Another Assembly of the Devil Has Taken Place in Rome

Revolutionaries of all varieties, whether social or ecclesiastical, have long sought to denounce and isolate those who disagree with them by all manner of pejoratives, up to and including the use of the “mentally ill card.” This was a favorite tool of Vladmir I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, and it has been a tool that has been used to the hilt by the conciliar revolutionaries.

It's always the same with revolutionaries, whether they are in the world of Modernity or in the world of Modernism, as it is of the nature of rebels after they acquire power to use the same tactics of intimidation and fear that they claim were used to “repress” their ascent to power. In other words, revolutionaries are hypocrites as they want to use power arbitrarily and autocratically to repress anyone who dares to criticize their tyrannical ways, and no one is more hypocritical and more tyrannical the master tyrant and bully from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Revolutionaries are worried about those who dissent from their own ideological "orthodoxy" because they are fascists.

Revolutionaries wax on and on about mercy while showing mercilessness to those who disagree with their revolutionary schemes.

Revolutionaries speak of humility while being arrogant and dismissive of those they view with contempt.

Revolutionaries say they eschew those who “judge” others while judging “counterrevolutionaries” with great harshness.

Stalinist-like purges of believing bishops began with Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini Paul VI, who sought to permeate the diocesan structures with men committed to his doctrinal and liturgical revolutions. So committed was Montini to these twin, inter-related revolutions that he instituted the novelty of a mandatory retirement age (seventy-five) for diocesan ordinaries and curial prefects and disqualifying cardinals participating in a papal conclave after they had reached the age of eighty:

11. That the prescription of No. 21 of the Decree Christus Dominus may be put into effect, all bishops of dioceses and others who are juridically their equals are earnestly requested of their own free will to tender their resignation from office not later than at the completion of their 75th year of age to the competent authority which will make provision after examining all circumstances of individual cases.

A bishop whose resignation from office has been accepted may maintain a home in his diocese if he wishes. Furthermore, the diocese itself must provide the bishop who resigns with appropriate and fitting sustenance. It is the right of the territorial episcopal conferences to determine by way of a general norm the ways in which dioceses must satisfy this obligation. (Ecclesiae Sanctae (August 6, 1966) | Paul VI.)

On the completion of eighty years of age, cardinals

1. cease to be members of the departments of the Roman Curia and of the other institutions mentioned in the above article;

2. lose the right to elect the Pope and consequently also that of entering the conclave. If, however, a cardinal completes his eightieth year after the beginning of the conclave, he continues to enjoy the right of electing the Pope on that occasion. (Age Limit Set for Functions by Cardinals.)

Montini/Paul VI wanted to put into place his fellow Bolsheviks, men who dealt ruthlessly with priests and the laity who held fast to the Deposit of Faith as it has been handed down us from the time of the Apostles under the infallible protection of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Ghost. The preconciliar "past" had to be wiped down the Orwellian memory hole as an artificial "memory" of that past was created and propagandized in "homilies" and in every manner of Catholic "educational" institutional imaginable as anyone who resisted was stigmatized as a veritable "reactionary." Some of the more cut-throat Bolsheviks in the first generation of the Pauline episcopal appointees went so far as to send fully sane priests to psychiatric hospitals for "reprogramming" because they refused to accept the errors and novelties and sacrileges that they were being fomented in the "name" of the Catholic Church.

Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI was also not adverse to appointing men who shared his own proclivities in the direction of perversity against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, thereby helping to set the stage for the blossoming into full public view of the scandals that have rocked the Faith of the weak and helped to prevent non-Catholics from even considering a conversion to the Catholic Church. The appointment of Montini's fellow perverts, documented in Mrs. Randy Engel's The Rite of Sodomy, helped to institutionalize a network of quisling infiltrators into chancery offices and seminaries and colleges and the massive bureaucracy of the then named National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference, now called the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, many of whom worked very closely with the Homosexual Collective and the left-wing of the Democrat Party to help draft "policy statements" in the name of the entire episcopal conference. The “bishops” appointed by Montini also signed off on the hiring of lay revolutionaries, men and women at war with doctrinal, liturgical and moral truths, to staff the International Commission on English in the Liturgy as it did its job of using the basic Bolshevik program, the Protestant and Jueo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination, as the stage for breaking down a Catholic's supernatural resistance to liturgical novelties and to the inclusion of the worship of false gods in the context of what purported to be the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Montini/Paul VI knew that a Catholic is taught to follow his shepherds, that it is an act out of the ordinary for a Catholic to resist what is being taught to him in the "name" of the "church." This is important to keep in mind as we assess the wreckage wrought by the conciliarist revolution. The sheep who remain in the conciliar structures are, for the most part, without blame for what has happened in the past four decades. Most of these people are busy leading their ordinary lives, oblivious to the fact that they are being led by false shepherds, men who are, with few exceptions, wolves in shepherds' clothing.

Most of these do not pay attention to ecclesiastical matters, and the little they do learn about the affairs of the conciliar church comes through the filter of outright apologists for conciliarism, such as the Eternally Wishful Television Network (EWTN), or from secular sources hostile to the Faith, thus either confusing them or affirming them in their resolve to "defend" the "church." Most of the Catholics who bother to attend their local parish churches do not know anything about The Wanderer or The Remnant or Catholic Family News, no less Novus Ordo Watch, Introibo Ad Altare Dei, AKA Catholic, The Daily Catholic, or this site. Indeed, many of these Catholics have never heard of the sedeplentist Tradition in Action. The small percentage of baptized Catholics who practice the Faith in the conciliar structures are content to follow their shepherds. Only a handful will respond now and again to the graces sent to them through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, to investigate the true nature of the problems and how they must flee from the ravenous wolves in the diocesan structures.

As noted on this site so many times in the past, however, the likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Robert Francis Prevost have been a dime a dozen from the very earliest days of the conciliar revolution, which was itself foisted upon by the faithful by clericalist bullies who hated Catholic Faith, Worship and Morals and who even used the pulpit in the 1970s to denounce members of the laity in various parishes who were known for their outspokenness against the conciliar revolution.

Although largely anecdotal and not yet recounted in a systematic manner in any one place, many of us know numerous instances in which priests and religious have been sent to psychiatric reprogramming centers because they resisted the first wave of the conciliar "reforms" in the middle to latter part of the 1960s. This persecution of those deemed to be "conservative" or "rigid" has continued in many dioceses and religious communities to this very day.  

We were told some nineteen years ago now of some very compelling stories by a consecrated religious woman who had worked as a nurse prior to entering the religious life, one of which involved a woman religious in the 1960s who was told by her superiors to report to a psychiatrist for “evaluation” because she would not give up her community's traditional habit.

The psychiatrist knew the consecrated religious because she had worked in the same hospital for a while as a nurse. He told to get out of the hospital immediately, that there was nothing wrong with her, but that she should not return to her community as there was an effort to imprison those priests and religious who resisted the conciliar changes. The psychiatrist led the religious woman, who told the story to our narrator, herself in traditional religious life, to a door where she could exit without being noticed, although she had seen many of her “disappeared” sisters sitting in wheelchairs in a doped-up state on her way into the psychiatrist's office.

This particular story has credibility as I know of men who have been candidates for the conciliar presbyterate who have been screened out in many dioceses and religious communities because they have been deemed to suffer from "rigidity."

As I have recounted on other occasions, the secular Talmudic psychologist who screened candidates for the Diocese of Rockville Centre for many years, the late Dr. Leonard Krinsky, came to some interesting conclusions following about me in May of 1979 following a psychological evaluation of me. Dr. Krinsky, now deceased, wrote that my concept of the priesthood as the sacerdos was preconciliar and self-centered, noting that that my desire to live a priestly life of prayer, penance, self-denial, and mortification were "possible signs of masochism." Dr. Krinsky’s report concluded by saying that while I was “free of any psychopathology, intelligent, creative, and had the capacity for rich, interpersonal relationships,” I “lacked the sufficient flexibility needed to adapt to the changing circumstances of a postconciliar vocation.”' In other words, I was "too rigid" in my beliefs, something that many other vocations directors, both for dioceses and religious communities, told me in the 1970s and 1980s.

I know of scores of men who were persecuted for their "conservatism" after their installation as presbyters in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

One man, the late Reverend Anthony Dandry, who was a seminarian with me at Holy Apostles Seminary during the 1983-1984 academic year, told me that he had been ordered to seek a psychological evaluation because he wore a biretta and preached about the reality of hell “too much.” Tony Dandry may not have been a true priest. However, he was very devoted to Our Lady, believing that he had been “ordained” as a priest to save souls, not to make his parishioners feel comfortable. After seeking the advice of a true priest, the late Father Benedict Groeschel, within the conciliar structures, though, he arranged to get an evaluation from a psychologist not associated with his diocese, obtaining a clean bill of mental health.

However, as noted above, this kind of persecution was made possible by Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI’s appointment of men to the conciliar hierarchy (all those appointed before the promulgation of the invalid conciliar rite of “episcopal ordination” in 1968 were true bishops, some of whom served for over thirty years in their capacities of arch-terrorists against believing Catholics, clergy and laity alike, who served as stumbling-blocks in their efforts to reprogram Catholics into accepting the revolutionary conciliar agenda that was, to a very large extent, shaped by men who were homosexuals themselves or, at the very least, effeminate pansies who eschewed the “certainties” of the “past.”

Very few of those bishops at the “Second” Vatican Council, including Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, were willing to admit what was apparent to some bishops during its first session sixty-one years ago to which very few people in the world, including most Catholics, paid any attention at all because there was a little thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis that was taking place simultaneously.

One of those who did have the prophetic insight to see what was happening as a consequence of the substitute, secretly planned schema that replaced what the schema that had been planned for over three years before being scuttled shortly after the proceeding’s opening on October 11, 1962, was Bishop Jose Maruicio da Rocha of the diocese of Braganza Paulista in Brazil:

Bishop Jose Maurício da Rocha, first ordinary of the diocese of Braganza Paulista (Brazil) was removed from the government of his diocese in 1967 by Paul VI Montini, and a few months later, on November 24, 1969, he died of grief. After being de facto deposed from the see, he never appeared in public again, but retired to his family's farm. Msgr. Da Rocha was ordained a priest on June 29, 1908 by the bishop of Maceió, Antônio Manuel do Castilho Brandão, and consecrated bishop on July 20, 1919 by the archbishop of Salvador de Bahia, Jeronimo Tomé da Silva. He was initially bishop of Corumbá, and in 1927 he was transferred to the newly created diocese of Bragança Paulista. In 1962, he attended the first session of Vatican II, returning shortly thereafter to Brazil. 

On his return, he told the priests of his diocese: "I came back because a council of the DEVIL is taking place in Rome.  They will destroy THE CHURCH OF OUR LORD." Five years later, when Monsignor Gabriel Paulino Bueno Couto O. Carm. (first bishop of Jundiaí), Msgr. Da Rocha told the priests he trusted: "Never celebrate the New Mass in my memory... only the Mass of All Time." For his funeral (presided over by the Archbishop of Campinas), he was dressed in pink ornaments. (Google Translation from a sedevacantist site in Brazil, MILES CHRISTI RESÍSTENS: History Revisited.)

Bishop Jose Mauricio de Rocha’s advice on matters of genuine social reform, including the reform of labor laws was sought out by Brazilian government officials, economists, financier throughout Brazil prior to a Communist regime taking power in 1964 (the conclusion of this commentary quotes an article about how an attempted Communist coup in Brazil, many of whose hierarchy and clergy were infiltrated with Freemasons in the early Nineteenth Century, was thwarted because of the power of Our Lady’s Holy Rosary). Bishop de Rocha’s “crimes” in the eyes of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI involved his recognition that the “Second” Vatican Council was the work of the Catholic Church, his abject rejection of Communism at a time when the “pope” was removing men such as Josef Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary and installing Communist stooges, if not actual members of local Communist parties, to sees throughout the Soviet bloc in further of his Ostpolitik policy of rapprochement with Communist authorities that was a foreshadowing of the sellout of faithful Catholics in Red China by Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and the new Montini himself, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and his, Bishop de Rocha’s, firm opposition to the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical travesty.

Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Montin/Paul VI was a Marxist at heart. Especially near and dear to his heart was to introduce Marxism under the euphemism of “liberation theology,” which was for him what the “theology of the body” was for Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, that is, Montini/Paul VI sought “liberate” Latin American from the influence of the United States of America and Europe, from capitalism and from what he considered a “preconciliar” clericalism that focused on sacramental ceremonies and priestly duties rather than upon being “servants of the poor” according to his “preferential option for the poor” doctrine.

In this regard, of course the “old guard” had to be eliminated to make way for the likes of Claudio Hummes, who took seriously his “pope’s” call for the “inculturation of the Gospel in the liturgy and thus the incorporation of pagan rituals and ceremonies whenever possible. What as considered “old-fashioned” doctrine was to be jettisoned in favor a “merciful” approach that would lead directly to Amoris Laetitia, March 19, 2016, and to the Amazonian Synod, replete with its Pachamama scandal, three years later.

Men such as Bishop Jose Mauricio de Rocha and Bishop Antonia Castro de Mayer were impediments to the establishment of conciliarism’s “reconciliation with the world,” which was then and remains now nearly sixty years later nothing other than a reconciliation with the world, the flesh, and the devil himself. Bishop de Rocha’s “unforgivable crime” was that he called the “Second” Vatican Council for what it was, a council of the devil himself, news that undoubtedly made its way back to the Vatican and the man who was to preside at the council’s second, third, and fourth sessions, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI. Even though the “official” line is that he died in office on Monday, November 24, 1969, the actual truth is that he was indeed pushed aside in 1967 and spent the last two years of his life grieving over Montini/Paul VI’s abandonment of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and of much of Catholic doctrine itself in practice if not in name.

Similarly, the esteemed Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, who has the editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review from 1933-1963, wrote the following in his diary on November 23, 1962, while at the council’s first session in 1962 as a peritus:

“If I did not believe God, I would be convinced that the Catholic Church was about to end.” —Mgr. Joseph C. Fenton on Vatican II, Nov. 23, 1962. As found at: Explosive! The Personal Diaries of Mgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton – Modernism & Vatican II – Novus Ordo Watch. The other entries are also well worth reviewing.)

Monsignor Fenton died in 1969, less than three months following the promulgation of the Novus Ordo by Montini/Paul VI on April 3, 1969. Cause and effect? We will only find out in eternity.

Another contemporaneous testimony to the confusion caused by the “Second” Vatican Council and its aftermath, including the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination, was given by the conciliar Archbishop of Portland, Oregon, Robert Joseph Dwyer, who said the following about this travesty two years after the “new Mass” had been implanted on Sunday, November 30, 1969, six days after the death of Bishop Josee Mauricio de Rocha:

(www.RemnantNewspaper.com) When whole segments of the contemporary Church are set on a downward course of vulgarization, of anti-intellectualism, of revolt, and rebellion against all standards and authority, it is exceedingly difficult to put a stop to the trend, holding back the enormous weight, and then attempting to turn these segments back the other way, to begin all over again the slow, laborious climb to the high and distant peaks.

It is just such a catastrophe which overwhelms us today.  We recall the dream of St. Francis and Pope Innocent III where the little Poor Man was holding up with his feeble hands the collapsing fabric of the Lateran…

We are in a veritable landslide of vulgarization.  What was intended by Vatican Council II as a means of making the liturgy more easily understood by the average Christian, has turned out to be something more like an orgy of stripping it of all sense of holiness and reverence, bringing it down to the level of commonness where the very people for whom the changes were made now only yawn out of sheer boredom with the banality of the result.

What was the great poetic style of the Bible has been transmogrified and cheapened into some of the most graceless, flat, plodding prose ever inflicted upon undeserving dullards.  Matters are bad enough now, but wait until the new Order of the Mass is released as compulsory for a revelation of what crimes can be committed by men in committee!  It might have been thought, in the interest of ecumenism, that consideration could have been given to strengthening the old Douai-Challoner text with the great style, the ‘organ roll’ of the King James version.  But no!  In the minds of those commissioned by hierarchy to do the work, the great object or target, manifestly, was to denude the liturgy of its last claim to literary dignity…With polite pious acquiescence, the Bishops received the results with no more than an occasional feeble, almost only grunted protest.  Thusly, do we lose a priceless cultural inheritance. Quoted from The Clarion, Parish Bulletin, Glenview, Il, July 26, 1971 (PAs found at: This Bears Repitition.)

Archbishop Robert Joseph Dwyer, who was a true bishop as he was appointed by Pope Pius XII in 1952 to be the Bishop of Reno, Nevada, resigned from his metropolitan see on January 22, 1974, and died on March 24, 1976, at the age of sixty-eight. As noted just above, we will find out in eternity how many bishops and priests died of a grief brought on by the “Second” Vatican Council and its hideous liturgy, which has made it more possible for those who bother to go to the Novus Ordo travesty to accept the ceaseless changes in Catholic Faith, Worship, and Morals in the past fifty-seven years since its promulgation and institution. 

Yes, Bishop Jose Mauricio de Rocha was quite correct in calling the "Second" Vatican Council a "council of the devil," and the assemblies convened by the “popes” of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have done the work of the devil, and the recent assembly convened by Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV to “reflect” on the state of the family ten years after the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio issued Amoris Laetitia on March 19, 2026, the Feast of Saint Joseph, is yet another proof of the simple fact that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is run by the adversary himself and his minions.

As was the case with the Protestant Revolution, the many, although not all, of the conciliar revolutionaries are driven in their desire to “reform” the irreformable because of their fascination with, if not active participation in, impurity, especially impurity of the most impure, indecent, and the most aberrant type conjured up directly in hell itself.

Although Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV has given us more than enough proof of his desire to fill the conciliar hierarchy with sodomite-friendly “bishops” and just recently appointed the sodomite sympathizer named Jamie Tagle to be the dean of the conciliar college of “cardinals,” the following report indicates the extent to which almost all vestiges of Catholicism have been replaced with an openly proud support for the sorts of sins that caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour to undergo His scourging at the pillar with whips laced with strips of rusty iron that dug deep into His body as they were dragged through by the Roman soldiers:

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — A senior Indian cardinal urged the Catholic Church to rethink its approach to family life, arguing that it must accommodate “new forms of partnership and cohabitation,” interfaith unions, and changing ideas about gender rather than insist on an “ideal family” model.

On October 8, Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão, archbishop of Goa and Daman and president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, delivered an introductory address on family life at the Paul VI Hall in Vatican City during the second day of the summit marking 10 years of Amoris Laetitia. Speaking before assembly participants, the Indian prelate asserted that traditional family structures are “increasingly giving way to smaller, nuclear households” across the globe. On account of this, he claimed that the Catholic Church must alter her understanding and pastoral practices to accommodate modern relationship models rather than insisting on immutable moral norms.

“Ten years after the promulgation of Amoris Laetitia, the experience of the Synod continues to challenge us: there is no single stereotype of an ideal family, but rather a challenging mosaic of diverse realities, marked by joys, hopes, struggles and wounds,” Neri Ferrão claimed. “In this context, perhaps the question we might carry into our synodal discernment is this: What is the Holy Spirit asking the Church to change – not only in what we do for the families but in how we understand, accompany and empower them as protagonists of the Gospel and as enduring loci of God’s revelation.”

In his speech, Neri Ferrão detailed what he described as “major shifts” transforming household “composition” in Asia and beyond, explicitly noting that “new forms of partnership and cohabitation are emerging, amid changing understandings of gender and relationships in urban settings” alongside a rise in “interfaith marriages.”

Instead of calling for a reaffirmation of Catholic doctrine on marriage and the family, the cardinal insisted that pastoral care cannot “arrive with ready-made answers” and urged the wider Church to recognize that “fragility is not the absence of grace.”

Furthermore, Neri Ferrão asserted that the Church must move away from a traditional teaching model, arguing that prelates cannot guide the faithful by “standing far off and pointing at the destination.” On the contrary, he called for an institutional transformation where families – including non-traditional or irregular situations – are viewed as “partners in mission” and even active places (“loci”) of divine Revelation.

“In our local Churches, we recognize the family as a privileged locus of revelation,” the cardinal said within a framework that rejects the traditional model of the family.

However, according to Catholic doctrine, the sources of Revelation are Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Tradition, as interpreted by the perennial Magisterium of the Church. The proper loci (“places”) of Revelation, namely, particular instances from which the theologian may draw arguments to understand, explain, and demonstrate doctrine without contradicting it, include the councils, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the constant consensus of the Church’s faith, natural reason, and history.

The Vatican’s eight-day summit commemorating Amoris Laetitia has been structured to ensure dominance by Francis-era progressives and to promote a pastorally fluid agenda. The summit opened on October 7, when Dominican Sister Helen Alford, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, delivered an introductory meditation claiming that Our Lord was initially “flirting” with the Samaritan woman at the well in St. John’s Gospel.

Neri Ferrão is a longtime ally of Pope Francis. In 2021, Neri Ferrão sparked widespread outrage among Catholics when he instructed his clergy to visit idols of Ganesha, an elephant-headed Hindu deity, during a pagan festival. Catholic faithful organized a petition condemning the archbishop for witnessing to “radical religious relativism which puts the living Jesus on a par with a clay Ganesh.” Neri Ferrão rejected the criticism, claiming that public outcry against idolatry hurt the sentiment of non-Christian traditions.

Despite these public scandals, Pope Francis elevated Neri Ferrão to the College of Cardinals in August 2022 and later appointed him to the drafting committee for the 2024 Synod on Synodality. In 2023, he was also elected as the new president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. (Cardinal betrays natural family at Amoris Laetitia summit.)

(LifeSiteNews) — A theologian on Monday lamented the exclusion of those living in adultery from Holy Communion in an address delivered at Pope Leo XIV’s Amoris Laetitia summit.

Professor Julie Hanlon Rubio on Monday delivered a talk titled “In the difficulties of life: accompanying and supporting – Walking with families in complex situations,” during the Vatican summit marking the 10th anniversary of Amoris Laetitia, which claimed the divorced and remarried may receive Holy Communion “in certain cases.”

After addressing the declining rates of marriage around the world, Rubio said, “Yet, I do not want to suggest that the problem of marginalization that concerned Pope Francis has been solved.”

“In preparing for this intervention, I heard heartbreaking stories. One person told me of his elderly mother suffering from dementia who, when offered Eucharist at Mass, shouted, ‘No!,’ and covered her mouth, because one thing she remembered was that, because her husband of fifty years had been previously married, she was not worthy to receive the Body of Christ,” said Rubio, clearly citing this as a case of “marginalization.” 

Those who are having sex with a partner other than their spouse, to whom they are married in the eyes of God, are living in adultery, and thus cannot receive Holy Communion if they have not repented of this grave sin. If a previous marriage has been declared annulled by the Church – that is, that a valid, sacramental marriage never existed – a Catholic may then marry another person and receive Communion.

In her talk, Rubio falsely referred to the divorced and remarried as living out a “vocation,” as if it was a calling from God or a path to holiness.

“Whether they are single or married, with or without children; whether they are divorced, widowed, or remarried, we can meet them at the door with open arms, tell them that theirs is a challenging and necessary vocation, and assure them they are not alone,” she concluded.

The Vatican’s ongoing summit, held from October 7 to 14, is designed to examine what the Church has “learned” from a decade of “trying to live” Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia.

The gathering brings together roughly 248 bishops, including heads of Eastern Catholic Churches and presidents of bishops’ conferences worldwide, along with select families and lay experts. Out of the listed attendees, Pope Leo XIV personally selected 22 participants, including prominent American heterodox prelates such as Cardinal Blase Cupich (Chicago), Cardinal Robert McElroy (Washington, D.C.), and Cardinal Joseph Tobin (Newark). (Amoris Laetitia summit speaker falsely claims divorce, 'remarriage' is a 'vocation'.)

So much for the plain words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself:

Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband, committeth adultery. (Luke 16: 18.)

So much for the plain words of Pope Leo XIII:

16. Yet, owing to the efforts of the archenemy of mankind, there are persons who, thanklessly casting away so many other blessings of redemption, despise also or utterly ignore the restoration of marriage to its original perfection. It is a reproach to some of the ancients that they showed themselves the enemies of marriage in many ways; but in our own age, much more pernicious is the sin of those who would fain pervert utterly the nature of marriage, perfect though it is, and complete in all its details and parts. The chief reason why they act in this way is because very many, imbued with the maxims of a false philosophy and corrupted in morals, judge nothing so unbearable as submission and obedience; and strive with all their might to bring about that not only individual men, but families, also -- indeed, human society itself -- may in haughty pride despise the sovereignty of God.

17. Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.

18. Hence are owing civil marriages, commonly so called; hence laws are framed which impose impediments to marriage; hence arise judicial sentences affecting the marriage contract, as to whether or not it have been rightly made. Lastly, all power of prescribing and passing judgment in this class of cases is, as we see, of set purpose denied to the Catholic Church, so that no regard is paid either to her divine power or to her prudent laws. Yet, under these, for so many centuries, have the nations lived on whom the light of civilization shone bright with the wisdom of Christ Jesus.

19. Nevertheless, the naturalists, as well as all who profess that they worship above all things the divinity of the State, and strive to disturb whole communities with such wicked doctrines, cannot escape the charge of delusion. Marriage has God for its Author, and was from the very beginning a kind of foreshadowing of the Incarnation of His Son; and therefore there abides in it a something holy and religious; not extraneous, but innate; not derived from men, but implanted by nature. (Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum, February 10, 1880.)

The ostensible author of Amoris Laetitia, late Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and his ghostwriter, Victor Manuel Fernandez, of course, had no problem with “civil marriages.” In truth, of course, they had no problem with adultery, fornication, sodomy, cross-dressing, contraception, bodily mutilation, or any other kind of impure practices. Bergoglio himself only had a problem with those who condemn these evils and call to correction those who are engaged in them. In this regard, obviously, he had a problem with Holy Mother Church’s twenty true general councils and our true popes.

Pope Leo XIII used the authority of the See of Saint Peter to denounce popular trends that Bergoglio does not believe need to be decried:

28. Now, however much the legislators of these our days may wish to guard themselves against the impiety of men such as we have been speaking of, they are unable to do so, seeing that they profess to hold and defend the very same principles of jurisprudence; and hence they have to go with times, and render divorce easily obtainable. History itself shows this; for, to pass over other instances, we find that, at the close of the last century, divorces were sanctioned by law in that upheaval or, rather, as it might be called, conflagration in France, when society was wholly degraded by the abandoning of God. Many at the present time would fain have those laws reenacted, because they wish God and His Church to be altogether exiled and excluded from the midst of human society, madly thinking that in such laws a final remedy must be sought for that moral corruption which is advancing with rapid strides.

29. Truly, it is hardly possible to describe how great are the evils that flow from divorce. Matrimonial contracts are by it made variable; mutual kindness is weakened; deplorable inducements to unfaithfulness are supplied; harm is done to the education and training of children; occasion is afforded for the breaking up of homes; the seeds of dissension are sown among families; the dignity of womanhood is lessened and brought low, and women run the risk of being deserted after having ministered to the pleasures of men. Since, then, nothing has such power to lay waste families and destroy the mainstay of kingdoms as the corruption of morals, it is easily seen that divorces are in the highest degree hostile to the prosperity of families and States, springing as they do from the depraved morals of the people, and, as experience shows us, opening out a way to every kind of evil-doing in public and in private life.

30. Further still, if the matter be duly pondered, we shall clearly see these evils to be the more especially dangerous, because, divorce once being tolerated, there will be no restraint powerful enough to keep it within the bounds marked out or presurmised. Great indeed is the force of example, and even greater still the might of passion. With such incitements it must needs follow that the eagerness for divorce, daily spreading by devious ways, will seize upon the minds of many like a virulent contagious disease, or like a flood of water bursting through every barrier. These are truths that doubtlessly are all clear in themselves, but they will become clearer yet if we call to mind the teachings of experience. So soon as the road to divorce began to be made smooth by law, at once quarrels, jealousies, and judicial separations largely increased: and such shamelessness of life followed that men who had been in favor of these divorces repented of what they had done, and feared that, if they did not carefully seek a remedy by repealing the law, the State itself might come to ruin. The Romans of old are said to have shrunk with horror from the first example of divorce, but ere long all sense of decency was blunted in their soul; the meager restraint of passion died out, and the marriage vow was so often broken that what some writers have affirmed would seem to be true -- namely, women used to reckon years not by the change of consuls, but of their husbands. In like manner, at the beginning, Protestants allowed legalized divorces in certain although but few cases, and yet from the affinity of circumstances of like kind, the number of divorces increased to such extent in Germany, America, and elsewhere that all wise thinkers deplored the boundless corruption of morals, and judged the recklessness of the laws to be simply intolerable.

31. Even in Catholic States the evil existed. For whenever at any time divorce was introduced, the abundance of misery that followed far exceeded all that the framers of the law could have foreseen. In fact, many lent their minds to contrive all kinds of fraud and device, and by accusations of cruelty, violence, and adultery to feign grounds for the dissolution of the matrimonial bond of which they had grown weary; and all this with so great havoc to morals that an amendment of the laws was deemed to be urgently needed.

32. Can anyone, therefore, doubt that laws in favor of divorce would have a result equally baneful and calamitous were they to be passed in these our days? There exists not, indeed, in the projects and enactments of men any power to change the character and tendency with things have received from nature. Those men, therefore, show but little wisdom in the idea they have formed of the well-being of the commonwealth who think that the inherent character of marriage can be perverted with impunity; and who, disregarding the sanctity of religion and of the sacrament, seem to wish to degrade and dishonor marriage more basely than was done even by heathen laws. Indeed, if they do not change their views, not only private families, but all public society, will have unceasing cause to fear lest they should be miserably driven into that general confusion and overthrow of order which is even now the wicked aim of socialists and communists. Thus we see most clearly how foolish and senseless it is to expect any public good from divorce, when, on the contrary, it tends to the certain destruction of society.

33. It must consequently be acknowledged that the Church has deserved exceedingly well of all nations by her ever watchful care in guarding the sanctity and the indissolubility of marriage. Again, no small amount of gratitude is owing to her for having, during the last hundred years, openly denounced the wicked laws which have grievously offended on this particular subject;[51] as well as for her having branded with anathema the baneful heresy obtaining among Protestants touching divorce and separation;[52] also, for having in many ways condemned the habitual dissolution of marriage among the Greeks;[53] for having declared invalid all marriages contracted upon the understanding that they may be at some future time dissolved;[54] and, lastly, for having, from the earliest times, repudiated the imperial laws which disastrously favored divorce.[55] (Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum, February 10, 1880.)

Pope Leo XIII named Protestantism as the proximate root cause of the promotion of divorce and “remarriage” in contemporary times while condemning the Greek Orthodox, who blazed the path that Luther trod five hundred years after the Greek Schism of 1054, for their habitual dissolution of marriages. A true pope decried evils. He did not seek to make any excuse for them on the pretext of finding “good” in anything evil as evil is the privation of good. Then again, one has to be a Catholic to understand such points.

Pope Leo XIII also cited instances in which the Catholic Church rebuffed civil leaders who wanted her to sanction their lecherous and adulterous ways:

34. As often, indeed, as the supreme pontiffs have resisted the most powerful among rulers, in their threatening demands that divorces carried out by them should be confirmed by the Church, so often must we account them to have been contending for the safety, not only of religion, but also of the human race. For this reason all generations of men will admire the proofs of unbending courage which are to be found in the decrees of Nicholas I against Lothair; of Urban II and Paschal II against Philip I of France; of Celestine III and Innocent III against Alphonsus of Leon and Philip II of France; of Clement VII and Paul III against Henry VIII; and, lastly, of Pius VII, that holy and courageous pontiff, against Napoleon I, when at the height of his prosperity and in the fullness of his power. This being so, all rulers and administrators of the State who are desirous of following the dictates of reason and wisdom, and anxious for the good of their people, ought to make up their minds to keep the holy laws of marriage intact, and to make use of the proffered aid of the Church for securing the safety of morals and the happiness of families, rather than suspect her of hostile intention and falsely and wickedly accuse her of violating the civil law. (Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum, February 10, 1880.)

Each of the despots who demanded that their divorces be sanctioned by Holy Mother Church would have found a most tender and receptive ear in the person of the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who always had ready excuses for evils and those who persist in them while apologizing for how the Catholic Church has presented what he disparaged as a “theological ideal” of marriage by stressing the “the almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation”:

36. We also need to be humble and realistic, acknowledging that at times the way we present our Christian beliefs and treat other people has helped contribute to today’s problematic situation. We need a healthy dose of self-criticism. Then too, we often present marriage in such a way that its unitive meaning, its call to grow in love and its ideal of mutual assistance are overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation. Nor have we always provided solid guidance to young married couples, understanding their timetables, their way of thinking and their concrete concerns. At times we have also proposed a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families. This excessive idealization, especially when we have failed to inspire trust in God’s grace, has not helped to make marriage more desirable and attractive, but quite the opposite.  (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Amoris Laetita, March 19, 2016.)

The paragraph from Amoris Laetitia quoted just above very succinctly documents the simple fact that Bergoglio did not believe in the efficacy of the graces Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ won for us by His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that the reiteration of basic Gospel truths by Popes Leo XIII in Arcanum and Pius XI in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930, was outdated and unrealistic.

In truth, of course, the fact that Amoris Laetitia was issued at all by a putative claimant to the papacy and has taken such deep root in the sinews of the conciliar sect provides ample proof about the apostate nature of conciliarism, an apostate nature that was condemned by Pope Pius XII himself as follows:

The new ethic (adapted to circumstances), say its authors, is eminently “individual.” In this determination of conscience, each individual finds himself in direct relationship with God and decides before Him, without the slightest trace of intervention by any law, any authority, any community, any cult or religion. Here there is simply the “I” of man and the “I” of the personal God, not the God of the law, but of God the Father, with whom man must unite himself in filial love. Viewed thus, the decision of conscience is a personal “risk,” according to one’s own knowledge and evaluation, in all sincerity before God. These two things, right intention and sincere response, are what God considers! He is not concerned with the action. Hence the answer may be to exchange that Catholic faith for other principles, to seek divorce, to interrupt gestation, to refuse obedience to competent authority in the family, the Church, the State, and so forth.

All this would be perfectly fitting for man’s status as one who has come “of age” and, in the Christian order, it would be in harmony with the relation of sonship which, according to the teaching of Christ, makes us pray to God as “Our Father.”

This personal view of things spares man the necessity of having to ask himself, at every instant, whether the decision to be taken corresponds with the paragraphs of the law or to the canons of abstract standards and rules. It preserves man from the hypocrisy of pharisaical fidelity to laws; it preserves him both from pathological scruples as well at from the flippancy or lack of conscience, because it puts the responsibility before God on the Christian personally. Thus speak those who preach the “new morality.”

It is Alien to the Faith and Catholic Principles

8. Stated thus expressly, the new ethic is so foreign to the faith and to Catholic principles that even a child, if he knows his catechism, will be aware of it and will feel it. It is not difficult to recognize how this new moral system derives from existentialism which either prescinds from God or simply denies Him, and, in any case, leaves man to himself. It is possible that present-day conditions may have led men to attempt to transplant this “new morality” into Catholic soil, in order to make the hardships of Christian life more bearable for the faithful. In fact, millions of them are being called upon today, and in an extraordinary degree, to practice firmness, patience, constancy, and the spirit of sacrifice, if they wish to preserve their faith intact. For they suffer the blows of fate, or are placed in surroundings which put within their reach everything which their passionate heart yearns for or desires. Such an attempt can never succeed.

The Fundamental Obligations of the Moral Law

9. It will be asked, how the moral law, which is universal, can be sufficient, and even have binding force, in an individual case, which, in the concrete, is always unique and “happens only once.” It can be sufficient and binding, and it actually is because precisely by reason of its universality, the moral law includes necessarily and “intentionally” all particular cases in which its meaning is verified. In very many cases it does so with such convincing logic that even the conscience of the simple faithful sees immediately, and with full certitude, the decision to be taken.

10. This is especially true of the negative obligations of the moral law, namely those which oblige us not to do something, or to set something else aside. Yet it is not true only of these obligations. The fundamental obligations of the moral law are based on the essence and the nature of man, and on his essential relationships, and thus they have force wherever we find man. The fundamental obligations of the Christian law, in the degree in which they are superior to those of the natural law, are based on the essence of the supernatural order established by the Divine Redeemer. From the essential relationships between man and God, between man and man, between husband and wife, between parents and children; from the essential community relationships found in the family, in the Church, and in the State, it follows, among other things, that hatred of God, blasphemy, idolatry, abandoning the true faith, denial of the faith, perjury, murder, bearing false witness, calumny, adultery and fornication, the abuse of marriage, the solitary sin, stealing and robbery, taking away the necessities of life, depriving workers of their just wage (James 5:4), monopolizing vital foodstuffs and unjustifiably increasing prices, fraudulent bankruptcy, unjust maneuvering in speculation—all this is gravely forbidden by the divine Lawmaker. No examination is necessary. No matter what the situation of the individual may be, there is no other course open to him but to obey.

11. For the rest, against “situation ethics,” We set up three considerations, or maxims. The first: We grant that God wants, first and always, a right intention. But this is not enough. He also wants the good work. A second principle is that it is not permitted to do evil in order that good may result (Rom 3:8). Now this new ethic, perhaps without being aware of it, acts according to the principle that the end justifies the means. A Christian cannot be unaware of the fact that he must sacrifice everything, even his life, in order to save his soul. Of this we are reminded by all the martyrs. Martyrs are very numerous, even in our time. The mother of the Maccabees, along with her sons; Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, notwithstanding their newborn children; Maria Goretti, and thousands of others, men and women, whom the Church venerates—did they, in the face of the “situation” in which they found themselves, uselessly or even mistakenly incur a bloody death? No, certainly not, and in their blood they are the most explicit witnesses to the truth against the “new morality.” (Pope Pius XII, Address “Soyez Les Bienvenues” (1952) – Novus Ordo Watch.)

Following up on Pope Pius XII’s Soyez Les Bievenues, the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office issued a formal dogmatic condemnation of situation ethics on February 2, 1956, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Contrary to the moral doctrine and its application that is traditional in the Catholic Church, there has begun to be spread abroad in many regions, even among Catholics, an ethical system that generally goes by the name of a certain "Situation Ethics," and which, they claim, does not rest upon the principles of objective ethics (which ultimately is rooted in “Being” itself), rather, it is not merely subject to the same limit as objective ethics, but transcends it.

The authors who follow this system hold that the decisive and ultimate norm of conduct is not the objective right order, determined by the law of nature and known with certainty from that law, but a certain intimate judgment and light of the mind of each individual, by means of which, in the concrete situation in which he is placed, he learns what he ought to do.

And so, according to them, this ultimate decision a man makes is not, as the objective ethics handed down by authors of great weight teaches, the application of the objective law to a particular case, which at the same time takes into account and weighs according to the rules of prudence the particular circumstances of the "situation", but that immediate, internal light and judgment. Ultimately, at least in many matters, this judgment is not measured, must not and cannot be measured, as regards its objective rectitude and truth, by any objective norm situated outside man and independent of his subjective persuasion but is entirely self-sufficient.

According to these authors, the traditional concept of "human nature" does not suffice; but recourse must be had to the concept of "existent" human nature, which in many respects does not have absolute objective value, but only a relative and, therefore, changeable value, except, perhaps, for those few factors and principles that pertain to metaphysical (absolute and unchangeable) human nature.

Of the same merely relative value is the traditional concept of the "law of nature". Thus, many things that are commonly considered today as absolute postulates of the natural law, according to their opinion and doctrine, rest upon the aforesaid concept of existent nature and are, therefore, but relative and changeable; they can always be adapted to every situation.

Having accepted these principles and put them into practice, they assert and teach that men are preserved or easily liberated from many otherwise insoluble ethical conflicts when each one judges in his own conscience, not primarily according to objective laws, but by means of that internal, individual light based on personal intuition, what he must do in a concrete situation.

Many of the things set forth in this system of "situation ethics" contradict the truth of the matter and the dictates of sound reason, betray traces of relativism and modernism, and wander far from the Catholic doctrine handed down through the centuries. In many of their assertions they are akin to several non-Catholic ethical systems.

Having considered these things, in order to avert the danger of the “New Morality,” of which the Supreme Pontiff Pope Pius XII spoke in the Allocutions held on the days of March 23 and April 18, 1952, and in order to safeguard the purity and intactness of Catholic doctrine, this Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office interdicts and prohibits this doctrine of "Situation Ethics” from being taught or approved, under any name whatsoever it may be designated, whether in Universities, Athenaeums, Seminaries or houses of religious formation, or in books, dissertations, lectures, whether, as they say, at conferences, or by any other means of being propagated or defended.

Given at Rome, from the Palace of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, on the day of February 2, of the year 1956.

Giuseppe Cardinal PIZZARDO, Bishop of Albano, Secretary

Sources:

Latin Original: AAS 48 [1956] 144-145

http://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/documents/AAS-48-1956-ocr.pdf#page=144  (As found at: Library : Contra doctrinam | Catholic Culture.)

Wham!

The counterfeit church of conciliarism has not been, is not now, nor can it ever be the same thing as the Catholic Church, she who is the spotless, virginal Mystical Bride of her Mystical Bridegroom and Divine Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

To contend that documents such as the new report issued by conciliarism’s “synod of bishops” can come forth from the authority of the Holy See is commit a criminal act.

Who says so?

Saint Ambrose of Milan, for one:

“The Catholic faith derives so much strength and support from the words of the Apostolic See, that it is criminal to entertain any doubt concerning it.”

It took me a very long time to come to this conclusion twenty years ago, and it is a cause for great rejoicing that the Transalpine Redemptorists of Papa Stronsay Island in Scotland have come to this conclusion for themselves. I am sure that, given their ties to the Society of Saint Pius X, the members of this community will make every effort, found in supplications to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, that the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X from which they took Holy Orders will come to recognize the errors of their Gallican ways and come to the realization that To Disobey a True Pope is to Disobey God Himself.

Our Lady is our life, our sweetness, and our hope. She will help us withstand all the trials and difficulties of these present times just as she came to the rescue of Bishop Jose Maurico de Rocha’s beloved Brazil in 1964 when the country’s president, Joao Goulart, was attempting to turn Brazil into a Cuban-style Communist stronghold:

In 1964, Easter was celebrated on March 29. During the Holy Week, miraculous events took place in Brazil, events that had a national and universal reach. The Communist revolution that had been planned for this South American country was stopped two days before its being triggered.

It is the women of Brazil who put a stop to the Communist revolution. It is they who led the counter revolution. And the women of Brazil chose the Queen of Heaven as their leader. She who, by Divine Decree, is to crush the head of Satan, the Liar, the Murderer.

It is Our Lady of Fatima who saved Brazil during the Holy Week of 1964, because Catholics in Brazil lived the Fatima Message and because the women of Brazil gathered in large processions following the statue of the Pilgrim Virgin through their cities’ streets while reciting the Rosary out loud and singing hymns.

In 1964, the Readers Digest Magazine published an article entitled, “The Country that Saved Itself”. One reads: “When the Federation of workers of Latin America — a Communist organization — announced that a huge meeting was to take place in Belo Horizonte, with two organizers from Russia as main speakers, the leaders of the Women’s League for Democracy sent this brief message: ‘When the airplane carrying these two people arrives, there will be hundreds of women lying on the landing runway. You have been warned.’ This threat was enough. The airplane did not land in Belo Horizonte and went on to Brazilia.

“That same year, Brazilian President Joao Goulart attempted to organize the selling-out of his country to Communism. Following the Cuban model, he had succeeded in infiltrating key government posts as well as the schools and universities in most of the country. But for most of the preceding year, Fr. Patrick Peyton, of the Holy Cross Congregation, had preached a Rosary crusade, crisscrossing the country in order to convince the faithful to turn to Our Lady. When the moment of danger came, the people remembered.

“In February, 1964, the same women organized a demonstration which was similarly successful. A congress on land reform was to be held in the city of Belo Horizonte, with Leonel Brizola, the Cuban and Communist ambassador, as main speaker. When Brizola arrived in the hall of the congress, he found it packed full, so full that he could not succeed in making himself heard, his voice being drowned out by the clanking of the Rosary beads of 3,000 women praying for the deliverance of their nation. On leaving, Brizola found the streets equally full, as far as the eye could see, with women praying. He departed the city with one of the most incendiary speeches of his career still in his pocket, undelivered.”

On March 13, 1964, the Communist leaders had brought to Rio de Janeiro 100,000 workers, by bus and train, at the expense of the State —at a cost exceeding $400,000 — to hear Goulart and Brizola decree the amendment of the Constitution, the abolition of Congress, and the confiscation of industries and farms. It was the 13th day of the month, the day chosen by the Virgin of Fatima for Her Apparitions in Portugal in 1917. Since then, the 13th day of every month is honoured by the devotees of Our Lady of Fatima.

So March 13, 1964, was the day chosen by President Goulart to officially announce the beginning of the Communist dictatorship in Brazil. However, March 13, 1964, was also the day chosen by the Virgin Mary to show Her miraculous power of intercession in favour of Her friends of the Rosary.

When the women of Brazil heard on television the terrifying news cast by the demons of Communism, they left their homes and went out on the streets and country roads, by the millions, reciting the Rosary, carrying anti-Communist banners, and distributing tons of leaflets with the help of their children.

On Thursday, March 19, the Feast of St. Joseph, head of the Holy Family, the “March of the Family towards freedom, with the help of God” took place in Sao Paulo. One million women marched solemnly, praying the Rosary and singing religious hymns. This took place during the first week of the Passion, on the Thursday before Palm Sunday.

During Holy Week

Brazil is a huge country, larger than the United States, home to some 77 million inhabitants, some three times the population of Canada and thirteen times that of Quebec (in 1965).

In the days that followed March 19, similar “Marches of the Family towards freedom, with God’s help” took place in almost every city in Brazil which mobilized millions upon millions of women.

Here is the text of the leaflet distributed by the women and their children throughout Brazil:

“This immense and marvelous land which God has given us is in extreme peril. We have allowed men with unlimited ambition, devoid of all Christian faith and scruples, to bring misery to our people, to destroy our economy, to perturb our social peace, to sow hatred and despair. They have infiltrated our nation, our administrations, our army, and even our Church, with servants of a totalitarianism which is foreign to us and which would destroy all that we hold dear...

“Holy Mother of God, protect us from the fate that threatens us, and spare us the sufferings inflicted on the martyred women of Cuba, Poland, Hungary, and the other nations reduced to slavery! ”

March 20th was the Feast Day of Our Lady of Compassion, the Friday before Palm Sunday.

The women of Brazil kept up their “Marches for the families”. March 22nd was Palm Sunday. As Christ did in Jerusalem, the women of Brazil were triumphantly taking possession of their country, while singing: “Hosannah to the Son of David!”

While at the same time, Luiz Carlos Prestes, head of the Brazilian Communist party, strutted around claiming: “We’ve already seized the power. We just need to take over the Government.” As for President Goulart, he publicly blamed the Catholics for opposing his reforms. He made the mistake of publicly making fun of their devotion to the Rosary, saying that it was an ineffective weapon to solve Brazil’s problems.

However, after March 13, the day Goulart had pronounced his devious decrees, General Castelo Branco had written a secret manifesto of reprobation which stated that: “When a president proposes to chase the Congress out and overthrow the Constitution, it is not only the right of the army, but also its duty to intervene to uphold the law.”

Through the channel of some rightist businessmen, this manifesto was secretly handed to high officers of the army who could be trusted. Then, 1,500 officers of the navy made a call to all the citizens of the nation, saying that the time had come for Brazil to defend itself. The army, the navy, the media joined forces with the women who were praying in a gigantic counter-revolution.

On March 23, Cardinal Camera of Rio de Janeiro, in a broadcast to the nation, warned the population against the imminent danger of a Communist take-over.

Three days later, on March 26, Holy Thursday, sections of the military marched against Goulart. Documents seized showed that the Communists had planned to take over the country by force exactly two days later, on March 28. The counter-revolution had preceded the revolution by only 48 hours!

A resurrection

The governors of the states and army generals sided with the counter-revolution, one after the other. Members of Congress deserted President Goulart who fled the country, followed by Brizola and the unions’ Communist leaders.

On Wednesday afternoon, April 1, three days after Easter Sunday, the counter-revolutionaries had won. They celebrated on the radio the failure of the Communists. Hanging from Rio’s windows, sheets and towels hailed the victory, and the streets of Brazil were filled with happy people who were dancing in an atmosphere of jubilation.

A procession had been planned for April 2, Easter Thursday by the women in Rio de Janeiro. Some overly apeasing individuals wished to dissuade the women from doing their “procession of families” under the pretext that it had become useless after the victory. But the women of Rio rushed to their phones to maintain their plan. They turned this procession into an “apotheosis” of thanksgiving to Our Lord. The entire population of Rio and the surrounding cities took to the streets.

The counter-revolution in Brazil was a miracle. The miracle of a war won without blood being shed, the miracle of a population that organizes resistance by itself, with limited means, without the help of the Financiers, the powers of money, or other nations. Contrary to common belief, the United States did not provide any assistance to Brazil’s counter-revolution. It was the miracle of businessmen and professionals who worked for the common good. The miracle of men of authority, governors, generals, members of Congress, who were willing to sacrifice prestige and wealth to save their country.

Who made the miracle in Brazil? The women, with their Rosaries. Who made the miracle? Our Lady of Fatima who, in 1917, had promised to save the world from Communist tyranny if Catholics prayed the Rosary and made penance.

In July 1964, Fr. Valerio Alberton, a Jesuit priest, traveled to Fatima, Portugal,” to thank the Most Holy Virgin for the most important grace that Brazil obtained from Her, with the victory of the armed forces over Communism that threatened to transform Brazil into another Cuba.“ And Father Alberton goes on:

“We have overcome, thanks to Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima and to Portugal... Thanks to Portugal, because Portugal is Fatima. And thanks to the message of Fatima lived in Brazil, we have freed ourselves in time from the hydra of Moscow.”

My friends, here, I wish us all to apply, sentence by sentence, the words that follow. You will see how our situation, here, today, resembles that of Brazil prior to its counter-revolution.

Father Alberton: “The situation in my country was very serious. Every aspect of human activity was undermined. The key positions were in the hands of notorious Communists, those in favor of Communism. The unions were mostly controlled by them. Continual strikes, many of which were of an openly political nature, provoked disturbances everywhere. The universities themselves were affected. I noticed myself the seriousness of the situation when I travelled from November 1963 to March 1964 to all the capital cities of Brazil, where I was in contact with the university milieux. In the middle of March, I finished my travels with this conclusion: it is a fact that the Church has lost the universities.

“The penetration in the Catholic faculties was very pervasive. Even in our colleges there were Communist cell groups. Catholic associations were not spared. It was really scary. Discouragement was beginning to take over minds. Many found the problem unsolvable. ..There remained only one hope: devotion to the Blessed Virgin.” 

“Marian army ready for battle”

“Every week, the Cardinal Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, through the voice of the pastor of a local radio station, put Catholics on their guard, and asked them to pray and make penance, according to the spirit of the Message of Fatima, so that God, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, may have mercy on us.

“And these repeated calls were echoed in the hearts of the Brazilian Catholics, because the Message of Fatima had deeply penetrated their souls. The Message of Fatima has been welcomed with enthusiasm in Brazil; the whole nation has been impregnated with it. The visit of the pilgrim statue of the Virgin of Fatima in Brazil, for 18 months, in 1952 and 1953, constitutes one of the most extraordinary religious events of its history of over 500 years.

“These were 18 months of intense religious and Marian fervour. All the religious and civil authorities, all classes of society were present to pay homage to Our Lady... And this devotion to the Virgin Mary, especially the Rosary, was revived last year and this year by the moving campaign of Father Patrick Payton.

“Faced with this perilous situation, Catholic associations had put all their efforts in the service of the Blessed Virgin. Two hundred thousand men and lads, enrolled in the 2,000 Marian congregations, had formed a true pacifying army in the struggle for freedom.

“The evidence of a signal grace at work was so strong that all were convinced that the unfolding of events did not have a human explanation. The civil and military leaders of the counter-revolution were almost unanimous in attributing this victory to a special grace of the Most Blessed Virgin. Several declared that the Rosary had been the decisive weapon, like for example Branco, Brazil’s present president. The Rosary was recited everywhere, especially in the Marches of the Family with God toward freedom. All the Bishops of Brazil, in their common statement of June 3, confirm this expressly.”

The practical conclusion to be drawn from this true story is obvious: let us pray the Rosary daily, individually, in our families, and in public. Let us organize Rosary marches in the streets of our cities to stop the dictatorship of Communism and High Finance, and then our civil authorities will have the courage to stand up against the financial powers and defend the common good of the citizens! The recitation of the Rosary saved Brazil. It will save us too!  (In 1964, the women of Brazil saved their country from Communism.)

Our Lady will save us from the conciliar revolutionaries and from the lords of Modernity.  Her Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end. All we need to do is to keep close to hear by praying her Most Holy Rosary every day with increased fervor, to wear and keep the pledges associated with her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel, and to make to wear and prominently display the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception as we greet one another with AVE MARIA!

To thee do we fly, poor banished children Eve!

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Appendix

A Brief Reflection on Saint Peter of Alcantara

We need Our Lady’s help in order to be persevere to our final breath, and we need to imitate the lives of the saints to practice heroic mortification, especially in these times of hedonistic excess. Such heroic mortification was practiced by the saint whose feast we celebrate today, Saint Peter of Alcantara, a true son of the Spanish soil land and of Saint Francis of Assisi who, though a Franciscan, was a close collaborator with Saint Teresa of Avila and her efforts to reform the Carmelites. Saint Peter of Alcantara was a mystic of his own, and he was even seen levitating when in prayer. Imagine how far from such holiness we are. Indeed, imagine how far from such holiness many in the clergy today. Such purity and cleanness of heart as that possessed by the ever charitable Saint Peter of Alcantara are difficult to find almost anywhere today during this time of apostasy and betrayal.

A brief mention of Saint Peter of Alcanatara was made in the reflection offered for the Feast of Saint Teresa of Avila. However, his holiness and wisdom were such that Catholics are still receiving the sort of prudent guidance that he gave to Saint Teresa never to compromise on matters of truth and on those matters pertaining to the proper mode life to observed by those in the consecrated religious life.

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., provided us with a summary of Saint Peter of Alcantara’s life:

“O happy penance, which has won me such glory!” said the Saint of today at the threshold of heaven. And on earth, Teresa of Jesus wrote of him “Oh! what a perfect imitator of Jesus Christ God has just taken from us, by calling to his glory that blessed religious Brother Peter of Alcantara! The world, they say, is no longer capable of such high perfection; constitutions are weaker, and we are not now in the olden times. Here is a Saint of the present day; yet his manly fervor equalled that of past ages; and he had a supreme disdain for everything earthly. But without going barefoot like him, or doing such sharp penance, there are very many ways in which we can practice contempt of the world, and which our Lord will teach us as soon as we have courage. What great courage must the holy man I speak of have received from God, to keep up for forty-seven years the rigorous penance that all now know!

“Of all his mortifications, that which cost him most at the beginning was the overcoming of sleep; to effect this, he would remain continually on his knees, or else standing. The little repose he granted to nature, he took sitting, with his head leaning against a piece of wood fixed to the wall; indeed, had he wished to lie down, he could not have done so, for his cell was only four feet and a half in length. During the course of all these years, he never put his hood up, however burning the sun might be, or however heavy the rain. He never used shoes or stockings. He wore no other clothing than a single garment of rough, coarse cloth; I found out, however, that for twenty years he wore a hair-shirt made on plates of tin, which he never took off. His Habit was as narrow as it could possibly be; and over it he put a short cloak of the same material; this he took off when it was very cold, and left the door and small window of his cell open for a while; then he shut them and put his cape on again, which he said was his manner of warming himself and giving his body a little better temperature. He usually ate but one in three days; and when I showed some surprise at this, he said it was quite easy when one was accustomed to it. His poverty was extreme; and such was his mortification, that, as he acknowledged to me, he had, when young, spent three years in a house of his Order without knowing any one of his Religious except by the sound of his voice; for he had never lifted up his eyes; so that, when called by the rule to any part of the house, he could find his way only by following the other Brethren. He observed the same custody of the eyes when on the roads. When I made his acquaintance, his body was so emaciated that it seemed to be formed of the roots of the trees.”

To this portrait of the Franciscan reformer drawn by the reformer of Carmel, the Church will add the history of his life. Three illustrious and worthy families form the first Order of St. Francis, known as the Conventuals, the Observantines, and the Capuchins. A pious emulation for more and more strict reform, brought about in the Observance itself, a subdivision into the Observantines proper, the Reformed, the Discalced or Alcantarines, and the Recollects. This division, which was horizontal rather than constitutional, no longer exists; for on the feast of the Patriarch of Assisi, October 4th 1897, the Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII thought fit to reunite the great family of the Observance, which is henceforth known as the Order of Friars Minor. (Dom Prosper Gueanger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)

The Divine Office provide us with a brief summary of Saint Peter of Alcanata’s remarkable life in the service of Our Lord and Holy Mother Church:

Peter was born at Alcantara, (a small town in the Province of Estramadura,) in Spain, in the year of our Lord 1499. His father, (Alphonso Garavito, was a lawyer and Governor of the town,) and his mother (was) of good extraction. The holiness of his life was foreshadowed from his earliest years. In the sixteenth year of his age he entered the Order of Friars Minor, wherein he showed himself a pattern to all. He undertook the work of preaching in obedience to his Superiors, and thereby brought many to turn away from sin to true repentance. He conceived a great desire to bring back the observance of the Rule of St Francis to the uttermost straitness of old times, and to that end, supported by God's help, and armed with the approval of the Apostolic See, he founded (in the year 1555) a new stern and poor house near Pedraso, from which the harder way of life, therein happily begun, spread marvellously through divers Provinces of Spain even to the Indies. He was an helper to holy Theresa, with whom he was like-minded, in bringing about the Reformation of the Carmelites. She was taught of God that no one should ask anything in the name of Peter without being heard, and was used to ask him to pray for her, and to call him a Saint while as he was yet alive.

He humbly excused himself from accepting the courtesies of princes, by whom his advice was sought as that of an oracle, and declined to become the Confessor of the Emperor Charles V. He was a very careful keeper to poverty, and contented himself with a single tunic than which none was worse. Purity he carried to such a point that when he was lying sick of his last illness, he would not allow the brother who ministered to him to touch him, how lightly soever. He brought his body into bondage by unceasing watching, fasting, scourging, cold, nakedness, and all manner of hardships, having made it a promise never to allow it any rest in this world. The love of God and his neighbour, which was shed abroad in his heart, somewhiles burnt so that he was fain to run from his cell into the open air to cool himself.

He was marvellous how his thoughts became altogether rapt in God, so that somewhiles it befell that he neither ate nor drank for the space of several days. He was oftentimes seen to rise into the air, shining with an unearthly glory. He passed dry-shod over torrents. When his brethren were in the last state of need, he fed them with food from heaven. A staff which he fixed in the earth grew presently into a green fig-tree. Once while he was travelling by night in the midst of an heavy snow-storm, and took refuge in a ruined and roofless house, then the falling snow made a roof over him lest he should be overwhelmed. Holy Theresa beareth witness that he had the gift of prophecy and of the discerning of spirits. At length, in the 63rd year of his own age, (and of salvation 1562,) at the hour which he had himself foretold, (upon the 18th day of October,) he passed away to be for ever with the Lord, cheered in his last moments by a wonderful vision and by the presence of Saints. At the instant of his death, blessed Theresa, then afar off, saw him carried to heaven. He appeared to her afterwards, and said O what happy penance, to have won for me such glory! After his death he became famous for very many miracles, and Clement IX. inscribed his name among those of the Saints. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Peter of Alcantara.)

Dom Prosper Gueranger’s prayer in honor of Saint Peter of Alcantara should inspire us all to reject the worldliness and the vain amusements of these wicked times as we seek to make reparation for our own many sins—and for those of all others, especially including the conciliar revolutionaries, each of whom is responsible for making it more and more possible for the monsters of Modernity to subject us to various kinds of persecutions both subtle and overt—as the consecrated slaves of Our Lord through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary:

‘Such then is the austere life, an eternity of glory!’ And how sweet were thy last words: ‘I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of the Lord.’ The time of reward had not yet come for the body, with which thou hadst made an agreement to give it no true in this life, but to reserve its enjoyment for the next. But already the soul, on quitting it, had filled it with the light and the fragrance of the other world; signifying to all that, the first part of the contract having been faithfully adhered to, the second should be carried out in like manner. Whereas, given over for its false delights to horrible torments, the flesh of the sinner will for ever cry vengeance against the soul that caused its loss; thy members, entering into the beatitude of thy happy soul, and completing its glory by their own splendour will eternally declare how thy apparent harshness for a time was in reality wisdom and love.

Is it necessary, indeed, to wait for the resurrection, in order to discover that the part thou didst choose is incontestably the best? Who would dare to compare not only unlawful pleasures, but even the permitted enjoyments of earth, with the holy delights of contemplation prepared, even in this world, for those can relish them? If they are to be purchased by the mortification of the flesh, it is because the flesh and the spirit are striving for the mastery; but a generous soul loves the struggle, for the flesh is honoured by it, and through it escapes a thousand dangers.

O thou who, according to our Lord’s promise, are never invoked in vain, if thou deign thyself to present our prayers to Him; obtain for us that relish for heavenly things, which causes an aversion for those of earth. It is the petition made by the whole Church, through thy merits, to the God who bestowed on thee the gift of such wonderful penance and sublime contemplation. The great family of Friars Minor cherishes the treasure of thy teaching and example; for the honour of thy holy Father Francis and the good of the Church, maintain in it the love of its austere traditions. Withdraw not thy precious protection from the Carmel of Teresa of Jesus; nay, extend it to the whole religious state, especially in these days of trial. Mayst thou at length lead back thy native Spain to the glorious heights, whence formerly she seemed to pour down floods of sanctity upon the world; it is the condition of nations ennobled by a more sublime vocation, that they cannot decline without danger of falling below the level of those less favoured by the Most High. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Time After Pentecost, Book V, pp. 427-428.)

We must take in these words a warning as to our voluntarily immersion in the useless things of this earth, including competitive sports (yes, I watched baseball for far too long before I walked out over nineteen years now), and an inspiration to aspire to the great heights of heavenly joy that cannot be experienced without austere penances and without a true and devout reliance upon Our Lady, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary as we pledge our own heart’s oblation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Peter of Alcantara, pray for us.

Appendix B

Father Francis X. Weninger on Saint Peter of Alcantara

St. Peter was born in the year 1499, at Alcantara, in Spain. He became celebrated for his great piety, and the austerity of his life, and in order to distinguish him from other Saints of the same name, received the surname, "of Alcantara." Besides other signs of future holiness, Peter, when only seven years of age, evinced so great a love for prayer, that he sometimes forgot to eat and drink. During the time of his studies he kept his innocence unspotted in the midst of many dangers, by making prayer, the holy Sacraments, and penances, its guardians. When hardly sixteen years old, he secretly left his father's house and entered the Franciscan Order, in which he soon became a model of all virtues. After having finished his novitiate, he was charged with different functions, all of which he discharged most successfully. The office of preacher was the most agreeable to him. An incredible number of hardened sinners were converted by his sermons, in which he treated of penance and a reform of life. The fame of his virtues and holiness gave additional weight to every word he uttered. Especially admirable were the untiring zeal with which he practiced all manner of bodily austerities, and his continual communion with God in prayer. His whole life was one of extraordinary and almost unexampled mortification. He guarded his eyes so closely, that he not only never looked on a woman's face, but knew his brethren only by their voices; and after a long sojourn in the monastery, could not tell whether the choir and the dormitory were vaulted or covered with boards.

The cell he chose for his dwelling was so narrow, that it was more like a tomb than the abode of a living human being, and so low, that he could not stand upright in it. He kept an almost continual fast, and hardly partook, every third day, of some undressed herbs, bread and water. It even happened that during eight days he took no food whatever. He scourged himself twice daily with iron chains. He wore, day and night, a penitential instrument made of tin, pierced like a grater. During forty years, he allowed himself only one hour and a half of sleep at night, and this, not lying down, but kneeling, or standing with his head leaning against a board. The remainder of the night he occupied in prayer and meditation. As long as he lived in the order, he went barefoot and bareheaded, even in the coldest season. His clothing consisted of his habit and a short cloak, made of rough sack-cloth. He seemed to have made a compact with his body never in this world to allow it any peace or comfort. His union with God in prayer had reached so high a degree, that he was often seen in ecstasy, or raised high in the air, and surrounded by a heavenly brightness. The power of his holy prayers was experienced not only by many hardened sinners, but also by many sick for whom he obtained health and strength. The inhabitants of the city of Albuquerque, ascribed to him their deliverance from the pestilence; for, as soon as St. Peter had called upon the divine mercy, the pestilence, which had most fearfully ravaged the city, disappeared.

The love of God, which filled the heart of the Saint, manifested itself in his intercourse and conversation with men, whom he endeavored to inflame with the same love. This appeared in all his actions, but especially at the time of Holy Mass, when he stood like a Seraph before the altar, his face burning, and tears streaming from his eyes. When meditating on the passion and death of our Saviour, he was frequently so deeply torched in his inmost heart, that for hours he was like one dead. His devotion to God would sometimes burn his heart so intensely, that to moderate his emotion, he would go into the fields to breathe more freely. Having reached his fortieth year, he was chosen provincial, but endeavored to refuse the dignity, and when compelled by obedience to accept it, he regarded it as an opportunity to do good to those under his charge. God admonished him to restore the primitive observance in the Order, according to the rule and spirit of St. Francis. Although he could not but foresee the many and great difficulties which he would encounter in this undertaking, still, trusting in God, he went courageously to work after having obtained the sanction of the Pope.

The Almighty visibly aided His faithful servant; for, in six years, the Saint had founded nine monasteries, in which the mortification and the perfect poverty which St. Francis especially cherished were observed in all the rigor of the first Rule. In the course of time, this renewed Order was disseminated through all Spain, to the great joy of the Saint. This and other labors which he performed to the honor and glory of God made him greatly esteemed by every one. St. Teresa, who lived at that period, asked his advice in her cares and doubts whenever she had occasion, and called him a Saint while he was yet upon earth. St. Francis Borgia entertained great friendship for him, and the praise of his great virtues resounded throughout all Spain. The Emperor Charles V. desired to make him his confessor, but the humble servant of the Almighty knew how to say so much of his incapacity for this office, that the emperor abandoned the idea, to the Saint's great joy. This became a new incentive for him to devote himself entirely to the service of God and the welfare of those under him.

He had reached his 63rd year, more by a miracle than in a natural way, when he was visited by Providence with a severe illness, which soon left no hope of his recovery, as his body was entirely wasted away by the severity of his life, his painful journeys and his uninterrupted labors. He himself was informed from on high of his approaching end and he received the last Sacraments with so deep a devotion, that the eyes of all present were filled with tears. After this he fell into a rapture, in which the Divine Mother and St. John, the Evangelist, appeared to him and assured him of his salvation. Hence, regaining consciousness, he cheerfully recited the words of the Psalmist: "I have rejoiced in those things which have been said to me; We shall go into the house of the Lord." Having said this, he calmly gave his soul into the keeping of his Creator, in the year of Our Lord 1562. St. Teresa, who has written much in his praise, says among other things: "He died as he had lived, a Saint; and I have, after his death, received many graces from God, through his intercession. I have often seen him in great glory, and when I saw him the first time, he said to me: 'O happy penance, which has obtained so great a glory for me!'" The Roman Breviary testifies that St. Teresa, though, at the time of his death, far from him, saw his soul gloriously ascend into heaven. The biographers of St. Peter, relate many and great miracles which he wrought while he was still living. In the Breviary, we read, among other things, the following. "He crossed rapid rivers with dry feet. In times of great poverty, he fed his brethren with food which he received from heaven. The staff which he placed in the ground, immediately became a budding fig-tree. Once, in the night-time, when he sought shelter from a snow-storm in a roofless house, the snow remained hanging in the air, above it, and thus formed a roof to protect him from being buried in the snow."

Practical Considerations.

I. St. Peter fasted most austerely; once in three days he took some herbs, bread and water, and frequently tasted no food for eight days. How is your conduct in regard to this point? Are you, perhaps, one of those who consider fasting as something which is not conducive to our salvation, or which is suitable only to priests, religious in convents, or hermits in the desert? Do you consider the transgression of the law which commands you to fast as a mere trifle? If you are one of these, I assure you that you deceive yourself to your own great detriment. The Saints had quite another idea of fasting. St. Augustine writes: "While investigating this matter, I see that in the writings of the Evangelists and Apostles, and indeed in the whole work called the New Testament, fasting is ordained." Therefore, if fasting is commanded by God, it must be necessary to our salvation. Where do we read that it is commanded only to priests and hermits? St. Bernard teaches that fasting is necessary "to appease the angry God, to obtain pardon for our sins, to escape the pains of hell, to guard ourselves against vice, and to gain salvation." St. Chrysostom says: "If fasting was necessary in Paradise, how much more necessary must it be out of Paradise?" What have you to say against this? Were the Saints mistaken, or are you and a great number of people in our time mistaken? What path will you take in the future? I advise you to follow that which the Saints have walked; it is the most certain to lead you the right way. I do not ask you to fast as rigorously as St. Peter did; but it is your duty to fast on the days and in the manner prescribed by the Church of Christ.

II. "O happy penance, which has obtained so great a glory for me!" exclaimed St. Peter, after his death. Have you ever read of a man of the world, who, on his death-bed, or after his death, exclaimed rejoicingly: "O happy pleasures of the world! happy dances and dissipations, happy comforts, sensualities and vanities of the world, which I sought and enjoyed! How great a consolation, how much benefit and glory they are to me now! "Have you, I ask, ever read or heard of such a thing? I have not. But more than once have I read, heard or seen with my own eyes, the dying regret with bitter tears, their immoderate seeking after worldly pleasures, and wish that they had led an austere penitential life. What do you intend to do? St. Peter had made a compact with his body, never to allow it any peace or comfort in this world. May you at least make with your body the following compact: 1.Never to allow it to indulge in any unchaste amusements. 2. Not to be kept from serving God by any discomfort arising from heat, cold, &c. 3. Not to give more time to sleep than you need. 4. To keep, if possible, the prescribed fasts, although it may be a hard task to the flesh. 5. Lastly, to deprive yourself sometimes even of some innocent enjoyment, to punish yourself for having offended the Almighty by sinful pleasure. Make and keep this compact; and you will be able some day to say with St. Peter: "O happy penance! happy mortification which has obtained such glory for me!" (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., on Saint Peter of Alcantara.)