Martyrology for Today
CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARY
in the Twilight of Reason
Mary, Conceived without
Sin,
pray for us who
have recourse to thee
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On the 10th Anniversary of
the Scandalous Encyclical
Amoris Laetitia
Pope Francis and My Likely “Null”
Marriage
Oh, yes ... and yours, too
“The great majority of sacramental marriages are null.”
“I’ve seen a lot of fidelity in … cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a
real marriage,
they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity.”
(Opening statement by Francis on the Pastoral Conference at the Diocese of Rome
June 16, 2016)
Once we
recover from this devastating statement,
it is noteworthy that Francis does not allow any latitude by qualifying it with,
“probably”. He does not say, “The great majority of sacramental marriages are
probably null.” He quite emphatically states the opposite:
“The great majority of
sacramental marriages are null.”
In this case, even the most deftly casuistic Catholic apologist cannot make a
wrong statement right. Why? Because Francis left out an extremely important
qualifier, even were such an absurd statement remotely true: “probably”. Without
this qualifier there is no possible way to make such a broad assessment of the
state of the “great majority” of Catholic marriages.
How does anyone determine if (very likely) they are among “the great majority”?
Without
empirical evidence it is impossible because Francis did not inject even
the most remotely extenuating notion of probability. Probability implies
the determination that evidence is forthcoming to validate a statement.
But there is no such evidence. Indeed, even if there were, what criteria would
be invoked? How would it be established and on what authority? At what numerical
point would the criteria culminate in a de facto annulment of a marriage?
The evidence that Francis appeals to is, for all purposes, entirely anecdotal.
However, even the injection of probability does not warrant such a sweeping and
grievously injurious statement. Even if he had invoked “probability”, the
resulting statement would
still
be scandalous, for he did not simply say that “a majority”
— but “a great majority” of
marriages are null (a specific canonical term) — which multiplies the scandal.
51% to 49% constitutes a majority. On that basis alone, half of all marriages
are invalid. 75% to 25% constitutes a great majority which would mean that
75 of 100 marriages (at a minimum) are null — or over 7 out of 10 marriages.
Has Pope Francis effectively annulled 75% of
all
marriages (not just Catholic)?
“That is absurd”, you say. No. It is not what I say — it is what Pope Francis
said.
As a
Catholic, I am confused. Are you?
Francis is making
quite a mess of things, yes? But that is his ... “style” ... as he said in
another context. What a curious and frightening notion.
My own confusion derives from the likelihood (being of “the great majority”) of
not
having been Sacramentally and validly married for some years now — despite
all appearances during the apparent illusion of a Nuptial Mass at that time.
Despite Pope Francis's insistence that
“they do not know what they
are saying” — that is
to say, the bride and the groom — when they make their marriage vows, the
clarity and simplicity of the words used suggest otherwise:
Groom:
“I take you for my lawful wife, to have and to hold,
from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
Bride:
“I, take you for my lawful husband, to have and to
hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
sickness and in health, until death do us part.
These are not recondite, confusing, cryptic, equivocal, and complicated words or
concepts. Can anyone argue that “the great majority” of men and women
do not understand what:
“from this day forward” means?
“for better, for worse” means?
“for richer, for poorer” means?
“in sickness and in health” means?
“until death do us part.” means
Seven Words
and an Insult to all — except the genuinely cognitively impaired
To argue — as
Francis does — that such simple statements are beyond the intellectual or
cognitive capacity of most men and women, is an insult not simply to
Catholics or the married or the unmarried — but to everyone who is not
clinically diagnosed as cognitively impaired. Are such words foreign to you? Are
you incapable of grasping what better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness,
health, and death mean? Do you not know the difference between what
is better and what is worse? Do you really not know the
distinction between being richer and poorer? Do you hold that
these seven words (and one phrase) are of such complexity that you do not
really comprehend them? When you utter them, do you really “not know what
you are saying?” How did you get this far into this article?
If I believe that what Francis says is true, it behooves me to remedy my own
questionable marriage by talking with someone who is living a “valid and
sacramental marriage” as he co-habits with his perhaps-wife-to-be (if
he weds her at a Nuptial Mass, after which, of course, his own marriage, will
then become a null marriage
also
— until he abandons it and reverts to co-habitation with another woman to
authenticate that marriage cohabitation as sacramental and real). No this is not
the Twilight Zone. It is the illogical and illusory world of Pope
Francis, steeped in a progressive and antagonistic agenda born of the “St.
Gallen” Syndicate where reason and tradition are anathema.
As I had stated, I am confused. Are you now confused, too? Are “The great
majority” of Sacramental marriages really no more than co-habitations, while
cohabitations are really sacramental (possessed of grace) marriages?
Of course not!
Ordinary People are not presumed competent by Pope Francis to understand and
enter into a simple marriage contract when they are presumed to be competent
and liable for any complex civil contract, such as a loan, a car, a house, or a
lease? All such contracts are held actionable by the parties entering into them
and there is a presumed recognition of the individual's mental, intellectual,
and cognitive capacity for entering into these far more subtle and legally
involuted contracts. Try, for example, telling your credit card agency that you
really were not competent to understand the loan you took out 5 years ago and
therefore now refuse to pay it.
The Oldest Institution in the
World
Pope Francis wounded
so many people with his statement, and opened the way to the breaking of many
marriages. So many are fragile and hold together because of the words of Christ
and the Church, enduring much suffering and remaining open nevertheless to each
other in the hope that their marriage will endure, and in the conviction that it
is
a real marriage and that vows mean something sacred and are not to be broken.
They full well know that they realized what they were saying when they got
married, however simple or uneducated they may have been. Marriage is not only
for scholars and canon lawyers. It is the oldest and most widespread institution
in the world!
How
much doubt must now enter so many marriages!
For those inclined to
leave, to break that contract, they now have nothing less than a papal
assessment that it never really was a marriage after all. They will count
themselves among “the majority” — and split. The “annulment process” already
“streamlined” by Francis will now become a race track.
Moreover, how are we to tell our children — many living in co-habitation — that
it is sinful and wrong when the pope openly approves of it? What
are we to say? As Catholic parents we have been divested of our moral authority;
for it has been subverted by the pope himself who declares that
we
are wrong in discouraging co-habitation — just as we were wrong when we thought
that we were sacramentally and therefore validly married. It is madness!
I am inclined to believe — as the most charitable of two options — that Francis
is non compos mentis. If that is so, it is, in fact, canonical grounds
for his being relieved of the papacy. The more he speaks the more certain I am
of this.
On the other hand, this may be an “impromptu” preparation for a more formal
statement concerning not so much further “streamlining” the annulment process
as in extending the divorce issue so close to Kasper’s heart — and it is
important to remember that Kasper (one of the St. Gallen Syndicate) is, after
all, one of the pope’s most trusted theologians — and one with the audacity to
countenance the explicit and absolutely unequivocal teaching on divorce by
Christ Himself.
No Retraction:
“The
great majority of sacramental marriages are null.”
To this day Pope Francis has not publicly amended, modified, or reversed his
statement that
“The great
majority of sacramental marriages are null.”
The Vatican press has tactfully, but belatedly, revised “the great majority” ...
to “some” — Francis has not.
It takes humility — the “celebrated hallmark” of his papacy — to acknowledge
that one is wrong. The refusal to do so is the remarkable absence of it.
In that vacuum
humility becomes arrogance — which far better suits a tyrant than a pope.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
“At
the Name of Jesus
every knee should bend ”
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“Because of this,
God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the
name which is above every name, that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in Heaven
and on earth and under the earth”
(Philippians 2.9-10)
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But
we no longer so
much as bow our heads upon hearing His Name
... let alone bend our
knees as we pass before Him in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the
Altar.
There was a time when, in a mix of many people, one could
always distinguish the Catholics among them. We see vestiges of
this at Mass — and almost exclusively among the elderly. They bow
their heads, however slightly, even imperceptibly, upon hearing
the name, “Jesus.” However old, they struggle to bend their knee
before Christ Himself in that beautiful golden Tabernacle
containing His very Body, Blood, Soul, and divinity!
Every time
No matter
how often and carelessly the Name is uttered by the priest or
deacon — as they would utter any other name upon Earth
— still the heads bow, reflexively, instinctively, from a life
past, an age past, when “the Name” was sacred ... and understood
as “the Sacred Name.” It derived not from a generation past,
but from centuries past, millennia past, where it was recognized
that one could not always kneel upon hearing the Sacred
Name, but the head ... and the neck ... could always bow
before it.
Indeed, it has become so common-place that our very priests
routinely use “the
Sacred Name” of Jesus —
and without so much as a nod of their heads ... as though
that Name by which we have been purchased at so great a cost
in His very body and blood upon the Cross wrought by our own
sins and to which we fastened Him ... were no different from
any other name in the world. Before the great
“Renewal” that
began in 1963, priests always used
“Christ” when
referring to Our Blessed Lord ... rarely using
“the Sacred Name of Jesus,”
— much as the Jews before Christ never uttered the Holy Name
of God (YHWH (יהוה)), using, instead, the Hebrew word
“Elohim” (אֱלֹהִים)
or “Lord,”
— just as Catholics used “Christ,”
instead of “Jesus,
before Vatican II — priest and laity alike. It is simply
another, and far more grave, instance of our move away from
Who and what is sacred, transcendent, and holy — to what is
... common ... and frankly, tiresome. After all, since the
Renewal, He Who was “the
King of kings, and the Lord of lords,”
(1 Tim 6.15) has largely become simply
“our
Buddy...” We are on a
first name basis.
The Prologue in Heaven
“They
were former days,” you say. Yes ... but from days more ancient
still; the days from which the source and substance of our very
Faith derives, days where a continuity existed — and still exists
— between Heaven above and Earth below; ancient days in which
we hear the words of Saint Paul echoed through the ages:
• “At the name
of Jesus every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth”
(Philippians 2.9-10)
• “Dost thou believe in the Son of God? He answered,
and said: Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in
him? And Jesus said to him: Thou hast both seen
him; and it is he that talketh with thee. And he
said: I believe, Lord. And falling down, he adored
him.” (St. John 9.35-38)
• “Every creature, which is in Heaven, and on the
earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the
sea, and all that are in them: I heard all saying:
To Him that sits on the throne, and to the Lamb,
benediction, and honor, and glory, and power, for
ever and ever. And the four living creatures said:
Amen. And the four and twenty ancients fell down
on their faces, and adored Him that lives for
ever and ever.” (Apocalypse 5.13-14)
• “Peter saw, he fell down at Jesus’ knees,
saying: Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord.” (St. Luke 5.8)
• “Be converted to me, and you shall be saved, all
ye ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is
no other. I have sworn by myself, the word of justice
shall go out of my mouth, and shall not return:
For every knee shall be bowed to me.” (Isaiah
45.22-24)
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And for every subsequent generation
... but ours
We are,
after all, too wise ... too sophisticated. We are not blind
beggars and we are not simple fishermen. We are not children.
Indeed.
Each of them entered the Kingdom of Heaven.
So tell
me ... since you are neither blind, nor simple fishermen, nor
children, how do you propose to enter into the Kingdom of God?
3
They fell to their knees before God, and
you ... you will do what? Is your pride so overweening that
you will bring your full height to the face of God? Will
you stride proudly through the Gates of Heaven?
You are a fool!
The arrogant have ever
been an affront to God.
Mary, the very Mother of God,
herself tells us that, “He hath
scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put
down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.”
1
Are you
greater than Mary, Mother of God? Greater than Saint Peter?
Will you make yourself to be even greater than Christ Himself
Who, “fell upon His face, praying”
2
to His Heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane?
And still, when next you pass Him by – Jesus Christ really
and truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar
– and every single day thereafter, you will not so much as
acknowledge Him with the bend of your knee ... nor His Sacred
Name with a nod of your head.
Instead of repenting of this arrogance, and learning from
Christ Who tells us that He Himself is humble
3
— you celebrate! ... most often yourselves — proclaiming
in song, in smug assurance, that you “are God’s people” — “and
the light of the world” — even as you fail to recognize Him
Who stands before you ... Who on Good Friday we had crucified
with our sins.
Why do
you find this so difficult?
Because to bend your knee you must first bend your
will ... just as Lucifer, who was the first to refuse!
You keep
evil company ...
Geoffrey K.
Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
May 18, 2026
Feast of Saint John I, pope and martyr
________________________________________
1
Saint Luke, 1.51-52
2
Saint Matthew, 26.39
3
Saint Matthew, 11.29
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Martyrology for Today
Semen est sanguis Christianorum (The
blood of Christians is the seed of the Church) Tertullian,
Apologeticum, 50
2004 Roman
Martyrology by Month
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
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2004 Roman Martyrology
Tuesday, October 20th in the Year of Grace 2026
This Day, the Twentieth Day of
October
1.
Commemoration of Saint Cornelius, centurion, whom
Saint Peter the Apostle baptized at Caesarea in Palestine,
the firstfruits of the Church from among the Gentiles.
2.
At Agen in Aquitaine, Saint Caprasius, martyr.
3.
At Aulnay in the countryside of Reims in Neustria, Saint
Sindulph, hermit, who led a solitary life, known to
God alone.
4.
At Salzburg in Bavaria, Saint Vitalis, bishop, who,
born in Ireland, was a disciple of Saint Rupert, a companion
in his travels, and imitator of his labors and vigils; chosen
by him as his successor, he converted the people of Pinzgau
to the faith of Christ.
5.
At Constantinople, Saint
Andrew, called “of the Crisis” or “the Calybite,”
monk and martyr, who was born on the island of Crete.
On account of his veneration of sacred Images, under the
emperor Constantine Copronymus, he was repeatedly beaten
and subjected to tortures unto death, and finally, hurled
from the city wall into filth, he was put to death.
6.
At Troyes on the Seine in France, Saint Aderald, archdeacon,
who, by his warnings and example, made illustrious the canonical
rule, even while he was held captive by the Saracens in
the Holy Land.
7.
At Sévigny in Normandy, Saint Adeline, first abbess
of the monastery of Mortain, which she founded with the
help of her brother Saint Vitalis.
8.
At Lviv in Ruthenia, blessed
Jacob Strepa, bishop of Halicz, of the Order of Friars
Minor, distinguished for pastoral solicitude and apostolic
virtues.
9.
At Treviso in Italy, Saint Maria Bertilla (Anna Francesca)
Boscardin, virgin of the Congregation of the Sisters
of Saint Dorothy of the Sacred Hearts, who in the hospital
was solicitous for both the bodily and spiritual health
of the sick.
10.
At Vienna in Austria, blessed James (Francis Alexander)
Kern, priest of the Order of Premonstratensians, who,
while still a student, was called to arms in the First World
War and seriously wounded; afterward, he devoted himself
with great care to pastoral ministry, which he exercised
only briefly, for he was afflicted with a long and bitter
illness, which he bore with courage of soul, peacefully
submitting to the will of God.
Omnes sancti Mártyres, oráte pro nobis.
(“All ye Holy Martyrs, pray for us,” from the Litaniae Sanctorum, the Litany of the Saints)
℟. Thanks be to God.
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1959 Roman Martyrology
The 1956 edition below, issued during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, is a revision of the typical edition of 1749, which had been promulgated by Pope Benedict XIV remained the foundational text for later updates throughout the 18th–20th centuries up to 2004 — the English translation of which remained the sole source of the Martyrology until the present translation of the 2004 Roman Martyrology by the Boston Catholic Journal in 2025.
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1959 Roman Martyrology by Month
._______________________________________________
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Tuesday, October 20th in the Year of Grace 2026
This Day, the Twentieth Day of October
In Poland, St. John Cantius, priest
and confessor. Being glorious for virtues and miracles,
he was inscribed among the saints by the Sovereign Pontiff,
Clement XIII.
At Avia, near Aquila, in Abruzzo, the birthday of blessed Maximus, deacon and martyr,
who, through the desire of suffering, presented himself
to the persecutors that sought him. After answering with
great constancy, he was racked and tortured, then beaten
with rods, and finally he died by being precipitated from
an elevated place.
At Agen, in France, St. Caprasius,
martyr. As he was hiding himself in a cavern to avoid
the violence of the persecution, the report of the blessed
virgin Faith's courage in suffering for Christ animated
him to endure torments, and he prayed to God that, if he
were deemed worthy of the glory of martyrdom, clear water
might flow from the rock of his cavern. God having granted
his prayer, he went with confidence to the scene of combat,
and after a valiant struggle, merited the palm of martyrdom
under Maximian.
At Antioch, St. Artemius, imperial
officer. Although he had filled high stations in
the army under Constantine the Great, Julian the Apostate,
whom he had reprehended for his cruelty towards Christians,
ordered him to be beaten with rods, subjected to other torments,
and finally beheaded.
At Constantinople, St. Andrew of Crete, monk.
On account of his veneration of holy images during the reign
of Constantine Copronymus, he was repeatedly scourged. Finally,
after one foot had been cut off, he expired.
At Cologne, the martyrdom of the holy
virgins Martha and Saula, with many others.
At Minden, the birthday of St. Felician,
bishop and martyr.
At Paris, the holy martyrs, George,
deacon, and Aurelius.
In Portugal, St. Irene, virgin
and martyr.
In the diocese of Rheims, St. Sindulphus,
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)
Response: Thanks be to God.
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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
agree
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; the sober realization of the
passing of this world
and all within it, and the pledge of everlasting happiness
in Heaven in the life to come.
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, and for the sake of the Church in a thousand ways outside
the blood-soaked arena. The road to Heaven is lined on both sides with Crosses,
and upon the Crosses people: some set ablaze by the contempt
of the world, and some consumed with the fire of divine love
unknown to the world but known by 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.
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*
Those early Christians who renounced their Catholic Faith
in times of persecution. When confronted with the prospect
of torture and death if they held fast to their faith in
Christ, they denied Him and their Faith through an act of
sacrificing (often incense) to the pagan Roman gods and
in so doing kept their lives and/or their freedom and property.
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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