Fighting Synodality with Democracy?

There are many ironies at this time of apostasy and betrayal that may appear obvious to those of us who, solely by means of Our Lady’s graces, have come to accept the fact that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is not the Catholic Church but are not at all obvious to those Catholics who are still fighting on Mindanao to “work from within” for a restoration of Catholicism in an apostate sect.

One of the chief ironies of our times is that many of those who rightly reject and decry the concept of a “synodal church” whose doctrines and pastoral praxes are based upon the “consent of the governed,” if you will, a “consent” “discerned in a “consultative” manner, use the falsehoods of democracy to “petition” men they think are “bishops” or “popes” to do what the signatories want done.

Yes, the “democratic spirit” has taken such deep root in the Western world in the past two hundred fifty years that many Catholics use supposedly democratic “methods” to express themselves to “demand” this or that outrage be retracted by the very men who have perpetrated the outrage du jour precisely because they, the decisionmakers, are Modernists who do not possess the Catholic Faith.

Among the current petition drives is the one to convince the “archbishop” of Denver, Colorado, James Gorka, to reverse his decision to silence and to ban from all “public ministry” “Father” Ripperger, who was installed as a presbyter for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter before he receive permission from the previous conciliar “archbishop” of Denver, Samuel Aquila, to found a pious association of the faithful, the Doloran Fathers, in honor of the Seven Dolors of Our Lady:

LifeSiteNews) — Denver Archbishop James Golka has ordered Father Chad Ripperger, the most widely heard living American priest on exorcism and spiritual warfare, to cease all public ministry for one year, LifeSiteNews has confirmed directly with the priest.

The order seems to cover public appearances, online homilies, and writings. Talks already booked are to be cancelled.

Ripperger was scheduled to speak at the upcoming LifeSiteNews 30th anniversary gala on April 24, 2027. He has notified us that he can no longer honor the engagement. “The Archbishop has asked me to take a break on public speaking,” he wrote. When asked to do a video address or something in writing, he also declined noting that questions on the restriction should be directed to the Archbishop of Denver. Moreover, he noted that the restrictions would be in place for a year – till next September. LifeSiteNews has also learned he has cancelled speaking engagements with at least two other organizations.

LifeSiteNews contacted the Archdiocese of Denver seeking comment on the nature, reasons, duration, and any Vatican involvement. Diocesan Director of Communications Kelly Clark has sent LifeSite the following response:

Archbishop Golka recently met with Fr. Chad Ripperger to discuss his ministry and his community, the Society of the Most Sorrowful Mother. During that conversation, the Archbishop asked Fr. Ripperger to consider a one-year fast from public speaking and interviews. The time will allow him to devote himself to the Society and to the people it serves. Fr. Ripperger readily agreed. At the end of the year, they will review the arrangement together.

Archbishop Golka is grateful for Fr. Ripperger’s priestly service, exorcism ministry, and for the generous spirit in which he received this request. We ask the faithful to join us in praying for Fr. Ripperger and for the Society.

Golka, named bishop of Colorado Springs by Pope Francis in 2021 and archbishop of Denver by Pope Leo XIV in February 2026, now holds faculties over Ripperger and the Society of the Most Sorrowful Mother (Doloran Fathers), the public association Archbishop Samuel Aquila received into the archdiocese. There has been no public decree explaining the penalty, no announced finding of heresy.

The silencing follows the achievement of the largest audience any priest has likely ever had: Ripperger recently appeared on the mega talk-shows of Tucker Carlson and Shawn Ryan.

On April 3, 2026, Ripperger sat with Carlson for nearly two hours to discuss possession, the occult, politicians and the demonic, addiction, and communism as a psychological twin of diabolic method. The full episode on Tucker’s YouTube channel got more than 3 million views and nearly 94,000 likes. Short clips continue to add millions more.

He went twice to the Shawn Ryan Show, among the top podcasts on Spotify. Episode #285 (March 5, 2026), a four-hour conversation on the mark of the beast and the rise of the Antichrist, has been reported in the 2.5 to 4.1 million view range on YouTube. The July 23 return visit, episode #324, sits around 2.7 million views; a single clip from that hour has passed 640,000. Combined with Spotify audio, the Ryan appearances alone put Ripperger in front of millions of listeners who did not come looking for a diocesan chancery statement.

Amazingly Ryan told Tucker that after speaking with Ripperger he has returned to his Catholic faith.

Ripperger, 61, was ordained in 1997 for the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, later founded the Doloran Fathers, and has served in the Denver archdiocese since 2016. After the 2016 death of Rome’s Chief Exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, he became the English-speaking world’s best-known living exorcist. His books – Deliverance Prayers for Use by the Laity, Dominion, Introduction to the Science of Mental Health – have gone far and wide. Conference talks on Sensus Fidelium and related channels have been watched for years.

Archbishop Golka was appointed bishop of Colorado Springs by Pope Francis on April 30, 2021. Leo XIV named him the archbishop of Denver on February 7, 2026, accepting the resignation of Archbishop Aquila.

Chris Jackson, writing at Hiraeth in Exile (“Leo XIV’s Golka Appointment: Rewarding a Cover-Up”), argued that the Denver promotion rewarded Golka for removing the canon lawyer that took the case of the abuse victims in Chiclayo, Peru, who accused Leo XIV of coverup.

The public timeline in Colorado Springs is not in dispute. Monsignor Ricardo Coronado-Arrascue, judicial vicar and chancellor under Bishop Michael Sheridan and then under Golka, stepped down in May 2022 under a settlement that, on paper, left him a priest in good standing. In June 2023 the diocese issued a precept over an unspecified “serious allegation” and suspended him. Coronado later sued the diocese and Golka for breach of contract and defamation; the civil actions were dismissed. In May 2024, after Coronado was hired by Peruvian abuse complainants in the Chiclayo matter – the see Leo had led as Bishop Robert Prevost – Golka issued a decree branding him as under canonical investigation and forbidding him to act as an ecclesiastical lawyer.

Under Sheridan, the Diocese of Colorado Springs had two diocesan Traditional Latin Mass options: the FSSP personal parish of Immaculate Conception, which Sheridan erected, and a Friday Mass offered by Coronado at Pauline Chapel.

After Coronado’s removal there was no replacement of that TLM, leaving the FSSP the only option in the large diocese. (Fr. Chad Ripperger silenced by his bishop for a year.)

Leaving aside a discussion of Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV’s continuation of the ecclesiastical Stalinism initiated against “reactionary” bishops and priests by the morally, doctrinally, and liturgically decadent Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI and revived with a particular vengeance by the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio for another time, it is clear that “Archbishop” Gorka is punishing “Father” Ripperger for his very scholarly defense of the Holy Faith and his explaining the kind of demonic activity at work in the world now that takes hold of the lives of so many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

The conciliar revolutionaries are discomfited by any detailed explanations about demonic activity principally because their entire work is demonically inspired and maintained, and many of these revolutionaries are engaged in perverse sins against nature. “Father” Ripperger is thus both a thorn in their sides as his eloquent defense of various truths of the Holy Faith, excepting his mistaken beliefs that the conciliar church is the Catholic Church and that he is a true priest, which he is not, remind the faithful the devil and hell are real and that they must be aware that the adversary prowls about the world like a roaring lion seeking the destruction of souls.

Remember, the conciliar revolution has “progressed” to such a point of open hatred of the angelic and holy that anyone who inspires Catholics to seek be on guard against the wickedness and the snares of the devil and to call upon the angelic power of Saint Michael the Archangel and their own Guardian Angels must silenced and disciplined.

This revulsion of the angelic and holy in favor of a “popular theology” that is based upon how the people live not upon objective truths revealed by God Himself and/or exist in the very nature of things is such that that Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII made the recitation of the Prayers after Low Mass, including the Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, were made optional in the missal (the “1962 Missal”)  that went into effect on Sunday, December 3, 1961, the First Sunday of Advent, and were abolished entirely by Montini/Paul VI when the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service took effect on Sunday, November 30, 1969, the First Sunday of Advent.

The hatred of the public recitation of the Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel that has been revived in some “conservative” conciliar parishes in recent years is so pronounced that the conciliar “bishop” of Knoxville, Tennessee, Mark Beckman, has banned any additional prayers before or after the staging of Novus Ordo liturgical travesty in his diocese:

KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Mark Beckman of Knoxville, Tennessee, banned the praying of the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel at the end of masses in his diocese.

In a statement to members of the Diocese of Knoxville published Friday, Beckman lamented that as he has traveled throughout his diocese, he “noticed that in some of our parishes additional prayers, including the Prayer to St. Michael, the ‘Prayer of St. Francis,’ a Prayer to the Holy Spirit, and others have been added regularly to the liturgy — recited together, sometimes before the entrance hymn, or immediately after the dismissal.” 

“Having reflected on the importance of celebrating the liturgy in accordance with the mind of the Church, I do not think it appropriate to add additional prayers associated with the celebration of the Mass itself,” Beckman wrote.

“Therefore, I have asked our priests to catechize the people of God as we move away from additional prayers recited together immediately before, during, and immediately after Mass,” Beckman said. 

Beckman instead encouraged pastors to find alternative ways to incorporate the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel “into the devotional lives of our families and communities beyond the celebration of the liturgy.”

Last year, Beckman limited the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) to one chapel at a retreat center once a month after previously announcing the suppression of all parish TLMs in the diocese.

Beckman declared at the time that the changes to the Roman liturgy after the Second Vatican Council as well as Pope Francis’ 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, which placed sweeping restrictions on the celebration of the TLM, were guided by the Holy Spirit. (Bishop bans St. Michael prayer at the end of Masses.)

You see, it kind of works like this: For all the talk of “synodality” by the Jacobin/Bolshevik conciliar revolutionaries, many of the conciliar “bishops” know how to act authoritatively as putative possessors of a “papal mandate” to govern their dioceses. He gets to decide which “priests” to discipline and what liturgical practices are permitted, and no amount of Americanist petitioning can force a man who believes himself to be a Successor of the Apostles to carry out the “magisterium” of a putative “pope” to respond to the “people,” especially if it is the wrong sort of “people” doing the petitioning.

Although the subject of the next commentary on this site, the Catholic Church does not silence priests who explain the existence of the devil and hell as well as how demonic activity is at work in the souls of men and thus in the world.

The Catholic Church does not seek to find a “common ground” with heretics by using, for example, the tenets of the Lutheran Augsburg Confession despite the fact that most of those tenets were solemnly condemned and anathematized by the Council of Trent without, of course, doing the Lutherans the favor of acknowledging the “confession” explicitly.

The Catholic Church does not teach that false religions are pleasing in the sight of the Most Holy Trinity, nor does she teach that false religions have a “mission from God” to “build peace” in the world as each false religion is of the devil himself.

The Catholic Church has nothing to “learn” from false religions and/or from the worldly currents of naturalism.

The Catholic Church does not reaffirm hardened sinners in their lives of unrepentant perdition in the name of “accompaniment.”

We must pray to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, and to the Holy Angels, who, along with the Holy Rosary, are honored during this waning month of October, so that we can persevere in the recognition that the Catholic Church is inerrant and that thus she cannot contradict herself or be led by the false spirits of a false age that preach a false gospel at odds with Divine Revelation and consequently with the honor and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity and the eternal and temporal good of souls.

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.

Appendix A

Reflections on the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

The Mass of the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, which was downgraded to a commemoration on Sunday, October 18, 2026, because of the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, is resumed today, Thursday, October 22, 2026. The theme of today’s Mass is forgiveness.

We must be perfect as Our Heavenly Father is perfect. We must forgive others. We cannot go about exacting vengeance or engaging in petty acts of vindictiveness against others. We must forgive as we are forgiven. It is that simple. Each of us deserves to be chastised for our sins. We should be grateful to the ever-merciful God that He sends us others to calumniate us and to speak ill of us just moments after they may have spoken feigned words of greetings to us through gritted teeth and pretended smiles that betrayed a spirit of inner contempt.

So what?

So what?

Our Lord also taught us that we must forgive those who hurt or offend us in one way or another seventy times seven times, meaning an infinite number of times in imitation of His own ready willingness to forgive us in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance if we approach Him with a true contrition for our sins and a firm purpose of amendment:

"Then Peter came unto Him and said: 'Lord, how often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times.'

"Jesus saith to him: 'I say not to thee, till seven times; but till seventy times seven times.'

" 'Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened to a king, who would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to take the account, one was brought to him, that owed him ten thousand talents. And as he had not wherewithal to pay it, his lord commanded that he should be sold, and his wife and children all that he had, and payment to be made.

" 'But that servant falling down, besought him, saying: "Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all." And the lord of that servant being moved with pity, let him go and forgave him the debt.

" 'But when that servant was gone out, he found one of his fellow servants that owed him an hundred pence: and laying hold of him, he throttled him, saying: "Pay what thou owest." And his fellow servant falling down, besought him, saying: "Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all." And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he paid the debt.

" 'Now his fellow servants seeing what was done were very much grieved, and they came and told their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him; and said to him: "Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all the debt, because thou besoughtest me: Shouldst not thou then have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had compassion on thee?" And his lord being angry, delivered him to the torturers until he paid all the debt.

" 'So also shall my heavenly Father do to you, if you forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.'" (Matthew 18: 21-35)

That's right, ladies and gentlemen: we will not be forgiven our sins unless we forgive others from our hearts without any trace of bitterness at all! We recite the Pater Noster many times during a day, praying "Et dimmite nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimmitimus debitoribus nostris." "And forgive us our trespasses we forgive those who trespass against us." The martyrs, following the example of Our Lord and His Protomartyr, Saint Stephen, forgave their persecutors. We must do the same.

True, we may not be reconciled fully in this life with those in whose life we may have caused pain or with those who have caused us to suffer. We must, though, seek out forgiveness from others and to give it freely even if it turns out to be the case that there will not be a full restoration of friendship until the glories of Heaven, when all of those who have persevered to their dying breaths will be reconciled one unto the other. An absolute precondition of that happy reunion in Heaven, however, is to have at all times the spirit of forgiveness and prayer that Our Lord Himself taught us many times in His Public Ministry and ratified on the wood of the Holy Cross, the spirit of forgiveness and prayer that Saint Stephen demonstrated at the moment of his own martyrdom.

Consider this example of forgiveness that was offered by the legitimate Queen of England, Catherine of Aragon, to her debauched husband, King Henry VIII, written shortly before Queen Catherine's death on January 7, 1536, at the age of fifty:

My most dear lord, King and husband,

The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.

Katharine the Queen  (Letter of Katharine of Aragon to her husband.)

And you can't forgive the brother who hasn't written to you in ten years?

Think again.

Forgive as you have been given.

Saint Stephen did.

Why can't you?

Our sins deserve far, far worse than anything we are asked to suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears. None of us or our supposed “reputations,” which exist more in our own imaginations than they do in the objective order of things, are so important as to become arrogant and full of self-righteous sanctimony when our “pride” is wounded and especially when things we would rather not hear about ourselves become more widely known in this life as a preparation for the revelation of each of our private thoughts, words and actions on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the living and the dead. It will only be on that Last Day that the totality of our lives will be seen by others as we saw it at the Particular Judgment, which is ratified and made known to all at the General Judgment to manifest both the justice and mercy of God.

So many people plot and scheme and whisper behind closed doors (or endlessly on their cellular phones) to “protect” their nonexistent “reputations,” fearful that some ill word, whether true or not, will be spoken against them. Meetings are held where tales full of half-truth and lots of positivism are spun to seek reaffirmation from others for a “plan of action” to proactively attack those who know the truth about them and their constant self-seeking.

To what end?

To what good end?

Doesn’t everything get revealed on the Last Day?

Why all of the efforts to avoid a little chastisement in this life?

Indeed, much of the chastisement that comes our way could be avoided entirely if we only had more humility to say, “You know what? Boy, I’ve messed up a whole lot. I’ve done some very bad things. I’ve treated people badly. I’ve attempted to make others look guilty in a given situation when I’m the one at fault. You know what? I’m a stinker. Please forgive me.”

Our persecutors and calumniators are really our best friends as they are being used by the good God as instruments to help us to be so purified of self and disordered self-love that we thank Him for helping us to be ground into nothing in the eyes of the "numbers," praying for a good and happy reconciliation for all eternity with Heaven with as those who have sought to persecute and/or speak ill of us even they, not realizing what it is they are doing, are just flat out wrong in their accusations. Everything does indeed get revealed on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the living and the dead. That's all that matters. Nothing else.

After all, Our Lord also said the following when discussing on the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount:

Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

[11] Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: [12] Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you. (Matthew 5: 10-12.)

What a joy it is be counted worthy despite one’s own sins to have others speak ill against us for the sake of the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is both humbling and encouraging to be the beneficiary of being so reviled.

In today’s world, though, forgiveness has become as difficult was it was before the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of God the Holy Ghost:

With the exception of that comparatively small number of heroic men and women who have, from the dawn of consciousness, pursued unfalteringly the path of perfection, Christians as a rule belie the promises of their baptism and continually present obstacles to the increase of divine grace in their souls. Differing in many respects, we are alike in this, that we are all sinners, and that we have not only once, but perhaps several times in our lives disappointed God.

Under the reign of Satan men were hard and unfeeling, without pity or tenderness. The one thing they looked up to was the physical power to dominate, and the one thing they feared was the helplessness of poverty. Their life was divided between pleasure and cruelty. Pride and haughtiness instead of being regarded as defects were regarded as manly virtues. Weakness was almost synonymous with vice, and all this tended to fashion hearts imperverious to the grace of God and to every human feeling. Conversion of heart was for them extremely difficult. What God required on the part of man as a necessary condition of their friendship with Him was to them abhorrent, for the practice of the Christian virtues of submission, humility, and patience would be regarded by them as degrading. They had to learn that what was not degrading to God–since nothing could degrade Him in reality–could not be degrading to them. Turning to God postulated on their part not only a change of heart, but also a change of mentality. Their human values were almost all wrong. In the terse words of St. Ignatius describing the pagan world” “They smite, they slay and they go down to Hell”.

In other words, it is the law of things as they actually are that we must continually suffer from others; it is the condition of our being that we shall be the victims of others’ abuse of their free wills; it belongs to our position that our desires and inclinations should be continually thwarted and that we should be at the mercy of circumstances. And it is our duty to bear that without resentment and without rebellion. To rebel is to assert practically that such things are not our due, that they do not belong to our position. It is to refuse to recognize that we are fallen members of a fallen race. The moment we feel resentment at anything painful that happens to us through the activity of men or things, at that moment we are resentful against God’s Providence.

We are in this really protesting against His eternal determination to create free beings; for these sufferings which we endure are a consequence of the carrying into effect of that free determination. If we expect or look for a mode of existence in which we shall not endure harshness, unkindness, misunderstanding, and injustice, we are actually rebelling against God’s Providence, we are claiming a position that does not belong to us as creatures. This is to sin against humility. It is pride. (Father Edward Leen, In The Likeness of Christ, Sheed and Ward, 1936, pp, 17-18; 182-183.)

We must be content to be humiliated before men and to rejoice in this fact, recognizing that the good, the bad and the ugly of each of our lives will be revealed for all men to see on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the living and the dead.

No Catholic who takes the Cross of the Divine Redeemer broods over injuries, gets depressed or scours the internet the find out who is saying what about him.

Who cares?

It is enough to try to please Christ the King as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church. It is enough to beg Our Lady, she who is the Queen of Mercy, to pray for us now, and at the hour of death. We should pray to be humiliated before men as this is truly the imitation of Christ the King, Who was humiliated by us, His own creatures, as He was about to redeem us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is so merciful to us erring sinners. He gives us just the number of years of life to make it possible for us to “get it” insofar as the interior life of the soul is concerned.

We pray to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, to help us, whose bodies are destined temporarily for the corruption of the grave until the General Resurrection of the dead on the Last Day, to aim for the glories of an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise that await us if we remain faithful to end as we pray for our own conversion and for that of all others who are looking for someone follow as everyone on this earth must come to believe and then follow Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through the Church He Himself created upon the Rock of Peter the Pope, and none other.

May God have mercy on us all.

Appendix B

Father Francis X. Weninger on the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

“So also shall My heavenly Father do to you, if you forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.”--Matt. 18, 35.

The Gospels which are read to you from the pulpit during the ecclesiastical year afford opportunities for the expounders of the Divine Word to lay before you those duties which are inseparably connected with the leading of a good Catholic life. To be true children of God, we must live to please God, to do His holy Will, to increase our merits for heaven, and to secure our eternal salvation. To assist us in this is the ardent wish of our holy mother the Church. In today’s Gospel are pointed out obligations, the fulfillment of which will be most effectual in promoting our salvation. One very important obligation relates to the forgiveness of our neighbor, a virtue which we are bound to practise, no matter what injury he has been guilty of towards us, or how repugnant it is to our feelings to forgive.

Remember how merciful and forgiving our divine Lord is to us. We have but to ask sincerely for pardon, and we are received once more into His favor! In the concluding words of the Gospel we are threatened in the most impressive manner that, unless we forgive our neighbor, we ourselves can not hope for forgiveness. Let us consider today how justly this duty of forgiveness is imposed on us, and how vain and futile the pretexts which are put forward in excuse for rancor and enmity!

Mary, mother of fair love, and queen of mercy, we pray thee, instill into our hearts the spirit of fraternal love, and forgiveness towards all whom we look upon as enemies! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, for the greater honor and glory of God!

Christ, my brethren, commands us to love our enemies. There is no special virtue in loving our friends, for nature prompts us to do so; but to love and forgive our enemies heroic virtue is required, and those who thus practise charity will be rewarded a thousand-fold. Think often of this precept, take it to heart, remember its importance; for Satan, who loves to fish in troubled waters, is ever on the alert, seeking occasions to make us transgress it.

To the violation of this commandment our Lord has attached terrible warnings, and for its fulfillment He has given us the most consoling promises, such as are united to no other commandment, not excepting the one which enjoins upon us the love of our Maker. St. John has assigned a reason for this prerogative when he assures us that “whoever says he loves God, yet hateth his brother, is a liar.” It is true that our Lord has also uttered those awful words: “He that believeth not shall be condemned;” but what would it profit a man to shed his blood and die a martyr s death, hoping to wear the martyr’s crown, if enmity reigned in his heart? Oh, believe me, it would avail him naught, and besprinkled with a martyr’s blood, he would rush head long into hell; for “ He that loveth not abideth in death,” says St. John.

And Christ Himself tells us, that if we do good only to those who do good to us we are no better than the heathen. Our Lord deprives no one of the genial, vivifying sun, but allows its rays to fall on the just and unjust alike. It was upon the last evening of His mortal life that He uttered the injunction: “Love one another, as I have loved you.” It was also His first petition when the desire of His cruel executioners was accomplished, and His sacred body hung in agony upon the cross. Then from His divine lips came forth the prayer: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do,” a proof that His bitter agony, His dreadful scourging, the sharp pain of the cruel thorns, as they pressed His sacred brow, the weary weight of the cross, as He bore it up to Calvary’s Mount, and, last of all, His death upon that cross would avail naught to the Christian who would refuse to forgive, even as He forgave!

On this point, nothing is left to our own inference; for Christ lays down the law in the most decided manner, when He assures us that, if we do not forgive others, our sins shall not be forgiven. St. Augustine tells us that whoever is not aroused by this terrible denunciation of Jesus Christ, our Judge, not only sleeps, but is spiritually dead.

It is vain to say “I am a Catholic,” while you refuse to forgive those who have offended you. There is no hope of eternal blessedness for you. In vain for you the benefits of our holy faith; in vain the Holy Sacraments. Not even one, “our Father,” could your confessor give you for a penance without placing a curse upon your lips; for your prayer would be to be forgiven as you forgive, and you refuse to forgive! “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Oh, pause, Christians, whose hearts are full of enmity, before you pronounce those words! Pause, and resolve to forgive as you hope to be pardoned, otherwise you will belong to the devil, to the declared enemy of God and your salvation, to that demon of evil, whose hatred towards ransomed man is ever urging him to lure souls on to their eternal ruin!

And nothing that you can urge in your own defense will avail you before God. You may say: “Father, could I but narrate the injury I have suffered, you would tell me I had reason to be obdurate!”

I answer: God has commanded, let His creature obey. But, you will say, my enemy does not deserve forgiveness. I answer: Do you deserve forgiveness from God? Were all the injuries that could ever be wrought by the hand of a man against a fellow-man added together they would bear no comparison to the guilt of one mortal sin; and perhaps, oh unforgiving sinner, there are many upon your soul! Yet God is ready to forgive you. And are you greater than God?

“He does not deserve it,” you say. But may not your enemy be converted to God, and become more pleasing to Him than you have ever been? You do not consider him worthy of forgiveness. Were the executioners of our Saviour worthy to be forgiven by Him? Are you worthy? Yet He prayed that they might be forgiven, and He is ready to pardon you. He set you a glorious example, when, from the depths of His wounded and agonizing heart, He forgave and prayed for His enemies!

Most certainly you are not bound to associate with persons when you know that new contentions would arise from such intercourse, but let your conduct be such as to show that you would willingly be kind to them when they require, your assistance. If you have a coolness with any one, and an opportunity offers for a reconciliation, hasten to make; the advances. It will be an exercise of virtue most salutary for your soul. If you are in earnest about the salvation of your soul, you will even seek for reconciliation. How sweet, then, will be to you those words of Christ: “Forgive, and you also will be forgiven!”

If you are already in the state of grace, how many new graces will Jesus grant you because you have forgiven for pure love of Him! Think of St. John Gualbert, who became a saint because, for love of God, he forgave the murderer of his brother!

St. Jerome says that a Christian may say he cannot fast on account of hard labor, or that he is not able to labor in consequence of illness, or that it is beyond his power to give alms, because he is in poverty himself, but that no one can say he is not able to forgive; for that requires only an effort of the will.

You may say: “I feel no spirit of forgiveness in my heart.” That may be; the heart is not free, but the will is free. One may feel distaste towards a bitter medicine, but by a powerful effort of the will, he will swallow it, for the sake of the benefit he will derive from it. Besides, if you sincerely try to forgive, for love of God, all bitterness will pass away, and in its place will come into your heart a sweetness such as passeth all understanding.

Therefore, to one and all of you I say, forgive. Forgive, for the sake of your neighbor, for the sake of your souls, and for the love of that Saviour Who forgave His enemies upon the cross! Amen! (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., Sermon for the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost.)