
Traditional
Catholics
Why we must stand with
Christ
... and not the World
and — MOST URGENTLY — not Francis

Pope Paul VI Meeting Hall
Holy
Mother Church — Catholicism — has been around
for over 2000 years
and has
celebrated the Most Holy Sacrifice of
the Mass
with the Altar ad orientem — facing the
East — the priest facing God in the Holy
Mysteries unfolding before the congregation
who hear — no matter where they are, or what
their native tongue, the Mass as it has been
celebrated for two millennia — in Latin. The
priest is intensely focused on God whom he worships
— with the people who are oriented exactly as
the priest is: to God — and not to each other.
The priest has no need to leave the sacred
Sanctuary (which, canonically, he must
not do **) descend the three steps
(if there are any) and go into the aisle
and mingle with the people in a Question
& Answer format that has little or nothing
to do with the Gospel Reading or the Epistles.
He is entertaining the congregation and
the more laughs he elicits the more popular
he is — in entertaining ... which has absolutely
nothing to do with latria — supreme
worship accorded to God alone! It is sacred.
It is solemn. It is holy:
Christ is being
crucified before you in that re-presentation
of Calvary!
Will you
laugh, joke, be entertained?
The
only ones who laughed, joked and were entertained
were the unbelievers: the Romans, the Pharisees,
the Sadducees, the mob, all of whom stood at
the foot of the Cross and spat upon Him, ridiculed
Him, who laughed and were entertained
by the enormity before them — this spectacle
unequaled in the annals of the world!
They laughed!
And now you will ...
too?
If we wish
to be
entertained
our venues are innumerable: concerts, television,
radio, cell-phone, night club, the movies, online
video, the sports stadium, the arena: our
opportunities for entertainment are endless
— but our worship is singular: the Most
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is in Latin
because the Latin is no longer a vernacular
language subject to change. Its meaning cannot
be modified. You will remember, during the Consecration
at Mass the priest, even in Novo Ordo
parishes, now says:
“Take this, all of you, and drink
from it, for this is the chalice
of my Blood, the Blood of the New
and Eternal Covenant, which will
be poured out for you and
for many for the forgiveness
of sins. Do this in memory of me.”
|
In Latin the priest says:
|
“Hic est enim Calix Sanguinis Mei,
novi et aeterni Testamenti: Mysterium
fidei: qui pro vobis et pro
multis effundetur in remissionen
peccatorum.”
|
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” —
until that catastrophic rupture that is known
as “Vatican II”
There were only
Catholics — who knew their
holy Faith, or in holy simplicity embraced what
the Church ever and always taught — what devout,
brave, and holy bishops staunchly
defended against a hostile and contrary world:
bishops who were one with the mind of the Church;
who held fast to, and safeguarded the Sacred
Deposit of the Faith — bishops that were
not seduced by the world and its
flattery — still less its abhorrent solicitation
of homosexuality and adultery in the life of
the Church under the sanctimonious guise of
“mercy” and “accompaniment in
sin”! Catholics instinctively intuited the sacred:
when they stepped over the threshold of the
Church door that separated the sacred from the
profane they left the City of Man and entered
the City of God! Every sense was touched by
the sacred! We were brought to our knees in
reverent silence before Christ Himself present
in the Holy Eucharist in the High Altar!
Quite different, No?
When you entered
the Church
it was quiet, and an atmosphere of piety and
lingering incense permeated it: subdued, but
not dark, it was an alternating array of light
and shadows, lingering angelic song and immense
silence — consonant with the souls of the sinners
who sought refuge there. Light filtered in through
beautiful, painstakingly made stained glass.
Sometimes the sun would highlight your face
in a stroke of yellow, red, or blue as it slowly,
majestically, moved across the windows with
the Mass. Pews and kneelers fell to the floor
with a dull thud as each soul entered to pray.
Beautifully artistic Stations of the Cross lined
each side of the aisles. In front of you, unmistakably
is the High Altar and the Crucifix — and Christ
is fixed to it.
It is not
the stylized (the forbidden ...
but ignored) “Cross of the Resurrection”
portraying a welcoming Christ with outstretched
hands detached from the Cross
— Christ did not Rise from the
Cross: He died on it!
Nor is it the bent, malformed, hideous,
and
nearly profane Bent Cross used by the Popes
on their Croziers or Ferulas since
Vatican II — “artistically rendered”
by commission
from the Vatican in 1963
by Italian Lello Scorzelli
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
 |
Vatican-issued
Martin Luther Commemorative Stamp
|
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
|
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
Printable
PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
____________________________________________________
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.html
4
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)
Copyright © 2004 - 2023 Boston Catholic Journal. All rights reserved. Unless
otherwise stated, permission is granted by the Boston Catholic
Journal for the copying and distribution of the articles
and audio files under the following conditions: No
additions, deletions, or changes are to be made to the text
or audio files in any way, and the copies may not be sold
for a profit. In the reproduction, in any format of any
image, graphic, text, or audio file, attribution must be
given to the Boston Catholic Journal.
|