Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer’s body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.
Clearly no sincere Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian doctrine more recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church, under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant fruit for souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas. No more can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation of the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources of canon law. Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity, discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation.
This way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. It likewise attempts to reinstate a series of errors which were responsible for the calling of that meeting as well as for those resulting from it, with grievous harm to souls, and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the “deposit of faith” committed to her charge by her divine Founder, had every right and reason to condemn. For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly Father of their souls’ salvation. (Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947. See also Francis The Ecclesiastical Agitator.)
Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s hatred of almost everything to do with the Catholic Faith as It has been handed down to us from the time of the Apostles themselves unchanged and unspotted by any stain of error or compromise with the spirit of the world is truly pathological.
As noted a few weeks ago in on scores upon scores of articles in the past year, Bergoglio is driven to denounce his mythical straw men who represent to him the “past” of a “no church” that was “unwelcoming,” “narrow-minded,” made “mistakes,” “too exclusive,” “too closed-in on itself” and too “self-referential.” The false “pontiff” has been a quixotic quest to denounce even the shadows of the weak-kneed “resistance” to the conciliar revolution that exists within his false church as those “attached” to a “former rite” of the Catholic Church have bitten their tongues and and covered their eyes and stuffed their ears in the face of one offense against the honor and glory and majesty of the Most Blessed Trinity and His Sacred Deposit of Faith after another.
There is nothing new about anything, no, not one blessed thing, that Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis, has said or done in the past. No, there is nothing new whatsoever.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis is merely doing and saying what he has been doing through the course of his life as a presbyter and false “bishop” in a false church.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis, as has been noted so many times before in the past three hundred sixty-two days, is a through-going Jesuit revolutionary of the type that I encountered first-hand in the 1970s and 1980s and even as late as the 1990s on the occasions when I would venture into Inisfada, the Jesuit retreat house in Searington, Long Island, New York, for a 4:00 p.m. weekday staging of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service now and again.
As with the case of all such revolutionaries, Bergoglio/Francis has a pathological hatred not only for the the ways of the “no church” but also for its symbols, preferring that which is opposed to any expression of the “past,” including his rejection of graphic depictions of how our sins caused Our Crucified Saviour to suffer in His Sacred Humanity as He redeemed us on the wood of the Holy Cross.
A post on a relatively new website, Call Me Jorge, which was featured on the Novus Ordo Wire site, revealed that the Argentine Apostate had given his “thoughts,” such as they are, about his dislike of the suffering Redeemer in the Spanish-language edition of a book, Conversations with Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio:
In the book, El Jesuita: Conversaciones con el cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Jorge makes a joke about Our Lord’s Crucifixion. On pages 41 & 42 in Chapter 3 of the book translated from the Spanish to English one reads the following:
But the main emblem of Catholicism is a Crucified Christ dripping blood…
The exaltation of suffering in the Church depends heavily on the time and culture. The Church represents Christ in the cultural atmosphere of the time that one lived. Looking at the Eastern icons, the Russians, for example, it is found that there are few images of the crucified suffering. Rather it represents the resurrection. But if we look at the Spanish Baroque or Cuzco, we find the patience of Christ ripped away because the Baroque emphasized the passion of Jesus. The White Crucifixion, Chagall, who was a Jewish believer, is not cruel (but) it is hopeful. Pain is shown there calmly. I believe that it is one of the most beautiful things he painted.
[NOTE THE FOLLOWING TEXT HAS BEEN EDITED OUT OF THE ENGLISH EDITION OF THE BOOK]
At this point, Bergoglio turns smiling, perhaps to ease the talk.
Can I tell a story that comes to mind, he asked?
Sure.
It is about a Jewish boy who thrown out of all schools for being unruly until another Jew recommends to the father a “good Catholic school.” And it encourages him that, surely, there (they) are going to straighten (him out). The father takes the advice. Thus passes the first month and the boy is very well behaved, without warning (surprisingly). Nor has he behavior problems in the coming months. The father, won by curiosity, goes to the rector to know how he managed this transformation. “It was very simple,” replied the priest. “On the first day I took him by the ear and said pointing to the crucifix, ‘That was a Jew like you, if you misbehave, you will end up the same.’ “
What would you say of one who shared the above with you? Would it be safe to say the man who now claims to be the ‘Vicar of Christ’ sees the crucifixion as the punch line of a joke? Or he doesn’t believe in the suffering Christ went through in His Passion for our sins? The Catholic Church has an ancient law, first written of by Saint Prosper of Aquitaine (390AD–455AD), “lex orandi, lex credendi.” This roughly translates as, “the law of prayer is the law of belief.” So if the above are his beliefs what does this say about how he prays? Are Jorge’s outward behaviors signs which gives one hints as to how he prays and what he thinks? Why is Jorge always equating Christ to modern day Jews? (Call Me Jorge. Also see the post at Novs Ordo Watch Wire.)
Tears came to my eyes when I read this out lout to Sharon, who responded by saying, “I think this man [Bergoglio] is a demon dressed up as a man.” To quote Mr. Timothy Duff, who has been kind enough to give permission for several articles of his to be published on this site, Bergoglio “is the veritable Vicar of Lucifer; it would be hard to imagine hell being more pleased with the evil work of this subhuman monster.”
Jorge Mario Bergoglio is without a clue as to sufferings that our sins imposed upon the Sacred Humanity of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, at the Annunciation as He undertook His fearful Passion and Death to pay back with His own Most Precious Blood our debt of sin that was owed to Him in His Infinity as God. This is why Bergoglio can treat of sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance so lightly and why he sees no connection whatsoever between the horror of personal sin and the economic injustices in the world that he believes can be “cured” by means of statist policies of coerced redistribution of wealth.
Bergoglio has even gone so far as to display hideous, grotesque “Resurrexifixes” and two other “processional crosses” no image of the Crucified Saviour as “Pope Francis” in the past seven months:
This is straight out of conciliar central casting.
Indeed, it is reminiscent of the time I stumbled into Saint Patrick’s Church in Iowa City, Iowa, on Saturday, May 8, 1993, when I went to a Saturday evening staging of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service as that was no morning staging of what I know now to be an abomination in the sight of the Most Blessed Trinity.
The “presider” (and he was introduced as such) at that service started off the show that evening by saying, “We’ve taken down that old Crucified Jesus and replaced Him with the Risen Jesus! What d’ya think of that?” Thunderous applause, hooting and hollering and whistling followed from those assembled, at which point I walked out in protest. Obviously, I should have walked out of the conciliar church entirely. That I did not is to my utter shame.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis has been railing against his mythical “restorationists” and “triumphalists” and “Pharisees” and “Pelagians” in order to present himself as a true son of the conciliar “enlightenment,” replete with its “surprises” and “innovations” and “novelties” that tickle the ears and delight the multitudes who are steeped in one unrepentant sin after another.
By doing this, you see, the false “pontiff” has been able to present himself as the “pope of the people,” not of the “musty past,” giving him the “comfort zone” wherein he can bring to Rome as “Pope Francis” all of the same hideous things for which he was known in Buenos Aires, Argentina, delighting in the opportunity given him to universalize what he had done in his native country.
The multitudes are, of course, eating this up, grateful to have a “pope” who understands them, a “pope” who cares about “mercy” and not about sin, a “pope” who is not a “slave of the past” but a man who is committed to blazing a “path of love” for the future.
As has been demonstrated numerous times in the past two hundred one days, this is all the stuff of Antichrist, yes, each and every bit of it, and none of it can come from Holy Mother Church, she who is the spotless mystical bride of her Divine Founder and Invisible Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
The wavy or bent cross that is to the left in the above photograph makes a mockery of the Sacrifice of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ offered of Himself in Spirit and in Truth to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal God the Father on the wood of the Holy Cross, which is meant to signify a total mockery of the dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the unbloody re-presentation or perpetual of Our Lord’s ineffable Sacrifice of the Cross.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis is at home with balloon liturgies and Pinocchio liturgies and travesties of the sort that occurred at World Youth Day in Rio de Janiero, Brazil two months ago now. Ah, you see, there were no balloons and nobody dressed up like Pinocchio or other fictional characters at Calvary on Good Friday. There were only the Jews who mocked Our Lord, the handful, led by Our Lady, Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint John the Evangelist, who remained faithful–and in silent grief–at the foot of the Cross, and the Roman soldiers, including Saint Longinus, who pierced the side of Our Saviour’s dead Body.
Although Mel Gibson has had his well-documented personal difficulties in recent years, his The Passion of the Christ, based upon Venerable Anne Katherine Emmerich’s The Dolorous Passion of the Christ, depicted the sufferings that our sins imposed upon the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ about as accurately as can be done given the limitations of any form of dramatic presentation. Even Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II said “It is as it was” when he screened the film, a description that caused a firestorm of a controversy and multiple contradictions from his spokesflack, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, something that I outlined in A Really Big Shew ten years ago at a time when I was studying–but not ready to embrace–the possibility that the See of Peter had been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958. (My review of The Passion of the Christ was published ten years ago this month: The Same Now as It Was Then.)
Additionally, anyone who has read Dr. Pierre Barbet’s A Doctor at Calvary, which is a physician’s descriptions of Our Lord’s Passion and Death based upon the scientific evidence in the Shroud of Turin, knows full well of the unspeakable tortures that Christ the King experienced to redeem us.
Similarly, Venerable Mary of Agreda’s The Mystical City of God contains graphic accounts of the sufferings that our sins, having transcended time, caused Our Lord to suffer as His Most Blessed Mother, the Queen of Martyrs, suffered with Him so perfectly that Pope Leo XIII referred to her as to the “Co-Redemptress” in Iucunda semper expectatione, September 8, 1894.
Consider the two following passage from The Mystical City of God:
As a reward for their tears and their compassion these women were enlightened so as to understand this doctrine. In fulfillment of the prayerful wish of the blessed Mother the pharisees and ministers were inspired with the resolve to engage some man to help Jesus our Savior in carrying the Cross to mount Calvary. At this juncture, Simon, of Cyrene, the father of the disciples Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15, 21), happened to come along. He was called by this name because he was a native of Cyrene, a city of Lybia, and had come to Jerusalem. This Simon was now forced by the Jews to carry the Cross a part of the way. They themselves would not touch it, yea would not even come near it, as being the instrument of punishment for One whom they held to be a notorious malefactor. By this pretended caution and avoidance of his Cross they sought to impress the people with a horror for Jesus. The Cyrenean took hold of the Cross and Jesus was made to follow between the two thieves, in order that all might believe Him to be a criminal and malefactor like to them. The Virgin Mother walked very closely behind Jesus, as She had desired and asked from the eternal Father. To his divine will She so conformed Herself in all the labors and torments of her Son that, witnessing with her own eyes and partaking of all the sufferings of her Son in her blessed soul and in her body, She never allowed any sentiment or wish to arise interiorly or exteriorly, which could be interpreted as regret for the sacrifice She had made in offering her Son for the death of the Cross and its sufferings. Her charity and love of men, and her grace and holiness, were so great, that She vanquished all these movements of her human nature. (The Venerable Mary of Agreda, The Mystical City of God, Volume III: The Transfixion, p. 637-638.)
665. When the most prudent Mother perceived that now the mysteries of the Redemption were to be fulfilled and that the executioners were about to strip Jesus of his clothes for crucifixion, She turned in spirit to the eternal Father and prayed as follows : “My Lord and eternal God, Thou art the Father of thy onlybegotten Son. By eternal generation He is engendered, God of the true God, namely Thyself, and as man He was born of my womb and received from me this human nature, in which He now suffers. I have nursed and sustained Him at my own breast; and as the best of sons that ever can be born of any creature, I love Him with maternal love. As his Mother I have a natural right in the Person of his most holy humanity and thy Providence will never infringe upon any rights held by thy creatures. This right of a Mother then, I now yield to Thee and once more place in thy hands thy and my Son as a sacrifice for the Redemption of man. Accept, my Lord, this pleasing offering, since this is more than I can ever offer by submitting my own self as a victim or to suffering. This sacrifice is greater, not only be cause my Son is the true God and of thy own substance, but because this sacrifice costs me a much greater sorrow and pain. For if the lots were changed and I should be permitted to die in order to preserve his most holy life, I would consider it a great relief and the fulfillment of my dearest wishes.” The eternal Father received this prayer of the exalted Queen with ineffable pleasure and complacency. The patriarch Abraham was permitted to go no further than to prefigure and attempt the sacrifice of a son, because the real execution of such a sacrifice God reserved to Himself and to his Onlybegotten. Nor was Sara, the mother of Isaac, informed of the mystical ceremony, this being prevented not only by the promptness of Abraham’s obedience, but also because he mistrusted, lest the maternal love of Sara, though she was a just and holy woman, should impel her to prevent the execution of the divine command. But not so was it with most holy Mary, to whom the eternal Father could fearlessly manifest his unchangeable will in order that She might, as far as her powers were concerned, unite with Him in the sacrifice of his Onlybegotten. (The Venerable Mary of Agreda, The Mystical City of God, Volume III: The Transfixion, pp. 643-644.)
Father Frederick William Faber wrote the following about the intense sufferings of Or Lord and how they afflicted the Immaculate Conception herself:
Another peculiarity of the Crucifixion is the length of time during which the tide of suffering remained at its highest point without any sign of ebbing. The mysteries, which filled the three hours, seem too diversified for us to regard them, at least till we come to the Dereliction, as rising from less to greater in any graduated scale. They are rather separate elevations, of unequal height, standing linked together like a mountain-chain. But the lowest of them was so immensely high that it produced most immeasurable agony in her soul. The anguish of death is momentary. The length of some of the most terrific operations which can rack the human frame seldom exceeds a quarter of an hour. Pain pushed beyond a certain limit, as in medieval torture, is instantaneous death. In human punishments which are not meant to kill, the hand of science keeps watch on the pulse of the sufferer. But to Mary the Crucifixion was three hours, three long hours, of mortal agony, comprising hundreds of types and shapes of torture, each one of them intolerable in itself, each pushed beyond the limits of human endurance unless supported by miracle, and each of them kept at that superhuman pitch for all that length of time. When pain comes we wish to lie down unless madness and delirium come with it, or we are fain to run about, to writhe, gesticulate, and groan. Mary stood upright on her feet the whole while, leaning on no one, and not so much as an audible sigh accompanied her silent tears. It is difficult to take this thought in. We can only take it in by prayer, not by hearing or reading.
It was also a peculiarity of the Crucifixion that it was a heroic trial of her incomparable faith. Pretty nearly the faith of the whole world was in her when she stood, with John and Magdalen, at the foot of the Cross. There was hardly a particle of her belief which was not tried to the uttermost in that amazing scene. Naturally speaking, our Lord’s Divinity was never so obscured. Supernaturally speaking, it was never so manifest. Could it be possible that the Incarnate Word should be subject to the excesses of such unparalleled indignities? Was the light within Him never to gleam out once? Was the Wisdom of the Father to be with blasphemous ridicule muffled in a white sack, and pulled about in absurd, undignified helplessness by the buffooning guards of an incestuous king? Was there not a point, or rather were there not many points, in the Passion, when the limit of what was venerable and fitting was overstepped? even in the reserved narrative of the Gospels, how many things there are which the mind cannot dwell on without being shocked and repulsed, as well as astonished! Even at this distance of time do they not try our faith by their very horror, make our blood run cold by their murderous atrocity, and tempt our devotion to withdraw, sick and fastidious, from the affectionate contemplation of the very prodigies of disgraceful cruelty, by which our own secret sins and shames were with such public shame most lovingly expiated? Is not devotion to the Passion to this day the touchstone of feeble faith, of lukewarm love, and of all self-indulgent penance? And Mary, more delicate and fastidious far than we, drank all these things with her eyes, and understood the horror of them in her soul, as we can never understand it. Think what faith was hers. (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in England in 1857 under the title of The Dolors of Mary, reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 259-262.)
Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his compatriots in wishing glad tidings to those who “come out” to announce to the world their sinful inclinations, Timothy Michael Dolan and Christoph Schonborn and Vincent Nichols and Reinhard Max, et al., have no conception of the horror of personal sin as they seek to provide cover for the civil authorities to provide “legal protections” to those who they claim are in “committed, stable relationships.” They have no horror of their own sins of blasphemy, sacrilege, apostasy and heresy. They don’t want anyone to “judge” them for their own sins, which is why they don’t feel “comfortable” to “judge” others for sins that many in the conciliar church have long sought to mainstream as “natural,” “normal,” “loving” and thoroughly acceptable to the true God of Divine Revelation.
Although the accounts provided by mystics such as the Venerable Mary of Agreda, Saint Bridget of Sweden and the Venerable Anne Katherine Emmerich are not binding on the faithful, they do feed our faith by providing us with powerful images upon which to fix our meditations in order to deepen our love for Our Lord as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church.
To wit, the account of Our Lord’s Scourging at the Pillar as found in The Dolorous Passion of the Christ helps us to visualize His infinite patience and love of His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal God the Father to undergo such unspeakably cruel treatment at the hands of the very people he was shedding His Most Precious Blood to redeem, namely, each one of us:
The Scourging of Jesus
THAT most weak and undecided of all judges, Pilate, had several times repeated these dastardly words:‘I find no crime in him: I will chastise him, therefore, and let him go;’ to which the Jews had continued to respond, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ but he determined to adhere to his resolution of not condemning our Lord to death, and ordered him to be scourged according to the manner of the Romans. The guards were therefore ordered to conduct him through the midst of the furious multitude to the forum, which they did with the utmost brutality, at the same time loading him with abuse, and striking him with their staffs. The pillar where criminals were scourged stood to the north of Pilate’s palace, near the guard-house, and the executioners soon arrived, carrying whips, rods, and ropes, which they tossed down at its base. They were six in number, dark, swarthy men, somewhat shorter than Jesus; their chests were covered with a piece of leather, or with some dirty stuff; their loins were girded, and their hairy, sinewy arms bare. They were malefactors from the frontiers of Egypt, who had been condemned for their crimes to hard labour, and were employed principally in making canals, and in erecting public buildings, the most criminal being selected to act as executioners in the Praetorium.
These cruel men had many times scourged poor criminals to death at this pillar. They resembled wild beasts or demons, and appeared to be half drunk. They struck our Lord with their fists, and dragged him by the cords with which he was pinioned, although he followed them without offering the least resistance, and, finally, they barbarously knocked him down against the pillar. This pillar, placed in the centre of the court, stood alone, and did not serve to sustain any part of the building; it was not very high, for a tall man could touch the summit by stretching out his arm; there was a large iron ring at the top, and both rings and hooks a little lower down. It is quite impossible to describe the cruelty shown by these ruffians towards Jesus: they tore off the mantle with which he had been clothed in derision at the court of Herod, and almost threw him prostrate again.
Jesus trembled and shuddered as he stood before the pillar, and took off his garments as quickly as he could, but his hands were bloody and swollen. The only return he made when his brutal executioners struck and abused him was to pray for them in the most touching manner: he turned his face once towards his Mother, who was standing overcome with grief; this look quite unnerved her: she fainted, and would have fallen, had not the holy women who were there supported her. Jesus put his arms round the pillar, and when his hands were thus raised, the archers fastened them to the iron ring which was at the top of the pillar; they then dragged his arms to such a height that his feet, which were tightly bound to the base of the pillar, scarcely touched the ground. Thus was the Holy of holies violently stretched, without a particle of clothing, on a pillar used for the punishment of the greatest criminals; and then did two furious ruffians who were thirsting for his blood begin in the most barbarous manner to scourge his sacred body from head to foot. The whips or scourges which they first made use of appeared to me to be made of a species of flexible white wood, but perhaps they were composed of the sinews of the ox, or of strips of leather.
Our loving Lord, the Son of God, true God and true Man, writhed as a worm under the blows of these barbarians; his mild but deep groans might be heard from afar; they resounded through the air,fording a kind of touching accompaniment to the hissing of the instruments of torture. These groans resembled rather a touching cry of prayer and supplication, than moans of anguish. The clamour of the Pharisees and the people formed another species of accompaniment, which at times as a deafening thunder-storm deadened and smothered these sacred and mournful cries, and in their place might be heard the words, ‘Put him to death!’ ‘Crucify him!’ Pilate continued parleying with the people, and when he demanded silence in order to be able to speak, he was obliged to proclaim his wishes to the clamorous assembly by the sound of a trumpet, and at such moments you might again hear the noise of the scourges, the moans of Jesus, the imprecations of the soldiers, and the bleating of the Paschal lambs which were being washed in the Probatica pool, at no great distance from the forum. There was something peculiarly touching in the plaintive bleating of these lambs: they alone appeared to unite their lamentations with the suffering moans of our Lord.
The Jewish mob was gathered together at some distance from the pillar at which the dreadful punishment was taking place, and Roman soldiers were stationed in different parts round about. Many persons were walking to and fro, some in silence, others speaking of Jesus in the most insulting terms possible, and a few appearing touched, and I thought I beheld rays of light issuing from our Lord and entering the hearts of the latter. I saw groups of infamous, bold-looking young men, who were for the most part busying themselves near the watch-house in preparing fresh scourges, while others went to seek branches of thorns. Several of the servants of the High Priests went up to the brutal executioners and gave them money; as also a large jug filled with a strong bright red liquid, which quite inebriated them, and increased their cruelty tenfold towards their innocent Victim. The two ruffians continued to strike our Lord with unremitting violence for a quarter of an hour, and were then succeeded by two others. His body was entirely covered with black, blue, and red marks; the blood was trickling down on the ground, and yet the furious cries which issued from among the assembled Jews showed that their cruelty was far from being satiated.
The night had been extremely cold, and the morning was dark and cloudy; a little hail had fallen, which surprised every one, but towards twelve o’clock the day became brighter, and the sun shone forth.
The two fresh executioners commenced scourging Jesus with the greatest possible fury; they made use of a different kind of rod,—a species of thorny stick, covered with knots and splinters. The blows from these sticks tore his flesh to pieces; his blood spouted out so as to stain their arms, and he groaned, prayed, and shuddered. At this moment, some strangers mounted on camels passed through the forum; they stopped for a moment, and were quite overcome with pity and horror at the scene before them, upon which some of the bystanders explained the cause of what they witnessed. Some of these travellers had been baptised by John, and others had heard the sermon of Jesus on the mountain. The noise and the tumult of the mob was even more deafening near the house of Pilate.
Two fresh executioners took the places of the last mentioned, who were beginning to flag; their scourges were composed of small chains, or straps covered with iron hooks, which penetrated to the bone, and tore off large pieces of flesh at every blow. What word, alas! could describe this terrible—this heartrending scene!
The cruelty of these barbarians was nevertheless not yet satiated; they untied Jesus, and again fastened him up with his back turned towards the pillar. As he was totally unable to support himself in an upright position, they passed cords round his waist, under his arms, and above his knees, and having bound his hands tightly into the rings which were placed at the upper part of the pillar, they recommenced scourging him with even greater fury than before; and one among them struck him constantly on the face with a new rod. The body of our Lord was perfectly torn to shreds,—it was but one wound. He looked at his torturers with his eyes filled with blood, as if entreating mercy; but their brutality appeared to increase, and his moans each moment became more feeble.
The dreadful scourging had been continued without intermission for three quarters of an hour, when a stranger of lowly birth, a relation to Ctesiphon, the blind man whom Jesus had cured, rushed from amidst the crowd, and approached the pillar with a knife shaped like a cutlass in his hand. ‘Cease!’ he exclaimed, in an indignant tone; ‘Cease! scourge not this innocent man unto death!’
The drunken miscreants, taken by surprise, stopped short, while he quickly severed the cords which bound Jesus to the pillar, and disappeared among the crowd. Jesus fell almost without consciousness on the ground, which was bathed with his blood. The executioners left him there, and rejoined their cruel companions, who were amusing themselves in the guard-house with drinking, and plaiting the crown of thorns.
Our Lord remained for a short time on the ground, at the foot of the pillar, bathed in his own blood, and two or three bold-looking girls came up to gratify their curiosity by looking at him. They gave a glance, and were turning away in disgust, but at the moment the pain of the wounds of Jesus was so intense that he raised his bleeding head and looked at them. They retired quickly, and the soldiers and guards laughed and made game of them.
During the time of the scourging of our Lord, I saw weeping angels approach him many times; I likewise heard the prayers he constantly addressed to his Father for the pardon of our sins—prayers which never ceased during the whole time of the infliction of this cruel punishment. Whilst he lay bathed in his blood I saw an angel present to him a vase containing a bright-looking beverage which appeared to reinvigorate him in a certain degree. The archers soon returned, and after giving him some blows with their sticks, bade him rise and follow them. He raised himself with the greatest difficulty, as his trembling limbs could scarcely support the weight of his body; they did not give him sufficient time to put on his clothes, but threw his upper garment over his naked shoulders and led him from the pillar to the guard-house, where he wiped the blood which trickled down his face with a corner of his garment. When he passed before the benches on which the High Priests were seated, they cried out, ‘Put him to death! Crucify him! Crucify him!’ and then turned away disdainfully. The executioners led him into the interior of the guard-house, which was filled with slaves, archers, hodmen, and the very dregs of the people, but there were no soldiers. (The Scouring of Our Lord.)
The Passion and Death of the God-Man in atonement for our sins is no joking matter.
Could anyone imagine Pope Saint Pius X making a joke out of Our Lord’s Crucifixion? He understood what Our Lord endured to redeem us? He had preached on Our Lord’s Sacred Passion in Tombolo, Treviso, Salzano, Mantua and Venice before he was elected on August 4, 1903, as the successor to Pope Leo XIII. Papa Sarto knew of the horrors that Our Lord endured for us and he did not need to “learn” from Russian Orthodox iconography or a Jewish artist’s absolutely grotesque abstraction of Golgotha to visualize the events of our Redemption.
Indeed, writing nineteen months after the issuance of Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8 1907, Pope Saint Pius X decried Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Modernist precursors as he dissected with exactitude their carefully-planned warfare against Holy Mother Church:
15. But with no less severity and sorrow have We been obliged to denounce and to put down another species of war, intestine and domestic, and all the more disastrous the more hidden it is. Waged by unnatural children, nestling in the very bosom of the Church in order to rend it in silence, this war aims more directly at the very root and the soul of the Church. They are trying to corrupt the springs of Christian life and teaching, to scatter the sacred deposit of the faith, to overthrow the foundations of the divine constitution by their contempt for all authority, pontifical as well as episcopal, to put a new form on the Church, new laws, new principles, according to the tenets of monstrous systems, in short to deface all the beauty of the Spouse of Christ for the empty glamour of a new culture, falsely called science, against which the Apostle frequently puts us on our guard: “Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit, according to the traditions of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ (Colos. ii. 8).
16. By this figment of false philosophy and this shallow and fallacious erudition, joined with a most audacious system of criticism, some have been seduced and “become vain in their thoughts” (Rom. i. 1), “having rejected good conscience they have made shipwreck concerning the faith” (I Tim. i. 19), they are being tossed about miserably on the waves of doubt, knowing not themselves at what port they must land; others, wasting both time and study, lose themselves in the investigation of abstruse trifling, and thus grow estranged from the study of divine things and of the real springs of doctrine. This hot-bed of error and perdition (which has come to be known commonly as modernism from its craving for unhealthy novelty) although denounced several times and unmasked by the very excesses of its adepts, continues to be a most grave and deep evil. It lurks like poison in the vitals of modern society, estranged as this is from God and His Church, and it is especially eating its way like a cancer among the young generations which are naturally the most inexperienced and heedless. It is not the result of solid study and true knowledge, for there can be no real conflict between reason and faith (Concil. Vatic., Constit. Dei filius, cap. 4). But it is the result of intellectual pride and of the pestiferous atmosphere that prevails of ignorance or confused knowledge of the things of religion, united with the stupid presumption of speaking about and discussing them. And this deadly infection is further fomented by a spirit of incredulity and of rebellion against God, so that those who are seized by the blind frenzy for novelty consider that they are all sufficient for themselves, and that they are at liberty to throw off either openly or by subterfuge the entire yoke of divine authority, fashioning for themselves according to their own caprice a vague, naturalistic individual religiosity, borrowing the name and some semblance of Christianity but with none of its life and truth.
17. Now in all this it is not difficult to recognize one of the many forms of the eternal war waged against divine truth and one that is all the more dangerous from the fact that its weapons are craftily concealed with a covering of fictitious piety, ingenuous candor, and earnestness, in the hands of factious men who use them to reconcile things that are absolutely irreconcilable, viz., the extravagances of a fickle human science with divine faith, and the spirit of a frivolous world with the dignity and constancy of the Church.
18. But if you see all this, venerable brethren,. and deplore it bitterly with Us, you are not therefore cast down or without all hope. You know of the great conflicts that other times have brought upon the Christian people, very different though they were from our own days. We have but to turn again to the age in which Anselm lived, so full of difficulties as it appears in the annals of the Church. Then indeed was it necessary to fight for the altar and the home, for the sanctity of public law, for liberty, civilization, sound doctrine, of all of which the Church alone was the teacher and the defender among the nations, to curb the violence of princes who arrogated to themselves the right of treading upon the most sacred liberties, to eradicate the vices, ignorance, and uncouthness of the people, not yet entirely stripped of their old barbarism and often enough refractory to the educating influence of the Church, to rouse a part of the clergy who had grown lax or lawless in their conduct, inasmuch as not unfrequently they were selected arbitrarily and according to a perverse system of election by the princes, and controlled by and bound to these in all things.
19. Such was the state of things notably in those countries on whose behalf Anselm especially labored, either by his teaching as master, by his example as religious, or by his assiduous vigilance and many-sided activity as Archbishop and Primate. For his great services were especially accomplished for the provinces of Gaul which a few centuries before had fallen into the hands of the Normans, and by the islands of Britain which only a few centuries before had come to the Church. In both countries the convulsions caused by revolutions within and wars without gave rise to looseness of discipline both among the rulers and their subjects, among the clergy and the people.
20. Abuses like these were bitterly lamented by the great men of the time, such as Lanfranc, Anselm’s master and later his predecessor in the see of Canterbury, and still more by the Roman Pontiffs, among whom it will suffice to mention here the courageous Gregory VII, the intrepid champion of justice, unswerving defender of the rights of the Church, vigilant guardian and defender of the sanctity of the clergy. (Pope Saint Pius X, Communium Rerurm, April 21, 1909, on Saint Anselm of Cantebury.)
Presaging the encouraging words of Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, by nearly sixteen years, eight months, Pope Saint Pius X told the Catholic bishops of the world not to lose heart despite the warfare being waged against Holy Mother Church by the Modernists:
21. Strong in their example and rivaling them in their zeal, Anselm also lamented the same evils, writing thus to a prince of his people, and one who rejoiced to describe himself as his relation by blood and affection: “You see, my dearest Lord, how the Church of God, our Mother, whom God calls His Fair One and His Beloved Spouse, is trodden underfoot by bad princes, how she is placed in tribulation for their eternal damnation by those to whom she was recommended by God as to protectors who would defend her, with what presumption they have usurped for their own uses the things that belong to her, the cruelty with which they despise and violate religion and her law. Disdaining obedience to the decrees of the Apostolic See, made for the defense of religion, they surely convict themselves of disobedience to the Apostle Peter whose place he holds, nay, to Christ who recommended His Church to Peter. . . Because they who refuse to be subject to the law of God are surely reputed the enemies of God” (Epist. lib. iii. epist. 65). Thus wrote Anselm, and would that his words had been treasured by the successor and the descendants of that most potent prince, and by the other sovereigns and peoples who were so loved and counseled and served by him.
22. But persecution, exile, spoliation, the trials and toils of hard fighting, far from shaking, only rooted deeper Anselm’s love for the Church and the Apostolic See. “I fear no exile, or poverty or torments or death, because, while God strengthens me, for all these things my heart is prepared for the sake of the obedience due to the Apostolic See and the liberty of the Church of Christ, my Mother,” (Ib. lib. iii. ep. 73), he wrote to Our Predecessor Paschal amid his greatest difficulties. And if he has recourse to the Chair of Peter for protection and help, the sole reason is: “Lest through me and on account of me the constancy of ecclesiastical devotion and Apostolic authority should ever be in the least degree weakened.” And then he gives his reason, which for Us is the badge of pastoral dignity and strength: “I would rather die, and while I live I would rather undergo penury in exile, rather than see the honor of the Church of God dimmed in the slightest degree on my account or through my example” (Ib. Lib. iv. ep. 47).
In like manner, we need to be reminded during this fist full week of Lent that it is necessary for us to make reparation for our own sins with great assiduousness as the consecrated slaves of Our Divine Redeemer through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
We also need to be reminded that the Catholic Church can never be the author of error and that no true pope, although he might fail to discharge his administrative duties as well as he should, can ever teach error or give us a liturgy that is in any way displeasing to God and an incentive to impiety.
Pope Saint Pius X taught us clearly that we cannot “pick and choose” what a true Successor of Saint Peter teaches. We must obey him entirely, something that is lost on the Society of Saint Pius X, which is now arrogating unto itself the “right” to determine who is legitimately “canonized” by the conciliar “popes” (for a superb refutation of this absolutely false, heretical proposition, please see Praying To The Damned). This is what Pope Saint Pius X wrote in 1912:
Distracted with so many occupations, it is easy to forget the things that lead to perfection in priestly life; it is easy [for the priest] to delude himself and to believe that, by busying himself with the salvation of the souls of others, he consequently works for his own sanctification. Alas, let not this delusion lead you to error, because nemo dat quod nemo habet [no one gives what he does not have]; and, in order to sanctify others, it is necessary not to neglect any of the ways proposed for the sanctification of our own selves….
The Pope is the guardian of dogma and of morals; he is the custodian of the principles that make families sound, nations great, souls holy; he is the counsellor of princes and of peoples; he is the head under whom no one feels tyrannized because he represents God Himself; he is the supreme father who unites in himself all that may exist that is loving, tender, divine.
It seems incredible, and is even painful, that there be priests to whom this recommendation must be made, but we are regrettably in our age in this hard, unhappy, situation of having to tell priests: love the Pope!
And how must the Pope be loved? Non verbo neque lingua, sed opere et veritate.[Not in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in – 1 Jn iii, 18] When one loves a person, one tries to adhere in everything to his thoughts, to fulfill his will, to perform his wishes. And if Our Lord Jesus Christ said of Himself, “si quis diligit me, sermonem meum servabit,” [if any one love me, he will keep my word – Jn xiv, 23] therefore, in order to demonstrate our love for the Pope, it is necessary to obey him.
Therefore, when we love the Pope, there are no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed; when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spoken clearly enough, almost as if he were forced to repeat to the ear of each one the will clearly expressed so many times not only in person, but with letters and other public documents; we do not place his orders in doubt, adding the facile pretext of those unwilling to obey – that it is not the Pope who commands, but those who surround him; we do not limit the field in which he might and must exercise his authority; we do not set above the authority of the Pope that of other persons, however learned, who dissent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because whoever is holy cannot dissent from the Pope.
This is the cry of a heart filled with pain, that with deep sadness I express, not for your sake, dear brothers, but to deplore, with you, the conduct of so many priests, who not only allow themselves to debate and criticize the wishes of the Pope, but are not embarrassed to reach shameless and blatant disobedience, with so much scandal for the good and with so great damage to souls. (Pope Saint Pius X, Allocution Viringrazio to priests on the 50th anniversary of the Apostolic Union, November 18, 1912, as found at: “Love the Pope!” – no ifs, and no buts.)
Thus stands completely demolished the entire great facade of the “resist while recognize” movement.
We turn, as always to Our Lady, who holds us in the crossing of her arms and in the folds of her mantle. We must, as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, trusting that we might be able to plant a few seeds for the Triumph of that same Immaculate Heart.
We may not see until eternity, please God and by the graces He sends to us through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother, the fruit of the seeds we plant by means of our prayers and penances and sacrifices, given unto the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We must remain confident, however, that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ wants to us, as unworthy as we are, to try to plant a few seeds so that more and more Catholics in the conciliar structures, both “priests” and laity alike, will recognize that it is indeed a sin to stand by He is blasphemed by Modernists, that He–and His true priesthood–are to be found in the catacombs where no concessions at all are made to conciliarism or its wolves in shepherds’ clothing.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
The Forty Holy Martyrs, pray for us.