Conferring "Legitimacy" on All That is Illegitimate

The scandalous decision of Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV, the “reasonable, personable” conciliar revolutionary, to establish a permanent chair in which a reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in his or her capacity as the “Supreme Head of the Church of England” is offensive to the memory of the over seventy-two thousand Catholics who were slaughtered by orders of King Henry VIII when he, having failed to secure an annulment of his legitimate marriage to Queen Katherine of Aragon, had Parliament bestow that false title upon him so that he could “marry” his mistress, Anne Boleyn, whom some historians believed to be his own illegitimate daughter, demanded that his subjects take an oath of loyalty to him in the exercise of his nonexistent ecclesiastical “authority.”

As was the case with the “ecumenical” efforts advanced by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI, Karol Jozsef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV wants to believe that the heretical and schismatic Anglican sect is worthy of “respect” because it has been existence for nearly five hundred years and that its “archbishops” are true and legitimate successors of Saint Augustine of Canterbury.

While even the English and Irish martyrs always recognized their duties to the civil state in all that did not offend God, they preferred death to even giving the appearance of recognizing their sovereign’s title as “Supreme Head of the Church in England.”

Without belaboring this point as I included many examples in yesterday’s republished commentary, Scuttling Apostolicae Curae? Nothing is Settled in Jorge's False Church Unless It Is "Settled" According to the Dictates of Modernism, it useful to set the stage for this present commentary to repeat some examples of Catholics who refused any compromise with the false Anglican sect:

In good faith, Master Rich, I am sorrier for your perjury than for mine own peril, and you shall understand that neither I nor any man else to my knowledge ever took you to be a man of such credit in any matter of importance I or any other would at any time vouchsafe to communicate with you. And I, as you know, of no small while have been acquainted with you and your conversation, who have known you from your youth hitherto, for we long dwelled together in one parish. Whereas yourself can tell (I am sorry you compel me to say) you were esteemed very light of tongue, a great dicer, and of no commendable fame. And so in your house at the Temple, where hath been your chief bringing up, were you likewise accounted. Can it therefore seem likely to your honorable lordships, that I would, in so weighty a cause, so unadvisedly overshoot myself as to trust Master Rich, a man of me always reputed for one of little truth, as your lordships have heard, so far above my sovereign lord the king, or any of his noble counselors, that I would unto him utter the secrets of my conscience touching the king's supremacy, the special point and only mark at my hands so long sought for?

A thing which I never did, nor ever would, after the statute thereof made, reveal unto the King's Highness himself or to any of his honorable counselors, as it is not unknown to your honors, at sundry and several times, sent from His Grace's own person unto the Tower unto me for none other purpose. Can this in your judgment, my lords, seem likely to be true? And if I had so done, indeed, my lords, as Master Rich hath sworn, seeing it was spoken but in familiar, secret talk, nothing affirming, and only in putting of cases, without other displeasant circumstances, it cannot justly be taken to be spoken maliciously; and where there is no malice there can be no offense. And over this I can never think, my lords, that so many worthy bishops, so many noble personages, and many other worshipful, virtuous, wise, and well-learned men as at the making of the law were in Parliament assembled, ever meant to have any man punished by death in whom there could be found no malice, taking malitia pro malevolentia: for if malitia be generally taken for sin, no man is there that can excuse himself. Quia si dixerimus quod peccatum non habemus, nosmetipsos seducimus, et veritas in nobis non est. [If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.] And only this word, "maliciously" is in the statute material, as this term "forcibly" is in the statute of forcible entries, by which statute if a man enter peaceably, and put not his adversary out "forcibly," it is no offense, but if he put him out "forcibly," then by that statute it is an offense, and so shall be punished by this term, "forcibly."

Besides this, the manifold goodness of the King's Highness himself, that hath been so many ways my singular good lord and gracious sovereign, and that hath so dearly loved and trusted me, even at my first coming into his noble service, with the dignity of his honorable privy council, vouchsafing to admit me; and finally with the weighty room of His Grace's higher chancellor, the like whereof he never did to temporal man before, next to his own royal person the highest office in this whole realm, so far above my qualities or merits and meet therefor of his own incomparable benignity honored and exalted me, by the space of twenty years or more, showing his continual favors towards me, and (until, at mine own poor suit it pleased His Highness, giving me license with His Majesty's favor to bestow the residue of my life wholly for the provision of my soul in the service of God, and of his special goodness thereof to discharge and unburden me) most benignly heaped honors continually more and more upon me; all this His Highness's goodness, I say, so long thus bountifully extended towards me, were in my mind, my lords, matter sufficient to convince this slanderous surmise by this man so wrongfully imagined against me....

Forasmuch, my lord, as this indictment is grounded upon an act of Parliament directly oppugnant to the laws of God and his holy church, the supreme government of which, or of any part thereof, may no temporal prince presume by any law to take upon him, as rightfully belonging to the See of Rome, a spiritual preeminence by the mouth of our Savior himself, personally present upon the earth, to Saint Peter and his successors, bishops of the same see, by special prerogative granted; it is therefore in law amongst Christian men, insufficient to charge any Christian man....

More have I not to say, my lords, but that like as the blessed apostle Saint Paul, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, was present and consented to the death of Saint Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they now twain holy saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends forever: so I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your lordships have now in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation. (See Saint Thomas More's Speech in Defense of Himself, at his Trial.)

The conciliar "popes" do not believe that the Church of England is based on laws repugnant to God and man. They celebrate what the English and Irish Martyrs died to oppose. Their view of history is to erase whatever stands in the way of false reconciliations with religious entities created by mere men and that defect in one or more ways from the truths contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has revealed exclusively to His Catholic Church for their infallible explication and eternal safekeeping.

There is no need to recount here the history of the evil effects of Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church as to do so would distract from the principal purposes of this commentary. Those unfamiliar with the facts may read the appendices below.

Perhaps it is good to remember these words of Dom Prosper Guerager, O.S.B, that were contained in his reflection on the life of Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen:

A Catholic who gives heretics credit for sincerity when they talk about religious toleration proves the he knows nothing about the past or the present. There is a fatal instinct in error, which leads it to hate the Truth; and the true Church, by its unchangeableness, is a perpetual reproach to them that refuse to be her children. Heresy starts with an attempt to annihilate them that remain faithful; when it has grown tired of open persecution it vents its spleen in insults and calumnies; and when these do not produce the desired effect, hypocrisy comes in with its assurances of friendly forbearance. The history of Protestant Europe, during the last three centuries, confirms these statements; it also justifies us in honouring those courageous servants of God who, during that same period, have died for the ancient faith. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year.)

Dom Prosper Gueranger described with prophetic accuracy the very spirit of the conciliar revolutionaries who have been ever so ready to make their own peace with that which was opposed so valiantly by Catholic martyrs.

One of the many thousands of English and Irish martyrs was Blessed Margaret Clitherow, who was put to death under the authority of Queen Elizabeth I of England on the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, March 25, 1686, as she refused all entreaties to “pray” with Protestants after she had been imprisoned for hiding Catholic priests:

There were present at her martyrdom the two Sheriffs of York, Fawcet and Gibson, Frost, a minister, Fox, Mr. Cheke's kinsman, with another of his men, the four sergeants, which had hired certain beggars to do the murder, three or four men, and four women.

'The martyr coming to the place kneeled her down, and prayed to herself. The tormentors bade her pray with them, and they would pray with her.'

The were still hoping for some act that could be construed as apostasy, not that it would save her life now, but because they needed a little victory to use a propaganda and to offset their shame. So they would intrude even into her converse with God, to confuse her last moments. Who should say, if they prayed with her, that she was not praying with them?

Clear-heaaded to the last, 'the martyr denied, and said, “I will not pray with you, and you shall not pray with me; neither will I say Amen to your prayers, nor shall you to mine.”

'Then they will her to pray for the Queen's Majesty.'

This was intended as a trap. If she refused, she was a traitor; if she prayed, they could and would pray with her. But Margaret Clitherow's ready with did not fail her even now.

'The martyr began in this order. First in the hearing of them all, she prayed for the Catholic Church, then for the Pope's Holiness, Cardinals, and other Fathers that have chage of souls and then for all Christian princes. At which words the tormentors interrupted her, and will her not to put her Majesty among that company; yet the martyr proceeded in this order, “and especially for Elizabeth, Queen of England, that God turn her to the Catholic faith, and that after this mortal life she may receive the blessed joys of heaven. For I wish as much good,” quoteth she, “to her Majesty's soul as to mine own.” (Mary Claridge, Margaret Clitherow, London, England: Burns and Oates, 1966, pp. 173-174.)

Blessed Margaret Clitherow, who worshiped God in a “dead language” that spoke of the transcendence of God above particular cultures and provided a sense of the Mysterium Tremendum that is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, did not have to “discern” anything. Indeed, she preferred death to apostasy, and so must we by refusing even the slightest affiliation with the counterfeit church of conciliarism and its robber barons who are enemies of Christ the King and of the souls whose sins He atoned by offering Himself up to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal God the Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

Thus, the holy Catholic example of the English and Catholic martyrs is no longer supposed to guide us as regards the illegitimacy of the Anglican sect, which the conciliar revolutionaries believe exists according to the will of God Himself even though its existence is in defiance of the law of God, Who permits false sects to arise so that Catholics can give a courageous witness to the true Faith and to perform the Spiritual Works of Mercy to seek with urgency the unconditional conversion of those who are members of such false sects.

Apostasy leads ultimately to unbelief, creating a very special irony for Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV as all his efforts to bestow public honors on a man who is the “supreme head of the church in England” ignores the fact that only five to ten percent of Anglicans bother to show up for the sect’s false services every Sunday.

Alas, those who live in alternative universes have to create false realities to justify the continued pursuit of various revolutionary precepts such as false ecumenism in the case of the lords of conciliarism and their “partners” in “ecumenical dialogue,” which is why a way must be found to consign the binding nature of Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae, September 15, 1896, to the same Orwellian memory hole to which the conciliar revolutionaries have consigned the English and Irish martyrs, whose refusal to compromise with evil stands as a rebuke to the revolutionaries’ desire to complete construction of a de facto One World Ecumenical Church.

As I have explained many times over the past twenty years or so, Walter “Cardinal” Kasper’s 2003 St Albans Address on the Future of Christian Unity...'May they all be one, but how?' was an open endorsement of dogmatic evolutionism to “solve” the “problem” posed by Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae, something for which he suffered no penalties at the hands of “Popes” John Paul II, Benedict XVI, or Francis.

A similar line of attack, though, had been advanced in 1970 by agents of the then named National Conference of Bishops (now the misnamed United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) issued a study of the possibility of recognizing the nonexistent validity of Anglican orders by citing the work of theologians who served on a commission appointed by Pope Leo XIII to study the matter prior to the issuance of Apostolicae Curae who were advocates of the validity of Anglican orders. One of the dissenters was none other than the infamous Modernists, Louis Duchesne, who works were condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in 1910:

One key element in the new context for the evaluation of Anglican orders today is that in 1978 the Vatican archives were opened through the year 1903. This has brought to light documents that show that the decisions of Apostolicæ Curæ were arrived at through a more complex process than we had previously imagined. The process, it must be admitted, is not so important as the conclusion. However, it is helpful to observe the process. The documents now available to scholars definitely confirm the existence of two distinct groups among the eight members of an apostolic commission appointed by Leo XIII in January 1896 to reexamine the validity of Anglican orders. Leo's commission was divided, and four members of the commission believed that a 'historic continuity' with the medieval Church in England could be traced in modern Anglicanism. In 1896 Vatican opinion on the invalidity of Anglican orders was not as solidly negative as we once imagined, prior to 1978. It would not be to our purpose to comment on the opinions of the four members who were in favor of invalidity because these arguments found their way into Apostolicæ Curæ. Almost unknown today are the positions of the papal commissioners who concluded positively in favor of the orders.³

For example, one member of the papal commission, Louis Duchesne, believed that the practice of regarding Anglican orders as null and void did not derive from 'an ecclesiastical sentence' given in full knowledge of all the facts in the case. For a second commission member, Pietro Gasparri, the material succession of Anglican orders was intact. A third member, Emilio De Augustinis, held that the ordination rite of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer safeguarded the substance of the sacrament of order, and that the formula Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, contained in the 1552 book, was a valid form of Catholic ordination. A fourth member, T B. Scannell, believed approvingly that 'true Roman caution' had prevented the papacy from making a definitive negative judgment on Anglican orders in the sixteenth century.⁴

Today we can study these conclusions for ourselves: (1) Rome in the sixteenth century did not state categorically and explicitly that all orders conferred with the Anglican Ordinal of 1552 were null and void; and Anglican orders were not consistently rejected by the Roman See during the Marian Restoration in England of 1553 to 1558. (2) The vague nature of the instructions sent to Reginald Pole, the Roman Catholic legate in England during that period, suggests that re-ordination was not the only means of reconciliation of ministries in the sixteenth century. This conclusion is amplified by the fact that Pole himself was not a priest until March 1556. In any case, whatever conclusions we may reach today about the sixteenth century, we do have much more information about the background of the papal decision of 1896. This has made enough historical facts available to us to justify new investigation and appraisal.⁵

Why did Leo XIII reject the historical arguments of four members of his commission? The recently opened documents in the Vatican inform us that Pope Leo XIII apparently decided that the issue of reconciliation with the Church of England was not a matter of historical continuity alone. More importantly, to the pope, validity was a matter of sacramentology and of ecclesiology. The new documents suggest this interpretation of Apostolicæ Curæ: Greater weight must be given to theological and institutional unity between Rome and Canterbury than to the proof of historical and sacramental continuity.

Leo XIII thus decided that historical proof of a continuation of sacramental validity with the Church of England was not the central question between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism. History is not the question. Theology is the question. For there to be sacramental validity within the Church of England from the perspective of Rome, Anglicans and Roman Catholics must be in one institutional community of faith, which implies agreements about the theology of sacraments and ministry, and some Anglican recognition of the papacy.⁶

From this standpoint, Leo XIII was not saying 'no' to Anglicanism. Today we can read letters in the Vatican archives in which Leo XIII and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Rampolla, wished to encourage further contacts and discussions with Anglicans after the promulgation of Apostolicæ Curæ. They urge Anglicans and Roman Catholics to move toward unity in faith before the issue of sacramental validity is resolved. In the light of new historical documents, Apostolicæ Curæ did not end a process of dialogue. It began a process of dialogue. The Vatican response was theological, not political. It set out clear theological conditions for validity. Could this not imply that given theological developments, there could be some future discernment of substantial agreement between Anglicans and Roman Catholics on sacraments and ministry which could sustain a positive judgment of future ordinations in the mind of Rome?

This does not mean that we doubt the intention of Leo XIII in 1896 'to settle definitively the grave question about Anglican ordination', as he later wrote to the Archbishop of Paris. But the documentation in the Vatican archives suggests that this decision on the precise technical point of Anglican orders was not meant to end contact between the two Communions.

After 1896 Cardinal Rampolla supported informal visits, meetings, correspondence, and prayer in order to 'maintain good relations with the Anglicans' and to encourage Anglicans to continue to persevere in 'positive sympathies toward the Roman Church'. In a similar manner, the chief Anglican protagonist of 1896, Lord Halifax, also believed that dialogue would continue. He wrote: 'We have failed for the moment…but God means to do the work himself ... the matter is as certain as it ever was'. (Anglican Orders: A Report on the Evolving Context for their Evaluation in the Roman Catholic Church | USCCB.)

Why did Pope Leo XIII decide as he did despite the “theological” advice of Louis Duchesne and Pope Pius XI’s future Secretary of State, Pietro Gaspari, who, as a diplomat, believed in the “good intentions” of Plutarco Elias Calles and negotiated a “settlement” that sold out the Cristeros, much to the later bitter regret of Pope Pius XI (see Acerba animi—On the Persecution of the Church in Mexico—September 29, 1932)?

The answer is quite simple and very Catholic: Pope Leo XIII was guided infallibly by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost and, as such, is irreformable.

As a true son of the conciliar revolution, of course, Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV really believes that nothing about the Catholic past cannot be “reformed” or “understood” in a “new” way according to various “insights” offered by pseudo-theologians of the present or condemned heretics of the past. Prevost/Leo’s honoring King Charles III with a permanent chair in the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls is simply another way to confer legitimacy on an illegitimate religion was created by the drunken, bigamous, adulterous, incestuous, gluttonous King Henry Tudor (VIII), after Pope Urban VII refused to grant him a decree of nullity.

Anglicanism is founded on a rejection of Papal Primacy and that the Catholic Church is the one and only true Christian church in the whole world.

Anglicanism teaches that, contrary to the words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, divorce and remarriage while one’s true spouse is still living is morally acceptable.

It is important to remember in this regard that the warfare waged by King Henry VIII against the sanctity and indissolubility of Holy Matrimony made inevitable his false religious sect’s warfare against the fecundity of marriage at its Lambeth Conference in 1930:

Resolution 15

The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience. (Resolution 15 - The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage.)

This decision opened the floodgates of Protestant acceptance of contraception, which, of course, had been promoted for the previous fifteen years in the United States of America by the nymphomaniac revolutionary anti-Theist named Margaret Sanger. An organization known as the Federal Council of Churches in America (which merged in 1950 with other such organizations to form the “National Council of Churches”) endorsed contraception in 1931, prompting the following editorial to appear, amazingly enough, in The Washington Post:

The Federal Council of Churches in America some time ago appointed a committee on "marriage and the home," which has now submitted a report favoring a "careful and restrained" use of contraceptive devices to regulate the size of families. The committee seems to have a serious struggle with itself in adhering to Christian doctrine while at the same time indulging in amateurish excursions in the field of economics, legislation, medicine, and sociology. The resulting report is a mixture of religious obscurantism and modernistic materialism which departs from the ancient standards of religion and yet fails to blaze a path toward something better.

The mischief that would result from an attempt to place the stamp of church approval upon any scheme for "regulating the size of families" is evidently quite beyond the comprehension of this pseudo-scientific committee. It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of the divine institution of marriage with any modernistic plan for the mechanical regulation of human birth. The church must either reject the plain teachings of the Bible or reject schemes for the “scientific” production of human souls. Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee’s report if carried into effect would lead to the death-knell of marriage as a holy institution, by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be “careful and restrained” is preposterous. If the churches are to become organizations for political and 'scientific' propaganda they should be honest and reject the Bible, scoff at Christ as an obsolete and unscientific teacher, and strike out boldly as champions of politics and science as substitutes for the old-time religion. ("Forgetting Religion," Editorial, The Washington Post, March 22, 1932.)

The Lambeth Conference’s Resolution 15, which prompted Pope Pius XI to issue Casti Connubii on December 31, 1930, accustomed the British people to “planned” pregnancies and opened the way to the public acceptance of one degrading practice after another over the course of time, up to and including the legalization of surgical baby-killing by means of the Abortion Law of 1967 that was passed Parliament at the behest of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Here is a brief history of surgical baby-killing in the United Kingdom as found on the website of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn in England:

In 1938, a London gynaecologist, Aleck Bourne, tested the laws by performing an abortion on a 14-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted by five off-duty British soldiers. Dr Bourne was a supporter of the Abortion Law Reform Association.

He was charged with an illegal abortion, and pleaded not guilty on the basis that the girl's mental health would have been adversely affected by giving birth. Dr Bourne was acquitted after the judge, Mr Justice Macnaughten, invited the jury to decide whether in acting to preserve the girl's mental health, as he saw it, the doctor's action had amounted to saving her life. The judge evidently condoned the abortion, and the jury acquitted the doctor.

The effect of the Bourne case was to give legal sanction for abortions to prevent damage to a woman's physical or mental health, a test which became interpreted more and more liberally, and which was incorporated into the Abortion Act. This marked a watershed and although medical grounds are still formally required, doctors can practice abortion virtually on request provided they claim mental health is at risk. Aleck Bourne eventually became appalled at the results of his case and became an early member of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.

Steel's 1967 Abortion Act

The Abortion Act was introduced by the liberal MP David Steel with the tacit support of the Labour government under Harold Wilson. Steel introduced the bill as a Private Member's Bill after drawing third place in the ballot on 12th May 1966. The bill would not have reached the statute book but for the support of the government which provided the parliamentary time needed to get the bill through. The government was sympathetic to the measure but did not want to include it in its own legislative programme. The bill was eventually given a third reading by the House of Commons on 14th July 1967, and came into force on 27th April 1968.

The operation of the Act proved controversial from the outset, and a committee of inquiry was set up under Mrs Justice Lane in 1971 to review the working of the Act. Obstetricians and gynaecologists who refused to provide abortions, were put under pressure, and although those in senior posts were protected by the 'conscience clause' in the Act others were forced out of the specialism, or out of the country, as pro-abortion officials in the Department of Health demanded that NHS hospitals should provide wide access to abortion services.

Pro-life reform attempts

Pro-life MPs sought to amend the Act, first introducing amendment bills as early as 1969. But despite numerous attempts through the 1970s and 1980s, they all failed to achieve any reform of the Act, as government ministers of various parties and Department of Health officials studiously defended the legislation and its abuse.

In 1990 the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher introduced a bill (the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act) to legislate for in-vitro fertilisation, and agreed to allow amendments to the Abortion Act to be attached to the bill, thereby overcoming the major obstacle to getting abortion amendments onto the statute book. This proved a miscalculation on the part of pro-life MPs, as it later became clear that the government's agenda was not to introduce any significant restriction, but to widen the abortion law to accommodate new abortion techniques and to extend abortion for disabled babies up to birth (previously it had been restricted to the point at which the baby could be born alive).

Recent efforts

Further attempts to amend the law by pro-abortion MPs were attached to a later embryology bill in 2008. These also failed for reasons that are not apparent.

Recent efforts have focused on unlawful abuses of the abortion law, such as the practice of sex-selection abortion, and the discriminatory nature of abortion for disabled babies. The policy of the Department of Health to allow "unwanted" pregnancy to be deemed a threat to mental health is another way in which the law is being treated with contempt. (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.)

British authorities admitted in 2013 that over eight million children had been killed since 1967 (Over eight million abortions since 1967), although a chart found here provides statistics that date as far back as the very year of the infamous 1930 Lambeth Conference. The British Isles have been a killing field since 1534, and it is thus only logical that it has been the scene of so much carnage in recent decades. Only seventeen percent of the British people believe that the killing of preborn children by surgical means is wrong in all instances (Ipsos Mori Research Publications), a figure that is very similar to that here in the United States of America, where nineteen percent of the public believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances (Gallup Poll.)

How can the conciliar authorities speak seriously of any kind of “union” with the Anglicans when the latter endorse all manner of moral perversity and have become such a laughingstock of globalist absurdities that only twelve percent of the English even identify themselves as Anglicans and, of that number, only two percent of professed “Anglicans” bother to show up at this infamous sect’s invalid liturgical services. Sterility is always the result of apostasy. This is true of Anglicanism and all other Protestant sects. It is also true of conciliarism. Sterility is always the result of apostasy.

England was Catholic for nearly a thousand years from the time that Pope Saint Gregory the Great sent Saint Augustine of Canterbury to re-evangelize the English people. England’s Catholic history is rich, beginning with the English devotion to Our Lady of Walshingham, which has undergo a revival in recent decades following the efforts of the English Protestant revolutionaries in the Sixteenth Century to wipe out all memory of this devotion, which dates back to the year 1061 A.D.

As I noted in a recent commentary, revolutionaries hate the past. They also must ignore the past as it contains well-documented contradictions of their own schemes to create a synthetic reality that is based upon the conjuring of their own pagan and thus sterile imaginations.

However, it is important to list, if only briefly, the chief heresies taught by the Anglican sect whose existence was but the will of a lustful man, not that of God Himself.

1) Unlike the Orthodox, who have sacramental rites that developed under the inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, when the Eastern churches were united to the Catholic Church, the “traditions” of Anglicanism are man-made and were meant to be a publicly manifest rejection of Catholicism, which is why so many scores of thousands of Catholics were willing to suffer the most cruel tortures and inhumane executions to bear their own visible, tangible rejection of those man-made “traditions.”

2) The passage of time does not confer legitimacy on that which has its very origins from the devil in a rejection of the Catholic Faith and the authority of the Catholic Church.

Alas, one of the chief contentions of heterodox theologians such as the late Father Walter Burghardt, S.J., centers around the false belief that that the mere existence of Protestant sects is a proof of their enjoying the Divine favor. Such an existential view of life ignores the distinction between the fact that God permits men to use their free will contrary to His Laws and/or contrary to His Divine Plan to effect man’s return to Him through His Catholic Church. God permits men evil without condoning the evil they do, and the passage of time never confers any kind of legitimacy on that which is evil in the objective order of things.

Has the passage of time conferred legitimacy on the “Anglican Book of Common Prayer”?

If not, then why should it receive “protection” in the counterfeit church of conciliarism that presents itself to the world as the Catholic Church?

Even though the circumstances of Martin Luther’s revolution against the true Faith and the one that took place under Henry VIII and Thomas Cranmer in England were different, both Protestant revolutions overthrew the Social Reign of Christ the King, thus paving the way for the triumph of today’s statist totalitarianism in so-called “democratic republics” and making constitutional monarchs little more than puppets controlled by their Judeo-Masonic masters in legislative or multinational governing bodies, something that the notorious globalist, environmental alarmist, population-control fascist, and worthy adulterous inheritor of the crown that once sat atop the head of the adulterous King Henry VIII five centuries ago, has long promoted.

The very man upon whom Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV is bestowing the honor a chair in one the four major Roman basilicas, King Charles, III, has been a longtime promoter of worldwide “population control”:

2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Prince of Wales has come under fire after using a speech on Islam and environmentalism as an opportunity to call for a reduction in the world’s birth rate, especially among Muslims.

But what has drawn the ire of some commentators is that moments after making his controversial remarks, the prince went on to quote famed Christian writers C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton in support of the thesis of his address.

Dr. Dave Beresford, an expert on G.K. Chesterton who writes for the Chesterton Society’s Gilbert Magazine, told LifeSiteNews.com that, “To quote Chesterton in support of any population control program is entirely misleading.” In fact, said Beresford, Chesterton's writings are chock-full of compelling arguments against population control, a fact of which Prince Charles seems to have been wholly unaware.

The prince conspicuously placed his treatment of population issues at the end of his hour-long speech, which marked the 25th anniversary of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, of which he is the patron.

The general thrust of the address was a call for a return to “tradition.” Such a move was presented as a means of combating the West’s “rapacious desire for continuous economic growth” and the “mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us.”

But before wrapping up the speech the prince said there was “one final issue I have to mention.”

“Wherever you look, the world's population is increasing fast,” he said. “It goes up by the equivalent of the entire population of the United Kingdom every year. Which means that this poor planet of ours, which already struggles to sustain 6.8 billion people, will somehow have to support over 9 billion people within fifty years.”

The prince told his audience that it must “face up to the fact more honestly than we do that one of the biggest causes of high birth rates remains cultural” – an apparent reference to the high birth rate amongst Muslims.

Then, while concluding his address, the Prince of Wales quoted Chesterton as saying that “real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them as a root.” He also mentioned C.S. Lewis’ famous statement in Mere Christianity, that “sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time” and “going back can sometimes be the quickest way forward.”

But not everyone is impressed by the prince's message or by the illustrious intellectual company he is keeping. When asked for comment specifically about the prince’s remarks on birth rate, Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and an expert on demographic issues, simply quipped, “Prince Charles should stick to matters that he's good at, like handing out awards at cricket and polo matches.”

Beresford, however, specifically took issue with the prince’s use of Chesterton, telling LifeSiteNews.com that the early 20th century English writer would have been appalled to be invoked in a speech that advocated population control.

“Chesterton’s major contribution to social criticism is his argument against population control. That is possibly his most significant contribution,” said Beresford.

In 1925 Chesterton wrote an introduction to Charles Dickens’A Christmas Carol in which he said that “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not.”

Elsewhere, in an essay titled “Social Reform vs. Birth Control,”Chesterton argued that it is typically the wealthy elite who are interested in promoting population control as a solution to poverty, often simply as a means of avoiding dealing with the more difficult root problems that lead to poverty.

“If [the Birth-Controller] can prevent his servants from having families, he need not support those families. Why the devil should he?” wrote Chesterton. “The landlord or the employer says in his hearty and handsome fashion: ‘You really cannot expect me to deprive myself of my money. But I will make a sacrifice. I will deprive myself of your children.’”

Beresford reiterated that “Chesterton dedicated his entire literary output to celebrating the goodness of life and to fighting against ideas such as population control.”

In reference to Prince Charles’ remarks, he said, “It’s unfortunate that one of the chief beneficiaries of a modern industrial economy and thus one.of the wealthiest people in the world has recourse to an old-fashioned trick of blaming the poor for all the world's ills.” (.)

King Charles III is a supporter of the global reset of the Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, an ally of both Bill Gates and George Soros, and a stooge of the World Health Organization. He is a fatuous baby boomer who has been crying wolf about the environment for decades and whose religious “faith” is nothing other than that of the rationalism, utilitarianism, and naturalism which emerged from the diseased carcass of Anglicanism decades ago.

God save the king?

Please, God save us from such a king as we pray for the rising up of the great French monarch!

The defender of a false faith born four hundred fourteen years after a revolution against the Social Reign of Christ the King was thus taught a false sense of “duty” to mere men because his false religious sect rejected Our King’s true Church, which alone has the supernatural means to rightly inform and guide the consciences of civil rulers to put duty to truth over a false obligation to obey the precepts and ordinances of mere men who have come to believe in fables as true and to reject the truth as “divisive” and “bigoted.” The world in which we live is suffering from a paucity of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces, resulting in the deification of man and his supposed “ability” to reshape the world according to his own unaided powers.

This lack of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces is, of course, the combined result of the effects of Protestant Revolution and the Modernist revolution that unfolded at the “Second” Vatican Council and has evolved by means of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical travesty. Men will revert to barbarism if they do not have belief in, access to and attempt to cooperate with the graces won for us by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by means of the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday. A world filled with neo-barbarians and neo-pagans and devil worshippers, a world filled with hedonism and materialism, will inevitably wind up imprisoned by statists, who always use chaos as the pretext for establishing an “order” that result eventually in active, overt and bloody persecutions against believing Catholics, that is, those who do not subscribe the false religion of man that is covered over by a slight gloss of Catholicism that is conciliarism.

Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV and Charles III are revolutionaries whose mutual false religions offend the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity and put into question almost everything contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith that “modern man” finds it “difficult” to accept.

England Rejected and Then Spat Upon Its Catholic Heritage

England gave Christendom a distinctive Anglo-Saxon culture, including the development of much of the Common Law, some of which is still the basis of legal reasoning, albeit much more infrequently now than in the past, in the United States of America. English judges heard cases-at-law as they sat under crucifixes and attempted to provide remedies and/or render decisions that were consonant with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. These judges were mindful of the fact that they would be judge by the Divine Judge, Christ the King, at the moment of their Particular Judgment, and it was from the tradition of justice that flowed from the Common Law that the Magna Carta was issued in 1215 to serve as a check upon the abuses of royal power. Although certainly owing a debt to the heritage of Roman law, the Magna Carta, however, was written by Catholics who were mindful of their duties to Christ the King, and it is one of the greatest English contributions to Christendom. The very seeds of the parliamentary-ministerial system of government were planted by the Magna Carta.

Yet it is, however, that it is not the grand Catholic legacy of England that influences the world today, acknowledging, of course, the injustices that England visited upon France—and especially our brave Saint Joan of Arc—during the Hundred Years’ War. No, it is the English legacy of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, which was at the very roots of the American founding principles, that helped to create the New World Order that enslaves us all at the moment.

Alas, there is another sorry legacy of Britain that largely escapes the attention of most commentators today: the influence of the British heretic named Pelagius, who lived between 360 A.D. and 418 A.D.

Pelagius taught that human beings were capable of more or less stirring up graces within themselves to save their souls and to accomplish whatever it is they set their minds to doing by means of their free wills. Many people alive today have never heard of Pelagianism or its variant, semi-Pelagianism, but most Americans believe inchoately, if not more explicitly, that they can do whatever it is they want because they are Americans. Pelagianism is at the heart of “American Exceptionalism,” which is itself but variant of the “British Exceptionalism,” that has been issued to try to remake the world in the image of the religious indifferentist and Calvinist-Judeo-Masonic American “way.”

Pelagianism was fought, however, by many a saint. Saint Germanus used the cult of the Protomartyr of Roman Britain, Saint Alban, who feast is celebrated, although not universally, on June 22, to combat Pelagianism. Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B.’s The Liturgical Year described the valor of Saint Alban and how he was hated by the anti-historical Protestant Revolutionaries:

For a thousand years Alban too reigned with Christ. At last came the epoch when the depths of the abyss were to be let loose for a little time, and Satan, unchained, would once again seduce nations. Vanquished formerly by the saints, power was now given him to make war with them, and to overcome them in his turn. The disciple is not above his Master: like his Lord, Alban too was rejected by his own. Hated without cause, he beheld his illustrious monastery destroyed, that had been Albion's pride in the palmy days of her history; and scarce was even the venerable church itself saved, wherein God's athlete had so long reposed, shedding benefits around far and near. But, after all, what could he do now, in a profaned sanctuary, in which strange rites had banished those of our forefathers, and condemned the faith for which martyrs had bled and died? So Alban was ignominiously expelled, and his ashes scattered to the winds. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)

Hatred for the past is a common theme of revolutionaries, including the one named Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

The work of Saint Alban and others to evangelize Roman Britain was not completed in their lifetimes. Unlike Saint Patrick, who worked a genuine miracle in the conversion of Ireland in his own lifetime it was not until five hundred ninety-five years later that the evangelization of Britain started again, this time under the guidance of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who had been sent to Britain by Pope Saint Gregory the Great:

Throned on the apostolic See, our saint proved himself to be a rightful heir of the apostles, not only as the representative and depositary of their authority, but as a follow-sharer in their mission of calling nations to the true faith. To whom does England owe her having been, for so many ages, the 'island of saints'? To Gregory, who, touched with compassion for those Angli, of whom, as he playfully said, he would fain Angeli, sent to their island the monk Augustine with forty companions, all of them, as was Gregory himself, children of St. Benedict. The faith had been sown in this land as early as the second century, but it had been trodden down by the invasion of an infidel race. This time the seed fructified, and so rapidly that Gregory lived to see a plentiful harvest. It is beautiful to hear the aged Pontiff speaking with enthusiasm about the results of his English mission. He thus speaks in the twenty-seventh Book of his Morals: 'Lo! the language of Britain, which could once mutter naught save barbarous sounds, has long since begun to sing, in the divine praises, the Hebrew Alleluia! Lo! that swelling sea is now calm, and saints walk on its waves. The tide of barbarians, which the sword of earthly princes could not keep back, is now hemmed in at the simple bidding of God's priests.' (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year.)

Look at the hatred directed at Father Edmund Campion, S.J., for simply adhering to that which every Englishman believed for nearly a thousand years since the time of Saint Augustine of Canterbury—and which many in Britain, including Saint Helena, had embraced as early as the latter part of the Third Century A.D. as a result of the work of Saint Alban. It was during the closing of his trial that was to conclude with his being sentenced to death by being drawn and quartered that Father Campion himself noted the irony contained in his being condemned for believing what every ancestor of those who had condemned him had believed for nearly a thousand years:

"The only thing I have now to say is, that if my religion makes me a traitor, I am worthy to be condemned. Otherwise I am, and have been, as good a subject as ever the Queen had.

"In condemning me you condemn all your own ancestor--all the ancient priests, bishops and kings--all that was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter.

"For what I have taught . . . that they did not teach? To be condemned with these lights--not of England only, but of the world--by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and joy.

"God lives; posterity will live; their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now going to sentence me to death." (Father Harold C. Gardiner, S.J., Edmund Campion: Hero of God's Underground, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957, pp. 160-161.)

Hatred for the past is a common theme of revolutionaries, including those of the conciliar stripe.

"The only thing I have now to say is, that if my religion makes me a traitor, I am worthy to be condemned. Otherwise I am, and have been, as good a subject as ever the Queen had.

"For what I have taught . . . that they did not teach? To be condemned with these lights--not of England only, but of the world--by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and joy.

Unlike the conciliar “popes” and their “bishops,” Pope Pius IX understood that he had a personal obligation before Christ the King as His Vicar on earth to seek with urgency the unconditional conversion of all non-Catholics to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order:

It is therefore by force of the right of Our supreme Apostolic ministry, entrusted to us by the same Christ the Lord, which, having to carry out with [supreme] participation all the duties of the good Shepherd and to follow and embrace with paternal love all the men of the world, we send this Letter of Ours to all the Christians from whom We are separated, with which we exhort them warmly and beseech them with insistence to hasten to return to the one fold of Christ; we desire in fact from the depths of the heart their salvation in Christ Jesus, and we fear having to render an account one day to Him, Our Judge, if, through some possibility, we have not pointed out and prepared the way for them to attain eternal salvation. In all Our prayers and supplications, with thankfulness, day and night we never omit to ask for them, with humble insistence, from the eternal Shepherd of souls the abundance of goods and heavenly graces. And since, if also, we fulfill in the earth the office of vicar, with all our heart we await with open arms the return of the wayward sons to the Catholic Church, in order to receive them with infinite fondness into the house of the Heavenly Father and to enrich them with its inexhaustible treasures. By our greatest wish for the return to the truth and the communion with the Catholic Church, upon which depends not only the salvation of all of them, but above all also of the whole Christian society: the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd. (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868.)

Has a conciliar “pope” spoke in such a way?

Indeed not.

Just the opposite is true. Such is one of the many distinct differences between Catholicism and conciliarism.

One must believe in everything that is taught by the Catholic Church, or he is not a Catholic.

One cannot believe in the “new ecclesiology” and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot believe in “episcopal collegiality” and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot believe in “false ecumenism” and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot participate in “interreligious dialogue” and “inter-religious prayer services” and be “blessed” by Protestant "ministers and enter into the temples of Protestants or the Orthodox or Mohammedans and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot believe in and promote "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State" and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot engage in liturgical ceremonies that would have made even the Arians white with rage and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot refer to the clergy of Protestant sects or the Orthodox confessions as being "pastors" in the "Church of Christ.

Has a conciliar “pope” spoke in such a way?

Indeed not.

Just the opposite is true. Such is one of the many distinct differences between Catholicism and conciliarism.

One must believe in everything that is taught by the Catholic Church, or he is not a Catholic.

One cannot believe in the “new ecclesiology” and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot believe in “episcopal collegiality” and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot believe in “false ecumenism” and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot believe in and promote "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State" and be a member of the Catholic Church.

One cannot engage in liturgical ceremonies that would have made even the Arians white with rage and be a member of the Catholic Church.

England’s departure from the Holy Faith was foreseen as early as the year 1061 by Saint Edward the Confessor, who also saw her return in a manner similar to though seen in a mystical experience of Saint Dominic Savio:

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR & THE VISION OF THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND

"During the month of January, 1066, the holy King of England St. Edward the Confessor was confined to his bed by his last illness in his royal Westminster Palace. St. Ælred, Abbott of Rievaulx, in Yorkshire, relates that a short time before his happy death, this holy king was wrapt in ecstasy, when two pious Benedictine monks of Normandy, whom he had known in his youth, during his exile in that country, appeared to him, and revealed to him what was to happen to England in future centuries, and the cause of the terrible punishment.

They said: 'The extreme corruption and wickedness of the English nation has provoked the just anger of God. When malice shall have reached the fullness of its measure, God will, in His wrath, send to the English people wicked spirits, who will punish and afflict them with great severity, by separating the green tree from its parent stem the length of three furlongs. But at last this same tree, through the compassionate mercy of God, and without any national (governmental) assistance, shall return to its original root, reflourish and bear abundant fruit.' (Saint Edward the Confessor.)

After having heard these prophetic words, the saintly King Edward opened his eyes, returned to his senses, and the vision vanished. He immediately related all he had seen and heard to hisvirgin spouse, Edgitha, to Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, and to Harold, his successor to the throne, who were in his chamber praying around his bed." (See "Vita beati Edwardi regis et confessoris", from manuscript Selden 55 in Bodleian Library.) (ORA PRO NOBIS: THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.)

The Dream of Saint Dominic Savio about the Return of England to the Catholic Faith

'One morning, while I was doing my thanksgiving after Holy Communion, I was taken by a strong distraction. It seemed that I was on a very vast flat land surface, full of people surrounded by thick darkness. They were walking, but did so as though they had lost their way and could not see where they set their feet. Someone beside me said, "This region is England."

'Then I saw the Supreme Pontiff, Pius IX. He was dressed in a majestic fashion, carrying in his hands a splendorous light, and advancing amidst the multitude of people. As He advanced, the darkness gradually disappeared and the people were bathed with so much light that it seemed noon time.

'The friend said, "This light is the Catholic Religion, which must illuminate England." (ORA PRO NOBIS: THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.)

The return of England to the true Faith from which she departed nearly half a millennium ago will be the work of Our Lady, and it is because that this is so that Pope Leo XIII composed a prayer to the Mother of God to win back her Dowry, England, to her Divine Son’s one and only true Church, the Catholic Church:

O Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our most gentle Queen and Mother, look down in mercy upon England “thy Dowry” and upon us all who greatly hope and trust in thee. By thee it was that Jesus, our Saviour and our hope, was given unto the world; and He has given thee to us that we might hope still more. Plead for us thy children, whom thou didst receive and accept at the foot of the Cross, O sorrowful Mother. Intercede for our separated brethren, that with us in the one true fold they may be united to the Supreme Shepherd, the Vicar of thy Son. Pray for us all, dear Mother, that by faith fruitful in good works we may all deserve to see and praise God, together with thee, in our heavenly home. Amen. (Pope Leo XIII to the English People, April 14, 1895.)

That prayer, composed one hundred twenty-seven years ago, is really all the proof one needs to have about the difference between the conciliar antipopes and our true popes, who knew that it was their duty before the One Whose Vicar they were during their respective papacies to seek with urgency the conversion of all non-Catholics to the true Church, the Catholic Church.

That prayer, composed one hundred thirty and one-half years ago, is really all the proof one needs to have about the difference between the conciliar antipopes and our true popes, who knew that it was their duty before the One Whose Vicar they were during their respective papacies to seek with urgency the conversion of all non-Catholics to the true Church, the Catholic Church, but it is not a prayer that Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIII will ever utter, whether privately or publicly.

Let the conciliar revolutionaries “overturn” Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae. No such “overturning” can ever make Anglican orders valid, and no amount of willing it so can ever make the conciliar rites, which are very similar to those of the Anglicans, a valid means of sanctification and salvation.

Let Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV give King Charles III, who was unfaithful to his deceased wife when she was alive by consorting with his current wife, who was then married to another man, his own “chair” in the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls.

As a reader wrote to me yesterday morning:

Well, let us remember that the Blessed Anna María Taigi said that St. Paul’s Outside the Walls burned down back when it did on July 15, 1823, because of all the abuses taking places within those walls prior. It was a Divine Chastisement.

This period in which we live is also a Divine chastisement, which is why we must make good use of the Sacrament of Penance regularly (if at all possible in this time of apostasy and betrayal) so that can build up a wellspring of Sanctifying Grace within the walls of our own souls so that we do not suffer a fire that will burn without end.

The conciliar revolutionaries and their partners in ecumaniacal crimes will have their celebrations as the number of people who show up on a weekly basis in the formerly Catholic churches that they have either stolen outright or coopeted surreptitiously continues to dwindle with each passing year. We know Our Lady and her Divine Son’s Holy Church will emerge victorious, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary.

Thus, praying our Rosaries as we beseech Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church and the Protector of the Faithful, to protect us in these times of great peril, may we fly unto his Most Chaste Spouse, to surrender to everything, including our liberty if this is to be taken away from us, to serve Christ the King as soldiers in His holy army in our battle with the forces of the adversary in our lives and in the world-at-large.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Peter of Alcantara, pray for us.

Appendix

On the Feast of 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.)

Father Francis X. Weninger’s reflection on Saint Peter of Alcantara complements the hagiographies quoted just above:

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 practised 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 ecstacy, 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., St. Peter of Alcantara, Confessor.)

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, 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.

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