The entire goal of Sensus fidei in the life of the Church is to provide a theological justification for Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s plans to expedite the evolutionary processes, if you will, of the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s logical path of degeneration to the point of complete paganism. Although the point has been made several times before on this site, the counterfeit church of conciliarism is rapidly matching the heretical and schismatic Anglican sect’s complete abandonment of any semblance of even a generic sense of Christianity in order to assuage the consciences of those steeped in lives of unrepentant sins, whether those sins be of the natural or unnatural variety.
The authors of Sensus fidei in the life of the Church attempted to explain that the conciliar religion’s concept of the sense of their false faith must be distinguished from public opinion as found in the realm of civil “democracies,” which are, of course, actually republics in that a pure democracy is a form of government in which the whole number of citizens meeting eligibility requirement gather in assembly to directly decide matters of public policy (e.g. ancient Athens and the “town meeting” form of government that to this very day in some New England communities), before proceeding to extol the role of public opinion in the gathering of the sense of the faithful. Such must ever be the fate of minds who reject what Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI considered the “crystal-clear logic” of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Scholasticism that is disparaged by Jorge Mario Bergoglio as producing a “church that is closed-in-on-itself” and thus incapable of letting what he thinks is the Third Person of Most Blessed Trinity “blow freely” without being “caged in” by the “filter” of a dogmatically “rigid” past.
Here is the supposed rejection of public opinion as the foundation of the sense of the faithful while admitting that it does have a “proper role in the Church”:
One of the most delicate topics is the relationship between the sensus fidei and public or majority opinion both inside and outside the Church. Public opinion is a sociological concept, which applies first of all to political societies. The emergence of public opinion is linked to the birth and development of the political model of representative democracy. In so far as political power gains its legitimacy from the people, the latter must make known their thoughts, and political power must take account of them in the exercise of government. Public opinion is therefore essential to the healthy functioning of democratic life, and it is important that it be enlightened and informed in a competent and honest manner. That is the role of the mass media, which thus contribute greatly to the common good of society, as long as they do not seek to manipulate opinion in favour of particular interests.
114. The Church appreciates the high human and moral values espoused by democracy, but she herself is not structured according to the principles of a secular political society. The Church, the mystery of the communion of humanity with God, receives her constitution from Christ. It is from him that she receives her internal structure and her principles of government. Public opinion cannot, therefore, play in the Church the determinative role that it legitimately plays in the political societies that rely on the principle of popular sovereignty, though it does have a proper role in the Church, as we shall seek to clarify below. (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
Extensive and Protracted Comments:
There is a great deal of error in this one paragraph. Much time has to be taken to examine the matter in depth as the conciliar revolutionaries must by their very reprobate nature distort the meaning, history and application in concrete circumstances of Holy Mother Church’s Social Teaching.
First, it is false that political power derives its legitimacy from the people. Although it will be explained below that the people may choose to adopt any particular form of government as befits the pursuit of the common good in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, the source of all sovereignty is God, not the people.
Pope Leo XIII made this eminently clear in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:
30. Now, natural reason itself proves convincingly that such concepts of the government of a State are wholly at variance with the truth. Nature itself bears witness that all power, of every kind, has its origin from God, who is its chief and most august source.
31. The sovereignty of the people, however, and this without any reference to God, is held to reside in the multitude; which is doubtless a doctrine exceedingly well calculated to flatter and to inflame many passions, but which lacks all reasonable proof, and all power of insuring public safety and preserving order. Indeed, from the prevalence of this teaching, things have come to such a pass that may hold as an axiom of civil jurisprudence that seditions may be rightfully fostered. For the opinion prevails that princes are nothing more than delegates chosen to carry out the will of the people; whence it necessarily follows that all things are as changeable as the will of the people, so that risk of public disturbance is ever hanging over our heads.
To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.
32. So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action.
33. To wish the Church to be subject to the civil power in the exercise of her duty is a great folly and a sheer injustice. Whenever this is the case, order is disturbed, for things natural are put above things supernatural; the many benefits which the Church, if free to act, would confer on society are either prevented or at least lessened in number; and a way is prepared for enmities and contentions between the two powers, with how evil result to both the issue of events has taught us only too frequently.
34. Doctrines such as these, which cannot be approved by human reason, and most seriously affect the whole civil order, Our predecessors the Roman Pontiffs (well aware of what their apostolic office required of them) have never allowed to pass uncondemned. Thus, Gregory XVI in his encyclical letter “Mirari Vos,” dated August 15, 1832, inveighed with weighty words against the sophisms which even at his time were being publicly inculcated-namely, that no preference should be shown for any particular form of worship; that it is right for individuals to form their own personal judgments about religion; that each man’s conscience is his sole and allsufficing guide; and that it is lawful for every man to publish his own views, whatever they may be, and even to conspire against the State. On the question of the separation of Church and State the same Pontiff writes as follows: “Nor can We hope for happier results either for religion or for the civil government from the wishes of those who desire that the Church be separated from the State, and the concord between the secular and ecclesiastical authority be dissolved. It is clear that these men, who yearn for a shameless liberty, live in dread of an agreement which has always been fraught with good, and advantageous alike to sacred and civil interests.” To the like effect, also, as occasion presented itself, did Pius IX brand publicly many false opinions which were gaining ground, and afterwards ordered them to be condensed in summary form in order that in this sea of error Catholics might have a light which they might safely follow. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
The conciliar revolutionaries celebrated the “joys” of Modernity as “good” in and of themselves even though they are contrary to Divine Revelation and to right reason. Again, one must face the plain reality that these revolutionaries profess a false religion and thus are not members of the Catholic Church, no less officials within her.
Second, yes, the Catholic Church can adapt herself to any legitimate form of government, including the republican form of democratic governance, as long as those governments are directed toward their proper end by pursuing the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End, the possession of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. Our true popes have urge children of Holy Mother Church to obey just laws and to resist those that are repugnant to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law by making use of the liberties accorded them by the civil law. Holy Mother Church does not, however, esteem “democracy’s” supposed “high human and moral values.
Writing in his encyclical letter on the French Third Republic, which came into existence in 1871 following the overthrow of Emperor Napoleon III (Louis Bonaparte) and then proceeded to institute gravely anti-Catholic legislation that caused many Catholics in France to protest its legitimacy, Pope Leo XIII wrote that Holy Mother Church accepts as legitimate all forms of government that aim to promote the common good, noting that she is not blind to the inherent defects, such as the separation of Church and State, found in that same Third Republic:
12. We have expressly recalled some features of the past that Catholics might not be dismayed by the present. Substantially the struggle is ever the same: Jesus Christ is always exposed to the contradictions of the world, and the same means are always used by modern enemies of Christianity, means old in principle and scarcely modified in form; but the same means of defense are also clearly indicated to Christians of the present day by our apologists, our doctors and our martyrs. What they have done it is incumbent upon us to do in our turn. Let us therefore place above all else the glory of God and of His Church; let us work for her with an assiduity at once constant and effective, and leave all care of success to Jesus Christ, who tells us: “In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world.”[5]
13. To attain this We have already remarked that a great union is necessary, and if it is to be realized, it is indispensable that all preoccupation capable of diminishing its strength and efficacy must be abandoned. Here We intend alluding principally to the political differences among the French in regard to the actual republic — a question We would treat with the clearness which the gravity of the subject demands, beginning with the principles and descending thence to practical results.
14. Various political governments have succeeded one another in France during the last century, each having its own distinctive form: the Empire, the Monarchy, and the Republic. By giving one’s self up to abstractions, one could at length conclude which is the best of these forms, considered in themselves; and in all truth it may be affirmed that each of them is good, provided it lead straight to its end — that is to say, to the common good for which social authority is constituted; and finally, it may be added that, from a relative point of view, such and such a form of government may be preferable because of being better adapted to the character and customs of such or such a nation. In this order of speculative ideas, Catholics, like all other citizens, are free to prefer one form of government to another precisely because no one of these social forms is, in itself, opposed to the principles of sound reason nor to the maxims of Christian doctrine. What amply justifies the wisdom of the Church is that in her relations with political powers she makes abstraction of the forms which differentiate them and treats with them concerning the great religious interests of nations, knowing that hers is the duty to undertake their tutelage above all other interests. Our preceding Encyclicals have already exposed these principles, but it was nevertheless necessary to recall them for the development of the subject which occupies us to-day.
15. In descending from the domain of abstractions to that of facts, we must beware of denying the principles just established: they remain fixed. However, becoming incarnated in facts, they are clothed with a contingent character, determined by the center in which their application is produced. Otherwise said, if every political form is good by itself and may be applied to the government of nations, the fact still remains that political power is not found in all nations under the same form; each has its own. This form springs from a combination of historical or national, though always human, circumstances which, in a nation, give rise to its traditional and even fundamental laws, and by these is determined the particular form of government, the basis of transmission of supreme power. (Pope Leo XIII, Au Milieu Des Sollicitudes, February 16, 1892.)
Pope Leo XIII was not praising the French Third Republic. He was only stating that it was possible for Catholics to work within it for the common good, noting that the sovereign of all states is God Himself, not the people. Christ the King is sovereign. His language was measured and diplomatic as he endeavored give the Concordat between the Church and the Third Republic a chance to work.
Pope Leo XIII, however, went on to reiterate Holy Mother Church’s absolute condemnation of the separation of Church and State in France that had been condemned consistently by his predecessors dating back to Pope Pius VII’s Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814. While Holy Mother Church will adapt herself to the particular circumstances in which her children live and tolerate the existence of such a situation, she never yields anything to the the anti-Incarnational errors of the modern civil state that is but the misbegotten issue of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry:
28. We shall not hold to the same language on another point, concerning the principle of the separation of the State and Church, which is equivalent to the separation of human legislation from Christian and divine legislation. We do not care to interrupt Ourselves here in order to demonstrate the absurdity of such a separation; each one will understand for himself. As soon as the State refuses to give to God what belongs to God, by a necessary consequence it refuses to give to citizens that to which, as men, they have a right; as, whether agreeable or not to accept, it cannot be denied that man’s rights spring from his duty toward God. Whence if follows that the State, by missing in this connection the principal object of its institution, finally becomes false to itself by denying that which is the reason of its own existence. These superior truths are so clearly proclaimed by the voice of even natural reason, that they force themselves upon all who are not blinded by the violence of passion; therefore Catholics cannot be too careful in defending themselves against such a separation. In fact, to wish that the State would separate itself from the Church would be to wish, by a logical sequence, that the Church be reduced to the liberty of living according to the law common to all citizens.…It is true that in certain countries this state of affairs exists. It is a condition which, if it have numerous and serious inconveniences, also offers some advantages — above all when, by a fortunate inconsistency, the legislator is inspired by Christian principles — and, though these advantages cannot justify the false principle of separation nor authorize its defense, they nevertheless render worthy of toleration a situation which, practically, might be worse.
29. But in France, a nation Catholic in her traditions and by the present faith of the great majority of her sons, the Church should not be placed in the precarious position to which she must submit among other peoples; and the better that Catholics understand the aim of the enemies who desire this separation, the less will they favor it. To these enemies, and they say it clearly enough, this separation means that political legislation be entirely independent of religious legislation; nay, more, that Power be absolutely indifferent to the interests of Christian society, that is to say, of the Church; in fact, that it deny her very existence. But they make a reservation formulated thus: As soon as the Church, utilizing the resources which common law accords to the least among Frenchmen, will, by redoubling her native activity, cause her work to prosper, then the State intervening, can and will put French Catholics outside the common law itself. . . In a word: the ideal of these men would be a return to paganism: the State would recognize the Church only when it would be pleased to persecute her. (Pope Leo XIII, Au Milieu Des Sollicitudes, February 16, 1892.)
This is what was happening in France at that time. This is what happening all over thew world today. Yet it is that the conciliar revolutionaries have long praised the ethos of “pluralism” and “religious liberty” and “separation of Church and State” and “freedom of the press” and “freedom of speech” despite all of the objective evidence testifying to the prophetic statements made by our true popes in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Then again, of course,the conciliar revolutionaries are busy celebrating those who are said to “live on the existential peripheries” as a result of the tide of evils that have been let loose by Modernity and that Modernism has enabled by its heresies, apostasies, errors and by its every celebration of the world in its liturgically abominable and sacramentally barren Protestant and Judeo-Masonic liturgical service.
Insofar as the case of France, a country where so-called “gay marriage” was approved in 2013 without a word of protest from Jorge Mario Bergoglio, it is well known that the leaders of the French Third Republic responded to Pope Leo XIII’s careful explication and application of Catholic principles with even more anti-Catholic legislation than before, which is what prompted Pope Saint Pius, who had the inestimable benefit of not having had any experience in the diplomatic service of the Holy See,wrote the following forceful and completely unequivocal words in Vehementer Nos almost exactly fourteen years later, that is, on February 11, 1906.
Our soul is full of sorrowful solicitude and Our heart overflows with grief, when Our thoughts dwell upon you. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, immediately after the promulgation of that law which, by sundering violently the old ties that linked your nation with the Apostolic See, creates for the Catholic Church in France a situation unworthy of her and ever to be lamented? That is, beyond question, an event of the gravest import, and one that must be deplored by all the right-minded, for it is as disastrous to society as it is to religion; but it is an event which can have surprised nobody who has paid any attention to the religious policy followed in France of late years. For you, Venerable Brethren, it will certainly have been nothing new or strange, witnesses as you have been of the many dreadful blows aimed from time to time by the public authority at religion. You have seen the sanctity and the inviolability of Christian marriage outraged by legislative acts in formal contradiction with them; the schools and hospitals laicized; clerics torn from their studies and from ecclesiastical discipline to be subjected to military service; the religious congregations dispersed and despoiled, and their members for the most part reduced to the last stage of destitution. Other legal measures which you all know have followed: the law ordaining public prayers at the beginning of each Parliamentary Session and of the assizes has been abolished; the signs of mourning traditionally observed on board the ships on Good Friday suppressed; the religious character effaced from the judicial oath; all actions and emblems serving in any way to recall the idea of religion banished from the courts, the schools, the army, the navy, and in a word from all public establishments. These measures and others still which, one after another really separated the Church from the State, were but so many steps designedly made to arrive at complete and official separation, as the authors of them have publicly and frequently admitted.
2. On the other hand the Holy See has spared absolutely no means to avert this great calamity. While it was untiring in warning those who were at the head of affairs in France, and in conjuring them over and over again to weigh well the immensity of the evils that would infallibly result from their separatist policy, it at the same time lavished upon France the most striking proofs of indulgent affection. It has then reason to hope that gratitude would have stayed those politicians on their downward path, and brought them at last to relinquish their designs. But all has been in vain-the attentions, good offices, and efforts of Our Predecessor and Ourself. The enemies of religion have succeeded at last in effecting by violence what they have long desired, in defiance of your rights as a Catholic nation and of the wishes of all who think rightly. At a moment of such gravity for the Church, therefore, filled with the sense of Our Apostolic responsibility, We have considered it Our duty to raise Our voice and to open Our heart to you, Venerable Brethren, and to your clergy and people-to all of you whom We have ever cherished with special affection but whom We now, as is only right, love more tenderly than ever.
3. That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man’s eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man’s supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. “Between them,” he says, “there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-“Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur.” He proceeds: “Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them…. As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. — “Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere…. Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error.”[1]
4. And if it is true that any Christian State does something eminently disastrous and reprehensible in separating itself from the Church, how much more deplorable is it that France, of all nations in the world, would have entered on this policy; France which has been during the course of centuries the object of such great and special predilection on the part of the Apostolic See whose fortunes and glories have ever been closely bound up with the practice of Christian virtue and respect for religion. Leo XIII had truly good reason to say: “France cannot forget that Providence has united its destiny with the Holy See by ties too strong and too old that she should ever wish to break them. And it is this union that has been the source of her real greatness and her purest glories…. To disturb this traditional union would be to deprive the nation of part of her moral force and great influence in the world.“[2] (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)
Although this quotation is very familiar to longtime readers of this site, do want to emphasize yet again this one sentence: “Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State.” The conciliar “popes” have never ceased praising the separation of the Church and State, which should help to convince the unconvinced that they have not been true and legitimate Successors of Saint Peter and that the “church” they head is but the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church.
The modern civil state with its reliance on the falsehoods of “popular sovereignty,” “freedom of religion,” “separation of Church and State” and maintained by “public opinion,” each of which is praised, celebrated and exalted by the conciliar revolutionaries has done away with the truth contained in the following statement: God (as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church) is a majority of One.
Paragraphs 113 and 114 from Sensus fidei in the life of the Church are meant to set up the reader for a very revolutionary discussion of how public opinion, although it is not part of the Catholic Church’s Divine Constitution, nevertheless plays a role in the development of pastoral approaches, something that will be discussed below in the context of the Instrumentum Laboris that has been issued in preparation for Jorge’s upcoming “extraordinary synod on the family” that will be held within the walls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Banks of the Tiber River in October of this year.
Here are the next pertinent passages from Sensus fidei in the life of the Church:
115. The mass media comment frequently on religious affairs. Public interest in matters of faith is a good sign, and the freedom of the press is a basic human right. The Catholic Church is not afraid of discussion or controversy regarding her teaching. On the contrary, she welcomes debate as a manifestation of religious freedom. Everyone is free either to criticise or to support her. Indeed, she recognises that fair and constructive critique can help her to see problems more clearly and to find better solutions. She herself, in turn, is free to criticise unfair attacks, and needs access to the media in order to defend the faith if necessary. She values invitations from independent media to contribute to public debates. She does not want a monopoly of information, but appreciates the plurality and interchange of opinions. She also, however, knows the importance of informing society about the true meaning and content both of her faith and of her moral teaching.
116. The voices of lay people are heard much more frequently now in the Church, sometimes with conservative and sometimes with progressive positions, but generally participating constructively in the life and the mission of the Church. The huge development of society by education has had considerable impact on relations within the Church. The Church herself is engaged worldwide in educational programmes aimed at giving people their own voice and their own rights. It is therefore a good sign if many people today are interested in the teaching, the liturgy and the service of the Church. Many members of the Church want to exercise their own competence, and to participate in their own proper way in the life of the Church. They organise themselves within parishes and in various groups and movements to build up the Church and to influence society at large, and they seek contact via social media with other believers and with people of good will.
117. The new networks of communication both inside and outside the Church call for new forms of attention and critique, and the renewal of skills of discernment. There are influences from special interest groups which are not compatible, or not fully so, with the Catholic faith; there are convictions which are only applicable to a certain place or time; and there are pressures to lessen the role of faith in public debate or to accommodate traditional Christian doctrine to modern concerns and opinions. (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
Fatigued Man’s Bleary-Eyed Commentary:
First, While Holy Mother Church will always defend her doctrine, which has received from her Divine Founder, Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom, Christ the King and has maintained inviolate by the infallible guidance and protection of God the Holy Ghost, she has never “welcomed debate as a manifestation of religious freedom.” The Catholic Church is the true and only teacher of Christianity and thus it is that she jealously safeguards her Divinely appointed role as the the only true teacher and the only sanctifier of men in the whole world.
For the sake of the one person who has never read these articles before or for the sake of a reader or two who may have read them but has forgotten the quotes below soon after reading them, here are healthy antidotes to the poison contained in the papal quotations below:
This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly “the bottomless pit” is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws — in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.
Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
“For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of “naturalism,” as they call it, dare to teach that “the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones.” And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that “that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require.” From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an “insanity,” viz., that “liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.” But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching “liberty of perdition;” and that “if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling.”
And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that “the people’s will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right.” But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests? (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)
This so clear that anyone as to obliterate the sophistic praise of the very diabolical instruments that have been used to convert Catholics from the Holy Faith into a ready acceptance of everything presented by lords of Modernity as being true and good even though they are repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity. We live in age of insanity and injurious babbling that suits the insane babblers of conciliarism so very well.
The conciliar masters of contradiction attempted to explain the distinctions between public opinion and the sensus fidei before going on to embrace “consultation” as a means of deciding that they think is the Catholic Church’s pastoral practices as an effort is made to “renew” the Church’s doctrine. The translation of this is most simple: The conciliar revolutionaries use the word “renew” to signify a change what true sense of the Holy Faith informs us is repugnant to the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity and to the good of the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and His Death on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem.
After all, of course, the conciliar revolutionaries have been attempting to peddle the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service as a “liturgical renewal” when it is nothing other than a wholesale overthrow of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in favor of the errors of conciiarism and its “reconciliation” with the principles of Modernity.
Second, there is no such thing as a “conservative” or a “progressive” Catholic. Such are the misapplication of the labels used to identify the false opposites of naturalism to the realm of the Holy Faith, where one and all are bound to be united to everything contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith without any reservation and qualification whatsoever, admitting that, as Pope Leo XIII tried to address in Au Milieu Sollicitudes, February 16, 1892, Catholics might and do disagree at times over the application of the principles of Holy Mother Church’s Social Teaching in concrete circumstances.
As pertains to the doctrine of the Holy Faith, we are simply Catholic, nothing else.
Pope Leo XIII made this very clear in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896:
Agreement and union of minds is the necessary foundation of this perfect concord amongst men, from which concurrence of wills and similarity of action are the natural results. Wherefore, in His divine wisdom, He ordained in His Church Unity of Faith; a virtue which is the first of those bonds which unite man to God, and whence we receive the name of the faithful – “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. iv., 5). That is, as there is one Lord and one baptism, so should all Christians, without exception, have but one faith. And so the Apostle St. Paul not merely begs, but entreats and implores Christians to be all of the same mind, and to avoid difference of opinions: “I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms amongst you, and that you be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment” (I Cor. i., 10). Such passages certainly need no interpreter; they speak clearly enough for themselves. Besides, all who profess Christianity allow that there can be but one faith. It is of the greatest importance and indeed of absolute necessity, as to which many are deceived, that the nature and character of this unity should be recognized. And, as We have already stated, this is not to be ascertained by conjecture, but by the certain knowledge of what was done; that is by seeking for and ascertaining what kind of unity in faith has been commanded by Jesus Christ. (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)
To speak in terms of “conservative” and “progressive” Catholics is to divide that which is indivisible, the Mystical Body of Christ that is the Catholic Church. The divisions that exist between Catholics in the past fifty years have been caused by conciliarism, not by the Holy Faith.
The expression of the Catholic Faith is meant to be clear, not foggy. The expression of the dogmas of the Catholic Faith is precise, not ambiguous or subject to a variety of different interpretations. While it is certainly the case that many theological questions (such as the coexistence of God’s Divine foreknowledge of human events with human free will, a matter that divided the Thomists and the Dun Scotists and is still a matter of active debate among orthodox Catholic theologians) are subject to legitimate interpretations and explanations, the dogmas of the Faith are meant to be grasped clearly by the human mind and accepted on the authority of the One Who has revealed them and caused them to be expressed in precise terms by legitimate popes and councils of the Catholic Church. While it is certainly true that the application of certain theological principles in concrete circumstances can be fraught with subjective considerations and other difficulties of the practical order, solemnly defined dogmatic truths demand the assent of the mind and the will without any degree of dissent or deviation whatsoever.
The Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas has been a major protection against the imprecise expression of the doctrines of the Church and a sure guide to their definitive explication. One true pope after another has recognized this to be the case. Pope Saint Pius X did so in a tribute to Saint Thomas Aquinas, Doctoris Angelici:
For just as the opinion of certain ancients is to be rejected which maintains that it makes no difference to the truth of the Faith what any man thinks about the nature of creation, provided his opinions on the nature of God be sound, because error with regard to the nature of creation begets a false knowledge of God; so the principles of philosophy laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas are to be religiously and inviolably observed, because they are the means of acquiring such a knowledge of creation as is most congruent with the Faith; of refuting all the errors of all the ages, and of enabling man to distinguish clearly what things are to be attributed to God and to God alone….
St. Thomas perfected and augmented still further by the almost angelic quality of his intellect all this superb patrimony of wisdom which he inherited from his predecessors and applied it to prepare, illustrate and protect sacred doctrine in the minds of men. Sound reason suggests that it would be foolish to neglect it and religion will not suffer it to be in any way attenuated. And rightly, because, if Catholic doctrine is once deprived of this strong bulwark, it is useless to seek the slightest assistance for its defense in a philosophy whose principles are either common to the errors of materialism, monism, pantheism, socialism and modernism, or certainly not opposed to such systems. The reason is that the capital theses in the philosophy of St Thomas are not to be placed in the category of opinions capable of being debated one way or another, but are to be considered as the foundations upon which the science of natural and divine things is based; if such principles are once removed or in any way impaired, it must necessarily follow that students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to perceive so much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of divine revelation are proposed by the magistracy of the Church. . . . (Pope Saint Pius X, Doctoris Angelici, quoted in James Larson’s Article 11: A Confusion of Loves.)
This is why it is so important for the conciliar revolutionaries to have made war upon the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas and to have recourse to “meeting the people where they are” that is nothing other than a descent into sentimentality and emotionalism in order to tickle the itching ears of unrepentant sinners. Those who get in the way of theological “renewal” are said to be without “mercy” or love” even though it is they, believing Catholics, who are showing forth their true love of God as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church and for souls by refusing to make any concessions to the errors and the diabolical agenda of the conciliar revolutionaries.
Having extolled the possible role of public opinion in the “development” of the sensus fidei, the apostates who wrote Sensus fidei in the life of the Church, attempted once again to prove that the two are not the same thing explaining the “proper” role of public opinion in the life of their false church.
Got all that?
It is fatiguing.
Why delay?
Be fatigued:
118. It is clear that there can be no simple identification between the sensus fidei and public or majority opinion. These are by no means the same thing.
i) First of all, the sensus fidei is obviously related to faith, and faith is a gift not necessarily possessed by all people, so the sensus fidei can certainly not be likened to public opinion in society at large. Then also, while Christian faith is, of course, the primary factor uniting members of the Church, many different influences combine to shape the views of Christians living in the modern world. As the above discussion of dispositions implicitly shows, the sensus fidei cannot simply be identified, therefore, with public or majority opinion in the Church, either. Faith, not opinion, is the necessary focus of attention. Opinion is often just an expression, frequently changeable and transient, of the mood or desires of a certain group or culture, whereas faith is the echo of the one Gospel which is valid for all places and times. (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
Quick Comment:
There has been nothing more changeable and transient than the ever-changing doctrines, liturgies and pastoral practices of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is degenerating to the point of self-caricature.
Back to those who specializing in giving believing Catholics a case of exhaustion (hey, I get a little funny when I am tired):
ii) In the history of the people of God, it has often been not the majority but rather a minority which has truly lived and witnessed to the faith. The Old Testament knew the ‘holy remnant’ of believers, sometimes very few in number, over against the kings and priests and most of the Israelites. Christianity itself started as a small minority, blamed and persecuted by public authorities. In the history of the Church, evangelical movements such as the Franciscans and Dominicans, or later the Jesuits, started as small groups treated with suspicion by various bishops and theologians. In many countries today, Christians are under strong pressure from other religions or secular ideologies to neglect the truth of faith and weaken the boundaries of ecclesial community. It is therefore particularly important to discern and listen to the voices of the ‘little ones who believe’ (Mk 9:42). (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
Another Quick Comment or Two:
First, curious, is it not, that the authors of do not name that among the “public authorities” who persecuted Catholics in Holy Mother Church’s infancy were the Jews. They did so with great fury prior to the chastisement that Christ the King visited upon them in 70 A.D. as he used the pagan Romans to punish them for their unbelief as they were dispersed into the quarters of the known world.
Second, the Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits may have been viewed with suspicions by many at first. Each, however, received the favor of true Successors of Saint Peter. Pope Innocent III was particularly solicitous of the Franciscans and the Dominicans as he knew that their respective founders, Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominican de Guzman, were true sons of Holy Mother Church. The Jesuits, for their part, were meant by Saint Ignatius of Loyola to be the Pope’s Army in defense of the Holy Faith.
The “lay movements” spawned by conciliarism may have had the favor of the conciliar “popes” and the approval of a large number of the “bishops.” Each of these “movements,” however, have enjoyed the favor of the conciliar “popes” precisely because their religious sentiments are those of conciliarism, not Catholicism. Moreover, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, despite his recent meeting with a delegation from the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, has authorized a major warfare upon them because they have held to a great deal of the Catholic Faith, including the devotion that large numbers of them have for the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that is “approved” for use under the Motu proprio of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007.
Although very tired by this all, there are eight more sections of this bilge to plow through before connecting this all to the agenda of the new Instrumentum Laboris in part three:
119. It is undoubtedly necessary to distinguish between the sensus fidei and public or majority opinion, hence the need to identify dispositions necessary for participation in the sensus fidei, such as those elaborated above. Nevertheless, it is the whole people of God which, in its inner unity, confesses and lives the true faith. The magisterium and theology must work constantly to renew the presentation of the faith in different situations, confronting if necessary dominant notions of Christian truth with the actual truth of the Gospel, but it must be recalled that the experience of the Church shows that sometimes the truth of the faith has been conserved not by the efforts of theologians or the teaching of the majority of bishops but in the hearts of believers. (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
Pointed Comment:
There’s that word “renew” again as the suggestion is made “to renew the presentation of the faith in different situations, confronting dominant notions of Christian truth with the actual truth of the Gospel.” In other words, the apostates are saying that it is necessary to rethink the “message” as “dominant notions of Christian truth” held by some stuffy theologians yield to the “hearts of believers.” This means that there can be a conflict between “dominant notions of Christian truth” and the “actual truth of Gospel, meaning the “actual truth” has been obscured by Holy Mother Church’s true popes and true councils and those of her Fathers and Doctors whose writings “corrupted” this “actual truth.” There is a word for this: Gnosticism.
Actually, of course, the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, has conserved the teaching of the Catholic Church, which never changes her manner of speaking:
[The Ancient Doctors] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, they sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith which is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error.
“Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it.
“It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions which are published in the common language for everyone’s use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor Saint Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed.
“In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements which disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged.” (Pope Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794.)
These firings, therefore, with all diligence and care having been formulated by us, we define that it be permitted to no one to bring forward, or to write, or to compose, or to think, or to teach a different faith. Whosoever shall presume to compose a different faith, or to propose, or teach, or hand to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth, from the Gentiles or Jews, or from any heresy, any different Creed; or to introduce a new voice or invention of speech to subvert these things which now have been determined by us, all these, if they be Bishops or clerics let them be deposed, the Bishops from the Episcopate, the clerics from the clergy; but if they be monks or laymen: let them be anathematized. (Constantinople III).
These and many other serious things, which at present would take too long to list, but which you know well, cause Our intense grief. It is not enough for Us to deplore these innumerable evils unless We strive to uproot them. We take refuge in your faith and call upon your concern for the salvation of the Catholic flock. Your singular prudence and diligent spirit give Us courage and console Us, afflicted as We are with so many trials. We must raise Our voice and attempt all things lest a wild boar from the woods should destroy the vineyard or wolves kill the flock. It is Our duty to lead the flock only to the food which is healthful. In these evil and dangerous times, the shepherds must never neglect their duty; they must never be so overcome by fear that they abandon the sheep. Let them never neglect the flock and become sluggish from idleness and apathy. Therefore, united in spirit, let us promote our common cause, or more truly the cause of God; let our vigilance be one and our effort united against the common enemies.
Indeed you will accomplish this perfectly if, as the duty of your office demands, you attend to yourselves and to doctrine and meditate on these words: “the universal Church is affected by any and every novelty” and the admonition of Pope Agatho: “nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished; nothing changed; nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning.” Therefore may the unity which is built upon the See of Peter as on a sure foundation stand firm. May it be for all a wall and a security, a safe port, and a treasury of countless blessings. To check the audacity of those who attempt to infringe upon the rights of this Holy See or to sever the union of the churches with the See of Peter, instill in your people a zealous confidence in the papacy and sincere veneration for it. As St. Cyprian wrote: “He who abandons the See of Peter on which the Church was founded, falsely believes himself to be a part of the Church . . . .
But for the other painful causes We are concerned about, you should recall that certain societies and assemblages seem to draw up a battle line together with the followers of every false religion and cult. They feign piety for religion; but they are driven by a passion for promoting novelties and sedition everywhere. They preach liberty of every sort; they stir up disturbances in sacred and civil affairs, and pluck authority to pieces.(Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
Would that they had but displayed less zeal and energy in propagating it! But such is their activity and such their unwearying labor on behalf of their cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such energy in endeavoring to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to her had their efforts been better directed. Their artifices to delude men’s minds are of two kinds, the first to remove obstacles from their path, the second to devise and apply actively and patiently every resource that can serve their purpose. They recognize that the three chief difficulties which stand in their way are the scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war. Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method. Let the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: “The method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science.” They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those “who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind…or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church“; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: “We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by everyone of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.” Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: “I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.” (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
There is a special irony, however, found in Paragraph 119 of Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church as the true Catholic Faith today is found in the hearts of believing Catholics in the underground, not in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
Back to the brutal apostates and their tortuous schemes:
c) Ways of consulting the faithful
120. There is a genuine equality of dignity among all the faithful, because through their baptism they are all reborn in Christ. ‘Because of this equality they all contribute, each according to his or her own condition and office, to the building up of the Body of Christ.’[133] Therefore, all the faithful ‘have the right, indeed at times the duty, in keeping with their knowledge, competence and position, to manifest to the sacred Pastors their views on matters which concern the good of the Church’. ‘They have the right to make their views known to others of Christ’s faithful, but in doing so they must always respect the integrity of faith and morals, show due reference to the Pastors and take into account both the common good and the dignity of individuals.’[134] Accordingly, the faithful, and specifically the lay people, should be treated by the Church’s pastors with respect and consideration, and consulted in an appropriate way for the good of the Church. (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
121. The word ‘consult’ includes the idea of seeking a judgment or advice as well as inquiring into a matter of fact. On the one hand, in matters of governance and pastoral issues, the pastors of the Church can and should consult the faithful in certain cases in the sense of asking for their advice or their judgment. On the other hand, when the magisterium is defining a doctrine, it is appropriate to consult the faithful in the sense of inquiring into a matter of fact, ‘because the body of the faithful is one of the witnesses to the fact of the tradition of revealed doctrine, and because their consensus through Christendom is the voice of the Infallible Church’.[135] (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
A Comment that will require a moment or two of your time:
Insofar as instances of pastoral abuse or immoral conduct or heterodox teaching heard from the pulpit or taught in a school, then, yes, of course, the faithful have a right and duty to make their concerns known privately, although there might be occasions when serious abuse might have to rebuked publicly according to the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the matter if all private entreaties fail to rectify the abuse.
Begging a thousand pardons here, but how respectful have the conciliar authorities been to members of the laity who brought instances of grave clerical immorality to the attention of their “bishops” and various chancery factotums? In most cases, of course, the members of the laity–not a few members of the conciliar clergy, have been treated with contempt as they were browbeaten, intimidated by diocesan attorneys or attorneys for the diocese’s insurance companies and castigated for daring to call abuse by its proper name.
The only recourse that victims of clerical immorality had was to threaten or to actually file lawsuits and to take matters into the public domain, whereupon the conciliar officials, at least at first, castigated them all over again and engaged in all manner of delaying tactics that were designed to keep their protection of the sodomites that they had recruited and promoted completely under wraps as though it was but the figments of the imaginations of “gold-digging” Catholics. I suggest that those who have any doubt about this fact should consider the massive amount of documented evidence that Mrs. Randy Engel amassed in The Rite of Sodomy. Remember, Father Carlos Urrutigoity is the conciliar vicar general of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, despite his proven record of abusive behavior (see Relevant Once Again: A Special Report on the Society of Saint John (2000) and No Excuses For Those Who Indemnify the Society of Saint John), and that “Monsignor Batista Ricca is still the head of the Vatican Institute for Religious Works (the Vatican Bank) despite his own proven perversity.
Begging yet another thousand pardons, but how respectful have the conciliar authorities in many places shown themselves to believing Catholics who have complained about “liturgical abuses” and aberrant teachings and practices that they know are abhorrent to the Most Blessed Trinity and harmful to souls and to the common good as well? These Catholics have also been treated with great cruelty, especially by the first generation of Catholic revolutionaries appointed by Paul the Sick and promoted by “Saint John Paul II,” men whose apostate minds believe and lips spoke exactly as Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been doing for the past fifteen months, sixteen days in his masquerade as “Pope Francis.”
Yes, yes, yes, power to the “people” with the little exception of those who are considered not part of the “people” by the lords of the conciliar revolution. There is no “consultation” with believing Catholics, only castigation, scorn, mockery and ridicule from the lips of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is always inveighing against “judging others,” at the Casa Santa Marta.
Talk about hypocrisy, Jorge.
As to the teaching of Faith and Morals and the discipline meted out by Holy Mother Church, however, the faithful have only to be concerned about following the teaching of Pope Leo XIII, contained in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890, to be living echoes of their shepherds, warding off error, imagine that, as much as it is within their power, ability and competence to do:
No one, however, must entertain the notion that private individuals are prevented from taking some active part in this duty of teaching, especially those on whom God has bestowed gifts of mind with the strong wish of rendering themselves useful. These, so often as circumstances demand, may take upon themselves, not, indeed, the office of the pastor, but the task of communicating to others what they have themselves received, becoming, as it were, living echoes of their masters in the faith. Such co-operation on the part of the laity has seemed to the Fathers of the Vatican Council so opportune and fruitful of good that they thought well to invite it. “All faithful Christians, but those chiefly who are in a prominent position, or engaged in teaching, we entreat, by the compassion of Jesus Christ, and enjoin by the authority of the same God and Savior, that they bring aid to ward off and eliminate these errors from holy Church, and contribute their zealous help in spreading abroad the light of undefiled faith.” Let each one, therefore, bear in mind that he both can and should, so far as may be, preach the Catholic faith by the authority of his example, and by open and constant profession of the obligations it imposes. In respect, consequently, to the duties that bind us to God and the Church, it should be borne earnestly in mind that in propagating Christian truth and warding off errors the zeal of the laity should, as far as possible, be brought actively into play
The faithful would not, however, so completely and advantageously satisfy these duties as is fitting they should were they to enter the field as isolated champions of the faith. Jesus Christ, indeed, has clearly intimated that the hostility and hatred of men, which He first and foremost experienced, would be shown in like degree toward the work founded by Him, so that many would be barred from profiting by the salvation for which all are indebted to His loving kindness. Wherefore, He willed not only to train disciples in His doctrine, but to unite them into one society, and closely conjoin them in one body, “which is the Church,” whereof He would be the head. The life of Jesus Christ pervades, therefore, the entire framework of this body, cherishes and nourishes its every member, uniting each with each, and making all work together to the same end, albeit the action of each be not the same. Hence it follows that not only is the Church a perfect society far excelling every other, but it is enjoined by her Founder that for the salvation of mankind she is to contend “as an army drawn up in battle array.” The organization and constitution of Christian society can in no wise be changed, neither can any one of its members live as he may choose, nor elect that mode of fighting which best pleases him. For, in effect, he scatters and gathers not who gathers not with the Church and with Jesus Christ, and all who fight not jointly with him and with the Church are in very truth contending against God. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)
A final comment on Paragraphs 120 and 121, which is also relevant to Paragraph 122 below, should be made for your thoughtful consideration.
How can Catholics in the conciliar stuctures today, having been fed a steady diet of heresy, apostasy and blasphemy and exposed to all manner of unspeakable sacrilege, serve as “witnesses to the fact of the tradition of revealed doctrine” when they have taught to revile that tradition and/or are entirely ignorant of it?
To the next two paragraphs of Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church:
122. The practice of consulting the faithful is not new in the life of the Church. In the medieval Church a principle of Roman law was used: Quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus tractari et approbari debet (what affects everyone, should be discussed and approved by all). In the three domains of the life of the Church (faith, sacraments, governance), ‘tradition combined a hierarchical structure with a concrete regime of association and agreement’, and this was considered to be an ‘apostolic practice’ or an ‘apostolic tradition’.[136] (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
123. Problems arise when the majority of the faithful remain indifferent to doctrinal or moral decisions taken by the magisterium or when they positively reject them. This lack of reception may indicate a weakness or a lack of faith on the part of the people of God, caused by an insufficiently critical embrace of contemporary culture. But in some cases it may indicate that certain decisions have been taken by those in authority without due consideration of the experience and the sensus fidei of the faithful, or without sufficient consultation of the faithful by the magisterium.[137] (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
A Mercifully Short Observation:
What was noted above is apropos yet again concerning the inability of most Catholics in the conciliar structures to serve as “witnesses” to anything other than the false “traditions” of the false conciliar religion.
It is, though, in Paragraph 123 that the framework is being established for the acceptance of “same-sex couples” and public fornicators, adulterers, mutants (transvestites) and other unrepentant sinners as outlined in not-so-subtle terms in the Instrumentum Laboris issued in preparation for Jorge’s embrace of “pastoral outreach” to those who find themselves in the “existential peripheries” that are called in the world “alternative living arrangements” that really are ancient paths to personal and social ruin and to Hell itself.
Moreover, to say that “that certain decisions have been taken by those in authority without due consideration of the experience and the sensus fidei of the faithful, or without sufficient consultation of the faithful by the magisterium” is to blaspheme the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, Who has always guided the magisterium infallibly. It is to exalt the role of the “people”–and a people who are misinformed about the true teachings of the Catholic Church–even while contending that “public opinion” is not the same as the sensus fidei.
Hubris writ large.
To the final three sections of Sensus fidei in the life of the Church that will be reviewed for present purposes and for the sanity of the readers and of this writer himself (obviously, what, if any, I ever had to begin with):
124. It is only natural that there should be a constant communication and regular dialogue on practical issues and matters of faith and morals between members of the Church. Public opinion is an important form of that communication in the Church. ‘Since the Church is a living body, she needs public opinion in order to sustain a giving and taking between her members. Without this, she cannot advance in thought and action.’[138] This endorsement of a public exchange of thought and opinions in the Church was given soon after Vatican II, precisely on the basis of the council’s teaching on the sensus fidei and on Christian love, and the faithful were strongly encouraged to take an active part in that public exchange. ‘Catholics should be fully aware of the real freedom to speak their minds which stems from a “feeling for the faith” [i.e. the sensus fidei] and from love. It stems from that feeling for the faith which is aroused and nourished by the spirit of truth in order that, under the guidance of the teaching Church which they accept with reverence, the People of God may cling unswervingly to the faith given to the early Church, with true judgement penetrate its meaning more deeply, and apply it more fully in their lives [Lumen Gentium, 12]. This freedom also stems from love. For it is with love that … the People of God are raised to an intimate sharing in the freedom of Christ Himself, who cleansed us from our sins, in order that we might be able freely to make judgements in accordance with the will of God. Those who exercise authority in the Church will take care to ensure that there is responsible exchange of freely held and expressed opinion among the People of God. More than this, they will set up norms and conditions for this to take place.’[139] (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
Hermeneutic of Self-Contradiction Comment:
Who wrote this?
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel?
Someone on the drafting committee that produced Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church wrote the following in Paragraph 118:
First of all, the sensus fidei is obviously related to faith, and faith is a gift not necessarily possessed by all people, so the sensus fidei can certainly not be likened to public opinion in society at large. (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
Did that same person draft the following words in Paragraph 124 above?
Public opinion is an important form of that communication in the Church. ‘Since the Church is a living body, she needs public opinion in order to sustain a giving and taking between her members. Without this, she cannot advance in thought and action. (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
Which is it?
Well, I suppose that we just are supposed to forget Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction. That went out the conciliar window with the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
As to what is thought to be the Catholic Church’s “advancing” in “thought and action,” there is need only to have recourse to Pope Saint Pius X:
It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
Those who do not see by now that the conciliar ecclesiology of “power to the people” is false and can never come from any instrumentality of the Catholic Church, no matter how “unofficial” it is alleged to be, does not want to make the sacrifices of human respect necessary to do so. I mean, Paragraph 124 admits that the conciliar concept of “public opinion” as part of the “normal” processes of what they allege to be the Catholic Church was unknown until after the “Second” Vatican Council. So much for “rooted in tradition.”
Ah, I digressed, as I meant to cover three paragraphs at once. Paragraph 124, however, cried out for individualized attention.
Now, at long last, to the final two paragraphs of this “unofficial” “official” document before connecting to the Instrumentum Laboris for Jorge’s Oktoberfest on the Tiber:
125. Such public exchange of opinion is a prime means by which, in a normal way, the sensus fidelium can be gauged. Since the Second Vatican Council, however, various institutional instruments by which the faithful may more formally be heard and consulted have been established, such as particular councils, to which priests and others of Christ’s faithful may be invited,[140] diocesan synods, to which the diocesan bishop may also invite lay people as members,[141] the pastoral council of each diocese, which is ‘composed of members of Christ’s faithful who are in full communion with the Catholic Church: clerics, members of institutes of consecrated life, and especially lay people’,[142] and pastoral councils in parishes, in which ‘Christ’s faithful, together with those who by virtue of their office are engaged in pastoral care in the parish, give their help in fostering pastoral action’.[143]
126. Structures of consultation such as those mentioned above can be greatly beneficial to the Church, but only if pastors and lay people are mutually respectful of one another’s charisms and if they carefully and continually listen to one another’s experiences and concerns. Humble listening at all levels and proper consultation of those concerned are integral aspects of a living and lively Church. (Sensus fidei in the life of the Church.)
Final Commentary on This Particular Madness Before Drawing Matters to a Conclusion:
Endless committees doing endless things to destroy the actual sensus Catholicus. These revolutionaries and their committees and “consultations,” albeit with the theologically and liturgically and morally “correct” kind of conciliar Catholics, have been very successful in helping to brainwash the average Catholic into looking up the actual teaching of Holy Mother Church with scorn and disdain. The result has been a new sense for a new faith, one that is as loathsome in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, as every other false religion.
Where is this all leading?
I will let the Instrumentum Laboris explain it all to you:
31. The family is acknowledged in the People of God to be an invaluable asset, the natural setting in which life grows and develops and a school of humanity, love and hope for society. The family continues to be the privileged place in which Christ reveals the mystery and vocation of the person. In addition to commonly affirming these basic facts, the great majority of respondents agree that the family has the potential of being this privileged place, despite their indicating, and often explicitly recounting, the worrisome difference between the forms of the family in today’s world and Church’s teaching in this regard. Real-life situations, stories and multiple trials demonstrate that the family is experiencing very difficult times, requiring the Church’s compassion and understanding in offering guidance to families “as they are” and, from this point of departure, proclaim the Gospel of the Family in response to their specific needs. (Instrumentum Laboris.)
Saint Anthony Mary Claret found families in irregular situations in Cuba in the Nineteenth Century, meeting them “where they were” to bring them out of lives of sin so that those involved therein could save their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church:
Here he was met by disturbing news. In this town of pilgrimage [Cobre] where the island’s most famous shrine was located, his missionaries had found hardly a dozen legitimately married couples! He praised their diligence in having substantially raised this figure prior to his arrival but–even so! This shocking situation required a strong hand–the hand of a patient but uncompromising prelate. The unhappy fact was that the Spanish-descended Cubans rarely condescended to marry their Negro and mulatto concubines, even when their half-caste progeny might number as many as nine or ten. Rightly suspecting that this intolerable state of affairs might prove typical, he attacked the problem vigorously. A committee was appointed to study each case individually. On its recommendations, he let it be known, all such unions must be regularized or, where impediments existed, dissolved!
It was a most trying undertaking, fraught with complications, both tragic and absurd. Persons who expressed their willingness, even eagerness, to legalize their unions were frequently not free to receive the Sacrament of marriage. Others, without the excuse of impediments under Church law were sometimes overcome with indignation to hear that they were expected to make wives of their colored concubines. There were emphatic affirmations that Spain prohibited mixed marriages, a fallacy the archbishop had no need to consider. In all her colonial history Spain had never forced any such regulation. However, for any who persisted in this persuasion in spite of Padre Claret’s assurances, his command was clear. They must immediately terminate their illicit unions. It would be a painful problem–the provision for their innocent children–but it would have to be faced. Although he praised God that many of these easy-going folk accepted their prelate’s reprimands contritely and docilely obeyed his injunctions to amend their lives, Cobre had certainly given him a first-hand acquaintance with the repugnant moral deterioration that had engulfed a traditionally Christian nation. (Fanchon Royer, The Life of St. Anthony Mary Claret, published originally by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in 1957 an republished in 1985 by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 130-131.)
Countless are the examples of Catholic bishops and priests, many of them raised to the altars of Holy Mother Church, who worked to reform the morals of the people who had been entrusted to their pastoral care.
Another Spaniard, Saint Francis Solano, for example, preached a sermon in the public square in Lima, Peru, in 1610 during which he prophesied of the great earthquake that God would visit upon Lima to chastise the people there for their ingratitude and immorality:
By the time Francis had reached the market, the theme of his sermon was clear. God was love, yet man was constantly thwarting that love. Many times this was because of thoughtlessness, but there were also countless times when it was because of sheer selfishness, and even malice. Well, atonement for sin must be made by means of penance.
“Unless you do penance, you shall likewise,” Our Lord had said to his disciples.
“I will say these words, too,” Francis thought. “Oh, Heavenly Father, may they help some souls tonight to turn away from sin!”
Naturally many at the market were astonished when they saw the Father Guardian of Saint Mary of the Angels making his way through their midst. Since his return from Trujillo he had appeared in the streets only rarely, and certainly never in the evenings. Then in a little while there was even more astonishment. Father Francis had come not to buy for his friars, or even to beg. He had come to preach!
At first, however, since business was brisk, not much heed was paid to his words. Merchants vied with one another in calling out the merits of their wares while customers argued noisily for a lower price. Beggars whined for alms. Babies cried. Dogs barked. Donkeys brayed. Older children ran in and out of the crowd intent upon their games. Music was everywhere–weird tunes played by Indian musicians on their wooden flutes, gay Spanish rhythms played on guitar and tambourine. At the various food students succulent rounds of meat sizzled and sputtered as they turned over slow fires. Then suddenly a thunderous voice rang about above the noisy and carefree scene:
“For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father but is in the world.”
It was as though a bombshell had fallen. At once the hubbub died away, and hundreds of Lima’s startled citizens turned to where a grey-clad friar, cross in hand, had mounted an elevation in the center of the marketplace and now stood gazing down upon them with eyes of burning coals. But before anyone could wonder about the text from Saint John’s first epistle, Francis began to explain the meaning of concupiscence: that, because of Original Sin, it is the tendency within each person to do evil instead of good; that this hidden warfare will end only when we have drawn our last breath.
“If we were to die tonight, would good or evil be the victor within our hearts” he cried. “Oh, my friends! Think about this question. Think hard!
Within just a few minutes Lima’s marketplace was as hushed and solemn as a cathedral. All eyes were riveted upon the Father Guardian and all ears were filled with his words as he described God’s destruction of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrha because of the sins committed within them.
“Who is to say that here in Lima we do not deserve a like fate?” he demanded in ringing tones. “Look into your hearts now, my children. Are they clean? Are they pure? Are they filled with love of God?”
As the minutes passed and twilight deepened into darkness, the giant torches of the marketplace cast their flickering radiance over a moving scene. As usual, crowds of people were on hand, but now no one was interested in buying or selling. Instead, faces were bewildered, agonized and fearful. Tears were streaming from many eyes as Francis’ words continued to pour out in torrents, urging repentance while there was still time.
“Can we say that we shall ever see tomorrow?” he cried, fervently brandishing his missionary cross. “Can we say that this night is not the last we shall have in which to return to God’s friendship?”
As these and still more terrifying thoughts struck home one after another, the speaker stretched out both arms, bowed his head, and in heartrending tones began the Fifth Psalm. At once the crowd was filled with fresh sorrow and made the contrite phrases their own:
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy.
“And according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my iniquity.
“Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
“For I know my iniquity, and my sins is always before me.
“To Thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before Thee: that Thou mayest be justified in Thy words, and mayest overcome when Thou art judged . . .”
Soon wave upon wave of sound was filling the torch lit marketplace as priest and people prayed together. Then Francis preached again, doing his est to implant a greater sorrow for sin and an even firmer purpose of amendment in the hearts of his hearers. Finally, looking neither to right nor left, he prepared to depart for Saint Mary of the Angels. But on all sides men and women pressed about him, sobbing and begging for his blessing.
“Father, please pray for me!” cried one young girl. “I’ve deserved to go to Hell a thousand times!”
“Last year, I robbed a poor widow of ten pounds of gold!” declared a swarthy-faced Spaniard. “May God forgive me!”
“‘I’m worse than anyone,” moaned a wild-eyed black man. “Tonight, I was going to kill a man . . . and for money!”
So it was that first one, then another, cried out his fault and expressed a desire to go to Confession at once. But Francis had to refuse all such requests. Yes, he was a priest. It was his privilege and duty to administer the Sacraments. But he was also a religious, and bound by rule to various observances. One of them was that he must be in his cell at Saint Mary of the Angels by a certain hour each night.
“There are other priests in the city who can help you, though,” he said kindly. “Go them now, my children. And may the Holy Virgin bring you back to her Son without delay.” (Mary Fabyan Windeatt, Saint Francis of Solano: Wonderworker of the New World and Apostle of Argentina and Peru, published originally by Sheed and Ward in 1946 and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1994, pp. 167-172.)
This is just a slight contrast with the approach taken by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of revolutionaries, who doubt the ability of the truths of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, when preached with conviction for love of Christ the King and for the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem, to touch hearts and to reform lives in an instant.
Wait a minute!
The problem is more basic than that: Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of conciliar revolutionaries do not believe in the binding truths of the Divine Positive Law as they have been explicated by the Catholic Church from time immemorial and they scoff at the ability of the “people” to understand the Natural Law:
30. The language traditionally used in explaining the term “natural law” should be improved so that the values of the Gospel can be communicated to people today in a more intelligible manner. In particular, the vast majority of responses and an even greater part of the observations request that more emphasis be placed on the role of the Word of God as a privileged instrument in the conception of married life and the family, and recommend greater reference to the Bible, its language and narratives. In this regard, respondents propose bringing the issue to public discussion and developing the idea of biblical inspiration and the “order in creation,” which could permit a re-reading of the concept of the natural law in a more meaningful manner in today’s world (cf. the idea of the law written in the human heart in Rm 1:19-21; 2:14-15). Moreover, this proposal insists on using language which is accessible to all, such as the language of symbols utilized during the liturgy. The recommendation was also made to engage young people directly in these matters. (Instrumentum Laboris.)
Yes, They Go After the Natural Law Comment:
Nothing is beyond the reach of these revolutionaries. This makes sense, though when you consider the fact that the lords of conciliarism have made short work of the binding precepts of the Ten Commandments, especially the First through Third Commandments, as a result of false ecumenism and inter-religious “prayer services” and by their words and actions praising the beliefs and esteeming the symbols of one false religion after another. Why not try to re-read the Natural Law, therefore?
A pagan, Cicero, had a very good, although not perfect, grasp of the Natural Law when he defined as follows in his Republic:
True law is right reason conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins or forbids, the good respect its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens; one thing to-day, and another to-morrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings. God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer. And he who does not obey it flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man. And by so doing he will endure the severest penalties even if he avoid the other evils which are usually accounted punishments. (Cicero, The Republic.)
Cicero had it almost entirely correct. Almost. He was wrong in asserting that the natural law does not need any “other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience.” He lived before the Incarnation and before the founding of the true Church upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Cicero thus did not know that man does need an interpreter and expositor of the natural law, namely, the Catholic Church. Apart from this, however, Cicero understood that God’s law does not admit of abrogations by a vote of the people or of a “representative” body, such as the Roman Senate in his day or the United States Congress or state legislatures, et al. in our own day.
Pope Leo XIII explained in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, that the Catholic Church is the guardian of the Natural Law and that men need her guidance to hep them to know it fully and to keep it as befits redeemed creatures:
Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. “If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth” john xv., 6). “He that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)
Although much more time could be spent examining the Instrumentum Laboris in the detail that has been given to Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church, there is really no need to do as the results of the “extraordinary synod on the family” have been cooked for a long time now. The Instrumentum Laboris is the result of the answers to questions that were sent to the world’s conciliar “bishops” eight months ago and were the subject of extensive commentary in Always Asking All The Wrong Questions, part one and Always Asking All the Wrong Questions, part two.
The “extraordinary synod on the family” will do the following things:
1. Following the practice of the heretical and schismatic Greek Orthodox, divorced and civilly remarried Catholics without a decree of nullity from the conciliar officials, not that it is worth anything, will be permitted to receive what is purported to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service on a case-by-case basis handled by means of the interior form of the conciliar “reconciliation room.” In other words, everybody goes hand to stick their paws out to receive what they think is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
2. The nullity process itself will be “streamlined” even further, making it possible for “decisions” in a matter of months, if not sooner.
3. “Pastoral outreach” to “unmarried couples” will be enlarged and expanded.
4. The “internal forum” solution, which has been used for decades now by cooperative priests and presbyters, will be adopted to assuage the consciences of married couples who find it “too difficult” to avoid the use of contraceptives. “Education” in methods of “natural family planning” will be recommended as the way to “plan” the number of children a married couple desires to have. For the refutation of “natural family planning,” please see Forty-Three Years After Humanae Vitae, Always Trying To Find A Way and Planting Seeds of Revolutionary Change.
5. “Ministries” to those engaged in the commission of perverse sins against nature will be expanded and found more universally than they have been up until to now, confined in some dioceses to a few well-known dens of iniquity (e.g. Saint Francis Xavier Church in New York, Most Holy Redeemer Church in San Francisco, California, Saint Brigid’s Church in Westbury, New York, Saints Cyril and Methodius Church in Deer Park, New York, Saint Joan of Arc Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, among so many, many others). The children who are unfortunate to be in the care of unrepentant practitioners of perversity with be baptized and welcomed into conciliar schools, thereby mainstreaming acceptance of perverse behavior and overthrowing any lingering concept of a detestation of personal sin that might be lurking in the hearts of Catholics who are as of yet attached to the conciliar structures.
Here is proof from the Instrumentum Laboris itself:
b) Concerning Unions of Persons of the Same Sex
Civil Recognition
110. On unions of persons of the same sex, the responses of the bishops’ conferences refer to Church teaching. “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family. […] Nonetheless, according to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies ‘must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided’” (CDF, Considerations regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons, 4). The responses indicate that the recognition in civil law of unions between persons of the same sex largely depends on the socio-cultural, religious and political context. In this regard, the episcopal conferences describe three instances: the first exists when repressive and punitive measures are taken in reaction to the phenomenon of homosexuality in all its aspects, especially when the public manifestation of homosexuality is prohibited by civil law. Some responses indicate that, in this context, the Church provides different forms of spiritual care for single, homosexual people who seek the Church’s assistance. (Instrumentum Laboris)
Reality Checks Provided by Saint Paul the Apostle and Pope Saint Pius V:
Here is the sort of “pastoral care” recommended by Saint Paul the Apostle:
Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use against which is their nature.
And in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.
And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.
Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1: 24-32)
Writing under the Divine inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, Saint Paul the Apostle, condemned “shameful affections.” Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis and others in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, speak of a “gay orientation.”
It is telling that the misnamed conciliar Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of a “homosexual orientation” while Saint Paul the Apostle wrote about shameful affections. And it is because at least one of those who served as a peritus under the liturgical revolutionary Annibale Bugnini, C.M., on the Consilium that planned the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo service, which boasts of a containing almost every passage of Sacred Scripture in its triennial cycle of Sunday readings and its biennial cycle of weekday readings, excludes verses twenty-four to thirty-two of the first chapter of Saint Paul the Apostle’s Epistle to the Romans.
Oh, the name of that one person? Yes, sure, thanks for asking. Rembert George Weakland, O.S.B. (see Weak In Mind, Weakest Yet In Faith and Just A Matter of Forgiveness?)
Pope Saint Pius V offered his own version of “pastoral care” to those who persist in crimes against nature:
That horrible crime, on account of which corrupt and obscene cities were destroyed by fire through divine condemnation, causes us most bitter sorrow and shocks our mind, impelling us to repress such a crime with the greatest possible zeal.
Quite opportunely the Fifth Lateran Council [1512-1517] issued this decree: “Let any member of the clergy caught in that vice against nature . . . be removed from the clerical order or forced to do penance in a monastery” (chap. 4, X, V, 31). So that the contagion of such a grave offense may not advance with greater audacity by taking advantage of impunity, which is the greatest incitement to sin, and so as to more severely punish the clerics who are guilty of this nefarious crime and who are not frightened by the death of their souls, we determine that they should be handed over to the severity of the secular authority, which enforces civil law.
Therefore, wishing to pursue with the greatest rigor that which we have decreed since the beginning of our pontificate, we establish that any priest or member of the clergy, either secular or regular, who commits such an execrable crime, by force of the present law be deprived of every clerical privilege, of every post, dignity and ecclesiastical benefit, and having been degraded by an ecclesiastical judge, let him be immediately delivered to the secular authority to be put to death, as mandated by law as the fitting punishment for laymen who have sunk into this abyss. (Pope Saint Pius V, Horrendum illud scelus, August 30, 1568.)
Just a slightly different approach, wouldn’t you say? A true pope understood the horror of such a detestable sin on the part of the clergy and sought to administer punishment to serve as a medicinal corrective for other priests and to demonstrate to the laity the horrific nature of such a moral crime. A false “bishop” seeks to protect his “institution” and the “clerical club.” Quite a different approach.
Mind you, I am not suggesting the revival of this penalty in a world where it would not be understood and where the offender would be made a “martyr” for the cause of perversity, only pointing out the fact that the Catholic Church teaches that clerics and others in ecclesiastical authority who are guilty of serious moral crimes are deserving of punishment, not protection, by their bishops. Such is the difference yet again between Catholicism and conciliarism.
Moreover, the Instrumentum Laboris called for a “non-judgmental” approach to taken toward those living perversely sinful lives by means, whether or not with the “blessing” of the civil authorities by means of “civil unions” and “same-sex marriages”:
113. Every bishops’ conference voiced opposition to “redefining” marriage between a man and a woman through the introduction of legislation permitting a union between two people of the same sex. The episcopal conferences amply demonstrate that they are trying to find a balance between the Church’s teaching on the family and a respectful, non-judgmental attitude towards people living in such unions. On the whole, the extreme reactions to these unions, whether compromising or uncompromising, do not seem to have facilitated the development of an effective pastoral programme which is consistent with the Magisterium and compassionate towards the persons concerned.
114. A factor which clearly has an impact on the Church’s pastoral care and one which complicates the search for a balanced attitude in this situation is the promotion of a gender ideology. In some places, this ideology tends to exert its influence even at the elementary level, spreading a mentality which, intending to eliminate homophobia, proposes, in fact, to undermine sexual identity. (Instrumentum Laboris)
Only those who not believe that homosexuality is seriously disordered and that the acts associated therewith cry out to Heaven for vengeance can claim that thee is such a thing as “homophobia.” It is not to hate anyone or to judge the subjective state of his soul, which is known to God alone, to judge and condemn sinful actions.
Pastors of the Catholic Church have an obligation to judge sinful actions for what they are and to tell sinners in clear, unmistakeable terms: Quit your lives of sin. You risk the fires of Hell if you do not.
Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ never reaffirmed anyone in a life of sin. While he dissuaded those who were about to stone his friend, Saint Mary Magdalene, when she was caught in adultery, he told his friend the following:
Go, and now sin no more. (John 8: 11.)
The conciliar revolutionaries are bereft of the Catholic Faith.
Why is this so hard to understand and accept?
The Instrumentum Laboris devoted an entire ten paragraphs to the care of those steeped in unrepentant sins of perversity that cry out to Heaven for vengeance even though there is one way to care for them, to discharge the Spiritual Works of Mercy to them, including admonishing the sinner in no uncertain terms, to quit his sins lest he be condemned to Hell for all eternity. In no small measure, of course, the the sin of Sodom has spread like wildfire in the world because of the indifference and/or complacency shown by the conciliar officials, to say nothing of the active support, approval and glorification of this sin against nature by conciliar “bishops,” priests/presbyters, religious and laity.
Laughably, the Instrumentum Laboris recommends not using the word “gay” to describe those who have shameful affections:
116. When considering the possibility of a ministry to these people, a distinction must be made between those who have made a personal, and often painful, choice and live that choice discreetly so as not to give scandal to others, and those whose behaviour promotes and actively — often aggressively — calls attention to it. Many conferences emphasize that, due to the fact that these unions are a relatively recent phenomenon, no pastoral programs exist in their regard. Others admit a certain unease at the challenge of accepting these people with a merciful spirit and, at the same time, holding to the moral teaching of the Church, all the while attempting to provide appropriate pastoral care which takes every aspect of the person into consideration. Some responses recommend not using phrases such as “gay,” “lesbian” or “homosexual” to define a person’s identity. (Instrumentum Laboris)
Go tell this to Jorge Mario Bergoglio:
Speaking of other problems within the administration of the Holy See, including rumours of a ‘gay lobby’ within the Vatican, Pope Francis said there are many saintly people working in the Curia but also those who are not so saintly and cause scandals which harm the Church. Quoting from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, he said that people with homosexual tendencies must not be excluded but should be integrated into society. “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?” he asked. (Francis the Revolutionary holds press conference on flight back from Brazil.)
A human being’s identity is based upon the fact that he has a rational, immortal soul made in the image and likeness of God that has been redeemed by the shedding of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on the wood of the Holy Cross whether or not the person knows or accepts this fact. Period.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio has done more to advance the agenda of what Mrs. Randy Engel terms the “homosexual collective” than anyone else before him in the counterfeit church of conciliarism and even in the secular world-at-large. Call Me Jorge has the details of how Franciscans, long a stronghold of the homosexual agenda, in the Archdiocese of Boston featured “Who Am I To Judge” t-shirts, buttons and banners for those walking in the annual “pride” parade in this month of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Sensus fidei, anyone?
117. Many responses and observations call for theological study in dialogue with the human sciences to develop a multi-faceted look at the phenomenon of homosexuality. Others recommend collaborating with specific entities, e.g., the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy for Life, in thoroughly examining the anthropological and theological aspects of human sexuality and the sexual difference between man and woman in order to address the issue of gender ideology.
118. The great challenge will be to develop a ministry which can maintain the proper balance between accepting persons in a spirit of compassion and gradually guiding them to authentic human and Christian maturity. In this regard, some conferences refer to certain organizations as successful models for such a ministry. (Instrumentum Laboris)
Preaching from the pulpits of Catholic churches must be firm in the denunciation of sin and clear about the compassion that awaits repentant sinners in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. Unreprentant sinners can never be affirmed, coddled or in any way congratulated for their entirely free-will choice to place themselves, objectively speaking, on the path to Hell. There is nothing to “understand” about perverse behavior. Holy Mother Church has all of the gifts given unto her by God the Holy Ghost to effect their conversion. The counterfeit church of conciliarism lacks those gifts and lacks even the desire to effect a true conversion to personal sancity.
For present purposes, my good and few readers, if there are who have read thus far in this long article, only one more passage from the Instrumentum Laboris will be cited:
119. Sex education in families and educational institutions is an increasingly urgent challenge, especially in countries where the State tends to propose in schools a one-sided view and a gender ideology. Formation programmes ought to be established in schools or parish communities which offer young people an adequate idea of Christian and emotional maturity to allow them to face even the phenomenon of homosexuality. At the same time, the observations show that there is still no consensus in the Church on the specific way of receiving persons in these unions. The first step would be a slow process of gathering information and distinguishing criteria of discernment for not only ministers and pastoral workers but also groups and ecclesial movements. (Instrumentum Laboris)
Conciliar programs of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments have done as much as, if not more than, similar programs in secular brainwashing and detention centers (sometimes referred to as “schools) to propagate promiscuity among the young and acceptance of sodomy as a practice that is expressive of “love.”
Pope Pius IX warned us about such programs in the following passages contained in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929:
65. Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers.
66. Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind;[43] and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.
67. In this extremely delicate matter, if, all things considered, some private instruction is found necessary and opportune, from those who hold from God the commission to teach and who have the grace of state, every precaution must be taken. Such precautions are well known in traditional Christian education, and are adequately described by Antoniano cited above, when he says:
Such is our misery and inclination to sin, that often in the very things considered to be remedies against sin, we find occasions for and inducements to sin itself. Hence it is of the highest importance that a good father, while discussing with his son a matter so delicate, should be well on his guard and not descend to details, nor refer to the various ways in which this infernal hydra destroys with its poison so large a portion of the world; otherwise it may happen that instead of extinguishing this fire, he unwittingly stirs or kindles it in the simple and tender heart of the child. Speaking generally, during the period of childhood it suffices to employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice.[44]
Thus is condemned all classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments is prohibited. Prohibited also, of course, is the graphically explicit speech of the conciliar “popes” and their disciples who promote the “theology of the body” that engages in the most vile, vulgar forms of speech that would never issue forth from the mouth of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, or that of His Most Blessed Mother. Such vile, vulgar forms of speech have never issued forth from the lips of our saints, who maintained custody of their eyes and who shunned all immodest speech at all times.
The upcoming “extraordinary synod on the family” will be just another step in the conciliar revolution of placing it on the fact track to a complete, seamless merger with the Anglican sect, which has long since made its “official peace” with “moral issues.
Indeed, among the other heresies spouted in the past few days by his mouth that is an engine of heresy, blasphemy, apostasy and sacrilege, Jorge Mario Bergoglio dared to blaspheme Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by saying that He was not a “moralist”:
“And this is why the people followed Jesus, because He was the Good Shepherd. He wasn’t a moralistic, quibbling Pharisee, or a Sadducee who made political deals with the powerful, or a guerrilla who sought the political liberation of his people, or a contemplative in a monastery. He was a pastor! A pastor who spoke the language of His people, Who understood, Who spoke the truth, the things of God: He never trafficked in the things of God! But He spoke in such a way that the people loved the things of God. That’s why they followed Him.” (Whom do I like to follow?.)
Blasphemer.
At the root of the entire conciliar agenda, including its agenda for the family, is the lack of any sense of the horror of personal sin, including Mortal Sin itself.
While it is true that many who are steeped today in what are Mortal Sins in the objective order of things may not understand or accept this to be so and/or may seek to minimize, it is the case nevertheless that each Mortal Sin wounds the soul, making it a captive to the devil and thus making it an instrument of chaos, disorder, anger, oftentimes displaced at those who seek to admonish it, and perhaps even violence in their own lives and that of those around them and the world-at-large. The family and the world are in the mess that they are because of the commission of unrepentant sins, most of which are protected under cover of the civil law and celebrated in every single aspect of what passes for “popular culture.” For a discussion of the horror of Mortal Sin, please see Saint Alphonsus de Liguori’s “On the Malice of Mortal Sin,” which is found in the appendix below, although the following sentence from that sermon might serve as a sober antidote to what the conciliar revolutionaries believe are nothing more than “irregular” situations: “Hence Hell and a thousand Hells are not sufficient chastisement for a single mortal sin.”
The path to personal ruin and social chaos that we see all around us today was charted as a direct, inevitable result of the Protestant Revolution against the Social Reign of Christ the King and the rise of the multifaceted, interrelated maze of naturalistic ideologies and “philosophies” that can be termed collectively by the name of Judeo-Masonry (see To Blot Out the Holy Name Forever, part one and To Blot Out the Holy Name Forever, part two.)
Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of conciliar revolutionaries do not believe that each of the problems in the world is caused by Original Sin and the Actual Sins of men, thus showing themselves to be utterly ignorant of the truths of the Catholic Faith concerning the offense that sin is in the eyes of God, how it wounded Our Lord once in time and how it wounds His Mystical Body, the Church Militant on earth, today. These truths were summarized so very clearly by Silvio Cardinal Antoniano (and quoted by Pope Pius XI in the aforementioned Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929, by Pope Saint Pius an by Pope Pius XI directly:
The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)
Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers. . No doubt “the Spirit breatheth where he will” (John iii. 8): “of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his designs” (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic world. (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)
Saint Irenaeus, whose feast we celebrated on Saturday, June 28, 2014, explained the nature of the conciliar approach of a supposed “love” for sinners as he analyzed and condemned the heresies of Carpocrates:
5. And thus, if ungodly, unlawful, and forbidden actions are committed among them, I can no longer find ground for believing them to be such. And in their writings we read as follows, the interpretation which they give [of their views], declaring that Jesus spoke in a mystery to His disciples and apostles privately, and that they requested and obtained permission to hand down the things thus taught them, to others who should be worthy and believing. We are saved, indeed, by means of faith and love; but all other things, while in their nature indifferent, are reckoned by the opinion of men-some good and some evil, there being nothing really evil by nature. (Against Heresies, Book I.)
Saint Irenaeus simply made no concessions at all to the heretics of his own day, the gnostics, whose false religion does indeed play an important role in shaping the Modernist mind of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who desires to jettison the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church as presented to by Holy Mother Church under the infallible guidance of God the Holy Ghost in order to “re-read” the Scriptures and to re-read even the Natural Law. Jorge has the “secret” ability to do this. We simply have to “trust” him. How did the “trust me” slogan work out with the thirty-ninth President of the United States of America, James Earl Carter, Jr.
While Saint Irenaeus urged the Vicar of Christ to be gentle with those who returned to the Faith after being involved in heresy, he was firm in his denunciation of heresy as he sought the conversion of those steeped within its grip. We can no do no less in our own day as we rely upon the intercessory help of the Mother of God and of the Apostles Saints Peter and Paul, who gave up their lives rather than to compromise the integrity of the Faith.
Today, June 29, 2014, is the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, one of the most glorious days in the entirety of Holy Mother Church’s liturgical year. These twin pillars of the Church of Rome were steadfast in their proclamation of the truths of the true Faith. Saint Peter, our first pope, had denied Our Lord three times before repenting. Saint Paul had persecuted the true Church before he, a Jew, was converted by Our Lord Himself, thus showing Himself, the God-Man, to cast His disapproval upon the “Second” Vatican Council’s Nostra Aetate, October 28, 1965.
Here is the account of the apostolic labors and martyrdom of our beloved Saints Peter and Paul as found from the readings for Matins in today’s Divine Office:
Dearly beloved brethren, in the joy of all the holy Feast-days the whole world is partaker. There is but one love of God, and whatsoever is solemnly called to memory, if it hath been done for the salvation of all, must needs be worth the honour of a joyful memorial at the hands of all. Nevertheless, this feast which we are keeping to-day, besides that world-wide worship which it doth of right get throughout all the earth, doth deserve from this city of ours an outburst of gladness altogether special and our own. In this place it was that the two chiefest of the Apostles did so right gloriously finish their race. And upon this day whereon they lifted up that their last testimony, let it be in this place that the memory thereof receiveth the chiefest of jubilant celebrations. O Rome these twain are the men who brought the light of the Gospel of Christ to shine upon thee These are they by whom thou, from being the teacher of lies, wast turned into a learner of the truth.
These twain be thy fathers, these be in good sooth thy shepherds, these twain be they who laid for thee, as touching the kingdom of heaven, better and happier foundations, than did they that first planned thine earthly ramparts, wherefrom he that gave thee thy name took occasion to pollute thee with a brother’s blood. These are they who have set on thine head this thy glorious crown, that thou art become an holy nation, a chosen people, a city both Priestly and Kingly, whom the Sacred Throne of blessed Peter hath exalted till thou art become the Lady of the world, unto whom the world-wide love for God hath conceded a broader lordship than is the possession of any mere earthly empire. Thou wast once waxen great by victories, until thy power was spread haughtily over land and sea, but thy power was narrower then which the toils of war had won for thee, than that thou now hast which hath been laid at thy feet by the peace of Christ.
It is well suited for the doing of the work which God had decreed that the multitude of kingdoms should be bound together under one rule, and that so the universal preaching of the Gospel should find easier entry into all peoples, since all were governed by the empire of one city. But this city, knowing not Him, Who had been pleased to make her great, used her lordship over almost all nations to make herself the minister of all their falsehoods and seemed to herself exceeding godly because there was no false god whom she rejected. But the tighter that Satan had bound her, the more wondrous was the work of Christ in setting her free. (From Matins, Divine Office, June 29.)
The lesson for Holy Mass today, which will be read again on the Feast of Saint’s Chains on August 1, 2014, described how an angel of Lord freed our first pope from his bondage at the hands of Herod as he, Saint Peter, slept so soundly that the angel had to wake him up:
In those days, Herod the king set hands on certain members of the Church to persecute them. He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and seeing that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also, during the days of the Unleavened Bread. After arresting him he cast him into prison, committing the custody of him to four guards of soldiers, four in each guard, intending to bring him forth to the people after the Passover. So Peter was being kept in the prison; but prayer was being made to God for him by the Church without ceasing. Now when Herod was about to bring him forth, that same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and outside the door sentries guarded the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood beside him, and a light shone in the room; and he struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, Get up quickly. The chains dropped from his hands. And the angel said to him, Gird yourself and put on your sandals. And he did so; and he said to him, Wrap your cloak about you and follow me. And he followed him out, without knowing that what was being done by the angel was real, for he thought he was having a vision. They passed through the first and second guard and came to the iron gate that leads into the city; and this opened to them of its own accord. And they went out, and passed on through one street, and straightway the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself, and he said, Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel and rescued me from the power of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting. (Acts 12: 1-11.)
Do not be agitated by the events of the moment as each of the events unfolding quickly before our eyes is simply part of the Great Apostasy. More and more chastisements are to be visited upon us, and we must accept each with joy and gratitude because God has so ordained it that we would be alive in these challenging times.
Saint Peter was freed by no “movement,” traditional or otherwise.
Saint Peter was freed by no “strategy” to keep silent about the truths of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in order to curry favor with the officials of the day.
Saint Peter was freed by the hand of Christ the King Himself through the work of His angel.
Do not be concerned about how a true pope will be restored to the Throne of Saint Peter. This will happen in God’s good time, which is not, quite by the way, our time. We must be something that comes hard to many Americans, who want tangible “solutions” now and without any kind of delay.
Christ the King will release the chains that fetter the Chair of Peter today in His good time and by means so miraculous that each of the warring tribes in the underground Church at present will recognize the miracle for what it is without any murmuring. This is because such a miracle will occur, most likely, after a terrible chastisement that will make the ones we are experiencing at present to seem like so much child’s play.
In the end, you see, we know that Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart will triumph. She promised that this would be so when she appeared to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and their cousin Lucia dos Santos in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, ninety-seven years ago.
Our Lady simply asks us to pray her Most Holy Rosary and to penance for the conversion of sinners as we offer up all to the Throne of the Most Blessed Trinity through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.
All we must do is to be faithful to Our Lady as the servants of her Divine Son, Christ the King, through her Immaculate Heart, which is united in such a matchless communion of love with the His Most Sacred Heart.
What are we waiting for?
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
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.
Appendix
Saint Alphonsus de Liguori On the Malice of Mortal Sin
“Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. 1 LUKE ii. 48.
MOST holy Mary lost her Son for three days: during that time she wept continually for having lost sight of Jesus, and did not cease to seek after him till she found him. How then does it happen that so many sinners not only lose sight of Jesus, but even lose his divine grace; and instead of weeping for so great a loss, sleep in peace, and make no effort to recover so great a blessing? This arises from their not feeling what it is to lose God by sin. Some say: I commit this sin, not to lose God, but to enjoy this pleasure, to possess the property of another, or to take revenge of an enemy. They who speak such language show that they do not understand the malice of mortal sin. What is mortal sin?
First Point. It is a great contempt shown to God.
Second Point. It is a great offence offered to God.
First Point. Mortal sin is a great contempt shown to God.
1. The Lord calls upon Heaven and Earth to detest the ingratitude of those who commit mortal sin, after they had been created by him, nourished with his blood, and exalted to the dignity of his adopted children. ”Hear, O ye Heavens, and give ear, Earth; for the Lord hath spoken. I have brought up children _ and exalted them; but they have despised me.” (Isa. i. 2.) Who is this God whom sinners despise?; He is a God of infinite majesty, before whom all the kings of the Earth and all the blessed in Heaven are less than a drop of water or a grain of sand. As a drop of a bucket, . . . as a little dust. ” (Isa. xl. 15.) In a word, such is the majesty of God, that in his presence all creatures are as if they did not exist. ”All nations are before him as if they had no being at all.” (Ibid. xl. 17.) And what is man, who insults him? St. Bernard answers: “Saccus vermium, cibus vermium.” A heap of worms, the food of worms, by which he shall be devoured in the grave. ”Thou art wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” (Apoc. iii. 17.) He is so miserable that he can do nothing, so blind that he knows nothing, and so poor that he possesses nothing. And this worm dares to despise a God, and to provoke his wrath. ”Vile dust,” says the same saint, “dares to irritate such tremendous majesty.” Justly, then, has St. Thomas asserted, that the malice of mortal sin is, as it were, infinite: ”Peccatum habet quandam infinitatem malitiae ex infinitatem divine majestatis.” (Par. 3, q. 2, a. 2, ad. 2.) And St. Augustine calls it an infinite evil. Hence Hell and a thousand Hells are not sufficient chastisement for a single mortal sin.
2. Mortal sin is commonly defined by theologians to be “a turning away from the immutable good.” St. Thom., par. 1, q. 24, a. 4; a turning ones back on the sovereign good. Of this God complains by his prophet, saying: ”Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord; thou art gone backward. ” (Jer. xv. 6.) Ungrateful man, he says to the sinner, I would never have separated myself from thee; thou hast been the first to abandon me: thou art gone backwards; thou hast turned thy back upon me.
3. He who contemns the divine law despises God; because he knows that, by despising the law, he loses the divine grace. “By transgression of the law, thou dishonourest God.” (Rom. ii. 23.) God is the Lord of all things, because he has created them. ”All things are in thy power… Thou hast made Heaven and Earth.” (Esth. xiii. 9.) Hence all irrational creatures the winds, the sea, the fire, and rain obey God, “The winds and the sea obey him.” (Matt. viii. 27.)”Fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds, which fulfil his word.” (Ps. cxlviii. 8.) But man, when he sins, says to God: Lord, thou dost command me, but I will not obey; thou dost command me to pardon such an injury, but I will resent it; thou dost command me to give up the property of others, but I will retain it; thou dost wish that I should abstain from such a forbidden pleasure, but I will indulge in it. ”Thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst my bands, and thou saidst: I will not serve.” (Jer. ii. 20.) In fine, the sinner when he breaks the command, says to God: I do not acknowledge thee for my Lord. Like Pharaoh, when Moses, on the part of God, commanded him in the name of the Lord to allow the people to go into the desert, the sinner answers: “Who is the Lord, that I should hear his voice, and let Israel go?” (Exod. v. 2.)
4. The insult offered to God by sin is heightened by the vileness of the goods for which sinners offend him. ”Wherefore hath the wicked provoked God.” (Ps. x. 13.) For what do so many offend the Lord? For a little vanity; for the indulgence of anger; or for a beastly pleasure. ”They violate me among my people for a handful of barley and a piece of bread.” (Ezec. xiii. 19.) God is insulted for a handful of barley for a morsel of bread! God! why do we allow ourselves to be so easily deceived by the Devil?”There is,” says the Prophet Osee, “a deceitful balance in his hand.” (xii. 7.) We do not weigh things in the balance of God, which cannot deceive, but in the balance of Satan, who seeks only to deceive us, that he may bring us with himself into Hell. ”Lord,” said David, ”who is like to thee ?” (Ps. xxxiv. 10.) God is an infinite good; and when he sees sinners put him on a level with some earthly trifle, or with a miserable gratification, he justly complains in the language of the prophet: ”To whom, have you likened me or made me equal? saith the Holy One.” (Isa. xl. 25.) In your estimation, a vile pleasure is more valuable than my grace. Is it a momentary satisfaction you have preferred before me?”Thou hast cast me off behind thy back.” (Ezec. xxiii. 35.) Then, adds Salvian, “there is no one for whom men have less esteem than for God.” (Lib. v., Avd. Avar.) Is the Lord so contemptible in your eyes as to deserve to have the miserable things of the Earth preferred before him?
5. The tyrant placed before St. Clement a heap of gold, of silver, and of gems, and promised to give them to the holy martyr if he would renounce the faith of Christ. The saint heaved a sigh of sorrow at the sight of the blindness of men, who put earthly riches in comparison with God. But many sinners exchange the divine grace for things of far less value; they seek after certain miserable goods, and abandon that God who is an infinite good, and who alone can make them happy. Of this the Lord complains, and calls on the Heavens to be astonished, and on its gates to be struck with horror: ”Be astonished O ye Heavens, at this; and ye gates thereof, be very desolate, saith the Lord.” He then adds: ”For my people have done two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jer. ii. 12 and 13.) We regard with wonder and amazement the injustice of the Jews, who, when Pilate offered to deliver Jesus or Barabbas, answered: ”Not this man, but Barabbas.” (John xviii. 40.) The conduct of sinners is still worse; for, when the Devil proposes to them to choose between the satisfaction of revenge a miserable pleasure and Jesus Christ, they answer: “Not this man, but Barabbas.” That is, not the Lord Jesus, but sin.
6. “There shall be no new God in thee,” says the Lord. (Ps. Ixxx. 10.) You shall not abandon me, your true God, and make for yourself a new god, whom you shall serve. St. Cyprian teaches that men make their god whatever they prefer before God, by making it their last end; for God is the only last end of all: “Quidquid homo Deo anteponit, Deum sibi facit.” And St. Jerome says: ”Unusquisque quod cupit, si veneratur, hoc illi Deus est. Vitium in corde, est idolum in altari.” (In Ps. Ixxx.) The creature which a person prefers to God, becomes his God. Hence, the holy doctor adds, that as the Gentiles adored idols on their altars, so sinners worship sin in their hearts. When King Jeroboam rebelled against God, he endeavoured to make the people imitate him in the adoration of idols. He one day placed the idols before them, and said: “Behold thy gods, Israel!” (3 Kings xii. 28.) The Devil acts in a similar manner towards sinners: he places before them such a gratification, and says: Make this your God. Behold! this pleasure, this money, this revenge is your God: adhere to these, and forsake the Lord. When the sinner consents to sin, he abandons his Creator, and in his heart adores as his god the pleasure which lie indulges. ”Vitium in corde est idolum in altari. ”
7. The contempt which the sinner offers to God is increased by sinning in God’s presence. According to St. Cyril of Jerusalem, some adored the sun as their god, that during the night they might, in the absence of the sun, do what they pleased, without fear of divine chastisement. “Some regarded the sun as their God, that, after the setting of the sun, they might be without a God.” (Catech. iv.) The conduct of these miserable dupes was very criminal; but they were careful not to sin in presence of their god. But Christians know that God is present in all places, and that he sees all things. ”Do not I fill Heaven and Earth? saith the Lord,” (Jer. xxiii. 24); and still they do not abstain from insulting him, and from provoking his wrath in his very presence: “A people that continually provoke me to anger before my face.” (Isa. Ixv. 3.) Hence, by sinning before him who is their judge, they even make God a witness of their iniquities: ”I am the judge and the witness, saith the Lord.” (Jer. xxix. 23.) St. Peter Chrysologus says, that, “the man who commits a crime in the presence of his judge, can offer no defence.” The thought of having offended God in his divine presence, made David weep and exclaim: “To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee.” (Ps. i. 6.) But let us pass to the second point, in which we shall see more clearly the enormity of the malice of mortal sin.
Second Point. Mortal sin is a great offence offered to God.
8. There is nothing more galling than to see oneself despised by those who were most beloved and most highly favoured. Whom do sinners insult? They insult a God who bestowed so many benefits upon them, and who loved them so as to die on a cross for their sake; and by the commission of mortal sin they banish that God from their hearts. A soul that loves God is loved by him, and God himself comes to dwell within her. ”If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him.” (John xiv. 23.) The Lord, then, never departs from a soul, unless he is driven away, even though he should know that she will soon banish him from her heart. According to the Council of Trent, ”he deserts not the soul, unless he is deserted.”
9. When the soul consents to mortal sin she ungratefully says to God: Depart from me. “The wicked have said to God: Depart from us.” (Job xxi. 14.) Sinners, as St. Gregory observes, say the same, not in words, but by their conduct. ”Recede, non verbis, sed moribus.” They know that God cannot remain with sin in the soul: and, in violating the divine commands, they feel that God must depart; and, by their acts they say to him: since you cannot remain any longer with us, depart farewell. And through the very door by which God departs from the soul, the Devil enters to take possession of her. When the priest baptizes an infant, he commands the demon to depart from the soul: ”Go out from him, unclean spirits, and make room for the Holy Ghost.” But when a Christian consents to mortal sin, he says to God: Depart from me; make room for the Devil, whom I wish to serve.
10. St. Bernard says, that mortal sin is so opposed to God, that, if it were possible for God to die, sin would deprive him of life;”Peccatum quantum in se est Deum perimit.” Hence, according to Job, in committing mortal sin, man rises up against God, and stretches forth his hand against him: ”For he hath stretched out his hand against God, and hath strengthened himself against the Almighty.” (Job. xv. 25.)
11. According to the same St. Bernard, they who wilfully violate the divine law, seek to deprive God of life in proportion to the malice of their will;”Quantum in ipsa est Deum perimit propria voluntas.” (Ser. iii. de Res.) Because, adds the saint, self-will”would wish God to see its own sins, and to be unable to take vengeance on them.” Sinners know that the moment they consent to mortal sin, God condemns them to Hell. Hence, being firmly resolved to sin, they wish that there was no God, and, consequently, they would wish to take away his life, that he might not be able to avenge their crime. “He hath,” continues Job, in his description of the wicked, ”run against him witb his neck raised up, and is armed with a fat neck.” (xv. 26.) The sinner raises his neck; that is, his pride swells up, and he runs to insult his God; and, because he contends with a powerful antagonist, ”he is armed with a fat neck.”“A fat neck” is the symbol of ignorance, of that ignorance which makes the sinner say: This is not a great sin; God is merciful; we are flesh; the Lord will have pity on us. O temerity! illusion! which brings so many Christians to Hell.
Moreover, the man who commits a mortal sin afflicts the heart of God. “But they provoked to wrath, and afflicted the spirit of the Holy One.” (Isaias Ixiii. 10.) “What pain and anguish would you not feel, if you knew that a person whom you tenderly loved, and on whom you bestowed great favours, had sought to take away your life! God is not capable of pain; but, were he capable of suffering, a single mortal sin would be sufficient to make him die through sorrow. ”Mortal sin,” says Father Medina, ”if it were possible, would destroy God himself: because it would be the cause of infinite sadness to God.” As often, then, as you committed mortal sin, you would, if it were possible, have caused God to die of sorrow; because you knew that by sin you insulted him and turned your back upon him, after he had bestowed so many favours upon you, and even after he had given all his blood and his life for your salvation. (The Malice of Mortal Sin.)
