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CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARYLooking for Catholic Prayers in Latin and English?
“Know you not that the friendship
of this world is the enemy of God?
Mary, Conceived without Sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee
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: (Jesus Christ: Saint Matthew 9.11-15) 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:
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:
“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 “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” “If you love me, keep my commandments.” “What fellowship hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath the faithful with the unbeliever? 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 crucified 4 while Pilate pedantically asked, “What is Truth?” ... even as Truth bled in his presence 5 — 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?
The influence of Francis’s hero, the arch-heretic Martin Luther is unmistakable:
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:
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: “Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels ... And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.” (Saint Matthew 25.31-46) 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
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com _____________________________
1
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/36233/we-dont-earn-gods-love-its-freely-given-pope-francis-says 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/
ADDENDUM:
MORTAL SIN
“The
Antidote of Death”
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Few of us, I assume, would seek recourse to
such a solution and for good reason. Legitimizing
crime does not indemnify us against it — however
much we hold ourselves to have abolished it.
Yes?
We can say as much of sin.
In fact, we have said as much. Unlike the immediate consequences of crime, the consequences of sin — even temporally — are often deferred, less immediate ... and because we apprehend them as remote, as distant, as impending only, we dismiss them, for we fail to immediately see the terrible consequences they entail, consequences so terrible, so far-reaching, so much beyond our ken, that they have become effectively mythical, brooding like demons on some distant bourne that we obscurely perceive and never quite forget; an escarpment lost in light and shadow where life quite suddenly drops off that abrupt precipice to death. We know it ... because we know that we dance on the dead.
I am about to state something with which you are likely to disagree, and for good reason:
My parish Church is the holiest in all of Christendom; not just in the Archdiocese of Boston, but in all Massachusetts; very likely all New England — perhaps even the entire world.
You will disagree.
In fact, you know your own Catholic
parish to be the holiest, perhaps the most sinless
parish in the world, and we will both appeal
to the same reasons for making this remarkable
statement: during Holy Communion the pews
are literally emptied.
There is not a sinner among us; at least no
sinner guilty of Mortal Sin which prevents
our going to Holy Communion, since
— as all Catholics know — we add the tremendous
sin of sacrilege to
whatever mortal sin we carry if we receive Holy
Communion while not in a state of grace — which
is to say, free of mortal sin.
But as I ponder the empty pews, the stigma of
being the sole sinner in the parish weighs heavily
upon me as many look askance at my kneeling
while all others scramble to make their way
to communion — I at least wonder. Do Catholics,
do all Catholics, do most Catholics,
do at least some Catholics, even
know what a mortal sin is any more? Do
they know the difference between a mortal
sin that sunders the soul from God, and
a venial sin that merely impedes its
union with God?
Since the entire congregation have had at least
8 years of
Catechism, or Religious Education —
8 to 10 years, mind you! — surely
so simple, so basic, so fundamental a concept
as the difference between serious sin and sins
far less grievous in nature, is clearly apprehensible.
A very ready analogy may be to the point: in
the civic world, all of us know (probably because
the penalty is clearly comprehended, immediate
and forthcoming) the difference between grievously
unlawful, or capital offenses
such as murder and grand larceny, and
misdemeanors, like receiving a speeding
ticket or maliciously destroying a neighbor’s
property. It is a no-brainer. We do not think
twice, or rather, we do
think twice in a given situation about the sanctions
and penalties involved. It is, we are told,
the means by which we maintain a
“civil”,
a mutually responsible, society.
We acknowledge the concept of justice and understand
very clearly why it is maintained and what penalties
are incurred if it is violated. We have no problem
with that. After all, the law is not some gratuitous
abstraction, and you are a fool if you think
that you can trifle with it and walk away. If
the breach is serious enough you are clapped
in irons, removed from the community, and deprived
of your liberty until justice has exacted its
tribute, until you have
“paid
your debt to society”.
By and large we are grateful for the severity
of the law, even as its rigors make us uneasy.
“There,
but for the grace of God, go I ...”
We all recognize that our own behavior has not
always been unimpeachable ... if not clearly
actionable. We do not personally legislate
parallel laws that contravene the laws
of the state and hold, at any point of divergence,
the private interpretation of the
law to abrogate the public law. It
is the opposite which is true. We may find the
laws of the state repugnant to us, unamenable
to our own inclinations, even contrary to our
own convictions — in which case we are confronted
with three clearly distinguishable alternatives:
we can absent ourselves from the polity and
choose to live elsewhere under a constitution
that more closely corresponds with our desiderations
and convictions, if such exists; we can continue
to enjoy the collateral benefits in the present
state that constrains us to abide by the laws
through which it is defined and by which it
is governed — or, we can seek to amend the law
through the venues afforded us by the state.
What we cannot do is to enjoy the prerogatives
of the state while either acting in defiance
of it, or while subverting it. We understand
this, and in fact underwrite it through maintaining
our citizenship within it. We understand this
broadly as a
“pledge
of allegiance”.
In any event, we cannot construct a private
and parallel universe of statutes and anticipate
that the public universe of affairs will recognize,
respect, and honor our privately legislated
laws. If we choose to abide only by those laws
of the state that we do not find disagreeable
to us we have not attained to personal freedom,
but to arbitrary license; not to civility, but
to anarchy. We become both legislator and law.
In such a solipsistic
“society”
the legislature and the corpus of law are as
numerous as the individuals legislating them.
Well and good.
Why, we must ask ourselves, is God’s
Law somehow less important, less pertinent
to our behavior? Why does it have less bearing
upon our responsibilities and our choices —
and, most especially — within Church? Is the
Divine Law, are the laws of the Church, no more
than pious and ultimately indolent sentiments
— rather than clearly articulated precepts with
very real corresponding sanctions and responsibilities
— in other words, coherent laws?
Do we give tribute to Caesar but withhold it
from God? Is the Fasces mightier than the Cross?
We are indeed a generation which had been nurtured
on defiance to authority — only seeing now,
in our own children, the fruit of that unbridled
defiance which we nurtured in them even as we
pretended to
“deplore
it”.
Our children were ... "independent”
... not defiant, and we were proud — until we
began to detoxify them, to rehabilitate their
behavior, to trade notes with our neighbors
on
“good
analysts”.
And our kids still get the keys to the car,
no matter how grievous their transgression ...
their money for the mall — just as we still
get Holy Communion, no matter how grievous our
offenses against God. We are as blind to our
sins as we have made our children blind to their
own. After all, a
“good
parent”
“spares
the rod”
and does not descend to
“primitive
behavior”
such as punishing the child, no? And
if we are such
“good”
parents — how much
“better”
God? Surely, there is no sin, no offense so
grievous, or so trite, as to offend Him ...
nothing we can ever do or say such
that we would ever forfeit our
“right”,
not to the keys of the car but to the Kingdom
of God, through the Bread of Angels ... Holy
Communion — that you as arrogantly insist is
as much your right as the keys to the
car ...
Still pondering the empty pews, it would seem
so. Perhaps it is the case that
all the parishioners are in fact guiltless of
civil crime, however petty (for these, too,
are the stuff of Holy Confession) — as well
as sin.
The truly defining question appears to be this:
to whom, we must genuinely ask ourselves, do
we owe more — to God or man? To the City of
God or to the City of Man?
On your blithe way to Holy Communion, ponder
this — especially given the ultimate
sanction placed before us by no
less an authority than Saint Paul:
“Whosoever shall eat this bread or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and of the Blood of the Lord.” (I Cor. 11:27)
... are you prepared to add sacrilege
to your your sins?
Or has the notion of sacrilege itself
gone the way of mortal sin ... also?
Go to Confession. You must go. It is the only antidote of Mortal Sin, and thus the antidote of death.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Semen est sanguis Christianorum (The blood of Christians is the seed of the Church) Tertullian, Apologeticum, 50
ROMAN MARTYROLOGY
Wednesday July 6th in the Year of Grace 2022
Time after Pentecost
At London in England, on Tower Hill, St. Thomas More, chancellor of the entire realm, who was beheaded by order of King Henry VIII for the defense of the Catholic faith and the primacy of blessed Peter. At Nettuno in Lazio, St. Maria
Goretti, a most devout young girl, who was savagely
murdered for the defense of her virginity, and whom Pope
Pius XII solemnly added to the catalogue of holy martyrs.
℟. Thanks be to God.
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“Semen est sanguis Christianorum” — Tertullian
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
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
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