Catholics, is good to keep in mind. Why would a good, loving, and truthful God conceal the real nature of the Church, the Sacraments, and true worship from us for so long?

Pay No Attention to What You See!

We are told so many times that what we see is no indication of what is real.

It is true in two venues: the political landscape, which is really of not much interest to us here except as a paradigm of our being told that what we perceive to be oppressive, unjust, and despotic, is really a benevolent government open to all its constituents. We are simply not socially-enlightened enough (“woke” enough) to see it, you understand.

The other venue, of course, is the ecclesiastical landscape, specifically the Vatican, and more specifically the papacies of the Vatican II pontiffs and the various Dicasteries under them. Within this crumbling landscape we are told that all the dismantling, removal, renovation, and ultimately the detritus following Vatican II has resulted in a more beautiful, vibrant, healthy, and faithful Church, with pews filled at Sunday Masses; a Church brimming with baptisms, confirmations, marriages, vocations, ordinations … a chrysalis bursting in a renewal of all things holy and good! We are simply too “rigid,” too “backward,” not “progressive-enough” to see it. Because we do not “walk in Accompaniment with the Spirit,” we are blind … you understand.

From Bergoglio’s dismissive perspective, “looking back (indietrismo) is useless,” ¹and given Francis’s insolent treatment of those who worship as our forefathers did for 200 centuries, they are equally useless as well. They are impediments to his progressive agenda; to use his words, they are “imbavagliando,” “gagging” the Church.²

His aggressively Modernist agenda set in motion by Vatican II, apparently, is too far advanced for the possibility of retrenching. It is “useless” to even entertain the possibility of rapprochement with the Mass of the Ages and the 2000-year spirituality inseparable from it; a Mass within which we immediately find sanctity, solemnity, sacrality, holiness, heavenliness, beauty, spirituality, form, sobriety, chant, mystery, the choir of angels; in short, all that is egregiously absent within the bland, mundane, and very worldly Novus Ordo “Mass of Paul VI.”

What, Exactly, are We to Understand by “Keeping — and Having Kept — the Catholic Faith”?

The notions of Keeping, and having kept, the Catholic Faith can only be understood as retaining (keeping), and having preserved (kept), the one true holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith that has been kept and practiced for the 2000 years prior to Vatican II — even when the practice of that venerable Faith has been unjustly deprived through ecclesiastical duress. That unchanging and unchangeable Faith is kept in the unwavering allegiance to it despite persecution and even deprivation. It can be physically removed from us, but it cannot be taken away from us.

Indeed, why do we keep anything at all? We only keep what we want and value; what is good and beautiful. Understanding this, we must ask, is there anything more beautiful this side of Heaven than the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? … than the Faith bequeathed to us by our fathers, by the Saints, by the Martyrs — the Faith that has generated the greatest and most brilliant constellation of saints and martyrs in the history of the Church?

It cannot be the case that Faith of the Church for the 2000 years preceding December 8, 1965 (when the Second Vatican Council was formally concluded) is no longer the Faith of the Church now — for if the Faith is different then the Church, which is the embodiment of that Faith, is different, and if the Church is different, the Church is no more. This cannot be. Christ promised that this cannot be.

But it can be said that the teaching of the Church is now vastly different from the teaching of the Church for the 200 centuries prior to John XXIII and his five successors, and most especially in what are presented to us as the “Conciliar” documents of Vatican II, documents that vastly, even essentially, diverge from centuries of incontestably authoritative Catholic teaching.

So much so, in fact, that in its latest iteration under the papacy of Francis, we have begun to ask in earnest, perhaps for the first time in our lives, “has the post-Conciliar Catholic Church, or perhaps more accurately, the “Post-Catholic-Conciliar-Church” — an increasingly different Church that first emerged from Vatican II and has continued to diverge from it through every successive papacy until that rupture with the past has culminated in a Church, together with its hierarchy, largely lost custody of the Catholic Faith?

Loathsome

Since beginning this article some days ago, some alarming news has begun to emerge from credible sources that has necessarily changed the tenor of this discussion, one which, much to our consternation, now concerns not simply the nature of the custody of the Faith vis-à-vis the papacy of Francis and the disaffected ecclesiastical apparatus in the Vatican under him, but concerning nothing less than the integrity^* of the Catholic Faith itself. It has come to our attention that under the direction of Pope Francis, English Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, together with other powerful figures within the Roman Curia are preparing to completely abolish — for all time — and with no possibility of reclaiming — what they perceive as the threat posed by the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in Latin — in other words, The Latin Mass, TLM, as it has been celebrated for 2000 years which must yield to the Novus Ordo (New Order) “Mass of Paul VI” exclusively — a Mass now barely half a century (54 years) in the making … and still in the making. In order to accomplish this with absolute, clinical exactitude, Francis & Friends have determined to stamp out the Latin Mass as something loathsome.

Such fear of something holy! As though the Mass of 2000 years can be shackled and plunged into a dungeon of unfathomable depth, hidden from sight, concealed as a destructive secret, and made irrecoverable to memory! How can we begin to imagine such malice in the Church toward those within the Church; how are we to begin to grasp the Church promulgating such an evil law and with an iron fist as hateful as the crushing fist of any petty dictator?

Too Catholic (for Ecumenism)

The Latin Mass, however, must go: apart from the many contrived and ultimately superficial reasons for abolishing the Latin Mass, the principal reason is this: it is an impediment to Ecumenism, the very corner-stone of Vatican II. This is the real reason behind the vitriolic, almost pathological animosity exhibited toward the Latin Mass by the liberal, Modernist Church of Vatican II and its principal proponent, Jorge Bergoglio: The Latin Mass is not amenable to non-Catholics; it is … too Catholic, it bears within itself the history, the memory, the devotion, the filial love of two hundred centuries of generations of Catholics who cleaved to the Faith through persecution and hardship and for many, to the point of the shedding of their blood.

Dwindling participation on the Novus Ordo (Vernacular) Mass, and an alarming increase in participation in the (Latin) Mass, especially among young Catholics, appears to be the principal motivation behind this draconian measure. The belief that Traditional Catholics will become Vernacular “Paul VI Mass” Catholics by heavy-handed decree; that they will be forced into this free-form Mass by Procrustean measures, is nearly delusional. It will not happen. I do not know what will happen, but I am confident that this fiction will not occur. Schism may occur. Were this the case, it would appear from several informed sources that Francis himself would be the formal cause of schism, and hence the Schismatic. This is not a shocking possibility.

Of course, we must ponder the question on everyone's mind: the fearful question that wrenches our gut: where do Traditional Catholics go from here — should the hammer fall on the Faithful?

Who is To Answer This?

Shall Canon Lawyers decide this … who are part of the very ecclesiastical apparatus that is prejudicial against the continued celebration of the Latin Mass? Even were Canon Lawyers able to answer this (they are not), it is not theirs to decide, for:

Ecclesiastical law derives its formal authority from the supreme legislator understood as the reigning Roman Pontiff who, in his person, “possesses the totality of legislative, executive, and judicial power.”

In other words, since there is no superior above the pope, ³ Francis is exempt from, and not subject to, Canon Law … and will do as he has ever done: whatever he wills, which, as a matter of record, has not always, or even often, been just, or even good.

Francis alone, then — temporally speaking — will determine where we go from here, and given his outspoken animosity toward the Latin Mass that preceded Vatican II for 2000 years, and his even greater contempt for Traditional Catholics, it appears that he is prepared to offer us two options only:

1. The First:
Go to the Novus Ordo (New Order) “Mass of Paul VI”

2. The Second option is intended to be optimally coercive:
No Mass at all. Essentially: “Attend the Novus Ordo Mass or leave the Church.”

What crime, we must ask, have these Catholics committed in continuing to worship in Latin (until Francis repealed Summorum Pontificum, three years ago in Traditionis Custodes, 2021) as their Catholic Religion has always worshipped up to a mere 70 years ago? Is this the crime that will cause them to be expelled from the Church?

Who is prepared to call the Tridentine Mass — the worship of God in Latin — a crime?

This Missal, This Mass (the Tridentine Mass), promulgated in Quo Primum (Pope Pius V, 1570):

“Grant[s] to all priests of the Latin Rite the right to celebrate the Roman Mass [of 1570] in perpetuity.”⁴

Whether or not, under the iron fist and the unbending will of Francis, matters come to such a destructive, divisive, and unimaginably ignominious conclusion remains to be seen. Perhaps it is rumor after all. By all accounts, we will know by mid-July.

Why the Vatican has said nothing to quash these rumors is a matter of ominous speculation.

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

October 2, 2024 Feast of St. Francis, Confessor, founder of the Order of Friars Minor

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_________________________

^* integrity: the quality or state of being complete, sound, unimpaired or undivided, uncompromised
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/integrity; https://www.dictionary.com/browse/integrity
1 https://thedialog.org/vatican-news/pope-francis-reminds-u-s-catholics-being-backward-looking-is-useless/
2 https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/06/14/pope-francis-traditionalist-gag-243151
³“The First See is judged by no one” (#1404, The Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church, 1983).
⁴ “We require then that all men, everywhere, shall embrace and observe the teachings of the sacred and holy Roman Church, mother and mistress of other churches; and that at no time in the future should Mass be sung or recited otherwise than according to the manner of the missal which we have published, in any of the churches of the provinces of Christendom, of Patriarchal, Cathedral, Collegiate or parochial status, secular and regular belonging to any kind of order, monasteries, both of men and women, also the military orders, and churches without cure of souls or chapels, in which conventual Mass is customarily celebrated or ought to be celebrated according to the rite of the Roman Church, either aloud with a choir, or in a low voice.” https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius05/p5quopri.htm

Martyrology for Today

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

ROMAN MARTYROLOGY

Sunday, December 22^nd in the Year of Grace 2024

Advent

This Day, the Twenty-Second Day of December

At Rome, between the two bay-trees on the Lavican road, the birthday of thirty holy martyrs, who were all on one day crowned with martyrdom, in the persecution of Diocletian.

In the same city, St. Flavian, ex-prefect, who, under Julian the Apostate, was condemned to be branded for Christ, and banished to Aquae Taurinae, where he gave up his soul to God in prayer.

At Ostia, the holy martyrs Demetrius, Honoratus and Florus.

At Alexandria, the holy martyr Ischyrion. Because he despised all the cruelties they made him suffer to force him to sacrifice to idols, they transpierced his bowels with a sharp-pointed stake, and thus put him to death.

In Egypt, the Saint Chaeremon, bishop of Nilopolis, and many other martyrs. Some of them fled whilst the persecution of Decius was raging, and wandering in different directions through deserts, were killed by wild beasts; others perished by famine, cold and sickness; others again were murdered by barbarians and robbers, and thus all were crowned with a glorious martyrdom.

At Nicomedia, St. Zeno, soldier, who derided Diocletian for sacrificing to Ceres, wherefore he had his jawbones fractured, his teeth plucked out and his head struck off.

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

January	February	March	April	May	June
July	August	September	October	November	December

New: the Roman Martyrology can now be downloaded entirely as either a PDF file 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.

A Martyr is one who suffers tortures and a violent death for the sake of Christ and the Catholic Faith.
A Confessor is one who confesses Christ publicly in times of persecution and who suffers torture, or severe punishment by secular authorities as a consequence. It is a title given only given to those who suffered for the Faith — but was not killed for it — and who had persevered in the Faith until the end.

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.

^* Those early Christians who renounced their Catholic Faith in times of persecution. When confronted with the prospect of torture and death if they held fast to their faith in Christ, they denied Him and their Faith through an act of sacrificing (often incense) to the pagan Roman gods and in so doing kept their lives and/or their freedom and property.

CONSECRATION OF THE 2024 ELECTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Mary Immaculate, living tabernacle of the Divinity, where the eternal Wisdom lies hidden to be adored and served by angels and men, Queen of heaven and of earth, beneath whose sway are subject all things that are lower than God, Patroness of the United States of America, sorrowful and mindful of our own sinfulness and the sins of our nation, we come to thee, our refuge and hope. Knowing that our country cannot be saved by our own works and mindful of how much our nation has departed from the ways of thy Son, we humbly ask that thou wouldst turn thine eyes upon our country to bring about its conversion. We consecrate to thee the integrity of the upcoming election and its outcome, so that what is spiritually and morally best for the citizens of our country may be accomplished, and that all of those who are elected would govern according to the spiritual and moral principles which will bring our nation into conformity with the teachings of thy Son. Give grace to the citizens of this land so that they will choose leaders according to the Sacred Heart of thy Son, that His glory may be made manifest, lest we be given the leaders we deserve. Trusting in the providential care of God the Father and thy maternal care, we have perfect confidence that thou wilst take care of us and will not leave us forsaken.

O Mary Immaculate, pray for us. Amen

This Consecration will remain on the Boston Catholic Journal until midnight November 5th, 2024
We urge our readers to pray it every day until this crucial election is decided.
(prayer composed by Father Chad Ripperger)

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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