 “Salus animarum supremus
lex esto” — ”the
salvation of souls must be the supreme law in the Church.” (Canon
Law 1752) |
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When the Shepherd Strikes the Sheep“It is written: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.” (Saint Matthew 26.31)
“I will
strike the shepherd,
and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.”1
We have often heard this. It pertains to the imminent
Passion of Jesus Christ on the very night before He was
betrayed into the hands of sinful men. He, the Good
Shepherd, would be struck (in fact, repeatedly ...) and the
Apostles, the Disciples, and the Faithful would be scattered
— they would abandon Him, flee for their lives, and their
unity in Him would be broken. Their Shepherd, in Whose fold
they were one flock, had been struck! What the will become
of the sheep? How much anxiety rends them!
_________________________ Further Reading on the Papacy of Francis:
The
REAL
Goal of the LGBT Movement is DIABOLICAL:
Why? Just as Satan cannot create, but only mimic, imitate, in the LGBT Movement we find his (Satan’s) effort to contrive a spurious — a completely counterfeit and totally perverse mockery — of the genuine family. It is a diabolical attempt to pass off what is a fiction for what is real — with the willing collaboration of a profoundly sexually and militantly perverse community. But there is an impediment to this epic exploit in Western culture as it devolves into de-civilization and debauchery: the family. As long as the nuclear family of husband, wife and children still remains intact, it is an indictment of the sterile sexual perversity that the LGBT fascists embrace and promote. It stands as an unassailable reproach to the counterfeit, for it is genuinely procreative and naturally perpetuates itself — as every other species has from the dawn of creation.
The FaceAnd the Offspring
of Vatican II
60 Years After its
Defection from Catholicism
Hideous — is it not? It has not changed much — apart from its growing defection from what the Holy Catholic Church taught for 2000 years before that most pernicious council.
It is increasingly elderly, gray,
and disheveled. Its children — fewer and fewer
every year — are largely the children of the
world, checking off the boxes branded on their
young minds by a perverse generation that has
lost its Catholic Faith and Identity: for
Abortion (yes), Homosexuality (yes), Lesbianism
(yes), Transgenderism (yes), Gender Identity
Choices (yes), Gender Re-assignment (yes), Euthanasia (yes), Cremation (yes), Pre-Marital
Sex (yes), Co-Habitation (yes), “Social
Justice” Issues (yes!) — the proper formation
of a Catholic Conscience (NO!), Chastity (NO!)
Virginity until Marriage (NO!) Sanctity (NO),
learning the most fundamental aspects of the
Catholic Religion into which they were summarily
Baptized (NO!) the Priesthood (NO!), Religious
Life (NO!) — Missionary zeal and the conversion
of sinners and those who do not know Christ —
which Francis (perhaps heretically) calls
“solemn nonsense.” (NO!) When they look about
them at their fellow “Catholics” and” Priests”,
“Nuns” and “Religious” — even the papacy of
Francis and the current Episcopacy (bishops and
cardinals) — who can blame them? The Faith is
not even authentically lived out by the highest prelates — and sadly enough by
Francis himself who gives scandal on a routine
basis.
V2 = Enrolled prior to Vatican II and deleted after Vatican II
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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!).1
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.
THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY is an
official and accredited record, on the pages of which are set
forth in simple and brief, but impressive words, the glorious
deeds of the Soldiers of Christ in all ages of the Church; of
the illustrious Heroes and Heroines of the Cross, whom her
solemn verdict has beatified or canonized. In making up this
long roll of honor, the Church has been actuated by that
instinctive wisdom with which the Spirit of God, who abides in
her and teaches her all truth, has endowed her, and which
permeates through and guides all her actions. She is the Spouse
of Christ, without spot or wrinkle or blemish, wholly glorious
and undefiled, whom He loved, for whom He died, and to whom He
promised the Spirit of Truth, to comfort her in her dreary
pilgrimage through this valley of tears, and to abide with her
forever. She is one with Him in Spirit and in love, she is
subject to Him in all things; she loves what He loves, she
teaches and practices what He commands.
If the world has its “Legions of Honor”, why should not also the
Church of the Living God, the pillar and the ground of the
truth? If men who have been stained with blood, and women who
have been tainted with vice, have had their memory consecrated
in prose and in verse, and monuments erected to their memory,
because they exhibited extraordinary talents, achieved great
success, or were, to a greater or less extent, benefactors of
their race in the temporal order, which passeth away, why should
not the true Heroes and Heroines of Jesus, who, imitating His
example, have overcome themselves, risen superior to and
trampled upon the world, have aspired, in all their thoughts,
words, and actions, to a heavenly crown, and have moreover
labored with disinterested zeal and self-forgetting love for the
good of their fellow-men, have their memories likewise
consecrated and embalmed in the minds and hearts of the people
of God? If time have its heroes, why should not eternity; if
man, why should not God? “Thy friends, O Lord, are exceedingly
honored; their principality is exceedingly exalted.” Whom His
Father so dearly loved, the world crucified; whom the world
neglects, despises, and crucifies, God, through His Church,
exceedingly honors and exalts. Their praises are sung forth,
with jubilation of heart, in the Church of God for ages on ages.
The wisdom of the Church of God in honoring her Saints is
equaled only by the great utility of the practice thus
consecrated. The Saints are not merely heroes; they are models.
Christ lived in them, and Christ yet speaks through them. They
were the living temples of the Holy Ghost, in whose mortal
bodies dwelt all the riches of His wisdom and grace. They were
in life consecrated human exemplars of divine excellence and
perfection. Their example still appeals to our minds and to our
hearts, more eloquently even than did their words to the men of
their own generation, while they were in the tabernacle of the
flesh. Though dead, they still speak. Their relics are instinct
with sanctity, and through them they continue to breathe forth
the sweet odor of Christ. The immortality into which they have
entered still lingers in their bones, and seems to breathe in
their mortal remains. As many an ardent spirit has been induced
to rush to the cannon's mouth by reading the exploits of earthly
heroes, so many a generous Christian soul has been fired with
heavenly ardor, and been impelled to rush to the crown of
martyrdom, by reading the lives and heroic achievements of the
Saints and Martyrs of Christ. Example, in its silent appeal, is
more potent in its influence on the human heart and conduct than
are words in their most eloquent utterances.
The Church knows and feels all this, in the Spirit of God with
whom she is replenished; and hence she sets forth, with holy
joy and exultant hope, her bright and ever-increasing Calendar
of Sanctity of just men and women made perfect and rendered
glorious, under her unearthly and sublime teachings. In reading
this roll of consecrated holiness, our instinctive conclusion
is, precisely that which the great soul of St. Augustine reached
at the very crisis of his life, the moment of his conversion “If
other men like me have attained to such sanctity, why not I?
Shall the poor, the afflicted, the despised of the World, bear
away the palm of victory, the crown of immortality, while I lie
buried in my sloth and dead in my sins, and thus lose the
brilliant and glorious mansion already prepared for me in Heaven?
Shall all the gifts, which God has lavished upon me, be
ingloriously spent and foolishly wasted, in the petty contest
for this world's evanescent honors and riches, while the poor
and contemned lay up treasures in Heaven, and secure the prize
of immortal glory? Shall others be the friends of God, whom He
delights to honor, while I alone remain His enemy, and an alien
from His blessed Kingdom?”
It is a consoling evidence of progress in the spiritual life in
this country to find the Martyrology here published, for the
first time, in English, and thereby made accessible, in its rich
treasures of Sanctity, to all classes of our population. It will
prove highly edifying and useful, not only to the members of our
numerous religious Communities of both sexes, but also to the
laity generally. Every day has here its record of Sanctity; and
there is scarcely a Christian, no matter how lowly or how much
occupied, who may not be able to daily peruse, with faith and
with great profit, the brief page of each day's models of
Holiness. These belong to all classes and callings of life; from
the throne to the hovel, from the Pontiff to the lowest cleric,
from the philosopher to the peasant, from the busy walks of life
to the dreary wastes of the desert.
Let all, then, procure and read daily the appropriate portions
of this Martyrology. Its daily and pious perusal will console us
in affliction, will animate us in despondency, will make our
souls glow with the love of God in coldness, and will lift up
our minds and hearts from this dull and ever-changing earth to
the bright and everlasting mansions prepared for us in Heaven!
Imprimatur, J. Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Baltimore, Maryland
1916
Printable PDF Version
(and what “Forever” really means)
“From
the very first, upon Our elevation to the chief Apostleship,
We gladly turned our mind and energies and directed all out
thoughts to those matters which concerned the preservation of a
pure liturgy, and We strove with God's help, by every means in
our power, to accomplish this purpose. For, besides other
decrees of the sacred Council of Trent, there were stipulations
for Us to revise and re-edit the sacred books: the Catechism,
the Missal and the Breviary. With the Catechism published for
the instruction of the faithful, by God's help, and the Breviary
thoroughly revised for the worthy praise of God, in order that
the Missal and Breviary may be in perfect harmony, as fitting
and proper — for it is most becoming that there be in the
Church only one appropriate manner of reciting the Psalms and
only one rite for
the celebration of Mass — We deemed it necessary
to give our immediate attention to what still remained to be
done, viz, the re-editing of the Missal as soon as possible.
Hence, We decided to entrust this work to learned men of our
selection. They very carefully collated all their work with the
ancient codices in Our Vatican Library and with reliable,
preserved or emended codices from elsewhere. Besides this,
these men consulted the
works of ancient and approved authors concerning the same sacred
rites; and thus they have restored the Missal itself to the
original form and rite of the holy Fathers. When this
work has been gone over numerous times and further emended,
after serious study and reflection, We commanded that the
finished product be printed and published as soon as possible,
so that all might enjoy the fruits of this labor; and thus,
priests would know which prayers to use and which rites and
ceremonies they were required to observe from now on in the
celebration of Masses.
Let all everywhere adopt and observe what has been handed down
by the Holy Roman Church, the Mother and Teacher of the other
churches, and let
Masses not be sung or read according to any other formula than
that of this Missal published by Us.
This ordinance applies
henceforth, now, and forever, throughout all the
provinces of the Christian world, to all patriarchs, cathedral
churches, collegiate and parish churches, be they secular or
religious, both of men and of women — even of military orders —
and of churches or chapels without a specific congregation in
which conventual Masses are sung aloud in choir or read
privately in accord with the rites and customs of the Roman
Church. This Missal is to be used by all churches, even by those
which in their authorization are made exempt, whether by
Apostolic indult, custom, or privilege, or even if by oath or
official confirmation of the Holy See, or have their rights and
faculties guaranteed to them by any other manner whatsoever.
This new rite alone is to be used unless approval of the
practice of saying Mass differently was given at the very time
of the institution and confirmation of the church by Apostolic
See at least 200 years ago, or unless there has prevailed a
custom of a similar kind which has been continuously followed
for a period of not less than 200 years, in which most cases We
in no wise rescind their above-mentioned prerogative or custom.
However, if this Missal, which we have seen fit to publish, be
more agreeable to these latter, We grant them permission to
celebrate Mass according to its rite, provided they have the
consent of their bishop or prelate or of their whole Chapter,
everything else to the contrary notwithstanding.
All other of the churches referred to above, however, are hereby
denied the use of other missals, which are to be discontinued
entirely and absolutely; whereas, by
this present
Constitution, which will be valid henceforth, now, and
forever, We order and enjoin that nothing must be added to
Our recently published Missal, nothing omitted from it, nor
anything whatsoever be changed within it under the
penalty of Our displeasure.
We specifically command each and every patriarch, administrator,
and all other persons or whatever ecclesiastical dignity they
may be, be they even cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, or
possessed of any other rank or pre-eminence, and
We order them in virtue
of holy obedience to chant or to read the Mass according to the
rite and manner and norm herewith laid down by Us and,
hereafter, to discontinue and completely discard all
other rubrics and rites of other missals, however ancient, which
they have customarily followed; and they must not in celebrating
Mass presume to introduce any ceremonies or recite any prayers
other than those contained in this Missal.
Furthermore, by these presents [this law],
in virtue of Our
Apostolic authority, We grant and concede in perpetuity
that, for the chanting or reading of the Mass in any church
whatsoever, this Missal is hereafter to be
followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience
or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment, or censure, and may
freely and lawfully be used. Nor are superiors, administrators,
canons, chaplains, and other secular priests, or religious, of
whatever title designated, obliged to celebrate the Mass
otherwise than as enjoined by Us. We likewise declare and
ordain that no one whosoever is forced or coerced to alter this
Missal, and that this present document cannot be revoked or
modified, but remains always valid and retain its full force
notwithstanding the previous constitutions and decrees of the
Holy See, as well as any general or special constitutions or
edicts of provincial or synodal councils, and
notwithstanding the practice and custom of the aforesaid
churches, established by long and immemorial prescription —
except, however, if more than two hundred years’ standing.
It is Our will, therefore, and by the same authority, We decree
that, after We publish this constitution and the edition of the
Missal, the priests of the Roman Curia are, after thirty days,
obliged to chant or read the Mass according to it; all others
south of the Alps, after three months; and those beyond the Alps
either within six months or whenever the Missal is available for
sale. Wherefore, in order that the Missal be preserved incorrupt
throughout the whole world and kept free of flaws and errors,
the penalty for nonobservance for printers, whether mediately or
immediately subject to Our dominion, and that of the Holy Roman
Church, will be the forfeiting of their books and a fine of one
hundred gold ducats, payable ipso facto to the Apostolic
Treasury. Further, as for those located in other parts of the
world, the penalty is excommunication latae sententiae,
and such other penalties as may in Our judgment be imposed; and
We decree by this law that they must not dare or presume either
to print or to publish or to sell, or in any way to accept books
of this nature without Our approval and consent, or without the
express consent of the Apostolic Commissaries of those places,
who will be appointed by Us. Said printer must receive a
standard Missal and agree faithfully with it and in no wise vary
from the Roman Missal of the large type (secundum magnum
impressionem).
Accordingly, since it
would be difficult for this present pronouncement to be sent to
all parts of the Christian world and simultaneously come to
light everywhere, We direct that it be, as usual, posted
and published at the doors of the Basilica of the Prince of the
Apostles, also at the Apostolic Chancery, and on the street at
Campo Flora; furthermore, We direct that printed copies of this
same edict signed by a notary public and made official by an
ecclesiastical dignitary possess the same indubitable validity
everywhere and in every nation, as if Our manuscript were shown
there. Therefore, no one whosoever is permitted to alter this
notice of Our permission, statute, ordinance, command, precept,
grant, indult, declaration, will, decree, and prohibition.
Should anyone dare to contravene it, know that he will incur the
wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and
Paul.”
Given at St. Peter’s in the year of the Lord's Incarnation,
1570, on the 14th of July of the Fifth year of Our Pontificate.
Printable PDF Version
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