Note Francis’s New Crozier, bottom right, probably copied from the Pope Paul VI Hall but more frightening still. 1
Pope Paul VI Meeting Hall
Francis’s new Crozier-without-Christ
Modernism, we see, infected not only schizophrenic visual presentations spuriously called “art” throughout the Church, but these very presentations themselves appear to further and foster the doctrines of the Modernists — and you must remember that Modernism is the “Synthesis of all Heresies” condemned in the Encyclicals Lamentabili Sane, and Paschendi Dominici Gregis by Pope St. Pius X in 1907. 2 Since Vatican II, however, nothing is too ugly or too profane to be called “modern”: art, theology, liturgy, and nominally Catholic literature. The “Windows and doors were flung open” by Pope John the XXIII when he convened the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and the World rushed in as the Faithful ran out. The result? Priests, nuns, sisters, Religious brothers and sisters, leaving the Church en masse while the seminaries are empty and most Novus Ordo priests are now elderly and retired — and as parishes become priestless, even these retired and infirm priests are brought in to have a Mass at all. Mass attendance, we know, is at a historical low — and dwindling as the aged parishioners die.
Who can argue that a change of monumental proportions occurred following
Vatican II, and especially under the present papacy of Francis? Martin
Luther has been re-habilitated and heralded by Francis as a much-needed
reformer, and the Reformation itself has been both celebrated and commemorated
with visits by Francis to commemorate the “Reformation” in Sweden with
female Lutheran Archbishop Antje Jackelen:
Francis with with female Lutheran Archbishop Antje Jackelen in Sweden Commemorating the Reformation
The Vatican subsequently issued official Stamps of Martin Luther piously portrayed, together with his statue now in the Vatican itself among the statues of the Saints. Martin Luther is an arch-heresiarch that split the unity of the Holy Catholic Church and has always been considered so in Catholic teaching — until Francis. His split from Rome resulted in a thousand splits of Protestant sects among themselves to this day. Luther, the instigator of this thousand-fold division, however, is now held up to Catholics as a paradigm? All this, of course, is the fruit of the other heresy of Ecumenism which emerged from the Second Vatican Council. The Holy Catholic Church effectively and continually relinquishes most of what is identifiably Catholic and other religions relinquish ... nothing in return. A sad trade indeed. Among the most identifiable of Catholic arts is that of the Stained Glass — especially the windows in our Churches. Let us look at a few examples of the transition from beautiful traditional Catholic stained-glass — to that which resulted from changes in churches following the Second Vatican Council:
TRADITIONAL STAINED GLASS:
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MODERNIST
STAINED GLASS:
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This transition from graceful form and beauty to linearly distorted and deeply isolated geometric fragmentation in art is symptomatic of the conflict within the psyche that produced it. The absence of symmetry and harmony — and the startling presence of discontinuity, the deliberate reduction of form to mutation and mutilation, from the visually and intellectuality apprehensible to the indistinct and amorphous is indicative of the fractures occurring deeply within the Church and the discontinuity — the tension and irreconcilability — growing in doctrine and theology. The unity of the Church has been shattered by division and dissension — overwhelmingly in Liberal camps that have laid unrelenting siege to the unity of the Church for 5 decades, determined to reconcile the profane with the sacred, the City of God with the City of Man — and even sin with sanctity. Hence the tension, the dissonance and discontinuity, the malformation we see evidenced even in ecclesiastical art (and architecture!).
The crisis that has continued for some time now — in fact for decades — has attained to critical mass under the papacy of Francis who, despite his illusions or pretensions, is dismantling the Holy Roman Catholic Church as no other pontiff has dared. Indeed with confidence we can assert that no external enemy has come near to achieving the destruction that Francis has wrought on the Body of Christ in 2000 years. Fault lines that were deep within the tectonic foundation of the Church first appeared to audibly rumble in 1963. Increasingly significant fissures developed in the following 6 years. Finally the tectonic shift has become evident and undeniable. The foundation of the Church — which ultimately is Christ Himself — but in terms of liturgy, the Mass, dogma, Sacred Tradition, the timeless teachings of the Church, the unchangeable Sacred Deposit of Faith, and even Sacred Scripture itself the Church has been subverted as in no other time in Church history (with the sole exception, perhaps, under Saint Athanasius and the great Arian Heresy in the 3rd century, when he alone held to the Faith when every other bishop apostatized). We need only look about us at the detritus of what remains of the once monolithic Holy Catholic Church. The architects of this destruction are many, but none attain to the audacity and arrogance of Francis. His is almost forthright in his ambition to remake the Catholic Church into the “Church of Surprise, Encounter, and Accompaniment” — even unto sin! I stated that he is almost forthright in his ambition, but I will invite you to make the assessment:
“He said the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the church into the modern world, had promised such an opening to people of other faiths and non-believers, but that the church hadn't made progress since then.”
“I have the humility and ambition to do so,” he said.” 4
How rarely, if ever, do we hear a humble person ascribe humility to themselves? The truly humble do not have the hubris to do so, nor even so much as to think so. But not Francis. He indeed has the latter, even as he reserves the former for widely publicized photo-ops. Is he suggesting that his predecessors lacked the necessary “humility” — to say nothing of the “ambition” — to embrace the Protestant Reformation? Adultery? Homosexuality? Sacrilege in Holy Communion? Such a deeply self-investing ... and deeply indicting statement, no?
In the face of this determined — and concerted — effort by Francis with the eager complicity of the majority of the College of Cardinals (the German and American delegations being the most vociferous in their Liberal and counter-Catholic demands) who appear to have forgotten, or simply repudiate the Catholic Faith in a perfidious effort to accommodate a world that will not tolerate it, what is the Catholic layman, the Catholic laywoman, the increasingly rare and genuinely Catholic priest to do? Join the crowd that jeers at Christ on Calvary? Or take a stand — perhaps the last stand — with Christ against the world?
We both know the answer.
The Holy Catholic Church has not ceased
to exist despite interlopers and apostates. They have always been in
Holy Mother Church as parasitic infections in a self-inflicted wound.
They mar the beauty of the Church, stain the veil of the Bride of Christ,
but will never bring Her to Her knees. Only before Christ Jesus does
She bend them! Not the world.
And neither should we.
We must stand with Christ — and not the World ... and perhaps — increasingly — not even Pope Francis.
Lusting suitors will assail Her, but she is inviolable, for She is faithful to the Groom Who is Christ.
As we must be.
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
November 30, 2017
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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1 images from https://novusordowatch.org/2013/04/francis-brings-back-bent-cross/
2 http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10lamen.htm
4 http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2013/10/pope_francis_urges_reform_want.html See also http://www.boston-catholic-journal.com/is-francis-the-great-divider-in-the-post-modern-catholic-church.htm
* Saint Matthew 13:42; 18:8; 25:41; 25:46; Saint Luke 16:23; Saint Mark 9:47-48; 2 Peter 2:4; Revelation 19:20; 20:10; 20:13-15; 21:8, etc.
**
“The priest may give the sign of
peace to the ministers but always remains within the sanctuary,
so as not to disturb the celebration. In the dioceses of the United
States of America, for a good
reason, on special occasions (for example, in the case of a funeral,
a wedding, or when civic leaders are present) the priest may offer the
sign of peace to a few of the faithful near the sanctuary.”
(GENERAL INSTRUCTION OF THE ROMAN MISSAL — known as GIRM — 154) Also,
GIRM 295: “The sanctuary is the place where the
altar stands, where the word of God is proclaimed, and
where the priest, the deacon, and the other ministers exercise their
offices. It should suitably be marked off from the body of the church
either by its being somewhat elevated or by a particular structure
and ornamentation.”
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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”
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