No Black and White in "Catholic Universities," Only Different Shades of Lavender

Those familiar with my work know that I was a college professor of political science for over thirty years in a number of colleges and universities across the United States of America. It still galls me somewhat to admit that I “was” a college professor as I do miss the classroom, although I understand that I am “teaching” in a different manner by means of my writing (and whatever technically poor video presentations that I have made) on this website.

As I wrote in Not With My Money (Not That I Have Any) two years ago, the totalitarianism in college and universities today has moved far beyond the “political correctness” of the 1970s and 1980s that got me in trouble now and again because I was not bashful about Catholicism as the only source of true social order, meaning that even if I had managed to acquire tenure in some institution that I would have been dismissed with a “golden parachute” years ago for refusing to knuckle under to demands to be “neutral” about supernatural and moral truth.

Moreover, given the radicalized nature of students thanks to the ceaseless indoctrination about “social justice,” “environmental justice,” “racial justice,” “gender equality justice,” “health care justice,” “justice” for those steeped in sin of Sodom of its related vices, and the demand for “racial awareness” brainwashing to “de-white” one’s thinking, I would probably be shot in a classroom today and have had a bevy of commentators saying that my death was fully deserved and justifiable. The past is the past, and I know that I will never be a college professor again.

My career was full of twists and turns, including teaching at four different Catholic colleges or universities: Allentown College of Saint Francis de Sales (now called DeSales University) in the 1979-1980 academic year, my own baccalaureate alma mater, Saint John’s University (as an adjunct) off and on from 1982 to 1991, including teaching six undergraduate courses in the 1984-1985 academic year with the singularly best students I ever taught, Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1985-1986 academic year and a one semester stint teaching a senior seminar at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in the Fall of 1980 in which I concentrated on Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letters on the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, something that half the students liked and half of them hated, reporting me to the “authorities” for being “anti-Vatican II.”

The problems within the Catholic institutions of higher education that I experienced during my college teaching career were simply the result of the Modernism that had infected these institutions in the decades after the death of Pope Saint Pius X on August 20, 1914 and came into its own during the “Second” Vatican Council and the fifty-five and one-half years since its closing on December 8, 1965, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I experienced a bit of these problems during my undergraduate years at Saint John’s University, including in my very first semester there in the Spring of 1970 after I spent the Fall of 1969 helping my father at his veterinary hospital in Queens Village, New York. I was, though, only vaguely familiar with how far gone what I believed to have been “Catholic” educational institutions were even at that early date and did not learn until later the role that the nefarious Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., the President of the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, from 1952 to 1987, played in developing a paradigm for the corruption and complete secularization of Catholic higher education with the assistance of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations in the 1950s and the chairman of the administration of the President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1960s.

Father Hesburgh actually became the chairman of the anti-family funder of eugenics and population control, the Rockefeller Foundation after he retired as the president of my master’s alma mater.

Indeed, Hesburgh started to work with the Rockefeller Foundation as early as the 1950s to provide a roadmap for a “reform” of Catholic higher education according to the lights of the Rockefellers. The Rockefellers and those they have funded have sought to play God with human life and the very institutions ever since John D. Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil in 1870, created the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913.

To cite just one example, the Rockefeller Foundation funds and controls the abjectly evil of work of eugenics at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, that devised model statutes for sterilization laws and mapped out a program of eugenics that Adolf Hitler himself used as the model for his own eugenics laws that were denounced in 1941 by Bishop Clemens von Galen of Munster, Germany (see Meet Some Catholics Truly Worth Admiring, part two. For an interesting history of the involvement of other industrialists and so-called “philanthropists” in the promotion of eugenics as part of the junk-science known as “Social Darwinism,” see The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics. See also From Luther to Sanger to Ferguson).

By the time that Father Theodore Hesburgh, who, incredibly enough, had been under consideration by then United States Senator George McGovern (D-South Dakota) to have been his vice presidential running mate in 1972, something that Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI would not have stopped, became its  chairman in 1987 even though the work of the Rockefeller Foundation in support of “population control,” including the chemical and surgical assassination of the innocent preborn, was well-known and was annually and proudly documented by the foundation itself.

Although there were problems in Catholic universities and colleges dating back to the founding of Georgetown College when it doors opened on January 2, 1792, as Catholicism there was more or less compartmentalized in the theology department and did not permeate instruction in the secular sciences, Father Hesburgh was principally, though not exclusively, responsible the state of what passes for Catholic higher education in the United States of States of America.

Catholic universities and colleges once taught the Faith reasonably well when they were in the control of the Catholic Church, not her counterfeit ape. Catholic scholars were trained in a framework of orthodoxy during most of the Nineteenth Century. They were trained in Thomistic philosophy and theology, schooled in Patristics, well-groomed in dogmatic and moral theology, and trained to love the Mass of the ages and the Mother of God.

Oh, yes, as noted before, elements of Americanism were present at Georgetown College from its inception. Modernist elements began to seep into some universities and colleges by the end of the Nineteenth Century, which is one of the reasons Pope Saint Pius X required an oath to be taken against the errors of Modernism. He saw the dangers posed to the life of the Faith in Europe and in the United States by the rampant spread of Modernism, especially in the realm of Biblical scholarship (with the advent of the German Protestant school of exegesis) and in the realm of philosophy (where the "process thought" of Hegelianism, which emphasized the belief that truths evolve over time and can change, was being taught quite openly in some places). Pope Saint Pius X believed it was essential to safeguard doctrinal integrity in seminaries and colleges and universities, especially since it was the case that only those who were genuinely equipped for serious intellectual work were the ones who attended Catholic colleges and universities (unlike the case in our own era of egalitarianism, which asserts that everyone is equally as able as everyone else to perform well in college).

Over the course of time, therefore, the foxes began to invade the henhouse at Catholic colleges and universities. In the United States, for instance, the Americanist ethos of academic freedom became such a clarion call among some Catholic intellectuals in the 1940's and 1950's that there began to be murmurings against any and all Church “interference” in the life of professional scholars.

Others, such as Father Theodore Hesburgh, believed that Catholic colleges and universities had been “ghettoized” because of their strict adherence to Catholic theology and philosophy, that our institutions of higher learning would never be taken seriously by "the world" if they were not open to the hiring of non-Catholic faculty, people who would bring a "diversity of opinion" into the academic marketplace of ideas. Also uppermost in the mind of Hesburgh was his belief that graduates of Catholic colleges and universities would not be able to achieve prominence in the economic, scientific, legal, and political realms if they were viewed as graduates of second-rate institutions that were said to be were “closed-minded” about the great issues of the day.

A major turning point in the de-Catholicization of Catholic universities and colleges occurred from 1965-1967 when seventy-five of some 500 professors at my own bachelor's alma mater, Saint John's University (New York), went on strike. Although the University's president at the time, Father Joseph Cahill, C.M., tried valiantly to maintain the right of the central administration to maintain control over the hiring and promotion and tenure of professors to assure their adherence to the Faith, the result was that the faculty won one of their central points: the devolution of personnel decisions to the level of personnel and budget committees in the individual academic departments. Dissenting Catholics and non-Catholics were hired in droves from that point on, resulting in the eventual re-casting of a once proud Catholic institution of higher education into a self-professed "multicultural" center of "urban" education to what it has been become toda as a newly proclaimed champion of the nonexistent rights of the “LGBTQ+” collective’s demand for the elimination of every vestige of Catholic teaching condemning sodomy as one of the four sins that cry out for vengeance and thus for full and uncritical acceptance and approval by everyone everywhere. This devolution has been the logical result of the secularization of Catholic institutions of higher education planned by Father Theodore Hesburgh and like-minded academic and administrative Modernists.

The battle at Saint John's University set the stage for the infamous meeting of Catholic college administrators at Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin, in 1967 that was convened by none other than Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., who had been President of the University of Notre Dame for fifteen years at that point and would serve in that capacity for another twenty beyond that.

As the late Monsignor George Kelly pointed out in his massive work, Battle for the American Church, the Land O'Lakes Conference was the forum in which the administrators of ten Catholic colleges and universities believed it was necessary for them to secularize their institutions by divorcing themselves voluntarily from the official control of the Roman Catholic Church in this country. The following excerpts are taken from the statement issued at the conclusion of the Land O'Lakes Conference:

STATEMENT ON THE NATURE OF THE CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY

1. The Catholic University: A True University with Distinctive Characteristics

The Catholic University today must be a university in the full modern sense of the word, with a strong commitment to and concern for academic excellence. To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself. To say this is simply to assert that institutional autonomy and academic freedom are essential conditions of life and growth and indeed of survival for Catholic universities as for all universities.

The Catholic university participates in the total university life of our time, has the same functions as all other true universities and, in general, offers the same services to society. The Catholic university adds to the basic idea of a modern university distinctive characteristics which round out and fulfill that idea. Distinctively, then, the Catholic university must be an institution, a community of learners or a community of scholars, in which Catholicism is perceptibly present and effectively operative.

2. The Theological Disciplines

In the Catholic university this operative presence is effectively achieved first of all and distinctively by the presence of a group of scholars in all branches of theology. The disciplines represented by this theological group are recognized in the Catholic university, not only as legitimate intellectual disciplines, but as ones essential to the integrity of a university. Since the pursuit of the theological sciences is therefore a high priority for a Catholic university, academic excellence in these disciplines becomes a double obligation in a Catholic university.

3. The Primary Task of the Theological Faculty

The theological faculty must engage directly in exploring the depths of Christian tradition and the total religious heritage of the world, in order to come to the best possible intellectual understanding of religion and revelation, of man in all his varied relationships to God. Particularly important today is the theological exploration of all human relations and the elaboration of a Christian anthropology. Furthermore, theological investigation today must serve the ecumenical goals of collaboration and unity.

4. Interdisciplinary Dialogue in the Catholic University

To carry out this primary task properly there must be a constant discussion within the university community in which theology confronts all the rest of modern culture and all the areas of intellectual study which it includes.

Theology needs this dialogue in order:

• A) to enrich itself from the other disciplines;
• B) to bring its own insights to bear upon the problems of modern culture; and
• C) to stimulate the internal development of the disciplines themselves.

In a Catholic university all recognized university areas of study are frankly and fully accepted and their internal autonomy affirmed and guaranteed. There must be no theological or philosophical imperialism; all scientific and disciplinary methods, and methodologies, must be given due honor and respect. However, there will necessarily result from the interdisciplinary discussions an awareness that there is a philosophical and theological dimension to most intellectual subjects when they are pursued far enough. Hence, in a Catholic university there will be a special interest in interdisciplinary problems and relationships. . . .

8. Some Characteristics of Undergraduate Education

The effective intellectual presence of the theological disciplines will affect the education and life of the students in ways distinctive of a Catholic university.

With regard to the undergraduate -- the university should endeavor to present a collegiate education that is truly geared to modern society. The student must come to a basic understanding of the actual world in which he lives today. This means that the intellectual campus of a Catholic university has no boundaries and no barriers. It draws knowledge and understanding from all the traditions of mankind; it explores the insights and achievements of the great men of every age; it looks to the current frontiers of advancing knowledge and brings all the results to bear relevantly on man's life today. The whole world of knowledge and ideas must be open to the student; there must be no outlawed books or subjects. Thus the student will be able to develop his own capabilities and to fulfill himself by using the intellectual resources presented to him.

Along with this and integrated into it should be a competent presentation of relevant, living, Catholic thought. . . .

10. Characteristics of Organization and Administration

The total organization should reflect this same Christian spirit. The social organization should be such as to emphasize the university's concern for persons as individuals and for appropriate participation by all members of the community of learners in university decisions. University decisions and administrative actions should be appropriately guided by Christian ideas and ideals and should eminently display the respect and concern for persons.

The evolving nature of the Catholic university will necessitate basic reorganizations of structure in order not only to achieve a greater internal cooperation and participation, but also to share the responsibility of direction more broadly and to enlist wider support. A great deal of study and experimentation will be necessary to carry out these changes, but changes of this kind are essential for the future of the Catholic university.

In fine, the Catholic university of the future will be a true modern university but specifically Catholic in profound and creative ways for the service of society and the people of God.

Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin
July 23, 1967 (Land O'Lakes Conference Statement.)

Other than Father Hesburgh, two of the twenty-five signatories of this hideous statement were none other than the President of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, an apostate named Monsignor Theodore McCarrick, who, as the retired conciliar "archbishop" of Washington, District of Columbia, gained some fame for his support of "civil union" legal status for those engaged in sins of unnatural vice (see Giving Unto Caesar What Belongs To God Alone) prior to his own public humiliation in 2913, and a Father William Walsh, S.J., who was the President of Boston College at the time.

No "theological or philosophical imperialism"?

Translation: Scholasticism must go in order to make room for a "living" theology.

The Aftermath of Father Hesburgh's Land of Lake Conference

Father Hesburgh's Land O'Lakes Conference opened the way for Catholic institutions of higher education to take down the Crucifixes from classroom walls, hire a glut of non-Catholics (as well as dissenting, heretical Catholics), and to go about their business as though the salvation of souls of the students entrusted to them did not matter at all.

Indeed, if there is no such thing as objective truth which exists in the nature of things and exists definitely in the person of the God-Man, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who deposited His teaching in Holy Mother Church, then there is no need to be concerned about educating students in the framework of Christian truth. Catholic education thus became thoroughly Protestantized, concerned about the business of training good apparatchiks who would make a lot of money in the professional world -- and who would therefore donate money back to the institutions which gave them the ability to become successful financially.

The result of this has been to make formerly Catholic colleges and universities dangerous places for the temporal and eternal welfare of souls. This includes the "conservative" colleges where students are taught to view the Fathers of the Church through the eyes of the "Second" Vatican Council and the "magisterium" of the conciliar "popes"!

Personnel decisions have been made at the more "mainstream" institutions that once belonged to Holy Mother Church to favor most deliberately the hiring and promotion of faculty members who are either non-Catholics or those deemed to be "progressive" Catholics.  Those adjudged to be reactionary "conservatives" found themselves unable to obtain positions in our colleges and universities or they were denied tenure and/or promotions. Many are the horror stories of faithful Catholic faculty members who have been hounded and harassed for their orthodoxy while teaching in formerly Catholic universities. Naturally, the harassment has come from the very people who claim that they are open-minded and receptive to all people. College administrators at these institutions of apostasy have either looked the other way or have actively participated in this harassment, preferring to be viewed as sophisticated professionals in the eyes of their peers at secular and/or state-run institutions of higher learning.

All of this has had a devastating impact on the intellectual and spiritual formation of young Catholics, many of whom now enter a formerly Catholic college or university after having received the relativistic theological training provided them in a Catholic high school that is in conciliar captivity. Ironically, these badly catechized young Catholics entering what they think, albeit falsely, to be Catholic colleges were taught in high schools by the graduates of the very institutions intent on brainwashing them with the same sort of advanced disinformation possessed by their high school teachers. The cycle thus perpetuates itself ad infinitum.

Most of the graduates of formerly Catholic colleges and universities have learned nothing that is true about the Faith, coming to believe they can do anything they want as long as their "fundamental option" is for God, including the practice of contraception and the procuring of an abortion. Remember, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton received his undergraduate degree from Jesuit Georgetown University in the direct aftermath of Georgetown's having secularized itself. (Georgetown's sister Jesuit university, Fordham, was the first historically Catholic institution in the nation to divest itself of official Catholic control and to voluntarily remove Crucifixes from the walls of its classrooms in the Fall of 1966 a full ten months before the Land O'Lakes Conference.) It is thus is no wonder that a large number of the Catholic pro-aborts in public life are graduates of once Catholic institutions of higher learning.

A good deal of Catholic collegiate and university education in the past used to integrate the truths of the Faith into every aspect of their academic programs. While non-Catholics who had a specialty in mathematics or science might have been hired from time to time to teach in their fields of competency, they were expected to familiarize themselves with how the Catholic Faith imbues all fields of knowledge, as Pope Pius XI noted in Divini Illius Magistri in 1929. Such scholars were also expected to remember that they were never to place in doubt the truths of the Catholic Faith, never to use their classrooms as a forum to profess that which was contrary to what the Catholic Church held was received teaching of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man, Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And Catholics who taught in Catholic universities and colleges understood that they had the obligation to be scholars who were faithful to the totality of the Deposit of Faith and to see in their students redeemed creatures who were looking to them, the faculty, for a model as to how to live the faith in the midst of one's own professional responsibilities. There was an integrity to the teaching of the Faith which flowed over into all aspects of a college or university.

Pope Pius XI noted the following in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929: 

This norm of a just freedom in things scientific, serves also as an inviolable norm of a just freedom in things didactic, or for rightly understood liberty in teaching; it should be observed therefore in whatever instruction is imparted to others. Its obligation is all the more binding in justice when there is question of instructing youth. For in this work the teacher, whether public or private, has no absolute right of his own, but only such as has been communicated to him by others. Besides every Christian child or youth has a strict right to instruction in harmony with the teaching of the Church, the pillar and ground of truth. And whoever disturbs the pupil's Faith in any way, does him grave wrong, inasmuch as he abuses the trust which children place in their teachers, and takes unfair advantage of their inexperience and of their natural craving for unrestrained liberty, at once illusory and false.
In fact it must never be forgotten that the subject of Christian education is man whole and entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all his faculties natural and supernatural, such as right reason and revelation show him to be; man, therefore, fallen from his original estate, but redeemed by Christ and restored to the supernatural condition of adopted son of God, though without the preternatural privileges of bodily immortality or perfect control of appetite. There remain therefore, in human nature the effects of original sin, the chief of which are weakness of will and disorderly inclinations. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Pope Pius XI's words were very clear: "And whoever disturbs the pupil's Faith in any way, does him grave wrong, inasmuch as he abuses the trust which children place in their teachers, and takes unfair advantage of their inexperience and of their natural craving for unrestrained liberty, at once illusory and false." No one is free to lead himself or others into temptation.

We pray every day in the Pater Noster that we will not be led into temptation (Et ne nos inducas in tentantionem).

There is no "freedom" to deny or to put into question the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith. None. There is no "balancing" of the Faith and "academic freedom," as a spokesman for "Father" John Jenkins, C.S.C., the President of the University of Notre Dame, noted eight years ago in an article in The New York Times. "All sides" must not be taught as equal to the Faith, as the late Richard Cardinal Cushing, an ardent Americanist and a fierce apologist for the Kennedys, argued during the first controversy involving Father Charles Curran in 1967. Every Catholic must be faithful to the Deposit of Faith at all times. No one must be hired to teach in any Catholic education institution who dissents from even one iota of the truths of the Holy Faith. It is that simple.

What, then, is the Catholic understanding of academic freedom?

Again, the answer is simple.

A Catholic understanding of academic freedom affords individual professors, great latitude in presenting the truths of the Faith in accord with their own personalities and temperaments. We have different communities of religious men and women in the Church. Those communities, at least traditionally until they were infected with Modernism and the blight of perverse moral problems condemned in no uncertain terms by Saint Peter Damian, expressed the truths of the Faith in different ways. Each had different charisms and missions. The Benedictines, Cistercians, the Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Sulpicians, the Franciscans, the Jesuits, the Trinitarians, the Pallotines, the Vincentians, the Mercedarians, the Redemptorists, and the Passionists—and countless others—served the cause of the sanctification and salvation of human souls in many and varied ways. In like manner, you see, two Catholic professors of the same subject matter might teach the same course in very different ways without ever once putting any truths of the Faith into question. That's a legitimate understanding of academic freedom.

For example, one professor might prefer the Socratic method of instruction, peppering his students with questions during class time to get them to discern and to defend the truth. Others, including this writer and forcibly retired college professor, prefer the lecture method of instruction. Neither is received from the hand of God. Both are legitimate forms of instruction.

Similarly, some professors may prefer students to respond at length to essay questions in order to demonstrate a profound grasp of the subject matter, more or less forcing the students to "teach" the reader of their essay about a question as though the reader knew nothing about the subject. Other professors may prefer short-answer essays to cover to variety of topics. Still others might desire students to answer "objective" questions (multiple choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, which was one of my own favorite devices to test the breadth of student comprehension). Once again, none of these things are de fide. Professors and teachers should be given the widest latitude in the method of instruction and examination they believe will best inform and then challenge their students.

To be sure, there can be lively intellectual discussions and arguments among students and faculty members even when the Faith is transmitted in all its purity and integrity. Catholic scholarship does not argue about what is true (no less about whether there is such a thing as truth). Rather, authentic Catholic scholars can and do argue, sometimes quite forcefully, about the application of received teaching in concrete circumstances.

What sort of governmental system is most conducive to the establishment of the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?

Is the contemporary state by its very definition and composition a threat to the life of the Faith?

What particular policies are the best way to protect the primacy of the Divine positive law and the natural law?

What is the correct interpretation of a particular philosopher or a passage from a piece of literature or the correct translation to be used in a piece of scholarship?

These, and many other areas, constitute legitimate forms of academic freedom as understood by the Catholic Church.

What is inarguable, however, is the fact that the Catholic Church is the true Church founded by our Lord upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and that He has revealed truths which are clear, certain and immutable. Anyone who argues about that is an abject heretic.

Anyone who contends that an "opposition" to the Catholic Faith must be presented on equal terms with the Faith, as opposed to examining errors so as to be able to recognize and refute them (which is a necessary part of the educational process), is in league with the devil.

Yet it is that this is what has been done at self-proclaimed “Catholic” colleges and universities for over fifty-five years now.

Indeed, the situation in what have become institutions of indoctrination is so antithetical to the Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His true Church that any respectful mention, no less any true exercise of actual Catholic apologetics by either professors or students is considered to be prima facie “proof” of “hatred,” “divisiveness,” “intolerance” and “hostility” that the “offenders” must either abjure or face firing/expulsion.

This did not happen overnight, and my own baccalaureate alma mater, Saint John’s University, located on the corner of Union Turnpike and Utopia Parkway, in the northern most reaches of Jamaica, Queens, saw its commitment to the True Faith decline gradually after the aforementioned faculty strike in 1966-1967 to the present time of outright glorification of sodomy as a legitimate means of human self-identification and glorification.

A bit of background is in order.

Apostasy of teaching had become so rife in the Department of Theology at Saint John's University, Jamaica, Queens, New York, in the 1970s that the university's president at the time, Father Joseph Cahill, S.J., asked the founder of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, Monsignor George A. Kelly, to found and to run the Institute for Advance Studies in Catholic Doctrine to do an end-run around the theology department whose direction Father Cahill has lost control of as a result of a faculty strike that lasted from January 4, 1966, to June of 1967. The Vincentian who succeeded Father Cahill in 1989, Father Donald Harrington, C.M., had no use for the Institute of Advance Studies in Catholic Doctrine, which was being run at the time by a protege of Kelly's, Monsignor Eugene V. Clark, Ph.D.

Two of the theology professors I had during my time as an undergraduate at Saint John's University were complete revolutionaries. The first was a lay woman, who taught in the Spring of 1970 that which had become very conventional conciliar doctrine by that time, namely, that the account of Special Creation in the Book of Genesis was merely allegorical. The second revolutionary was a priest of the Congregation of the Passion who really believed that Our Lord Himself was an allegorical figure, a belief that just might have cost him a wee little bit when he met Christ the King in the very face at the moment of his Particular Judgment. The priest was a complete supporter of the work of the late Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., and was enamored as well with the work of the likes of Fathers Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, O.P., Karl Rahner, S.J., Edward Schilebeeckx, O.P., and a certain Joseph Ratzinger, who said as "Pope Benedict XVI" that the devil himself was nothing other than an allegorical figure (see Preparing To Spend All Eternity With His Allegorical Figure). In other words, everything was open for "reexamination" in order to be given a "new meaning" for "modern man" in light of supposedly "changed circumstances. (Most of my fellow students in the class shared my own disgruntlement when we were given an assignment to read from an anthology contained the aforementioned Modernists as I muttered somewhat audibly, “Not these clowns again.”)

This covering up of the Catholic Faith at formerly Catholic institutions now under conciliar control has involved the hiring of non-Catholic professors and the recruiting of non-Catholic students so as to prevent professors who are of a mind to teach the Faith from doing so, especially by starting their class sessions with the Sign of the Cross and a confessionally Catholic prayer that would "offend" non-Catholic students. This sort of insidious attack on the honor and majesty and glory of God is a daily occurrence at these formerly Catholic institutions under conciliar control. It permeates the courses taught by most of their professors. It permeates the horrific "liturgies" offered on their campuses (and in the Newman Centers on the campuses of non-Catholic colleges and universities). It permeates the "advice" given in the "reconciliation room." It permeates the atmosphere of faculty meetings and the hiring decisions made by departmental personnel and budget committees.

Believe me, this is not merely "academic" knowledge acquired from reading articles. This is first-hand knowledge that I have experienced in my own teaching career and second-hand knowledge that has been transmitted to me by various colleagues over the years.

To be sure, of course, I did my share of investigations as to the theological and liturgical corruption on Catholic educational institutions in conciliar captivity during my eight years of writing for The Wanderer. One of those investigations involved the scandal caused by the hiring in 1995 of a pro-abortion, law professor, Tanya Hernandez, who had worked for the Center for Reproductive Law and Public Policy, by the dean of the Saint John's University School of Law in Jamaica, Queen, New York, Rudolph Hasl, who had also removed a large Crucifix from the lobby of the then-named Fromkes Hall and replaced it with a mobile containing symbols of Judaism (a Star of David), Mohammedanism (the Islamic crescent) and Christianity (a cross without a cross), each of an equal size.

There was no room for Our Crucified Saviour in the lobby of the Saint John's University School of Law. The series of articles prompted Father Donald Harrington, C.M., to rush into the office of a departmental chairman with a copy of The Wanderer in his hands, shouting "What are we going to about this? He's killing us", a shout that was loud enough to be heard by a professor, who related the story to a student who told it to me.

Nothing happened, of course, as a result of that series of stories. We can and must chronicle the attacks on the Faith that constitute a veritable pandemic within the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. As those who foment these scandals always remain in perfectly good "canonical standing" in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, however, anyone who thinks that they are "fighting for the Faith" by seeking to "reform" these institutions from within is quite mistaken. These institutions are in the hands of apostates who are protected by apostate "bishops," who are appointed by apostate "popes,” and the current “pope” is very encouraging of the promotion of what is now called the “LGBTQ+” agenda, an agenda that the new president of the university from which I received my Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, on January 31, 1973, “Father” Brian Shanely, O.P., is doing with particular abandon, thus spitting on the graves of so many dedicated Vincentian Fathers and faithful laity who sought to defend the true Faith at Saint John’s University on its original Brooklyn campus from 1870 to 1970 and even at the current main campus on the site of the former Hillcrest Country Club in Jamaica, Queens, from 1955 until most of them either died or retired”

NEW YORK, April 30, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The Dominican priest and president of the Catholic St. John’s University in New York City has committed the school to furthering and promoting LGBT ideology, stating that more must be done to include LGBT individuals, and saying the university policies must reflect this goal.

Fr. Brian J. Shanley, O.P., issued an internal memo — obtained by LifeSiteNews — in which he decried the recent findings of a report by “The Transgender Training Institute” (TTTI), which stated that “it is not currently possible to say that SJU is a community that is open and welcoming for LGBTQ+ students, staff and faculty.”

The report called on the university to take a “stronger, more vocal stance in support of LGBTQ+ people through both words and aligned actions.”

Writing internally to the university in response to the report, Fr. Shanley wrote that he was “disheartened to learn about the many negative experiences of our LGBTQ+ students, employees, and alumni: a lack of support, neglect, ignorance, bias, and prejudice.”

“It is clear, both from the climate survey and my own observations, that much work needs to be done to transform St. John’s into a place that is equitable and inclusive for LGBTQ+ people.”

“As the new president of St. John’s, I want everyone to know that I embrace the LGBTQ+ members of our community and that I am committed to leadership that will help to create a climate that realizes our mission to love and respect every individual as made in the image and likeness of God.”

Shanley added that LGBT individuals had “enriched our community in many ways,” mentioning that they had made “contributions” to the university for “generations,” doing so “nearly always without proper recognition and at great personal risk. We must all work together to create a campus that is more inclusive, respectful, affirming, and loving.”

The radical transformation of the campus which Fr. Shanley looks to implement would be expressed in new “practices, policies, and norms.”

Shanley proudly referenced how St. John’s was the first university to commit to a statement from a pro-homosexual advocacy group, which affirmed LGBT youth by telling them that “God is on your side.” Yet despite this, Shanley stated that the university needed to improve in its commitment to LGBT ideology, referencing a “culture of silence” when it came to “affirmation of LGBTQ+ community members.”

The TTTI also mentioned such a culture of silence: “[S]ilence translates into a campus where LGBTQ+ people are welcomed as members of the SJU community, but not necessarily embraced as LGBTQ+ people.” Shanley wrote that “it is a culture I am actively working to disrupt.”

The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are one of the four sins that cry to heaven for justice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered’. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (CCC 2357)

The Catholic Church further teaches that the homosexual inclination is also “objectively disordered,” since God created sexual attraction for the purpose of drawing a man and a woman together to become husband and wife in marriage. In other words, the Catholic Churches teaches that God does not make anyone a homosexual.

Fr. Shanley, appointed president of the university in late 2020, revealed himself to be aware of the Catholic teaching regarding homosexuality, commenting that “some of the tenets of Catholic moral teaching create challenges for making LGBTQ+ people feel fully included and embraced.”

He described this Catholic doctrine as “a difficult and painful reality,” which was a detriment to “greater understanding and connection in our community.”

Potential pro-LGBT changes

The TTTI made a number of recommendations for the university, in order to become more in line with LGBT ideology. Among them were proposals for LGBT-specific Masses; pro-LGBT events, such as pride days; prioritizing “inviting LGBTQ+ speakers to campus”; increasing the number of “all gender bathrooms.”

The TTTI also recommended to use pronouns which align with the sex of which a student claims to be a member; provide “HR benefits” for “married” same-sex couples, including medical transitioning; begin a mandatory first-year seminar which would provide “LGBTQ+101 content, as well as content that is anti-racist, anti-ableist.”

Not only this, but the TTTI asked the university to perform actions which would seem to set the university in direct conflict with Catholic teaching on some matters.

Some such instances were the recommendations to “voice condemnation or solidarity when public news events of LGBTQ+ people intersect with the Catholic Church,” and “send messages to the university keeping the community abreast of the issue and offer support in affirming identities, highlight the mission of the university in affirming human dignity of LGBTQ+ peoples, and stress the message of inclusion embodied on campus.”

This latter suggestion was made in specific reference to the recent declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reiterating the Church’s teaching which bans blessings for same-sex couples.

In the internal memo, Fr. Shanley wrote that he would be asking the “senior management team, other campus leaders, and the Strategic Planning Committee to give careful attention to the Transgender Training Institute’s Climate Assessment.”

The various recommendations, as well as additional ones stemming from “ongoing community feedback,” would be “taken seriously,” he stated. “I am confident that our strategic plan will be responsive to the concerns highlighted in the climate survey.”

LifeSiteNews contacted the university about the matter, inquiring whether Fr. Shanley was concerned that his promotion of LGBT ideology placed him in opposition to the Church’s teaching on the matter, and if his actions could encourage students in a lifestyle condemned by the Church.

A spokesman for the university replied: “At St. John’s University, we embrace all members of the University community without exception in all that we do, and Fr. Shanley’s statements on the matters that you raise speak for themselves and the University.”

A constant tone for his presidency

The news comes just hours after LifeSiteNews reported on how Fr. Shanley was mandating COVID-19 injections for all on-campus students this fall. Citing the “expanded availability” of the injections, Shanley ordered that students must not only be injected, but provide proof of the event, in order to attend the university.

Some exceptions would be provided for those who could provide “proof of a documented medical condition,” or who did not have the injection “due to religious beliefs.”

St. John’s, which proclaims its Vincentian “compassion and zeal for service,” could face backlash based on violation of human rights under the new policy. Since the COVID injections have so far only received emergency use authorization, they are as yet only experimental, and forcing individuals to partake of experimental medicine is a violation of the Nuremberg Code, which came to be as a result of the atrocities seen in World War II.

However, the latest two developments at St. John’s are no surprise, as Fr. Shanley 2255

In 2016, as president of Providence College, he verbally attacked then-Professor Anthony Esolen, who had criticized what he described as the college’s surrender to the “the Totalitarian Diversity Cult.” Shanley rebuffed Esolen by saying that both he and the college “understand and value diversity in a very different sense from him.”

That same year, Shanley invited “Rhode Island’s most notorious abortionist” to take part in a political panel discussion at the college.

Indeed, two years later, Fr. Shanley made headlines for initially refusing to condemn a gay-rape cartoon in Providence College, which threatened a pro-family, pro-marriage student. Michael Smalanskas had put up a poster on the college notice board, defending the Catholic teaching about marriage, but was subsequently placed under the protection of campus police, after being threatened by fellow students, and a cartoon depicting his forcible homosexual rape was placed in his dormitory bathroom.

After nearly a month, following the intervention of the local bishop and a petition by the laity, Fr. Shanley intervened to condemn the threats made against Smalanskas. (New President of Saint John’s University Commits to Promoting Sodomite Ideology on Campus.)

Gee, I wonder if "Bishop" Nicholas DeMazio of Broolyn will take the same kind of forceful action against Brian Shanley that his immediate predecessor, "Bishop" Thomas Vose Daily, took against Rudolph Hasl when he hired Tanya Hernandez twenty-six years ago?

What was that "forceful action," you ask?

Well, I am being facetious as "Bishop" Thomas Vose Daily said and did nothing when Hasl hired Hernandez, and "Bishop" DeMarzio will be hamstrung to do or say anything this time because he knows that his "pope," Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is sitting back and enjoying every minute of the German "bishops'" open defiance of the conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's document prohibiting the "blessing" of sodomite "civil unions" that he approved but almost immediately undermined (seeAntipope Appoveth, Antipope Undermineth What He Approveth).

This open support for the agenda of perversity within the counterfeit church of conciliarism has been the very basis of this false religious sect’s liturgical revolution.

We have the seen the conciliar sect’s false “pope” go from saying “Who am I to judge” to his standing idly by with his motor mouth firmly sealed with super glue as men like Brian Shanley and most of the conciliar “hierarchy” of Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland embrace everything about the agenda of perversity as being perfectly consonant with the Catholic Faith and thus being no impediment to personal sanctification and salvation, no less a threat to the very integrity of social order and thus of the very existence of nations.

Men such as Brian Shanley must, therefore, deny the following plain words inspired by God Himself in the Book of Genesis as meaning what they say or that they refer to the pestilential sin of Sodom that they seek to protect and promote with the zeal of those inspired by the forces of darkness to promote all that is rotten,  ugly, impure, indecent, impious, and odious in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity, Who visited fire and brimstone upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha:

And when the men rose up from thence, they turned their eyes towards Sodom: and Abraham walked with them, bringing them on the way. And the Lord said: Can I hide from Abraham what I am about to do: Seeing he shall become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth shall be blessed? For I know that he will command his children, and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord, and do judgment and justice: that for Abraham's sake the Lord may bring to effect all the things he hath spoken unto him. And the Lord said: The cry of Sodom and Gomorrha is multiplied, and their sin is become exceedingly grievous.

I will go down and see whether they have done according to the cry that is come to me: or whether it be not so, that I may know. And they turned themselves from thence, and went their way to Sodom: but Abraham as yet stood before the Lord. And drawing nigh he said: Wilt thou destroy the just with the wicked? If there be fifty just men in the city, shall they perish withal? and wilt thou not spare that place for the sake of the fifty just, if they be therein? Far be it from thee to do this thing, and to slay the just with the wicked, and for the just to be in like case as the wicked, this is not beseeming thee: thou who judgest all the earth, wilt not make this judgment.

And the Lord said to him: If I find in Sodom fifty just within the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake. And Abraham answered, and said: Seeing I have once begun, I will speak to my Lord, whereas I am dust and ashes. What if there be five less than fifty just persons? wilt thou for five and forty destroy the whole city? And he said: I will not destroy it, if I find five and forty. And again he said to him: But if forty be found there, what wilt thou do? He said: I will not destroy it for the sake of forty. Lord, saith he, be not angry, I beseech thee, if I speak: What if thirty shall be found there? He answered: I will not do it, if I find thirty there.

Seeing, saith he, I have once begun, I will speak to my Lord. What if twenty be found there? He said: I will not destroy it for the sake of twenty. I beseech thee, saith he, be not angry, Lord, if I speak yet once more: What if ten should be found there? And he said: I will not destroy it for the sake of ten. And the Lord departed, after he had left speaking to Abraham: and Abraham returned to his place. (Genesis 16: 16-33)

And he said to him: Behold also in this, I have heard thy prayers, not to destroy the city for which thou hast spoken. Make haste and be saved there, because I cannot do any thing till thou go in thither. Therefore the name of that city was called Segor. The sun was risen upon the earth, and Lot entered into Segor. And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he destroyed these cities, and all the country about, all the inhabitants of the cities, and all things that spring from the earth.

And his wife looking behind her, was turned into a statue of salt. And Abraham got up early in the morning and in the place where he had stood before with the Lord, He looked towards Sodom and Gomorrha, and the whole land of that country: and he saw the ashes rise up from the earth as the smoke of a furnace. (Genesis 19: 21-28.) 

Although apologists for all things lavender would have us believe that the sin of Sodom was that of a “lack of hospitality,” we know this is yet another Modernist myth designed to reaffirm those steeped in perverse sins against nature in their freely chosen behavior until the time that they meet Christ the King at the fearful moment of their Particular Judgment.

Perhaps, however, Brian Shaley would have Catholics ignore Holy Mother Church's condemnations of against homosexual behavior that are contained in the very pages of Holy Scripture that were written the Divine Inspiration the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost:

[13] If any one lie with a man as with a woman, both have committed an abomination, let them be put to death: their blood be upon them. [14] If any man after marrying the daughter, marry her mother, he hath done a heinous crime: he shall be burnt alive with them: neither shall so great an abomination remain in the midst of you. [15] He that shall copulate with any beast or cattle, dying let him die, the beast also ye shall kill. (Leviticus 20: 13-15.)

And into whatsoever city or town you shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and there abide till you go thence. And when you come into the house, salute it, saying: Peace be to this house. And if that house be worthy, your peace shall come upon it; but if it be not worthy, your peace shall return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words: going forth out of that house or city shake off the dust from your feet. Amen I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. (Matthew 10: 11-15.) 

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.)

[9] Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, [10] Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6: 9)

[6] And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day. [7] As Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication, and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. [8] In like manner these men also defile the flesh, and despise dominion, and blaspheme majesty. [9] When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but said: The Lord command thee. [10] But these men blaspheme whatever things they know not: and what things soever they naturally know, like dumb beasts, in these they are corrupted.  (Jude 1 6-10.)

Does the Catholic Church have to apologize for the Book of Leviticus, for the words of Our Lord Himself, for the writings of Saint Paul the Apostle and for that of Saint Jude Thaddeus, our dear Patron of Hopeless Cases, who was blessed to carry the Holy Shroud adorned with the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ upon it?

The conciliar revolutionaries have adopted the language of the homosexual collective, whose members are filled with bitter anger and hatred at anyone who dares to criticize their "lifestyles" as they are, whether or not they realize it, in rebellion against the very nature that God has implanted within them and have thus done what all revolutionaries do to justify themselves before men: to do violence to language in order to cloud supernatural and natural truth with a fog of irrationality and sentimentality.

It is shameful that one conciliar official after another has adopted this language, thereby conceding that one can identify himself on the basis of the inclination to and/or the commission of perverse sins against nature and the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and that civil society and must treat such self-identification as a legitimate basis for social interaction and legal protection under various "civil rights" statutes and ordinances. 

Then again, obviously, many conciliar officials, not a few of them afflicted with perversity themselves, have gone of their way created, fostered, and promoted a culture that has sustained and propagated the entire agenda of homosexual collective, including "marriage" and, quite importantly, persecuting anyone who criticizes sodomy for what it is. There has been the systematic recruitment, retention, and promotion of homosexuals through the nooks and crannies of the conciliar structures, including its hierarchy, such as it is, and within parishes, schools, universities, colleges, seminaries, professional schools, religious houses, and houses of so-called "spiritual formation." I suggest that those who have any doubt about this fact should consider the massive amount of documented evidence that Mrs. Randy Engel amassed in The Rite of Sodomy, which has an entire chapter devoted to the horrors of "New Ways Ministry," welcomed as it is at this time by the conciliar revolutionaries in the Vatican itself. 

Thus it is that the counterfeit church of conciliarism, reflecting its "openness to the world" and its falsehoods, has bought into the ideology of the homosexual collective by building it into programs that are taught to presbyters, teachers and children, doing so with an special application to "touching" and expressions of "affection" when the problem of clergy abuse that has exploded into full public view in the past sixteen years now has been caused by the creation of an entire environment that is friendly to perversity.

Our true popes condemned heresy and error. They condemned moral wrong for what it is without any "nuancing" of issues.

So have our saints, including Saint Peter Damian and Pope Leo IX.

Saint Peter Damian's Book of Gommorha explained the detestable nature of the sin of Sodom, something that Mrs. Engel made clear in The Rite of Sodomy:

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)

Do men such as Jorge Mario Bergoglio or Brian Shanley want to destroy this monstrous vice?

Of course not!

They want to befriend those who attracted to 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. and Arguing About Who Decides That Which Is Beyond Humans To Decide, part one, Arguing About Who Decides That Which Is Beyond Humans To Decide, part two, Arguing About Who Decides That Which Is Beyond Humans To Decide, part three, andArguing Who Decides That Which is Beyond Humans To Decide, part four)

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 renowned 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  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."

Aping Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Brian Shanley  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" and much of his “hierarchy” and “clergy” seek to appear as agents 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 could consider the words of Brian Shanley quoted above as coming from someone who possesses the Catholic Faith. There has been quite a descent from Father Joseph Cahill’s effort to preserve Catholicism at Saint  John’s University fifty-five years ago to Brian Shanley’s wholesale surrender to the lavender collective’s ever-expanding, ever-mutating agenda of eternal ruin for souls and thus the temporal and eternal ruin of men and their nations.

Alas, we are witnessing only the perfection of the inherent degeneracy of conciliarism’s false teachings and its sacramentally barren liturgical rites. It was only a matter of time for men who have propagated grave doctrinal errors would come to propagate ever manner of moral error imaginable in the name of a false “mercy” and “tolerance.”

The counterfeit church of conciliarism is a false church. Its "pontiffs" and "bishops" have given us a steady diet of apostasy, blasphemy, and sacrilege over the course of the past sixty-two and one-half years.

Once again, Antichrist is not going to give his calling card. We are going to have to use the faculty of reason, guided by the sensus Catholicus and the clear teaching of the Catholic Church, to recognize who he his and who has done his bidding for him in advance of his coming.

While God alone is the sole Judge of the subjective state of souls, He gave us the sensus fidei when we were baptized in order to be able to recognize sin for what it is and thus to amend our own lives when are tempted to sin or find ourselves in the near occasion of sin. This sensus fidei also provides us with the ability to perform the Spiritual Works of Mercy, which includes, of course, admonishing the sinner. “Pope Francis” and men such as Brian Shanley do not believe this. Indeed, they condemn those who do.

How is this not apostasy?

Catholics believe in the Spiritual Works of Mercy, Jorge. Here is a little review for you:

• To instruct the ignorant.
• To counsel the doubtful.
• To admonish sinners.
• To bear wrongs patiently;
• To forgive offences willingly;
• To comfort the afflicted;
• To pray for the living and the dead.

Catholics also believe that there are nine ways that they can be accessories to the sins of others:

• 1. By counsel.
• 2. By command.
• 3. By consent.
• 4. By provocation.
• 5. By praise or flattery of the evil done.
• 6. By silence.
• 7. By connivance.
• 8. By partaking.
• 9. By defense of the ill done.

Conciliarism is by its very false nature uncharitable as it makes a mockery of the authentic, immutable teaching that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by making it appear that it is somehow opposed to tenderness and mercy to follow these words that Saint Paul wrote in his Second Epistle to Saint Timothy:

[1] I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming, and his kingdom: [2] Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. [3] For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: [4] And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. [5] But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober. (2 Tim. 4: 1-15.)

A physician does not "judge" anyone if he warns him what might happen if he does not stop engaging in a certain course of behavior that is deleterious to his bodily health.

Similarly, one who warns another about the state of his soul as he persists in a life of unrepentant sin is simply performing a fundamental Spiritual Work of Mercy, and those who are inclined to and/or steeped in perverse sins against nature are not to be left without being remonstrated as this is a duty of a Catholic before God and to the eternal and temporal good of the sinner.

It is one thing to sin and to be sorry and then to seek out the mercy of the Divine Redeemer in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. It is quite another to persist in sin, no less perverse sins against nature, unrepentantly and to expect others to reaffirm him in those sins, whether explicitly by words of approval or implicitly by silence, which betokens consent. Catholics must judge the states of their own souls every night in their Examen of Conscience, and they have a duty to help others to recognize the serious states of sin into which they have plunged themselves, praying beforehand to God the Holy Ghost to fill them with wisdom and prudence so as to provide a warning in such a way that could plant a seed to get an unrepentant sinner to a true priest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.

To accept any of this as coming from the Catholic Church is to admit that she can propagate heresy and error to tickle the ears of Catholics and non-Catholics alike while scandalizing many Protestants and even Orthodox Jews by daring to assert that sinful behavior, whether natural or unnatural, contains "elements of true love" that can "teach" the "Church" about the "meaning" of "love" and "families" in our "modern" age.

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, or “priests” such as “Father” Brian Shanley.

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 men such as Brian Shanley 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 are quite apropos of our own:

Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use against which is their nature.

And in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.

And as they liked not to  have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.

Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.  (Romans 1: 24-32)

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 true Catholic bishop or a true Catholic  priest 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 as 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. 

Ah, Bergoglio is neither a Catholic nor a bishop. He is a man who fell from the Faith long ago, dating back to the days he was scandalized by the refusal of faithful Catholics to recognize the legitimacy of divorced Catholics "marrying" again civilly. He is a suborner of sin because he is A Man of Sin.

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 the woman caught in adutery her sin. 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 the woman caught in adultery 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.

The false mercy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and men such as Brian Shanley, coupled with their denunciations of faithful Catholics, comes at a time when sin is being justified and enabled by the lords of Modernity, who deem as "haters" the very people homosexualists in the conciliar structures view as "hypocrites." None other than the Patron Saint of Moral Theologians, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, a Doctor of Holy Mother Church, had a few choice words about the delusions of the sorts of unrepentant sinners whom homosexualists believe are "judged" by merciless "hypocrites".

Consider the following passages from Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri’s sermon for Sexagesima Sunday:

The Devil brings sinners to hell by closing their eyes to the dangers of perdition. He first blinds them, and then leads them with himself to eternal torments. If, then, we wish to be saved, we must continually pray to God in the words of the blind man in the gospel of this day,” Lord, that I may see." Give me light: make me see the way in which I must walk in order to save my soul, and to escape the deceits of the enemy of salvation. I shall, brethren, this day place before your eyes the delusion by which the devil tempts men to sin and to persevere in sin, that you may know how to guard yourselves against his deceitful artifices  

2. To understand these delusions better, let us imagine the case of a young man who, seized by some passion, lives in sin, the slave of Satan, and never thinks of his eternal salvation. My son, I say to him, what sort of life do you lead? If you continue to live in this manner, how will you be able to save your soul? But, behold! the devil, on the other hand, says to him: Why should you be afraid of being lost? Indulge your passions for the present: you will afterwards confess your sins, and thus all shall be remedied. Behold the net by which the devil drags so many souls into hell. “Indulge your passions: you will hereafter make a good confession." But, in reply, I say, that in the meantime you lose your soul. Tell me: if you had a jewel worth a thousand pounds, would you throw it into a river with the hope of afterwards finding it again? What if all your efforts to find it were fruitless? God! you hold in your hand the invaluable jewel of your soul, which Jesus Christ has purchased with his own blood, and you cast it into hell! Yes; you cast it into hell; because according to the present order of providence, for every mortal sin you commit, your name is written among the number of the damned. But you say.” I hope to recover God’s grace by making a good confession." And if you should not recover it, what shall be the consequences? To make a good confession, a true sorrow for sin is necessary, and this sorrow is the gift of God: if he does not give it, will you not be lost for ever?  ("The Delusions of Sinners: Sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday," as found in Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, The Sermons of Saint Alphonsus Liguori For All the Sundays of the Year, republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1982, pp. 118-119.)

The conciliar revolutionaries, of course, live in a delusional world. Their world is so delusion that they do not even tell the unrepentant sinner that he has to make a good confession, not that the thought of doing so enters into the minds of most unrepentant sinners today.

Bergoglio and his band of homosexualists who control chancery offices, universities, colleges, universities, seminaries, hospitals and much of the “official” Catholic media  embrace and enable the very crimes of Modernity that have contributed to the natural disasters of our present age, and he bears direct responsibility for the crimes of Modernism as advanced by the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres explained the connection between the sins of men and natural disasters and tragedies:

While the founding mothers admired Mother Mariana's perfect observance of the rule and practice of virtue, there were other sisters who were stirred by jealousy. Mother Marina suffered insults and persecutions form those sisters without ever trying to justify herself or protest. Only at the foot of the Tabernacle did she confide her secret sorrows to her Beloved. One day in 1582, as she was praying before the altar, she saw the Tabernacle open and Christ Himself emerged, suffering as He had at Golgotha. The Blessed Virgin, at His feet, was shedding tears of pearls. Mother Mariana asked her, "My Lady, am I do blame for this sadness?"

"No, she replied, "it is not you, but the criminal world." Then as Our Lord began His Agony, she heard the voice of the Eternal Father saying, "This punishment will be for the 20th century." She saw three swords hanging over the head of Christ. On each was written, "I shall punish heresy, blasphemy and impurity." With this, she was given to understand all that would take place in the present era.

The Holy Virgin continued: "My daughter, will you sacrifice yourself for the people of this time?" Mother Mariana replied, "I am willing." And immediately the swords moved away from the agonizing Christ and buried themselves in the hear of Mother Mariana, who fell dead through the violence and pain. (Marian Therese Horvat, Ph.D., Our Lady of Good Success: Prophecies for Our Times, Tradition in Action, Inc., second edition, 2000, p. 27.)

Following Mother Mariana's "mysterious death and resurrection," Our Lady spoke to her again:

"Thus do I make it known to you that from the end of the 19th century and especially in the 20th century, in what is today the Colony and then will be the Republic of Ecuador, the passions will erupt and there will be a total corruption of customs, for Satan will reign almost completely by means of Masonic sects. They will focus particularly on the children in order to achieve this general corruption. Woe to the children of these times! It will be difficult to receive the Sacrament of Baptism, and also that of Confirmation. Making use of persons in positions of authority, the devil will assiduously try to destroy the Sacrament of Confession ...

"The same thing will happen with Holy Communion. Alas! How deeply I grieve upon manifesting to you the many and horrible sacrileges--both public and also secret--that will occur from such profanations of the Holy Eucharist! Often during this epoch, the enemies of Jesus Christ, instigated by the demon, will steal consecrated hosts from the churches so that they might profane the Eucharistic Species. My Most Holy Will will see Himself cast upon the ground and trampled upon by irreverent feet" . . . .

"Know, moreover, that Divine Justice releases terrible chastisements on entire nations, not only for the sins of the people, but especially for those of priests and religious persons. For the latter are called by the perfection of their state, to be the salt of the earth, the masters of truth and deflectors of divine wrath. Straying from their divine mission, they degrade themselves in such a way that, before the eyes of God, they quicken the rigor of the punishments. . . . (Our Lady of Good Success: Prophecies for Our Times, pp. 44-45; 63) 

We should not be surprised, therefore, by the outbreaks of various natural disasters as they are instruments of God's justice. They are also, however, instruments of His ineffable mercy, providing survivors (and those in other parts of the world who become aware of various disasters) an opportunity to amend their lives and return to Him through His Catholic Church before they die sudden and sacramentally unprovided-for deaths. We must remember that there is nothing we can suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears that is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Lord to suffer during His Passion and Death, remembering also how our sins caused Seven Swords of Sorrow to be thrust through the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Dr. Horvat put it this way in Our Lady of Good Success: Prophecies for Our Times:

It is almost impossible for us to understand the next phase of the life of the novice Mariana de Jesus Torres. Hidden in the Heart of her Spouse, she was inflamed with a desire for a life of immolation and sacrifice. Our Lord Himself told her the practices she should carry out during the free hours of the community schedule and the penances she should perform each week. Her severe disciplines, sacrifices, fasting and prayer, all described in chapters of the manuscript, appear daunting to the man of our century, who finds suffering something to avoid, or, at best, to endure as austerely as possible.

Suffering is highly ennobling. On this road of suffering in union with Christ, man finds the fullest meaning of his life, and he discovers that frequently it is in the great sufferings of life, accepted with a supernatural disposition, that he can find a joy which the greatest pleasures do not give. Further, he discovers in suffering an interior state that makes him capable of soaring to heights impossible for one who does not suffer. Only when man embraces great sufferings can his horizons expand to grand metaphysical and religious heights and his spirit advance to a superior state. At the end of Mother Mariana's life when her sanctity was acknowledged in the community and convent, she would look back with nostalgia and sigh for the days of persecution and suffering. (Marian Therese Horvat, Ph.D., Our Lady of Good Success: Prophecies for Our Times, Tradition in Action, Inc., second edition, 2000, p. 26.)

Yes, God punishes men for the sins, both in this life and, in the case of those who die in a state of Mortal sin, for all eternity in hell. This is simply His Divine Justice, which is not in the least in conflict with his ineffable mercy for erring sinners who seek to reform their lives by confessing their sins, both by kind and number as far as they are able to remember, to a true priest.

God will not be mocked. Sins must be punished. God chooses a variety of ways to punish us errant, recidivist, ungrateful sinners. The elements of the earth are themselves disturbed by human sins as they are part of the Order of Creation (Nature) whose perfect balance was rent asunder as a result of Original Sin. 

I would entreat you, however, to consider how Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself told Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres that the sins of men in Ecuador, a country favored with the visits of Our Lady of Good Success and ruled for twelve years (1859 to 1865 and 1869 to the time of assassination in 1875) by that great exemplar of the Social Reign of Christ the King, Gabriel Garcia Moreno, would diminish the luster of the sunsets in that country on the equator:

She saw that when this would happen, the beautiful dawn that each morning would break forth with refulgence over this land--so enchantingly spectacular that some persons would rise at daybreak just to see the day break--would lose some of its brilliance. Thus does earth reflect Heaven, and the earth's beauty and vitality diminish with sin and infidelity to grace. This favor of beautiful dawns should cease, Mother Mariana was given to understand, because the Republic [of Ecuador, which was then only a Spanish colony] would become corrupt and ungrateful for the benefits it received from God. (Marian Therese Horvat, Ph.D., Stories and Miracles of Our Lady of Good Success, Tradition in Action, Inc., 2002, p. 68.)

Men must quit their sins and repent of them in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. They must treat each other as they would treat Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who was made Flesh in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb, where He spent nine months growing to the point of His Nativity in poverty and anonymity in Bethlehem on Christmas Day.

No one can say that he loves Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and yet support His dismemberment mystically in the persons of innocent preborn children. And it is impossible to provide for any element of  the common temporal good on an enduring basis as long as the innocent preborn are attacked with legal impunity, as long as the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage is denied by means of contraception, as long as perversity is promoted under the slogans of "diversity" and "human rights," as long as men live as though there is no true Church and that they do not have to face Christ the King as their Judge at the moment of their Particular Judgments.

Men cannot sin wantonly without realizing terrible chastisements from God, something that Saint Alphonsus de Liguori made very clear in Preparation for Death:

The Lord does not wish us to be lost; and therefore, by the threat of chastisement, he unceasingly exhorts us to a change of life. Except you will be converted, He will brandish His sword. Behold, he says in another place, how many, because they would not cease to offend me, have met with a sudden death, when they were least expecting it, and were living in peace, secure of a life of many years. For whey they shall say: Peace and security: then shall sudden destruction come upon them. Again he says: Unless you shall do penance, you shall likewise perish. Why so many threats of chastisements before the execution of vengeance? It is because he wishes that we amend our lives, and thus avoid an unhappy death. "He," says Saint Augustine, "who tells you to beware, does not wish to take away your life." It is necessary, then, to prepare our accounts before the day of account arrives. Dearly beloved Christians, were you to die, and were your lot for eternity to be decided before night would your accounts be ready? Oh! how much would you give to obtain from God another year or month, or even another day, to prepare for judgment? Why then do yo not now, that God gives you this time, settle the accounts of your conscience? Perhaps is cannot happen that this shall be the last day for you? Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day; for His wrath shall come on a sudden, and in the time of vengeance He will destroy thee. My brother, to save your soul you must give up your sin. "If then you must renounce it at some time, why do you not abandon it at this moment?" says Saint Augustine. Perhaps you are waiting till death arrives? But for obstinate sinners, the hour of death is the time, not of pardon, but of vengeance. In the time of vengeance He will destroy thee. (Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Preparation for Death.)

It was on September 19, 1846, that Our Lady explained Our Lady of La Salette told Melanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud about the terrible effects of sin in the world:

The Church will be in eclipse, the world will be in dismay. But now Enoch and Eli will come, filled with the Spirit of God. They will preach with the might of God, and men of good will will believe in God, and many souls will be comforted. They will make great steps forward through the power of the Holy Spirit and will condemn the devilish lapses of the Antichrist. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth! There will be bloody wars and famines, plagues and infectious diseases. It will rain with a fearful hail of animals. There will be thunderstorms which will shake cities, earthquakes which will swallow up countries. Voices will be heard in the air. Men will beat their heads against walls, call for their death, and on another side death will be their torment. Blood will flow on all sides. Who will be the victor if God does not shorten the length of the test? At the blood, the tears and prayers of the righteous, God will relent. Enoch and Eli will be put to death. Pagan Rome will disappear. The fire of Heaven will fall and consume three cities. All the universe will be struck with terror and many will let themselves be lead astray because they have not worshipped the true Christ who lives among them. It is time; the sun is darkening; only faith will survive.

Now is the time; the abyss is opening. Here is the King of Kings of darkness, here is the Beast with his subjects, calling himself the Savior of the world. He will rise proudly into the air to go to Heaven. He will be smothered by the breath of the Archangel Saint Michael. He will fall, and the earth, which will have been in a continuous series of evolutions for three days, will open up its fiery bowels; and he will have plunged for all eternity with all his followers into the everlasting chasms of hell. And then water and fire will purge the earth and consume all the works of men's pride and all will be renewed. God will be served and glorified." (Message of Our Lady of La Salette.)

Remarkably, Our Lady’s warning at La Salette, France, is very similar to as found in The Mystical City of God as Our Lady explained to the Venerable Mary of Agreda:

"Woe to the earth, and to the sea, because the devil is come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time." Woe to the earth, where so many sins and such wickedness shall be perpetuated! Woe to the sea, which refused to pour forth its floods and annihilate the transgressors at the sight of so great offenses against its Creator, and to avenge the insults against its Maker and Lord! But more woe to the profound and raging sea of those that follow the demon, after he had descended in their midst in order to war against them with great wrath and with such unheard of cruelty! It is the wrath of the most ferocious dragon, and greater than that of the devouring lion (I Pet. 5, 8), who attempts to annihilate all creation and to whom all the days of the world seem a short time to execute his fury. Such is his hunger and thirst to do damage to mortals, that all the days of their life do not satisfy him, for they come to an end, whereas he desires eternal ages, if possible, in order to wage war against the sons of God. But incomparably greater than against all others is his rage against that most blessed Woman, who was to crush his head (Gen. 3: 15).  (The Mystical City of God.)

We are eyewitnesses to apostasy, which is why we need the help of Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, now more than ever before,

Offer all 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 Perpetual Help, 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 Balthazar, pray for us.

Saint Antoninus, O.P., pray for us.