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A Church in Crisis

Truth in the Service of a Lie

by Patrick Archbold

Now that Amoris Laetitia, the long awaited post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation has been released, the real debate is over. Don’t misunderstand me, the document itself, as it is digested over the next weeks, will certainly undergo much-needed debate about particular passages. Obviously, there are several key paragraphs that raise immediate concern and these can and should be debated.

Yet, I think that much of that debate will be hampered because of the working assumption that goes into such debates, a key assumption that papal positivists, many conservative Catholics, and the revolutionaries are counting upon. That assumption upon which the groundwork of the revolution is laid is that the words on the page actually mean things and, conversely, don’t mean other things.

So while others will necessarily engage in the line by line deconstruction of the document, I would like to move a little higher and look at the structure and language of the document.

Sometimes we become so used to something that we can no longer see it, or at least discount its importance. In this instance, I reject the premise of the debate, namely, that the intent and effect of the Apostolic Exhortation are directed and limited by the words on the page.

~ See Truth in Service/ Page 4

Peter denies knowledge of Christ, by A. de Paulis

Truth in Service of a Lie

P. Archbold/ Continued from Page 1

This is no mere accident created by jumbled thinking and, as Michael Matt stated it, "a tediously long and verbose piece of poorly-written and thought-out amateur post-modern-deconstructionist sociology."

This tedious and jumbled verbosity is no accident, it is the method itself. It is intended by its author to confuse, distract, and cloud with senseless questions and elaborate arguments. The purposeful ambiguity and mind-boggling contradiction is a strategy aimed at achieving an end; that end is to introduce concepts and methods that are contrary to the faith in such a way that plausible deniability is maintained, confident that those willing to build upon, in practical ways, those concepts and methods that are contrary to the faith, will be unrestrained by the caveats and contradictions.

This, of course, is nothing new. But the revolutionaries in the Church will continue to use this methodology because it works. For heaven’s sake, here in 2016 we still have many mainstream theologians and Catholic pundits who loudly proclaim that the documents of Vatican II are wonderful, it was just the implementation that went wrong. There are conservative Catholics who shrug and scratch their heads at all that is wrong in the liturgy that was never directly called for in Sacrosanctum Concilium.

They all make the same mistake, they limit the intent and effect of the documents to just the words on the page. They pretend that a simple Catholic-sounding caveat like "this discernment can never prescind from the Gospel demands of truth and charity, as proposed by the Church,(AL 300)" somehow negates and undoes all the ill-effects of the Jesuitical word-stew that surrounds it. It doesn’t, because it is not intended to. It is there to negate and undermine the critics. I mean, we all know this. We know this is how they operate and have operated for 50 plus years. So why do we have to pretend otherwise when debating the document.

Are we to pretend that any priest or prelate that is willing to offer sacraments to the publicly unrepentant will not find in this document's numerous calls for discernment and mercy all the justification he needs? Are we to pretend that when they do these things that the Pope of the Vatican bureaucracy will be quick to say, "No no, stop. You can’t do that!" Of course not.

The revolutionaries are happy, gloating even, because they know that they have all they need to proceed, given ample cover by so many passages of Amoris Laetitia that they cannot be named here.

Are we supposed to pretend that any of the few Catholic-sounding caveats of Amoris Laetitia will in any way retard the institutionalization of sacrilege openly desired by leading members of the hierarchy?

So this all brings me back to my most basic critique of Amoris Laetitia.

The purposeful and methodical ambiguity and contradiction that is the infrastructure of the Apostolic Exhortation is a pernicious form of deceit. In the simplest terms, it is a lie.

As such, and it pains me greatly to say it, it is a shameful and sinful act on the part of the Pope.

If it is helpful to pick apart any particular passage of the document to negate in any small part the ill-effects of that passage, it is a worthwhile endeavor. But we should never lose sight of the fact that ill-effects are not limited to what is on the page. It was and is intended only as a lie, even if sprinkled with truth in service of that lie. ■

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Fri, 15 Apr 2016 | Cover | Page 01

From the Editor’s Desk…

By Michael J. Matt

Special Double Issue

Please note: The current issue of The Remnant is numbered Vol. 49, No. 5 & 6. It is dated April 15, 2016, but it is a double issue. There was no March 31, 2016 edition. The reason for this is the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (the ‘Joy of Love’, if you can believe that!), which we consider to be a fundamentally revolutionary and deceptive document.

We decided to devote much of this issue to the analysis of this exceedingly problematic document.

Neo-Catholic polemicists, by the way, who have been defending it, really must choose a side when it comes to the Catholic faith. At this point, I’m sorry to say, the public defenders of the Joy of Love are either too stupid to understand what they’re reading, or maliciously covering up the myriad misdirects and errors contained in the text. There is no other option.

Father Longenecker Retracts

Speaking of neo-Catholics, over at Patheos.com Father Dwight Longenecker posted what I believe to be a sincere explanation of his side of the unfortunate exchange which took place between us over the past few weeks. In his "That Remnant Retraction," Father indicates that he now understands the nature of our concerns over his recent suggestion that some traditionalists, if given enough rope, will move from rhetorical to physical violence. He’s fully retracted that claim, apologized and

~ See Editor's Desk/ Page 2

From the Editor's Desk...

Continued from Page 1

expressed a desire to move on. I assume Remnant readers are as weary of this saga as I am, and we’re thus more than happy to accept Father’s explanation and to wish him Godspeed. At the end of the day and despite obvious disagreements, we’d much prefer to consider Father Longenecker a potential ally rather than an adversary, especially in light of forthcoming events in Rome, but also considering the rise of Christophobia in the world at large. The matter is therefore closed. We ask Father to pray for us, even as we will pray for him, that a greater understanding might gradually begin to develop between all those who seek to remain in the faithful service of Christ our King and His Church under siege, even despite the confusion and uncertainty that seem to everywhere dominate the landscape.

In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.

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This Week at RemnantNewspaper.com...

The Apostolic Exhortation and the Abolishment of the Sin of Presumption

by Michael J. Matt and Thomas More There is no other way to say this: Despite its protestations to the contrary Amoris Laetitia represents an attempt to achieve a revolution in Catholicism at the expense of the prior teaching of the Church on the indissolubility of marriage and reception of the Eucharist.

In addition, and on a more mundane level, it is a tediously long and verbose piece of poorly-written and thought-out amateur post-modern-deconstructionist sociology.

In order to achieve its aim of deconstructing the sacraments of Matrimony and the Eucharist, the tome paints the picture of sacramental marital love as a torture chamber of abuse, domination, sexism, exploitation and endless financial and emotional travails.

The sacrament of Matrimony, it is claimed, subjects its participants to the need to mutually beg constant forgiveness and afford each other mercy on an on-going basis. Indeed, in what would appear to be extremely disturbing language representing significant confusion about the nature of spousal love, the work attempts to point out that hurdles to staying married for life include the growing ugliness and infirmity that accompany old age. Such assertions are simply incomprehensible and reflect what, in light of the hierarchy’s recent behavior, could be interpreted as being a disturbing glorification of and fascination with youth.

Drawing upon such diverse and meaningful sources as "Eastern masters," Erich Fromm, Martin Luther King, Babette’s Feast, and numerous and plethora of Pope Francis’s own prior statements, and, on occasion even selective quotes from the Bible, the author demands that the Church accept and not comment negatively about divorce and adultery. This, he asserts, will minimize the frequency of those phenomena.

Moreover, despite the horrific nature of sacramental marriage which he depicts, the author nonetheless purports to make a case for encouraging those in irregular unions to become sacramentally married. The question as to why someone "living in sin" would seek to enter into such an horrific institution is not readily answered, especially since, it would seem, the institution is no longer to be considered de facto indissoluble, even if it is, currently, theoretically de jure indissoluble. Indeed, at one point marriage is actually called a contract in the document.

Moreover, with regard to the so-called concept of graduality, it must be noted that it, effectively, results in Amoris Laetitia asserting that all actions are more or less equivalent. It does this by asserting that even in bad things, good things subsist. Thus, it follows that bad things are really good. Cohabitation, for example, reflects affection, affection is good, therefore, cohabitation is good.

Further, the so-called concept of gradualness facilitates adulterers (who are in grave sin) receiving Communion.

This is to be accomplished, depending on the facts of the situation. But one thing is asserted strongly: No one is to be kept away from Communion forever.

Although only the rapprochement of those in "irregular relationships" is considered, there would appear to be no rational basis for refusing to extend the logic involved to all of those in grave sin. The reception of Communion by all grave sinners, of whatever kind, is left to the conscience of the sinner and their pastor. This is one undoubted time bomb of a slippery slope contained in Amoris Laetitia; another is the justification for a married priesthood; and, who knows, perhaps even a gay and married priesthood. The floodgates have opened, and who are we to judge?

Finally, no one in the congregation has a right to be scandalized by this, it would seem. Scandal and banning from Communion are perhaps only to apply to those who engage in social injustice, something for which Pope Francis unsurprisingly expresses deep disdain.

In terms of discernment, it would appear that all Catholics, including Catholic bishops, now have some discerning of their own to do. We now await the leadership that has been sorely lacking heretofore.

In the meantime, we are left to reassure ourselves that, well, the Exhortation is not as bad as it could have been. As one jubilant observer put it, "Hey, we really dodged a bullet here!"

Really? So that’s how far down the rabbit hole we’ve plunged, where "dodging heretical bullets" in papal Exhortations is sufficient grounds for a declaration of victory? (Do these commentators even hear themselves anymore?) No bullet was actually dodged here, of course. Everything is exactly on schedule. This Exhortation is Act I in an ongoing "synodal process" designed to establish the ‘new Church’ about which we heard so much at the Synod on the Family in Rome last October.

At the final press conference, Cardinal Peter Turkson explained how this new process will work, how it’s going to take years to set up this ‘new Church’, and how at next year’s Synod, for example, the question of same-sex unions will be tackled.

So, buckle up. Is it an exaggeration to suggest that Rome’s Mercy Madness represents the de facto abolishment of one of the two sins against the Holy Ghost? The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that Presumption is a "vice opposed to the theological virtue of hope. It may also be regarded as a product of pride.

It may be defined as the condition of a soul which, because of a badly regulated reliance on God’s mercy and power, hopes for salvation without doing anything to deserve it, or for pardon of his sins without repenting of them."

Sound familiar? It would seem that this is not the end but rather the beginning of the crucifixion of the Mystical Body of Christ in the modern world.

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" ■

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Amoris Laetitia:

Anatomy of a Pontifical Debacle

By Christopher A. Ferrara

Introduction: Spreading Alarm

As Cardinal Burke has observed in an article appearing in the National Catholic Register, upon careful reading AMORIS LÆTITIA reveals itself to be "a personal, that is, non-magisterial" document, "a personal reflection of the Pope" that "is not confused with the binding faith owed to the exercise of the magisterium." This is true enough, but perhaps not for the reasons the Cardinal expresses, as I show at the conclusion of this essay. But that hardly eliminates the massive problem with this utterly unprecedented 256-page "apostolic exhortation." What motivates all the pages to follow here is that Pope Francis has promulgated Amoris Laetitia as if it were an authentic and binding act of the Magisterium, and that it will be treated as such by his collaborators and by ecclesial progressives throughout the Catholic world. Amoris Laetitia is, therefore, yet another addition to The

~ See Amoris Laetitia/ Page 13

Amoris Laetitia:

Anatomy of a Pontifical Debacle

C. Ferrara/ Continued from Page 1

Great Façade of pseudo-doctrines in the form of non-binding pastoral and disciplinary novelties and new attitudes and "approaches"—all emerging for the first time during that great epoch of enlightenment known as the Sixties.

These include the new liturgy (which the faithful were never actually required to attend), "ecumenism," "dialogue" and "interreligious dialogue." Their combined effects have been ruinous.

And now this. A commentary at the Rorate Caeli blog site said what had to be said for the sake of truth: "There’s no other way to put it: The pope’s Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia is a catastrophe." Voice of the Family likewise recognized what was immediately apparent from a reading of the critical Chapter 8: "Our initial overview provides sufficient cause to regard this document as a threat to the integrity of the Catholic faith and the authentic good of the family."

Even normally middle-of-the-road commentators have not concealed their alarm: EWTN regular Robert Royal, writing in The Catholic Thing, dismisses the claim of the usual whitewashers that Francis has not authorized Holy Communion for public adulterers in "certain cases" (as shown below). That is exactly what he has just done, and Royal laments the inevitable consequences:

Amoris Laetitia hopes to resolve the situations of many in the modern world, but is far more likely only to add further fuel to the holocaust.

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that once Communion can be taken by the divorced/remarried in some circumstances, it will soon be assumed licit by all. And— why not?—by people in gay relationships, who probably have an equally good claim to mitigating circumstances….

On one side of a border between two countries, Communion for the divorced and remarried would now become a sign of a new outpouring of God’s mercy and forgiveness. On the other side, giving Communion to someone in "irregular" circumstances remains infidelity to Christ’s words and, potentially, a sacrilege.

In concrete terms, around the globe, what looms ahead is chaos and conflict, not Catholicity.

Writing for LifeSiteNews, Philip Lawler states: Amoris Laetitia— "The Joy of Love"—is not a revolutionary document. It is a subversive one…. Unfortunately, the net effect of the Pope’s approach will very likely be an acceleration of an already powerful trend to dismiss the Church’s perennial teaching, and therefore a decline in respect for the pastoral ministry he hopes to encourage [emphasis added here and throughout].

Catholic World Report, published by Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., presents a symposium of articles on the document, nearly all of them strongly critical in some respect, particularly concerning Chapter 8, the focus of this commentary:

• Father Fessio’s fellow Jesuit, James V. Schall, S.J., agrees that the overall document has a subversive impact respecting the Church’s teaching on sexual immorality and grave sin in general: "But when we add it all up, it often seems that the effect of this approach is to lead us to conclude that no "sin" has ever occurred. Everything has an excusing cause…. One goes away from this approach not being sorry for his sins but relieved in realizing that he has never really sinned at all."

• Carl E. Olsen calls Amoris Laetitia "profound and muddled," noting that "Francis apparently plays a bit fast and loose with some of his arguments and sources." (Not apparently and not a bit, but actually and quite seriously, as we shall see.)

• The renowned canonist Edward Peters laments Amoris Laetitia’s "more-than-occasional resort to platitudes, caricatures of competing points of view, and self-quotation…" He notes a "serious misuse of a conciliar teaching [in] Gaudium et spes 51" (a veritable fraud to be discussed below) and marvels at Francis’s astonishing opinion that there can be "proven fidelity" and "Christian commitment" in "chronically adulterous relationships" following "the public and permanent abandonment of a previous spouse."

• Eduardo Echeverria, Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology as Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, offers a series of polite but devastating criticisms: "Francis seems almost (not quite, but almost) incapable of acknowledging that an individual is sinfully responsible for rejecting the truth of marriage and family" … "So, with all due respect to Francis, I think that he does imply support for the "gradualness of the law" and hence by implication opens the door to a "situation ethics." (That is exactly what he has done, as I will show on the following pages.) Francis "does encourage the ‘dimming of the light’ because he downgrades the moral force of this normative [moral] order when he speaks of ‘rules’ here. He wants to create a moral space to regard a person as inculpable, resorting even to calling those who want to apply these norms unconditionally (in his mind, at this point " mere rules") as sporting a ‘cold bureaucratic morality.’… This conclusion appears to be a far cry from the Catechism of the Catholic Church…"

Must We Sift the Good from the Bad— Again?

Yet despite such damning (however muted) comments, the above-quoted "mainstream" commentators are at pains to stress the orthodox elements to be found in its meandering 256 pages of promiscuously verbose text. But why should any member of the faithful have to devote any effort to separating out the orthodox parts of a papal document that, as even these mainstream commentators observe, will lead to chaos and conflict in the Church, is subversive, conveys the overall impression that grave sins are all more or less excusable, resorts to misleading citations, dishonest arguments and caricatures of opposing views, and opens the door to the gross evil of situation ethics?

If a world-renowned head chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant served us a cake whose recipe included "1 tsp.

cyanide," we would hardly praise the other wholesome ingredients because of the chef’s prestige. We would throw the thing away and have him arrested.

Where an admittedly subversive "Apostolic Exhortation" is concerned, the faithful have no duty to parse it for acceptable Catholic teaching on marriage and family. Have we not had more than enough of this nonsense? It is not the responsibility of the faithful to "purify" defective papal teaching with defensive post-publication commentaries that "accentuate the positive" while ignoring the negative. It is the Pope’s responsibility to give the faithful teaching whose purity they can trust implicitly in the first place—on every page of every document.

After three years of this sort of thing, we have learned well that this pontificate is a continuing demonstration of the strict limits of papal infallibility, a charism that ends at the frontiers of novelty, where Francis fancies himself a bold pioneer. There is no more telling comment on this document than Father Zuhlsdorf’s initial declaration that "We have dodged a bullet, at least dodged a round to center mass." Nothing could be more revealing of the disaster of this whole pontificate than the inadvertent recognition that Francis is like some active shooter on a college campus, and that we should be glad he missed or only winged us. Whew. That was a close one!

As for those parts of Amoris Laetitia which affirm, however verbosely, aspects of traditional Catholic teaching on marriage and family, we already have that teaching in abundance from innumerable sources of the infallible Magisterium, including beautifully written landmark encyclicals, to which faithful Catholics have already given assent of mind and will. As for unfaithful Catholics, they will not even bother to read the thing, but will simply be content with the news, now being trumpeted throughout the world, that Francis has lightened up on all that "adultery" business. And if, at the end of the tumultuous "synodal journey" that Francis insisted upon and stagemanaged from start to finish, traditionminded Catholics are supposed to exult merely because he did not do what he had no power to do anyway— "change doctrine"—then what was the point of the whole "Synod on the Family"?

The answer to this question is now obvious to anyone in possession of his reason. The Synod was merely the delivery vehicle for Amoris Laetitia, wherein Francis, as I will demonstrate below, finally arrives at the destination he has arranged from the beginning: admission of "certain" (ultimately all) divorced and "remarried" Catholics, along with other habitual public sinners of the sexual variety, to Confession and Holy Communion without prior repentance and amendment of life. The bare doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage is left untouched—indeed paragraph after paragraph of flowery praise is heaped upon it—while Francis’s plan for ignoring it in practice is finally confirmed. Amoris Laetitia widens to commodious dimensions the opening for that outcome already created by the infamous paragraphs 84-86 of the final report of Synod 2015.

But there is more. Exceeding even the most pessimistic predictions, Francis goes beyond his sham of a Synod to proclaim what amounts to a practical amnesty on grave sexual immorality generally as an impediment to Holy Communion, if that were possible. As this essay will show, the big payoff is Chapter 8, whose bizarre title says it all: "Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness." Read that title again and ponder its implications before reading further.

As Francis would have it, the Church will now integrate unrepentant, habitual, public mortal sinners into ecclesial life, even though the Church has always taught, for their own salvation, that they are not living members of the Church

Continued Next Page

Amoris Laetitia:

Anatomy of a Pontifical Debacle

C. Ferrara/ Continued from Page 13

until they repent, are absolved of their sins, and are restored to the life of sanctifying grace. This "integration" plan will include, but not be limited to, those living in adulterous second "marriages" or simply cohabitating with no intention of ending their immoral situations. This is to be done on the pretext that such people are just so helpless in their sins that they cannot be deemed culpable for them or be required to amend their lives at present, and that "mercy" requires that the Church accommodate their "weakness" until they "grow" spiritually at some point in the indefinite future. But what of God’s grace? In the usual postconciliar mode of Modernist doubletalk, Amoris Laetitia blatantly contradicts itself by declaring: "Through his Church, Christ bestows on marriage and the family the grace necessary to bear witness to the love of God and to live the life of communion (¶ 63)."

If only this were a joke. But Francis is deadly serious. Of course, what I say here requires a demonstration, which follows. It will be quite detailed and thus quite lengthy, but a matter this grave must be demonstrated entirely with the words at issue, and that requires extensive analysis, not general characterizations of the document.

PART I A Plate of Subversive Hors D’oeuvres While the focus of this commentary is Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, the preceding chapters contain numerous intimations of the subversion to follow.

These rhetorical appetizers for the main course tend to undermine or disparage the Church’s traditional teaching on marriage and family and the modern threats to both expounded by a line of great Popes before Vatican II. (There are token citations to Pius XI and Pius XII, but nothing of their uncompromising "rigorism" finds its way into the text).

On this score, I highly recommend Chris Jackson’s brilliant dissection and discussion of these tendentious elements, sprinkled amidst pious praise of "God’s plan" for marriage. Among others, Jackson identifies these:

• praise for the supposedly more "equitable distribution of duties, responsibilities, and tasks" in the "modern" family versus the " older forms and models" (35);

• a laughably feeble protestation that the Church "can hardly stop advocating marriage" because this would be "depriving the world of values that we can and must offer" (35);

• the claim that "there is no sense in simply decrying present-day evils, as if this could change things"—when Francis never ceases decrying the "presentday evils" he considers most urgent, all of which happen to be politically correct targets (35);

• the false accusation that the Church’s teaching on marriage "is overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation" versus the socalled "unitive" aspect, when exactly the opposite is true (36);

• the false accusation that the Church has presented an "excessive idealization" and an "artificial theological ideal" of marriage" (36);

• the false accusations that the Church has long been "stressing doctrinal, bioethical and moral issues, without encouraging openness to grace" and has unjustly neglected to "make room for the consciences of the faithful" (37)—an obvious setup for Chapter 8;

• the declaration that "[s]urely it is legitimate and right to reject older forms of the traditional family marked by authoritarianism and even violence," conspicuously failing to specify what is meant by "older forms of the traditional family" (32);

• a rather sly, matter-of-fact mention of "same-sex unions" as part of the "great variety of family situations that can offer a certain stability," even if they "may not simply be equated with marriage" (53)— thus implicitly abandoning the Church’s teaching on the moral duty to oppose legalization and resist implementation of any form of such "unions";

• subtle demotion of the "indissoluble union between a man and a woman" to merely the one "family situation" that has "a plenary role to play in society as a stable commitment"—meaning that "same-sex unions" can have a lesser role, which is quite in keeping with Francis’s refusal to offer any opposition to their legalization in Ireland, the United States and even Italy (52);

• "feminine emancipation" is praised and absolved of any blame for "today’s problems," while those who think otherwise are accused of "male chauvinism" (54);

• the astounding suggestion— from a Roman Pontiff, no less— that because it is "important to have the freedom to realize that pleasure can find different expressions at different times of life… we can appreciate the teachings of some Eastern masters who urge us to expand our consciousness, lest we be imprisoned by one limited experience that can blinker us" (149);

• a flat rejection of the Scriptural admonition "wives be subject to your husbands," here replaced by Saint Paul’s other admonition "be subject to one another," which has nothing to do with the order of authority in the family (156);

• the claim that Catholic priests lack pastoral knowledge of family problems and should learn from the "experience of the broad oriental tradition of a married clergy…"— a veiled indication of what is probably the destination of the next "synodal journey": the beginning of the abolition of priestly celibacy. (202) In short, by the time we reach Chapter 8, where nearly all of the damage is done, the reader is prepared for the Big Reveal.

PART II.

An Essay In Subversion With good reason does Phil Lawler call Amoris Laetitia a "subversive" document that will likely cause "an acceleration of an already powerful trend to dismiss the Church’s perennial teaching." To read Chapter 8, comprising paragraphs 291-312, is to understand that these pages, which explicitly advocate "accompanying, discerning and integrating weakness" in the Church, could not have been more cleverly written for subversive ends.

(1) "Moral ecumenism" and praise of "irregular" sexual relationships; Christian marriage reduced to an ideal (291-294).

Amoris Laetitia attempts to enshrine with the cloak of the Magisterium the preposterous "moral ecumenism" first floated at Synod 2015. According to this repellant novelty, the Church is now supposed to recognize the "constructive elements" in relationships she has traditionally condemned as mortally sinful, including second "marriages" and "even simple cohabitation," so long as they tick enough boxes on a new checklist of "constructive features" that supposedly confer nobility on illicit sexual unions: "stability," "deep affection," "responsibility for offspring" and "an ability to overcome trials in the midst of a storm." (293) Just as "ecumenism" harps incessantly on the "good elements" in false religions laden with heresy and superstition, leaving their practitioners undisturbed in their errors, the newly invented moral ecumenism of the Synod of Francis will now harp incessantly on the good elements in false relationships involving adultery and fornication, leaving their participants undisturbed in sin. In 2016, after the Synod, the concept of living in sin is suddenly abolished, just as the concept of being outside the one true Church was suddenly abolished after Vatican II.

Accordingly, also in line with ecumenism, Amoris Laetitia now informs us that "Christian marriage, as a reflection of the union between Christ and his Church, is fully realized in the union between a man and a woman who give themselves to each other in a free, faithful and exclusive love, who belong to each other until death and are open to the transmission of life, and are consecrated by the sacrament…" (292) The reader will readily guess what is coming next: "Some forms of union radically contradict this ideal, while others realize it in at least a partial and analogous way."

So, Christian marriage now becomes the "fullness" of marriage, while illicit sexual unions of various kinds are seriously described as "partially" realizing this "ideal." In like manner, the Catholic Church is "ecumenically" described as merely possessing the "fullness of truth" while other religions have a more or less acceptable quantum of it. Thus everyone is safe right where he is, although it would be better to have "fullness." The effects of this notion on conversions to Catholicism are obvious; the effect will be the same on conversions to Christian marriage.

The next element of subversion (quoting Synod 2015) is a moral justification of civil marriage and even cohabitation as alternatives to the "ideal" of Christian marriage: "The choice of a civil marriage or, in many cases, of simple cohabitation, is often not motivated by prejudice or resistance to a sacramental union, but by cultural or contingent situations…. celebrating marriage is considered too expensive in the social circumstance. As a result, material poverty drives people into de facto unions." (294) One can only laugh at the Synod’s claim that poverty makes a simple Catholic wedding ceremony impossible, or that "shacking up" is less expensive than living in Holy Matrimony under the same roof with the same person. One is reminded here of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, which sought to undermine Christian marriage and promote divorce by cataloguing various "cultural alternatives" to the divine institution as dry anthropological facts.

(294) According to Francis, "de facto unions" are now to be viewed as "opportunities that can lead to the full reality of marriage and family in conformity with the Gospel." (294) Thus people living in sin are now said to have "part" of the reality of marriage—a proposition as nonsensical as the claim that heretics who reject the very existence of the Catholic Church and practice various forms of gravely sinful sexual immorality are somehow in "partial communion" with her.

What Romano Amerio has called the "loss of essences" in postconciliar thinking—a refusal to distinguish good from bad or even one thing from another with exactitude—now claims Christian marriage and even morality itself. The reduction of marriage to an "ideal" radically undermines respect for the divine institution Francis purports to defend, and the only licit conjugal relation between man and woman now becomes the mere end point on a scale of relational choices, all of which are to be viewed as more or less good. Mortally sinful sexual unions are no longer to be treated as threats to salvation, but only as stages in a "gradual" moral development. This truly monstrous notion of Kasper’s is now Francis’s theme in Amoris Laetitia.

(2) "Integrating weakness" of those in immoral sexual unions; objective conduct and consequent scandal and profanation of the Eucharist ignored (295-299).

As I have noted before on these pages in

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Recalling Why They Resisted…

Protestantism in the Church Since Vatican II

By Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, Titular Archbishop of Synnada, Former Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers

The Liturgical Reform and Ecumenism

To deny that the liturgical reform was conceived and executed for ecumenical reasons would be to deny the evidence.

The presence of six Protestant delegates in the commission for the reform of the Mass is ample proof that it was so. That the photograph of these six Protestants was published on the front cover of "Documentation Catholique" is significant. (1) What could have been the reason for such a Protestant presence if not to examine the prayers, and even the structure of the Mass in order to make possible a union in prayer with Protestants, and this, in the most important act of the Catholic Church. (2) The definition of the Mass as given in the introduction of the Novus Ordo is a Protestant one, and this, in itself, is inadmissible and inconceivable. (3)

~ See Protestantism/ Page 8

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Archbishop Lefebvre -

Protestantism in the Church Since Vatican II

Continued from Page 1

Henceforth, the emphasis will be on the Supper, the Meal and no longer on the Sacrifice. This alone would suffice to justify our emphatic rejection of the Reform.

It is significant that we no longer find the term ‘Sacrifice’ in the new Mass booklets. This has been replaced by ‘Liturgy of the Eucharist’, ‘Supper Memorial’, ‘Celebration of the Eucharist’, all terms which are typically Protestant.

The logical consequence of this is that this part of the liturgy has taken on a narrative aspect, and the sacrificial action of the priest at the Consecration has disappeared. In the Ordo Romanum, on the other hand, all the gestures, postures, and attitudes of the priest, the words spoken in a low voice, demonstrated that a mystery was being enacted, and that the priestly function ‘par excellence’ was being exercised. But from now on, the priest ‘narrates’ that which happened long ago.

This also is unacceptable.

Everything in this reform concurs in deceiving and in fostering the belief that the Mass is essentially a meal; thus, the table replacing the Altar of Sacrifice; the permission to dispense with the relics of the martyrs who followed Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His Sacrifice; the priest facing the people as the president of a family meal, and no longer as the minister of a sacrifice offering a victim to God, face to face with the Cross which is the symbol of the Sacrifice being perpetuated on the Altar. Many more changes could be mentioned that all concur in this shift of emphasis introduced long ago by the Protestants.

This substitution, or shift of emphasis, must of necessity lead—and is already leading—to the destruction of Catholic Doctrine which rests upon the Sacrifice of the Cross continued on the Altar.

It will lead to loss of faith in the Real Presence, and to the ruin of the Catholic priesthood.

This means that no compromise whatever can be consented to in this regard. It means also that those who have taken the Mass along that road bear a heavy burden of responsibility.

To support this new conception, it has been asserted that the Mass is above all the symbol of the "Caena", and the "Caena" was essentially a meal. But both these claims are false.

The Mass refers essentially to the Sacrifice of the Cross as did the Caena on Holy Thursday, and the Caena was essentially a Sacrifice because its entire significance is bound to the Cross, and has no meaning but for the Cross. The lamb that was immolated and eaten is indeed the victim of the Sacrifice, as Our Lord will be on the Cross, and as signified by the separation of His Body and Blood under the species of bread and wine. It is therefore only in its exterior aspect that the Caena can be compared to a meal and, in doing so, fail to perceive the sublime and profound reality underlying this pre-signification of the Cross. (4) The danger of losing the most holy reality of our lives—the source of all sanctification, the well-spring of all graces, the fount of every Sacrament, the backbone of the priesthood, and cornerstone of the Church—must needs make us wary of being taken in by deceptive appearances.

Now, the liturgical reform clearly steers us in a direction which is very dangerous to our faith. Facts are before us to show that the danger of losing faith in the Sacrifice, in the Real presence and in the priestly function, is very real. The cries of anguish from the true faithful and from priests whose faith is strong are rising from every side, yet, it must be conceded, with no apparent result up till now.

Such is the first cardinal point on which hinges the ecumenical orientation of the liturgical reform.

We must now mention a second point on which the Protestants who were present at the study of the Reform must certainly have insisted, namely, to reduce in the revised texts the propitiatory end of the Mass, which is the primary end of the Catholic Mass, of the Sacrifice taking place on the Altar, thereby perpetuating the Sacrifice of the Cross and applying its merits to those who participate and for whom it is being offered.

The Protestants claim that this is blasphemy and tantamount to denying the infinite value of Calvary, the One Sacrifice which atoned for the sins of all men. Faith in the Sacrifice of the Cross is sufficient to cleanse us from all our sins; sins are not really wiped out, but by our faith in Christ they are covered and will not be held against us. According to the same Protestant interpretation, the remission of sins through the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacrament of Penance, and Indulgences, is an insult to the Sacrifice of Calvary.

Accordingly, our modern reformers have thought fit to suppress the near totality of the traditional prayers which used to express clearly the propitiatory and expiatory end of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and in particular the beautiful Offertory prayers, the prayers at the foot of the Altar, the prayer to the Blessed Trinity at the end of the Mass, the Lavabo prayers, and two of the prayers before the priest’s communion. (5) This is, therefore, yet another cardinal aspect of the Catholic Mass, and of our faith, which is being faded out and will eventually disappear from the consciousness of the priests and faithful. We cannot accept such compromises; we must uphold the integrity of our faith in the basic truths of our holy religion.

If there is no longer any propitiation for our sins, there is no longer any need either for the Victim to be present on the Altar, no reason for a Sacrifice offered by the priest; all these hold together.

Now, let us not forget that the presence of the Victim on the Altar and His offering, are the ‘raison d’etre’ of the priesthood that Our Lord instituted; the ‘raison d’etre’ also of priestly celibacy, of the existence of religious orders, and of those who receive the baptism of blood. The entire Catholic spirituality finds its justification in the presence of the Divine Victim on the Altar, and in His offering. Such is, indeed, the life of every Catholic: a life of offering in communion with Our Lord, and even more so as regards the religious life whose profession it is, and the priestly life whose function it is.

We cannot afford to go along with a brand of Ecumenism that puts at stake and supernatural truths which are the very essence of Christian life and of the whole life of the Church.

It is clear that this liturgical reform has been carried out so lightly and in such irresponsible manner by people not qualified whether in theology or pastoral work, that it is well-nigh unbelievable.

The haste with which the changes have been introduced in such vital matters, the very number of these changes, the impracticability of checking translations, the intrusion of the Reform into every domain of the liturgy, even into private devotions such as the Rosary, are all beyond comprehension, and are a denial of common sense.

Further, the frenzied insistence on implementation, combined with a phobia for the traditional forms, is such that it is impossible to see in all this the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

They will not hesitate at pushing the reform to the extreme limit of what is permitted, and even beyond since the validity of some of the new Sacraments is now in doubt due to defect of matter and form. What benefit is there in a reform carried to such lengths?

These are not legitimate and beneficent reforms carried out by the Roman Catholic Church; we cannot recognize the usual marks of wisdom, moderation, concern for the faith and for pastoral needs. In circumstances such as these, our duty is to uphold tradition in order to protest our faith and safeguard the validity of our Sacraments.

• What pastoral need could there by in altering the words of the Consecration, and in permitting erroneous translations of these alterations to appear?

• What useful purpose could be served in allowing the aged to receive Extreme-Unction since they do not constitute the matter of the Sacrament of the sick?

• What pastoral advantage is there in substituting olive oil for any other oil, when olive oil has always been considered by Tradition as necessary to the validity of the Sacrament of Confirmation, any other oil being a doubtful matter?

• What is the pastoral advantage of suppressing two minor orders and the sub-deaconate, when the priest is so frequently called upon to exercise his functions of Exorcist in the Sacrament of Baptism and in all the blessing of the Ritual, and when he is more than ever in need of re-asserting his celibate state which the sub-deaconate so aptly denoted?

All these changes have put on justification, namely, and aberrant and senseless brand of Ecumenism which will not attract a single Protestant to the Faith, but will cause countless Catholics to lose their own, and will instill total confusion in the minds of many more who no longer will know what is true and what is false.

Obedience in such a case can only consist in a refusal to accept these reforms, and not in their acceptance. To

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The Remnant Speaks

Letters to the Editor: The Remnant Speaks P.O. Box 1117, Forest Lake, MN 55025 ~ Editor@RemnantNewspaper.com Thank you so much (and Chris Ferrara)

Editor, The Remnant: Many thanks to you and Chris for your sober, crystal clear and passionate commentary on Amoris Laetitia. The clarity of thought between the encyclical of Pope Pius XI and the recent Exhortation is parallel to the difference in clarity between those who are troubled by this exhortation and those who are celebrating or, in commendable deference to the Holy Father, are finding silver linings in the ominous clouds.

I was brought into the Church at the Easter Vigil a few weeks ago. As a former Protestant minister, I am thrilled to be coming home at last. While God could have and did use many avenues to bring me home, your ministry (and yes, it has been a ministry to me) was very instrumental in persuading me. My wife (who is still a Protestant) is amazed that I converted during the current papacy, and she acknowledges that this is further evidence that my conversion is a work of God and not a work of man. While the Church is and will do far more for me than I can do for the Church, I hope and believe that God is populating his church with others who see through the recent confusion to the truth and reality that is to be believed and defended. God is adding new soldiers to stand alongside those of you who bear the scars of years of service and, it seems, have more battles to fight.

By the way, the current papacy was actually the last hurdle for me to overcome before entering the Church. I delayed for several months, but finally could not resist what I believe was the work of God’s Spirit. I teach high school English, and, strange as it may seem, teaching Dante’s Inferno persuaded me to join. Dante puts popes and bishops and lots of corrupt clergy in his hell, yet his love for the Church never wavers.

In fact, it is because of his love for truth, goodness and the Church that he puts corrupt priests in the inferno.

So, I figured if the popes Dante knew deserved hell and yet his faith was not shaken, I can do no less with a papacy whose standing with God I am not wise enough to adjudicate. It is a bit ironic to me that what I assume is the Vatican’s attempt to reach out to sinners was actually the last barrier that stood in my way. Whether that fault is theirs or mine, I do not know. I pray for you and thank you for your work. And now, please allow me to return your blessing to you — "May God bless you, and may Mary keep you," Erick Apostolic Exhortation

Editor, The Remnant: We are the Church Militant. That is, we are all soldiers in an army fighting a terrible age-old war for our souls and the souls of all mankind.

Like all armies, we need discipline. We need discipline to toughen our souls, our minds and our hearts. Discipline calls for sacrifice, pain and suffering to make us warriors of Christ strong enough to fight the Enemy of mankind.

The effect of the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis is a weakening of Catholic resolve in the name of mercy. It is not merciful, however, to lighten the burden of the Cross we have to carry as soldiers of Christ. The whole of Western Civilization is under threat of Islamic terrorists who have declared time and again their intention to destroy our civilization and our beloved Church.

Now is the time for the Church to reclaim her position as the spiritual defender of the world. If our leaders are weak and utter confused statements, we, the soldiers of Christ, have to toughen ourselves and summon up our courage to prepare for what may be our greatest struggle of the past 2000 years.

The Apostolic Exhortation is a document counseling mercy and tolerance. This document has no place among the strong, clear papal declarations of the past which are still current, still viable and still inspiring. What weapons shall we use? We shall use the weapons faithful Catholics have always used in times of stress and danger: the holy rosary, prayer and fasting. We do not need a document recommending mercy and gentleness, important as those may be. In a time of war, therefore, we need strength, we need resolve. We need encouragement. We need confidence.

Above all, we need the militant leadership of Our Lord and his Vicar on earth to lead us to certain victory.

John Lambert Vancouver Identifying as a Cat

Editor, The Remnant: A man "identifies" as a woman and thinks he should be allowed to use the same public restroom that is used by women and girls.

Well, how about a few other examples using that same absurd template: 1) A man "identifies" as a cat. (Will the owners of restaurants, etc. be told to remove at least one toilet and replace it with a box of kitty litter?) 2) A man "identifies" as a lion.

(Will this man be allowed to urinate/ defecate anywhere he wants to?) 3) A 10-year-old boy "identifies" as a 30-year-old man. (Does this mean he now gets to buy and drink whiskey?

Does it mean he gets to enter into a counterfeit marriage with a 40-year-old man? Does it mean the 40-year-old man can not be charged with child molestation?) A number of people in this world need to get out of their perverted fantasyland and deal with reality. No man, including those who regard themselves as lowercase ‘g’ gods, has any authority to say a truth is no longer a truth.

A man can have his body mutilated, etc.

and it will never change the fact; namely, a man is a man, not a woman. And, that is the truth.

If this decadent culture remains on its present path, persecution of persons who are faithful to Christ will increase. Very probably, this will include the removal of children from the homes of parents who teach them that the homosexual act is an unnatural sin which puts a soul at risk of an eternity of hell.

For Catholics, there is much to be done. This includes trying to be instrumental in bringing about the conversion of people to the Catholic Church (the Catholic Church was founded by our Lord and our God, Jesus Christ). A very good way of being instrumental in this conversion process would be the initiation of a major campaign which would let people know about the message of Our Lady of Fatima.

Patrick Benedict Anglo-Catholic Priest Confesses

Editor, The Remnant: I am an Anglo-Catholic Priest who was raised semi-Catholic but ended up on a long journey in life that brought me to where I am today. I am married with children. I am the Vice President of Chaplaincy for a retirement community and have been for 12 years prior to which I was a trader on the NYSE trading floor. Having discerned my calling to ministry, I went to seminary and followed Christ.

In 2010 after a prolific and long reading of Cardinal Newman’s writings I was moved to return Home to Rome and my family and I converted back to the Church. I found out rather quickly that Newman’s Church does not exist anymore. After a year of going through the process of Deaconate tests and interviews etc, I passed all of them which were admitted to me, but I encountered a rather strong resistance against me because of my traditional Anglican background and conservative views. Also, there was a very noticeable and very entrenched homosexual stranglehold on the Diocese. One priest admitted to me that he was one and that all of the Bishops were. He jokingly said that they referred to him as the "Big Queen" so to speak.

Anyhow, I am not here to rant but to give a brief overview of my situation.

I would love to talk to someone about what a person should do in my situation. I still am drawn to Rome but to me it looks like a thorough apostasy is entrenched anywhere I would go and the Church is in eclipse. Rather, this seems to be happening in ALL Churches today, as a diabolical disorientation permeates Church and society. Until the Lord directs, I continue to be faithful in my calling and bring Jesus to those elderly who are suffering and dying.

I am not bitter about my experience, just confused with what I see today.

In Christ’s Love, Rev. Dr. Name Withheld by Remnant Editor Open Letter to Notre Dame

Dear Mr. McKenna, Notre Dame keeps rolling along unscathed with their serial apostasy and scandal. The occasions are always reported, and reported, and reported, in only some of the traditional Catholic press, and nowhere else. There are apparently no Catholics in the

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Letters to the Editor Cont...

secular media or they have no power or desire to cover the events. Our Lady has long-since been kicked off ND’s bench.

Over 10 years ago I wrote to the president of Notre Dame, with copy to his ordinary at the time, the Bishop of Fort-Wayne/South Bend, John D’Arcy, asking that all record of my matriculation and Cum Laude degree (1957) from ND be expunged because I was ashamed of having gone there and I no longer wanted it known. I sent the copy to the bishop in trying to elicit a reply from ND instead of my request only finding the "round" file. At the time I was (and am still) scandalized by ND’s annual staging of the drama with the name of part of the female anatomy (memory lapse here) and their annual 2-week homosexual film festival, both on campus, of which ND is quite proud.

Doesn’t anyone in the "higher archy" appreciate what ND has been doing for so many years versus the awful words of Our Lord about scandal?

Throughout the Korean War, and I did 2-tours in its 3 years, I prayed constantly to the Blessed Mother that I would be admitted to ND, as it was otherwise only a dream because my high school scholastic record was less than ordinary, having loafed through the last five years of (public) school, after coming from 7 years of parochial school.

Firstly, good Bishop D’Arcy sent me a fat envelope full of copies of newspaper clippings of his fruitless battles with Notre Dame, urging me to not quit but to fight. Though quite sympathetic, I sensed that he took me as a well-heeled alumn with influence to match. It already wasn’t quite enough to be just a "Catholic". Someone titled "provost" responded briefly and entirely "modernisticly" justifying their religion; "there-thereing" me, which is not Catholic, and in reality hasn’t been since glamorous President "Teddy" Hesburgh led - seemingly with easeso many Catholic universities away from Rome in what is known as the "Land-O-Lakes" Agreement, effectively secularizing the adherents, many of whom were Jesuit schools, but not all by any means. I would, for example, like to see the Catholic college rating society, the Newman organization, begin real emphasis in making clear which schools are dishonestly continuing to call themselves "Catholic". At present, and in what is foreseeable, the only ORGANIZED and EFFECTIVE opposition to new-church and newreligion is the SSPX, everything else is mere endless reporting, endless commentary and confusion and nothing else is in sight. I pray for the growth and spread of the SSPX, and that it holds the line until divine intervention arrives...

and may we be made worthy.

Philippe Cavanagh Support Needed for the Pilgrimage

Dear Remnant Readers, I’m writing to you on behalf of a very special cause. Every year, readers see the many students and youths sponsored for the Chartres Pilgrimage. This pilgrimage changes lives but it would not be at all possible without certain people who make it possible. First, readers of The Remnant who give so generously make it all happen. After that, the pilgrimage relies heavily on chaperones, youth coordinators, guides, and of course our chaplain to keep the pilgrims safe, learning and spiritually nourished. None of these people are paid for their time or work. They freely offer their time and service and many would not be able to afford to go if the Remnant did not pay their travel costs.

Since this is a labor of love, not profit, paying these expenses puts the Remnant in a financial hole.

This year we have a lot of youth coming and are therefore trying to find a way to finance fares for our chaplain, head chaperone and assistant chaperone, two youth coordinators, and three guides.

What do these people do? Our chaplain’s job is fairly self-explanatory.

Father Gregory Pendergraft FSSP, is a wonderful spiritual director who has served as chaplain on the last three Remnant pilgrimages. He tirelessly walks every step of the way with us, leads countless rosaries, wheedles permission to use the high altars on various holy shrines and churches where the Latin Mass is then celebrated for the first time sometimes in many years. And Father is always up for a detour into a coffee or ice cream shop for the kids.

Truly the pilgrims would be lost without him!

Our head chaperone, Mrs. Joan Mahar, is a wonderful ‘mom’ to all the youth who come. Always available, helpful, with an amazing sense of humor, she makes everyone comfortable within minutes of meeting each other. Assisted by our other chaperone, Mrs. Carrie Brannon, this year we have two youth coordinators. We do a plethora of jobs, helping Mr. Matt and Mrs. Mahar keep everyone organized, safe and happy.

The Remnant must also provide for the fare and accommodation of our excellent guides, Dr. John Rao, Chris Ferrara, and Jamie Bogle. Invaluable sources of education and information for the pilgrims, these gentlemen know their way around cities we visit, and lead fascinating discussions on history, the faith, Catholic action and politics. It’s not always easy for the members of our team to make this yearly pilgrimage but, again, they do this as a labor of love, taking not one cent in payment for their time and considerable efforts.

This will be my fourth year as a youth coordinator for Remnant Tours, and this year it almost didn’t happen for me. I’m a college student and my final exams conflicted with the pilgrimage. With a lot of finagling with the academic dean and my professors, I got permission to take half of my final exams early. This will be a challenge but, honestly, having served in the capacity for the past three years and quite literally fallen in love with the spiritual graces, the hard work, and the wonderful people one meets on the road to Chartres, I believe it will be well worth it.

Remnant Tours has an official Chaplain and Chaperone Fund each year and donations of any amount are sincerely appreciated. Through the generosity of Remnant readers, the whole Remnant Tours team—chaperones, youth coordinators, guides and chaplain—can dedicate this time and opportunity to doing our very best to help inspire and encourage traditional Catholic youth of today to fight for the honor and glory of God and restore tradition. Those of us who serve in this capacity and help make this pilgrimage a success are indeed honored and privileged to do so, and we see this as an important spiritual journey. We promise to pray daily (and to remind the new pilgrims to do the same) for all the donors who make this spiritual adventure possible for so many young people for the past 25 years. The pilgrimage to Chartres has changed my life, and I intended to do everything I can to return the favor by working to make that happen to other young Catholics.

Please, if you will, support this fund, and, in return, I promise to honor your commitment by being a constant reminder to all those in my charge to remember our pilgrim sponsors back home and to make their spiritual intentions our own, every step of the way. God bless you always.

In Christ, Cecelia Matt Remnant Tours’ Pilgrimage Fund PO Box 1117 Forest Lake, MN 55025 As has been the case for the past 25 years, young pilgrims will walk the pilgrimage to Chartres in the name of their sponsors. The names of sponsors and their special intentions will be carried to Chartres and read aloud each day on the Pilgrimage. Your donations to this effort are tax deductible. MJM

Waiting for Sponsors:

Sara Bischel, Ohio SPONSORED Jack Heape, Maryland SPONSORED Peter Kanzenbach, WI, SPONSORED Christina Kanzenbach, SPONSORED Anthony Mitchell, $1500 thus far Mary Bowen, ID $2500 thus far Martin Bruns, KS $1800 thus far Molly Brannon, WI SPONSORED Robert Seeley, PA SPONSORED Chaplain Fund: $2000 thus far

Archbishop A. Schneider and Cecelia Matt

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Fri, 15 Apr 2016 | Cover | Page 05

Darkening Unto Night

By Timothy J Cullen " The fundamental things apply/As time goes by" (Herman Hupfeld) When the twilight of the West gives way to night, authentic Catholics who follow tradition will be well positioned in terms of protecting their immortal souls from a far worse descent into darkness, a darkness almost immemorially known as Hell. Those who believe that they will finally gain societal power sufficient to create an earthly utopia for their poor, benighted, sadly-less-"intelligent" inferiors may be in for the shock of their lives: "utopia" was always imaginary and always will be in this the fallen world; it’s really that simple.

This writer imagines and is close to being convinced that while there will not be a near-term collapse of Western civilization, night will encroach upon it before some "black swan" event shocks lapsed Catholics into returning to the true fold and rejecting the sentimental and therefore suicidal silliness of the ill-starred "Modernist" uprising within the Catholic Church, never mind the reactions of those non-Catholics for whom the scales will fall from their eyes and the ugly truth of the secular materialist mirage be revealed. That will be the time amidst darkness when the light of the Church’s Truth will begin to brighten the horizon of those who were manipulated into abandoning their faith, at least in their minds if not in their hearts.

Night inevitably gives way to day, and so it will be for the Faith and the Church. As the civilization of the West declines to whatever low point it eventually does, it is quite likely that another of the world’s major civilizations will ascend in secular power. Civilizations rise, civilizations decline, civilizations fall and on occasion rise again, although not to their former heights, or so we learn reading philosophical historians such as Spengler and Toynbee, along with their more recent fellows Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) and Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008), whose seminal works (respectively) Tragedy and Hope (1966) and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) merit reading by any serious student of history, regardless of the extent of one’s agreements and disagreements with the theses put forward by the authors. Catholics, however, in the final accounting are compelled by faith to be optimistic with respect to the longterm future of the Church and Her child, Western civilization.

The "modernized" and increasingly radicalized NO Church of the past half century and a bit is highly likely to be proven to be nothing more than a fad in the fullness of time, perhaps not so long a time, should the present decadence of Western civilization picks up speed: think of the snowball heading down the hill. If civilizational clash becomes civilizational confrontation, as is highly possible given current events, the core values of the separate civilizations will come to the fore; in the case of the West, one can easily draw the inference that traditional Catholicism will thus experience explosive growth, given that it is without question the solid foundation—both religious and cultural—upon which the currently tottering edifice of Western civilization was built. The more serious the confrontation, the more quickly this is likely to occur.

If historian Huntington’s thesis in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order that the great crisis between civilizations is to be cultural rather than ideological, then he is also likely correct in agreeing with "a prominent Indian Muslim… that the West’s ‘next confrontation is definitely going to come from the Muslim world.

It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the Maghreb to Pakistan that the struggle for a new world order will begin’."

1 Religion (secular materialism included), in other words, will return to the forefront of the manner in which civilizations are defined.

Faith, family, clan, tribe and nation: multinational civilizations’ components.

There never has been, isn’t and likely will never be a "global" civilization. The Church had a civilizational authority that transcended kingdoms, principalities, duchies and so on, but with the rupture of the Reformation, nations arose and the identification with the Church as the ultimate civilizational arbiter declined.

Should the West continue its decline, the pendulum of history will begin its arc of return and religion will take on a renewed importance as the embattled West’s inhabitants discover the standard upon which they can rally round.

Beneath the skeptical surface of many a scoffer lies a deep, if untapped, reservoir of yearning for the transcendent: for God, once the scales have fallen from one’s eyes. Civilizational Seismic civilizational disturbances will see this yearning begin to break through surface cynicism. Eventually, the dike of secular materialism may break and religion flood the cities of the plain.

But which religion?

The Bride of Christ over the past half century has become a wife who prefers to serve her children "lite" instant mashed potatoes—manufactured, bland and textureless—rather than feed her flock more hearty fare, one among many explanations of why the NO Church will not serve in societal conditions very different from those of even today, never mind a hundred years ago; only a robust faith will satisfy those who turn away from the pseudo-religion of "scientism".

The conflation of science with scientism will diminish and the disaffected will find their way back to the religions of their forefathers; in the West, that religion is Roman Catholicism in the final account, an authentic and robust Catholicism that restores Christ to His Social Kingdom.

Religious cohesion is strong in Islam in spite of its internecine struggles when it comes to confrontation with other religions; the secular materialist veneer is thin indeed in Islamic societies and their overall civilization and is likely to be stripped quickly in the event of a clash with the West escalating into a crisis, increasingly likely with the injection in large numbers of nonassimilating Muslims into the West, a situation the NO Church is actually and

1 Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster, 1996.

incomprehensibly encouraging.

Christianity has been less cohesive than Islam and continues to be so in spite of fifty years of failed ecumenical overtures and Catholicism "lite". Were a clash to begin in earnest between the Christian core of the West and non-assimilated Muslim immigrants into the West, the voice of the Church must be raised in support of Her own, many of whom have gone astray in no small measure because the Church Herself has gone astray. One must sadly conclude, however, that such a voice would not likely be forthcoming during the present pontificate.

It is far less likely that the Christian West will face a religiously motivated clash with what Huntington labeled as the "Orthodox" (Russia, the Russian part of Ukraine, some Balkan states) civilization or the Hindu civilization; it is increasingly likely that they too will clash with Islam, as they have almost entirely throughout their histories in frontier zones. It is far from unimaginable that the Orthodox and their Christian brethren in the West at some time in the future may make common cause in a confrontation with Islam.

And it is far from inconceivable that Christianity could once again become not merely transnational but "transcivilizational" by returning to its roots in Roman Catholicism. As the old saying goes, "There are no atheists in foxholes"; perhaps in a conflict, Christians will finally reunite under the aegis of a Holy Mother Church restored.

The near future, however, is almost certainly one of further decline for the NO Church if not for Tradition, the lamp that will be kept burning in the window of and for the West. When the darkness deepens, Traditional Catholicism will reclaim the Church and fend off the chaos that has befallen Her over the past half century and for however much longer the chaos lasts. Only Tradition can restore the Church to Her rightful place in the Western civilization to which She gave birth, but first She will likely have to endure the passage of a long winter’s night before the pangs of Her own rebirth begin.

Authentic Catholics are rightfully distressed over what at times can appear to be an irreversible decline in the Church during their own lifetimes.

Distress is one thing, despair another, and the vice and mortal sin of despair, as states the Catholic Encyclopedia, has a "power for working harm in the human soul… fundamentally far greater than other sins inasmuch as it cuts off the way of escape and those who fall under its spell are frequently, as a matter of fact, found to surrender themselves unreservedly to all sorts of sinful indulgence".

2 There is no call for despair with respect to the future of the Church; there is only uncertainty as to when She will resume her spiritual suzerainty in Western civilization and its outlying former colonies.

Catholicism and Islam have coexisted as religions within their respective civilizational sectors, but as civilizations they have proven largely incompatible and remain distinct for that reason.

As Islam strengthens in resolve, both religious and civilizational, Christianity

2 http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view. php?id=3797

weakens. The once decidedly Christian nations, particularly those of Europe, have fallen prey to the would-be global management coalition run from the counting houses controlled by the secular humanists to the extent that they are willingly opening their borders to unfortunates who nevertheless have little or no interest in adopting the values of their hosts, never mind their now-diluted core religion. Prudence dictates consideration of the possibility that an unassimilable and uncontrolled immigrant invasion of Western nations will include those who could constitute a fifth column in the event of open conflict between the Christian-heartland West and Islam, a possibility to which the Holy Father seems oblivious. Perhaps the recent murderous violence in Europe will attract his attention even if the Fatima prophecies do not.

The decadent West seems determined to continue its drunken stumble into the gloaming while the Church tut-tuts any efforts to present a sober evaluation of societal and civilizational decline.

Nevertheless, one wonders if even if it were still "late afternoon", the West might be stumbling for failure to raise its collective eyes from various electronic gadgets and for once gaze upon reality as it presents itself to the beholder bold enough to see things as they are, not as one dreams they might be.

There will be those who will claim that twilight is really dawn if one only looked at it differently. There will be those who will claim that twilight does not necessarily imply a gathering dark but simply a lessening of light.

There will be those who will claim that night need never come in the secular materialist utopia, but said godless "utopia" is in fact a hall of mirrors that will lose its power to distort reality not in the clear light of day but rather when the light fails and darkness renders the mirrors unable to cast back distorted reflections. One way or another, night will fall. So too could Western civilization fall into what will be a genuine dark age for a night that may last for generations, but not "forever".

The flame of the Faith will never be extinguished; no qualification.

Somewhere in a little oases of light in a benighted West, the lamps will keep on burning generation after generation until dawn breaks. The twilight and the night are only foreshadows of the new day to come. ■

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Lives of the Saints...

St. Felicity, Mother of the New Maccabees

Saint Felicity was a noble Roman matron, distinguished above all for her virtue, whose life and death were a great boon for the Early Church in the first half of the second century. This mother of seven children raised her sons in the fear of the Lord, and after the death of her husband served God in continence, concerning herself only with good works and prayer. Her good example, and those of her children, brought a number of pagans to renounce their superstitions and seek baptism in this nascent religion. Her courageously outward manifestation of her Faith in all her daily actions encouraged many closet Christians, so gun shy during this time of marathon persecutions, to show themselves worthy of their vocation.

The pagan priests, furious at seeing their gods abandoned, denounced her and lodged a complaint against her with the Emperor, Antoninus They claimed that the boldness with which Felicity publicly practiced the Christian religion drew many from the worship of pagan gods who were the guardians and protectors of the empire, and that it was a continual insult on them; who, on that account, were extremely offended and angry with the city and, by extension, with the whole state. They added that in order to appease the gods, it was necessary to compel this widow and her children to sacrifice to them.

Antoninus, being a very superstitious man, was prevailed upon by this remonstrance to send an order to Publius, the Prefect of Rome, to take care that the priests should be satisfied, and the gods appeased. Publius caused the mother and her sons to be apprehended and brought before him. When this was done he took Felicity aside, and used the strongest inducements to bring her to freely sacrifice to the gods, that he might not be obliged to proceed with severity against her and her sons. She returned him this answer: "Do not think to frighten me by threats, or to win me by fair speeches.

The spirit of God within me will not suffer me to be overcome by Satan, and will make me victorious over all your assaults." The Prefect was equally unsuccessful with her seven sons who followed their mother’s example.

"Wretched woman," Publius said to her, "How can you be so barbarous as to expose your children to torments and death? Unhappy woman, if you wish to die, die! But do not destroy your sons.

Have pity on these poor creatures, who are in the flower of their youth and can aspire to the highest positions in the Empire!" Felicity replied, "If they are faithful, my children will live eternally with Jesus Christ, but they will have only eternal torments to await, if they sacrifice to idols. Your self-proclaimed pity is cruel and false." Then, turning to her children, she cried, "Look towards heaven, where Jesus Christ is waiting for you with His saints! Be faithful in His love, and fight courageously for your souls." These are the words of a mother who sees with saintly clarity and resignation, the ultimate purpose for which God charged her with the care of seven souls.

Publius, being exasperated at this behaviour, commanded her to be cruelly buffeted, saying: "You are insolent indeed, to give them such advice as this in my presence, in contempt of the orders of our princes.

Four judges, taking the children one by one, tried to overcome their constancy.

They began with Januarius, the eldest, but received for his answer, "What you advise me to do is contrary to reason.

Jesus, the Savior, will preserve me, I pray, from such impiety." Felix, the second oldest, was then brought in.

When they urged him to sacrifice, he answered, "There is only one God, and it is to Him that we must offer the sacrifice of our hearts. Use all artifices, every refinement of cruelty; you will not make us betray our faith!" The other brothers, when questioned, answered with the same firmness. Martial, the youngest, spoke last with a conviction and authority that defied his tender age, exclaiming, "All those who do not confess that Jesus Christ is the true God, will be cast into a fire which will never be extinguished!"

When the interrogation was finished, the saints underwent the penalty of the lash and were taken to prison. Felicity implored God only that she not to be killed before her sons, so that she might be able to encourage them during their torture and death, in order that they would remain steadfast to the end.

According to God’s Providence, it so happened. Fortified by the strength only God can give, this wonderful mother accompanied her sons one by one until she had witnessed the death of all seven.

They were murdered in various ways, according to the individual judges who presided over their respective prosecutions: Januarius was beaten until he died by leather straps capped with lead; Felix and Philip were killed with bludgeons; Sylvanus was thrown headfirst from a cliff; Alexander, Vitalis and Martial were beheaded. Felicity, the mother of these new Maccabees, was the last to suffer martyrdom. After each execution she was given the chance to denounce her faith, but she remained resolute, drawing on an unfathomable source of fortitude and perseverance. It is said that she died eight times; once with each of her sons, and finally her own. They suffered and entered into eternal rest in Rome about the year 164, and their feast day is held on January 25. St. Felicity was buried in the catacomb of Maximus on the Via Salaria, beside St. Silvanus. ■ Sources:

magnificat.ca/cal/en/saints/saint_felicity_and_her_ seven_sons.html en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicitas_of_Rome www.bartleby.com/210/7/101.html

'The Martyrdom of the Maccabees' (M.Bonnotto)

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A New Remnant Series…

What Heretics Believe

What is Lutheranism?

"The Church needs a reformation. And this cannot be the work either of a single man, as the pope - but it must be that of the whole world."

- Martin Luther -

The Lutheran Church is the oldest of the Protestant sects, originating in 1517, when Martin Luther, a monk, infamously nailed his ninety-five theses-worth of personal problems with the Catholic Faith to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. Legend says Luther was inspired to launch this Protestant Reformation while seated comfortably on the chamber pot, which was advanced for his day, complete with a heated floor system and primitive drain.

In early 16th-century Europe, a few theologians and scholars were beginning to question the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. It was also around this time that translations of original texts— namely the Bible and the writings of the early church philosopher Augustine— became more widely available.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church’s practice of granting indulgences to provide absolution to sinners became to some extent abused. Indulgenceselling was even banned in Germany, but the practice continued. In 1517, a friar named Johann Tetzel began to sell indulgences in Germany to raise funds to renovate St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Ostensibly, Luther’s collection of theses was in part a backlash to the problem of indulgences, but they were really meant to challenge many doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church which he imagined were inconsistent with Scripture. The first two of his theses contained Luther’s central idea: that faith alone, and not deeds, would lead to salvation. The other 93 theses, many of which directly criticized the practice of indulgences, supported the first two.

On November 9, 1518, Pope Leo X condemned Luther’s writings as conflicting with the teachings of the Church. One year later, a series of commissions were convened to examine Luther’s writings. The first papal commission found them to be heretical, and a second further stated that Luther’s words were "scandalous and offensive to pious ears." Finally, in July 1520, Leo issued a papal bull, Exsurge Domine, demanding Luther retract 41 of his 95 theses, and after Luther’s refusal, excommunicated him on January 3, 1521.

Although he did not formally break with the Catholic Church until three years after his public temper tantrum, he had already come substantially to his later views on the plan of salvation. The new teachings, however, underwent constant evolution. Before he died in 1546, his system of belief had been propagated in many states throughout Germany and Poland, in the Baltic Provinces, in Hungary, Transylvania, the Netherlands, Denmark and Scandinavia.

From these European countries, Lutheranism was carried by emigration to the New World, and in the United States it ranks among the leading Protestant denominations.

When the conflict escalated to its distinct separation with the Roman Catholic Church, those who accepted Luther's reforms became 'Lutherans.' Based on Luther's own writings, Lutherans still uphold Luther's theological teachings, such as sola scriptura (scripture as the primary authority for faith and life), justification by the grace of God alone, and salvation through faith in Christ alone. Luther's many theological ideas have since been collected into the Book of Concord, which is still an authority in Lutheran doctrine and practice.

The term Lutheran was first used by his opponents during the Leipzig Disputation (a discussion convened in the presence of the Duke of Saxony, who opposed Luther’s new theology) in 1519, and afterwards became universally prevalent. Luther preferred the designation 'Evangelical', and today the usual title of the sect is 'Evangelical Lutheran Church'. In Germany, where the Lutherans and the Reformed have united (since 1817), the name Lutheran has been abandoned, and the state Church is styled the Evangelical or the Evangelical United.

In its doctrine, official Lutheranism is part of what is called orthodox Protestantism, since it agrees with the Catholic and the Greek Churches in accepting the authority of the Scriptures and of the three most ancient creeds (the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed). Besides these formulae of belief, Lutheranism acknowledges six specific confessions which distinguish it from other churches: the unaltered Augsburg Confession (1530), the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531), Luther's Large Catechism (1529), Luther's Catechism for Children (1529), the Articles of Smalkald (1537), and the Form of Concord (1577).

These nine symbolical books (including the three Creeds) constitute what is known as the 'Book of Concord', which was first published at Dresden in 1580 by order of Elector Augustus of Saxony. In these confessions the Scriptures are declared to be the only rule of faith. The symbols and the other writings not contained in Scripture do not possess decisive authority, but merely show how the Scriptures were understood and explained at particular times by the leading theologians.

The chief tenet of the Lutheran creed, that which Luther called 'the article of the standing and falling Church', has reference to the justification of sinful man. Original Sin is explained as a positive and total depravity of human nature, which renders all the acts of the unjustified, even those of civil righteousness, sinful and displeasing to God. Justification, which is not an internal change, but an external one, comes only by faith, which is the confidence that one is reconciled to God through Christ.

Other distinctive doctrines of the Lutheran Church are: Baptism - Although Luther retained that Baptism was necessary for spiritual regeneration, no specific form was stipulated. Today Lutherans practice both infant baptism and baptism of believing adults. Individual Access to God - Luther believed that each individual has the right to reach God through Scripture with responsibility to God alone. It is not necessary for a priest to mediate. The Lord's Supper - Luther retained some semblance of the Mass, but the doctrine of transubstantiation was rejected, turning the focal point of Catholicism into a mere communal supper. Sacraments - Luther believed the sacraments were valid only as aids to

faith, thus giving grace to those who participate in them.

Salvation by Grace through Faith Luther maintained that salvation comes by grace through faith alone; not by works and sacraments. Salvation for All - Luther believed that salvation is available to all humans through the redeeming work of Christ. Scripture - Luther believed the Scriptures contain the one necessary guide to truth. Worship - As to the manner of worship, Luther chose to retain altars and vestments and prepare an order of liturgical service, but with the understanding that no church was bound to follow any set order. As a result, there is today no uniform liturgy belonging to all branches of the Lutheran body. However, an important place is given to preaching and congregational singing.

Luther had previously written against the Church’s adherence to clerical celibacy, and in 1525 he married Katherine de Bora, a former nun. They had five children. At the end of his life, Luther turned strident in his views, and pronounced the pope the Antichrist, advocated for the expulsion of Jews from the empire, and condoned polygamy based on the practice of the patriarchs in the Old Testament. He died on February 18, 1546. Though an unfortunate number of faithful were seduced by Luther’s errors, the hierarchy of the Church came forward to rebuke him. At the Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563, every doctrine and practice which the Reformation denied or refuted was firmly reestablished and codified. In this sense the Reformation was a total failure. Rather than weakening and giving way, the Church was strengthened in her purpose and forged ahead with new resolve and commitment. ■

Sources:

www.newadvent.org/cathen/09458a.htm christianity.about.com/od/denominations/a/lutheran.htm history.com/topics/martin-luther-and-the-95-theses

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This Week at RemnantNewspaper.com

Diocesan Pastor Calls Brother Priests to Stand and Resist, Warns SSPX to Be Wary

by Father Celatus

Editor’s Note: One of the most popular regular features in the print- and e-edition of The Remnant is "The Last Word", by Father Celatus. Father, who is a pastor working in the U.S.

at a diocesan parish, enthusiastically celebrates the TLM as often as possible.

Father’s call to his brother priests to stand and resist what is happening in Rome speaks for itself, but I’d remind our readers that this courageous priest is not part of the SSPX or FSSP or any other traditionalist fraternity or society.

He is a diocesan priest who is protecting his flock and defending Truth at a critical juncture in history. May Father’s brother priests heed his call. MJM Dear Brother Priests:

The traditional Gospel of the Holy Mass on the Second Sunday of Easter is that of the Good Shepherd:

At that time Jesus said to the Pharisees: I am the good Shepherd.

The good Shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and flieth: and the wolf catcheth and scattereth the sheep: and the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling, and he hath no care for the sheep. I am the good Shepherd: and I know Mine, and Mine know Me, as the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father: and I lay down My life for My sheep. And other sheep I have that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.

By now it should be manifestly clear to all but the invincibly ignorant or hopelessly obtuse that the rogue who currently holds the office of pope speaks and acts more like a vicar of an anti-Christ than a Successor of Saint Peter. To put it bluntly, the flock of Christ is being ravaged by a wolf rather than protected by a shepherd.

The recent papal exhortation is but the latest example in a long litany of papal outrages against truth and godliness. For three insufferable years Bishop Francis of Rome has been given sufficient rope to hang himself, leaving no doubt among the faithful remnant that we have a terribly rogue Pope on a Rope.

So The Last Word at this critical time must needs be an Exhortation Word to my brother priests: PLEASE do not allow this rogue pope to mislead souls entrusted by divine providence to your personal protection. We cannot expect— though we have every right to—that the Successors of the Apostles, the bishops, will exercise the authority and grace of their office to publicly oppose this rogue and his abominations. With rare exception they are for the most part either complicit through ill will or compliant through weak will.

Instead it falls to increasingly marginalized or already ostracized priests to protect whatever souls God has entrusted to us, whether in parishes, in classrooms, in confessionals or in some form of exile. Our circumstances vary and we must act accordingly but act we must.

Some priests are in a position to act openly with personal impunity, such as the clerics of SSPX. Bravo and keep up the good work! We can only pray that any regularization that your Society may consider would not in any way jeopardize your religious liberty or compromise your traditional integrity.

For many other priests in the trenches subject to bully bishops we do well to heed the exhortation of our Lord: "Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves." Saint Edmund Campion, priest and martyr of England who often had to minister and witness in secret, would be a good patron and intercessor for us.

The remnant faithful cry out for shepherds; brothers, let us protect our flocks from these ravaging wolves!

And if we are persecuted by our religious superiors for speaking the truth, then like the Apostles who were persecuted by the Sanhedrin we can rejoice for having suffered reproach for the Name of Jesus. As said by Saint Peter, a true Vicar of Christ, "We ought to obey God rather than men"—to include a pope! ■

"I can only reiterate the appreciation expressed by my predecessors, in reaffirming the importance which the Catholic Church attaches to the United Nations and the hope which she places in its activities."

- Pope Francis, Address to the UN, September 25, 2015 -

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Continued...

Superior General of the SSPX Melbourne, Feb. 20, 1973.

Footnotes:

accept this spurious Ecumenism is to precipitate oneself sooner or later into new Protestant or Pentecostalist sects.

(6) Obedience is a virtue intended to direct us towards good, not towards evil. To pretend not to see evil in order not to appear to be disobedient, is a betrayal of truth and a betrayal of our own selves.

It is time that bishops and priests opened their eyes and denounced the danger; time for them to safeguard the former Latin Mass from the Offertory to the Communion inclusive, and to maintain the form and matter of the sacraments integrally as they were, so that none may doubt their validity. It is the greatest service they could render to the Pope, to the Church, to the Faithful, and to themselves.

The criterion of Truth in the Church is Tradition. In doubtful cases, it is there that we must look. To pass on to us faithfully the truths contained in Revelation, such is the role of the infallibility of the Pope and of the Church.

Not by breaking this necessary continuity, shall we serve the Church, but by holding on to it at all costs, especially so at a time when all the efforts of the devil are directed towards breaking it, using the most deceitful pretexts or ‘Updating’, ‘progress’, and ‘opening to the world’.

Virgo fidelis ora pro nobis, Marcel Lefebvre

(Translated from the French by Yves Dupont)

(1) Also published in No.20 and No.34 of "World Trends".

(2) The New Mass is now in use in some Protestant communities. (Ed.) (3) Article 7 of "Institution Generalis" (Editio Typica), reads as follows: "The Lord’s supper is the assembly or gathering together of the people of God, with a priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. For this reason, the promise of Christ, is particularly true of a local congregation of the Church: ‘Where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in their midst’ (Mt. 18:20)." –a) No mention is made of the Mass as a Sacrifice—its essential aspect ("Essential" in the etymological sense). b) The Supper and Memorial aspects are mentioned— which is in order. c) But the mass is further defined as a ‘gathering—which is need not be since a priest may celebrate it alone. d) The priest is described as a ‘President’— which may be acceptable in Latin but emphatically not in English. e) Finally, Holy Scripture is quoted out of context to foster the belief that Christ’s presence at Mass is solely spiritual, not physical—a rank heresy.

(4) Wherever the Archbishop used the word ‘Gene’ I have used the Latin ‘Caena’ rather than the common English rendering ‘Last Supper’. Indeed, it is hardly possible to say that the Last Supper was not a supper, a contradiction in terms, but not improper to suggest that the Caena was not quite the same as the Last Supper, that is did not consist of a supper only.

As a matter of fact, some revelations, and those of Venerable Anna-Katarina Emmerick is particular (Some of which were later archeologically verified in the Holy Land), say that the institution of the Eucharist took place after the Last Supper, and in a different room, all doors being closed. The immolation and eating of the lamb in the first room was done merely in observance of the Jewish precept, and as a prefiguration of the real sacrifice of the New Covenant. But, according to this holy Augustinians Nun, the first Consecration of the Bread and Wine took place during an entirely separate ceremony in the second room. If this is correct, it certainly brings to naught the current heresy that describes the Mass as a Meal only! (Ed.) (5) It is to be noted also that the so-called New Mass no longer has a separate Offertory and Canon proper; both have been merged, so to speak, to form the ‘Liturgy of the Eucharist’—a Protestant term. Likewise, the Foremass is now called ‘Liturgy of the Word’, with many readings added. This augmentation, with the suppression on the other hand of many prayers in the Mass proper, is making the ‘Liturgy of the Word’ appear more important than the ‘Eucharist’. In spite of the devilish cunning of the Reformers, their heretical intention is glaringly obvious. In fact, the so-called Eucharistic Prayer No. II, which is now used almost universally in preference to the other three, makes short shrift of the Mass once the so called ‘Liturgy of the Word’ is over. It is pointless to adduce that the New Mass was ratified by Pope Paul: a papal signature does not possess the magical power of turning heresy into orthodoxy, or a sin into a virtue. (Ed.) (6) As explained a little further down, Tradition is the criterion of Truth, and, therefore, it determines the attitude we are to take. In order to remain obedient to what the Church has traditionally taught, it is sometimes necessary to be disobedient to those who abuse their God—given authority and teach novelties in contempt of the mandate they have. That is what the Archbishop actually means when he says: "Obedience can only consist in a refusal to accept these reforms." ■

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Traditional Latin Mass 101

Calling to Mind:

Unde et Memores

by Father Ladis J. Cizik

In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

The last words of Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, just after the Consecration at the First Mass in the Upper Room, were to this effect: "Do this in remembrance of Me." The actual words of Christ from the venerable Misale Romanum are presented as: "Haec quotiescumque feceritis, in Mei memoriam facietis." These words translate as: "As often as you do these things, ye shall do them in remembrance of Me." The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the complete, immemorial, and unending answer to this Divine directive dating back to the time of Christ and His Apostles.

The very next prayer in the Canon of the Mass is the "Unde et memores" ("wherefore also calling to mind" or "Hence and remembering"). This prayer is an immediate liturgical response following Our Blessed Lord’s command that we (the Priest and the faithful united in prayer through the Priest) should "remember" Him in the context of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. As a servant of the Master (" nos servi tui"), the Priest and the God’s "holy people" ( plebs tua sancta) obediently and faithfully "call to mind" significant events and teachings from the Life of Christ during the Traditional Latin Mass.

In his classic tome entitled The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Rev. Dr. Nicholas Gihr writes that the plural, "we Thy servants," ( nos servi tui) refers to Priests who "are indeed, by their ordination, dignity, and power, exalted above the laity; but they are none the less obliged to serve in love and humility…" In addition, the term "plebs tua sancta" is described in the following manner by Father Gihr: "The words, ‘Thy holy people,’ denote the high dignity of the faithful regenerated by the sacrament of Baptism; they are a people of God ( plebs tua), and as such a ‘holy people’ ( plebs sancta)."

What the Priest and the faithful united to him call to mind, is in the same sense and in the same meaning as that which was handed on to us from the Apostles.

This assures the purity, holiness and inerrancy of matters pertaining to our One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith.

We commemorate and hand on to future generations that precious gift of the One True Faith that has been entrusted to us. When the Traditional Latin Mass is offered, the Church confesses the Faith received from the Apostles - hence the ancient saying: lex orandi, lex credendi … The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as She prays. That is why, prior to the 1960’s, the Roman Catholic Church had avoided even the most minor changes to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for century after century. Lex orandi, lex credendi: any change in the way we worship could lead to unforeseen and unintended changes in beliefs.

Catholic truths and the memory of what Jesus said and did are preserved and called to mind in the Traditional Latin Mass. God’s faithful "servants" and "holy people" do not surrender to the heresy of Modernism by innovating and changing the teachings of Christ and His Church: to accommodate modern times; to reflect the latest theological/ pastoral speculations; or to conform to public opinion polls clamoring for change. Accordingly, we remember that the first "public opinion poll" recorded in the Gospels led to the people crying out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" (Mk 15:13-14; Lk 23:21; Jn 19:6, 15).

In this light, the Unde et memores begins by recalling Jesus’ Blessed Passion ( beatae Passionis). This calls to mind that the Mass is first and foremost the unbloody ‘re’-presentation of Christ’s Sacrifice on Calvary: as we remember, we are also actually present at the foot of the Cross. During this prayer the Priest makes the Sign of the Cross five times over the Blessed Sacrament to call to mind the Sacrifice of the Cross on Calvary and the five wounds suffered by our Crucified Savior. These and all other Signs of the Cross made after the miracle of Transubstantiation are in NO WAY meant to be a "blessing" made over the Eucharistic Lord. The material elements of bread and wine, which were in need of a blessing previously, are no longer present after the Consecration.

As such, Gihr comments: "Jesus Christ, the source of all blessings, cannot be blessed by the Priest."

Next, the Unde et memores recalls His Resurrection from hell ( ab inferis Resurrectionis). This reminds us that through Our Lord’s Death and Resurrection, the souls of the just, that Jesus sojourned with on Good Friday and Holy Saturday in the "Limbo of the Fathers," were set free by Our Lord from that temporary afterlife to the eternal Glory of Heaven on that first Easter Sunday. Likewise, the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass can be the occasion of other holy souls escaping from the netherworld of Purgatory to an eternity of refreshment, light and peace with the Angels and the Saints.

Keep in mind that when the "Apostles’ Creed" declares that "He descended into hell," the hell so mentioned is traditionally understood to include: at its topmost level, the Limbo of the Fathers where Jesus went; Purgatory, another temporary abode; and the depths of hell where the damned will spend all eternity with no hope of release.

This same prayer also calls to mind Jesus’ glorious Ascension into Heaven ( in Caelos gloriosae Ascensionis). To help us to get to Heaven, the Priest, in Persona Christi, offers gifts and presents ( donis ac datis) to the Divine Majesty at each Mass, just as Jesus did at the Last Supper and at Calvary: a pure Victim ( Hostiam puram); a holy Victim ( Hostiam sanctam); and a spotless Victim ( Hostiam immaculatam). The Church does NOT offer Almighty God the insult of mere bread and wine, the work of human hands. Through the ordained Priest we offer the Perfect Sacrifice of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the pure, holy and spotless Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.

The Unde et memores then recalls the miracle of Transubstantiation which took place at the Consecration of the Mass.

Here, the Christ/Priest has turned mere bread into the "Holy Bread of Eternal Life" ( Panem sanctum vitae aeternae) and mere wine into the "Chalice of Everlasting Salvation" ( Calicem salutis perpetuae). It is indeed, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This memory calls to mind the profound teaching of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity recorded in chapter six of the Holy Gospel according to Saint John:

"Amen, Amen I say unto you: Except you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you shall not have no life in you. He that eateth My Flesh, and drinketh My Blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For My Flesh is meat indeed; and My Blood is drink indeed…This is the Bread that came down from Heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead.

He that eateth this Bread, shall live forever" (Jn 6: 54- 56, 59).

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass remembers and brings to fulfillment these words of Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, whereby we are thus able to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Holy Communion under the appearances of Bread and Wine. As the one and only Pure, Holy and Immaculate Divine Victim for our sins, Jesus has deigned to become our Spiritual Food: the Holy Bread of Eternal Life and the Chalice of Eternal Salvation.

The twin fonts of Catholic Truth, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, converge in the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass, which dates back to the time of the Apostles. What was true and holy at the time of Christ and His Apostles and through the centuries must, for the sake of the Church, still be considered to be true and holy today and into the future. In our One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, we call to mind and remember what has been handed on to us through generations of faithful Catholics. We do that best, and in fulfillment of Our Lord’s command to "do this in remembrance of Me," every time the Traditional Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered. Although an angry mob of assembled voices, as at Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate, would demand that we ‘forget’ and call out for the death of the immemorial Traditional Latin Mass, we will NEVER forget; we will call to mind and remember, now and forever.

In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Back in the day, all Roman Catholics were Traditional Catholics

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There Is No Sanctuary:

The Spirit of Vatican II v. Women’s Religious Life

by Hilary White

Why don’t we just all go join convents?

Well, because there aren’t any. Really, like Douglas Adams’ description of the existence of life in the universe; there is so little of it out there that if you were to measure the nearly infinite space around it and divide that number into the number of convents that aren’t compromised by neomodernism, ("novusordoism," "Vaticantwoism"… whatever) you would get a number so close to nothing that it makes no difference.

About 13 years ago, I nearly wrote a book about how the religious life was being revived in the US by "conservative" bishops. By the time I got to the end of the research phase, I realised I had been dead wrong. I was also a Traditionalist.

I get emails from people asking me what I think we should do. People talk to me a lot about the "Benedict Option," as we’re calling it now. Sometimes the people are interesting and say useful things. Here’s part of a conversation about religious life and the restoration of the Faith I had with one of them, a lady who corresponds regularly from Ireland:

Hello Hilary: I hope you feel settled about what you’re about. I wouldn’t mind that feeling myself. I was thinking about what you were saying about Perfection. I had been reading a blog post by another lady stating that perhaps the reason we cannot find good Catholic husbands and wives is proof that Christ wants a pile of us to go into convents and monasteries and pray.

I don’t know about this. The main difficulty is that there aren’t any convents and very few monasteries. Of course, the religious life – and here I mean mainly the contemplative life – is to the Church what mitochondria are to a cell, like a battery that keeps the whole machine running. Tiny, silent, hidden and mainly unthought-of, but without them the whole organism dies. There has never been a time in the Church without people specifically consecrated to the task of constant prayer. And the times of crisis have often been the times of blossoming of this life. But it has not always and everywhere taken the same form.

God, of course, doesn’t need this but in His mercy He certainly seems to have chosen to recruit our involvement in the maintenance of the Church in this way. And it does seem to be a rule that a deepening of contemplative prayer by people specifically called to the work is His usual answer to such crises. We had only the one Athanasius, and history records his deeds, but we will not know until the last day how many of God’s mystical supporters he had, locked in their mortal combat in their deserts.

In the last 20 years there has been a tiny – and I mean tiny – revival of cenobitic life for women. (There is a relatively larger resurgence of contemplative religious life for men that seems to be doing pretty well. There are reasons for this, mainly having to do with the ability of men to be ordained, but that’s a discussion for another time.) But these small and extremely rare – and often threatened – groups cannot be an immediate solution to the vast problem before us. A revival is not the same thing as a restoration. I’m not convinced, in fact, that we should be looking for the latter, if we mean by "restoration" the ecclesial landscape of 1954. Because it is not a restoration of religious life we should be aiming at, but a restoration of the Faith.

The much bigger problem, that of the neo-modernist claw that grips all the institutions of the Church from top to bottom, is going to be an obstacle to the growth and spread of these little communities. A few little clusters of five or six or sometimes as many as twenty sisters, sheltering under the wings of a single bishop – a bishop who may or may not fully grasp the gravity of the situation in the Church, who may or may not be himself only a more broadminded neo-modernist than his fellows – is no basis for a resurgence of the Faith.

As long as the majority of bishops of the world adhere to the New Theology, the New Mass, the New Church – one of the most prominent features of which is its loathing and violent hostility to the ancient Faith and a determination to stamp it out at any cost – there cannot possibly be any general resurgence of the religious life or the Faith that they would carry.

About 2002/03 I was working on a book about religious life, and what I then thought was a revival of its more traditional forms in some places in the west, most notably the US. In the end I got to about 90,000 words worth of notes, and had visited monasteries and communities, mainly in the eastern end of the US and Canada. I attended conferences, went on retreats, attended World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto, and had many conversations.

In the end, I concluded that my thesis at the start had been in error. There was no general revival of religious life.

There were pockets here and there of communities that had been founded or preserved with most of the external traditional trappings of religious life intact. But the appearance was nearly always deceptive. I learned firsthand that with only a tiny number of extremely rare exceptions, nearly all of what we think of as the "new conservative" communities have been very badly infected with the neomodernist Disease.

Even those communities that look on the outside to be flourishing were, upon closer inspection, riddled through with the infection, a major symptom of which, as I noted above, is an extreme hostility towards the only remedy; theological Tradition.

Further, I concluded that what we were used to thinking of as common – large communities with a unified charism with traditional trappings like habits, an ordered communal prayer life and big convents – was an artifact of a particular time and place. Looking into the history of the religious life, I found that there have been many species of consecration for women, like garden plants, and as in a garden many of them have flourished abundantly at particular times and in particular conditions. At the moment, I believe the conditions do not exist in the western Church for the kind of thing we took as normal in 1954. And they will not exist again until the neomodernist crisis has been resolved in favour of the Faith in the fullness of its Tradition.

Now, this does not mean that God does not have His plans laid for a restoration.

Merely that at the moment it seems unlikely to be coming from the sources or in the structures we expect. This is why lately I have become interested in the eremitical life as it was lived during the first five or six centuries of the Church, and as more and more people are turning to it now. I am coming to believe that a bishop who wants to restore the Faith and wants to see religious life flourishing again, should start with these little seeds, for they will prepare the ground for larger and more spectacular growth. The difficulty now in the Church is that after such a long neglect – and in most places outright poisoning – the impoverished soil is not capable of sustaining the showier plants. The form of the life dedicated exclusively to concentrated prayer has changed to respond to the circumstances of the time and place. The eremitical life, while it remains a common feature in Eastern (Byzantine) Christianity, had almost died out in the Western Church after the establishment of cenobitic life by Benedict and his followers. This became the pattern for most of the Latin Church, and if there were solitaries – as there were through the High Middle Ages – they could never rival the sheer numbers and material influence of the monasteries. But the Asteroid of Vaticantwoism has all but wiped them out along with all the rest of the old visible structures – the large targets – of the Church.

What does this leave us with? The dinosaurs are mostly already gone, and the survivors are on their last legs.

What survives? How many people are there out there who are having the similar thought: Perhaps I should pray.

Perhaps I should really be praying a lot.

More than usual. I’m single / widowed / separated / annulled… the kids are grown or there never were any, and life has settled down a bit. There is time and calm enough to start organising the day to include a settled programme of prayer. People in their 40s and 50s have established careers and settled lives, such that it is possible in at least a small way to organise their days to fit in a regular prayer life. We are no longer in our 20s and mad, flighty 30s, desperately floundering around the world trying to figure out what to do next.

How many people of the generation who were the right age, in their 20s in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when it was all coming crashing down, before there was an internet to help us communicate, before there was any thought of building back up? How many who are starting to think now, "I always wanted to be a nun but at the time there was nowhere to go.

And maybe at the time I didn’t want it for the right reasons, and now I’m too old anyway. But things are in such a dreadful state of emergency, I feel I have to do something and I’m in a position in life now that I can spare some thought to it. Maybe what St. Francis de Sales said about the heights of sanctity being open to people in all states of life was true. Maybe it’s impossible to join a monastery, but how can it be too late to pursue a holy life of prayer? After all, what else is life actually for?"

I have been told that the few and far between monasteries with a traditional mindset are practically besieged with

Continued Next Page

What happened to all this? Vatican II happened!

The Spirit of Vatican II v. Women’s Religious Life

H. White/ Continued from Page 11

requests for oblation. I know that Norcia – a rather small place of not much more than a dozen young monks – has, if I’m not mistaken, a couple hundred around the world. (I went down to the Basilica one day last summer and there was a big crowd in the pews, maybe 50 people. I was told by the Oblate master that this was a group from Sardinia, some of whom were making their final oblation that day, and the rest wanted to join up, all from the same village. "What did you do, oblate the whole island?!" Br. Oblate Master smiled conspiratorially and whispered back, "Soon, soon.") Further, an Italian researcher has discovered that there are a great many women my age in this country who have chosen to live this kind of hidden life of prayer, all on their own and with next to no guidance but old books.

Isacco Turina, a professor of sociology at the university of Bologna, has done a book on them and says there are as many as 250 hermits, men and women, in Italy alone, with an average age of about 56. Only a tiny fraction of whom are officially recognised by a bishop under the Canonical provision, but all of whom have chosen a life of ordered, contemplative prayer in the eremitical life. I believe this is where the "revival" is really dwelling at the moment.

What will happen next, if anything, is anyone’s guess. And it is a very ancient precedent. This seems to be a common "emergency measure" that has emerged several times throughout the topsy turvy history of the Church. Taken in its broadest sense, it simply means that the person has deliberately consecrated herself to the task of contemplative prayer, to the "combat of the desert" as St. Anthony the Great put it, and to varying degrees of solitude, depending on circumstances. This would certainly cover the many, many single people, either widowed or even annulled or never-married spinsters who carry on their regular duties of prayer in their state and place in a quiet way, minding their little outpost assignment with as much care as though it were the battlements of Carcassonne.

A good soldier is not interested in the size or importance of his posting; only that he does his duty in it. Whether there are others who are similarly posted to keep watch in the remote places is also not a primary concern. It could be of assistance to him to know, and in this case he will be informed. I think this is the value of the internet at the moment, and for however long it is available to us.

Everything seems so ugly now, from music and art to clothes. I love Scruton and what he writes about Beauty. Lately it seems to be getting worse though, as in the past year.

Abortion and Sodomy will do that to a country. I can deal with the stupid news channels and newspapers and switch them off. It’s more than that though. What I don’t know is how to view the world in a Christian manner with that attitude. The "pick up my skirts and walk away" mentality has hit me recently and I don’t know if that’s because I’m too snobby to look at it and too cowardly to deal with conflict.

I’m afraid we have a bit of a "stand and fight" prejudice. I expect we got it from the movies. But the great spiritual masters – St. Philip Neri and Francis de Sales included – often say that the best way to deal with temptation is to run away from it, as fast as your heels will go. Don’t imagine that you are a big tough superhero saint who can duke it out toe to toe with the world, the flesh and the devil. I know personally that I’m just weak. I become depressed and discouraged easily at the sight of the endemic sin and ugliness that the modern western world has embraced. I fear it and I fled it, and I don’t feel the least bit badly about that.

Evil and ugliness isn’t something we’re obliged to accept. We don’t have to be "cool" about bad things and are not being "snobby" because we find ugliness and sin repulsive, and the simple fact is that our cities have largely become cesspits of immorality, degradation and spiritual and emotional misery. We’re not supposed to like bad things. The fact that we feel guilty about not liking bad things, or not being able to be "cool" about them, is a sign that the anti-culture has sunk its hooks into our brains.

The desire to remove oneself from the temptations of the world used to be understood as a sign of a vocation to the religious life. It used to be accepted as a perfectly normal and positive response.

It’s the reason the Desert Fathers went to Sinai and the reason La Grande Chartreuse was built in an inaccessible corner of the Alps.

While these days, anyone who talks about the eremitical life always starts with the desperate caveat that the person is not "fleeing the world," Fr. William Doyle, SJ, a spiritual director of the early 20th century, wrote that this "hatred of the world" is simply one of the normal signs of a vocation. "To have a hatred of the world, a conviction of its hollowness and insufficiency to satisfy the soul. This feeling is generally strongest in the midst of worldly amusement." Another is to have "a fear of sin, into which it is easy to fall, and a longing to escape from the dangers and temptations of the world."

I don’t think I am called to be a nun, the relief on getting out of the convent when I was on retreat was too great. I suppose it’s about building that little cell in our minds from which we cannot flee.

Well, yes, and this is something that gets said a lot. We should be able to be at one with God and to pursue the mystical heights in the heart of the ugliest city, and certainly there are people who do this. But it’s really, really difficult, and there has never been a rule in the spiritual life that says you have to do everything the hardest way possible.

Something that kind of gets forgotten today is that the Desert Fathers and hermits flee their city life and go and live in the middle of nowhere because it’s easier. The monastic life is meant to make the pursuit of holiness easier, not harder.

Moreover, there is also no obligation to live the way the World expects you to live. We only assume that the correct way to live is deep in the City of Destruction because that is how most people live. But this way of living, which is not in keeping with human nature, has been the result of 250 years of deliberate re-organisation of our civilization. In fact, in the Anglo nations it started all the way back with the Dissolution of the monasteries. It was not until that structure was taken away that there was such a thing in England as a class of indigent paupers, begging and thieving. It started the push from the old, settled, ordered, country way of life and into the cities and dependence on wage labour and the state. It is not normal for human beings to live this way.

City life is a trap; it is too expensive to live in a city, so every penny of your wages goes to merely making it barely possible for you to continue to go to your job. No matter how much money you make in wages, the modern urban consumer lifestyle conspires to make it not enough.

But there are ways to fight this and to organise your life differently. A mantra of mine lately has become, "You don’t have to live like they tell you." As the old movie had it, "The only way to win the game is not to play." And I can tell you from experience, that little interior cell in your heart (which I have always thought of as a garden) is a heck of a lot easier to build and maintain in the country than it was in the city.

Do you think that it’s necessary to literally get out into the countryside to build that cell nowadays? Is that march to Perfection possible while working and living in the world?

I could get a job anywhere in this country, including rural Ireland.

Of course, we can’t say it’s impossible to pursue holiness in a city environment, but as I said above, it is obviously a good deal easier to live materially, and to be away from the constant psychic and moral assault that characterizes life in western cities. There really is no obligation to make things harder for oneself than is necessary. In the 4th century, the point of fleeing Rome or Alexandria or Constantinople to a cave in the desert or a stone hut in the woods was, simply, to get away from distractions, temptations and the constant rattle and buzz of the world.

As things are in this world right now, it is often materially very, very difficult to live in a large city. Rents and house prices are sky high, the cost of living is such that it often ends up being a trap, forcing a person who wants to pay attention to spiritual things to become more and more worldly. The simple fact is that, while wages are lower in small country places, the cost of living, the pace of life and the moral atmosphere are all just easier to handle. Money matters less and you are not a stranger to everyone you see. (Don’t forget, when the votes were counted in the referendum, it was Dublin that wanted abortion, not the country people.) Again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, it isn’t a sign of moral virtue to make your life as hard and unpleasant as possible.

I know St. Benedict removed himself to pray and in doing so he transformed Christianity. How did you figure out if your way of following him was for the right reasons?

By trying it. And by figuring that there was no other choice. I prayed, I consulted and weighed all the factors and signs, but in the end I just had to come here and try it. But at least I know that the reasons I came here were the right ones. It’s just common sense, really, applied to spiritual things.

I needed to live in a place that had the things that I found here – this monastery, this kind of quiet rural atmosphere, even the climate was the thing I had been looking for. I was able, financially, to move here and live here because the rents are very low and there are plenty of decent places available. Simply, this is where I found the particular combination of things I could not do without. As far as motivations go, it was a no-brainer.

And it’s important to understand that I’m not very good at it. The normal undulations, the kind of spiritual sine wave, in which we have our up-days and our down-days, are all going to be magnified by any effort to make it a lifestyle. As soon as you are doing it on purpose and trying to be regular then the ton of bricks falls on you. You realize just how lazy you really are, or just how careless, or how disorganized, or, and God help us this is the worst, how indifferent. This struggle with the self is what happens to anyone who tries to do the spiritual life more deliberately.

Always. You’re tempted to quit, to give up, to just let things slide… on and on it goes. And, I’m told, this is the struggle that will go on for the rest of your life. I’ve only been here a year and four months, so I’m only just the very beginningest of beginners.

I’m pretty sure St. Benedict, when he went to live in his cave, didn’t have as his goal the transformation of Christianity, or the founding of Europe or the development of bee keeping (yes, another Benedictine thing that we do here). Every time I’ve read the life of one of these great founders, in most cases the goal had nothing to do with "founding" anything. It’s well to remember that Benedict is thought to have written his Rule near the end of his life and work. He didn’t think it all up ahead of time in his cave and then march out and try to put it into practice.

We don’t, if we are smart, set out to found things or start things or rescue civilization from the barbarian hordes.

At least, not if we’re not bishops.

Bishops can do those things, if they’ve a mind to. But we lay people can only do the thing we’re given to do right here and now. The rescue of civilization or the Church beset with heresies, is, thank God, not up to us. Our most urgent task is the salvation of our own souls and the Great Rescue will flow from that. Imagine what would happen in the world if 1 in 10 Catholics attained the Transforming Union.

The very elderly nun who founded the community in Ontario that I was considering joining years ago, gave me one of the top five most useful pieces of advice I have ever had, and I have never forgotten it. She said, "Well, no matter what you decide, you’re going to have to become a saint, one way or another.

Better and easier to do it in this life than the next." ■

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derived from divine law and transcends the domain of positive ecclesiastical laws…."

reference to Synod 2015’s final report, the Church’s perennial ban on the reception of Holy Communion by public adulterers in purported "second marriages" is no mere changeable discipline. Rather, as the Pontifical Council for Interpretation of Legislative Texts observed in 2000, rejecting the very effort Francis has been spearheading for the past three years, that discipline, while enshrined in Canon 915, "is

The issue is not the subjective culpability in particular cases of the divorced and "remarried," as implausible as the claim that they are unaware of their sinful condition may be. Rather, the real issue as framed by the Pontifical Council is this: [T]he reception of the Body of Christ when one is

publicly

unworthy constitutes an

objective

harm to the ecclesial communion: it is a behavior that affects the rights of the Church and of all the faithful to live in accord with the exigencies of that communion. In the concrete case of the admission to Holy Communion of faithful who are divorced and remarried, the scandal, understood as an action that prompts others towards wrongdoing, affects at the same time both the sacrament of the Eucharist and the indissolubility of marriage.

That scandal exists even if such behavior, unfortunately, no longer arouses surprise: in fact, it is precisely with respect to the deformation of the conscience that it becomes more necessary for Pastors to act, with as much patience as firmness, as a protection to the sanctity of the Sacraments and a defense of Christian morality, and for the correct formation of the faithful.

Thus, Amoris Laetitia purports to abolish a discipline that cannot be abolished without violating divine law. It does so by the two-step of a general "integration" according to "pastoral discernment" conducted by parish priests, followed ultimately by admission to the sacraments in "certain cases" according to the same "discernment."

First, "integration." Here Francis gets down to the business of "playing fast and loose" with his arguments and sources, to recall Carl Olsen’s comment. Just as Synod 2015 did, Francis misleadingly cites John Paul II for a supposed "law of gradualness" in obeying "the objective demands of the law." (295) But in Familiaris consortio John Paul II was actually speaking of

spiritual

progress while rejecting any notion of "gradual" acceptance of moral precepts that bind all men: And so what is known as "the law of gradualness" or step-by-step advance cannot be identified with "gradualness of the law," as if there were different degrees or forms of precept in God’s law for different individuals and situations. ( Familiaris consortio, 34).

As we shall see, Francis is proposing precisely that there be "different degrees or forms of precept in God’s law for different individuals and situations."

He contrives to avoid the accusation by asserting that while the moral law is the same for all, the duty of obedience to the law can vary according to "concrete circumstances," which is just "gradualness of the law" in disguise or situation ethics by another name.

Next, "Discernment of ‘Irregular Situations.’" Here Francis—quoting the Synod he stacked with progressives to insure generation of the verbiage on which he now relies—begins to hurl revolutionary thunderbolts: The way of the Church is not to condemn anyone for ever… there is a need ‘to avoid judgements which do not take into account the complexity of various situations’ and ‘to be attentive, by necessity, to how people experience distress because of their condition….

(296) It is a matter of reaching out to everyone, of needing to help each person find his or her proper way of participating in the ecclesial community and thus to experience being touched by an "unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous" mercy. No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves. (297) In other words, people living in an objective condition of mortal sin need not repent and amend their lives because "no one can be condemned for ever."

Apparently, Francis envisions a kind of statute of limitations on mortal sin, upon the expiration of which it no longer constitutes any real impediment to ecclesial life. No, the "weakness" of everyone must be "integrated" sooner or later! Above all, that of the divorced and "remarried."

Francis next provides some suggested criteria for a new procedure of ranking the quality of relations constituting public adultery: The divorced who have entered a new union, for example, can find themselves in a variety of situations, which should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for a suitable personal and pastoral discernment.

One thing is a second union consolidated over time, with new children, proven fidelity, generous self giving, Christian commitment, a consciousness of its irregularity and of the great difficulty of going back without feeling in conscience that one would fall into new sins. (298) Incredibly enough, we have a Pope who seriously proposes that some public adulterers should be given First Class treatment, while others perhaps should remain in Coach, at least for part of their "journey" toward "integration." That a Roman Pontiff could declare in a papal document that public adulterers of any kind exhibit "fidelity" and "Christian commitment" makes one wonder if Francis thinks that, after fifty years of "ecumenical dialogue," it is time for the Catholic Church to emulate the Anglican Church in recognition of Henry VIII’s groundbreaking foray into "Catholic divorce." All of this, by the way, is straight from the "thought" of Cardinal Kasper.

Performing his next sleight of hand with sources, Francis again quotes John Paul II’s Familiaris consortio (84), this time for the proposition that "The Church acknowledges situations ‘where, for serious reasons, such as the children’s upbringing, a man and woman cannot satisfy the obligation separate.’" (298) There are no ellipses to indicate the missing words before and after, which Francis clearly wishes to conceal. The complete sentence reads: "This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they " take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples."

What does Francis have to say about John Paul II’s teaching, also the constant teaching of the Church, that divorced and civilly remarried couples who cannot separate because of children must live in complete continence and abstain from all further adulterous sexual relations?

It defies belief, but here it is, buried in a footnote to the misleadingly cropped quotation: In such situations, many people, knowing and accepting the possibility [!] of living "as brothers and sisters" which the Church offers them, point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are lacking, "it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of the children suffers" ( Second Vatican Ecumenical Council,

Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,

Gaudium et Spes, 51).

What besides horror mingled with fear should the faithful experience when they see a Roman Pontiff suggesting that people living in adultery need "intimacy" in order to remain "faithful" to their partners in adultery and for the good of the children. To that end, the footnote further misrepresents the teaching of John Paul II by reducing his affirmation of a positive moral duty in such cases to a mere "possibility" that the Church "offers."

Worse, the same strategic footnote contains still another misrepresentation of source material. The quotation from paragraph 51 of Gadium et spes actually refers to validly married couples who avoid marital relations so as not to have children, thus harming their relationship.

Moreover, the quotation is wholly inaccurate. As the English text at the Vatican website reads: "But where the intimacy of married life is broken off, its faithfulness can sometimes be imperiled and its quality of fruitfulness ruined, for then the upbringing of the children and the courage to accept new ones are both endangered." Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, the phrase "courage to accept new ones" is missing from Francis’s quotation. Turning to his primary aim in "integrating weakness"—Holy Communion for the divorced and "remarried"—Francis next "agrees" with what his manipulated Synod declared: [T]he baptized who are divorced and civilly remarried need to be more fully integrated into Christian communities in the variety of ways possible, while avoiding any occasion of scandal…. Their participation can be expressed in different ecclesial services, which necessarily requires discerning which of the various forms of exclusion currently practised

in the liturgical, pastoral, educational and institutional framework, can be surmounted.

(299) Thus, all restrictions on the performance of ecclesial functions by public adulterers,

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The New Synodal Church at Work: Cardinals Dolan (L), Kasper and Wuerl

Amoris Laetitia:

Anatomy of a Pontifical Debacle

C. Ferrara/ Continued from Page 15

from being godparents and "Eucharistic ministers" to teaching religion classes, are now to be reviewed as unjust "forms of exclusion." The outcome Francis desires is that all such restrictions are eventually abolished, as he demanded more than a year ago: They are not excommunicated, that is true. But they cannot be godparents at baptism, they cannot read the readings in the mass, they cannot give communion, they cannot teach catechism, they cannot do some seven things. I have the list here.

Stop! If I take account of this it seems they are excommunicated de-facto… Why can’t they be godparents?

This "integration" of adulterers (and cohabiters), which would rather conveniently benefit Francis’s divorced and "remarried" sister and cohabiting nephew, is to be accomplished through "[c]onversation with the priest, in the internal forum," where "discernment" will assess the public sinner’s "humility, discretion and love for the Church" before granting "exceptions." The exceptions will not be granted "quickly," but will ultimately be granted. (299) In sum, Francis declares a new kind of "pastoral discernment" that ignores objective conduct in favor of the programmatically indulgent presumption that people living in a state of public adultery are somehow subjectively blameless. According to this approach, as Fr. Schall observes, it would be impossible to say that anyone is "subjectively" in a state of mortal sin that would impede his participation in any aspect of ecclesial life no matter what his "objective" state of behavior. This idea will eventuate in an explicit opening to Confession and Holy Communion, discussed below.

(3) The moral law reduced to "general rules"; Saint Thomas abused (301-302).

In the already infamous paragraph 301, Francis next delivers an even broader revolutionary proclamation: "Hence it can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are depriv(ed of sanctifying grace." This ipse dixit covers cohabiters, "remarried" divorcees and presumably even "partners" in the "samesex unions" that Francis has already cited (53) as an example of the "great variety of family situations that can offer a certain stability" even if they may not "simply be equated" with marriage.

Note the key phrase "no longer"—that is, now that Francis is Pope, but not before him. Amazingly, Francis does not even care whether those who are living in sin know that the Church teaches they are living in sin, which teaching he demotes to a "rule": "More is involved here than mere ignorance of the rule. A subject may know full well the rule, yet have great difficulty in understanding ‘its inherent values,’ or be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin." (301) It is rhetorically essential to call the moral law a "rule" because the phrase "he may know well the moral law yet have great difficulty in understanding its inherent values" connotes a sociopath, not a poor "abandoned" sinner whose "love" is "wounded."

The Catholic mind staggers before the spectacle of the Pope who, for rhetorical convenience, reduces the moral law to a set of "rules" from which one can be excused if he does not appreciate their "value" or his "concrete situation" supposedly makes compliance impossible—as if the precepts of the natural law were a set of traffic regulations. Saint Paul infallibly teaches that "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it (1 Cor. 10:13)." Francis, however, apparently doesn’t agree with the word of God on this particular point. Neither did Martin Luther, whose launching of the "Reformation" Francis will be celebrating next year in Sweden, including a joint liturgy with Lutheran ministers whose churches reject the indissolubility of marriage, condone contraception and abortion, ordain women and practicing homosexuals as "priests" and "bishops," and support the legalization of "same-sex unions" that Francis has consistently failed to oppose.

Surely, this is just a coincidence.

In support of this enormity, Francis argues that Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that "someone may possess grace and charity, yet not be able to exercise any one of the virtues well; in other words, although someone may possess infused moral virtues, he does not clearly manifest the existence of one of them, because the outward practice of that virtue is rendered difficult." Here Francis misleadingly quotes Saint Thomas’s observation, not his teaching, in the Summa Theologiae that "Certain saints are said not to possess certain virtues, in so far as they experience difficulty in the acts of those virtues, even though they have the habits of all the virtues."

But this citation to the Summa is utter nonsense. Infused virtues, unlike the corresponding acquired ones, are animated by supernatural charity, not merely the habit of acting virtuously.

Saint Thomas is not discussing sinners whose objective conduct—in this case, adultery, as Our Lord Himself calls it—contradicts the very existence of an infused virtue, or any virtue, of chastity. Rather, Thomas’s subject is saints who possess all the infused virtues, can exercise them, albeit with some difficulty, and do not act habitually in a manner that is even objectively sinful. What a despicable abuse of the Angelic Doctor!

Proceeding with his rules theory of the moral law, in paragraph 302 Francis cites two sections of the new Catechism (§§ 1735 and 2352) concerning factors that might diminish subjective culpability for particular sinful actions. But that principle of moral theology applies to individual sinful acts, such as masturbation (§2352), not a continuing state of public immorality and consequent scandal without repentance or any firm purpose of amendment.

As to public adultery in particular, the two sections of the Catechism that Francis studiously fails to mention even once in 256 pages demolish his theory: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’… If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law [and] and cannot receive Eucharistic communion as long as this situation persists….

Reconciliation through the sacrament of Penance can be granted only to those who have repented for having violated the sign of the covenant and of fidelity to Christ, and who are committed to living in complete continence." (§ 1651) Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign. Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery… (§ 2384) Evidently hoping to forestall or mitigate what he knew was a coming disaster, the retired curial Cardinal Walter Brandmüller issued a statement only days prior to the publication of Amoris Laetitia (since repeated in substance) which, in keeping with the Catechism and the Church’s invariant teaching, declares that one "who, in spite of an existing marriage bond, enters after a divorce into a new civil union, is committing adultery" and "cannot receive either absolution in Confession nor the Eucharist (Holy Communion) [if he] is not willing to put an end this situation…" Obviously there can be no "exceptions" for certain individuals because "What is fundamentally impossible for reasons of Faith is also impossible in the individual case." The Cardinal concluded: "The post-synodal document, Amoris Laetitia, is therefore to be interpreted in light of the above-presented principles, especially since a contradiction between a papal document and the Catechism of the Catholic Church would not be imaginable."

For Francis, however, the contradiction is quite imaginable. He apparently thinks he can make it a reality simply by declaring it so without the least regard for the contrary teaching of his predecessors— indeed, without regard for truth itself, which he has already twisted repeatedly to get this far. Francis deems it sufficient that during his own minutely stagemanaged sham of a Synod "many Synod Fathers"—including those with whom he stacked the proceeding—were of the view that "[u]nder certain circumstances people find it icult to act differently," so that "while upholding a general rule, it is necessary to recognize that responsibility with respect to certain actions or decisions is not the same in all cases."

(302) According to Francis’s moral theory, every moral precept would be a "general rule" admitting of exceptions according to "difficult" circumstances. His theory is founded on nothing more than his own opinion, quotations from his own documents and ad-libbed homilies, misleading references to the teaching of Saint Thomas, and whatever appreciation for situation ethics he might have imbibed during his studies and ecclesiastical career.

(4) Supremacy of the individual conscience over morality as "rules" (303).

Next, in paragraph 303, Francis decrees a new supremacy of the individual conscience over the Church’s "rules" on marriage and family. The Drudge Report trumpeted this development under the headline "Age of the Individual Conscience." Quoth Francis: "Recognizing the influence of such concrete factors, we can add that individual conscience needs to be better

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Pope Francis and his 'favorite theologian', Walter Cardinal Kasper

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incorporated

into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage."

Apparently, Francis seriously believes that all the Popes, saints, great theologians and doctors of the Church somehow overlooked this important task during the 2,000 years that preceded his arrival from Buenos Aires.

Leaving no doubt of the magnitude of his theological coup attempt, Francis even declares that a

well-formed

conscience, which

knows

what the "general rule" requires, can

still

claim an exemption from the "rule" if it "honestly" decides God does not require full compliance at the moment. Believe it or not, the following is the opinion of a Roman Pontiff: Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and to encourage an evergreater trust in God’s grace.

Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully

the objective ideal.

It seems impossible to believe that a Roman Pontiff could promulgate a document declaring that a well-formed conscience is excused even from obedience to the moral law it knows if less than obedience is what the actor deems sufficient "for now," and that God will approve of this departure from "the ideal." How is this passage alone anything other than a sign of an apocalyptic turn of events in the Church?

(5) Natural Law attacked; Saint Thomas abused again (304-305).

In paragraph 304 Francis expands his idea that moral precepts are "general rules" not always applicable to particular situations: "It is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual’s actions correspond to a general law or rule, because that is not enough to discern and ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete life of a human being."

This echoes the previous paragraph’s incredible assertion that even a wellformed conscience may inform an actor that, "for now," God does not wish him to comply with the "general rule," which now joins marriage in a kind of Platonic realm of the "ideal."

Here Francis perpetrates another shameful abuse of the teaching of Saint Thomas in the Summa, deceptively quoted out of context (like the teaching of John Paul II in Familiaris consortio) in order to attack the natural law itself: Although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects… In matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles; and where there is the same rectitude in matters of detail, it is not equally known to all… The principle will be found to fail, according as we descend further into

detail. (ST, I-II, Q. 94, art. 4).

Based on this cropped quotation, Francis dares to enlist the Angelic Doctor in support of his claim that "It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations."

This is simply outrageous. Saint Thomas is not discussing "formulation" of "rules" at all, as God inscribes the basic precepts of the natural law in human nature as "the first principles of human actions." Rather, he is addressing the human failure to draw the right conclusions from application of universally applicable, always valid, natural law principles to more complicated factual scenarios. An example Thomas gives is whether goods in trust must always be restored to their owner even if the owner intends to use them for an immoral purpose.

Other examples would be what exactly constitutes usury or what forms of taking constitute theft. These detailed applications are often the subject of written law (such as the laws against usury). And if the morally wrong conclusions are reached in these cases, which Thomas describes as "some few," it is only because "reason is perverted by passion, or evil habit, or an evil disposition…" (I-II, Q. 94, Art.

4).

Thus, in context, when Saint Thomas says that a principle of the natural law "will be found to fail according as we descend further into detail" he means only that it fails in application to more complex matters because of defects in reason, not that the principle itself is some sort of inadequate "formulation" that cannot cover the situation if rightly applied. The failure lies with the actor, not with the underlying natural law principle. Moreover, the Church’s teaching authority is divinely commissioned to rectify just such failures by way of her moral theology.

In any case, the universal moral precept forbidding adultery does not involve any complex application to divorce and "remarriage." As noted above, the Catechism that Francis ignores states simply that "divorce is a grave offense against the natural law." It was Our Lord himself who declared to all of humanity that whoever puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery. There are no "details" that permit "hardship exceptions" to this divinely expressed application of the natural law binding all men. Neither, therefore, can there be any "exceptions" to the Church’s intrinsically connected sacramental discipline down through the centuries, as Cardinal Brandmüller observes. That discipline is "based on Sacred Scripture" as John Paul II teaches in the same apostolic exhortation from which Francis misleadingly quotes out of context. And it is Francis himself who has a divinely imposed duty to affirm this, rather than pretending that a life of continuing public adultery involves the kind of obscure matter Saint Thomas had in view.

This is the umpteenth instance of Francis "playing fast and loose" with sources over the past three years. A team of Spanish diocesan priests has demonstrated meticulously that this tendency pervades the entire pontificate.

Even Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press is constrained to note that in Amoris Laetitia Francis is "selectively citing his predecessors" and that while he frequently cited John Paul, whose papacy was characterized by a hardline insistence on doctrine and sexual morals, he did so selectively. Francis referenced certain parts of John Paul’s 1981 ‘Familius [sic] Consortio,’ the guiding Vatican document on family life until Friday, but he omitted any reference to its most divisive paragraph 84, which explicitly forbids the sacraments for the divorced and civilly remarried.

It is actually worse than that: Francis does cite part of paragraph 84, while leaving out the key phrases that extinguish his position.

Saint Thomas would be horrified at the abuse to which Francis is subjecting his teaching, twisting it into something that more closely resembles John Locke’s confused and incoherent attempt at a natural law philosophy, which I explore in my book on the rise and rapid fall of political modernity. Locke denied that the precepts of the natural law are inscribed in man’s rational soul and innately incline him to act rightly in the exercise of his reason despite the effects of Original Sin (which Locke also essentially denied). And what do we see in Amoris Laetetia but a kind of Lockean attack on the traditional Catholic understanding of the natural law as Saint Thomas expounds it. In paragraph 305 we read the following: Along these same lines, the International Theological Commission has noted that " natural law could not be presented as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather, it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions.

In essence, Francis declares—contrary to all of Tradition and divine revelation itself (cf. Rom. 2:14-15)—that the natural law is no law at all, engraved in human nature and inclining reason toward the good, but merely a sort of externalized guideline to "inspire" our "deeply personal" decisions! For this astounding proposition Francis cites, at footnote 350, nothing more than a document of the International Theological Commission, which has no teaching authority whatsoever. The document is entitled "In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at Natural Law."

The audacity at work here is breathtaking. According to Francis’s "new look at natural law," a moral precept disobeyed is now to be viewed, not only as a "general rule," but merely an inspiring goal that may

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Amoris Laetitia:

Anatomy of a Pontifical Debacle

C. Ferrara/ Continued from Page 17

not be reachable "amid the concrete complexity" (303) of each individual’s situation. In short, a form of situation ethics Catholics cannot possibly accept as an authentic teaching of the Magisterium.

(6) The Poison Pill Footnote; admission of public adulterers and other habitual sexual sinners to the sacraments (305-312).

Finally, in paragraph 305 we encounter the poison pill the entire document and the entire "Synodal process" were clearly designed to administer to the Church: authorization for the admission of public adulterers, and by implication any sort of habitual public sinner, to Confession and Holy Communion in "certain cases." This means, in short order, every case. For as Francis revealed last November to his trusted friend, the militant atheist Eugenio Scalfari, in another interview whose contents neither Francis nor the Vatican denied: "This is the bottom line result, the de facto appraisals are entrusted to the confessors, but at the end of faster or slower paths, all the divorced who ask will be admitted."

Reaching the crescendo of his threeyear- long demagogic assault on the Church’s imaginary pharisaical "rigorism," including that of John Paul II, Francis now announces: "a pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular’ situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives."

Quoting his own previous eruption of ire at the conservative prelates who dared to stand up to him during Synod 2015, Francis opines that merely to apply moral laws would "bespeak the closed heart of one used to hiding behind the Church’s teachings, ‘sitting on the chair of Moses and judging at times with superiority and superficiality difficult cases and wounded families’."

What a strange accusation to hurl at the very prelates who opposed Francis’s relentless drive for a neo-Mosaic return to the Old Testament dispensation respecting divorce, but rather defended its perpetual abolition by Christ, whose vicar Francis is supposed to be. But then Francis has spent much of the past three years doing exactly what he accuses others of doing—above all, deriding observant Catholics he deems inadequate, almost every day.

Francis will have none of this "hiding behind the Church’s teachings," for by "thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God." Yes, the Roman Pontiff has actually published a document whose very theme is the slogan of the empty modern mind: "Well, you see, not everything is black and white." No, there are so many shades of grey— probably at least fifty.

And then outcome the faithful have been dreading since the "synodal journey" began. With little fanfare and a buried footnote, the synod train at least reaches its destination. Paragraph 305 declares: "Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin… a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end." And what does Francis mean by the "Church’s help"? He means Confession and Holy Communion, as fateful footnote 351 states: In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, "I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy" (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist "is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak" (ibid., 47: 1039).

The phrase "prize for the perfect" is taken directly from the intervention by Cardinal Kasper with which Francis began the whole charade of a "Synod on the Family": Kasper’s speech to the consistory of February 2015 in which he unveiled the "Kasper proposal"— the only address Francis permitted, which he later hailed as "beautiful and profound." The circle of manipulation is completed as Francis finally reveals that the "Kasper proposal" was his proposal all along.

Leaving no doubt of the matter, Cardinal Lorenzo ("the book thief") Baldisseri made this clear even to the most obtuse observer at the press conference where he and the other Modernist subversive Francis tapped for the occasion presented Amoris Laetitia to the public: Pope Francis reiterates the need to discern carefully the situation in keeping with St.

John Paul II’s Familiaris consortio. "Discernment must help to find possible ways of responding to God and growing in the midst of limits.

By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God."

[T]he Pope affirms, in a humble and simple manner, in a note that the help of the sacraments may also be given in " certain cases." But for this purpose he does not offer us case studies or recipes, but instead simply reminds us of two of his famous phrases: "I want to remind priests that the confessional should not be a torture chamber but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy" and the Eucharist "is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak."

So, the confessional is a "torture chamber" unless some—meaning ultimately all—unrepentant public adulterers are, at least eventually, allowed to enter without repentance, avoid any commitment to amendment of life, and leave with a declaration of absolution for a continual mortal sin they will simply continue committing because their "weakness" is now being "integrated". Otherwise, everything would be "black and white."

Is this for real? Indeed it is. Consider the moral catastrophe Francis has just unleashed: A public adulterer in a second "marriage" is admitted to Holy Communion as part of a process of "discernment" that allows "integration" while he "gradually" moves toward an acceptance of Church teaching. Yet once he is made aware by the priest conducting this "discernment" that the Church teaches that his condition constitutes adultery—as if he didn’t know before!—how can he continue to claim inculpable ignorance of the moral law? Of course he cannot. But, as we saw above, Francis has the answer: even those who know the law are now to be excused from compliance by way of pastoral "discernment" because they find it "very difficult to act differently (302)" on account of "mitigating factors (301302)."

This logic obviously would lead to the practical elimination of mortal sin as an impediment to Holy Communion on the part of any and all habitual sinners who find it "very difficult" to change. In which case, as Fr. Schall wonders, why would anyone need to go to Confession at all? "If this conclusion is correct," he writes, "we really have no need for mercy, which has no meaning apart from actual sin and its free recognition….

Therefore, there is no pressing need to concern oneself too much with these situations."

As we shall see below, however, Francis apparently thinks he can limit the damage to a kind of amnesty on mortal sins of a sexual variety only.

Some neo-Catholic first responders to the scene of this disaster argue desperately that footnote 351 means only that people living in sin can go to Confession, be absolved, and receive Communion so long as they have a firm purpose of living chastely. But this time not even the usually indefatigable Jimmy Akin is willing to labor in denial of the obvious. He simply admits the truth—at least in part. In answer to the question "Does the document foresee any possibility for sacramentally absolving and giving Communion to people who are civilly remarried if they are not living as brother and sister?" Akin writes: It does…. The document thus envisions administering sacramental absolution and holy [sic] Communion to those living in objectively sinful situations who are not mortally culpable for their actions due to various cognitive or psychological conditions.

Since they are not mortally culpable, they could be validly absolved in confession and, being in the state of grace, they could in principle receive Communion. Nothing in this is new.

Nothing in this is new? Akin certainly knows better. He knows that Francis has just overthrown—or rather attempted to overthrow, as this document cannot possibly bind the Church—the teaching of Benedict XVI, John Paul II, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Code of Canon Law and all of Tradition on the impossibility of public adulterers being admitted to the sacraments on account of their objective state in life. Yet Akin blithely pretends nothing of the sort has happened.

But even worse than this, Akin joins Francis in pronouncing the practical elimination of mortal sin itself as an impediment to Holy Communion, for what mortal sinner could not claim to be subjectively inculpable based on "various cognitive or psychological conditions" which (to quote paragraph 302) make it "very difficult to act differently…" And if some habitual mortal sinners are granted admission to the sacraments under that nebulous criterion, on what ground besides a purely arbitrary "pastoral discretion" could the Church’s pastors stand to deny the sacraments to anyone at all, no matter what his "objective" sin?

Here we see the most dramatic confirmation yet of what this newspaper has contended all long: In order to maintain their niche and a modicum of prestige, there is absolutely nothing certain neo-Catholic opinion leaders are not prepared to swallow in defense of the ever-expanding postconciliar regime of novelty.

Moreover, to admit that Amoris Laetitia is indeed "a subversive document," as Philip Lawler says, would be to admit the entire traditionalist critique of the regime to which they themselves belong, this document being the lowest point yet reached on a continuous downward trajectory traditionalists have accurately tracked and rightly opposed for decades while the neo-Catholic establishment did nothing but applaud the latest novelty.

Having been so wrong for so long, they would rather go down with their sinking ship, which is not to be confused with the unsinkable Barque of Peter. Their vessel is the ghost ship that came out of the fog of Vatican II and will inevitably disappear beneath the waves of history as the ephemeral thing it is. But what calamities the Church must endure until then!

Mission accomplished, Francis brings Chapter 8 to an end with the same rhetorical devices he has been employing incessantly over the past three years: caricature, demagoguery and selfquotation: It is true that at times "we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems." (310) We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance. (311)

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Questions abound: Was the Church

not

This offers us a framework and a setting which help us avoid a cold bureaucratic morality in dealing with more sensitive issues. (312)

the house of the Father, where everyone was welcome, before Francis became Pope? What exactly are these "many conditions on mercy" that rob it of meaning and significance? What is a "cold bureaucratic morality" as opposed to morality

simpliciter?

What distinguishes "

more

sensitive" moral issues from merely sensitive ones? Is it just sexuality?

But of course there will be no answers.

(7) A Selective Amnesty for Sins of the Flesh The above-quoted paragraphs from Chapter 8 of

Amoris Laetitia

demonstrate that we are now confronted with an unprecedented pontifical debacle. Citing nothing but his own previous statements, misrepresented sources, and the declarations of a Synod he tightly controlled and stacked with handpicked Modernist progressives— while ignoring the directly contrary teaching of his two immediate predecessors in harmony with all of Tradition—Francis now attempts to introduce a mitigated form of situation ethics as pastoral practice throughout the universal Church.

To recall what Eduardo Echevarria observes in Catholic World Report: "So, with all due respect to Francis, I think that he does imply support for the ‘gradualness of the law’ and hence by implication opens the door to a ‘situation ethics.’" More than that! Francis opens wide the door, steps inside, makes himself at home, and suggests that all the pastors of the Church join him in building a new moral order for Catholics. The very hallmark of heretical German moral theology, exemplified by Francis’s personal favorite, Cardinal Kasper, amounts to a de facto amnesty on sexual immorality.

But note well:

nothing in

Amoris Laetitia indicates that Francis would extend his amnesty for sexual sinners to the other sorts of sinners he never ceases to denounce, including Mafiosi, arms traders, greedy capitalists, polluters of the environment, and, lest we forget, the "rigorist" Catholics who oppose his notion of "mercy." Would Francis, for example, tell the pastors of the Church that greedy billionaires or wealthy arms dealers are subjectively guiltless and cannot be expected to change their evil ways because of "various cognitive or psychological conditions" that make it "very difficult to act differently"? The question answers itself.

As he has done so often during the tempests provoked by what he dubbed "Bergoglianism" early on, Antonio Socci exposes the heart of the matter: This "revolution" is being carried out by cancelling the notion of "mortal sin"… In compensation, Bergoglio introduces new grave sins. Those of the so-called "rigorists", guilty of remembering God’s law, but most of all, those [of individuals] who don’t share his political ideas on social questions.

So this entire years-long, dismal affair comes down to an "amnesty" extending only to sins of the flesh. But, as Our Lady of Fatima warned, these are the sins that send more souls to Hell than any other. We are reminded that Sister Lucia of Fatima warned Cardinal Caffarra, one of the foremost opponents of the Kasper proposal, that "the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family." Did she know that a Pope would be leading the enemy forces?

III.

Conclusion: Damage Assessment What will actually happen in the Church in the wake of Amoris Laetitia? First of all, we can thank God that—surely by Providence—Francis’s own choice of approach allows one to dismiss the entirety of the document as nothing more than a personal opinion he has not imposed (and cannot impose) upon the Church, as Cardinal Burke has observed. For example: I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion. But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a Church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness… (308) Francis may "sincerely believe" that "Jesus wants" pastoral care that

does

leave room for confusion. But there is no room for confusion in the divine declaration: " Whoever puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery." We have no obligation to treat as an authentic teaching of the Magisterium, or even as a rational thought, Francis’s claim that "Jesus wants" him to "integrate weakness" into the Church for the first time in 2,000 years.

But even if we assume that this document is apparently an act of the Magisterium, in reality it simply cannot be. Just as God cannot contradict Himself, the Magisterium cannot contradict itself. Therefore, whatever contradicts the constant prior teaching of the Magisterium cannot possibly belong to the Magisterium, no matter what formal appearances it has. Rather, it would constitute error, which is possible with any exercise of the "ordinary" Magisterium that involves novelties.

Otherwise, we would have to say that absolutely every papal pronouncement, no matter what novelty it contains, is infallible.

Amoris Laetitia clearly presents such a contradiction in at least two respects: First, it purports to change an unchangeable Eucharistic discipline, not a mere ecclesiastical law, that is intrinsically connected to the dogma of the indissolubility of marriage and the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Second, it attempts to introduce into Catholic moral theology an absolutely inadmissible form of situation ethics, which the Magisterium has always condemned. Nor can it be argued that the faithful have no capacity to recognize these contradictions and must blindly presume that somehow they do not exist. This is the Catholic Church, whose deposit of the Faith is objectively knowable, not a gnostic sect headed by the Oracle of Rome, who announces what "Jesus wants" today.

What this means is that for priests and prelates who continue to "prefer a more rigorous pastoral care," which is to say the unchangeable bimillenial pastoral discipline of the Church affirmed even by Francis’s two immediate predecessors, nothing in Amoris Laetitia can bind them to do otherwise. So the "normalists" will be able to say, just as they always do, "nothing has really changed."

But it is not that simple. Paradoxically, yet no less truly, everything has changed. For others are already running amok with the same document, brandishing it triumphantly as new and revolutionary authority, from the Pope himself, to engage in exactly what Phil Lawler fears: "an acceleration of an already powerful trend to dismiss the Church’s perennial teaching." They will tell us, as Cardinal Schönborn already does, that Amoris Laetitia is "an organic development of doctrine"—misleading quotations and footnotes included! An "organic development" that contradicts the very Pope whom Francis himself canonized, found in the words Francis concealed in a pivotal misrepresentation of his predecessor’s teaching concerning "discernment."

And so it goes with The Great Façade of non-binding novelties that have plagued the Church for nearly fifty years. The "continuing process of decay" Cardinal Ratzinger lamented and, as Pope, arrested for a time now will penetrate more widely and deeply than before, accelerated by a book-length excursus whose novel aspects have only the weight of opinion yet will still cause incalculable new damage to the ecclesial commonwealth.

Therefore,

pace

Cardinal Burke, despite its non-binding character the appearance of Amoris Laetitia confirms every one of the expressions of alarm in the Remnant’s petition this past December, which implored Francis to change course or consider resigning the papacy in keeping with his own promise to do so if he became unfit for the office: You declare that [a] "revolution of tenderness" will take place during your Jubilee of Mercy…Your stated motive for the "revolution of tenderness" is that, according to you, "the Church herself sometimes follows a hard line, she falls into the temptation of following a hard line, into the temptation of stressing only the moral rules, many people are excluded." … Catholics know that a true revolution of tenderness occurs in every soul that undergoes Baptism or, corresponding to the grace of repentance, enters the confessional with a firm purpose of amendment and a contrite heart, unburdens the weight of sin, [and] receives absolution by a priest acting in persona Christi… The Catholic Church has always been an inexhaustible font of divine mercy through her Sacraments. What can your proposed "revolution" add to what Christ has already provided in His Church? Can you declare an amnesty on mortal sin?...

Now, as you condemn the Church’s "hard line" on "moral rules" and proclaim a "revolution of tenderness," we are faced with the imminent threat of unheard-of "gestures" of "mercy" … Among these gestures would appear to be a post-synodal apostolic exhortation authorizing the admission of public adulterers to Holy Communion according to the judgment of individual bishops or episcopal conferences… One has the sense of a nearly apocalyptic turn of events in the history of the Church.

Every Catholic worthy of the name has a duty to resist this attempted overthrow of the perennial Magisterium by a wayward Pope who clearly has no respect for the teaching of his own predecessors, having misrepresented the crucial contrary teaching of one of them (along with other sources), and who descends to demagoguery by appealing to a "mercy" that would be the worst kind of spiritual cruelty. It is unthinkable that the leadership of the Church, as a pastoral program no less, could leave souls at risk of damnation in the very condition that places them at risk, even encouraging them to compound their guilt by sacrilegiously partaking of Holy Communion while they consider whether they will cease their continuing adultery or fornication.

This is madness never before seen in the history of the Church. And where are the members of the hierarchy to lead us in the midst of this madness? As it was during the time of the Arian crisis, when Saint Athanasius was almost alone among hierarchs publicly defending the faith, so will it be today: the prelates who stand fast and refuse to repudiate the teaching of their own Church will be very few in number, perhaps so few they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It is fitting, then, to conclude this commentary with the words of one prelate who may be among those few, the very aptly named Bishop Athanasius Schneider, speaking even before the threat of this catastrophe had become a reality: " Non possumus!" I will not accept an obfuscated speech nor a skilfully masked back door to a profanation of the Sacrament of Marriage and Eucharist. Likewise, I will not accept a mockery of the Sixth Commandment of God.

I prefer to be ridiculed and persecuted rather than to accept ambiguous texts and insincere methods. I prefer the crystalline "image of Christ the Truth, rather than the image of the fox ornamented with gemstones" (Saint Irenaeus), for "I know whom I have believed", "Scio, Cui credidi!" (2 Tim 1: 12) [Rorate Caeli, 2 November 2015] ■

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The True Catholic Teaching on Marriage

By Chris Jackson

In the early 1900’s Britain set up a "Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes" in order to consider new legislation liberalizing divorce laws in the country. As part of the process, experts were called before the Commission in order to acquire diverse opinions about the issue. On 27 June 1910, a Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor James Moyes was called to testify before the Commission.

According to Msgr. Moyes’ Wikipedia entry:

Moyes was born Edinburgh, Scotland.

He was educated in Ireland, France, and Rome at the Venerabile. Ordained into the priesthood in 1875, he was later appointed professor at St Bede’s College, Manchester, England. He was appointed canon theologian of Salford Chapter, 1891, and of the Westminster Chapter, 1895. In 1896, he served on the Papal Commission in Rome on Anglican matters on which he was an authority. In 1903 he was chosen as sub-delegate Apostolic for the Cause of English Martyrs. He edited the Dublin Review until 1903, contributed a vast amount of controversial literature on theological subjects to The Tablet, and wrote Aspects of Anglicanism, 1906. Moyes died in London, England in 1927.

The following contains excerpts of Msgr. Moyes’ testimony to the Royal Commission regarding Catholic teaching on marriage. This testimony is especially relevant since the release of Francis’ tragic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which misrepresents Catholic teaching on the sacraments of marriage, penance, and the Eucharist. Here, Msgr. Moyes’ sets the record straight as to what the Church’s unchangeable teaching is on marriage, divorce, absolution, and reception of the Eucharist.

Chris Jackson

Monseigneur Moyer Called and Examined (Chairman.) Would you kindly inform us what is your exact position in the Church?

…I am Canon of the Archdiocese of Westminster, and also a Prelate of the Roman Court.

I think the Secretary communicated with the Archbishop of Westminster with the view of asking if he desired that someone should attend on behalf of the Catholic Church, and that you have been good enough to attend by his request ?

Yes.

…Would you kindly read the answers you desire to make?

The answer in my statement to that first part would be:—"If I am asked to give an answer to this question, and the grounds on which I base it, I can only say that believing, as a Catholic, that divorce in its ordinary acceptance as a dissolution of the bond of matrimony once validly contracted, and consummated, is contrary to the teaching of Christ, and therein to Divine law, and inimical to the interests of society, I am conscientiously opposed to the granting of such divorce in any court and under any conditions. I can best express what I feel in regard to the proposal by stating in brief the authoritative doctrine of the Catholic Church to which I belong."

Shall I state the grounds?

If you please. This is a very convenient way of taking what you want to say, and the shortest way.

Well, the doctrine on which I base my belief, and the Church of which I am a member, is that— (1) Marriage between Christians is not only a contract, but a sacrament of the New Law, in which the union of the parties is wrought and ratified by God. In this sacrament, the parties themselves— not any officiating clergyman—are the ministers, each giving consent to the other, and God accepting and sealing the consent of both.

(2) When such marriage is validly celebrated between competent persons, and is consummated, so that there is fulfilled in their union the words of Our Lord, ‘and they two shall be in one flesh’ (Mark 1: 8), there exists between them a God-made bond of matrimony, or vinculum matrimonii I n its completeness. The knot is of God’s own knitting, and Christ teaches that it is God Himself who is the ‘Joiner.’ (3) Because the union is thus of God’s making and a Divine work, it has the paramount and immutable character of Divine law, and is absolutely indissoluble except by the death of either party. It cannot be unmade by any act of the parties themselves, seeing that it is a covenant which they themselves alone have not made, but is one into which God Himself has entered as the Joiner.

As a matter of Divine law, or God’s own ordinance, it is intangible by any created power, and no human authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, can have any authority to dissolve it as neither the Pope nor the Church can claim to override or alter anything which is of Divine law, neither can exercise any dispensing power to loose the complete and consummated bond of matrimony.

‘What God has joined together, no man may put asunder.’ The Catholic Church teaches that this principle laid down by Christ is absolute, and consequently that the words of Christ, ‘except it be for fornication’ (Matt. xix. 9) and ‘excepting for cause of fornication’ (Matt. v. 32), constitute a clause of exception, applying solely to the unlawfulness of separation or putting away of wife or husband, but not to the unlawfulness of re marriage during the life-time of either. That is to say, unfaithfulness may justify separation, but does not dissolve the bond of matrimony by which they are still husband and wife, and any remarriage with others during the life-time of either becomes adultery. The texts of St. Matthew, thus construed, fall into harmony with those of St. Mark (x. 11) and St. Luke (xvi. 18) and St. Paul (1.

Cor. 10), in which the prohibition is stated absolutely and without exception.

(4-) Anything which is called by the name of ‘divorce’ in the Catholic Church can never include any dissolution of the bond of matrimony ratified and consummated. By this bond the man remains the husband of the wife, and the woman remains the wife of the husband, and as no Christian can have at the same time two wives or two husbands, it follows that any attempted marriage of either during the life-time of the other with any third person is ipso facto null, and any cohabitation with such person is adulterous. The term divorce is, however, sometimes applied to the two following causes, which do not involve any dissolution of the bond of matrimony: (a) Separation a mensa et thoro, which may be granted for sufficient grounds, such as unfaithfulness or cruelty, & , (b) Decree of nullity, in which a supposed marriage, owing to certain initial defects, is declared to have been null, from the beginning. Such nullity must be one arising from some antecedent cause, and not from any cause supervening after the marriage.

The judgment does not affect the nullity, but merely declares it. It does not dissolve the vinculum, but affirms that it never existed… Regarding, therefore, any divorce which professes to dissolve the bond of matrimony once valid and consummated, and to set parties free to remarry, as an evil the contrary to the teaching of Christ, who wrought the regeneration of society mainly by establishing the unity and indissolubility of marriage, and therein the stability of the Christian home, Catholics desire its abolition, and especially that the poorer classes may be protected from its disintegration, and hope that any legislation undertaken in regard of it may be rather to restrict than to extend the facilities for a concession which they believe to be morally wrong and socially disruptive."….

(Sir Frederick Treves.) I would just ask in what way the teaching of the Catholic Church in this matter holds divorce to be inimical to the interests of society?

What we believe is that the Christian home is the very centre and the source or the cell of the social organism, so to say, and that everything depends on its purity and stability for the healthy state of society; and we believe that Christ, in regenerating and healing society, began by securing the indissolubility of the bond of matrimony, restoring it to its original condition, and securing the permanent relation between husband and wife, and the right of the woman to stand with fixity of tenure at the side of her husband, and that both should exercise a permanent function of education with regard to their children ; and in that we have an important interest to society, which is gravely menaced by divorce.

(Sir William Anson) I understand that, looked at as a social question, you regard the family as the basis of society?

Yes.

And the security of marriage as practically the basis of the family existence?

Quite so…

In this country, would you tell me, how does the system work? Supposing a Roman Catholic marriage, and the husband, let us say, who has been wronged were to go to the Divorce Court and get a divorce from his wife on the ground of adultery, what would be done?

In the first place he would commit a sin against the Church law; as long as he had not repented of the sin he could not receive absolution or Holy Communion; or if scandal were publicly given he would be regarded as a public sinner who could not, according to the law of the Church, receive Holy Communion.

If he repented he could be absolved?

Oh, certainly.

Supposing he went further and proceeded to remarry, he would then be excommunicated, I suppose?

If he married any other person than the person from whom he was divorced, in that case, according to the mind and teaching of the Catholic Church, he would be regarded as a public sinner and unable to receive absolution or Holy Communion.

If he undertook to leave his second wife and never to cohabit with her, could he obtain absolution?

Yes, provided he made due satisfaction for the scandal given.

Even though the marriage takes place?

Yes; if he declared to the Church his sorrow for what he had done and his intention not to live with or cohabit with that person, in that case he would be absolved. ■

Monsignor James Moyes

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A New World Order Update...

Islam, Terrorism and "the West"

Our masters have created two camps in Western Society, that of the politically correct leftists and that of the "Western" "conservatives". Both camps combat each other, not recognizing that both of them serve as mercenary troops of the New World Order.

By Thomas Stark

In recent times Europe has been shocked and shaken by a series of terror attacks performed by Islamist terrorists. These events have caused a lot people to state that the Muslim world in general is our enemy and that Muslims are a savage horde, living in an inferior, unenlightened, primitive culture that – in order to pacify the world – has to be transformed in accordance to the achievements and "values" of "the West". But, there are a few points to be considered to see the whole picture: First of all, there are many decent people who are Muslims and, for example, in London, Paris or Berlin, assiduously run a vegetable store around the corner, bring up their children, telling them to be honest and polite, to show respect to elder people and think highly of tradition and strict morals. These people emphasize the differences between the sexes and the necessity of hierarchy. They are against homosexuality, abortion, the destruction of the (patriarchal) family and the Enlightenment philosophies. They are even pious, but unfortunately they believe in the wrong religion, namely Islam. And although Islam is – in many respects – an evil religion, some people surprisingly and fortunately draw some good and wise conclusions out of their – maybe insufficient – common sense interpretation Islamic faith.

So what we as Christians have to do is, we have to try to evangelise and convert them. (Or should we – horribile dictum – say: proselytise them?) But how do we do that, if we say to them: You belong to a savage horde and an inferior culture?

A judgement like that is in itself an indication of an inferior cultural formation, because educated people know of the magnificent creations that the Oriental culture brought forth in the fields of architecture, poetry (for example think of Hafis, whose poems tops Goethe, whose "West-Östlicher Diwan" was influenced by them), fine arts and craftsmanship (for example goldsmithery or furniture-, fabric- and carpet production), the cuisine, and even music. The crusaders where so fascinated by the achievement of the refined Oriental culture, that the European aristocratic lifestyle was influenced by it, when the Christian knights returned to their unheatable castles in the foggy forests of Germany and northern France.

As beauty always is an indicator for value and – yes – even for truth (according to the scholastic precept "pulchritudo est splendor veritatis", beauty is the radiance of truth), the Oriental culture, which has been a predominantly Islamic culture for centuries, because of its beauty, must be of some value and contain some truth; even if we agree that it has stolen that value and truth from the Byzantine Empire to a large extent.

But nevertheless, we have to recognise the value of that culture and – above all – we have to love the people we want to convert in the first place, and to love somebody is impossible while despising the whole cultural and social environment that determines his identity. Secondly: Since the early 90s, the Empire of the New World Order utilizes a double strategy. On the one hand, its representatives tell us that mass immigration of people who don’t share our religion and culture is something magnificent, and that it is strictly prohibited to criticize anyone’s religion, creed, ideological conviction or worldview (unless he’s a real Catholic) for the sake of "tolerance". This part of the strategy serves the purpose of destroying our cultural identity and its traditional foundations through "pluralism", to thereby atomise all communities and societies and to transform each and every one of us by that means into slaves of the banksters in the long run. All the States that belong to the global capitalist system – not only those in the Third World – have already fallen into debt-slavery that they will never be able to overcome, because they will never be able to pay back the debt – not in million years. It will, to the contrary, always increase.

On the other hand, the same ideologists seed hatred and contempt towards everything that does not go along with the "Western Civilisation" (and by the way: Protestantism), especially the Orient, incidentally including Orthodox Christianity – as far as, for example, Samuel Huntington is concerned. This part of the strategy serves the purpose of the creation of a new enemy (necessary after the end of the Cold War), and of legitimizing wars that are at the same time unjust (from the standpoint of natural law and the Theology of just war) and a violation of international law. Every country of geostrategic significance that does not submit itself to western interests and the goals of globalisation (which are a central part of the western project of the New World Order), now can be involved in a war because of its lack of "freedom" and (pseudo-)egalitarian "democracy".

Our masters have created two camps in Western Society, that of the politically correct leftist gooders and that of the identitary "Western" "conservatives".

Both camps combat each other, not recognizing that both of them serve as mercenary troops of the New World Order, and which – entangled in their distractive battle – never get to perceive their real enemy in the real war. The real enemy is The Revolution and the real war is the war between Counterrevolution and Revolution which – in the end – is the war between Christ and the Antichrist. The Revolution is trying to eradicate everything natural and naturally grown in culture and society, including economy, government and even family, and to replace it by artificial constructions mainly based on devilish ideology of the so called "Enlightenment". But maybe it would be better to talk about the "Endarkenment" in that regard, because the church has identified this movement from its very beginning on as one of her worst enemies. And lots of encyclicals have confirmed this assessment over and over again.

The Revolution hates the Orient, because – due to its real backwardness – it has remained in "The Middle Ages" and therefore in a status of natural organisation of family, economics, society etc., even though often in a deficient and insufficient manner, which gives the Revolutionaries the opportunity to discredit everything natural. And for the same reason the Revolution hates Catholicism. If you look at the enlightened arguments against the Orient and replace Islam with Catholicism, these arguments work equally, because from the standpoint of the Revolution, real (that means traditional) Catholics, like Muslims, are Middle Ages-minded fundamentalists, i.e. people who believe that concepts, thoughts, convictions, explanatory (scientific) models and strategies for action have to have a fundamentum in re and not only a fundamentum in voluntas humana.

Also, the "western" "Conservatives" reject traditional Catholicism as they reject Islam, because Islam has never "gone through Enlightenment", as they put it. Because of that, the only sort of Christianity "Conservatives" are willing to condone is a Christianity moulded, "developed" and transformed by having "gone through the Enlightenment".

And this is what Protestantism and protestantised Catholicism is all about.

That sort of "Christianity" is a central part of the Revolution, because the Reformation was the first phase of the Revolution in western modernity. And so it is hardly surprising that the same sort of people who want to overcome the Middle Ages in the Orient by implementing enlightened "freedom and democracy", are donating heretical protestant sects that try to de-catholicise former Catholic countries, especially in Latin America. So it doesn’t matter, whether one finds himself in the camp of the leftist gooders or the identitary "western" "Conservatives" – he is always fighting for the Revolution.

But what about the real savage hordes that threaten the Christians in the Orient and meanwhile also in Europe right now? First of all: They threaten the Muslim population in the same way (but

Continued Next Page

Islam, Terrorism

T. Stark/ Continued from Page 21

this is not the place to go deeper into the whole problem of the Sunni and Shiite conflict and the related problems of all sorts). Secondly: Islam has indeed a high capacity of violence. We have some experience in Europe with meeting our fellow Muslims at the gates of Vienna.

But after the fall of the Osman Empire, Islam did not play any significant role in world history any more. Since that time, the Orient was sluggishly behind the times. What revived Islam as a political force was Islamism, which – from a theoretical point of view – emerged from merging Koran teaching with Leninism and other western revolutionary ideologies. And the real savage hordes, be they Taliban, Al-Qaida, ISIS or who else, could never have gained the military (and terrorist) power they have without western funding, instruction, arming (this is where Turkey comes into the picture) and logistic support, etc.

Look at the territory ISIS has conquered in only a very short time. Savage hordes without support from western General Staffs, Special Forces and aerial reconnaissance could never have managed that. Not to speak about their modern weapons and vehicles paid by gas stations with national anthems like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose corrupt leaders don’t even dare to twinkle without permission of the US State Department or the Pentagon.

The contemporary "West" is the force of the enlightened Revolution. And the people who run the whole show know their Hegel; and as good Hegelians they know what dialectics is all about and how to build a political and geostrategic approach on dialectics. They know that – from a strategical point of view – it is not the best modus operandi to go straight for your goals. It is much better to treat your objectives as syntheses, which are brought forth by the struggle between a thesis and an antithesis that you have to construct in the first place, so that you can lean back and watch how your objectives emerge out of this struggle "all by themselves". Oops!

Look at that: The unstoppable historical progress has actually spawned what is useful for us.

The movers and shakers behind the scenes use "Middle Age" (although in reality Leninist) Islamism, the contempt of the Oriental Culture and the politically correct condemnation of any independent, critical point of view as "hate speech" for one and the same purpose: the destruction of traditional Christianity, which must give way to the inexorable "historical progress". In this regard the whole conflict between Conservatives and Leftist is only an artificial staging in order to divert our attention.

The West in not interested in converting the Muslims to the truth of Christ, but to stage a conflict between East and West in order to convert all of us to the big plan of human self-redemption, which paves the way to the reign of the Antichrist, which was the very objective of the Revolution from its very beginning on, regardless of whether you identify that beginning as the "Glorious Revolution" of 1689, the American Revolution of 1776 or the French Revolution of 1789, the same year – by the way – in which the Freemason George Washington became the first President of the United Sates. Since those times, "Revolution" is another name for Regime Change.

No really successful revolution has ever emerged from an insurgency of "The People", as they told us in school. All revolutions have been highly expensive and well organised operations in order to manipulate the people for the sake of "freedom and democracy" and in order to replace a naturally-grown traditional elite by a new, "enlightened" one.

Therefore, the natural and traditional aspects of Oriental life and mentality have to be defamed in order to destroy human nature and tradition as a whole in the long run. There must be no order that we did not invent ourselves.

Objectively speaking, the Muslims are – in a certain respect – our enemies indeed, because they are the enemies of our religion, and sometimes they behave like that, although they do not always.

But they are not our worst enemies.

Our worst enemy is the Revolution, which (sometimes) is also the enemy of the Muslims, while simultaneously it (sometimes) uses them as a revolutionary tool.

It is not the purpose of Christians in the West to export "freedom and democracy" (whatever that slogan means) as we did in the cases of Iran (1953), Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria and many other countries, or to spread the ideas of the enlightenment (read: endarkenment). It rather is the duty of Christianity to do what the Church did since the days of Constantine the Great in the late Roman Empire and afterwards in the Holy Roman Empire: To gather the world under the Kingship of Christ, which evidently includes the social kingship of Christ, as it was emphasised by Pope Pius XI, not in the Middle Ages but in the midst of the 20th century.

The whole history centers on Christ, and it evolves as a constant battle between Christ and the Antichrist, between light and darkness. This has always been the teaching of the Church. And the interlinked globalist elites of big money, big state and big media, who are the revolutionary forces dominating "The West", have obviously opted for the darkness. As the online edition of the New York Times reported on March 19th, referring to UPI from December 28th 2015, a 50-foot-tall full size model of the entrance portal of the Baal temple in Palmyra, that has been destroyed by the ISIS Terrorists, will be erected at Times Square in New York and at the same time at Trafalgar Square London for at least one week. [ Editor’s Note: After considerable protest this event was postponed, but Mr. Stark’s point remains the same. MJM] This event is officially explained as a protest against the destruction of the cultural heritage of humanity by the ISIS troops. And indeed: the destruction of the relics of ancient architecture has to be considered as an act of barbarism which is worth protesting against.

But the question is, why is this legitimate protest being expressed by just precisely putting a symbol of the Baal cult in the very centre of most representative western cities? Baal is the male Canaanite Deity of youthfulness, fertility, abundance and richness. The Baal cult is most severely condemned by the Old Testament. All the prophets of Israel fought against it, as the religion that is most hostile to God. The Baal cult is associated with sexual magic, heterosexual and homosexual temple prostitution and ritual orgies (1 Kings 15, 12; 2 Kings 23, 7), and with sacrificing children to the Deity by burning them.

The Old Testament identifies the worship of Baal as the reason for the destruction of the kingdom of Israel and the exile (2 Kings 17). So again: Why do western metropoles use a symbol of a religion, and thereby identify with a religion that – according to the Holy Scripture – is the one which is most offensive to God? Maybe because this religion sacralises success and wealth and above all sexuality in all its natural und unnatural forms, and thereby represents some of the "Western Values" we desperately don’t want to give up; those with which – to the contrary – we want to delight the rest of the whole world, including the Orient, such as: adultery, promiscuity, homosexuality, free access to pornography, and as a result of all that: contraception and abortion as a modern type of sacrificing children to an evil idol?

However: Every Christian has to decide where he should search for the real enemies of God, of the church, and therefore of humanity as a whole. ■

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Debating the Relevant Issues...

Sedevacantist Errors on Fact and Law:

Unraveling the Anti-Catholic Thesis

By John Salza & Robert Siscoe

PART I

In our book True or False Pope?, as well as our latest articles at www.

trueorfalsepope.com (under the "Sedevacantist Watch" tab),

1 we have discussed the critical distinction between questions of fact and law regarding the loss of office for a heretical Pope. In this material, we have demonstrated that Sedevacantists have consistently overlooked this distinction as they attempt to defend their position (you will not find this distinction mentioned in any of their articles, and it’s no wonder why). This article summarizes the key concepts regarding fact and law, which will help the reader to understand one of the most fundamental errors of the Sedevacantist position.

An Overview of the Sedevacantist Error

Sedevacantists generally maintain that Sedevacantism is solely a "question of fact" (i.e., whether the Pope is a heretic), which they claim is to be discerned by the private judgment of individuals, rather than a question of

1 See "Mario Derksen’s Elementary Error on Fact vs. Law" and "Sedevacantist Bishop Dan Dolan Concedes the Church is the Judge of the Question of Fact" at www.trueorfalsepope.com.

Church law to be judged by the proper ecclesiastical authorities. But this amounts to running to second base before crossing first base. Whether the Pope is a heretic is indeed a "question of fact" (second base), but who is authorized to judge the facts is a question of law (first base) that must be resolved first, as reason and logic demand. Furthermore, questions such as if, when, and how a Pope who fell into heresy would lose his office are additional questions of law, which the Church alone has the authority to decide. The following illustrates the critical distinction between the questions of law versus fact, which Sedevacantists have consistently overlooked: First Base: Question of Law – Can a Pope lose his office for heresy? If so, when and how does the loss of office happen (does the Church depose him, or does he lose his office ipso facto?), and who possesses the authority to judge the matter?

Second Base: Question of Fact – Is the Pope a formal, manifest heretic?

Now, let’s look at these questions of law and fact in more detail.

Questions of Law

As stated above, questions relating to precisely how and when a heretical Pope loses his office (or if he even can lose his office) are questions of law.

In his book De Romano Pontifice, St.

Robert Bellarmine said there were five different opinions concerning these questions, all of which fall into the category of law or speculative theology. 2

These five opinions have been debated by theologians for centuries, and have never been settled by the Church – who alone has the authority to settle them.

What this means is that no one can claim that just because a certain theologian held an opinion concerning a question of law, that their opinion must be correct; nor can an individual draw a conclusion based upon the theological opinion and then declare their conclusion to be a fact. Many Sedevacantists may be surprised to learn that the leading Sedevacantist clerics of our day have admitted that the Church alone has the

2 Four opinions pertain to how a heretical Pope would lose his office, or if a Pope can lose his office for heresy. The other opinion addresses whether a Pope can fall into formal heresy in the first place.

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have no authority to settle such speculative questions of theology and law that have not been resolved by the Church.

authority to decide speculative questions of law and theology. Specifically, Fr.

Cekada, Bishop Sanborn and seven of their colleagues admitted that individual Catholics

You read that correctly.

In 1983, these nine priests (former members of the Society of St. Pius X) wrote a letter to Archbishop Lefebvre complaining that they were not permitted to question the validity of the New Mass and the new rite of ordination.

They complained that forbidding them to do so was infringing on their liberty since, as they said, these speculative questions of law had not been resolved by the Church (even though the new rite of ordination was approved by the Church!). Here is what these nine priests wrote in their 1983 letter: "The Society must not presume to settle such speculative questions [ validity of the New Mass] in an authoritative and definitive fashion, since it has absolutely no authority to do so. Any attempt by the Society to teach and impose its conclusions on matters of speculative theology as the only positions suitable for a Catholic to embrace is dangerous and opens the door to great evils, for it assumes a magisterial authority which belongs not to it but to the Church alone. Now, while in theory the Society may deny any claim to such teaching authority, in practice it has acted as though it did have such an authority."

3

At the end of the letter, these nine priests (who were soon to be expelled from the Society), added the following "resolution": "Respect for the magisterial authority of the Church as the sole arbiter of theological questions shall be enforced. Therefore, the Society shall faithfully adhere to the teachings of the Church, but shall never usurp that teaching authority by attempting to settle definitively questions of speculative theology."

4

Needless to say, as Sedevacantists, these priests are now guilty of doing today precisely what they complained about in 1983. They have admitted

3"Letterof‘theNine’toAbp.MarcelLefebvre,"(March 25, 1983; emphasis added), http:// www.traditional mass.org/articles/article.php?id=48& catname=12.

4 Ibid.

that no one has the right to treat such speculative questions (e.g., questions of law) as having been settled, before the Church itself has rendered a judgment, yet this is precisely what they themselves do when it comes to questions concerning how and when a Pope will lose his office for heresy.

They even admitted that attempting to definitively answering such questions by private judgment is a dangerous practice which opens the door to great evils, because it usurps the authority of the Church.

Think about this hypocrisy for a moment. According to the reasoning of the priests who signed this letter (most or all of whom are now Sedevacantists), the Society of St. Pius X is not permitted to insist on the validity of a Mass and a rite of ordination that was approved by the Catholic Church, yet Sedevacantists themselves (including Fr. Cekada who signed the letter) are permitted to settle speculative questions of theology and law regarding when and how a Pope loses his office for heresy, which the Church herself has not resolved! And the Sedevacantist priests now do so dogmatically by condemning those who are "in union" with the conciliar Popes, going so far as to claim that it is forbidden for anyone to attend a Mass in which the Pope’s name is mentioned in the canon!

Yet the admission by these nine Sedevacantist priests in their 1983 letter confirms what should be obvious – namely, that no lay person or cleric has the right to declare precisely how and when a heretical Pope loses his office (questions of law and speculative theology), simply because they certain theologians of their choice have provided an opinion which they believe supports their Sedevacantist position.

In our book, we also show that St.

Bellarmine himself (who they often quote in defense of their position) did not present his opinion concerning how a Pope loses his office as being certainly correct; nor did he claim that those who held opinions with which he disagreed were certainly wrong.

5

5 For example, in response to the Third Opinion (that a heretical Pope cannot lose his office), Bellarmine said it was only "highly improbable," not definitely wrong. In response to the Fourth opinion (that the Church itself plays a part in severing the bond uniting the man to the pontificate), Bellarmine simply said "to my judgment, this opinion cannot be held." Bellarmine went on to defend his own opinion (just as those who held the contrary opinions did), but he never claimed

Bellarmine knew full well that questions of law and speculative theology can only be settled by the Church (and, in True or False Pope?, we show how the Sedevacantists have completely misunderstood Bellarmine’s opinion).

Before the Church renders a judgment on such speculative questions, differing theological positions are nothing more than opinions, and therefore cannot be used as a certain premise to draw a certain conclusion, as the very theologians who held the opinions would readily concede. Because the Church has never settled the questions of how, when, or if a Pope would lose his office for heresy, no one can declare that a Pope has lost his office for heresy, since this conclusion rests on speculative questions which the Church has not yet settled.

Questions of Fact

Whether a Pope is a formal heretic falls into the category of a question of fact, which, like the questions of law, must be established by the Church, who alone has the competence to establish "facts" in the external, ecclesiastical forum. Believe it or not, this too has been admitted to by Sedevacantist clergy (when it is used to defend themselves).

The Sedevacantist Bishop Dan Dolan, for example, admitted that "questions of fact" can only be determined by the Church, not by individual priests, much less individual laymen.

6

Dolan made this admission a number of years ago when a group of priests, which included Fr. Clarence Kelly (who is now also a Sedevacantist bishop), accused Dolan of being invalidly ordained, alleging that his consecrating bishop used only one hand, instead of two. The accusing priests wrote Dolan a letter demanding that he immediately cease his priestly functions until the issue of his doubtful ordination was cleared up.

How did Fr. Dolan respond to these accusations? Did he concede that their private judgment of the facts sufficed, and immediately ceased functioning as a priest? Not quite. On the contrary, he replied with his own letter rightly declaring that Fr. Kelly had no authority to judge the facts and determine whether his priestly ordination was valid, since such a private judgment usurps the Church’s judgment, which alone is competent to decide such matters. You read that correctly. The Sedevacantist clergyman Dan Dolan admits that the Church alone is the competent judge concerning the facts and validity of his ordination, yet, at the same time, Dolan himself believes he possesses the authority to judge the facts and decide (by private judgment) whether the man, who was elected Pope according to the laws of the Church and who is recognized as Pope by the Church, is a true Pope. This is yet another example of the astounding hypocrisy and double standards we find in the Sedevacantist movement.

In the following reply from Dolan to Fr. Kelly, notice that Dolan argues that it is the Church, not Fr. Kelly, who investigates and decides the "facts" – which is precisely what we have been arguing for years in our refutations of Sedevacantism. Here is Dolan in his own words:

that his opinion is certainly correct.

6 Salza/Siscoe, "Sedevacantist Bishop Dan Dolan Says Only The Church Can Judge ‘The Question Of Fact’" (1/19/16), see: www.trueorfalsepope.com.

"The Church, not Father Kelly, investigates and decides the facts. Those impugning the validity of an ordination present their case to the Holy Office, which conducts an investigation, hears the evidence of all parties, examines the witnesses and establishes what the facts are. Let’s repeat that: the Holy Office investigates, weighs the evidence and establishes the facts. Nothing there or in Canon Law about Father Kelly investigating, weighing evidence and establishing facts. Nothing there or in Canon Law about a priest having to answer ‘evidence’ Father Kelly finds convincing. Ditto for the rest of the clergy who signed the letter to me."

7

(emphasis in original) Here we have a Sedevacantist cleric admitting that the determination of whether he is a true priest concerns questions of fact that must be established by "the Church" and not private judgment. Yet this is completely contrary to the practice of the Sedevacantists with respect to the "validity" of the Pope, which also concerns questions of fact (and law) that must be established, or "decided" by the Church, not private judgment. In both cases, "the Church, not Frs. Dolan, Kelly or Cekada, etc.

investigates and decides the facts," and then renders her legal decision based upon those facts.

8 We could not have

said it any better. This real life situation is helpful because it also illustrates the distinction between a question of fact (was Dolan ordained with one hand or two?) and a question of law (Is a one-handed ordination invalid?). Again, this is a distinction that Sedevacantists consistently overlook, as they try to make their position solely a "question of fact" (Is the Pope a heretic?), which they judge by their own private judgment.

Just as the question of whether Dolan was validly ordained concerns a "question of fact" that only the Church has the authority to judge, so too is the question of whether a Pope is a heretic a "question of fact" that the Church alone has the authority to judge. Certainly, individuals can have an opinion concerning the issue before it is judged by the Church (for example, many are of the opinion that Pope Francis is a heretic, and even publicly express their opinion), but such opinions do not constitute a fact in the ecclesiastical forum. And, as we saw earlier, even if the question of fact (e.g., is the Pope a heretic?) had been established by the Church, the question of law would also have to be decided by the Church first, before the Church could apply the fact to the applicable law.

In Part II we will see how the Church establishes the fact that the Pope is a heretic, and we will also consider the main opinions of theologians concerning how and when he would lose his office.

To Be Concluded Next Issue

7 Fr. Dolan’s reply to Fr. Kelly, October 5, 1990. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24604978 3/DOLAN-SREPLY.

8 We would also like to ask Fr. Dolan "what Holy Office" he is asking Fr. Kelly to petition, since both of them believe the post-conciliar Vatican hierarchy has completely defected from the Church, and thus there is no "Holy Office." Funny how Dolan would appeal to an authority that both he and Kelly reject. It is evidently quite convenient for Dolan to appeal to Church authority when it will help his case, but it is the same authority that he actually rejects (or claims to reject) in his daily life.

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Fri, 15 Apr 2016 | Cover | Page 24

The Last Word…

The

Catholic Services Appeal

and Similar Frauds

By Father Celatus

One of the principal responsibilities of parish pastors is to protect the faithful from ravaging wolves. But wolves are not always readily recognized for what they really are. Remember the folk tale Little Red Riding Hood? "Grandmother, what big arms you have!" "All the better to hug you with." Grandmother, what big ears you have!" "All the better to hear you with." Grandmother, what big teeth you have!" "All the better to eat you with."

And the wicked wolf pounced upon Little Red Riding Hood and ate her all up.

Wolves in disguise are found not only in fairy tales and on Wall Street but within the hierarchy of the Church. Perhaps you are thinking that this Last Word concerns the Wolf of Rome but for now our focus is on wolves closer to home: The U.S.

episcopal wolves who fleece the flock with a plethora of collections.

A quick Google search of USCCB approved annual collections produced the following overly long list: Special Collection Sunday Church in Latin America Church in Africa, Central & Eastern Europe Global Solidarity Sunday Rice Bowl Collection Holy Land Shrines Clergy Benefit Trust Military Archdiocese Communications Collection Seminarian Fund Collection Holy Father - Peter’s Pence Catholic Relief Services Catholic University of America National Needs Combined Clergy Health and Retirement Trust World Mission Sunday Campaign for Human Development Black and Native American Retired Religious Sisters Collection Clergy Health and Retirement Trust Add to these typical diocesan collections occasional spontaneous collections for natural disasters such as hurricanes and humanitarian crises such as immigration inundation and we are up to twenty-two total. Add two more for Diocesan Capital Campaigns and Diocesan Annual Appeals and we now have an even double dozen.

That averages out to one collection every two weeks throughout the year. Some of you are thinking, "But we do not have that many collections in my parish." Then consider yourselves fortunate to have a strong pastor who takes seriously his responsibility to protect the faithful from ravaging wolves.

Now let’s look more in depth at the last of these collections we have noted: Diocesan Annual Appeals. It has become a nearly universal practice in dioceses across the United States to have an annual collection to fund certain programs, projects and positions, as determined by the local ordinary, that is, bishop. In the past these annual collections were commonly called "Archbishop’s Appeals" or the equivalent, depending upon the title of the ordinary— bishop, archbishop, cardinal. The more recent trend, however, has been to rename these appeals with more attractive titles such as Living the Joy of the Gospel or Sharing God’s Blessings or Together in Mission or Many Roads One Path or Catholic Services Appeal or equivalent.

Why the change? Diocesan statements will typically assure you that these titles better reflect the scope of the appeals but in reality much of this is driven by slick marketing and scandal. Yes, scandal.

One of the first to change its title was the Archdiocese of Boston, following the national scandal of clergy sex abuse and the resignation of its Cardinal in 2002. Since then other dioceses exposed for clergy abuse cover up or some other scandal associated with an ordinary have followed suit. In at least one diocese the annual appeal has not only disassociated itself with any connection to its ordinary, it has reconfigured itself as a separate non-profit organization in order to protect donated funds from seizure via bankruptcy. How ironic and revealing of the times that appeals once bearing titles of bishops now avoid mention of them.

Regardless of the title of an annual appeal the modus operandi remains the same.

In a typical diocese there is a standard process that is followed which spans months of preparation, execution and follow up. It all begins with rah-rah rallies to get pastors and key benefactors excited weeks in advance; pastors are requested to provide names of individuals to serve as chairs; sample bulletin announcements and prayers of the faithful are provided to parishes; video and audio discs are distributed with the expectation that these will be played at Masses; there are In-Pew

weekends in which the faithful are led through scripted processes in which they fill out donation envelopes in the pews; the diocese does direct mailings to all registered parishioners in every parish; finally, professional telemarketers hound the faithful at home.

Unsurprisingly support for diocesan annual appeals is dwindling among the faithful and pastors as well. Some dioceses provide incentives to parishes to contribute mightily, such as rebates back to parishes that achieve certain financial goals. For some pastors this carrot works wonders but others could care less. Some dioceses use the stick approach instead, by simply assessing parishes whatever amount they fall short of the financial goal that has been set. In such cases it should be titled "Archbishop’s Extortion."

The Last Word is proud to say that it has never contributed a dime to Diocesan Annual Appeals and it does the minimum to promote them in the parish. If the faithful search diligently they may find a stray contribution envelope somewhere in the church but not in the pews. For as pastors know and the faithful should be made aware, parishes are already taxed substantially based on collection incomes, at a rate of about 10%. Additionally, many dioceses are secretive about the disbursement of funds and some provide funding to unconscionable causes. One diocese provided tens of thousands of dollars to an organization appropriately known as COW (Commission on Women) whose purpose was to insure gender inclusivity.

The faithful have a duty and right to donate money to causes as they see fit but they are well advised to discriminate carefully among the many causes that compete for their contributions. One diocese went so far as to post this statement on its Diocesan Appeal website: "In the spirit of Pope Francis and Laudato Si, his encyclical on the environment, please consider going green with electronic pledge reminders." Gag!

But instead of that approach to "going green" how about this alternative as proposed by The Last Word: Take any greenbacks you might otherwise have donated to a diocese and send it to The Remnant instead. We promise you that your green money will be much more appreciated and spent for a more godly cause! ■

Yeah, RIGHT!

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