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Boston Catholic Journal - Critical Catholic Commentary in the Twilight of Reason

 

 

Boston Catholic Journal

Martyrology for Today

(will be suspended until September 14th. Please use the month of September to access the daily Martyrolgy)


CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARY

in the Twilight of Reason


 

 

Mary, Conceived without Sin, Pray for us who have Recourse to Thee

Mary, Conceived without Sin,

pray for us who have recourse to Thee

 


 

 

 

The Littlest Apostles
 

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their Angels in Heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father ... it is not the will of your Heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost.”  (St. Matthew 18:9-14)

The Littlest Apostles

Jesus and the children!
 

     So often, implicitly or explicitly, Jesus invokes children as exemplars in God’s Kingdom. So much so, in fact, that He admonishes us against despising any of them in their littleness.
 

     It is likely that you have heard many sermons and read many reflections, on the Scriptural verse that “unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom” (St. Matthew 18.3) — that Christ is not asking us to simply “go out and play,” or to speak as children speak.
 

     We have listened and we have yawned. “Of course.”
 

     We know the unfeigned love and simple trust of children. It touches us (or ought to touch us) deeply. We are indicted by it in our “adult” love that is largely mathematical in nature and a matter of quid pro quo, a giving and an expected receiving, a balance between self-giving, that is more often a fulcrum leveraging our own advantage. A child most often gives without counting, loves as a matter of spontaneity, and not measure. Children are terrible at math. Thank God! They know nothing of fulcrums and levers and the like, of using their love to ends other than love.
 

     We do. We adults. And the children shame us, remind us of something clear, untainted, uncalculated, that we instinctively recognize as something we have lost, and we lament it ... even as we esteem ourselves too wise to return to that innocence.
 

     We are motivated by a child’s loving trust. It moves us to be better than we are, to go beyond our narrow interests — to enact the fulfillment of that trust, of what is anticipated of us by the child — to something noble and good within us.
 

     That is why we are not to despise them. They call us, in their littleness, in their uncalculated love, in the simplicity of their trust, to become the image of God. Of goodness. Of responsiveness to love and trust.
 

     That is also why they are our exemplars. They are the unwitting Apostles. They proclaim an invincible, an incredibly powerful evangel that only God can proclaim through them, and it is this: love, trust, God. Be good. Do not deceive. Throw away your calculator. Expect what you ask for in love. Accept what is denied you in love.
 

     Earth, this world of politics, primacy and power — this is our world ... the world of adults. And we’ve made quite a mess of it.

 

     I cannot think of one child who has screwed up the world, and not made it more beautiful for his or her presence.
 

     Unfortunately, by our example they become like us when Jesus tells us that by their example we should become like them!
 

     After all, their very Angels behold the Face of His Father in Heaven. Yours ... well, ours ... may well be hiding in shame, not because they have failed Him, but because we have failed them.
 

     The Angels?


         No, no! The children!


 

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

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


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Three Pious Practices
for Every Devout Catholic

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ...

Gloria, Tea and Bee:


Recovering the Disreputable



     There are three pious practices that we no longer encounter and that had been not just customary, but instinctive to Catholics — up to 40 or so years ago when the notion of piety fell into disrepute, together with many of the customs long cherished — and practiced — by Catholics, not for years, but for centuries. They are simple things really, that we seldom see because ... well, they are rarely done and yet of themselves, speak volumes of our loss (perhaps a calculated deprivation, actually) of the sacred.

Let me give you both the long and the short of it. Here is the short:

  • We no longer bow our heads at the Sacred Name of Jesus (see Philippians 2.5-11)

  • We no longer make the Sign of the Cross over our hearts or foreheads when we pass by a Catholic Church where Christ dwells, really and truly, in the Blessed Sacrament.

  • We no longer make reparation whenever we hear the Sacred Name of Jesus uttered blasphemously.

     We have lost collective memory of things instinctually Catholic. Much of it has been superannuated by “policy” or simply jettisoned in what became a totally unilateral effort at ecumenism in which the Church embraced, en masse, much historically alien to it — with absolutely no other denomination embracing anything remotely “Catholic” in return. The Church surrendered much unique to its identity. The other “communions” wisely surrendered nothing. This is not to say that ecumenism has failed. It has only failed for Catholics — the only ones who have been resolute in failing to recognize the obvious.

     Now the long version, a vignette really, that captures much of what once was — not long ago — is no more, and ought to be: (the Boston Catholic Journal wishes to express its gratitude to P.G. of San Francisco, formerly of Massachusetts, for the following contribution)

A flood of memories came rushing in upon me one day recently at Mass.

I noticed an impeccably dressed elderly woman with stark white hair nodding — not just nodding, but nodding at what I began to realize were predictable times. To be sure, I continued to observe this almost imperceptible movement of her head downward until I became aware that it occurred precisely each time the priest uttered the Name, “Jesus.” It did not occur when the priest uttered “Christ” — except when it was preceded by “Jesus.”

I looked around the congregation and saw to my surprise that this gentle gesture was accompanied by other nods — mostly among what one “Minister of Music” derisively described to me as the “Grayheads.” I even observed it, much to my surprise, in one young man. Out of a congregation of perhaps 300, I noticed this almost imperceptible but curious behavior in perhaps five or six parishioners. And always — always and only — at the Sacred Name of Jesus.

Memories returned. Memories of my father. A tall man (to me as a child, anyway) with a gentle voice; strong, in the quiet way that only gentleness can be remarkably strong, he walked beside me, straight and assured, but not arrogant. Holding my hand, we walked the several blocks to Church with my younger brother alternately walking and being carried effortlessly in the strong arms of my father. It was Sunday morning 1957. Upon entering Church (Saint Clement’s), he removed his hat and made sure we blessed ourselves properly. In those days matrons wore fur stoles that still had the eyes of the poor Minks still in them, which endlessly fascinated my brother, and frightened me. Dad had to prevent Mikey from poking at them during Mass.

It was here that I first remembered Dad nodding his head, too. I did not know why ... but he did, and so did everyone else. I remember asking him if his tie was too tight. He put his fingers to his lips and pointed in the direction of the Altar. As time went by I began to understand that one simply nods ones head whenever the name of Jesus was uttered. Catholics just did that. The priest did it. Dad did it. Even Mikey did it! And so did Tommy Mason, the freshest kid on the block! Soon it became second nature, in Church and out of it. I remember my father gently scolding me once when I deliberately said the “Holy Name” several times in a row to make the boys around me nod their heads! I even did it twice to Aunt Vickie!

But I also noticed two other peculiar things about Dad (and, in fact, a lot of other Catholics back then). Whenever we walked in front of a Church — even on the other side of the street — Dad would make a tiny Sign of the Cross over his heart in a hidden kind of way, and quietly utter :

“Gloria (presumably Aunt Gloria), Tea and Bee, Dom and knee”.

I thought it a cute riddle that rhymed, although I never had an Uncle Dom. Later Dad unraveled the mystery to me one day when I finally asked him who “Dom” was. I distinctly remember that it was winter, for Dad crouched down beside me in the snow, threw his muffler around our faces to keep out the snow and wind, and told me, “It is Latin, son. “Gloria tibi, Domine”, which means, “Glory to You, Lord Jesus.” Yup, even as he spoke he nodded his head when he said “Jesus” — and so did I. I was learning. “Whenever you pass in front of a Catholic Church you always say that, son, and make the Sign of the Cross over your heart.” But Mom does it over her forehead, I protested. “Well, Mamma is right, too”, he said. “The important thing is that you always do it, because Jesus is inside the Church.”

Walking, driving, on the bus — wherever — Dad did it and I felt it was like a little secret between us, and, of course, Jesus (yes, I just now bowed my head).

There was one other thing that Dad did that stayed with me all my life. Whenever he spoke with someone who was either angry or just crude and said something like, “Jesus Christ! I told him he was a crook!” or, “Jesus, was I angry!”, I noticed that Dad very unobtrusively did two things! First, of course, he slightly bowed his head. Then he would usually cross his arms and underneath them secretly make a small, totally unnoticeable movement with his thumb, pressing it against his heart.

It took a long time for me to catch on to that one. Again, it was something he did so naturally and quietly that it almost escaped me. “Dad,” I later asked, after he had a very animated conversation with one of my uncles, “what do you do with your thumb when people are angry, like Uncle Mario was a few minutes ago? And why?” This really escaped me — but stayed with me all my life as perhaps no other gesture he taught me.

He paused a moment, as though trying to look for simple words to explain it.

“What,” he asked me, is the Third Commandment?” I told him,
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”, proud that I remembered it quickly (back then we had to memorize them and Nuns taught us our Catechism — and boy, you had better remember!)

“Well,” Dad continued, “Uncle Mario just used the Lord’s Name in vain. Instead of just letting it pass as blasphemy (I did not know what “blasphemy” exactly was at the time, but knew it was not good) against God, I just “finished” the sentence for him, adding, “Have mercy on us” and striking my heart as we do at Mass. That way, it brings something good out of a sin — I make it an opportunity to ask God’s mercy both for Uncle Mario and for myself.”

I began to understand what kind of man my father really was — and what kind of man I should try to be, too. So often it is the little things a person does — especially when they dont know that they are being observed — that leave the most lasting impressions.

Dad would not recognize most Catholics today. Neither, I think, would Saint Paul. What was second nature to them seems to have disappeared altogether — except for a few of those beautiful elderly women or old men at Mass.”

P.G.
San Francisco, CA


     Sad to say, not only do the laity no longer exercise these pious and beautiful practices — but neither do our priests or bishops. They use what Catholics once called the “Sacred Name” with no reverence, attaching to it a significance apparently no greater than any other name that passes from their lips. But it was not always so. For many, many centuries it was not so. But piety has become so … disreputable in our time. It is a term of disdain, a concept fraught with an intolerable “otherworldliness” that no longer has a place in our time, and in our world.

     What P.G., I think, was alluding to when he wrote that Saint Paul would probably not recognize most Catholic today, is this:

Christ Jesus, Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” (Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians 2.5-11)

The very Angels in Heaven bow at the name of Jesus ... and even the demons in Hell.
      But
we are somehow more enlightened than that …somehow superior to both — such that what is binding upon those in Heaven and Hell itself, is not binding upon us
!

     How vastly cultured, how erudite we now are, unlike those backward generations who filled the Church (and the Calendar of Saints) before Vatican II; you know, the indietrists” (the “backwardists as Francis had derisively called them) before Vatican II stamped out most things distinctly Catholic as impediments to the new evangel of Ecumenism.”

     How perfectly infused with Sanctifying Grace we have become — unlike our forebears just two generations past! How learned! How wise! How discerning! We thank God that we are not like them! (St. Luke 18.11)
     What a quantum leap! But I think not of grace — at least for us who have been made “a little less than the Angels” (Heb. 2.7) who bow in Heaven at the Sacred Name
          us, who have made ourselves less subject to God than even the demons!

     Think about it — and perhaps make a very ancient effort at what is “disreputable” to the world and more in keeping with your beautiful Catholic identity of 2000 years past — and what gives glory to God ... and not man.
 


Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

   Printable PDF Version


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

 

 

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The Most Urgent Question of Our Time:

When the Son of Man Comes, will He Find Faith on Earth? 

(St. Luke 18.8)

 

     No more stunning, no more frightening, and perhaps no more ominously portentous words are spoken in all the Gospels, in fact, in the entire New Testament — perhaps even in the entirety of Sacred Scripture itself; words that have become increasingly fraught with significance with every passing year of the most unfortunate papacy of Francis — a papacy not just  likely … but I believe with certainty … will be understood not simply as among the worst … but the worst … the most destructive to the Faith and to the Church in the annals of 2000 years of Church history.

     Indeed, with every generation following that devastating Second Vatican Council — that scorched earth assault on Tradition and historical Catholicism — the question increasingly verges on an implied and obvious answer.

     Indeed, we must wonder if the question that Christ poses … “When the Son of Man comes will He find Faith on earth?” … is, in fact, spoken of this generation, or of one soon — very soon, to come.
 
     As with so many of Christ’s teachings, this troubling question is too often and too deftly explained away — especially by the overwhelming number of the liberal theologians and bishops who have proliferated and multiplied since 1962 — which is to say, by “the learned and the wise”. If we heed them, it would appear that either Christ does not know what He is saying, or we do not know what He is saying — although we all agree that He said something ... that sounds suspiciously clear.
 
     We must, however, pay careful attention to these twelve words, …. perhaps more now than at any
other time in Church history.



“When the Son of Man comes will He find Faith on earth?”

     These are twelve words, however, to which we must pay careful attention, perhaps more now than at any other time in Church history.

     However reluctant we are to take Christ at His word — which becomes increasingly inconvenient to us — we must recognize that Jesus never spoke idly: His words, His teachings — and yes, His Commandments — were always uttered to one explicit end: the salvation of souls — attaining to Heaven and everlasting happiness and to avoiding Hell and eternal misery.

     The Jewish religious authorities — “the learned” of His own time — had scornfully dismissed Christ’s warning that not so much as stone would remain standing in the great Temple 1 ... the very Temple within which, 70 years later, these words were fulfilled when Rome laid waste in days what took 46 years to build.

     We tend to view such alarming statements made by Jesus — and there are many — with the same scorn and disdain today.
     Indeed ... what has become of the “Faith of our Fathers?”

     A mere fifty years ago we ourselves would have instinctively replied “Of course He will find faith! There simply must be some deeper, some obscure and less evident meaning to this that we do not presently understand — and what He appears to be saying, He is not really saying at all. Surely the “learned” of our own day can deftly explain the answer to this troubling question. In the end, they will conclude, Jesus is really asking something entirely different from what He appears to be asking and that it has nothing to do with our very real defection from the Faith.”

     It is likely that many Jews of Jesus’ time — both the learned and the unlearned — had replied in much the same way. In fact, they did. 
     In other words, to us, our faith, the Faith of the Catholic Church for two millennia, could no sooner disappear than ... well, the stones of the great Temple 2000 years ago!
     If, however, we take a careful inventory of our present and undeniably dismal and increasingly scandalous situation in the Church — especially as it has unfolded in the last five decades — Jesus does not quite appear as ... “perplexing” ... as so many apparently make Him to be.


Candidly Ask yourself the following:

     Has the Faith — the Catholic Faith — flourished in the last 50 years, or has it withered?

     Are vocations to the Priesthood and Religious life growing or dwindling?

     Are Catholics having more children or are they having fewer children?

     Are Missionary efforts, to the end of (dare we say it?) “conversion” as mandated by Christ encouraged as intrinsic to Catholicism — or are they discouraged as impolite, obtrusive, culturally imperialistic and inherently inimical to the “Ecumenical spirit of Vatican II” — especially as interpreted by Pope Francis for whom “proselytism is solemn nonsense,” to use his own words, words that mock the sacrifices of countless missionary saints through the 2000 years preceding Vatican II more enlightened” understanding  of the Great Commission*?

     Rather, we find that “conversion” to Christ and His Church is actively discouraged — that especially under Pope Francis it is no longer understood as a holy and inherently necessary endeavor — instead, it is disdained, even dismissed, as “socially and culturally incorrect” — indeed, we find that promoting our Catholic Faith — as Christ has commanded us to— has been  forbidden by Francis and his “progressive” coterie of feckless and disaffected cardinals and bishops! What pope, prior to Vatican II, could ever have envisioned this?

     Is our understanding of the Catholic Church, as an absolutely unique institution indispensable to the ordinary means of salvation, emphasized as urgently today (if it is emphasized at all) as it was a hundred years ago? Fifty years ago? Indeed, is the concept itself — of the singularity and indispensability of the Holy Catholic Church — still deemed an actual dogma and a viable concept at all?

     For all our insolence and equivocation, we know the answers, and we are uncomfortable with them, for they fly in the face of Christ and all that He taught — to say nothing of Sacred Scripture, Holy Tradition, and the Sacred Deposit of the Faith entrusted to the Catholic Church by God Himself.

     Indeed, Christ’s question takes on a greater sense of urgency still, for the sheep are scattered and confused as never before. The papacy of Francis has been disastrous for the Church. Why? Precisely because he has taken Vatican II to its logical conclusion: the irrelevance of the Church.

Ubi est Pastor?

     Where is the Shepherd? Who is earnestly addressing this spiritual malaise and religious decay due to the indolence and dereliction of the vast majority of American and European bishops who appear far more eager for secular plaudits than the now quaint and discredited notion of “the salvation of souls.” Pope Francis has effectively declared this mandate defunct in favor of the rehabilitation of bodies, societies, economies, and “the environment”. That the passing material environment of man is infinitely less important than the eternal abode of his soul, often appears to elude Francis. Indeed, it appears to elude most Catholics whose mantra increasingly coincides with the world’s: Social activism! ... not interior conversion away from this world ... and to Christ.

     Shame! Shame on us! By our silence, our fear of being disparaged by “other Catholics” for the sake of Christ, we condone this travesty — are complicit in it ... even promote it!

     What will motivate us to recognize, and to redress, this frightful and ultimately deadly state of affairs?

     There are, after all, other contenders in this world for the souls of men ... seen and unseen! As our own wick smolders, others blaze! The burning Crescent of Islam, poised like a scimitar, and every bit as deadly, glows and grows in the east, and with it, not an ethnic, but a Religious Cleansing to which the world remains indifferent — an expunging of every vestige of Christianity in partibus infidelium. And even Islam has its secular collaborators: the European Union — once a continent raised up from utter barbarism to a civilization formed and ennobled by its Catholic heritage — will no longer tolerate the inclusion of its indissoluble Christian heritage within its Constitution. Not only does it thoroughly repudiate its own Christian cultural heritage — it prohibits it — even banishes it! This is nothing less than self-loathing. And perhaps it ought to be.

     Surely, then, in our effort to remedy this impending state of dissolution, we will first turn to our bishops, since they are, preeminently, the “Teachers and Guardians of the Faith”. But more often than not — much more often than not — in the well-appointed office at the end of the corridor we do not find a shepherd of souls but a deeply sequestered, occasionally avuncular, and predictably remote ... “administrator.”

     Relegating his prime responsibility as Teacher and Promoter of the Faith ... to others, in the form of Lay committees and subcommittees largely “chaired” by liberal Catholics more concerned with social issues than the salvation of souls, are we confident that the patrimony of our faith will somehow percolate through this strata of already contaminated soil and reach our children authentically and intact? Is our fear mitigated ... or further exacerbated ... by our bishops’ resolute lack of diligence in being attentive to what Catholic colleges and theologians in their own dioceses are really teaching — and who are teaching the teachers ... who, in turn, are teaching our children?

     Do you think that your bishop actually — that is to say, cognitively — is aware of, or even concerned with — what the teachers themselves are actually teaching?

Not in this diocese. Not in Boston. In fact, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley had routinely feted, praised, and held up as exemplary, the clueless “Catechists” who churn out our children to the Sacrament of Confirmation — with no clue whatever of that in which they are being confirmed. By comparison, even the dismal failure of our public schools in Boston must be deemed a stunning success.

     For most of us — especially in the Archdiocese of Boston, but no less elsewhere — the answer is, as they say, a “no-brainer:” it is a universally resounding no. Most of us find, to our growing dismay and deepening cynicism, that our bishops appear to have “more important,” more ... “pressing” things to do ... than to communicate the Faith to the faithful ... especially the children.

     Really, we beg the question: if no one teaches the teachers — who, then, teaches the children? If they are not brought the faith by those to whom it has been entrusted — the bishops, the episcopacy — who will bring it to them?
Will they — how can they — acquire the Faith ... if no one brings it to them? Saint Paul is very clear about this:


“How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent ...?” (Romans 10.14-15)


     Ask yourself candidly: do you know more ... or less ... of your Catholic faith than your children? Very likely more — although, in all honesty, it is probably little. You politely assent to the now quaint Catholic notion that “parents are the primary teachers of their children,” but knowing little of your own Faith, you simply shell out $175.00 per child and pan off this grave responsibility to others of whom you know nothing, and who themselves largely know nothing of the faith they presume to teach. You go through the motions as careless of what your children are taught in their 10 years of “Religious Education” as your bishop is of what the teachers teach. 10 years later, and $1500 poorer per child, you scratch your head and wonder why Johnny still does not know God, and why Judy never goes to Mass — and yet we have agreed that you know more than your children ...

What, then, we must ask — with growing apprehension — will your children teach their children ...?


What will they — who know even less than you — teach those who know nothing?


Total Ignorance

The momentum, as we see, is inexorable — until it culminates in total ignorance: every generation knows less of their faith than the generation preceding it. It is, in the end, the devolution from doctrine to legend, from legend to fiction, and from fiction to myth.

That is not just a poor, but a stultifying and ultimately deadly patrimony.

This default — at every level — in transmitting the authentic Catholic faith intact ... leaves Jesus question very suddenly very real.

“Recently, a Gallup poll was taken on Catholic attitudes toward Holy Communion. The poll showed serious confusion among Catholics about one of the most basic beliefs of the Church. Only 30 percent of those surveyed believe they are actually receiving the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.”

     The problem is more than mathematical; as we have seen, it is exponential. 70% of Catholics do not possess this most fundamental, this most essential understanding of the core article of genuine Catholic doctrine: that “Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, you have no life in you.” Heavy stuff!

     It is not just a matter of the greatest concern, but nothing less than a matter of the gravest dereliction that most Catholics do not realize — do not know — that the very Mass itself is an abbreviation of “The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass”, and that it is really a Sacrifice, the actual re-enactment of Calvary before their very eyes!

     This failure of understanding ... culminates in a failure in Faith. It possesses, in significant ways, the remorseless characteristics of mathematical certainties. Not understanding, grasping — having never been taught — the most elementary features of the faith, how can they be understood to possess what they have not acquired, and how can they transmit, pass on, what they do not possess? It is inescapable. 

     Prognostication, of course, is for fools.

     But the words of Christ are certainties that will come to pass.

“Weep not for Me, but for your children”, 5 Christ told the sorrowing women on the road to Calvary.

     Jesus’ question, then — “When the Son of Man comes will He find faith on earth?”—  is not a “rhetorical question” at all; it is a question fraught with enormous significance ... the frightful answer to which appears to be unfolding before our very eyes ... but that is if you take Christ at His word — and given Jesus’ track record on things yet to come, we would do well and wisely to give pause for more than thought.

     Are you worried now ...? Not nearly enough.

And this is all the more frightening still.

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

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

   Printable PDF Version

 

 

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The Holy Catholic Faith
Where is it And Who is Keeping it?

The Catholic Church that we Once Knew and Recognize no Longer

Has the Post-Conciliar Church

Lost Custody of the Faith?

 

All indications are that is has

The “Dark Ages” — that disdainful term for the period in history following the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. until the 15th century (a period correctly described as the Middle Ages) is understood by the secular world to have lasted roughly 1000 years, beginning in Florence, Italy.

Within the post-Conciliar Catholic Church, however, it appears that the term extends well beyond the 15th century; indeed, some 500 years beyond it! According to contemporary Catholic thought articulated within the past five papacies, the “Dark Ages” really ended in 1965 at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. All the doctrines and teachings prior to that Council were only imperfectly, deficiently, and insufficiently articulated or defectively understood.


The 1000 Years of Darkness

Only the Second Vatican Council finally attained to enlightenment in the divine economy, and after 1,965 years of suspension, it alone has provided the final, sufficient, and correct understanding of God and Church, man and nature. Prior to that, according to post-Conciliar thought, Catholics had essentially lived in darkness, specifically the darkness of the “pre-Conciliar Dark Ages.” It may be said that where the Rational Enlightenment “saved the world from religion,” Vatican II saved the Church from Catholicism.

Continue reading

 

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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

(The 2004 Martyrology below will be suspended until September 14th. Please use the month of September to access the 2004 daily Martyrology)
 

 

 

 

2004 Roman Martyrology

 

 

Wednesday, September 3rd in the Year of Grace 2025


This Day, the Third Day of September

Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great, pope and Doctor of the Church, who, having embraced monastic life, served as legate in Constantinople, and, finally elected on this day to the Roman See, cared for both earthly affairs and sacred matters as the servant of the servants of God.  He showed himself to be a true shepherd in governing affairs, in providing every assistance to the poor, in fostering monastic life, and in confirming or spreading the faith everywhere, on account of which he also wrote outstandingly on moral and pastoral matters.  He died on the twelfth day of March.

 

2Commemoration of Saint Phoebe, servant of the Lord among the faithful at Cenchreae, who assisted the blessed Apostle Paul and many others, as he himself testifies in the letter to the Romans.

 

3.  At Nicomedia in Bithynia, Saint Basilissa, virgin and martyr.

 

4.  At Córdoba in Baetica, Spain, Saint Sandalus, martyr.

 

5.  At Toul in Belgic France, Saint Mansuetus, first bishop of this city.

 

6.  On Mount Titano near Rimini in Flaminia, Saint Marinus, deacon and hermit, who is believed to have led a still-pagan people to the light of the Gospel and the freedom of Christ.

 

7.  In Ireland, Saint Macanisius, bishop.

 

8.  At Milan in Lombardy, Saint Auxanus, bishop.

 

9.  At Caudium in Campania, Saint Vitalian, bishop.

 

10.  In the monastery of Stavelot in Brabant, Saint Remaclus, bishop and abbot, who, after living at the monastery of Solignac, founded the twin monasteries of Stavelot and Malmedy in the solitude of the Ardennes forest.

 

11.  On the island of Lérins in Provence, Saint Aigulphus, abbot, and his fellow monks, who are thought to have suffered martyrdom at the hands of invading Saracens.

 

12.  At Séez in Neustria, Saint Chrodogang, bishop and martyr.

 

13.  In the region of Asti, in the Camonica Valley of Lombardy, blessed Gualterus, bishop of Brescia, of the Order of Preachers, who prudently labored for the peace of the Church and the state during the time of Emperor Frederick II, and suffered exile.

 

14.  At Nagasaki in Japan, the blessed Bartholomew Gutiérrez, priest of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine, and five companions, martyrs 4, who, out of hatred for the Christian faith, were first immersed in boiling sulfurous waters and then consigned to fire.

 

15.  At Piacenza in Emilia, blessed Brigida Morello of Jesus, who, having become a widow, consecrated herself to the Lord in penance, devoted herself with all zeal to works of charity, and founded the Congregation of the Ursuline Sisters of Mary Immaculate for the Christian formation of young girls.

 

16.  At Paris in France, the passion of the blessed martyrs André Abel Alricy, priest, and seventy-one companions,5 most of whom were priests, who, after having confessed the faith on the previous day, were confined in the Seminary of Saint Firmin as in a prison, and were slaughtered out of hatred for the Church.

 

17.  In the same place, on the same day and year, the blessed martyrs Jean-Baptiste Bottex, Michel-Marie-François de la Gardette, and François Hyacinthe le Livec de Trésurin, who perished for Christ in the same time of persecution in the prison called “La Force.”

 

18.  At Seoul in Korea, the passion of Saints John Pak Hu-jae and five female companions, 6 martyrs, who, during a fierce persecution, were led before a tribunal for their being Christians, endured cruel tortures for the faith, and were put to death by beheading.

 

 

 

__________________________________________________________________

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)

 ℟. Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

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.
 

(The 1956 daily Martyrology below will be suspended until September 14th.
Please use the month of September to access the daily 1956  Martyrology)

 

 

 

1956 ROMAN MARTYROLOGY

 

Wednesday September 3rd in the Year of Grace 2025


This Day, the Third Day of September

At Rome, St. Serapia, virgin. Under the emperor Adrian, she was delivered to two lascivious young men, and as she could not be corrupted, nor afterwards burned with lighted torches, she was beaten with rods, and finally beheaded, by order of the judge Berillus. She died on the 29th of July, and was buried by blessed Sabina in her own sepulchre, near the field of Vindician. But the commemoration of her martyrdom is celebrated more solemnly on this day, when their common tomb was finished and adorned, and dedicated as a place of prayer.

At Corinth, the birthday of St. Phoebe, mentioned by the blessed Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans.

At Aquileia, the holy virgins and martyrs Euphemia, Dorothea, Thecla, and Erasma. Under Nero, after enduring many torments, they were slain with the sword, and buried by St. Hermagoras.

At Capua, the holy martyrs Aristseus, bishop, and Antoninus, a boy.

At Nicomedia, the martyrdom of St. Basillissa, virgin and martyr, in the persecution of Diocletian, under the governor Alexander. At the age of nine years, after having, through the power of God, overcome scourging, fire, and the beasts, she gave up her soul to her Creator in prayer.

Also, the holy martyrs Zeno and Chariton. The one was cast into a caldron of melted lead, the other into a burning furnace.

At Cordova, St. Sandalus, martyr.

The same day, the birthday of the holy martyrs Aigulphus, abbot of Lerins, and the monks, his companions, who, after their tongues were cut off, and their eyes plucked out, were killed with the sword.

At Toul, in France, St. Mansuetus, bishop and confessor.

At Milan, the demise of St. Auxanus, bishop.

The same day, St. Simeon Stylites, the younger.

At Rome, the raising to the Sovereign Pontificate of St. Gregory the Great, an incomparable man, who, being forced to take that burden upon himself, sent forth from the more exalted throne brighter rays of sanctity upon the world.

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.

 

 



1959 Roman Martyrology by Month


 



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.

  • A Martyr is one who suffers tortures and a violent death for the sake of Christ and the Catholic Faith.

  • A Confessor is one who confesses Christ publicly in times of persecution and who suffers torture, or severe punishment by secular authorities as a consequence. It is a title given only given to those who suffered for the Faith  —  but was not  killed for it  —   and who had persevered in the Faith until the end.


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.

____________________________

* 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.

 

 


 

Boston Catholic Journal

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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