Determined Not To Accept The Truth of Truth Himself, Christ the King, part one

He [Pontius Pilate] must yet make another attempt. He would appeal to those deeper things which had made so great an impression on himself, and which, he knew, meant so much more to the Jewish people. He could affect contempt in what he said; he could pretend it was not his concern; yet in his heart he knew it was not all contempt. Jesus ‘the Christ’, ‘the Anointed’—the word clearly had a meaning to the Jew, for the chief priests and elders had flung it at Jesus with exceeding bitterness. Jesus ‘the King of the Jews’—whatever it might signify, he was sure by now that the title was no empty name. The accusers had been enraged because their Victim had claimed these titles for Himself; if they meant nothing, neither could the charge they contained have any meaning. No man could be put to death for claiming a title that meant nothing; no man could rouse against himself such bitter hatred by the mere adoption of a foolish, empty name. He would press these titles home; if the elders and the priests rejected them, nevertheless the people might yet be moved, He would imply that, as judge, not only did he declare Jesus innocent of any crime, but also he believed Him to be what He claimed to be. If still they would have His life, then, in the final judgment of the independent Roman court, it would not only be because Jesus claimed to be ‘Christ the King’, but because He was ‘Christ the King’ in very truth: ‘And Pilate spoke to them again desiring to release Jesus. What will you then that I do with Jesus Who is called Christ the King of the Jews?’

And again he failed. Once more the reminder of the truth did but aggravate them; the will not to believe is hard to convince, the determination not to accept what is known to be true is invincible. Indeed to attempt to convince is to rouse the most violent kind of enmity. Hitherto the accusers had only clamoured for the condemnation of Jesus. They had asked that somehow He should be put to death, apparently it mattered not how; how, since they had been taught with His being their Christ, their anointed King, they went to a further extreme. He must not only die; he must die the most shameful death that even the Roman world knew. He must die the death of a guilty slave, of a convicted criminal; though to be a Roman citizen would save even a criminal from such a fate. Their Anointed? Let Him be crucified. Then it would be known what they thought of Him, then even such men as Pilate would check their sarcastic tongues: ‘But they all cried out, Crucify him, crucify him, let him be crucified.’

This was indeed a climax of hatred, so that more than ever Pilate was amazed. He had seen passion roused to blind fury before; in his own city it was cultivated as an amusement. He had seen, in Rome, eyes glittering and faces taut, as women round the arena turned down their thumbs demanding a gladiator’s death. He had seen his own soldiers, brutalized and hardened till they were scarcely human any longer, laughing and turning to sport the slaughter of the helpless. He had watched an Asiatic mob, more deliberate and merciless than any European, show its white teeth and express dread purpose in its eyes as it pursued some deed of callous cruelty. He had himself a heart hardened enough to pass suffering by, to inflict it if need be, and to be moved no more than if he plucked a lily. But this sight before him was different from all these. It was not fury, it was not blind; it was cold, deliberate, determined. There was too much hatred now even for mockery or laughter. Never before had a Jew, or a Jewish mob, demanded that a Jew should be crucified, no matter what might have been his crime. (Archbishop Alban Goodier, S.J., The Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Authorized American Edition published by the Daughters of Saint Paul, pp. 267-269.)

Incredible assaults against Truth Himself—Truth Incarnate, Truth Crucified and Resurrected, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ are taking place in the world at this time. Most Catholics are utterly silent, if not oblivious, to these attacks, diverted as they are by the bread and circuses of our times. Some Catholics who see the evils of the times refrain from opposing them vocally for fear of being rejected by friends and relatives and/or suffering some kind of injury to their financial well-being and career success. It is the same now as it was below Pontius Pilate’s portico on Good Friday. Exactly the same.

As Archbishop Goodier noted, truth aggravates those who are opposed have set their minds upon rejecting it. Those who remind others of truths that they do not want to accept must be dealt with summarily. This is what the civil authorities are not doing at this time. This is what many journalists, especially some of the younger ones, have been doing all of their careers. This is what is being done in public and conciliar schools, in colleges, universities and professional schools. This is what is being done by the medical industry as most of its practitioners suborn the chemical and surgical execution of innocent preborn children and the use of “palliatives” to expedite the deaths of terminally or chronically ill patients while also supporting the vivisection of living human beings in the name of “giving the gift of life” after they have been declared as “brain dead.” And, of course, this is what has been done by the authorities of the counterfeit church of conciliarism for fifty-six and one-half years now.

Unlike “Saint John Paul II,” who spoke in opposition to contraception and abortion, albeit using the language of conciliarspeak by making recourse to “human dignity” rather than the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as has been noted so many times on this site, calls its “merciful” to refuse to denounce sin or to call it by its proper name while refusing to demand that those in public life who support it stop doing so. Moreover, Bergoglio refuses to call for notorious sinners to reform their lives as he reaffirms them in a false concept of “God’s mercy” that is premised upon the supposed inability  of people to give up their sins as a condition of being the beneficiaries of absolution in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.

Bergoglio has also visited a veritable reign of terror upon those “bishops” and religious communities in the conciliar structures known to show signs of resistance to the moral degradation of the times and/or who are even perceived to be committed to a modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that was merely a stepping stone to the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service. Many of his daily screeds at the Ding Dong School Of Apostasy are directed at believing Catholics who reject the apostasies, heresies, sacrileges, blasphemies and errors of conciliarism to a greater or a lesser extent. Indeed, the supposed “merciful” “Pope Francis” is merciless in his relentless assault upon truth and those who adhere to it and/or who call the horror of personal sin by its proper name, no less to denounce the widespread promotion of the sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, including willful murder and the sin of Sodom that he, Bergoglio, has suborned by indifference (in the case of willful murder) and by giving the appearance of acceptance (in the case of the sin of Sodom and those who practice it unrepentantly while basing their very human self-identification upon this detestable sin).

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s reign of terror has been such as to send a chill throughout the nooks and crannies of the conciliar system. This reign of terror has been so successful in its use of intimidation that even many “conservative” and “traditionally-minded” priests/presbyters in the conciliar structures, having learned long ago to keep their mouths shut about the conciliar “popes’” and “bishops’” multiple offenses against the First and Second Commandments by means of false ecumenism and interreligious “prayer” gatherings as they themselves offend God by staging a liturgical service at least a few of their number recognize as “distasteful,” from saying a word about the public promotion of sin under cover of the civil law and throughout what passes for “popular culture.”

Behold the latest victim of Jorge’s reign of terror as it has spread throughout the conciliar structures:

Catholic school teacher suspended after she wrote in a Facebook post that gays "want to reengineer western civ into slow extinction" has been reinstated.

Patricia Jannuzzi was put on administrative leave last month and was asked to disable her Facebook page when her comments drew wide publicity, in part after a school alumnus wrote a critical letter that was shared online by "Thelma & Louise" star Susan Sarandon, who's his aunt.

One of Jannuzzi's posts compared a lesbian relationship to news of Egyptian men being beheaded.

A letter was sent Friday to faculty and staff members at Immaculata High School in Somerville saying Jannuzzi had been reinstated, Gannett New Jersey reported. Monsignor Seamus Brennan, pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception, said in the letter that Catholic teachers should communicate the faith in "a way that is positive and never hurtful."

"Tone and choice of words matter and I trust Mrs. Jannuzzi's stated promise to strive always to teach in a spirit of truth and charity," Brennan wrote.

He cited Jannuzzi's "otherwise good reputation as an educator over 30 years at Immaculata" as a factor.

Jannuzzi's lawyer David Oakley said she was "grateful to the school for engaging in the process." (Conciliar School Teacher Reinstated After Writing the Truth on Facebook.)

To be sure, such “political correctness” is nothing new in the conciliar structures. Far from it! The stories of similar cases in the past three to four decades are too many to count, including those cases involving “conservative” or “traditionally-minded” priests/presbyters who have been removed or reassigned or sent to a psychiatric facility for reprogramming because of what their “bishops” have perceived to be some vestiges of Catholicism left in their bones and thus in their public ministry within the structures of the false conciliar sect. Also legendary are the cases of college professors and school teachers who have been disciplined, up to and including outright dismissal, for their efforts to defend the true Faith as best they could without access to true liturgical rites and thus to Sanctifying Grace in the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance.

The case of Patricia Jannuzzi has become news, though, because of her posting on Facebook and the involvement of the pro-abortion, pro-perversity and anti-death penalty Susan Sarandon, an actress whose crusade against the death penalty led to take the lead in the motion picture entitled Dead Men Walking. Such public notoriety might catch the “pope’s” attention at the Casa Santa Marta as he chows down on a slice of pizza despite his physicians’ recent orders to cut back on his daily caloric intake. Thus it is that the case of Patricia Jannuzzi was handled swiftly by “Monsignor” Seamus Brennan, who is a presbyter within the Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey.

The irony, of course, is that Patricia Jannuzzi wrote nothing untrue nor uncharitable. To speak the truth she did is a Spiritual Work of Mercy, unless, that is, it is no longer the case that Catholics attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the false belief that it is the Catholic Church, which it is not, are able to admonish the sinner. Admonition must be given. Prophetic denunciations of sin must be made in order exhort hardened sinners to reform their lives and to have a firm purpose of contrition and amendment of life before seeking out the ineffable mercy of the Divine Redeemer in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.

Here is news for “Monsignor” Seamus Brennan: none other than Saint Paul the Apostle denounced the sin of Sodom and its social implications with great force in his Epistle to the Romans:

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1: 18-32.)

Those who are unchaste must be exhorted to quit their immoral behavior, seeking out the Mercy of the Divine Redeemer in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance at the hands of a true priest as he acts in persona Christi as an alter Christus, resolved from thence on to live penitentially as the consecrated slaves of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as their state-in-life permits. You will hear no such exhortations from the lips of the conciliar "bishops," staring with Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself.

We do not base human self-identification on the basis of an inclination to commit various sins. If we did, of course, perhaps we could refer to the "blasphemers' community" and the "killers' community" and the "thieves' community" and the "adulterers' community" and the "gossipers' community" and the "enviers' community." (Well, come to think of it, the counterfeit church of conciliarism is a collection of blasphemers, isn't it?) Human self-identification is not based on the inclination to commit any sins, and for the conciliar revolutionaries to reaffirm those inclined to the commission of perverse sins demonstrates that they, the conciliar revolutionaries, do not understand that true love of God requires us will the good of others. the ultimate good of others is the salvation of their immortal souls, which they conciliar revolutionaries impede, not advance, as they write about the "elements of true love" and concern that perverse sinners have for each other than can "inspire" others by the "sacrifices" they make for each other.

Let me reprise the following once again for those who have been away from this site for a while:

1) God's love for us is an act of His divine will, the ultimate expression of which is the salvation of our immortal souls.

2) Our love for others must be premised on willing for them what God wills for us: their salvation.

3) We love no one authentically if we do or say anything, either by omission or commission, which reaffirms him in a life of unrepentant sin.

4) God hates sin. He wills the sinner to repent of his sins by cooperating with the graces He won for them on the wood of the Holy Cross.

5) Sin is what caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer unspeakable horrors on the wood of the Holy Cross and caused His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be thrust through with Seven Swords of Sorrow.

6) No one can say that he loves Our Lord or Our Lady if he persist in sin unrepentantly and/or celebrates the commission of sin in public acts of defiance against the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the Natural Law.

7) Each sin darkens the intellect and weakens the will, inclining us all the more to sin and sin again. We must, therefore, resolve never to sin again and to do penance for our sins as Our Lady herself implored us to do when she appeared in th Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, ninety years ago.

8) It is therefore forbidden for anyone of this parish or diocese to participate or support, whether morally or financially, any event whatsoever that celebrates any sin, whether natural or unnatural, and/or encourages people to persist in sin as a legitimate "lifestyle."

9) One of the Spiritual Works of Mercy is to admonish the sinner. We have an obligation to admonish those who are in lives on unrepentant sin to turn away from their lives of sin and to strive to pursue the heights of sanctity.

10) God has compassion on all erring sinners, meaning each one of us. He understands our weakness. He exhorts us, as He exhorted the woman caught in adultery, to "Go, and commit this sin no more."

11) It is not an act of "love" for people to persist in unrepentant sins with others.

12) It is not an act of "judgmentalness" or "intolerance" to exhort people who are living lives of unrepentant sin to reform their lives lest their souls wind up in Hell for eternity.

13) Mortal Sins cast out Sanctifying Grace from the soul. Those steeped in unrepentant mortal sin are the captives of the devil until they make a good and sincere Confession.

14) Certain sins cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Sodomy is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

15) Those engaged in natural or unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments do not "love" the individuals with whom they are sinning. Authentic love cannot exist in a soul committed to a life against the Commandments of God and the eternal welfare of one's own soul, no less the souls of others.

16) Those engaged in natural or unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are not fit to adopt children.

17) Those engaged in natural or unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are not fit to adopt children because their very sinful lives put into jeopardy the eternal of the souls of the children they seek to adopt. It is not possible for people who are sinning unrepentantly to teach children to hate sin as God hates sin. They are immersed in sin. Pope Pius XI put it this way in Casti Connubii, December 31,1930:

But Christian parents must also understand that they are destined not only to propagate and preserve the human race on earth, indeed not only to educate any kind of worshippers of the true God, but children who are to become members of the Church of Christ, to raise up fellow-citizens of the Saints, and members of God's household, that the worshippers of God and Our Savior may daily increase. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31,1930.)

18) Those engaged in unnatural, perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are further unfit to adopt children because they have no right in the Divine positive law or the natural law to live together as a "couple."  Once again, Pope Pius XI's Casti Connubii:

Nor must We omit to remark, in fine, that since the duty entrusted to parents for the good of their children is of such high dignity and of such great importance, every use of the faculty given by God for the procreation of new life is the right and the privilege of the married state alone, by the law of God and of nature, and must be confined absolutely within the sacred limits of that state. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31,1930.)

19) Those engaged in unnatural, perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandment have no right in the Divine positive law or the natural law to present a "model" of parenthood that is from the devil himself. The words that Saint Paul wrote about perversity in Rome in his own day that were cited above in this commentary are quite apropos of our own situation today. One wonders if "Monsignor" Seamus Brennan considers Saint Paul's words to be "offensive" to "gay" people?

20) Matrimony was elevated to a Sacrament by Our Lord at the wedding feast in Cana. The Holy Sacrament of Matrimony is entered into by one man and by one woman to achieve these ends: the procreation and education of children, the mutual good of the spouses, a remedy for concupiscence. Pope Pius XI noted this in Casti Connubii:

This conjugal faith, however, which is most aptly called by St. Augustine the "faith of chastity" blooms more freely, more beautifully and more nobly, when it is rooted in that more excellent soil, the love of husband and wife which pervades all the duties of married life and holds pride of place in Christian marriage. For matrimonial faith demands that husband and wife be joined in an especially holy and pure love, not as adulterers love each other, but as Christ loved the Church. This precept the Apostle laid down when he said: "Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the Church,"[24] that Church which of a truth He embraced with a boundless love not for the sake of His own advantage, but seeking only the good of His Spouse.[25] The love, then, of which We are speaking is not that based on the passing lust of the moment nor does it consist in pleasing words only, but in the deep attachment of the heart which is expressed in action, since love is proved by deeds. This outward expression of love in the home demands not only mutual help but must go further; must have as its primary purpose that man and wife help each other day by day in forming and perfecting themselves in the interior life, so that through their partnership in life they may advance ever more and more in virtue, and above all that they may grow in true love toward God and their neighbor, on which indeed "dependeth the whole Law and the Prophets." For all men of every condition, in whatever honorable walk of life they may be, can and ought to imitate that most perfect example of holiness placed before man by God, namely Christ Our Lord, and by God's grace to arrive at the summit of perfection, as is proved by the example set us of many saints.

This mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

21) It is never permissible to put even one child into spiritual, if not physical, jeopardy by claiming that so many others would be helped if the Church did not cooperate with an unjust law. Our Lord said that it would be better for one to have a millstone thrown around his neck and thrown into a lake than to lead one of his little ones astray. He was not joking.

22) Sinners must repent of the evil they have done in order to live ives of penance and mortification worthy of Saint Francis of Assisi. Pray as many Rosaries as you can each day of our life. They must repent and pray and work for the conversion of those with whom they have sinned, sure to make a full, integral confession to a true piest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance on a weekly basis. 

A Catholic bishop would not hesitate to make these points. Although there are some true bishops from the Eastern Rites present in Rome at this time, they are one with the their brother “non-bishops” of the Roman Rite within the counterfeit church of conciliarism of being completely bereft of the Catholic Faith, thus leaving souls “happy” in this life to be condemned for all eternity in Hell, the very place where the conciliar revolutionaries themselves are headed if they do not have a miraculous conversion to the true Faith before they die.

How do Catholics speak to sinners? How did Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ speak to sinners whilst He walk the face of the earth?

Our Lord did not reaffirm Saint Mary Magdalene in her sin of adultery. He did not applaud her. He did not excuse the gravity of violating the Sixth Commandment. He did not explain away her sin by saying that she was genetically-predisposed to commit it or that it was "impossible" for her to keep from committing it. Our Lord, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, said the following to her:

Go, and now sin no more. (John 8: 11.)

Our Lord told His friend from Bethany to reform her life, to quit her sins once and for all. He tells us, each of whom is a sinner (and I am one of the worst and most miserable, truth be told) the same thing in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance as we resolve to amend our lives as we pray the Act of Contrition as a true priest administers Absolution upon our immortal souls, thereby applying the merits His own Most Precious Blood upon them.

Is it any accident that the passage cited above from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans is not included in the triennial cycle of Sunday readings or the biennial cycle of daily readings in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service?

Consider how Saint Peter Damian and Pope Leo IX deal with the sin of Sodom that was rampant amongst the clergy in the Eleventh Century:

According to Damian, the vice of sodomy "surpasses the enormity of all others," because:

"Without fail, it brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust. It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind ... It opens up hell and closes the gates of paradise ... It is this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty, strangles chastity, and slaughters virginity ... It defiles all things, sullies all things, pollutes all things ... This vice excludes a man from the assembled choir of the Church ... it separates the soul from God to associate it with demons. This utterly diseased queen of Sodom renders him who obeys the laws of her tyranny infamous to men and odious to God... She strips her knights of the armor of virtue, exposing them to be pierced by the spears of every vice ... She humiliates her slave in the church and condemns him in court; she defiles him in secret and dishonors him in public; she gnaws at his conscience like a worm and consumes his flesh like fire. ... this unfortunate man (he) is deprived of all moral sense, his memory fails, and the mind's vision is darkened. Unmindful of God, he also forgets his own identity. This disease erodes the foundation of faith, saps the vitality of hope, dissolves the bond of love. It makes way with justice, demolishes fortitude, removes temperance, and blunts the edge of prudence. Shall I say more?"

No, dearest St. Peter Damian, I think not.

Like every saint before him, and every saint that will ever come after him, St. Peter Damian exhorts the cleric caught in the vice of sodomy to repent and reform his life and in the words of the Blessed Apostle Paul, "Wake up from your sleep and rise from the dead, and Christ will revive (enlighten) you." (Eph 5:14) In a remarkable affirmation of the Gospel message, he warns against the ultimate sin of despairing of God's mercy and the necessity of fasting and prayer to subdue the passions:

"... beware of drowning in the depths of despondency. Your heart should beat with confidence in God's love and not grow hard and impenitent, in the face of your great crime. It is not sinners, but the wicked who should despair; it is not the magnitude of one's crime, but contempt of God that dashes one's hopes."

Then, in one of the most beautiful elocutions on the grandeur of priestly celibacy and chastity ever written, Damian reminds the wayward cleric or monk of the special place reserved in Heaven for those faithful priests and monks who have willingly forsaken all and made themselves eunuchs for Christ's sake. Their names shall be remembered forever because they have given up all for the love of God, he says.

One of the very interesting historical sidebars to Damian's treatise is that he made no preference to the popular practice of distinguishing "notorious" from "non-notorious" cases of clerical immorality--a policy which can be traced back to the 9th century and the canonical reforms on ecclesiastical and clerical discipline by the great German Benedictine scholar and Archbishop of Mainz, Blessed Maurus Magnentius Rabanus (776?-856). Under this policy, the removal of clerics found guilty of criminal acts including sodomy, depended on whether or not his offense was publicly known, or was carried out and confessed in secret.

In cases that had become "notorious," the offending cleric was defrocked and/or handed over to the secular authorities for punishment. But if his crime was known only to a few persons such as his confessor or religious superior, the offending cleric was privately reprimanded, served a penance and then was permitted to continue at his post, or transferred to a similar post in a different diocese. Given the aggressive and predatory nature of the vice of sodomy, it is highly likely that such a policy contributed to, rather than inhibited, sodomical practices among clerics and religious between the mid-800s and the early 1000s. In any case, it was unlikely that Damian, who openly expressed his condemnation of too lenient canonical regulations related to the punishment of clerical sodomites and was so judicious in preserving the integrity of the priesthood and religious life, would have approved such a policy.

Saints are realists, which is no doubt why St. Peter Damian anticipated that his "small book" which exposes and denounces homosexual practices in all ranks of the clergy including the hierarchy, would cause a great commotion in the Church. And it did.

In anticipation of harsh criticism, the holy monk puts forth his own defense as a 'whistle-blower'. He states that his would-be critics will accuse him of "being an informer and a delator of my brother's crimes," but, he says, he has no fear of either "the hatred of evil men or the tongues of detractors."

Hear, dear reader, the words of St. Peter Damian that come thundering down to us through the centuries at a time in the Church when many shepherds are silent while clerical wolves, some disguised in miters and brocade robes, devour its lambs and commit sacrilege against their own spiritual sons:

"... I would surely prefer to be thrown into the well like Joseph who informed his father of his brothers' foul crime, than to suffer the penalty of God's fury, like Eli, who saw the wickedness of his sons and remained silent. (Sam 2:4) ... Who am I, when I see this pestilential practice flourishing in the priesthood to become the murderer of another's soul by daring to repress my criticism in expectation of the reckoning of God's judgement? ... How, indeed, am I to love my neighbor as myself if I negligently allow the wound, of which I am sure he will brutally die, to fester in his heart? ... "So let no man condemn me as I argue against this deadly vice, for I seek not to dishonor, but rather to promote the advantage of my brother's well-being. "Take care not to appear partial to the delinquent while you persecute him who sets him straight. If I may be pardoned in using Moses' words, 'Whoever is for the Lord, let him stand with me.' (Ezek 32:26)"

As he draws his case against the vice of clerical sodomy to a close, St. Peter Damian pleads with another future saint, Pope Leo IX, urging the Vicar of Christ to use his office to reform and strengthen the decrees of the sacred canons with regard to the disposition of clerical sodomites including religious superiors and bishops who sexually violate their spiritual sons.

Damian asks the Holy Father to "diligently" investigate the four forms of the vice of sodomy cited at the beginning of his treatise and then provides him (Damian) with definitive answers to the following questions by which the "darkness of uncertainty" might be dispelled and an "indecisive conscience" freed from error:

1) Is one who is guilty of these crimes to be expelled irrevocably from holy orders?

2) Whether at a prelate's discretion, moreover, one might mercifully be allowed to function in office?

3) To what extent, both in respect to the methods mentioned above and to the number of lapses, is it permissible to retain a man in the dignity of ecclesiastical office?

4) Also, if one is guilty, what degree and what frequency of guilt should compel him under the circumstances to retire?

Damian closes his famous letter by asking Almighty God to use Pope Leo IX's pontificate "to utterly destroy this monstrous vice" that a prostrate Church may everywhere rise to vigorous stature." (Mrs. Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 53-55)

Does Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis want to destroy this monstrous vice?

Hardly.

He wants to befriend those who are attracted to and/or practice it and to see it "mainstreamed" in society, which is pretty much a fait accompli these days (see, for example, Irreversible By Means Merely Human).

By contrast, consider how Pope Leo IX responded to the report presented to him by Saint Peter Damian:

The approximate date that Damian delivered the Book of Gomorrah to Pope Leo IX is generally held to be the second half of the first year of the pontiff's reign, i.e., mid-1049, although some writers put the date as late as 1051. We do know, absolutely, that the Pope did respond to Damian's concerns, as that response in the form of a lengthy letter (JL 4311; ItPont 4.94f., no.2) is generally attached to manuscripts of the work.

Pope Leo IX opens his letter to "his beloved son in Christ, Peter the hermit," with warm salutations and a recognition of Damian's pure, upright and zealous character. He agrees with Damian that clerics, caught up in the "execrable vice" of sodomy "verily and most assuredly will have no share in his inheritance, from which by their voluptuous pleasures they have withdrawn. " Such clerics, indeed profess, if not in words, at least by the evidence of their actions, that they are not what they are thought to be," he declares.

Reiterating the category of the four forms of sodomy that Damian lists, [59] the Holy Father declares that it is proper that by "our apostolic authority" we intervene in the matter so that "all anxiety and doubt be removed from the minds of your readers".

"So let it be certain and evident to all that we are in agreement with everything your book contains, opposed as it is like water to the fire of the devil," the Pope continues. "Therefore, lest the wantonness of this foul impurity be allowed to spread unpunished, it must be repelled by proper repressive action of apostolic severity, and yet some moderation must be placed on its harshness," he states.

Next, Pope Leo IX gives a detailed explanation of the Holy See's authoritative ruling on the matter.

In light of divine mercy, the Holy Father commands, without contradiction, that those who, of their own free will, have practiced solitary or mutual masturbation or defiled themselves by interfemoral coitus, but who have not done so for any length of time, nor with many others, shall retain their status, after having "curbed their desires" and "atoned for their infamous deeds with proper repentance".

However, the Holy See removes all hope for retaining their clerical status from those who alone or with others for a long time, or even a short period with many, "have defiled themselves by either of the two kinds of filthiness which you have described, or, which is horrible to hear or speak of, have sunk to the level of anal intercourse."

He warns potential critics, that those who dare to criticize or attack the apostolic ruling stand in danger of losing their rank. And so as to make it clear to whom this warning is directed, the Pope immediately adds, "For he who does not attack vice, but deals with it lightly, is rightly judged to be guilty of his death, along with the one who dies in sin."

Pope Leo IX praises Damian for teaching by example and not mere words, and concludes his letter with the beautiful hope that when, with God's help, the monk reaches his heavenly abode, he may reap his rewards and be crowned, "Ö in a sense, with all those who were snatched by you from the snares of the devil."

Clearly, on the objective immorality of sodomical acts, both Damian and Pope Leo IX were in perfect accord with one another. However, in terms of Church discipline, the pope appears to have taken exception with Damian's appeal for the wholesale deposition of all clerics who commit sodomical acts. I say, appears, because I believe that even in the matter of punishing known clerical offenders, both men were more in agreement than not.

Certainly, Damian, who was renown for his exemplary spiritual direction of the novitiates and monks entrusted to his care, was not unaware of certain mitigating circumstances that would diminish if not totally remove the culpability of individuals charged with the crime of sodomy.

For example, as with certain clerical sex abuse cases that have come to light today involving the Society of St. John and the Legionaries of Christ, which the Holy See has yet to investigate, some novices or monks may have been forced or pressured by their superiors to commit such acts. No doubt, it is circumstances such as these that prompted Pope Leo IX to use the term, "who of his own free will" in describing a cleric guilty of sodomy. Also among the four varieties of sodomy Damian discusses in his treatise, he states that interfemoral and anal coitus are to be judged more serious than solitary or mutual masturbation.

All in all, what this writer found to be most remarkable about the pope's letter to Damian, was the absolutist position Pope Leo IX took concerning the ultimate responsibility of the offending cleric's bishop or religious superior. If the latter criticized or attacked this apostolic decree, he risked losing his rank! Prelates who fail to "attack vice, but deal lightly with it," share the guilt and sentence of the one who dies in sin, the pope declared. (Mrs. Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 57-58)

Writing five hundred years after Saint Peter Damian and Pope Leo IX, Pope Saint Pius V explained the just penalty due clerics caught in the act of unnatural vice:

That horrible crime, on account of which corrupt and obscene cities were destroyed by fire through divine condemnation, causes us most bitter sorrow and shocks our mind, impelling us to repress such a crime with the greatest possible zeal.

Quite opportunely the Fifth Lateran Council [1512-1517] issued this decree: "Let any member of the clergy caught in that vice against nature . . . be removed from the clerical order or forced to do penance in a monastery" (chap. 4, X, V, 31). So that the contagion of such a grave offense may not advance with greater audacity by taking advantage of impunity, which is the greatest incitement to sin, and so as to more severely punish the clerics who are guilty of this nefarious crime and who are not frightened by the death of their souls, we determine that they should be handed over to the severity of the secular authority, which enforces civil law.

Therefore, wishing to pursue with the greatest rigor that which we have decreed since the beginning of our pontificate, we establish that any priest or member of the clergy, either secular or regular, who commits such an execrable crime, by force of the present law be deprived of every clerical privilege, of every post, dignity and ecclesiastical benefit, and having been degraded by an ecclesiastical judge, let him be immediately delivered to the secular authority to be put to death, as mandated by law as the fitting punishment for laymen who have sunk into this abyss. (Pope Saint Pius V, Horrendum illud scelus, August 30, 1568.)

Death, not "brotherhood" and "mainstreaming" for the sake of "inclusivity," was what Pope Saint Pius V, faithful to the teaching of Saint Paul the Apostle in his Epistle to the Roman cited above, believed should be imposed on the clergy as well as the laity who were caught in "such an execrable crime" that caused him "such better sorrow" shocked his papal mind as he sought to "repress such a crime with the greatest possible zeal."

Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis and others in the conciliar structures want to provide "brotherhood" and "acceptance."

Just a slightly different approach, wouldn't you say?

A true pope understood the horror of such a detestable sin on the part of the clergy and sought to administer punishment to serve as a medicinal corrective for other priests and to demonstrate to the laity the horrific nature of such a moral crime.

A false "pope"seeks to appear as an agent of mercy when he is actually an apostle of eternal death.

Mind you, I am not suggesting the revival of this penalty in a world where it would not be understood and where the offender would be made a "martyr" for the cause of perversity, only pointing out the fact that the Catholic Church teaches that clerics and others in ecclesiastical authority who are guilty of serious moral crimes are deserving of punishment, not protection, by their bishops. Such is the difference yet again between Catholicism and conciliarism.

It is shameful that anyone would seek to provide a cover for a man who has such disregard for the honor and glory and majesty of the Most Blessed Trinity and who seeks to indemnify sinners in the name of what is nothing other than a false mercy. That Patricia Jannuzzi was penalized and forced to hire an attorney to secure her reinstatement, which was premised upon her promise to be more "charitable" even she had done nothing other than speak the truth in charity, is even more shameful, and this shame falls on a modern-day Pontius Pilate, "Monsignor" Seamus Brennan.

Part two of this series will focus on the recent controversy engendered by United States Senator and Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul’s recent answer to a question to an Associated Press reporter about his position on “exceptions” to the absolute inviolability of all innocent human life from the first moment of conception until the time of natural death. The hostility to truth in the secular world is just as fierce as it is within the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, a hostility that has been fueled anew by the tone being struck by the “ever-merciful” Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who has been conducted a charade as “Pope Francis” since Wednesday, March 13, 2013.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is an apostle of Antichrist, and those who refuse to see this and who keep waiting for the "next outrage" to occur are simply continuing to accustom themselves to accept the falsehood that apostasy, heresy, blasphemy and sacrilege can be associated with a true Sovereign Pontiff. Such people are preparing to accept Antichrist himself without a qualm of conscience, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis is his poster-boy as to how to accomplish his end in these our times. Sadly, Bergoglio has lackeys aplenty in the conciliar structure, men who are unwilling and/or unable to recognize the truth and to embrace it no matter the cost.

Remember these words as written by the late Archbishop Alban Goodier, S.J.:

And again he failed. Once more the reminder of the truth did but aggravate them; the will not to believe is hard to convince, the determination not to accept what is known to be true is invincible. Indeed to attempt to convince is to rouse the most violent kind of enmity. Hitherto the accusers had only clamoured for the condemnation of Jesus. They had asked that somehow He should be put to death, apparently it mattered not how; how, since they had been taught with His being their Christ, their anointed King, they went to a further extreme. He must not only die; he must die the most shameful death that even the Roman world knew. He must die the death of a guilty slave, of a convicted criminal; though to be a Roman citizen would save even a criminal from such a fate. Their Anointed? Let Him be crucified. Then it would be known what they thought of Him, then even such men as Pilate would check their sarcastic tongues: ‘But they all cried out, Crucify him, crucify him, let him be crucified.’

This was indeed a climax of hatred, so that more than ever Pilate was amazed. He had seen passion roused to blind fury before; in his own city it was cultivated as an amusement. He had seen, in Rome, eyes glittering and faces taut, as women round the arena turned down their thumbs demanding a gladiator’s death. He had seen his own soldiers, brutalized and hardened till they were scarcely human any longer, laughing and turning to sport the slaughter of the helpless. He had watched an Asiatic mob, more deliberate and merciless than any European, show its white teeth and express dread purpose in its eyes as it pursued some deed of callous cruelty. He had himself a heart hardened enough to pass suffering by, to inflict it if need be, and to be moved no more than if he plucked a lily. But this sight before him was different from all these. It was not fury, it was not blind; it was cold, deliberate, determined. There was too much hatred now even for mockery or laughter. Never before had a Jew, or a Jewish mob, demanded that a Jew should be crucified, no matter what might have been his crime. (Archbishop Alban Goodier, S.J., The Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Authorized American Edition published by the Daughters of Saint Paul, pp. 268-269.)

Keep close, if possible, to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, if this is possible where you live.

Pray as many Rosaries each day as your state-in-life permits.

Offer all of the sufferings of the moment to the Throne of the Most Blessed Trinity as the consecrated slave of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart Mary, whose triumph will be manifest when will least expect it.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint Hermenegild, pray for us.