The “Pro Multis Crowd”
For nearly 50
years Traditional Catholics had been scorned
and ridiculed by Modernists in the Church as
“the Pro Multis crowd”
— that is to say, a group of stubborn Catholics
who (correctly) understood that the words
“pro multis” mean “for many”
— and only “for many”
in Latin — and most definitely not
“for all” as the Consecration
had been pronounced — in contradiction to Sacred
Scripture itself (Saint Matthew 26.28:) for
50 years following Vatican II. There are
serious, very serious — even eternal
consequences that follow from the deliberate
and ecumenically-driven mistranslation
of one word in Latin —
for if the Most Holy Sacrifice of Christ
on the Cross is offered “for many”
— and not “for all” — then
the salvation held out by
Christ does not — despite quite nearly everything
we hear at Mass — extend to all: there
are, indeed, some who will be cast into
outer darkness and unending torment in the
“Lake of Fire that is
the Second Death” against which Christ
insistently and urgently warns us.* Indeed,
why, otherwise, would Christ tell us:
“the road that leads to
eternal salvation is narrow and few there
are that take it. But the road to eternal
destruction is wide and easy and many
there are who follow it” (Saint
Matthew 7.13) Is Christ a liar? Of course not! Think of the two corresponding utterances for a moment and tell us who is uttering the truth: a church that has become deeply infected with the heresy of Modernism — or Christ? We stand with Christ — and His Holy Catholic Church of 2000 years prior to the many heretical ventures and documents of the Second Vatican Council. There are not two Churches — the Church of Vatican II and the Church of the 2000 years preceding it. There is “One, True, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church” — to which even Modernists defer in their “Profession of Faith” not only in every Novus Ordo parish, but in nearly every Protestant church that utters it in recrimination against itself.
Truth will out,
despite our best efforts to suppress it, yes? Christ or the World: Choose!
You can choose
Christ ... or the world. You cannot have
both: they are inimical to each other.
And the beautiful voice of the Bride of Christ
... is heard in Latin. It is Her language
alone, a unique language of love between God
and man — inseparable from Her, who is faithful
to Him to Whom She is ever espoused. She does
not speak English, German, Czech, Chinese, Russian,
French, and Italian — at the same time — estranging
each from the other! That is the Tower of
Babel. For 2000 years no matter where you
came from, no matter your language or culture,
if you knelt any place in the world at
Mass you would be hearing the same language
and responding in the same language of 2000
years: Latin. And you would know precisely
where you were in the Mass. You could travel
the entire world and hear the Mass in Latin
as you heard it at home.
There never
were “Traditional Catholics” —
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Note Francis’s New Crozier,
above right, probably copied from the Pope Paul
VI Hall but more ghastly still.
1
Francis’s new Crozier-without-Christ
Modernism, we see, infected not only schizophrenic visual presentations spuriously called “art” throughout the Church, but these very presentations themselves appear to further and foster the doctrines of the Modernists — and we must remember, despite its constant suppression since Vatican II — that Modernism is the “Synthesis of all Heresies” condemned in the Encyclicals Lamentabili Sane, and Paschendi Dominici Gregis by Pope St. Pius X in 1907. 2 Since Vatican II, however, nothing is too ugly or too profane to be called “modern”: whether it is art, theology, liturgy, and nominally Catholic literature. The “Windows and doors were flung open” by Pope John the XXIII when he convened the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and the World rushed in as the Faithful ran out. The result? Priests, nuns, sisters, Religious brothers and sisters, leaving the Church en masse while the seminaries are empty and the majority of Novus Ordo priests are now elderly and soon-to-be-retired — and as parishes become priestless, even these retired and infirm priests must be brought in — to have a Mass at all. Mass attendance, we know, is at a historical low — and dwindling as the largely aged parishioners die.
Who can argue that a change of monumental proportions occurred following Vatican II, and especially under the present papacy of Francis? Martin Luther has been re-habilitated and heralded by Francis as a much-needed reformer, and the Reformation itself has been both celebrated and commemorated with visits by Francis to “commemorate” the “Reformation” in Sweden with female Lutheran Archbishop Antje Jackelen:
Francis with with female Lutheran Archbishop Antje Jackelen in Sweden Commemorating the Reformation
“With gratitude we acknowledge that the Reformation helped give greater centrality to sacred Scripture in the church’s life,” the pope said in a joint declaration at Lund Cathedral with Bishop Munib A. Younan, the head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and the president of the Lutheran World Federation.” 3
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Vatican-issued Martin Luther Commemorative Stamp |
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Martin Luther (left) and collaborator Philipp Melanchthon, with the city of Wittenberg in background. On October 31, 1517 Luther nailed his infamous 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg, marking the start of the Protestant Revolt and the second greatest schism in the history of Christianity |
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The Vatican subsequently issued
official Stamps of Martin Luther,
piously portrayed, together with his statue now
in the Vatican
itself among the statues of the Saints. Martin Luther
is an arch-heresiarch who split the unity of the
Holy Catholic Church and has always been considered
so in Catholic teaching — until Francis. His split from
Rome resulted in a thousand Protestant sects increasingly
divided among and in contention with themselves to this
day.
Under the heretical papacy of Francis, Luther — the profane instigator of this thousand-fold division — is now held up to Catholics as a paradigm ...
All this, of course, is the fruit of the other heresy of Ecumenism which emerged from the Second Vatican Council. The Holy Catholic Church effectively and continually relinquishes most of what is identifiably Catholic while other religions relinquish ... nothing in return. A sad trade indeed.
Among the most identifiable of Catholic arts is that of the Stained Glass — especially the windows in our Churches. Let us look at a few examples of the transition from beautiful traditional Catholic stained-glass — to that which resulted from changes in churches following the Second Vatican Council:
This transition from graceful form and beauty to linearly distorted and deeply isolated geometric fragmentation in art is symptomatic of the conflict within the psyche that produced it. The absence of symmetry and harmony — and the startling presence of discontinuity, the deliberate reduction of form to mutation and mutilation, from the visually and intellectuality apprehensible to the indistinct and amorphous is indicative of the fractures occurring deeply within the Church and the discontinuity — the tension and irreconcilability — growing in doctrine and theology. The unity of the Church has been shattered by division and dissension — overwhelmingly in Liberal camps that have laid unrelenting siege to the unity of the Church for 5 decades, determined to reconcile the profane with the sacred, the City of God with the City of Man — and even sin with sanctity. Hence the tension, the dissonance and discontinuity, the malformation we see evidenced even in ecclesiastical art (and architecture!).
Attaining to Critical Mass
The crisis that has continued for some time now — in fact for decades — has attained to critical mass under the papacy of Francis who, despite his illusions or pretensions, is dismantling the Holy Roman Catholic Church as no other pontiff has dared. Indeed with confidence we can assert that no external enemy has come near to achieving the destruction that Francis has wrought on the Body of Christ in 2000 years. Fault lines that were deep within the tectonic foundation of the Church first appeared to audibly rumble in 1963. Increasingly significant fissures developed in the following 6 years. Finally the tectonic shift has become evident and undeniable. The foundation of the Church — which ultimately is Christ Himself — but in terms of liturgy, the Mass, dogma, Sacred Tradition, the timeless teachings of the Church, the unchangeable Sacred Deposit of Faith, and even Sacred Scripture itself the Church has been subverted as in no other time in Church history (with the sole exception, perhaps, under Saint Athanasius and the great Arian Heresy in the 3rd century, when he alone held to the Faith when every other bishop apostatized). We need only look about us at the detritus of what remains of the once monolithic Holy Catholic Church. The architects of this destruction are many, but none attain to the audacity and arrogance of Francis. His is almost forthright in his ambition to remake the Catholic Church into the “Church of Surprise, Encounter, and Accompaniment” — even unto sin! I stated that he is almost forthright in his ambition, but I will invite you to make the assessment:
“He said the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the church into the modern world, had promised such an opening to people of other faiths and non-believers, but that the church hadn't made progress since then.”
“I have the humility and ambition to do so,” he said.” 4
How rarely, if ever, do we hear a humble person ascribe humility to themselves? The truly humble do not have the hubris to do so, nor even so much as to think so. But not Francis. He indeed has the latter, even as he reserves the former for widely publicized photo-ops. Is he suggesting that his predecessors lacked the necessary “humility” — to say nothing of the “ambition” — to embrace the Protestant Reformation? Adultery? Homosexuality? Sacrilege in Holy Communion? Such a deeply self-investing ... and deeply indicting statement, no?
In the face of this determined — and concerted — effort by Francis with the eager complicity of the majority of the College of Cardinals (the German and American delegations being the most vociferous in their Liberal and counter-Catholic demands) who appear to have forgotten, or simply repudiate the Catholic Faith in a perfidious effort to accommodate a world that will not tolerate it, what is the Catholic layman, the Catholic laywoman, the increasingly rare and genuinely Catholic priest to do? Join the crowd that jeers at Christ on Calvary? Or take a stand — perhaps the last stand — with Christ against the world?
We both know the answer.
The Holy Catholic Church has not ceased to exist despite interlopers and apostates. They have always been in Holy Mother Church as parasitic infections in a self-inflicted wound. They mar the beauty of the Church, stain the veil of the Bride of Christ — but will never bring Her to Her knees. Only before Christ Jesus does She bend them! Not the world.
And
neither should we.
We must stand with Christ — and not the World ... and — increasingly — not even Pope Francis. Lusting suitors will assail Her, but She is inviolable, for She is faithful to the Groom Who is Christ.
As
we must be.
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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1 images from https://novusordowatch.org/2013/04/francis-brings-back-bent-cross/
2 http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10lamen.htm
3
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/world/europe/pope-francis-in-sweden-urges-catholic-lutheran-reconciliation.html4 http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2013/10/pope_francis_urges_reform_want.html See also http://www.boston-catholic-journal.com/is-francis-the-great-divider-in-the-post-modern-catholic-church.htm
* Saint Matthew 13:42; 18:8; 25:41; 25:46; Saint Luke 16:23; Saint Mark 9:47-48; 2 Peter 2:4; Revelation 19:20; 20:10; 20:13-15; 21:8, etc.
** “The
priest
may give the sign of peace
to the ministers but always remains within the sanctuary,
so as not to disturb the celebration. In the dioceses of
the United States of America, for a good reason, on special
occasions (for example, in the case of a funeral, a wedding,
or when civic leaders are present) the priest may offer
the sign of peace to a few of the faithful near the sanctuary.”
(GENERAL INSTRUCTION OF THE ROMAN MISSAL — known as GIRM
— 154) Also, GIRM 295:
“The sanctuary is the place
where the altar stands, where the word of God is proclaimed,
and where the priest, the deacon, and the other ministers
exercise their offices. It should suitably be marked off
from the body of the church
either by its being somewhat elevated or by a particular
structure and ornamentation.”
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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