Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 01

From the Editor’s Desk…

By Michael J. Matt

Special Double Issue

Due to next week’s Pilgrimage to Chartres, France, we have decided to publish one large double issue of The Remnant for the month of May rather than the usual two smaller issues. Please pray for us as we will be praying for all Remnant subscribers and friends during the 3-day pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres, France. If you’d like to take part in the Pilgrimage by spiritually following along on a day-to-day basis, please look at our website on or after June 4th for details on how to become part of the Guardian Angels chapter of non-walking Chartres pilgrims from all around the world (RemnantNewspaper.

com).

As I’ve written before in these columns, I’m convinced the most important annual event happening the Church today is the Notre Dame de Chretiente pilgrimage to Chartres, which is why we’ve organized the U.S. chapter of Our Lady of Guadalupe for the past 26 years. And this year’s high-profile celebrant for the Pentecost Monday Mass in the Chartres Cathedral will be significant indeed.

Still, there are concerns. With all the unrest in Europe just now, just getting to this pilgrimage starting line is becoming something of a leap of faith. Greater security measures are being taken for this year’s event than for any I can remember over the past quarter century—proof, once again, of the "progress" of the burgeoning New

~ See Editor's Desk/ Page 2

From the Editor's Desk Continued. . .

Soul-killers of the New World Order

World Order in that bastion of peace and harmony called the European Union.

Please pray for the safety and security of the U.S. chapter. And as we’ll be a bit underhanded here at home, I’d ask for your patience when it comes to our limited staff processing your telephone orders and inquires over the first two weeks in June.

Jesuits of Fordham Stand Strong Against ... Chick-fil-A The campus of the Jesuit-run Fordham University is at peace after having undergone a terrible ordeal last month that could have resulted in the establishment of a dangerous and subversive group being set up in the heart of one of America’s most venerable Catholic universities.

Here’s how it went down. A Chick-fil-A restaurant was planning to set up shop at Fordham’s New York City campus, if you can believe that! And the fast-food chicken giant would have succeeded, too, had it not been for Fordham’s rainbow-sashed crusaders who managed to step in at the last minute and save the day.

As The Fordham Observer reports, thanks to the courage of the LGBTQ lobby (who didn’t allow fear of a fastfood restaurant stop them from standing up for peace, justice and the American way), other groups on campus soon discovered the will to fight. Everyone from the Commuter Students Association to the United Student Government leapt into action—led, of course, by the fearless campus’ Rainbow Alliance—to keep the pro-Christian marriage Chickfil- A far away from Fordham. After all, there are young and impressionable kids on that campus!

We can laugh about it now, of course, but for a while there it looked like a pro-marriage chicken sandwich seller was about to gain a foothold at one of our premier Catholic universities. Thank God, the Rainbow Alliance at Fordham found a way to alert the Jesuit brass to the fact that, back in 2012, Chickfil- A president Dan Cathy had had the audacity to tell a Baptist newspaper that he believed in the biblical definition of marriage. The horror! Once that message went viral on campus, it was easy for the Jesuits to understand the urgency of the situation, and to do the right thing. "Get thee behind me, Chick-fil-A!" The Jesuits at Fordham took a stand.

Disaster averted! That’s one way of putting it. Here’s another: Because a few whining activists put up a little stink over a chicken peddler on campus, a school run by one of the most powerful Catholic missionary orders in history couldn’t summon the intestinal fortitude to stand with a restaurant chain under fire for defending the Church’s position on marriage. Incredible as it may seem, Chick-fil-A is too Christian for Fordham University.

We’ve come a long way, baby!

The Society of Jesus, requiescat in pace.

"But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh."

– Jesus Christ

Sometimes the news of the day is just too heart breaking to consider.

I have little children, and, quite frankly, this story breaks my heart. Out of consideration for the children of our readers, we’ve cut out half of the drag queen—all made up in women’s clothing and makeup—reading to little kids and their parents in a New York City public library. We’ve all seen and heard these guys’ befuddled cries for help (and desperate quest for attention) before, but look at the children. . . look at their faces…and imagine they’re your kids, your grandkids.

His name is "Little Miss Hot Mess," and in an accompanying video (see RemnantNewspaper.com), he sings for the kids, dances, and talks about storybook characters who are really girls but think they’re boys. Parents of the children are interviewed in the video, and they’re all smiles, as they explain how important diversity is to them and to their children. One is left nearly despondent at the image of parents so proud to be abusing their own children in this way.

The thought of my kids being subjected to what’s going on in that public library every week, fills me with desperate sadness. Their little minds—so innocent, so inquisitive, so trusting—suddenly assaulted by a barrage of ideological warfare served up by the adults in their lives, even the mothers and fathers they trust so implicitly.

Regardless of where you come down on the homosexual question, there’s got to be a part of you that recognizes something very wrong with brainwashing little kids in subject matter even most adults don’t fully understand.

Can any civilization in history be accused of conducting such dangerous psychological experimentation on their own children?

Not long ago, doing this to children would have been against the law, God’s and man’s. We used to understand the value and fragility of innocence, the tragedy of innocence lost and the precious balance of childhood. Children were protected, shielded from that which they were too young to understand, and to which if they were exposed too young could destroy their innocence and cause permanent psychological damage.

We used to understand this, just as every civilization in history did. And then one day we decided to start sacrificing our kids on the altar of political correctness.

We even started killing our babies in their mothers’ wombs. Lots of them, millions in fact. And this evidently cannot be done without massive psychological and moral consequences.

Today we have thus developed an almost insatiable need to corrupt the little ones that made it past the abortortuaries.

"But," our critics will say, "we as a society have evolved beyond such archaic moral concerns." Really?

Are you quite sure about that? The civilization that has developed the most efficient killing machines in history—capable of wiping out entire nations with the push of a button—has simultaneously developed a better moral compass? We who abuse children, objectify women, drug kids by the millions somehow have developed a keener sense of morality than that which our grandmothers possessed—an evolved societal conscience that informs us it’s just fine to expose innocent little kids (whose bodies haven’t even fully developed yet) to cross-dressing sexhibitionists? Well, what if we’ve been misinformed? What if we’re wrong about that? What if we’ve lost the ability to even know the difference between right and wrong? What if it turns out we’re actually damaging our kids— permanently?

Isn’t anyone interested in the science and psychology behind what we’re doing to our kids in the name of political correctness? Because if we’re not interested in even looking into possible long-term effects, then can it not be said of us—not that we’re morally more evolved—but rather that we just don’t care what happens to our kids? Risking their psychological health is worth it to us, if it means we can justify whatever it is we’re doing in the here and now.

Such Orwellian mind-control sessions held in public libraries at the very least suggest that we’ve become so twisted— in mind, heart and soul—that we simply cannot stand the sight of what’s straight, even in kids. We’re phobic of innocence and innocents, and the way to make us feel right about the monsters we’ve become is to demand that our children give us absolution, approbation and approval.

Again, if there’s precedent for this in human history I’d like to know what it is.

Like vampires feeding on the blood of virgins, we suck the innocence out of the littlest and purest among us, so that before long there will be no goodness left in the world—just addiction, death and darkness. Everyone around us will either be dead or dying, and then it won’t be so hard for us to look in the mirror and see the spiritual zombies we’ve become. When everyone looks and stinks just like us there will be no more guilt and the dehumanizing process will be complete.

God help us. God forgive us. We’re worse than Sodom, worse than pagan Rome—we the Christophobic soulkillers of the New World Order. ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 01

Vatican Watch...

The Path to Rome and the Ascendency

of Pope Peter II?

By Hilary White

Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the Knights of Malta

Has Bergoglio reached the end of his usefulness? And if so, what’s next on the agenda?

While most eyes are still lingering on the repellant business in Fatima, and watching the skies for fire from above, the rumour mill is firing up again. There are people around about who want information to come out, and they like to send it to me and to others we know who are doing similar work. I’ve also been having conversations with various folks who have been sharing what they have heard. Then I suppose it is more or less my job to put the pieces of the puzzle together, with one bit from one person, and another bit from another, and see if it makes a picture.

(Nota Bene: all to be taken with the subjunctive and qualifiers... we’re still talking about rumours and speculation, don’t forget): The short version is that at the end of 4 years of Pope Francis Bergoglio, every bit of the power and money of the institutions of the Catholic Church is now in the hands of the completely triumphant post-Conciliar, secularist,

~ See Fatima/ Page 12

The Path to Rome and the Ascendency

of Pope Peter II?

H. White/ Continued from Page 1

globalist, neo-modernist Revolution.

And that is why I think that Bergoglio’s reign will not last much longer. His purpose has been accomplished; Maradiaga’s "irreversible renovation" of the Church is done.

Bergoglio himself has been recorded saying that he thought his pontificate would last about 4 years. And here we are. We know that certain people put him in place for certain reasons. He was to accomplish some very particular tasks and I think he has done so. I think overall, his job was to complete the demolition project of the radical revolutionaries of the Vaticantwoist project; that is, the total reconstruction of the Catholic Church along the lines of their vision.

He was to be the wrecking ball applied to the institutional structures, the machine to take down the power of the Curia, who most especially broke the power of the Vatican’s old guard power brokers, like Sodano and Bertone, names we never hear now. He was to align the Church with the secularist globalists of the George Soros kind, and put all or nearly all of the control of the money into the hands of the Germans and their bankers.

He was to wipe out the vestiges of the John Paul II/Benedict appointments in the Curia and in major and strategically important sees around the world (pop quiz: what do the dioceses of Chicago and Tulsa have in common?) appoint the right kind of Nuncios so that the national bishops’ conferences – that had begun to backslide under the last two popes – could be brought back into line. Last of all, he was to ensure the succession by, on the one hand appointing the right kind of man to the College of Cardinals and on the other isolating, terrorizing and demoralizing the remnants of the Ratzingerian "conservatives".

Broadly, he was to sever the connection of the Church’s power structures to her doctrines, most especially the doctrines that the secular world finds most objectionable; that is, on sex and marriage. He was to complete the desacralization of the Church as an institution and remove the last obstacles for a functioning union between Catholicism, "liberal" factions in other Christian confessions and other religions and the globalist, transnationalist elites in Brussels and New York.

All of these things he has accomplished, and the time has come for the Revolution to move on to the next phase. Whatever Francis himself had planned next - and I am still hearing talk of a "Big Thing" in the works – probably isn’t on the agenda. (The shape of which is perhaps starting to be revealed. cf: Marco Tossati’s piece today on the appointment of a "commission" to "rexamine" Humanae Vitae. If this is true, and there’s no reason to doubt it, I’m sure the commission’s work will be encouraged to flourish no matter who’s on the throne.) What I believe is that now that the Wrecking Ball has done his work, we will next have the Surgeon.

What do I mean? The wrecking ball was needed to take down the last of the old large structures, the big old buildings that were dusty and halffalling down. Organizations like the Curial offices that were holding things up and whose resistance has now been effectively neutralized or taken over: the Pontifical Academy for Life and the JPII Institute; the IOR; Divine Worship and Sacraments; CDF; Cor Unum and Caritas under Cardinal Sarah’s attempted reforms; Congregation for Religious and the re-visioning of contemplative religious life for women; the Roman Rota and the new rules for annulment; the "modernization" and "rationalization" of Social Communications.

Indeed, I think Francis has succeeded beyond the hopes of the cabal, in having essentially bypassed the Curia altogether, inventing entirely new governing structures from whole cloth, and simply waving his hand and decreeing that from now on national conferences will take care of themselves. Under Francis there has, effectively, been no "Vatican" at all. Only his personal drinking buddies sitting around the table for the five-hour lunches at Casa Santa Martha. The prelates still turn up for work, but no one’s getting any nods from the boss, who, simply, doesn’t care about them or what they do. But the problem the Revolutionaries have is that there are still people around like us. The little guys out here in the big and little pockets of resistance. People like Matthew Festing and the Professed Knights of Malta, the Franciscans of the Immaculate, the Norcia monks, the Anglican Ordinariates, the London and Toronto Oratories, the parish of St. John Cantius, the Norbertines in California and the Augustinians in Lagrasse, the FSSP, Bon Pasteur, and the ICK. There are certain bishops of the JPII/Benedict "old guard" all over Europe, the Americas and Asia who have influence and who have and continue to attract many "conservative" young vocations.

There’s noisy guys like Cardinal Zen and quiet ones like Bishops Laun, Rey and Jugis.

There are the "new conservative" religious orders of the JPII era, and the holdouts who refused to go along in the first place, like the Rosano nuns in Tuscany - more or less the only women’s monastery in the country who kept the Latin monastic Divine Office and have 60 nuns and flocks of vocations to show for it. There are some like Heiligenkreuz Abbey, who tried the Vaticantwoist proposal for a while and decided it was better to go in reverse.

There are pockets of resistance among the Dominicans. There’s the little startups, new communities in formation, the Benedictine houses like Gower, Missouri and Silverstream in Ireland, and those little independents who were founded locally in hope and who want to adopt habits, common life, even the traditional liturgical forms. There are the Benedictines whom everyone knows are counterrevolutionaries: Fontgombault, Le Barroux, Kergonan and Jouques, Clear Creek and St. Cecelia’s in Ryde. And of course, there’s all those Carmelites and Poor Clares praying and praying without cease.

Going down a few levels there are publishing houses, think tanks and university rectors, liberal arts colleges and postgraduate study centres. There are pro-life organizations, scouting groups and adoration societies, Chesterton Societies, young adult groups and Legion of Mary chapters, all that might be termed the "civic society" of the Church, laity acting in accordance with their state in life.

And then, there’s Summorum Pontificum, that turned out to be a bigger problem than anticipated: sitting there in the bright sun, digging its roots deeper and deeper every day, flourishing and sending out shoots and vines and flowers that are rapidly developing into fruit.

There’s all that to think about. And for that one doesn’t need a wrecking ball.

One requires a Surgeon.

The Revolutionaries were stymied in 2005, and have been in a rage over it since then. It is hardly surprising that in 2013 they ran out of patience – even Kasper, who is second-generation, was getting on. Martini was dead, as was Hume; Danneels and Lehman were coming up to mandatory retirement, and who knew how long they were going to last after that. They had held on all these decades, waiting and planning through the long John Paul II period, and the brief Benedict hiatus – that they worked to make as chaotic as possible – and now have finally been able to put their man in place, the capstone of the Conciliar Pyramid, so to speak. But now that the Revolution is on track again at last, those who knew what he was also knew that there were things that needed to be done that could not be done by Bergoglio.

But even through the Long Pause they accomplished nearly all the preparatory spadework. In five decades, they have taken hold of and strengthened their grip on every other institution in the Church.

They created and then controlled the national bishops’ conferences that have done the lion’s share of destroying the old Faith; they have done everything possible to control the selection process of new bishops by careful selection of nuncios. And through these structures have had a firm grip on Catholic education – crucially the seminaries of course – from the start.

Through the Germans they have for some time had control a good deal of

Continued Next Page

The Pope and His Successor?

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 01

Cardinal Burke Calls for Consecration of Russia

At press time this week, our friends at LifeSiteNews reported on the stunning development that here in the month of May and in the 100th anniversary year of Our Lady’s apparitions in Fatima, Cardinal Raymond Burke issued a call for the Catholic faithful to "work for the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary." Cardinal Burke, who is one of the four Cardinals who have asked Pope Francis for a clarification of Amoris Laetitia, made his appeal at the Rome Life Forum.

In a comprehensive address on "The Secret of Fatima and a New Evangelization," Cardinal Burke, in the presence of fellow dubia Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, outspoken Kazakhstan Bishop Athanasius Schneider and over 100 life and family leaders from 20 nations, said that the triumph of the Immaculate Heart would mean much more than the ending of world wars, and the physical calamities that Our Lady of Fatima predicted. "As horrible as are the physical chastisements associated with man’s disobedient rebellion before God, infinitely more horrible are the spiritual chastisements for they have to do with the fruit of grievous sin: eternal death," he said.

He expressed agreement with one of the foremost Fatima scholars, Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, who said that the promised triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary undoubtedly refers firstly to "the victory of the Faith, which will put an end to the time of apostasy, and the great shortcomings of the Church’s pastors."

The call for the consecration of Russia is for some controversial, but Cardinal Burke addressed the reasons for his

~ See Cardinal Burke/ Page 2

Cardinal Burke Calls for Consecration of Russia

Continued from Page 1

appeal simply and straightforwardly. "In fact, the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary did not take place, as she requested," he said.

"Certainly, Pope Saint John Paul II consecrated the world, including Russia, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25, 1984," said Cardinal Burke.

"But, today, once again, we hear the call of Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, in accord with her explicit instruction."

The report can be read in its entirety at LifeSiteNews.com and in article entitled, "BREAKING: Cardinal Burke calls for Consecration of Russia to Immaculate Heart of Mary

REMNANT EDITOR’S COMMENT:

So after all of these years, "crazy" old Father Nicholas Gruner (RIP) is proven to have been right all along. How about that!

God bless Cardinal Burke!

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 01

Pope Pelagius?

By Christopher A. Ferrara

The essence of the heresy of Pelagius, a holy monk who went badly wrong, is denial of the dogma of Original Sin and the effects of Adam’s transgression upon the whole human race. Pelagianism holds that man is not in a fallen state and that his free will alone is able to reach perfection in virtue, even if grace may assist in the endeavor. The existence of an original Paradise and state of human perfection in Adam and Eve are also denied, with death and concupiscence viewed as natural to man. Pelagius also anticipated by more than a thousand years the Lutheran master-heresy of justification by fiducial faith in Christ alone, with no interior transformation and elevation to a state of grace.

In its view of human origins, Pelagianism is remarkably compatible with the present-day neo-Catholic synthesis of the Genesis account and the pseudo-scientific myth of the evolution of molecules into men. The neo-Catholic synthesis is an element of neo-Modernism, which (to quote Father John Hardon’s landmark Catholic dictionary) "attempts to reconcile modern science and philosophy at the expense of the integrity of the

~ See Pelagius/ Page 5

Pope Pelagius?

C. Ferrara/ Continued from Page 1

Catholic faith." For the sake of the neo-Darwinian creation myth, Paradise is eliminated and Adam and Eve are presented without preternatural gifts, including immortality, as merely the apex of an evolutionary process in a world filled with disaster and death for hundreds of millions of years before their appearance, along with other first humans, on the evolutionary scene.

Pelagianism is also remarkably compatible with the liberal Jesuit, Seventies-era theology of the current occupant of the Chair of Peter. Before him, however, this neo-Pelagianism or semi-Pelagnianism was germinally present in the Vatican II document Gaudium et spes (GS). Heavily influenced by the French modernism of Congar, Daniélou and de Chardin, and full of unwarranted optimism, bordering on the fatuous, concerning post-Christian "contemporary society," the "modern world" and the exercise of human freedom therein, the document is easily recognized in retrospect as ground zero of an explosion that obliterated the Social Kingship of Christ as the foundation of Catholic social teaching.

The Social Kingship doctrine was to be replaced by a pan-religious "civilization of love," a term coined by Paul VI and echoed incessantly by John Paul II, which represents precisely the post-Christian utopia condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in his letter to the French bishops reprobating the proto-Modernist Sillon movement.

As no less than Cardinal Ratzinger observed in his commentary on GS, the document’s attempt to present a vision of human freedom that is not first and foremost Christological and thus rooted in the operation of sanctifying grace was a failure that has led to what he described as an "avalanche" of adverse consequences for the Church:

The section [of GS] on freedom, in which the Constitution deliberately takes up the theme of modern thought, is one of the least satisfactory in the whole document…. [T]he standpoint adopted is, for the Christian, an unreal one. The omission of Christology from the doctrine of the image likeness of God… once again imposes its consequences. The attempt to lead up to the Christian doctrine of man from outside, and thus to render what faith affirms about Christ generally acceptable, has led to the mistaken decision to leave aside for the present what essentially belongs to the Christian faith, as being supposedly less susceptible of dialogue.

[Ratzinger, Joseph in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed.

Herbert Volgrimer (London: Burns & Oates, 1969), p. 137] (emphasis added here and throughout)

Avoiding the revelation of Christ and His liberating grace as the font of true freedom ("You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free"), GS presents a pre-New Testament view of freedom that "transfers the text from the perspective of faith to that of natural theology…" The covenantal nature of man’s freedom vis-à-vis God is passed over in silence as is the fact that "Israel—representing mankind— was not in a position to carry out what the Covenant offered, but inevitably experienced the law as a yoke…" GS systematically avoids discussing the passing of the Old Covenant in favor of the Blood of the New and Everlasting Covenant as the gateway to human freedom through the transformation in Christ. Ratzinger continues: "It is impossible to prescind from the fact that the promised life ultimately came not from freedom in fulfilling the Law, but from the death of him who allowed himself in accordance with the Law to hang on the tree as a transgressor of the Law (Gal. 3:12 ff) …." GS, he concludes, abuses the Old Testament in order to hide the New:

To tear Ecclus 15:14 from these contexts in the history of revelation and to use it in support of a colourless philosophical doctrine of freedom, represents not only an unhistorical reading of Scripture but also an unhistorical and therefore unreal view of man. The general doctrine of freedom developed in the conciliar text cannot therefore stand up either to theological or to philosophical criticism….

The whole text gives scarcely a hint of the discord which runs through man and which is described so dramatically in Rom. 7:13-25. It even falls into downright Pelagian terminology when it speaks of man " sese ab omni passionum captivitate liberans finem suum persequitur et apta susbidia…" [The full sentence in English translation reads: "Man achieves such dignity when, emancipating himself [!] from all captivity to passion, he pursues his goal in a spontaneous choice of what is good, and procures for himself through effective and skillful action, apt helps to that end."] (emphasis added)

The problem is not solved, Ratzinger notes, by the immediately following declaration: "Since man’s freedom has been damaged by sin, only by the aid of God’s grace can he bring such a relationship with God into full flower." The phrase " full flower" [ plene actuosam] implies human flourishing without grace and ignores "the extent of the human dilemma… which calls man into question to his very depths and makes him unfree…"—meaning the consequences of the Fall and man’s bondage to the devil before the coming of the Redeemer. To suggest that man’s elevation from the state of original sin by grace leads merely to a "full" flowering of human nature "means that an all events semi-Pelagian representational pattern has been retained," the subsequent interpretation of which has "led to anodyne [inoffensive] formulas which it need not necessarily have given rise to at all." [Ibid., p. 138] Finally, Ratzinger observes, GS’s failure to take human alienation and decadence seriously for the sake of the Council’s posture of optimism about the modern world "does not mean to think highly of man, but to deceive him about the gravity of his situation." (Ibid.) Who can reasonably deny that this very deception is at work in the Church today? The Council’s avoidance of "the problems of human freedom… also meant that only freedom of choice was dealt with…" The true freedom of "the children of God" is what should have been presented, "whereas the conciliar text is incapable of any opening to its significance." [Ibid., 138-139] Quite an indictment, however muted, from the Modernist-leaning Father Ratzinger, a peritus at the Council and the future Pope Benedict XVI. As John Allen notes in his biography of Cardinal Ratzinger, Father Ratzinger’s critique of GS (published in 1969) was motivated in part by an experience during his time on the theological faculty of the University of Tübingen which led him to see "that the kind liberalizing he had supported within the Church at Vatican II was leading to chaos because any sense of what is distinctively Christian about the Church was being lost: all anyone seemed to care about from the Council was Gaudium et spes and ‘the signs of the times.’" [Allen, John. Pope Benedict XVI: A Biography of Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 83] Today, the Church is afflicted by a Pope who seems to have been deposited on the Chair of Peter by the whirlwind of that ecclesial chaos, which already alarmed Father Ratzinger in the 1960s.

We have a Pope unlike any before him, who indulges in an endless jeremiad against the legalists, latter-day Pharisees and "rigid Christians" he purports to see everywhere in the Church, while ignoring the laxity and the collapse of faith and discipline that led John Paul II to lament a "silent apostasy" Bergoglio seems determined to accommodate as the new ecclesial normal.

And while Bergoglio condemns "casuistry" on the part of those who simply defend the indissolubility of marriage without exception, he resorts precisely to casuistry in order to contrive neo-Mosaic "exceptions" to the Sixth Commandment based on an obscure "discernment" of "concrete situations," so that public adulterers who purport to have effected "second marriages" can in "certain cases" be admitted to Holy Communion without ceasing adulterous sexual relations with people to whom they are not married.

More to the point here, the same Pope who has infamously condemned "the self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past" has spent the past four years engaging in precisely a neo-Pelagian program of the pursuit of human flourishing without Christ, a program whose origin Father Ratzinger rightly traces to the language and reception of Gaudium et spes.

The Bergoglian Manifesto known as Evangelii Gaudium (EG), wherein "promethean neopelagian" Catholics are derided for their orthodoxy, is itself a neo-Pelagian prescription that calls for the perfection of the world through dialogue and mutual cooperation that will supposedly produce "a new order of human relations," "new directions for humanity," "a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of the life of all over the appropriation of goods by a few," "a new political and economic mindset," "new forms of cultural synthesis," "new processes in society," "new horizons for thought" and "a new social situation…" The Bergoglian utopia, quite in the spirit of GS and the "civilization of love" promoted by Paul VI and John Paul II, is to be realized by the followers of any and all religions:

An attitude of openness in truth and in love must characterize the dialogue with the followers of non-Christian religions, in spite of various obstacles and difficulties, especially forms of fundamentalism on both sides.

Interreligious dialogue is a necessary condition for peace in the world, and so it is a duty for Christians as well as other religious communities.

This dialogue is in first place a conversation about human existence or simply, as the bishops of India have put it, a matter of "being open to them, sharing their joys and sorrows." In this way we learn to accept others and their different ways of living, thinking and speaking. We can then join one another in taking up the duty of serving justice and peace, which should become a basic principle of all our exchanges. A dialogue which seeks social peace and justice is in itself, beyond all merely practical considerations, an ethical commitment which brings about a new social situation. (EG 250)

This call for a post-Christian panreligious brotherhood is followed by the usual Modernist disclaimer that what is being advanced is not being advanced: "In this dialogue, ever friendly and sincere, attention must always be paid to the essential bond between dialogue and proclamation, which leads the Church to maintain and intensify her relationship with non-Christians. A facile syncretism would ultimately be a totalitarian gesture on the part of those who would ignore greater values of which they are not the masters."

But, of course, a facile syncretism involving "all believers" in the utopian project is exactly what is being proposed, as even one still frame from the now infamous "Pope Video" on "interreligious dialogue" makes clear: To be sure, EG adverts to a role for the Gospel in the building of this neo-Pelagian utopia, and even the assistance of grace in the enterprise (which Pelagius himself allowed for), but nowhere is it suggested man is simply incapable of universal brotherhood outside the Mystical Body of Christ, wherein sanctifying grace alone makes possible the social metanoia that would renew the face of the earth. Rather, EG, based on nothing more than the opinion of the International Theological Commission, asserts that "Non-

Continued Next Page

Pope Pelagius?

C. Ferrara/ Continued from Page 5

Christians, by God’s gracious initiative, when they are faithful to their own consciences, can live ‘justified by the grace of God’, and thus be ‘associated to the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ’."

The vague to appeal to the mere following of conscience as a ground of justification through a vague "association" with the Paschal mystery, even when the conscience is errant, is another problem to which GS opened the door. As Father Ratzinger observes in his commentary: "As regards the binding force of erroneous conscience, the text employs a rather evasive formula. It merely says that such a conscience does not lose its dignity." (Op. cit., p.

136) But while Aquinas teaches that conscience, being the voice of reason, must be followed even when it errs, he also teaches, as Ratzinger points out, that reason " must know about God’s law [his emphasis]." Thus, as the Church teaches, guilt attaches to one whose conscience, deformed by habitual sin, buries its own knowledge of the divine precepts, whereas "The doctrine of the binding force of an erroneous conscience in the form in which it is propounded nowadays, belongs entirely to the thought of modern times." (Ibid.) But it is just this modern notion of the binding force of an errant conscience that Pope Bergoglio propounds in Amoris Laetitia, 303:

Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and to encourage an ever greater trust in God’s grace. Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal. (emphasis added)

In other words, someone who knows his conduct violates the Sixth Commandment can continue in his adultery if his conscience supposedly informs him that God does not expect more of him "for now" and that he is justified in God’s sight without alteration of his objectively sinful behavior. On the basis of this utter novelty in moral theology, the errant conscience of the habitual sinner is transformed into an informed conscience right with God. No Pope in the entire history of the Church has lent his name to such an atrocity.

In an important address in 1991, delivered to a bishops’ workshop in Dallas, Cardinal Ratzinger further developed his critique of the modern notion of conscience and its baneful effects upon the Church’s mission:

In the course of a dispute, a senior colleague, who was keenly aware of the plight to being Christian in our times, expressed the opinion that one should actually be grateful to God that He allows there to be so many unbelievers in good conscience. For if their eyes were opened and they became believers, they would not be capable, in this world of ours, of bearing the burden of faith with all its moral obligations. But as it is, since they can go another way in good conscience, they can reach salvation.

What shocked me about this assertion was not in the first place the idea of an erroneous conscience given by God Himself in order to save men by means of such artfulness—the idea, so to speak, of a blindness sent by God for the salvation of those in question.

What disturbed me was the notion that it harbored, that faith is a burden which can hardly be borne and which no doubt was intended only for stronger natures— faith almost as a kind of punishment, in any case, an imposition not easily coped with.

According to this view, faith would not make salvation easier but harder. Being happy would mean not being burdened with having to believe or having to submit to the moral yoke of the faith of the Catholic church. The erroneous conscience, which makes life easier and marks a more human course, would then be a real grace, the normal way to salvation. Untruth, keeping truth at bay, would be better for man than truth. It would not be the truth that would set him free, but rather he would have to be freed from the truth. Man would be more at home in the dark than in the light.

Faith would not be the good gift of the good God but instead an affliction.

If this were the state of affairs, how could faith give rise to joy? Who would have the courage to pass faith on to others? Would it not be better to spare them the truth or even keep them from it? In the last few decades, notions of this sort have discernibly crippled the disposition to evangelize. The one who sees the faith as a heavy burden or as a moral imposition is unable to invite others to believe. Rather he lets them be, in the putative freedom of their good consciences. [paragraph breaks added]

A "sanctifying grace" presumed to be more or less universal among men who are generally presumed to be in good conscience, dissociated from any act of faith in Christ or even basically moral behavior, would not be sanctifying grace at all—a divine gift superadded to fallen nature. It would, rather, be an intrinsic attribute of Pelagian man, who has never fallen in the first place.

Pelagian man, able to save himself without faith, baptism or the Catholic Church, is precisely the man of the Bergoglian vision, engendered by the conciliar novelties of "ecumenism," "dialogue" and "interreligious dialogue," which have indeed crippled—nay, all but ended— "the disposition to evangelize" on the part of post-conciliar churchmen.

On this view, faith and baptism are reduced to Pelagian forms of assistance to a human enterprise that is nonetheless quite able to succeed without them. Far from the pages of EG or the endless, meandering oral output of Pope Bergoglio is the constant teaching of the Church that she alone possesses the means by which there can be peace among men of good will. As Pius XI declared during the interim between the two World Wars: Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state.

The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love" (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual’s soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ.

She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very makeup and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail. ( Ubi Arcano Dei, nn. 42, 46))

And, as Pope Saint Pius X declared against the errors of the utopian dreamers of the Sillon movement, whose dream is now obviously the Bergoglian program:

This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO. ( Notre Charge Apostolique) Finally, there is the antinomian strain of Pelagianism also clearly evident in the Bergoglian program: the notion, dating back to Apostolic times and reaching its destructive apex with Luther, that" Christians are exempt from the obligations of moral law" in the sense that "as good works do not promote salvation, so neither do evil works hinder it" so long as one has fiducial faith in Christ. Christians may be under the law, and indeed ought to follow it for the sake of right living and good example, but they are not condemned by it no matter what their transgressions, for their faith alone save them.

For Bergoglio, sins—aside from those it is politically acceptable to condemn, which he condemns without ceasing— are of no moment respecting salvation, for Jesus has already made satisfaction for them all, just as Luther believed— especially the sins of the flesh Bergoglio labors to accommodate. As he declared during one of his error-filled improvised sermons at Casa Santa Marta: "When we go to confession, for example, it isn’t that we say our sin and God forgives us.

No, not that! We look for Jesus Christ and say: ‘This is your sin, and I will sin again.’ And Jesus likes that, because it was his mission: to become the sinner for us, to liberate us."

We have a Pope who openly professes that Martin Luther was right concerning justification by faith alone. As the world was delighted to hear during one of the sessions of his "airplane Magisterium": "And today Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification. On this point, which is very important, he did not err."

And so, along with Pelagian man, who never fell in Paradise, we have Lutheran man, the heir of Pelagius, who never will fall so long as he professes faith in the Christ whose Law he disobeys.

Original sin, personal sin, and the fatal consequences of both without sanctifying grace fade from view in Bergoglian theology, just as they have in the theology of post-conciliar churchmen in general. Speaking of the problem as manifest in the documents of the Synod that Bergoglio rigged in preparation for Amoris laetitia, Bishop Athanasius Schneider observes the ultimately Pelagian outcome:

This omission is serious because, without the acceptance of the truth about original sin and sins in general, one cannot understand properly the redemption of the human race through the sacrifice of Christ at the Cross.

If one eliminates the language of sin, one finally also eliminates the true redemption; and one then turns Christianity into a Humanism or into a Pelagianism. Then there is left only the self-redemption or a religion of a naturalistic moral ethic and pedagogy, or a new religion of ecology and of climate change.

But this is the very religion Pope Bergoglio has been promoting, albeit mixed with occasional expressions of popular Catholic piety in the confusing mélange that has been his theological style from the beginning of his episcopal career—a style that always moves, however, in the same liberalizing direction.

In sum, the same Pope who condemns the "self-absorbed Promethean neopelagianism" of orthodox Catholics—a ludicrous calumny that will haunt the memory of this bizarre pontificate until the end of time—turns out to be something of a neo-Pelagian himself. But in fairness to him, it must be said that he stands at the end of a process of decay that began with the Council in 1962 and is reaching its final stage with this pontificate, the complete embodiment of all the Council’s illstarred novelties. ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 03

The Remnant Speaks

Letters to the Editor: The Remnant Speaks P.O. Box 1117, Forest Lake, MN 55025 ~ Editor@RemnantNewspaper.

Public School Concentration Camps: Morality-Free Zones ( REMNANT TV) Editor, The Remnant: The recent Public School Concentration Camps edition of Remnant TV was outstanding. I hope it gets hundreds of thousands of views if not millions. Let us pray...and promote (FB, etc.).

Craig Waltersheid Editor, The Remnant: I am listening to your presentation about the sad state of affairs in public schools in America I taught in a public school for 7 years from 1974 to 1981 in a middle school in central Pennsylvania. The situation was much better back then being a generally conservative area.

It is time that Catholics and all people of good will start working to pass a law that states simply: "Every taxpayer will support the schools of his or her choice that covers ages 5-18. Each school will have its own governing board that will determine the school’s curricula and policies including the qualifications and the salaries of its faculty and staff.

Each school will determine by which professional body it will be certified if it so desires. No child will be barred from a school due to lack of economic means to pay the full costs of the education of the child."

Certain details need to be worked out, but this is the basic idea. Those who have children in the school will pay what it costs to educate the children plus a certain percentage for a reserve fund. Those who do not have children in the school will pay somewhat less to be determined by the costs of educating the children. This means that if the local town has a school it will not be allowed to force persons to support its school through property and other taxes. The town will have to go to each taxpayer and convince him or her to support the "public" school.

Charter schools, tax incentives, vouchers and the like will not save our schools. We must get government out of education. Law suits by the ACLU and their ilk will be eliminated because each local governing board will make the important decisions. Teacher unions and politicians will be dead set against such legislation because it will immediately release the schools from their control. We must be firm and determined to regain our schools for the sake of the children.

Peace, Fr. Matthew Chadwick, OFM Conv East Sussex, ENGLAND

Evolution: Mr. Cullen’s Reply

Editor, The Remnant: Thanks to you and Mr. Underwood for the compliments in the "Letters to the Editor" section of the 30 April Remnant. Mr. Underwood’s criticism is well-taken and in fact correct: I should not have included that number nor should I have even referred to the cypress as "one of the oldest types of trees", given that said description does indeed go against Church teaching. We both got caught with our pants down on that one! My bad, however.

Mr. Underwood’s further observations are also points well-taken; quite honestly, for me it’s a knotty (no pun intended vis-a-vis trees) problem, the whole "evolution" thing. His reasoning is sound from the standpoint of traditional Church teaching and in a traditional Catholic publication, that teaching should not be open to question, although it wasn’t my intention to question it even by implication: it simply slipped my mind, given that I confess to taking for granted the "small-e" evolution of plant and animal life as described by the anti-Darwinian D’Arcy Thompson, author of the 1917 classic On Growth and Form.

I’m grateful to Mr. Underwood for having posed the question as to where I stand on the matter, because the sad truth is that I’m not really sure! His letter was well written and perhaps it might be worth requesting an essay from him on the subject, because my knowledge of it is woefully inadequate and while it’s a controversial issue, he’s correct in stating that it’s one not often covered, although you and Christopher Ferrara did some pieces some years back that were formidable. I’m now tempted to reread Thompson (a formidable and timeconsuming task!) and do some further research, perhaps with a future (not nearterm!) essay in mind.

I’d be indebted to Mr. Underwood if he would offer some source material with respect to his comment that "from the molecular level upward, Evolution is virtually impossible". Continuing education is always welcome, as is constructive criticism.

Thanks again and God bless, Tim Cullen

The Consecration of Russia

Editor, The Remnant: With regard to William Price’s article, Fatima and the Russian Connection, in the April 30th edition of The Remnant, Mr. Price mentions that the Blessed Mother reappeared after the Fatima apparitions to Sister Lucia de Santos in June of 1929 at Tuy, Spain. Our Lady mentioned that Russia was to be consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart – a solemn consecration made by the Pope in union with the world’s bishops.

Well, a bunch of us "Old Fogies", now in our early to mid-80’s, discussed the article after Sunday’s Latin High Mass, celebrated in a suburb of Greenville, SC. (Our tradition after Mass is to usually have brunch at either IHOP or Cracker Barrel to discuss church news or other related events). Several of our group brought up the matter as to why, as we well remember the glorious days of the Church of Pope Pius XII (1939-1958), the solemn consecration, mentioning Russia specifically by name, was not done.

One of our group added, in that era, bishops were truly loyal to the Holy Father, and seemingly it would not have been a difficult matter for the Holy Father to do. I interjected that it could have been done even earlier and, that because of our then very young youth, we have little or no remembrance of Pope Pius XI (1922-1939), he could have performed the Russia Consecration with the bishops within a short time frame from the message given to Sister Lucia at Tuy in 1929.

Not only was he the then-Holy Father, but some years back I read his two encyclicals, Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and Divini Redemptoris (1937), in which Pius X1 most definitely condemned the evils of Communism. " Why was the consecration of Russia not done?" by either one of two Pontiffs during the era of a strong non-fragmented Catholic Church, apparently is a question known only by God.

Frank L. Bordell Mauldin, SC

Dr. Silvas and Amoris Laetitia

Editor, The Remnant: The Romanianborn patristic scholar, Dr. Anna Silvas, who now teaches at my alma mater, the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, has already written eloquently and perceptively about the crisis in Catholic moral teaching that is metastasizing under the present pontificate. At the April 2017 conference in Rome at which lay Catholic scholars reflected on the confusion and disunity unleashed by Amoris Laetitia in the first year after its promulgation, Professor Silvas delivered a new and outstanding paper. It will probably be published before long, but, having previewed the text, I offer here a few comments on what I found to be its highlights.

I find particularly interesting her thoughts on the quasi-Hegelian ‘spirit’ that seems to pervade Pope Francis’ thinking and strategy - encapsulated in his principle that "time is greater than space" (i.e., that the important thing is just "to set processes in motion"). Within this framework, chaos, confusion and conflict within the Church are not evils to be avoided or overcome by clear magisterial interventions from Peter’s Successor. On the contrary, they are part of a deliberate strategy by which a new revolutionary synthesis – a ‘situation ethic’ directly contrary to the philosophical, moral and sacramental tradition of the Church – will gradually emerge in her praxis

Continued Next Page

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 04

Letters to the Editor Cont....

by the gradual working-out of the present sharp conflicts.

And to bring this about, Papa Bergoglio will not need to issue any clear, explicit and unambiguous denials of Catholic doctrine! Indeed, such crystal-clear heterodoxy might well provoke a strong orthodox reaction from those many prelates who, as Dr.

Silvas notes, are now clutching at hermeneutical straws in order to give a tradition-friendly interpretation to the bare text of Amoris, which they read in isolation from its real-life existential and ecclesial context.

Why should Francis risk possible defeat by provoking their ire when he can pave the way for final victory more smoothly, albeit more slowly, by simply letting the confusion and conflicts gradually work themselves out in the developing praxis of a Church led at grass-roots level by cardinals and archbishops who will be increasingly of his own ilk?

After all, the fault-lines already chiseled by original sin into our fallen human nature will ensure that the final working-out of this dialectical process will be one that smothers the objective moral order with the subjective demands of individual "conscience", so that (among other things) the Holy Eucharist will finally be open to all those who present themselves for it. In a report in La Repubblica that was never denied by the Vatican, its atheist editor Eugenio Scalfari asserted that the Pope himself, in a phone conversation, revealed that to be the future "bottom line" of his reforms. (In this Bergoglian strategy there are also hints of John Dewey’s pragmatism and the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci’s approach: gradually undermining the status quo from within rather than directly and violently confronting it.) I hate to say this, but the word ‘diabolical’ keeps popping up in my mind as I contemplate this horrid scenario. After all, if you’re the devil, and you’re out to destroy the Church by attacking her truth and holiness, you’ll want to "deceive even the elect", as Our Lord prophesied (cf. Mt. 24:24). So you’re not going to blow your cover by issuing obvious, outright denials of Catholic dogma. In fact, you’ll "reassure" devout papal loyalists by throwing in generous doses of orthodoxy and sound piety into your pronouncements - good wheat alongside the cockle. Also, where is Satan going to start if not at our weakest point? Well, what point in fallen human nature is weaker than our disordered sexual desires? And what aspects of the Church’s teaching about sexuality are now more vulnerable, in the forum of ‘enlightened’ public opinion, than her rejection of unnatural birth control and remarriage after divorce?

So it makes sense that you’re going to sow confusion in those areas first, with ambivalent or seemingly contradictory words and actions that will allow the theological equivalent ("Bad doctrine drives out good") of Gresham’s Law ("Bad money drives out good") to gradually spread moral poison throughout the Mystical Body.

Whatever about that, Anna Silvas’ perceptive observations on Amoris certainly help us to see why Francis is refusing to answer the cardinals’ dubia - and why he almost certainly never will.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S. St. Louis, Missouri

Sexual Revolution in Nursing Homes and at Mass?

Editor, The Remnant: I’m now in my mid-70s and had lived in a 55-plus community for about 15 years. Let me assure you, it isn’t ONLY the young people these days who are "sex obsessed". The elderly are also! Not only that, but they have to TELL ALL, whether or not you want to hear their stories.

Another friend from years past is now living in a Catholic nursing home, and at age 84 has a 94-year-old "lover". Yes, she, too, must TELL ALL about their hook ups.

I no longer live with the older, active (gulp!) adults, but have chosen to live in an apartment home—no one above, next door, or below. These are separate units, and I can be left alone with "The Liturgical Year" and other wonderful spiritual readings, as well as the ability to attend a Traditional Latin Mass. But even there, one has to have "custody of the eyes" because so many do not dress properly for "the Most Beautiful Thing This Side of Heaven". Truly, it is scandalous, but then not everyone at those Masses is Traditionalist. Shorts, skimpy tops and short skirts, jeans, and all kinds of casual wear is seen at these Masses. It truly disgusts me, and my eyes are often kept in my Missal.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I am supposed to do about these matters, but like I said, it isn’t only the young who are sexually active without benefit of marriage. My younger brother has recently "married" and he is her fifth husband! Needless to say, he is no longer a practicing Catholic. Keep up the good work. Love Remnant TV!

Dominus vobiscum.

With prayers always, Name Withheld (by Remnant editor)

Yet Another War?

Editor, The Remnant: War drums are getting louder by the day, with demonstration of the latest super-bomb.

This may gladden the steel hearts of war-hawks John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, and the "Defense Contractor Community" (as warned against by Generals Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur 65 years ago).

Outmaneuvered by their Russian allies in the on-going Syrian (Civil) War, the frantic war-hawks have discovered a new meddling opportunity in the Korean peninsula. There they may have a new comrade in National Security Adviser, General H.R. McMaster—who grabs the latest headline with militant advice: "We cannot accept a nuclear North Korea".

Well, who is "we"—and who is asking him to "accept" anything? Is he giving personal advice, or is he speaking for President Trump—our rambling leader who strangely tweets at 3am, "I’m both a nationalist and a globalist" (never mind the glaring contradiction)? We have a busy President who is reinterpreting Webster’s entire dictionary—at 3am any day of the week. The President’s new son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as new top adviser, has a real job on his hands— how to refocus presidential attention on Jerusalem.

But now back to the unfinished Korean War, an active real war for three years (1950-1953), and then under an informal armistice for 64 years— with armed forces still aligned on an artificial boundary set by United Nations authority. Now with General McMaster announcing "We Cannot Accept a Nuclear North Korea"—perhaps he is a bit late in thumping the war-drums, the Marxist regime may already possess the nuclear ability, certainly its Chinese Marxist regime ally has the nuclear weapons.

So, can President Trump "make a deal" here and now? Or does General McMaster get unofficial "authority" to produce a war plan which will satisfy our Homeland War Hawks? Since President Trump seems unable to decide whether he is a real "America First" advocate, or some kind of a Globalistwithout- Borders, may U.S. Congress be allowed a vote?

Regarding any proposed restart of the Korean War of 1950-53, it may be of use to recall that President Harry Truman aborted any further American military involvement when in 1951 he "fired" General Douglas MacArthur, preventing his advance to the Yalu River (boundary with China), thus allowing Red Chinese takeover of North Korea.

So, it seems obvious that the only way General McMaster can find any solution to a renewal of the Korean War, or its prevention, is to gain Chinese diplomatic aid. Meanwhile, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Nikki Haley, please shutup and put the war drums back in your toy boy.

Robert Dahl Maryland

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 07

SSPX Priest on

Amoris Laetitia:

How to Disguise Falsehood under the Mantle of Truth and Vice under the Mantle of Virtue

by Father Guy Castelain, SSPX

Editor’s Note: Father Guy Castelain is the chaplain of the Marie Reine des Coeurs ( Our Lady Queen of Hearts) Confraternity in France, which spreads True Devotion to Mary according to De Montfort. This article was published in the April 2017 edition of the Confraternity’s bulletin (#144, April 2017). Again, we ask for prayers on behalf of our faithful translator of these important contributions from Europe.

MJM

On the March 19, 2016, Pope Francis’ post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia on love in the family was published. Why speak of this pontifical document in a publication devoted to the spirituality of Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort? Because Father de Montfort casts a singular light on the problematic posed by this document.

To begin with, a little reminder. The leitmotif or the thrust of the Second Vatican Council was aggiornamento, or in Latin accomodatio renovata, that is, opening and adaptation to the modern world. Paul VI explained the meaning of this term in his opening speech to the second session (1963): "that the deposit of Christian doctrine be conserved and presented in a more efficacious manner" and that doctrine "be deepened and expressed following the research methods and presentation used by modern thought".

Simply put, it was, therefore, a case of marrying Catholic doctrine with the Atheism, Evolutionism, Modernism, Liberalism and immorality of the modern world. And herein lies the basic problem: how can you express Divine Revelation, that is, Catholic Faith and Morals, using the thought of today’s world?

Strictly speaking, it is a case of trying to square the circle.

Now, to use terminology more proper to Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort, the problem of the Second Vatican Council was that of marrying Divine Wisdom with the wisdom of the world. Saint Louis Marie de Montfort dealt with this subject in The Love of Eternal Wisdom in Numbers 74 to 89. Father de Montfort explains that the world "subtly [uses] the truth to inspire falsehood, virtue to authorize sin, and the very maxims of Jesus Christ to authorize its own" (Number 79).

Father Grignon also points out that worldly wisdom is "a perfect conformity with the maxims and fashions of the world... not in a clumsy and blatant way, by committing some scandalous sin, but in a subtle, deceptive and political manner; otherwise it would no longer be wisdom in the eyes of the world, but license" (Number 75).

Finally, he defines the worldly person as someone "who makes a secret but deadly agreement between truth and falsehood, between the Gospel and the world, between virtue and sin" (Number 76). De Montfort is here describing Liberal Catholicism (which ended up triumphing at Vatican II and in its reforms) a full one hundred years before its existence (19th Century).

What does Amoris Laetitia contain?

A reminder of the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage (in Numbers 52-53, 62, 77, 86, 123 and 178) and, at the same time, affirmations which grant divorced and remarried people the possibility of accessing the sacraments, that is to say Confession and Communion, without conversion, without contrition, without reparation for scandal, without ceasing to live in adultery and without ceasing their sin (in Numbers 243, 298-299, 301-305 and especially Note 351).

To be convinced of this, the reader can refer to two easily accessible publications: DICI Number 345 of November 25 2016 and Le Courrier de Rome Number 595 of January 2017.

De Montfort, with his eagle eye, saw the crux of the problem which currently occupies our attention: Conciliar wisdom consists in disguising falsehood under the mantle of truth, and vice under that of virtue. Thus, Amoris Laetitia, authorizes sacrilege under the pretext of being pastoral. Let it be said in passing that there is a good chance that the 2018 Synod will carry out the same sleight of hand with regard to ecclesiastical celibacy in order to permit the priestly ordination of married men.

De Montfort was truly a man in advance of his own time. This is so because he held to Catholic Doctrine, that of the Council of Trent, which in turn reiterates that of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In effect, history teaches us that, during this Council, two books were placed on the altar: The Bible or Sacred Scripture (Written Tradition) and the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas (representing Oral Tradition).

And in those days, this Catholic Doctrine was not expressed with the help of an atheistic philosophy which is opposed to the Catholic Faith, but with the help of sane Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, known as the Philosophia Perennis, and which is "the Handmaid of Theology" (Saint Thomas Aquinas). ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 07

The Fenton Diaries

By Robert J. Siscoe

One of the many contributions John Vennari made to the world of Tradition was bringing to light the writings of Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, which he discovered and published extensively in Catholic Family News.

Msgr. Fenton was well known prior to Vatican II. He received his doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Angelicum in Rome and wrote his dissertation under Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., who is recognized as one of the 20th century’s greatest Thomists. He served as the editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review from 1944 to 1963, and was chosen to serve as a peritus (expert) for Cardinal Ottaviani (then Secretary of the Holy Office) during the Second Vatican Council.

Msgr. Fenton also served on the Pontifical Theological Commission in preparation for the Council.

Msgr. Fenton was known as a fierce opponent to Modernism and Liberalism during the reign of Pius XII. He publicly defended the traditional papal teaching on the Catholic Confessional State, and engaged in a lengthy debate with John Courtney Murray, in the pages of the American Ecclesiastical Review, over the issue of religious liberty. He battled the Modernist alongside Cardinal Ottaviani during the Second Vatican Council, and endured the turbulent years that followed. He suffered two serious heart attacks during the Council, and died of a third on July 7, 1969, just before the publication of the Novus Ordo Missae.

Monsignor Fenton’s personal diaries, which have been stored at The Catholic University of America, were recently made public. The diary entries during the time he spent on the Theological Commission (1960-1962), and during the Council (1962–1965), provide a unique perspective and reveal what it was like for a traditional Catholic theologian in the face of the liberal onslaught that was unleashed during the Council. Msgr. Fenton was in the very heart of the battle, and his diaries provide some interesting behind the scenes information. What follows are some of the more relevant entries, which were recorded between the years 1960 and 1965. To assist the reader, we have included full names (when known) of the individuals to whom some abbreviated entries refer.

On November 5, 1960, during the time he was serving on the Theological Commission, he wrote: "To me the condition here in Rome is an evidence of the existence of the Church as a miracle of the social order. In general it is being run by men who have no concern whatsoever for the purity or the integrity

Continued on Page 8

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 08

Fenton Dairies

of the Catholic doctrine. And yet, when the chips are down, the doctrine of Christ always comes through. … This trip has taught me one thing: I definitely am a believer. It has also shown me that some of the leaders in the Church appear not to believe."

On October 9, 1962, four days before the opening of the Council, he wrote: "It is a crime that we did not take the Anti-Modernist Oath. Poor Cardinal Ottaviani must have failed to have our own profession passed by the Central Commission. It contained his condemnation of Fr. John Courtney Murray."

On the opening day of the Council, which was the 45th Anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, he wrote the following about his prophetic fear that the Council could bring trouble to the Church: "I had always thought that this council was dangerous," wrote Fenton. "It was started for no sufficient reason. There was too much talk about what it was supposed to accomplish.

Now I am afraid that real trouble is on the way." (Oct. 13, 1962) He expressed the same fear in an article he wrote for the American Ecclesiastical Review, which was published in the same month (October 1962). In the piece, he warned that there was no guarantee that the Council would be a success. He went on to observe that most people mistakenly "imagine that the Council will automatically be a success, and that, as a result, there is no particular need of any prayers for the attainment of the ends for which it was conceived and summoned."

1 He then added:

"Many seem to have imagined that the calling of an ecumenical council was like pushing a magic button, which would automatically and painlessly do away with all of the difficulties being faced by the true Church of Jesus Christ during the second half of the 20th Century. And, as is obvious from a study of the history of previous general councils, and from the consideration of the very nature of the Catholic Church, it is plain that there could be no more serious misconception. The fact of the matter is that the success of the ecumenical council really depends on the effectiveness and the ardour of the prayers of the Faithful."

2

1 Msgr. Fenton, Joseph, "The Virtue of Prudence and the Success of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council" (American Ecclesiastical Review, October 1962); cited in "1962 Warning: Vatican II May Fail," by John Vennari, ( Catholic Family News, November, 2001).

2 Ibid.

He went on to add:

"It is by no means automatically certain the council will be successful (…) It is possible that the council might act otherwise than with the fullness of supernatural prudence. It is possible that, seen in this perspective, it may not be successful."

3

His fear was realized almost immediately. In his diary entry from October 19, 1962, he discussed the problems with the Council’s schema on the liturgy: "I started to read the material on the Liturgy, and I was shocked at the bad theology. (…) they speak of the Church working ‘quousque unum ovile fiat et unus pastor’ (until there be one fold and one shepherd), as if that condition were not already achieved" (October 19, 1962 pp. 71-72). Another diary entry from the same day discusses an anticipated proposal by the French bishops to shift the focus of the Council from the doctrinal to the pastoral level.

In a moment of frustration, he also complained that the recent Popes (after Pius X) had been liberals who filled the Church with liberal prelates. He wrote:

"Dulac wants me to contact Vagnozzi about a reply to some French bishops.

It seems that these men intend very soon to propose that the Council pass up all the doctrinal schemata and settle for some ‘pastoral’ stuff. I do not think that any little work on our part is going to bring good to the Church. We should, I believe, face the facts: since the death of St. Pius X the Church has been directed by weak and liberal popes, who have flooded the hierarchy with unworthy and stupid men. This present conciliar set-up makes this all the more apparent. Father Ed Hanahoe, the only intelligent and faithful member of Cardinal Bea’s secretariat has been left off the list of the periti. Such idiots as Msgr. John Quinn and the sneak Fr. McManus have been put on. Fr. Tavard is there as an American. God help us! From surface appearance it would seem that the Lord Christ is abandoning His Church ["Eli, Eli Lama Sabachthani"]. The thoughts of many are being revealed. As one priest used to say, to excuse his own liberalism, which, in the bottom of his heart he knew was wrong, ‘for the last few decades the tendency in Rome has been to favor the liberals.’ That is the policy now.

We can only do what we can to overt an ever more complete disloyalty to Christ." (October 19, 1962, pp. 74 75).

Two weeks into the Council, he again expressed his fears that the Council would end badly for the Church:

"As far as I can see the Church is going to be very badly hurt by this Council. The opposition between the liberals and the loyal Catholics has been brought out into the open. Yesterday a Dutch (Holland) bishop gave a nasty talk in which he claimed to be speaking for all of his countrymen. He charged that the claims (really statements of fact) about theological imperfection in the schema were ‘exaggerated.’ The poor fellow seemed to imagine that a little lack of precision is all right in

3 Ibid.

a conciliar document. I am disgusted with talk of this kind. Another wild liberal speech was made by the auxiliary of Lyons." (October 27, 1962, pp 88-89).

Four days later, on Wednesday, October 31, he expresses his surprise in seeing how liberal the episcopate was at the time, and makes several predictions that would soon come to pass:

"Being at the Council is, of course, the great experience of my life. But, at the same time, it has been a great disappointment. I never thought that the episcopate was so liberal. This is going to mark the end of the Catholic religion as we know it.

There will be vernacular masses, and, worse still, there will be some wretched theology in the constitutions.

… I met dozens of bishops that I know. But I realize that I am all alone. … On the way back from the Council I stopped in to see Cardinal Ottaviani. He seemed shaken by what had happened the day before.

I feel for him. We had a good visit."

(Wednesday, October 31, 1962, p. 95, 96).

The following month, he spoke of those at the Council who were promoting the New Theology, which had just been condemned by Pope Pius XII.

"Ottaviani spoke of the people who are trying to reject this schema as people who favor the New Theology, and who are trying to sow cockle. He was very firm. I could see that the Frenchmen were quite hostile. Fr.

Tromp gave a lot of defense of the schema. … Tromp has just pointed out that a pastoral council should not be non-doctrinal. Tromp is being very good. He is defending the schemata.

He definitely is not going to break to the opposition. We are hearing history. What is the theological note of what is contained in the doctrinal constitution?" (November 13, 1963, pp. 104-105)

The entry for the next day is interesting because we begin to see that the Liberals were doing with doctrine exactly what they are doing now with morality, namely, separating (and opposing) doctrine from practice. Fenton notes that Cardinal Ottaviani spoke out against this error:

"Today the 1st speaker is Ottaviani.

He is magnificent. He insists: 1) They must consider this schema, 2) Pastoral & doctrinal are not opposed, 3) We should not have the New Theology.

… Cardinal Lienart is against [the schema]. (…) He takes no cognizance of the fact that this has been the language of Catholic theology since Trent. He imagines that the language is ‘cold’. He uses the ‘separated brethren’ [terminology] of a lousy theologian. (November 14, 1962, p.

110-111)

The entry for November 23 begins to reveal which side Pope John XXIII was on. Fenton explains that the vote to reject the schema (a schema which was supported by the conservatives) did not pass. In response, John XXIII simply changed the rules by reducing the twothird requirement down to 50% (which the liberals had), and viola the problem was solved. This allowed the schema to be discarded, thereby scoring a victory for the liberals. Regarding this event, Fenton wrote:

"This has been one of the most adventurous weeks of my life.

Tuesday they took the vote. It was about 60% against the schema and 40% for it. They announced that, since the opponents did not gather the required two-thirds, they would continue with the discussion of the schema. I was delighted, of course. For several days the old man [Ottaviani] had been taking it on the chin. … At noon, [name unreadable] called me … [and] told me the bad news. At the Pope’s own order the rules were changed and the schema was thrown out. A new commission was set up including Cardinal Meyer, Alfrink, and Lienart. On the same day Time Magazine came out with a dirty personal attack against Ottaviani. I went up to see the old man in the afternoon. He is angry and he talks about more action from our side. … As I left, Paul [last name unreadable] was going in. He was crying. And he said that this was the time of the devils" (November 23, 1962).

Two days later, Fenton wrote that John XXIII was "definitely a lefty":

"After supper I finished the Tederchi book. It is a scorcher. It simply shows that some other people believe what I have thought for several months, namely, that John XXIII is definitely a lefty. This nonsense to the effect that he is ‘deceived’ or ‘mal servite’ is disgraceful. He is the boss." (November 25, 1962, pp 120-121).

The following day, he wrote:

"The articles in the Milan Corriere della Sera tell of the Pope’s connection with Fr. Ernesto Buonaiuti [previously excommunicated for Modernism], and they make him look like a real Modernist, at heart. He probably is. In light of what Tederchi has written, it is easy to see why Cardinal Ottaviani has taken such a bad beating in the Council from the Pope." (Nov. 26, 1962)

In May of the following year, the diary entry discusses the Conservative-Liberal question. Fenton explains that, in his opinion, the Liberals at the Council differed from the Liberals of the 19th century, such as de Lamennais. In reality, however, the difference was likely only one of tactic. The difference that Fr. Fenton refers to is that the 19th century Liberals denied doctrine directly, whereas the liberal Bishops at the Council did not. Their tactic was much more crafty (and more successful):

Continued Next Page

Continued from Page 7

First officers of the Catholic Theological Society of America , left to right: Fr.

James E. Rea, Fr. Gerard Yelle, Fr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, Fr. Francis J. Connell

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 09

Continued...

they undermined doctrine

indirectly

practices

that were opposed to

doctrine.

indirect

doctrine

Lumen Gentium.

and what he did in response:

The following day he wrote:

de Mysterium Ecclesiae.

Five days later we see his frustration

over what he was witnessing:

in the Church itself,

fine domani

segregatio

So he spoke out in full

congregatio

admiratio.

Dei Verbum:

The following month he wrote:

A week later, he wrote:

Continued on Page 10

Vatican Council II in Session

by shifting the focus to the "pastoral" level and promoting

This same tactic, which was employed so successfully by the Left to undermine doctrine, is now being used to undermine morality, as we see in the current attacks on the indissolubility of marriage, and the sinfulness of adultery. It is an

attack on doctrine, which they think enables them to escape doctrinal error.

From the May 11, 1963 diary entry:

"The Conservative-Liberal question: This, I think, is the matter in which most Catholics are interested today.

To be honest and scholarly in this area, we must first of all define our terms. … Liberal Catholicism … is the system of thought by which the teachings of the Catholic Church were represented as compatible with the maxim that guided the French Revolution. In practice the men who advocated the

of separation of Church and State, as these have been condemned by the Popes since Leo XIII, are called Liberal Catholics. … But the men who are called Liberals today, at least the Fathers of the Council who are called Liberals as distinct from the groups known by the reporters as conservative, are definitely not Liberal in the sense that Felicité de Lamennais was a liberal Catholic. Practically, these men who are Fathers of the Council, and who are designated as Liberal by the press, are those who seek a ‘pastoral’ rather than a ‘scholastic’ approach to the teaching and the legislation of the Council. …" (May 11, 1963).

After the experience of the past 50 years, it seems more likely that the Liberals at the Council were identical to de Lamennais in the sense of embracing the liberal doctrines, and only differed in the tactic used to promote their errors: instead of publicly denying the doctrines they rejected (which would get them in trouble), they undermined doctrine indirectly by focusing on "pastoral solutions," which favored and paved the way for the acceptance of the Liberal doctrine.

Fenton continued by noting that although a council is not a theological textbook, if the conciliar teaching is not precise, or if it passes over important aspects of doctrine, it can lead to confusion:

"Of course, the teaching as well as the directives of the ecumenical council should be portrayed in the fullest sense of the term.

The statement of the Council is not a theological text book. At the same time, however, a declaration by a council can cause confusion or finally can actually be harmful when, even though there is no error about faith or morals in it, the statement passes over Truths which are, and which have long been generally recognized as assertions of Catholic doctrine.

On this point, as in other areas, the Fathers of the Council need prudence and they need your prayers" (May 11, 1963).

In September of 1963, he discussed the schema on the Church, which would become the conciliar document

He notes that the first chapter contains the language of Fr. George Tyrrell, who was excommunicated by Pope St. Pius X for Modernism. Fenton explains how he was made aware of this

"Fr. Ed Hanahoe gave me two books on Modernism. In one of them I found evidence that the teaching in the first chapter of the new schema on the Church [uses] the language … of Tyrrell. May God preserve His Church from that chapter. If it passes, it will be a great evil. I must pray and act."

(September 24, 1963)

"I met Bishop Fearns, and told him about the first chapter. He was startled and hurt to hear about Tyrrell.

Thank God he has some interested in theology. … After Mass I went to see Cardinal Ottaviani. He was astounded about the Tyrrell thing. He wants the exact quote, which I shall give him tomorrow. … Then I went to go see Staffa. He was likewise astounded about the Tyrrell affair." (Sept. 25, 1963)

The next day he wrote: "…I learned that a group of periti had written a Latin letter to the individual bishops, warning them about the ‘New Theology,’ and explaining their responsibilities to them." (September 26, 1963). Unfortunately, warning them of their responsibility to oppose the New Theology did not bear fruit, as evidenced from the fact that Father Henrici, S.J. would boast, after the Council, that the New Theology, which had just been condemned by Pope Pius XII, "became the official theology of Vatican II."

On November 18, 1963, Fenton mentions a paper he wrote in which he urged that they not refer to the Church as a "sacrament":

"This morning I wrote a little paper urging the changing of the word ‘sacramentum’ in the

I gave it to Charue at the beginning of the meeting. I know that it will go into the round file [i.e., the trash can], but at least I tried."

"If I did not believe God, I would be convinced that the Catholic Church was about to end." (November 23, 1962)

What Fr. Fenton perceived as a possible end to the Church (which he knew by faith was not possible) would instead be a faith-shaking crisis of the Church to an unimaginable degree – a crisis that would cause many to lose their faith

by imaging that the visible society of the Church had morphed into an entirely new entity.

In his diary, Fr. Fenton also comments on other world events. For example, on the day of the Kennedy assassination, he wrote:

"Everyone here is talking about the mess in Dallas. Last night I saw the murderer of Oswald on the … TV.

There were people in the public room, and among them were a young couple from Dallas. They knew a great deal about Rubinstein [Jack Ruby?]. The whole affair appears to be a very deep plot, in which some of the leaders of the police were involved."

In the diary entry two days later, Fenton shows that the "self-absorbed Promethean neo-Pelagians" of his day had a sense of humor. He wrote:

"Cardinal Ottaviani was delighted with two poems I gave him before the meeting. He wants me to write them out for him. I have written them on an envelope. Here they are: "1: There are Weigel and Rahner and Küng Whose praises are everywhere süng.

But some

Old Ottaviani Will see that they’re properly hüng.

"2: Old Suenens dislikes

The bishops are churls So let’s bring in the girl In spite of the world’s

Then, in a different color ink, he added a third poem:

"3: Hanahoe, Fenton, and King Their names have a militant ring They argue for Rome But were silenced at home It was, perhaps, a very good thing."

(November 25, 1963)

On June 4, 1964, he writes the following about the schema on divine revelation, which would become

"The 3th chapter, on the New Testament, has gone by without discussion. I am afraid that this will turn out to be harmful to the Church.

There is nothing erroneous in the material we have passed. But there is a great deal that is incomplete and misleading. … [name illegible] again attacks the attempts made by the Progressives to sneak in ‘Scripture alone’ as a norm." (June 4, 1964)

In his October 3, 1964 entry, Fenton notes that the Church’s teaching on birth control was being publicly attacked by two Cardinals:

"A couple of days ago, Cardinals Suenens and Leger, among others, hit out at the Church’s teaching on birth control. Some fellow from Mill Hill told the reporters … that this was the happiest day of his life. He must have had a sad existence."

"At the moment, it looks like the schematas on the Church and on ecumenism will be ready for Saturday. The latter will be proposed without the chapter on religious liberty and on the Jews. We are much better off now than we were toward the end of the 1st and 2nd sessons. Fr. Charles Davis has inherited Küng’s position as king of the nuts. At the moment they are debating whether the schema on the Church in the modern world is addressed to Catholics & Christians or to the world. There have been some silly speeches. " (Nov. 16, 1964)

"Msgr. Joseph Quinn just told me that the H.O. [Holy Office] is being abolished and that Cardinal Ottaviani will not be the head of the new, nonsupreme, congregation which will take its place. The old man is being humiliated. He is a saint." (Nov. 21, 1964)

Referring to the text on religious liberty, which would become Dignitatis Humanae, he writes:

"The text of [schema no.] 13 is being rushed through. We are supposed to be finished by Sat., Oct. 30. It is like the last days of Congress, when everything goes through without a moment’s halt. … The part on ecumenism is a joke. It reads like a 19th century text, or a second-rate article in a leftist magazine." (October 28, 1965).

Fenton’s statement about everything being rushed through at the end of the Council is interesting in light of something that was discovered by Fr. Brian Harrison. When Fr. Harrison researched the Acts of the Council, he discovered that one of the more

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 10

Remembering Traditional Saints...

Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi

Since the Lord imprinted upon St. Francis the marks of His Five Sacred Wounds, called the "stigmata", in the days when charity or love for God and neighbor had grown cold, it is fitting that in these days of ours, when charity has likewise grown cold and is growing ever colder, we should consider devoutly the story of the miraculous stigmatization whereby St.

Francis was made so like the Crucified Savior.

In the year 1224, two years before his death, St. Francis and Brother Leo came upon a celebration at the Castle of Montefeltro in honor of a count who had just received the knighthood. The Saint took the occasion to speak to the large gathering of noblemen attending the celebration about the joy of temporal suffering for the sake of eternal glory.

Among the noblemen present was a Count Orlando of Chiusi who had heard much about the Saint and had greatly desired to see him and hear him preach.

The Count was greatly impressed by Francis’ sermon and after the banquet he was given the opportunity to speak with the Saint about the state of his soul. Out of gratitude to the Saint, Count Orlando then said: "In Tuscany, I have a mountain well-fitted for devotion, which is called Mount Alverna, which is very solitary and wild, and is eminently suitable for anyone who wishes to do penance in a place remote from mankind or for someone desiring to lead a solitary life. If it should please you, I would gladly give it to you and to your companions, for the salvation of my soul."

Francis was overjoyed at this generous offer of the Count and, after having some of his friars inspect the place to see if it was truly suitable for prayer and penance, gladly accepted his gift. Mount Alverna, called also Alvernia and LaVerna, is located in that part of northern Italy called Tuscany and is perhaps some 30 or 40 miles almost straight east of the great city of Florence.

The mountain rises abrupt and solitary to a height of almost 4,000 feet and is part of the long chain of the Apennine Mountains that run through the center of Italy almost the full length from north to south. To the west of Mt. Alverna is a beautiful valley, filled with meadows, vineyards, and forests, through which runs the Arno River. Count Orlanda’s castle, called the Castle of Chiusi, was located about a mile south of Mt. Alverna.

It was in August of 1224, that St.

Francis set out from the Portiuncula near Assisi with several companions to take possession of Mt. Alverna many miles to the north. After a very tiresome journey of several days, Francis arrived at the foot of the mountain and stopped to rest under an oak tree, and it was then that a great multitude of birds came to him, singing and fluttering their wings, some of them settling on his head, some on his shoulders, some on his arms and in his lap, and some around his feet. To his friars, the Saint said: "I believe it is pleasing to Our Lord that we shall dwell on this mountain, seeing that our little sisters and brothers, the birds, show such joy at our coming." It is said that to this day countless birds live in the branches of the pines and beech trees of Mt. Alverna, which offers a magnificent view on a clear day all the way across Italy, from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean.

Francis found that Count Orlando, who was there to welcome him and his companions, had built a small hermitage on the mountain, as well as a small oratory dedicated, like the famed Portiuncula, to St. Mary of the Angels.

Eventually, individual huts made of branches were set up for the friars, with Francis having his own near a large beech tree.

Mt. Alverna is noted for its gigantic rocks and deep crevices and chasms, with some of the huge boulders hanging out over the chasms. One day, Francis was observed in contemplation over these rocks, wondering what kind of disaster or cataclysm might have caused all this. And then it was revealed to him during prayer that the enormous chasms had burst open when, according to the Gospel, "the rocks were rent" at the time of the Crucifixion of Our Lord. This revelation made him love the Crucified Savior all the more.

As the Feast of the Assumption was drawing near Francis decided to begin and keep a rigorous fast until the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, September 29. But he wanted to be all alone at some spot where he could not be heard as he prayed out loud to God.

Across a narrow chasm some 120 feet deep, Francis saw a kind of rock ledge jutting out over the chasm which seemed to him as the ideal spot for

Continued Next Page

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 10

The Fenton Diaries

R. Siscoe/

Contiued from Page 9 controversial statements from Dignitatis Humanae (the document on religious liberty) - namely, that those who " do not fulfill their obligation of seeking and adhering to the truth" have a right to religious freedom (immunity from coercion) - was slipped in to the draft at the last minute, without the Council Fathers being told about it.

The Dutch relator, Bishop De Smedt, whose job it was to inform the Fathers of the changes to the revised draft, failed to mention this controversial addition and instead referred to the unchanged part of the paragraph. The only way anyone would have known about this addition (which even the defenders of Dignitatis Humanae struggle to reconcile with Tradition4) is if they read the entire draft for themselves, which was not likely to happen at the last minute when, as Fr. Fenton explained, everything was "being rushed through." Here we find an example of the trickery employed by the Liberals during the Council to push through their agenda. ■

4 Ibid

NB: Fr. Brian Harrison: "One of the many difficulties in interpreting the Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, and reconciling it with traditional doctrine, lies in the fact that while the key article 2 of this document, Dignitatis Humanae (DH), begins by affirming that the right to religious liberty has to do with conscientiously held religious beliefs, it ends by affirming that the same right is enjoyed even by those who are not in good conscience (that is, those who "do not fulfill their obligation of seeking and adhering to the truth"). Curious as to whether this confusing, and at first sight contradictory, treatment of conscience in DH #2 was officially explained to the Council Fathers before they voted on it, I started fishing around in the Acta Synodalia (AS) in our university library. And what I dredged up struck me as a choice example of how that famous ‘Rhine’ flowed into the ‘Tiber’ during Vatican II… The above passage recognizing immunity from coercion for those whose religious propaganda is not in good conscience was absent from the first three drafts of DH. It finally appeared in the fourth (second-last) draft, presented on October 25, 1965, only a few weeks before the end of the Council (cf. AS IV, V, p. 79). Bishop Emil De Smedt, the Dutch relator (official spokesman for the drafting Commission), then gave his relatio (speech) to the assembled Fathers officially explaining this fourth draft and its changes to the previous draft. However, in doing so he did not even mention this important addition to the text! On the contrary, in commenting on the new version of article 2, De Smedt repeatedly stressed the importance of conscience, citing the (unchanged) words in the first paragraph of #2 which assert that the human person must not be forced to act against (or be prevented from acting in accordance with) "his conscience" (‘suam conscientiam’ – see ibid., pp. 101-102). True, the Fathers all had on their desks printed copies of the old and new drafts in parallel columns, but it looks as if De Smedt was hoping that if he didn’t draw their attention to this change, many would either overlook it or not attach much importance to it" (Fr.

Harrison, "Skeletons in the Conciliar Closet" The Remnant newspaper, emphasis added).

■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 11

The Film "Risen" and the Triumph of the Cross

(A Movie Review)

By Boyd D. Cathey

At the foot of the Cross even the Roman centurion recognized that here was No Ordinary Man, as the Gospel recounts.

"Ave Crux spes unica!" "Hail the Cross, our Only Hope!" the old Latin hymn goes.

In recent years there has been a proliferation of what some condescending film critics have termed "Christian cinema," in a barely concealed effort to cordon off and pigeonhole films that favorably portray Christianity into a barely acknowledged, often sneered-at sub-category. These critics are wont to label such movies as "propagandistic" and "overly didactic."

And, while some of the films in this genre do have a tendency to hit the viewer over the head with excessive sentimentalism, certainly not all do.

One marvelous film I recently viewed remains etched in my mind; it would make a remarkable moment for a family gathered by the DVD player after Mass and Sunday dinner. The film is titled "Risen," and it came out last year.

I managed to catch it on one of my satellite channels and was so moved by it, that I ended up purchasing a DVD copy (on Sony Pictures) that I found at Walmart!

For those of you who have seen the movie, you know the story.

Roman military Tribune Clavius is sent by Pontius Pilate to oversee the Crucifixion of Our Lord, and then, with rumors running rampant among believing Jews of Jesus’ Resurrection, he is directed to follow up and find the disappeared "Body" of the supposedly dead Christ. Clavius’s journey and gradual realization that here, indeed, was Someone Very Unique---possibly the very Son of God---forms the core of the film.

And what is notable is that, resisting the effort to "hit-you-in-the-face" with the Christian message, "Risen" eschews that approach. Rather, what we have is a progressive unfolding and understanding, with actor Joseph Fiennes (as Clavius) actually playing his role in an intriguingly understated manner. He is utterly believable---his initial skepticism and multiple doubts are illustrated, but never overblown.

And the increasingly powerful evidence that inevitably mounts as he follows the Apostles and views and converses with the Risen Christ is mostly internalized, largely demonstrated by Clavius’s pleading eyes and his body movement: the miraculous events he has seen have begun to change him.

Several of the miracles of Our Lord are portrayed with both realism and restraint, including the healing of the leper and the catching of the fishes on the Sea of Galilee. Clavius is there as a spectator as his doubts begin to subside.

Towards the end, as the Christ prepares to leave His disciples, Clavius is left alone with Him, and Our Lord asks him what he seeks: "Certainty, peace, a day without death?" And Clavius, deeply moved, sinks to his knees and slowly nods his head. A kernel of Faith has been engendered in his soul.

In one scene, Clavius overhears a conversation between Our Lord and St.

Peter, the account reported in the Gospel of St. John 21:17. "Simon do you love me?" Christ asks him. And Simon Peter replies: "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Then Our Lord embraces him and declares: "Feed my sheep." As the film indicates, following Holy Scripture, it is Peter, Cephas the Rock, who is appointed by Christ to lead His flock.

In the final scene, Clavius is viewed at the hovel of a peasant. He has been wandering alone in the desert and offers his Tribune’s ring as payment for bread and wine. His host, hearing Clavius’s remarkable story, asks him, "Tribune, do you believe all of this?" And he responds: "I believe, I can never be the same."

Clavius’ evidence is real and physical, and it has transformed him. But his journey, which indeed becomes a quest, would never end until he fully received the Faith, just as our journey of Grace never ends until we have completed our sojourn here below. Our evidence is unseen and based on a Faith that we have received through Baptism, a Faith that gave birth to Western Christian civilization, a Faith that has burned bright in the hearts and minds of Christians now for twenty centuries.

If you have not seen "Risen," my recommendation is that you do, and do so in family, or with a church group. It is a marvelous cinematic experience.

Reflecting on the message of the film, as we look around us we observe that perhaps as never before the Christian Faith is under severe attack, not only from the exterior (e.g. Islamic expansionist terror, state-sponsored secularism), but also from within, from those who would doubt, dilute, subvert, and negate the orthodoxy and the beliefs that form the core of our faith.

Our Christian Faith offers forgiveness and promises peace and a "day without death," just as Our Lord promised to Clavius... but at times, it also demands that the Church Militant defend its patrimony and defend the Faith against those who not only would kill the physical body, but also would, in effect, extinguish spiritual Faith. There can be no peace with the enemies of the Faith.

The unbreakable Faith of the disciples spread to the four corners of the world, and it was and is a Faith in the Risen Christ. Clavius made his spiritual journey and was privileged to believe because he saw the Christ in the flesh; we have Our Lord’s promises and can see His grace in our lives. ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 11

Continued...

solitary prayer, but it could not be reached until the friars built a foot-bridge out of logs across the chasm. Francis wished to be alone for 40 days at that secluded and divinely-chosen location, and he was to be visited only by Brother Leo, who should bring him a little bread and water every day and come to pray the Divine Office with him.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, September 14, fell on a Friday in that year of 1224. That day, at the break of dawn, Francis was kneeling in prayer, facing the east. "Lord," he said, "I ask two graces of Thee before I die; to experience myself, as far as possible, the sufferings of Thy cruel Passion and to have for Thee that very same love which caused Thee to sacrifice Thyself for us." Francis had told his friars of his presentiments of approaching death, which actually came two years later, in 1226 on October 4.

The Saint was for some time absorbed in sentiments of tender compassion over the Mystery of the Sacred Passion of Our Lord, when suddenly, as St. Bonaventure has written, "he saw what appeared to be a Seraph, with six shining and fiery wings, coming down from Heaven. The Vision flew swiftly through the air and approached the man of God, who then perceived that it was not only winged but also crucified, for the hands and feet were stretched out and fastened to a Cross, while the wings were arranged in a wondrous manner, two being raised above the head, two outstretched in flight, and the other two crossed over and veiling the whole body. The gracious aspect of Him, Who appeared in so wonderful and loving a manner, rejoiced him exceedingly, while the sight of His cruel Crucifixion pierced his heart with a sword of sorrowing compassion."

St. Bonaventure continues thus: "He Who appeared outwardly to Francis taught him inwardly that, although weakness and suffering are incompatible with the immortal life of a Seraph, yet this vision had been shown to him so that he, a lover of Christ, might learn how his whole being was to be transformed into a living image of Christ Crucified, not by martyrdom of the flesh, but by the burning ardor of his soul.

After a mysterious and familiar conversation, the Vision disappeared, leaving the Saint’s mind burning with seraphic ardor and his flesh impressed with an exact image of the Crucified… Then immediately the marks of nails began to appear in his hands and feet, their black heads showing in the palms of his hands and on the upper part of his feet, with their points bent back and visible on the other side. There was also a red scar on his right side, as if it had been wounded by a lance, and from which blood often flowed, staining his tunic and underclothing."

The miracle took place without any human witness and Francis, despite the fact that God made the wounds visible to others, tried at first to conceal them, wrapping them with cloths and keeping his hands within his sleeves. Later he was given to understand that the miracle of the stigmata was for the edification of all mankind, and so he hesitatingly made known the facts to his friars. Brother Leo regularly washed the wound in Francis’ side, and many others saw the wounds eventually, because they never disappeared and were plainly visible to all after his death.

Pope Blessed Benedict XI (13031304) willed that the stigmatization of St. Francis should be solemnly commemorated every year on September 17. Pope Paul V (1605-1621) extended the celebration of this feast to the entire Church, because he wished that the hearts of all the faithful should be enkindled with the love of Christ Crucified through the contemplation of the Five Wounds imprinted upon the body of St. Francis.

Sadly enough, another Paul, Pope Paul VI, chose to omit this feast from the Vatican II-inspired general Roman calendar. ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 13

Continued...

the money – which is why the German bishops were able for so long to thumb their noses at Pope John Paul who wanted them to stop stamping the government’s abortion permission slips.

And now that they have control of the Vatican’s assets (the cash-generator has always been real estate) they’ve now got most of the rest of it. Of course, the women’s religious orders were done-for 30 years ago.

The only power-brokering going on now in the religious life is divided roughly between the Jesuits, the Legion and Opus Dei. Frankly, in terms of Church politics, no one else counts, except perhaps for some of the politically powerful and wealthy Italian/European "New Movements" like St. Egidio and Communion and Liberation. But that’s pretty much the entire package.

The Knights of Malta was one area that until the end of last year was still in an ambiguous position with regards to the Revolution, and it was that business unfolding before the eyes of the alternate media that has given much of the game away. The issue in the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta was that though they didn’t have any money themselves, the Professed Knights – most of whom were not nobility – had most of the power according to the constitutions. The money was in the hands of the German/ Austrian nobility who weren’t professed and therefore didn’t call the shots. To a guy like Albrescht von Boeselager (the "von" is the key here), the son of an ancient German noble family, this just seemed like an inversion of how things ought to be.

The peculiarities of the Knights’ constitutions created what for the Revolution was a conundrum... one that has now been resolved. Watch in the next months for the complete rewriting of the constitutions to put the constitutional power into the hands of the wealthy lay German nobility and out of the hands of the Professed religious Knights. I’ve been told that it’s likely we’re headed for the creation of two separate but vaguely historically related institutions, one made up of Professed religious knights who would maintain the pomp and ceremony and the outfits, and perhaps be graciously allowed to participate in a small way in the order’s assistance to the poor; and the other a secular NGO run out of Germany or Brussels who have the ear of the Vatican power structures, and charge of the bank accounts.

And this was mostly the doing of the Vatican Secretary of State, Pietro Cardinal Parolin, not Francis.

Everything I read and heard about the complicated and confusing business of the Knights of Malta has indicated that Parolin was the one behind it. It was Parolin that Boeselager went to, his friend, for recourse against being removed over the absurd irrelevance of condoms (of all things!). And it was Parolin and his creatures who have been in control of the situation ever since, most particularly the career diplomat, Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu, who is now the de facto representative of the pope to the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta. As our friend Mike Hichborn reported, it was also Parolin, personally, who is believed to have been in receipt of a cheque for 30 million Euros from the money manager of Boeselager’s German nobility faction.

As one waggish contact put it: "It was supposed to be that the Knights were about wealthy nobility serving the needs of the poorest of the poor. Now we’ve got the poorest of the poor being put at the service of the wealthy nobility."

I believe that the successful manipulation of, and the resulting cash payouts, from the SMOM affair is part of Parolin’s bid for the papacy. And it was certainly a trial balloon, a wildly successful field test of his powers. If this is the case, the next bit of news I have had is of great interest.

It comes by email from Rome, from among people with connections to the Secretariat of State, i.e.: Cardinal Parolin.

"Fresh news: they were saying at breakfast that

Parolin is expected to be made Archbishop of Milan and Becciu Secretary of State."

It had already been intimated to me by people with connections there, that the whole business of Parolin’s effective takeover of the SMOM was about gathering support – particularly the support of the German bishops – for his Big Project. He will now begin to pressure Bergoglio to resign so he can be elected pope.

And wouldn’t 30 million Euros go a long way to generating that kind of support! It would hardly be the first time someone had allied himself with the wealthy nobility to buy himself a pontificate. In that sense it’s a very traditional move.

Now this news about Milan and Becciu fits extremely neatly with this. I was told in a phone conversation the other day that Becciu isn’t Francis’ man, but Parolin’s. Francis doesn’t especially like Becciu – a career diplomat who has spent his whole career in the frescoed halls of political power and never met a poor man in his life. But the pope allowed Becciu – presumably on Parolin’s suggestion – to take over things in the Knights because if he failed it would be easy to distance himself from him. Because his name is unknown, if he succeeded Francis could easily take the credit.

It is certainly becoming more and more clear that the entire thing with the Knights of Malta and the German takeover has been Parolin’s baby from

RELEASED!

JUST

the get go. So Becciu him being elevated to Secretary of State would make a great deal of sense, becaaaauuuuse... (get ready for the punchline…)

Milan is the papabile see. It is a common axiom in Catholic history: if you want to be pope, get made archbishop of Milan.

This is so broadly accepted in Italy that the Italian bishops’ issued a press release congratulating their pick, Cardinal Scola, on his election to the papacy on March 13, 2013. Scola had gone into the Conclave with the support of Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian bishops’ conference, Caffarra the powerful leader of the "conservatives" and archbishop of Bologna, Ruini the former Vicar of Rome and Re the acknowledged kingmaker. It can be safely assumed that if Parolin goes to Milan, it will be with the blessing of the Italians, most of whom are reported to be pretty fed up with Bergoglio by now.

If the above news is true – and if they pull it off – it would mean that Parolin intends to become the kind of pope who keeps the political power close, like a gun under his pillow, in fact. It is to be remembered that Becciu – until recently a nonentity as sostituto of the Secretariat of State – is certainly Parolin’s man, and the reason he was put in charge of the Knights was that he was Parolin’s pick, not the pope’s. If Parolin were pope, he would certainly like to have his own hand-picked and obedient man already in place in Stato.

For anyone appalled by this, don’t be. This is actually the normal way things are done in the Vatican, and frankly, they’re an improvement over the Bergoglian way of blackmail and surveillance.

So it might be a pretty good idea right now to keep a close eye on Pietro Cardinal Parolin. ■

Pietro Cardinal Parolin.

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 14

FATIMA and Tradition...

Communion Under Both Kinds?

By Father Ladis J. Cizik

As the Church celebrates the 100th Anniversary of Our Lady’s appearances at Fatima this year, and with the canonizations of Jacinta and Francisco Marto, it may come as a shock to the vast majority of modern-day Catholics to realize that the three shepherd children were ‘traditional’ Catholics. As Our Lady was appearing to them in 1917, and as the Guardian Angel of Portugal prepared them for Her visit in 1916, the Fatima children faithfully and exclusively attended the Traditional Latin Mass.

However, it may come as a shock to some traditional Catholics to call to mind that in 1916 the Guardian Angel of Portugal administered Holy Communion to Jacinta, Francisco and Lucia under ‘both Species.’ Not to fear, dear friends, this was not an endorsement of the Protestant custom adopted after Vatican II of what some in the Church now call "Communion under both kinds."

The Guardian Angel of Portugal appeared, for the third and last time, to the three shepherd children at the Cabeco. The Cabeco is a rocky hill with a cave near its bottom, reminiscent of Calvary with the tomb of Christ at its base. The Cabeco is a favorite place of mine to talk to the pilgrims about the Most Blessed Sacrament since the Angel appeared here in 1916 with a Bleeding Host from which drops of the Precious Blood were seen by the children falling into a Chalice. This appearance of the Angel with the Blessed Sacrament calls to mind the Precious Blood that Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, shed at Calvary, which we recall at each and every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Bleeding Host and the Chalice remained suspended in the air as the Angel knelt down with the three children as they prostrated themselves before the Real Presence of Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ. The Angel led them in repeating the following ‘Angel Prayer’ three times: "O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg the conversion of poor sinners."

The Angel and the three shepherd children knelt before our Eucharistic Lord, the posture used to receive Holy Communion at the Traditional Latin Mass. Kneeling before the Lord is a clear indication of our subservience to the King of Kings.

Standing for Holy Communion or, God-forbid, standing during Eucharistic adoration, is contrary to our Latin-Rite tradition and implies equality with Almighty God. One stands before equals.

One kneels before the Divine Presence, as demonstrated at Fatima.

Adoration of the Eucharistic Lord on bended knee is also made manifest at the Traditional Latin Mass where there are at least eleven genuflections by the Priest to honor the Real Presence of the Lord after the Consecration of the Host, reduced to three in the Novus Ordo Mass. Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief): as at Fatima, worship on bended knee reflects and reinforces our Catholic belief in the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ being Truly Present in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

That is why our Catholic churches used to have Altar Rails to kneel for Communion prior to Vatican II; and speaks to the devastatingly diminished belief in the Real Presence after their removal from most Catholic churches some fifty years ago.

As the Angel gave Holy Communion to the three Children, only the eldest, Lucia (age 10), received the Sacred Host as she had already made her First Holy Communion. But the younger children, Francisco (age 8) and Jacinta (age 7), having never made their First Holy Communion, drank the Precious Blood of Christ from the Chalice. Unlike the Protestant practice of eating bread along with drinking grape juice or wine, the Angel did not give both the Sacred Host and the Precious Blood to any of the children. Lucia, and only Lucia, received the Host. Francisco and Jacinta, and only them, received from the Chalice.

As the Angel gave the Chalice to Jacinta and Francisco, he said: "Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Repair their crimes and console your God." The Angel was directly and correctly indicating that both the Body and Blood of Christ were contained in the Chalice.

When the Angel disappeared, along with the Chalice, Francisco asked his older cousin, Lucia, whether he and his sister had received Holy Communion since they did not receive a Host. Lucia affirmed that they did indeed receive Holy Communion.

Lucia responded correctly since in either the Sacred Host or in the Precious Blood, Jesus is really and truly entirely Present.

This confirms the centuries-old practice of receiving only the Consecrated Host at a Traditional Latin Mass. It confirms that our Eucharistic Lord is really and truly Present in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Host alone. One does not have to "drink from the cup," as they now say, in order to receive the Precious Blood of Christ, as it is contained in the Sacred Host.

Lucia’s answer, as well as the Angel’s words, are reflections of Chapter III of the Thirteenth Session of the Council of Trent, which stated: " … this faith has ever been in the Church of God, that, immediately after the Consecration, the veritable Body of our Lord, and His veritable Blood, together with His Soul and Divinity, are under the species of bread and wine; but the Body indeed under the species of bread, and the Blood under the species of wine, by the force of the words; but the Body itself under the species of wine, and the Blood under the species of bread, and the soul under both, by the force of that natural connection and concomitancy whereby the parts of Christ our Lord, Who hath now risen from the dead, to die no more, are united together; and the Divinity, furthermore, on account of the admirable hypostatical union thereof with His Body and Soul. Wherefore it is most true, that as much is contained under either species as under both; for Christ, whole and entire, is under the species of bread, and under any part whatsoever of that species; likewise the whole (Christ) is under the species of wine, and under the parts thereof."

The Thirteenth Session of the Council of Trent, Chapter IV, decrees that at the consecration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, "… a conversion is made of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ Our Lord, and the whole substance of wine into the substance of His Blood; which conversion is, by the Holy Catholic Church, suitably and properly called Transubstantiation."

Nevertheless, in the context of Trent Session Thirteen, Chapter III: Jesus Christ is really and truly Present: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in either species, as affirmed by the Fatima Message.

But then, why did the Angel give the Precious Blood to Jacinta and Francisco?

The teaching in the Fatima Message was not just for Latin Rite Catholics but for Eastern Rite Catholics as well, especially those in what would become the Soviet Union, who would soon find their Holy Catholic Faith threatened by the errors of Russia – as Our Lady would foretell on July 13, 1917. In the Eastern Rites, young children make their First Holy Communion as infants at the time of their Baptism by receiving a drop of the Precious Blood in the form of Wine. After that, as they are growing up and are too young to receive Jesus in the form of Bread, the Priest gives them a drop of the Precious Blood with the tiny spoon used to administer Holy Communion under both species to those who are of age, as is the custom in the Byzantine Catholic Rite.

There is nothing wrong with the Eastern-Rite Catholic tradition of the Priest giving the Consecrated Bread mingled with Consecrated Wine on a small spoon directly into the mouth of the Communicant. In his classic booklet, Communion Under Both Kinds: An Ecumenical Surrender, Michael Davies begins by saying: "There is no theological objection to the laity receiving Holy Communion under both kinds (sub utraque specie). The controversy on this topic was initiated by those who claimed that there is a theological objection to the reception of Holy Communion under one kind only." It should be noted that the misguided insistence on the necessity of the laity receiving Holy Communion under both species was a basis for the 15th century Hussite Heresy.

For our times, the Fatima Message’s possible reference to the Eastern Rites could also bring comfort to those traditionminded Catholics who felt abandoned by the Protestantized, man-centered Novus Ordo Mass. Like Eastern Rite refugees fleeing from Communist Russia, many Latin Rite Catholics fled for a safe haven to the Byzantine or other Eastern Rite Catholic Churches where their centuriesold beautiful God-centered Traditional Divine Liturgies were still being offered after Vatican II.

At Fatima, there is a landmark ‘Onion Dome,’ marking the exact location of an Eastern-Rite Chapel. This Onion Dome, a traditional Eastern-Rite church feature, can be seen rising just behind Fatima’s venerable Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary. This Eastern Rite Chapel is on the second floor of Domus Pacis, the International Headquarters of the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima (World Apostolate of Fatima), which was constructed in the years 1953-58.

Domus Pacis also is home to a Latin-Rite Chapel on the first floor. The Eastern-Rite Chapel has a traditional wall of Icons (an Iconostasis) and is dedicated to Our Lady of the Dormition. It was intended, along with the distinctive Onion Dome, to symbolize and to pray for the conversion of Russia, as promised by Our Lady of Fatima on July 13, 1917. Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, Head of the Congregation for the Oriental Church, blessed Domus Pacis on October 12, 1956, as a Papal Legate for Pope Pius XII.

But ultimately, we are Latin Rite Catholics and we are not at home without our Traditional Latin Mass. We thank God and Our Lady of Fatima for the few opportunities that we have to publicly attend the Immemorial Mass of the Ages.

It may seem that we have a long way to go before the Traditional Latin Mass is fully restored and available to Catholics everywhere and on an everyday basis without restrictions. But, Our Lady of Fatima gives us hope, as She said at Fatima on July 13, 1917: "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph." ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 15

To Truly Honor Our Lady Fatima, Why Not Truly Obey Our Lady of Fatima?

By Michael McBride

A papal pilgrimage, the canonizations of the two youngest non-martyrs, national and diocesan consecrations to Our Lady, Rosary rallies, special parish Masses, Marian conferences, new publications printed and circulated, parochial processions, private novenas, calls to prayer, national and diocesan pilgrimages, and numerous other unique events, all organized, planned, advertised, and offered during this year of 2017. To what end? Why, to honor and celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Mother of God’s appearance at the once little village of Fatima, of course! All quite understandable, fitting, and proper to highlight and fix in our minds such a momentous event.

And, yet, all this vast publicity also represents a great distraction, a distraction from the truth hidden beneath all the festivities: the very real fact that Our Lady’s requests and commands at Fatima have not been substantially complied with, either by large segments of the Catholic population or by the hierarchy of the Church herself.

"Do you want to offer yourselves to God to endure all the sufferings that He may choose to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended and as a supplication for the conversion of sinners?"

1

"… Jesus wants to use you to make Me known and loved. He wants to establish Devotion to My Immaculate Heart in the world. I promise salvation to those who embrace it and their souls will be loved by God as flowers placed by Myself to adorn His throne."

"… say the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary to obtain peace for the world ... for She alone can save it."

"Sacrifice yourselves for sinners; and say often, especially when you make some sacrifice: ‘O my Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary I offer this sacrifice to Thee.’" "You have seen Hell – where the souls of poor sinners go.

To save them God wants to establish throughout the world the devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If people will do what I tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace....

"But if they do not stop offending God … He is going to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, hunger, persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father.

"To forestall this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.

"If they heed My requests, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace. If not, she shall spread her errors throughout the world, promoting wars and persecutions of the Church; the good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated; in the end, My Immaculate Heart shall triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, which will be converted, and some time of peace will be given to the world.

"In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc.

"Do not tell this to anyone [the words which follow the etc.

above]. To Francisco, yes, you may tell it."

Continued on Page 16

The True Story of Fatima, 1 Except where noted, all quotes are taken from Fr. John de Marchi, I.M.C., 1947 & 2009, taken directly from Sister Lucia’s Memoires and checked by her in person.

Celebrating 100 Years of Fatima

To Truly Honor Our Lady Fatima, Why Not Truly Obey Our Lady of Fatima?

Continued from Page 15

"Pray! Pray a great deal and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to Hell for not having someone to pray and make sacrifices for them" "People must amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins.

They must not offend Our Lord any more for He is already too much offended."

On December 10, 1925, Our Lady and the Child Jesus appeared to Sister Lucia at her Dorothean convent school at Vilar de Porto. The Child spoke first, followed by His Mother: "Have pity on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother. It is covered with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to remove them with an act of reparation."

"My daughter, look at My Heart encircled with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude.

Do you at least try to console me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, go to Confession and receive Holy Communion, recite the Rosary and keep Me company for a quarter of an hour while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary with the intention of making reparation to me."

On June 13, 1929, Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucia in her convent at Tuy, Spain, indicating just how the fulfillment of Her request for the Consecration of Russia was to be carried out. The Pope was to order all the bishops of the Catholic Church to join with him in consecrating specifically Russia to Mary’s Immaculate Heart. This Consecration was to be carried out by both the Pope and the bishops on the same day, at the same time. (Note that the Consecration was to be of Russia specifically and that it was to include ALL the bishops of the Catholic Church. Exempt, of course, would be the ill and those who were prevented from doing so by hostile governments.

The bishops were to consecrate with the Pope, if present in Rome, or in their own dioceses.) Two years later, in the summer of 1931, Our Lord appeared to Sister Lucia at Rianjo, Spain, announcing to her that He was quite displeased that the Consecration had not been carried out in the intervening two years. He said to her: "Make it known to My ministers, given that they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My command [to consecrate Russia], they will follow him into misfortune. It will never be too late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary."

(Notice that Our Lord calls the Consecration His command.

Our Lady always acts in concert with Her Son. Note, too, that Our Lord says that recourse to Jesus and Mary will "never be too late". He was displeased after only two years of noncompliance. 86 years later, there has still been no compliance with His command.) (Emphasis added.) In an interview given to a Dutch priest named Fr. Jongon, at Tuy, in 1942, Sister Lucia told him: "The exact request of Our Lady was that the Holy Father consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, ordering that this be made at the same time and in union with him by all the bishops of the Catholic world."

And, in another interview, given to the noted historian William Thomas Walsh on June 15, 1946, Sister Lucia said the following: "What Our Lady wants is that the Pope and all the bishops in the world shall consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart on one special day. If this is done, She will convert Russia and there will be peace. If this is not done, the errors of Russia will spread through every country in the world."

Three years later, in speaking to a New York Dominican named Fr. Thomas McGlynn, Sister Lucia reiterated that it was not the world that Our Lady wanted consecrated, but "Russia! Russia!" And that She commanded the Holy Father to command the Catholic bishops of the world to carry it out in union with him at the same time.

Our Lady, again, appeared to Sister Lucia in May 1952 and confirmed, once more, that she was to: "Make it known to the Holy Father that I am always awaiting the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart. Without the Consecration, Russia will not be able to convert, nor will the world have peace."

This Consecration of Russia, along with the call to each of us to do penance, is a crucial part of the Fatima message. As Sister Lucia wrote: "The good Lord is allowing Himself to be appeased, but He complains bitterly and sorrowfully about the small number of souls in His grace who are willing to renounce whatever the observance of His law requires of them."

In Lent of 1943, Sister Lucia informed the Bishop of Gurza what Our Lord had related to her on this subject:

"The sacrifice required for every person is the fulfillment of his duties in life and the observance of My law. This is the penance that I now seek and require."

Over the years, since Our Lord voiced to Sister Lucia His displeasure at the delay of the Consecration of Russia, there have been many consecrations and/ or entrustments of the world to Mary’s Immaculate Heart. But, there has been only one Consecration of Russia. That was carried out by Pope Pius XII in 1952.

Inexplicably, however, for some unknown reason, the Catholic bishops of the world were not ordered to join him in this consecration. Therefore, as a result, the promised blessings of Russia’s conversion and a period of peace for the world were not forthcoming.

Since then, many in the world and in the Church have been led to believe that the consecration carried out by Pope John Paul II, on March 25, 1984 satisfied Our Lady’s command and was accepted by Heaven. However, this was denied by Sister Lucia both before and after the

Continued Next Page

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 15

A Remnant Book Review...

IT'S DANGEROUS TO BELIEVE:

Religious Freedom and Its Enemies

By Mary Eberstadt Harper, 2016

Reviewed for The Remnant

By Vincent Chiarello

On May 4, 2017, in a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House attended by religious and political leaders, President Trump signed the Presidential Executive Order, Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty. In its first sentence, the documents reads: «It shall be the policy of the executive branch to vigorously enforce Federal law›s robust protections for religious freedom.» Why would the Trump administration see a need to issue a restatement of one of the rights - and among the first listed spelled out in the U.S. Constitution?

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church of Colombia, Missouri, has a pre-school and day-care program Learning Center, and its administrator applied for a grant from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to offset the cost of resurfacing its playground with recycled scrap-tire material. The request was denied, citing the Missouri Constitution, which reads: "[N]o money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion..."

On April 19, two weeks before President Trump signed his Executive Order, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer. The legal action of any church, or church organization, appearing as the plaintiff (in the Supreme Court’s language, a "Petitioner") is not common; hence, why would this Lutheran church bring its case to the Supreme Court for adjudication after having lost both of its two earlier pleas in the federal district and circuit courts? To summarize the legal question before the Justices that day: Whether the exclusion of churches from an otherwise neutral and secular aid program (emphasis mine) violates the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses when the state has no valid Establishment Clause concern.

As the attorney for Holy Trinity responded under the crossexamination by the justices, Missouri has provided help for decades: it pays, for example, for the fire extinguishers used in the Learning Center; yet, it declined to help in this case. That denial of assistance, he further opined, was based solely on Holy Trinity’s status as a religious organization, which would violate both the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. It should be noted that the newest Justice, Neal Gorsuch, participated in the oral arguments; hence, how he chooses to interpret First Amendment law in this case may give an early clue as to whether or not he is a follower of the late Justice’s Scalia’s jurisprudence.

Is there a problem regarding religious liberty in the land today? Is it fair and accurate to claim that over the past decades - but clearly over the past 8 years - the constitutional tether to religious freedom and, therefore, to our liberty, has been seriously weakened?

If not, why do so many sentient and

Continued on Page 16

Dangerous to Believe Book Review Cont...

observant citizens believe that we are losing that most precious of liberties? In her attempt to address that problem, Mary Eberstadt has written a book titled, IT’S DANGEROUS TO BELIEVE Religious Freedom and Its Enemies, in which she draws on a career spent reporting on the forces at work that have brought about the current situation, and what the future may hold.

Eberstadt begins by relating an incident during a dinner with a group of Catholic parents in Denver when invited to speak there. During the course of the evening, a member of the group, after hearing the current examples of increasing restrictions on religious liberty, raised the simple question: "Where will we go?"

Inherent in that question is the belief that leaving the U.S. because of those limits, is a distinct possibility. Eberstadt: "...what’s happening among Western religious believers today... is like nothing that has happened before. By 2016, in many influential cultural, political and intellectual precincts, "C" for Christian has become the new scarlet letter."

An exaggeration? Eberstradt then reels off a dozen examples that are the tip of the iceberg: The CEO of Mozilla losing his job after donating to Proposition 8, the California referendum which sought to limit marriage to a man and woman; a New Jersey Professor of Theology fired for posting a statement that supported Catholic teaching about same-sex marriage; an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois fired for using "hate speech" after teaching modern Catholic thought about natural law. There are more...many more... of these incidents that affect those who espouse Christian beliefs, and not only in the U.S.: examples abound in Great Britain and Canada of similar treatment afforded those whose religious beliefs are not "acceptable" to the current zeitgeist.

Answering the question, "Where will we go?" requires another: How did this intolerance begin and develop in the home of the brave and the land of the free?

Although anti-Christian practices go back centuries, Eberstadt reviews the roots of "the New Intolerance" by examining the players and events that have moved many Christians into what the late Catholic priest, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, called "the Long Lent." Two events, although thinly related, form the anvil upon which this new anti-Christian gospel has been forged: the first was the priestly scandals of 2002, which, she claims, "dealt the moral authority of the Church a crippling blow from which it has yet to recover."

The second was 9/11, "an unspeakable act of violence."

Although the work of Muslim "jihadists," the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in the Twin Towers, Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, gave rise to a reaction she labels, "the New Anti-Christian" atheism, which tarred American Christians with the same brush as Muslim terrorists. Christian-baiting,

particularly towards the traditional followers of Jesus Christ (emphasis mine) was easily disseminated on the Internet and Social Media, which proved to be an essential conduit in getting this message out.

Meanwhile, the political landscape was being designed by the ultra-liberal wing of the Democrat Party, especially by former President Obama, whom Eberstadt identifies as, "the most progressive president who missed few opportunities to castigate non-progressive American Christians with rhetoric that would have been unthinkable had it been aimed at any other religious group." It must be mentioned that former President Barack Hussein Obama called himself a "Christian," which does not square with his actions.

Christianity today in the West faces another form of serious trouble as well: in a study of 35,000 (no typo) respondents, the Pew Research Center reported that the result of their polling demonstrated a serious drop in those who call themselves "Christians," and, at the same time, a commensurate growth in atheistic, agnostic, or "nothing in particular" among those queried. Further, as will be noted later, in the U.S., support for this trend has come, perhaps unintentionally, from the Supreme Court and other Federal courts. For example, what Roe v. Wade did to accelerate the decline of political and religious discussions about the legality/morality of abortion, Obergefell v. Hodges, perhaps even more so, has done to those who do not accept homosexual marriage. How many informed citizens know that, as was reported in the N.Y. Times, unlike any other case in Supreme Court history, no major law firm or celebrity lawyer would take the case against the petitioners, that is, the homosexual couple, for fear of the personal and professional consequences?

In this situation, a well-known jurist and federal judge, wrote: "The level of sheer desire to crush dissent is pretty unprecedented." That ability to crush dissent goes far beyond written law.

The "new anti-Christian atheism" can take many forms, for it can morph from one set of rules and regulations to another in a moment, depending on the situation.

Continued on Page 17

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 17

V.

Chiarello/

Continued...

In short, there appears to be no major guiding principle save one: to vilify the believing Christian under any and all circumstance. Eberstradt gives the example of "diversity" as one such example. Among the politically correct beliefs widely held by these anti-Christians is that "diversity" is inherently absent in Christians.

Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a Protestant Evangelical organization, with nearly 1000 chapters on over 600 campuses, had minority chapters that included Black, Latino, and Asian participants. "Diverse" enough? Not quite, for the new politically correct Puritans objected to the group because of its fidelity to teaching about morality. In 2014, with their administrations’ approval, 23 of the colleges of the Californian State educational system expelled the chapters from their campuses. That was not, however, the end to this sad saga.

A similar scenario took place at the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, but in this case, members of the Christian Legal Society filed suit in federal court, claiming that the college had violated their First Amendment rights. You can intuit the rest: in the case of

Christian Legal Society v.

Martinez,

(2010), the Supreme Court ruled (5-4) against the Christian group, claiming that the group had basically forfeited "its right to discriminate against non-believers if they take financial support from public universities." In his dissent, Justice Alito called the decision, "...a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country." One could also add, a serious blow to religious liberty as well.

There is also a bit of historical irony included in this book: when the President of Gordon College, another Protestant Evangelical school in Salem, Massachusetts, wrote as an individual, not as the head of the college, along with 14 other similarly minded people, and asked for "a religious exemption" from the Obama administration’s Executive Order banning "sexual orientation discrimination by federal contractors," the blowback stunned the college: the city of Salem suspended its long-term contract with the school to use its city hall; the 11 year relationship which allowed the college’s students to serve as student-teachers in the city’s school system was suspended, and the college’s hitherto impeccable credentials for accreditation were reconsidered.

Ebertstadt: "In other words, 312 years after the Salem witch trials, a new hunt for imagined demons was on in Salem and in its environs." One cannot help but recall H. L. Mencken’s definition of a Puritan, in this case the older variety, but applicable to the new as well: "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

Eberstadt also expands her horizons and points to the decline of religious liberty not only in the U.S., but in England and Canada, where anti-Christian sentiments now seem to be accepted in principle and without legal recourse. I was pleased to find that she spent some time describing the current disaster facing Orthodox and Catholic believers in Iraq and Syria, too. Despite the acknowledgement in March, 2016, that Syrian Christians were targeted for extermination, the U.S. under the Obama administration chose to bury (no pun intended) the matter, and when it acted, it did so by taking in "refugees," who were were 99% Muslim. I cannot help but add to this indifference to the plight of Middle East Christians, some of whom speak the language of Christ Aramaic - the lengthy silence of the Vatican in failing to use its public and private resources to speak to the desperate state of these people. Was the pope worried that openly criticizing Muslim barbarism would jeopardize the Church’s quest of ecumenism?

If Eberstadt had given a talk, rather than writing a book on this subject, the speech’s peroration would come under her chapter, "What is to Be Done" or, "How To End a Witch Hunt."

By way of openers, she is realistic enough to recognize that, "...extrapolated from current realities, escape is no longer an option, and recognition of this situation has led some believers to debate "the Benedict option." Here she is referring to the founder of the Order, not the "pope-ex-officio." That "option" is based on the belief popularized by the British moral philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre, that a "retreat from society itself is the only way parents will save their churches, children and souls." Then there is also her recognition of "a new sequel to the culture war, which requires realistic assessments, rather than pie-in-the-sky solutions." Here her words ring true: "What’s unfolding today is not a drama in which secularist progressivism is slowly but surely eclipsing antiquated religious faith at last, but a contest of competing creeds and principles."

And what are those "first principles?"

Among the first is the recognition that words create an atmosphere, especially in the political arena, that can cut off debate. One is the loosely used, "theocrat," which is used by opponents against believers to prevent open discussion about religious beliefs, which, up to now, allowed non-Christians and even anti-Christians to recognize and/or accept their neighbor’s set of beliefs without ostracizing them for it. This, she claims, is particularly true in discussing the "sexual revolution," which has become an untouchable part of the progressive agenda, where no quarter is allowed by its adherents, despite causing the ruination of lives as well as increasing income inequality.

Eberstad seeks a middle ground in dealing with these issues, seeking to "dialogue" with those who are implacable in their hatred. I would suggest, as she does not, a more realistic approach: if the federal court system is where the legal license to deny Christians their rightful place begins, then it is important - nay, vital- that we elect presidents whose campaigns promise to appoint qualified, non-Progressive, judges and justices. It should be noted that President Trump’s selection of Justice Gorsuch is a step in the right direction; so is the president’s list of ten new appointees to the Federal Circuit Courts. That is not a guarantee that legal challenges will be eliminated, but it will allow Christians "a level playing field," something that does not exist today in our jurisprudence.

To continue down this path of doing nothing will surely bring on the apocalyptic vision forseen by the late Cardinal George of Chicago, who a decade ago wrote: "I expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square." That choice is ours. ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 17

McBride/

Continued...

M. event. Prior to the event, Sister Lucia told her old friend Mrs. Eugenia Pestana (after having read the text of the Pope’s consecration formula): "That event cannot have a decisive character."

After the event, in a 1985 interview with

Sol de Fatima,

when asked if the Pope’s consecration of the world on March 25, 1984 fulfilled Heaven’s command, Sister Lucia replied: "There was no participation of all the bishops, and there was no mention of Russia…. No [the consecration was not done as requested]. Many bishops attached no importance to this act."

If further proof is needed that the Consecration has not yet been carried out as Heaven stipulated, all we have to do is answer for ourselves this question: "Have the blessings promised by Our Lady, as a result of the Consecration, come to pass to date?"

And, additionally, Pope John Paul II had never claimed – at

any

time to the end of his life in 2005 – that he had carried out the Consecration in the way Heaven required.

The Consecration

will

– inevitably – take place; Our Lady has assured us of this in her words to Sister Lucia: "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will Triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world."

Our Lord, through Sister Lucia, assured us of this as well:

"Pray a great deal for the Holy Father. He will do it [consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary]

but it will be late." But, notice, it will not be

too

late.

We, also, have a crucial part to play in this eventual triumph: "According to Sister Lucia: ‘The grace’ of the Collegial Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Catholic bishops together with the Pope ‘will only be given when a sufficient number [of people] are complying with the message of Fatima."’

2

2 The Fatima Crusader, #118, Spring 2017, p. 10.

Finally, as to the so-called Third Secret, did the Vatican reveal the whole of it on June 26, 2000 at its press conference? Yes, the whole of the secret

was

revealed. It was contained in the vision described by Sister Lucia in her notebooks, sent to the Vatican in 1957.

These were kept in the Vatican archives. What was withheld from us, however, was the one page letter, sent to the Vatican at the same time, and kept in an envelope in the papal apartment. This letter – in Sister Lucia’s handwriting – contained Our Lady’s words to the children explaining to them what the vision meant. (It wouldn’t make much sense for Our Lady to require these three simple children to interpret what it was they were being shown. Our Lady would have had to explain it to them.) "Incredibly, the only person not to participate in the ‘revelation’ of the Third Secret on June 26, 2000 was Sister Lucia herself. She was still not allowed to speak [she had been silenced by the Vatican since 1960 and – under her vow of Obedience – was not permitted to speak about the Third Secret], even though the public was now being told that the Message of Fatima has been fully revealed and that nothing else remains hidden."

3 At the time, she was in her convent in Coimbra, Portugal and was not even permitted to view the proceedings on the convent’s TV.

Why could she – who was the only one alive who actually knew what the vision portrayed – not have read the Third Secret aloud at the conference and explained its meaning? Why was it necessary for the Vatican to interpret June 11, 1908-April 4, 1919 – some words spoken prior to his death.

"No, ma’am. I don’t want to be a priest either…. I don’t want to be anything. I just want to die and go to Heaven."

"I liked to see the Angel so much, but I liked Our Lady much more. What I liked best about the apparitions was seeing Our Lord

3 The Devil’s Final Battle, edited & compiled by Fr. Paul Kramer and the editorial staff of the Missionary Association, Good Counsel Publications, Pound Ridge, NY, 2nd edition, 2010, p. 363.

Continued on Page 18

what the vision meant?

***

St. Francisco Marto:

To Truly Honor Our Lady Fatima, Why Not Truly Obey Our Lady of Fatima?

Continued From Page 17

in that light that the Blessed Virgin put into our hearts. I love God very much. He is so sad because of so many sins. We must not commit even the smallest sin."

St. Jacinta Marto:

March 11, 1910-February 20, 1920 – some words spoken to Mother Godinho, superior of the convent where the future saint lay ill.

"My dear Mother, don’t allow that.

They must act before the Blessed Sacrament as is proper. Everyone must be quiet in church; they must not speak…. Our Lady does not want us to talk in church." (on seeing some people talking in the chapel) "You must never tell a lie or be lazy, but be very obedient. Do everything well and with patience for the love of Our Lord if you want to go to Heaven!"

"My dear Mother, the sins that bring most souls to Hell are the sins of the flesh. Certain fashions are going to be introduced which will offend Our Lord very much. Those who serve God should not follow these fashions…. The sins of the world are too great. If only people knew what eternity is, they would do everything to change their lives. People lose their souls because they do not think about the death of Our Lord and do not do penance."

"Many marriages are not good; they do not please Our Lord and are not of God."

"Pray a great deal for governments." "Be very charitable even with those who are unkind…. Be very patient, for patience brings us to Heaven."

* * * To paraphrase the Gospel, if we truly want to honor and show our love for Our Blessed Mother in this centennial year what better way to manifest this than by doing what she asked of us.

"God is served only when He is served as He wishes to be." (St. Pio of Pietrelcino)

4

Dear Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

St. Jacinta, pray for us!

St. Francisco, pray for us!

Sister Lucia, pray for us! ■

4 Have a Good Day, ed. Bro. Mariano Di Vito, Piazzale Santa Maria della Grazie, San Giovanni Rotondo (FG) Italy, 3rd edition, 2015, p. 229.

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 18

Christians and the Assad Government:

The Untold Story

By Kathleen M. Hines

Amid the Syrian crisis we ought to remember a history that the American Mainstream Media would have us forget. Ironically, in the words of former President Barack Obama, "We know Assad has been protecting the Christians." Reporter Alessandra Nucci stated this fact in 2013, but it remains still quite true today: "Despite a stunning one-time-only admission by President Obama to a delegation of patriarchs in Washington . . . the bipartisan attitude towards the Syrian government has continued to hover between aloof and openly hostile."

These observations deserve further explanation, as do the following questions: Do Christians in Syria support Assad, and if so, why?

A Christian civilization nearly two millennia old, Syria currently houses over 2.2 million Christians. For nearly 2,000 years Syrian Christianity has flourished richly and widely; denominations include the Greek and Syriac Orthodox Churches, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Roman, Armenian, Syrian, and Chaldean Catholic Churches, and the Assyrian (Nestorian) Church, all of which have peacefully coexisted historically with Alawite, Sunni, Druze, and Shiite Muslim populations.

In the words of a writer from The Economist in December 2016: "Just like Iraq, Syria hosts an array of Christian confessions, distinguished by the positions their forebears took in church councils of up to 15 centuries ago. Some are in communion with Rome, others with Greek and Russian Orthodoxy, still others have subtle doctrinal differences with all the above but keep friendly terms with their co-religionists elsewhere. Whatever they believe, virtually all have accepted Russia’s renewed claim, originally dating from the 19th century, to be the protector of Christians in the region. "Russia has given hope to the people of Syria," according to Patriarch Ignatios Ephrem II, leader of the Syrian Orthodox church.

With this history, is it any wonder that nearly the totality of Syrian Christians have sided with Assad and the Russian government who have protected their families, homes, and livelihoods? At the mercy of rebels who have joined ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the al-Qaida-connected al-Nusra Front, Syrian Christians have pleaded for leaders around the world to acknowledge their sovereignty and the preservation of their homeland, by far best assured under President Assad.

In international interviews, Syrian Christians have stated the following about the rebels: "We are afraid that these people will try to destroy our peaceful life. . . but we trust the army and security and state" "We used to live in peace, Muslims and Christians. Of course, we’re afraid people from outside the city and the country may come and destroy this unity. Assad became more than just the head of state. He is a kind of international symbol of this fight for our life."

"There were people here; they wanted to push us against the government, the president, the army. If you hear the army enter the city and kill people, believe me this is a mistake, the army is here to protect people. God bless Assad; he did a lot to protect this state and make it strong."

"Our country before the crisis was developing. Now we’re all losing. Jesus said any kingdom that splits will die fast. These people are receiving money and listening to the orders. They want to ruin this country."

These quotes refer to the Islamist rebels who have flooded into Syria, most notably from Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Practitioners of "radical Islam extremism," these rebels have destroyed much of the culture and many of the religious artifacts that once stood as testaments to Syria’s ancient Christian faith. At the mercy of international governments who have armed the "wrong men," Syrian Christians see the Assad government as their only protector against the onslaught of Arab extremism and terror.

In the words of Abu Fadi, a prominent Syrian Christian leader in Aleppo, "There is no question at all about whom we support: the government, of course. It is the only force protecting us from the jihadists and extremists." While Abu Fadi acknowledges that some Christians once opposed Assad, basing that opposition on "protests against corruption and the need for reform," they rapidly discovered that the alternative was nothing more than violent religious extremism. As he concluded, "They want to get rid of us, drive us from our lands that we have inhabited for centuries. They have destroyed churches. Look at Kassab and Ma’aloula [the sites of Christian massacres by Syrian rebels], do you need further proof?"

Never reported in the American media, the destruction of these towns represents the erasure of a Christian culture in the name of "global democracy" and "human rights". In the words of Andrew Ashdown, an Anglican priest who visited Aleppo shortly after Assad’s recapture of that city, "The Syrian people are not being listened to; the international community is not listening to the people of Syria themselves. . .. Have we not learned from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya?"

Perhaps the words of Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Joseph III Younan will ring yet more clearly; in response to a French prime-time news caster, who claimed, "Assad is . . . a monster.

He’s killing innocent people, children and women," Younan replied with an account excerpted by The Center for Research on Globalization:

"…of a Syrian town on the Euphrates River which is 98 percent Sunni Muslim. The Capuchin [priest] told Younan that as the town was being attacked by anti-government rebels, he sheltered four Missionaries of Charity sisters and 12 elderly women in their care within his parish center. When the situation was no longer sustainable, the Capuchin said, the nuns called Damascus. ‘And Damascus sent military vehicles to evacuate [them] from the parish compound—there were the nuns, 12 elderly people, and [the Continued Next Page

Syrian girl brings Assad's image, with slogan We're all With You, to Mass at her Greek Orthodox church.

Christians and Assad

Continued From Page 18 Capuchin], and they took all to safety, in Damascus.’ ‘Now,’ Patriarch Younan had said to the French news-show host, ‘you can judge for yourself if this person, Assad, is a monster or not’."

The words of Melkite Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III Laham of Syria should also speak to fellow Christians about the true plight and views of Syrian Christians.

In an interview with Asia News, Laham stated:

"The Church of the Arabs means the Church of Jesus Christ, which lives in an Arabian setting and in a profound and intimate relationship with the Arab world, with its pain and its hopes, its joys and its sorrows, its problems and its crisis. The Church is Emmanuel, a Church with, for and in this Arab society, without forgetting its Arab roots and nature, thanks to our history and our geography."

Syrian Christians have turned to the Assad government for protection and the preservation of their Christian heritage. Contrary to reports that Assad chemically gasses these Christians and their moderate Muslim constituents, evidence shows that he is neither responsible for, nor insensitive to, the gruesome gassings carried out by local rebel groups (including the White Helmets) and their Saudi-Arabian suppliers. As UN human rights investigator Carla del Ponte indicated in 2013 rebels are responsible for using sarin gas on Syrian civilians.

Even the U.N. Security Council’s reports on the 2013 gassings refuse to indict or explicitly blame the Assad government, yet both neoconservative and liberal American news sources have produced fallacious interpretations of the remaining evidence to support their own agendas in 2013; they continue to do so even as authorities question the present gassings in 2017.

As Anatoly Karlin concludes:" There are so many problems with the propaganda campaign against Assad getting unrolled now: (1) You can’t treat exposure to sarin with your bare hands without falling ill/dead yourself, as the White Helmets were apparently doing in the aftermath of the Idlib attack.

(2) As Syrian war reporter @ Partisangirl noticed, some journalists were apparently discussing a sarin attack before it actually happened.

(3) It is eerily reminiscent of the aftermath of the 2013 Gouta attacks, in which the Western media and neocon and neocon-in-all-but-name politicians and punditry parroted the official line that Assad’s troops were responsible even though consequent journalistic work by Seymour Hersh and MIT raised serious doubts over the veracity of that allegation.

(4) The "moderate rebels" have themselves resorted to poison gas on various occasions.

(5) Unlike in 2013, Assad is now winning. Why on Earth now, of all times, would he resort to poison gas – one of the few things he can do to that is capable of provoking a strong Western reaction – just to kill all of 75 civilians? It just makes no sense.

Assad’s six year war against rebels in Syria has in fact been successful, but if we refuse to speak the truth of Assad’s support for Christians and moderate Muslims in the region, we lie to ourselves and defy the right of Syria to manage its own affairs."

We would do well to take the advice of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "You can resolve to live your life with integrity.

The simple step of a simple courageous man is not to take part in a lie, not to support deceit. Let your credo be this: let the lie come into the world, let it even dominate the world, but not through me."

If we continue to disseminate these lies, we will forever have the blood of Syrian martyrs on our hands. ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 19

Catholic Heroes....

Antonio Salazar, The Greatest Portuguese that Ever Lived

"For me, I have only one goal," said Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in 1932, Prime Minister of Portugal after a fouryear ascendency. "What I propose is to bring Portugal permanently to life!" And he aimed to do this through the Catholic Church.

Before studying law he had been a seminarian; his roommate at the University of Coimbra, Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, later became cardinal patriarch of Lisbon.

Salazar was twenty-one years old at the time of the revolution of 5 October 1910, which overthrew the Portuguese monarchy and instituted the First Portuguese Republic. The political institutions of the First Republic lasted until 1926.

The era of the First Republic has been described as one of "continual anarchy, government corruption, rioting and pillage, assassinations, arbitrary imprisonment and religious persecution." It witnessed the inauguration of eight presidents, 44 cabinet re-organizations and 21 revolutions. The first government of the Republic lasted less than 10 weeks and the longest-ruling government lasted little over a year.

The regime led Portugal to enter World War I in 1916, a move that only aggravated the perilous state of affairs in the country.

Concurrently, the Catholic Church was hounded by the anti-clerical Freemasons of the Republic and political assassination and terrorism became general. Between 1920 and 1925, according to official police figures, 325 bombs burst in the streets of Lisbon. The British diplomat Sir George Rendel said that he "could not describe the political background as anything but deplorable... very different from the orderly, prosperous and well-managed country that it later became under the government of Senhor Salazar." Salazar would keep in mind the political chaos of this time when he later ruled Portugal.

"We want to preserve at any price," said Salazar upon his election, "from this wave that is falling over the world, simplicity of life, purity of morals, gentleness of sentiments, the equilibrium of social relations, and this modest but noble family atmosphere which is proper to Portuguese life."

Pope Pius XII whole-heartedly supported Salazar’s Catholic counter-revolutionary program, stating: "I bless him with all my heart, and I cherish the most ardent desires that he be able to complete successfully his work of national restoration, both spiritual and material."

Salazar began immediately to put his plan into action. He wanted simply to restore the Catholic Social Order, wherein the state, government and social establishments would base their laws and practices firmly upon Catholic principles rooted in both the moral and natural law.

Salazar slammed Communism as "the greatest heresy of our time," and by 1935, had almost entirely eradiated Freemasonry from his country.

In 1940, a concordat governing churchstate relations was signed by Portugal and the Vatican. The church was to be "separate" from the state but enjoy a special position. The Concordat of 1940 reversed many of the anticlerical policies undertaken during the First Republic, and the Roman Catholic Church was given exclusive control over religious instruction in the public schools. Only Catholic clergy could serve as chaplains in the armed forces. Divorce, which had been legalized by the republic, was again made illegal for those married in a church service.

The church was given formal "juridical personality," enabling it to incorporate and hold property. His legislation on marriage and divorce read, in part: "The Portuguese state recognizes the civil effects of marriages celebrated according to canonical laws… In harmony with the essential properties of Catholic marriages, it is understood that by the very fact of the celebration of a canonical marriage, the spouses renounce the legal right to ask for a divorce."

As it turned out, legally denying canonically-wedded couples the right to even file for divorce made the numbers of Catholic marriages skyrocketed to nearly 91 percent of all marriages in Portugal by the year 1960. Catholic families florished in Portugal while many nearby countries wrestled with the errors, revolutions and wars brought by Communism, Socialism, and the humanistic obsessions of the world at large.

Surely Our Lady of Fatima guided Salazar’s administration, and through efforts such as this (and the merits of a solemn pilgrimage to Fatima made by the Portuguese bishops at the time), preserved Portugal from the Communist "terror", and the horrors of World War II! Our Lady even spared the little nation from the bloody Spanish Civil War, which is a miracle unto itself. Salazar had a part to play in this, as well: The revolutionary tumult of Spain could not help but exert some influence on Portugal, and eventually two Portuguese ships mutinied and joined the new Communist Republic of Spain. Salazar and the Portuguese bishops wouldn’t hear of this, and the intrepid PM ordered that the vessels be bombarded until they surrendered. The bishops chronicled this event by writing that a little revolutionary streak had been summarily "snuffed out" so that Portugal could carry on in peace and security.

Antonio Salazar was not without enemies, and on 4 July 1937 an attempt was made on his life. He had just exited a vehicle on his way to Mass when a bomb detonated ten feet from him. As devastated citizens rushed to the scene, Salazar emerged unscathed from the wreckage, along with his driver, whose only injury was loss of hearing. Salazar pacified the incredulous onlookers, and then he and his chauffeur attended Mass as planned. Once again, the Portuguese bishops documented the occurrence, calling it an act of God that their beloved PM had not been touched by the blast, and acknowledged that his death may have tossed Portugal headlong into the path of the Communist onslaught.

Salazar was widely praised for keeping Portugal neutral during the Second World War. From the war’s very beginning in 1939, Salazar was convinced that Britain would suffer injury, but remain undefeated, that the United States would step into the conflict and that theAllies would win. The American journalist Henry J.

Taylor commented: "I found not another continental European leader who then agreed with him".

Salazar based his political theory on the doctrines of the popes and throughout the 1930s achieved great prestige in the Catholic world. In 1936, the episcopate expressed its full support for the regime in a Carta Pastoral, reaffirmed the following year by the head of the Catholic Church.

After a 40-year reign (1928–1968), Salazar suffered a stroke in September 1968 and was unable to continue his duties. He died two years later, having lived a life of frugal simplicity, shunning publicity, rarely making public appearances, and never leaving Portugal.

A decade ago, the Portuguese people voted their former Prime Minister, Antonio Salazar, to be "the greatest Portuguese who ever lived". The Left hated this, because the Left has been in the business of twisting his legacy into that of a murderous dictator. His people remember him better; they remember reality. ■

Sources:

britannica.com, wikipedia.org romancatholicheroes.blogspot.com nytimes.com

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 20

FATIMA and Tradition

The Fires of HELL

By Father Ladis J. Cizik

There is a book with the impious title: Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"? by Hans Urs von Balthasar. This Swiss theologian entertains the thoughts that not only can we hope that no one goes to hell, but that we can also hope that hell is empty. This type of Modernist theology is reflected in statements said to be made from the highest level of the Church indicating that everyone goes to Heaven, including non-Catholics, non-Christians, and even atheists. Another outrageous novelty was the recently devised false teaching that there is no final punishment for the ‘lost soul,’ rather the destruction/ annihilation of that soul, such that with the death of the body, the journey of the body and soul is finished: i.e. no one goes to hell. All of this Modernist nonsense flies in the face of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, Church Dogma, and is dreadfully offensive to pious ears.

The Great Pope Saint Pius X warned us about Modernist theologians in his Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, issued on September 8, 1907, where he compared them to being "puffed up like bladders with the spirit of vanity" who "strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the sacred text" (par 17).

He says that for the Modernist: "Divine Revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress corresponding with the progress of human reason" (par 28). Modernism is simply defined by Pope Saint Pius X as: "The synthesis of all heresies" (par 39).

It does not take a learned theologian to refute the Modernist masters of deception who deny the reality of the souls of the damned suffering for all eternity in the fires of hell. All that it takes is to behold and understand the blackened metal candle rack at Fatima.

This blackened foreboding structure, for reasons somberly explained later by Sister Lucia, is also known as the "candle pyre."

For those who are going to Fatima to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Our Lady’s appearances or for those who have been there previously, I strongly advise you to meditate upon this candle rack/pyre. The candle rack at Fatima has a blackened cast-iron appearance and is just to the side of the Capelinha, just left of the very spot where the Mother of God appeared to Jacinta, Francisco and Lucia. This rack does not contain neat glass-enclosed vigil lights, but rather, natural beeswax candle sticks made available by the Sanctuary and placed there by devout pilgrims.

As the candles burn down, their heat twists and distorts the candles set near to them. The sea of twisted melting candles in the large candle rack does not present a pretty picture at all. At various times during the day, a Fatima Sanctuary official turns on jets of natural gas which results in a huge sea of flames and great billowing clouds of smoke as the disfigured candles are melted down for re-use.

"The candle rack really looks like hell," I always warn the pilgrims in advance. "The candle rack was constructed to look like hell ..." I continue, "… since that is the exact spot where Our Lady of Fatima showed the three shepherd children a vision of hell on July 13, 1917." The candle rack is also known as the ‘candle pyre’ since a ‘pyre’ denotes a place of intense fire where corpses are burned.

Lucia wrote in her memoirs of that July 13th: "She [Our Lady] opened Her hands once more, as She had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw, as it were, a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls [of the damned] in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fright (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons could be distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. That vision lasted only a moment. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind Heavenly Mother, Who had already prepared us by promising, at the first apparition, to take us to Heaven.

Without that, I think we would have died of terror and fear."

Lucia continued: "Terrified and as if to plead for succor, we looked up at Our Lady, Who said to us, so kindly and sadly: ‘ You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.’" Near the end of the July apparition, Our Lady of Fatima taught: "When you pray the Rosary, say after each Mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins; save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are most in need." Note that it was the Church which later insisted that "of Thy mercy" conclude this decade prayer.

In the fourth apparition of Our Lady in August, She said: "Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them."

Note that this Message from Fatima and the vision of hell on July 13th (7/13) re-affirms Mt 7:13: "Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who enter by it." It does not take a genius to understand what this passage means, although the Modernist appears to be clueless. The Haydock Biblical commentary of Mt 7:13 simply states: "The doctrine of these two verses needs no commentary, but deserve serious attention." In saying that many souls go to the fires of hell, the Fatima Message is also re-affirming numerous other Scripture passages, including: Mt. 5:22, 29-30; 13:30-42; 25:41and Lk.13:23-24). For those who embrace the Modernist teaching in Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"?, they will have to hope again for a sequel entitled:

Dare We Hope "That the July 13th Vision of Hell Never Took Place"? From that apparition, it is clear that there is a hell and that people are there. There are many publications upholding the Catholic doctrine of hell that they could read, but probably would rather not.

The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 is one book that has much to say affirming the fires of hell and condemning the false hope that there is no one in hell, including the following:

• "God says of the damned: ’Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched’ (Isaiah 66:24; Mark 9:43, 45, 47).

• "The fire of hell is repeatedly called eternal and unquenchable. The wrath of God abideth on the damned "(Jn 3:36).

• "The Church professes her faith in the Athanasian Creed: ‘They that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.’"

• "According to the greater number of theologians the term fire denotes a material fire, and so a real fire. We hold to this teaching as absolutely true and correct."

• "Hence, beyond the possibility of doubt, the Church expressly teaches the eternity of the pains of hell as a truth of faith which no one can deny or call in question without manifest heresy."

On that July 13th, Our Lady told the three shepherd children: "Sacrifice yourself for sinners, and say often to Jesus, especially when you make a sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

People have lost the sense of sin in the last fifty years as all the faithful began being referred to, unconditionally, as "the Holy People of God." Sinners now believe that they are holy even if they are living in sinful lifestyles. Sinners are told by clergy of the highest rank: "Who am I to judge?" Confessionals, known now as "Reconciliation Rooms,’ are practically unused in most Novus Ordo parishes. If Jesus would have said to this modern-day crowd, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" (Jn 8:7), the poor lady would have been pummeled by an avalanche of Modernist stones.

This is in contrast to pre-Vatican II times when the people considered themselves to be sinners and the Confessionals had long lines of penitents waiting their turn to confess their sins. The long lines are still there where Traditional Latin Masses are offered. Traditional Catholics dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of hell. Modern-day Catholics ‘dare to believe’ that no one goes to hell, with credit going to the false teachings of the Modernists.

Hell is said to have become a preoccupation of Jacinta Marto, who was only seven years old at the time of the apparitions. She once exclaimed: "Oh hell! hell! How sorry I am for the souls who go to hell! And the people down there, burning alive, like wood in the fire! She once remarked to her older cousin, Lucia: Why doesn’t Our Lady show hell to sinners? If they saw it, they would not sin, so as to avoid going there! You must tell Our Lady to show hell to all the people. You’ll see how they will be converted."

Continued Next Page

Fatima Children after seeing a vision of Hell

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 21

This Week At RemnantNewspaper.com...

BOMBSHELL IN ROME:

Priest Calls Amoris Laetitia 'Trojan Horse', Exposes Rise of Anti-Church

By Michael Matt

This just in from

LifeSiteNews: In an article entitled We are witnessing St. John Paul II’s prophesy of an ‘anti-Church’: Catholic priest -- St. John Paul II’s 1976 prophetic warning about the rise of an "anti-Church" that would preach an "anti-Gospel" is being fulfilled today by leaders within the Catholic Church, even at the highest levels, said a priest in a talk given at a Catholic conference today in Rome. Fr. Linus Clovis of Family Life International said in his talk at the Rome Life Forum, organized by Voice of the Family, that the anti-Gospel of the anti-Church is often "indistinguishable from secular ideology, which has overturned both the natural law and the Ten Commandments."

"This anti-Gospel, which seeks to elevate the individual’s will to consume, to pleasure and to power over the will of God, was rejected by Christ when tempted in the wilderness. Disguised as ‘human rights,’ it has reappeared, in all its luciferian hubris, to promulgate a narcissistic, hedonistic attitude that rejects any constraint except that imposed by man-made laws," he said. READ MORE AT: https:// www.lifesitenews.com/news/we-arewitnessing- today-st.-john-paul-iisprophesy- of-an-anti-church-cathol

REMNANT COMMENT: God bless and keep Father Clovis! This is one of the most revealing, explicit and truthful speeches given in the Eternal City in the post-conciliar era. He ties in Fatima, Amoris Laetitia and then courageously explains the role of Pope Francis in the rise of the Anti-Church. Here, for example, is Fathers’ take on AL: "As a Trojan horse, Amoris Laetitia spells spiritual ruin for the entire Church. As a gauntlet thrown down it calls for courage in overcoming fear. In either case, it is now poised to separate the anti-Church of which St. John Paul II spoke from the Church that Christ founded. As the separation begins to take place, each one of us, like the angels, will have to decide for himself whether he would rather be wrong with Lucifer than right without him."

This LifeSiteNews article should be sent to every priest and bishop in the world-including Bishop Bernard Fellay of the Society of St. Pius X. ■

Father Linus Clovis

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 21

Continued...

The Message of Fatima, sent from Heaven for our times, is often dismissed today by saying that it is a

private revelation that one is free to accept or reject. Well, some 70,000 people, over a radius of 70 miles, publicly witnessed the Miracle of the Sun on October 13th, 1917, which was foretold by Our Lady on July 13th, "so that all may believe."

In addition, the Message of Fatima is a Church-approved compendium of Traditional Catholic Church teaching and a reaffirmation of the Gospels, twin fonts of Truth, from which no Catholic is free to reject.

Saint Padre Pio had a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima. Someone, perhaps a Modernist, once said to Saint Padre Pio: "I don’t believe in hell." Padre Pio responded: "You will when you get there."

In conclusion:

•

• Dare we hope that 2 + 2 = 5?

NO. As much as one may wish for that, the answer is logically and always 4. A ‘hope’ is irrational if it is not possible. Likewise ...

• Dare we hope that

all

men be saved?

NO. Jesus was asked that question when a certain man said to Him: "Lord, are there few that are saved?"

Our Lord and God responded: "Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able" (Lk13:23-24). "Many" here means that many will NOT be saved. In the Syllabus of Errors of the Great Blessed Pope Pius IX, the following error condemned in the Encyclical Quanto conficiamur of 1863 was cited: "Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ" (#17).

• Dare we hope that hell is empty and that God and Our Lady of Fatima are wrong about the souls of the damned being there?

NO. That would be blasphemous and contrary to Sacred Scripture and opposed to Sacred Tradition. In addition, it would contradict the Churchapproved Message of Fatima, which includes the vision of hell.

• Dare we hope that no other

souls are in danger of joining the others in hell?

NO. The Church has traditionally taught that the devil and his demons are prowling the world seeking the ruin and damnation of souls. We are all in danger of eternal hell fire.

Dare we hope that all Modernists be saved?

NOT much hope for them if they remain a Modernist spreading their pernicious errors which lead souls to hell.

BUT hope remains if they repent, recant their heresies, and embrace "the doctrine of the Faith that was handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport" (from the "Oath Against Modernism" by Pope Saint Pius X). Making a good Sacramental Confession and receiving the Last Rites, including the Apostolic Pardon, at the point of death, would also be in their best interests. To this end,

we will pray for them and for all other sinners, in accord with the Message of Fatima: Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee, Blessed art Thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Always remember my

Three R’s of Modernism: Recognize it;

Refute it; and

Return to Tradition. ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 22

The Next Crusade

By Timothy J Cullen

" For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood: but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places" (Eph. 6:12) The late Catholic historian Warren Carroll (1932-2011) authored a 1996 book about the Spanish Civil War entitled The Last Crusade, the back matter of which describes "Crusade" as follows: " Crusade means a war for the sake of the Cross, a war to protect Christian people from persecution and death on account of their faith in Jesus Christ". Crusades scholar Thomas Madden wrote: "Today, the term is commonly used to denote a grand enterprise, often with a moral dimension, as in General Eisenhower’s ‘Crusade in Europe’ or a ‘crusade for adult literacy’."

1 Perhaps it would not be amiss to describe the next Crusade as a grand enterprise for the sake of the Cross and of the Catholic culture that gave rise to the culture and civilization of the West, now persecuted and embattled on all sides including from within. The predominant religions in the West of 2017 are "denominational mentality" Christianity2, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and secularism; Judaism, Islam and others make up a very small minority (although there are more Muslims than Anglicans in Europe) and are not native to the West, although Judaism has a long history of Western presence. The argument is often raised that the Judaism is an alien-to-the-West latently hostile ethnicity cum tribe as well as a religion, but such claims are denounced as anti-Semitism based on a presumed and intrinsically intolerant and equally hostile Christian posture toward the Jewish people, particularly with respect to the Ashkenazim, "a Jewish ethnic division who coalesced as a distinct community of Jews in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the 1st millennium".

3 Be that as it may, however, it is indisputable that this particular alien-to-the-Christian-West and largely secularized tribal rather than religious group exerts—in large measure owing to an overweening financial strength—a powerful influence over the politics and cultural status of what once was Christendom. Does this fact then indicate that a Crusade against the Jewish people— Ashkenazim or Sephardic—is called for? Absolutely not! The Jewish faith is that which represents the ground from which Catholicism was born and as such is to be honored if no longer accepted as the True Covenant. No, it is the secularized and "ethnic/tribal" version thereof that should be rejected by faithful Jewish believers and Christians alike, as is the case in the Jewish homeland of Israel

1 Ibid, p. 1.

2 See "God and Our Right", Remnant, xxx 3 https://infogalactic.com/info/Ashkenazi_Jews

in which there exists no small amount of divisiveness between the Orthodox believers and the secular "tribals" who are more concerned with worldly power than an adherence to the beliefs of the Jewish faith.

Secularists— be they of whatever descent—are the true and openlydeclared enemies of the believers in God and His transcendence over fallen man and as such must be challenged before their efforts to destroy the Faith of the West make any further progress: the progressive destruction of Christendom calls for nothing less.

The principal weapon used by the secularists in their satanic "mission" is their ingenious but inhumane and certainly un-Godly control of what these days passes for "money", a goodstransfer mechanism that has lost its way from a sound system to one that is based upon jiggery-pokery of a shameful sort, one that permits the creation of "debt" that is backed by nothing but the consent of the deceived to a financial system that creates by use of accounting legerdemain what purports to be a legitimate monetary currency.

If there is to be a genuine "Crusade" to protect Catholicism and Christianity from subversion and destruction—both internal and external—, it must begin with an all-out assault upon the present fraudulent financial system that funds the secularist attack upon the Faith and the Church.

An apocryphal quote attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a patriarch of the Rothschild financial dynasty has it: "Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws"

4

Just so. Whether or not the late Mayer Amschel Rothschild actually stated this,

4 N.B.: also cited as "Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes her laws." See http://www.

searchquotes.com/quotation/Give_me_control_of_a_ nation%27s_money_and_I_care_not_who_makes_her_ laws/233340/.

history has borne out the truth of it. The money supply of the West is firmly in the control of a cabal of international and private bankers, superseding the sovereignty of all the nations of what once was Christendom. The late international banker well understood (if indeed he said what he is alleged to have said) the workings of societies; sadly, the truth of the statement seems to have been lost on the societies of the West, given the present state of affairs.

It would appear, then, that in the name of the defense of the Faith and the Church, and in the interest of the restoration of Christendom, a thorough understanding of financial and economic sovereignty is sine qua non, yet little attention to it is given by those from whom it has been usurped. If there is to be a "next Crusade" in defense of the authentic Catholic Faith and of Christendom as a whole, it must begin with a concentrated assault upon the "queen bee" of the secularist hive: monetary sovereignty.

The societal "command posts" referred to in this writer’s 30 April edition of the Remnant5 are dependent upon funding by those who, by the passive consent (silence implies consent) of a citizenry that permit them to, issue currency that is for all practical purposes counterfeit, given that it has no tangible backing. If the paymasters can no longer provide that funding, it is not difficult to imagine a reduction if not outright cessation of activity by the drones and worker bees; "no money, no honey" in the words of a crude but popular bit of doggerel.

The next Crusade, therefore, must begin with a struggle against this thoroughly entrenched group of anti-Christian secularists whose ultimate purpose is to destroy all belief in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions in favor of an atheistic vision of humanity that would create a "humanistic" dynasty

5 N.B. "…the national press, the entertainment industry, the elite colleges and universities, and the higher ranks of the bench and the bar." (p. 13).

of overlords ruling over a financially (and thus materially) ignorant mass of believers in the transcendent incapable of understanding the mechanisms by which they are enslaved. If the utterly fraudulent and thus false now-globallyentrenched non-real-asset-backed and thus criminally counterfeit prevailing monetary system is not eliminated, Catholic Social Teaching is and will be nothing more than an intellectual curiosity to be laughed off by those who control the monetary exchange mechanisms of the world: sad but true.

Traditional Catholics, a now tiny minority among believers in a transcendent God Who in the final accounting governs the workings of the world He created, have very little power or influence within the Church and have no influence whatsoever with the secularists, nevertheless retain the right and responsibility to struggle on to change this state of affairs. Authentic Catholicism is largely rejected by Modernists of every stripe, be they coreligionists or openly declared enemies. This writer’s question is for how long and to what degree the authentic and faithful Catholic will continue to turn the other cheek before deciding to counterattack the well-organized and well-financed opposition our beliefs.

What—if any—form might this opposition take?

The annual Chartres pilgrimage offers a splendid organized public activity in support of God and the Faith and in opposition to apostasy, atheism and secularism, but there is no denying that further forms of Catholic action are required if a truly crusading spirit and struggle is to be fostered in civil life.

This writer’s belief is that the next "Crusade" must be first and foremost an activist posture against the non-tangibleasset- backed debt-money system that allows overtly anti-Christian financiers to exert an out-of-proportion influence over the four "command posts" of now-secularized Western societies: the political process, the educational systems, the media and legal systems as they have developed over the course of the twentieth century until the present day. Without the "greasing of the wheels" provided by control of finance, the ascendency of what has come to be known as "cultural Marxism"

6

might well never have occurred, given its intrinsic anti-Christian and thus anti-Western bias. If some degree of national sovereign control of currency is not restored, then to say the process of persuasion for the restoration of Christendom with respect to politics, education media and law will be an uphill battle is to underestimate by

6 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define. php?term=cultural%20marxism

Continued Next Page

The Next Crusade

Continued from Page 22

various orders of magnitude the reality of the situation.

If there were a genuine "level playing field" in politics, education, media and law, a playing field in which the money-changers and their collaborators were unable to unfairly manipulate outcomes, said outcomes would likely be very different from what they are and will be unless their "expulsion from the temple" can be accomplished. This equates to: removing the excessive influence of funding from the political process; eliminating from "education" the equivalency of political indoctrination to practical instruction; forbidding the concentration of media outlets obtained by the use of financial manipulation by corporate entities determined to destroy competition and make new and independent entries into the field enormously difficult; greatly simplifying the legal system by returning jurisdictions to smaller governmental units, by eliminating needless and burdensome "regulations" and bureaucracy that serve little if any practical purpose and last but most certainly not least, redefining corporate "personhood" while lowering the monetary bar to litigation.

Clearly, the above is greatly oversimplified, but it serves as a general outline for obvious reforms that could be accomplished if the unjust and overweening influence of finance were to be barred from the playing field, so to speak; this writer believes that little short of a "crusade" of sorts is required for there to be any chance of such a non-violent Lepanto-like victory to actually come to pass. If Catholics— Traditional and otherwise—and indeed all Christians do not form a united front against secularism and its truly poisonous sequelae in civil life, the Faithful of a nottoo- distant future will almost certainly be driven to the catacombs by persecution both foreign and domestic, the latter aided by fifth columnists from alien cultures and traditions already entrenched in what once was Christendom and is now fast becoming a multicultural mish-mash presided over by political, academic, "journalistic" and judicial puppets manipulated by hidden hands of the money masters.

Traditional Catholics should be in the vanguard of those calling for a non-military crusade to restore monetary sovereignty to the nations of Christendom and once this objective is achieved, proceed on to smoke out the secularist hives that produce not honey but gall. Granted, monetary sovereignty is not exactly a stirring nor especially "Catholic" call to action, but it is nonetheless a call that needs to be heeded, because without it, barring Divine intervention, the Catholic cause is unlikely to prosper given the tremendously powerful societal forces that weigh in against it. While we maintain the eternal "high ground", the temporal is firmly in the hands of the secularists and their anti-Christian allies.

The next Crusade must be won by beginning with the pen and not with the sword. ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017

Next Article >        < Prev Article

Sun, 21 May 2017 | Cover | Page 23

The Last Word…

Lessons of Little Red Riding Hood

By Father Celatus

For countless generations children have grown up hearing and reading folk tales and fairy tales, such as those gathered into a widely popular collection published by the brothers Grimm. One such tale is the story of Little Red Cap, better known to us as Little Red Riding Hood. The story goes something like this: Little Red Riding Hood set out through the woods with a basketful of goodies for her grandmother. Her mother had warned her to stay on the path but the girl disobeyed and so she happened upon a wolf. Not recognizing the danger, the little girl continued her journey; meanwhile the wolf ran ahead and arrived at grandmother’s house before her. Depending upon which version you read, the wolf either swallowed up the grandmother or locked her in a closet and put on her clothes. When the girl arrived the wolf was lying in bed, pretending to be her grandmother. Then follows this ominous dialogue between the girl and wolf:

"Oh, grandmother," she said, "What big ears you have." "The better to hear you with, my child," was the reply.

"But, grandmother, what big eyes you have," she said. "The better to see you with," my dear. "But, grandmother, what large hands you have." "The better to hug you with." "Oh, but, grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have." "The better to eat you with." And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was out of bed and swallowed up red-cap.

In the original version both the girl and the grandmother die; in a subsequent version a huntsman frees them both from the belly of the wolf; and in a third cleaned up version both girl and grandmother escape.

For some reason this fairy tale came to our mind recently, while The Last Word was perusing the web for updates on the most recent outrages of Francis of Rome.

Perhaps this otherwise odd association relates to the homophones Grimm and grim, the latter being one of many words to describe the Bergoglian papacy. Or perhaps it is a connection between two wolves, both of which use their cunning to deceive the innocent for a wicked purpose. In fact, let’s rewrite the original fairy tale and call it Little Red Zucchetto: Once upon a time there was a prelate with a little red zucchetto upon his head who was inspired by Holy Mother Church to deliver a basketful of dubbia to the pope at the Vatican. Little did Little Red Zucchetto realize it but the real pope was being held captive in his quarters while the wily wolf, who had dressed himself in the white garments of a real pope, sat upon the papal throne. When Little Red Zucchetto came close to the wolf in white he said, "Oh Holy Father, what awful insults you speak." "The better to silence you with," he replied. "Oh Holy Father, what heterodox sermons you preach." "The better to confuse you with," he responded. "Oh Holy Father, what confusing exhortations you write."

"The better to mislead you with," he replied. Once he had said this he leapt from the throne and suspended Little Red Zucchetto.

Would that the story of Little Red Zucchetto were merely a fairy tale but unfortunately it is all too real. Even more disturbing than a wolf disguised in the nightgown and night cap of a grandmother is a wolf disguised in the white cassock and white zucchetto of a shepherd. And even more horrific to imagine than a wolf gobbling up a grandmother and a girl is the reality that a wolf on the papal throne is ravaging the flock of Christ and misleading souls into sin and the fires of hell. Where are all the fearless cardinals who wear little red zucchettos? Incredibly only four have dared express any concern at all about the wily wolf.

When I heard as a child the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood I was astounded that Red Cap was unable to more quickly recognize the imposter in the bed as a wolf. By the time she was finally starting to realize that the ears and the eyes and the hands and the mouth of the fraudster under the covers were not those of her dear grandmother it was too late. Even more astounding is that so many clerics and faithful fail to realize or admit that the words and actions of Pope Francis Fraudulosus are not those of a true shepherd.

There is, therefore, unfathomable irony in the fact that a wolf disguised as a shepherd has canonized two faithful shepherd children on the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, May 13, which marks the anniversary date of the first of the Marian apparitions to three children in Portugal. As traditional Catholics know, despite Vatican assurances to the contrary, the Third Secret of Fatima has never been fully disclosed and the Consecration of Russia has not been properly accomplished. Shame on all the disobedient shepherds! But there is something particularly ominous about the timing of the Fatima centennial anniversary and this particular pope. For if our first conviction is correct, that the hidden Third Secret regards apostasy in the Church at the highest level, as well as our second conviction that the Consecration of Russia has not been accomplished, then we should not be surprised if all hell is about to break loose sometime soon.

After all, it appears that a central figure in any unfolding Fatima drama is now in place. Far beyond any papal predecessor, Jorge Bergoglio has manifested himself as a committed Modernist and a sympathetic Marxist. Clearly there is apostasy enthroned at the top which encompasses lower level leadership as well. As for the spread of the errors of Russia, under Jorge, morality is collapsing and socialism is spreading.

In the fairy tale Red Riding Hood, at least one version ends with a huntsman who comes to the rescue, wielding an ax which he uses to split the wicked wolf wide open, rescuing the girl and grandmother from its belly. Life rarely has a fairy tale ending but we have reason to hope for a supernatural intervention and ending. In this centennial observance of the apparitions at Fatima, let us heed the warning of our Lady against sin and let us pray to the faithful Fatima shepherd Saints, asking for deliverance from the wolves. ■

Powered by TECNAVIA

Copyright (C) 1996-2017 Remnant Press 05/21/2017