Today’s Martyrology

CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARY

in the Twilight of Reason

“That understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church once declared; and there must never be a recession from that meaning under the specious name of a deeper understanding” (Blessed Pope Pius IX, 1st Vatican Council, S.3, C.2 on Revelation, 1870 ex cathedra)

Mary, Conceived without Sin,

pray for us who have recourse to Thee

“The city of Thy sanctuary is become a desert ... Jerusalem is desolate.
The house of our holiness, and of our glory, where our fathers praised Thee,
is burnt with fire, and all our lovely things are turned into ruins.” (Isaiah 64.10-11)

A Tainted Libation

“I am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand.
I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.”
(2 Timothy 4:6-7)

Have we been “poured out as a libation” for Christ Jesus?

Probably not.

In fact, the point of our being Catholic at all very likely has had little in the way of any adverse consequences in our lives — until recently, following the homosexual clerical abuse scandal that is still unfolding worldwide (for more than 20 years now, and still counting.)

In other words, if we have not suffered for the sake of Christ:

shame

humiliation

disdain

ridicule

rejection

contempt

If we have not been marginalized as:

fanatic

behind the times

holier-than-thou

traditionalist

extremist

pre-Vatican II

patriarchal

anti-feminist

If we have not been:

castigated

ridiculed

excluded

shunned

If no epithet has been hurled at us to make us feel like fools in the mocking faces of “modern” and “progressive” Catholics, to say nothing of the world at large — then we have not been “poured out”.

We have cherished the world over Christ; and have even been applauded for it. We use “the Name” even as we repudiate the “Person”. We lustily sing that “We are the sheep of His fold” ... even after we have torn down the fence and strayed, with no clear direction from our popes, priests and bishops, into other pastures. We are told, in an age of mindless and unbridled ecumenism, that there really are no fences any longer and that one fold is really no different from another, however much the sheep somehow look like wolves. And behave like wolves. And howl like wolves.

Why, then, is Saint Paul’s fate so different from our own? Following Christ literally cost him his head in Rome.

The answer is found in the previous verses from the same letter from Saint Paul’s letter to Saint Timothy:

“For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

“People will not tolerate sound doctrine”

Let us put Saint Paul’s words in a more contemporary setting:

Following our own desires and insatiable curiosity, we have accumulated teachers (popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, theologians, CCD teachers, RCIA instructors) who will teach us what we want to hear, and not what we must hear. They teach us that sin and corruption and perversion, properly understood, are acceptable to God ... after all ... and that this whole “Roman thing” doesn’t apply to Catholicism in America, Europe, or, for that matter, to any “enlightened” culture any longer. It is, we are told, hopelessly archaic, unenlightened, “patriarchal”, stultifying, and terribly dissonant with everything that is now socially correct, legislated, mandated and rigorously — even ruthlessly — enforced by the secular State and its tri-initialed apparatchik which are absolutely intolerant of intolerance ... and which, by policy, refuses to acknowledge this contradiction.

This attitude explains why we have kept our own heads (in a manner of speaking), while Saint Paul (literally) lost his.

We have no libation to pour out — because no one has filled our cups since the Second Vatican Council ... or if they have, the substance is either profoundly diluted, or brazenly tainted and contaminated with foreign doctrines. Instead of sound dogma, our cups have been, by and large, filled with quite nearly anything calculated to satisfy our desires — which are not the same as God’s. And this really is the root of the problem.

We still want God’s “stamp of approval”, and since Rome will not give it to us, we seek out bishops, priests, theologians, clerics, ecclesiastical functionaries of every sort more perverse than ourselves who will give us both: our own corrupt desires and a counterfeit stamp of God’s approval.

This is what the Roman State wanted from Saint Paul.

And it is precisely what Saint Paul would not give them.

But ... unlike St. Paul, for Heaven’s sake ... we must not lose our heads over it.

Mustn’t we ...?

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

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

Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Stalin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus Christ:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whom do we Believe?

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

Statue of Heretic Martin Luther brought into Vatican by Francis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Either Christ is a deceiver — or Francis is.

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

Francis can, will, and does.

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

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

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

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

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

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

_____________________________

¹ https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20170614_udienza-generale.html
& https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/36233/we-dont-earn-gods-love-its-freely-given-pope-francis-says
2 https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2021/04/17/the-american-church-going-going/³Saint John 14.24 — Saint Matthew 17.17-19 — Saint John 3.18 — Saint John 8.41-44 — 1 John 3.8-10 — etc., etc., etc.
4 “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by Me.” (Saint John 14.6)
⁵ “Pilate saith to Him: What is truth?” (Saint John 18.38)
⁶ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/did-luther-really-tell-us-to-love-god-and-sin-boldly/

LET US BE CLEAR:

We have stated it before and we wish to state it again: we hold that Francis is the legitimate pope.

We equally hold that he is a heretic, and possibly an apostate.

We do not argue that the Seat of Saint Peter is empty — which is to say that we are not Sedevacantists (from the Latin “sede vacante”, “the chair being vacant”) indeed, we maintain that the Chair is, in fact, occupied.

That it is presently occupied by a heretic, pantheist and madman, in no way invalidates the statement that the papacy is indeed occupied.

Some popes have been saints. Some have been scoundrels. Jorge Bergoglio, regrettably, is certainly and most notoriously among the latter — and we will not, cannot, accept his repudiation of Jesus Christ Himself in Sacred Scripture together with the perennial teachings of the Holy Catholic Church before the many heretical credenda foisted on the Church by that most unfortunate event called Vatican II; that is to say, Francis’s chimerical understanding of himself — as the paradigm of Conciliar progressivism — and, lately, pantheism — and also as the law-giver preeminent, the law-maker who tolerates no dissent — indeed, who punishes it ruthlessly — does not coincide with the 2000 year old understanding of the Petrine Office in the Economy of Salvation. Francis is a vicar only. Not the Master.

Does a Vicar dare correct his Lord or amend His mandates? Of course not!

Therefore does Christ say:
“Amen, amen I say to you: The servant is not greater than his Lord; neither is the Apostle greater than He that sent him.” (Saint John 14.16)

Must we therefore follow his teachings? We will let Pope Innocent III, “arguably the most effective pope ever” answer this:

“It is necessary to obey a pope in all things as long as he does not go against the universal customs of the Church, but should he go against the universal customs of the Church he need not be followed.” ( www.newadvent.org/cathen/08013a.htm )

Francis, however, has done something more sinister still — something that no other pope preceding him, however corrupt, had done: He made the Catholic Church unrecognizable.

Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

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AN EXTREMELY TROUBLING

— and accurate — OBSERVATION

“Pope Francis – unlike his predecessors – has not directly advocated the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Keeping to his South American theological roots, Pope Francis has called for Catholics to consider the Eucharist as an encounter with Christ – an occasion where Christ makes Himself available to the community through an act of remembrance. [This is a Protestant doctrine which separates Catholics from ALL Protestants: understanding the Eucharist as merely as an act of remembrance; nothing more. — ed.]

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

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

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

Martyrology for Today

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

ROMAN MARTYROLOGY

Sunday October 2^nd in the Year of Grace 2022

This Day, the Second Day of October

Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels

At Nicomedia, St. Eleutherius, soldier and martyr, with numberless others. They were falsely accused of having set fire to the palace of Diocletian and, by order of this most cruel emperor, were barbarously massacred in groups. Some were put to the sword, some consumed by fire, while others were precipitated into the sea. But the principal one, Eleutherius, having endured long tortures, and being found stronger after each one, terminated his victorious martyrdom by fire, as well-tried gold.

In the vicinity of Arras, the martyrdom of blessed Leodegarius, bishop of Autun. After being subjected to various insults and torments for the truth, he was put to death by Ebroin, chief minister of Theodoric.

Also, the holy martyr Gerinus, brother of the blessed Leodegarius, who was overwhelmed with stones in the same city.

At Antioch, the holy martyrs Primus, Cyril, and Secundarius.

At Constantinople, St. Theophilus, a monk, who was most cruelly scourged by Leo the Isaurian, for the defense of holy images, was driven into exile, and went gloriously to Heaven.

At Hereford, in England, St. Thomas, bishop and confessor.

And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.

Omnes sancti Mártyres, oráte pro nobis. ("All ye Holy Martyrs, pray for us", from the Litaniae Sanctorum, the Litany of the Saints)

℟. Deo gratias. (Thanks be to God)

“Semen est sanguis Christianorum” — Tertullian

Roman Martyrology by Month

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

New: the Roman Martyrology can now be downloaded entirely as either a or as a Microsoft Word File

Why the Martyrs Matter

Each day we bring you a calendar, a list really, of the holy Martyrs who had suffered and died for Christ, for His Bride the Church, and for our holy Catholic Faith; men and women for whom — and well they knew — their Profession of Faith would cost them their lives.

They could have repudiated all three (Christ, Church, and Catholic Faith) and kept their lives for a short time longer (even the lapsi only postponed their death — and at so great a cost!)

What would motivate men, women, even children and entire families to willingly undergo the most evil and painfully devised tortures; to suffer death rather than denial?

Why did they not renounce their Catholic Faith when the first flame licked at their feet, after the first eye was plucked out, or after they were “baptized” in mockery by boiling water or molten lead poured over their heads? Why did they not flee to offer incense to the pagan gods since such a ritual concession would be merely perfunctory, having been done, after all, under duress, exacted by the compulsion of the state? What is a little burned incense and a few words uttered without conviction, compared to your own life and the lives of those you love? Surely God knows that you are merely placating the state with empty gestures …

Did they love their wives, husbands, children — their mothers, fathers and friends less than we do? Did they value their own lives less? Were they less sensitive to pain than we are? In a word, what did they possess that we do not?

Nothing. They possessed what we ourselves are given in the Sacrament of Confirmation — but cleaved to it in far greater measure than we do: Faith and faithfulness; fortitude and valor, uncompromising belief in the invincible reality of God, of life eternal in Him for the faithful, of damnation everlasting apart from Him for the unfaithful; of the ephemerality of this passing world and all within it, and lives lived in total accord with that adamant belief.

We are the Martyrs to come! What made them so will make us so. What they suffered we will suffer. What they died for, we will die for. If only we will! For most us, life will be a bloodless martyrdom, a suffering for Christ, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of the Church in a thousand ways outside the arena. The road to Heaven is lined on both sides with Crosses, and upon the Crosses people, people who suffered unknown to the world, but known to God. Catholics living in partibus infidelium, under the scourge of Islam. Loveless marriages. Injustices on all sides. Poverty. Illness. Old age. Dependency. They are the cruciform! Those whose lives became Crosses because they would not flee God, the Church, the call to, the demand for, holiness in the most ordinary things of life made extraordinary through the grace of God. The Martyrology we celebrate each day is just a vignette, a small, immeasurably small, sampling of the martyrdom that has been the lives of countless men and women whom Christ and the Angels know, but whom the world does not know.

“Exemplum enim dedi vobis”, Christ said to His Apostles: “I have given you an example.” And His Martyrs give one to us — and that is why the Martyrs matter.

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Boston Catholic Journal

Note: We suggest that you explore our newly edited and revised “De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus — The Torments and Tortures of the Christian Martyrs” for an in-depth historical account of the sufferings of the Martyrs.

**Totally Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome**

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

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