This is Phenomenal Even by Bergoglio’s Endless Array of Double Standards

Most of those who access this website, which is not dormant despite the paucity of new articles lately as a result of my suffering, it would appear, from “Long Covid” (as a friend of mine from Long Island said in a phone conversation recently, “Doc, you think you’re getting better, you have a good day and then Wham! you get hit all over again!”) and the fact that I am tired of repeating myself endlessly, probably are very much aware of the fact that “Father” Frank Pavone, who was installed as a presbyter for the Archdiocese of New York on November 12, 1988, has been “excommunicated” and “laicized” by the authorities in the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River.

Before commencing a dispassionate summary of important facts that transcend Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s overweening hypocrisy as he punishes anyone within the structures of his false religious sect whom he considers to be “traditional” and too overtly “pro-life” while making it a point to indemnify the pro-abortion, pro-perversity likes of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi, the following report on the Catholic News Agency provides a summary—and it is only that, a summary—of the facts surrounding the case of the Reverend Frank Pavone:

Father Frank Pavone, a well-known pro-life activist and national director of the organization Priests for Life, has been dismissed from the clerical state for “blasphemous communications on social media” and “persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop,” CNA has learned.

In a Dec. 13 letter to U.S. bishops obtained by CNA and confirmed by multiple sources as authentic, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States, wrote that the prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy issued the decision on Nov. 9, adding that there was “no possibility of appeal.”

“Father Pavone was given ample opportunity to defend himself in the canonical proceedings, and he was also given multiple opportunities to submit himself to the authority of his diocesan bishop,” explains a separate statement attached to Pierre’s letter. “It was determined that Father Pavone had no reasonable justification for his actions.”

Pavone, however, told CNA Saturday that he had not been notified about the Vatican’s judgment.

The communication from Pierre does not specify the actions that led to Pavone’s dismissal or name the bishop he disobeyed.

The statement refers to Pavone as “Mr. Pavone” and calls him “a lay person,” underscoring the dramatic and immediate nature of the Vatican’s action. 

“Since Priests for Life, Inc. is not a Catholic organization, Mr. Pavone’s continuing role in it as a lay person would be entirely up to the leadership of that organization,” the statement says.

Pavone is still saying Masses, including one streamed online Saturday. The Priests for Life website states that Pavone “is a Catholic priest in good standing, and exercises his ministry in full communion with the Catholic Church.”

In an email to CNA on Saturday, Pavone said that he was not aware of the Vatican’s action.

“How did CNA learn about this before I did?” he asked. In a subsequent email he added that CNA’s inquiry was “the very first communication that came to me about this.”

It is not clear in what diocese Pavone, 63, is incardinated as a priest. On the Priests for Life website, it says he received permission from the Vatican in 2019 to transfer from the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, where he was incardinated in 2005, to another, unnamed diocese.

Pavone hosted the show “Defending Life” on EWTN for many years until the bishop of Amarillo, Texas, revoked Pavone’s permission to appear on the Network. EWTN is the parent organization of CNA.

A history of clashes with hierarchy

Originally based in Staten Island, New York, Priests for Life is now headquartered in Titusville, Florida, within the Diocese of Orlando. That diocese, also, did not respond to CNA’s request for comment Saturday.

Pavone has served as the pro-life organization’s national director since 1993.

In that role he has a long history of conflicts with bishops, beginning more than 20 years ago with the late Cardinal Edward Egan of the Archdiocese of New York. Egan succeeded the late Cardinal John J. O’Connor, who ordained Pavone in 1988 and encouraged his pro-life work.

In his email, Pavone directed CNA to a document posted on his personal website titled “Summary of How Fr. Frank and Priests for Life Have Been Treated by Some in the Hierarchy.”

“We all expect that the pro-abortion groups, like Planned Parenthood, will target, harass and try to intimidate us. And they do try,” he wrote.

“But when such treatment comes from bishops and other Church authorities — which it increasingly does — it’s particularly deplorable,” he added. “Instead of supporting and encouraging the pro-life work of the Church, some of these men try to obstruct and hinder it, and abuse their authority to try to intimidate priests and laity who make ending abortion the top priority of our lives.”

Pavone has been at odds with Bishop Patrick J. Zurek in Amarillo since the latter became bishop there in 2008. In 2011, Zurek publicly suspended Pavone, though Pavone later had the suspension overruled by the Vatican. The Amarillo Diocese did not respond to CNA’s requests for comment prior to publication.

Pavone’s political activism played a role in his problems in Amarillo.

An outspoken supporter of former president Donald Trump, Pavone served on official Trump campaign outreach positions in 2016 and was originally a co-chair of Trump’s 2020 pro-life coalition, as well as an advisory board member of Catholics for Trump. Canon law forbids clerics from having an active role in political parties unless they receive the permission of their bishop. 

In November 2016, Pavone filmed a video at the Priests for Life headquarters, urging support for Trump. The video was staged with the body of an aborted baby laid before Pavone on what appeared to be an altar. 

Zurek said soon after the video’s release that he would open an investigation into the incident, calling it “against the dignity of human life” and “a desecration of the altar,” adding that “the action and presentation of Father Pavone in this video is not consistent with the beliefs of the Catholic Church.”

On his website, Pavone details his version of what happened in the video. He also has posted a transcript of what he said on the video.

“Much of the criticism revolved around my having placed the baby on an ‘altar’ and some started getting into technical complaints about what should or should not be done with an altar. But to the extent that they want to get technical, so can I, and I pointed out that this was a table in our office, not a consecrated altar in a chapel,” he wrote.

“That table, sometimes used for Mass, was also the place where all my videos in this educational series of election broadcasts were made,” he continued. “In retrospect, I should have made the baby video in a different location so as to avoid any confusion to begin with.”

Pavone wrote in his account that the baby’s remains were given to him so he conduct a proper burial, which he said he did after making the video.

Pavone stepped down from the two positions with Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020 at the request of what he called “the competent ecclesiastical authority.” But he continued to use his social media platforms to advocate for Trump and denounce the Democratic Party.

Those posts led to another confrontation with Zurek shortly before the 2020 election.

In tweets that were subsequently deleted, Pavone reportedly called then Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden a “[expletive] loser” and said the Democratic Party was “God-hating” and “America-hating” and that Biden’s supporters “can’t say a [expletive] thing in support of their loser candidate without using the word Trump.”

“What the hell do you have to say for yourselves, losers?” Pavone asked.

Pavone also reportedly tweeted that he would hear the confession of a Catholic who votes Democrat, “but we are trained that in the absence of repentance, absolution has to be withheld.”

In response, the Amarillo Diocese issued a statement disavowing Pavone’s comments, saying he used “scandalous words not becoming of a Catholic priest.”

“These postings are not consistent with Catholic Church teachings,” the diocese said in its statement. “Please disregard them and pray for Father Pavone.” (Vatican dismisses Father Frank Pavone from priesthood.)

Although many Catholics within the conciliar structures have lost their minds about this matter and are once again demonstrating their stupendous ignorance of Catholic ecclesiology and the very nature of the Papacy, I am here to remind the very few people who read these articles of simple truths before commenting the protection racket that the blaspheming Argentine Apostate is running in behalf of globalists, environmentalists, statists, sodomites, pro-aborts, unrepentant adulterers, religious indifferentism, naturalism and abject infidelity.

Basic Facts That Transcend the Emotion of the Moment and Bergoglio’s Own Hypocrisy

First, none of this has come from the Catholic Church, she who is the spotless, mystical spouse of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head, and Mystical Bridegroom.

Second, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter, and he is the sixth in the current line of antipopes dating from the “election” of Angelo Roncalli on October 28, 1958, the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude. Bergoglio is neither a priest nor a bishop.

Third, Frank Pavone himself has never been a Catholic priest. He has been a layman throughout the sixty-three years of his life, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. The conciliar rite of “episcopal ordination” is invalid. It is not a true Catholic rite of episcopal consecration, something that Father Louis J. Campbell, who was ordained to the Holy Priesthood as a member of the Order of Saint Augustine on September 3, 1961, the Feast of Pope Saint Pius X, and has been the pastor of Saint Jude Shrine in Stafford, Texas, since 2001, explained in very clear and simple terms in a sermon eleven years ago:

“Let no one lead you astray with empty words,” warns St. Paul in today’s Epistle (Eph.5:6). We must keep the faith, the faithof our fathers, handed on to us from the Apostles by saints and martyrs, the fathers and doctors of the Church, and holy popes and bishops. Now it is our turn to teach the faith, handing it on to the younger generation unchanged and untainted by heresy, lest the Church become the desolate kingdom spoken of by Our Lord in the Gospel. 

Many, “with empty words,” have tried to destroy the Catholic faith – Arius, Luther, Calvin and Cranmer, to name a few. Then came the Modernists, condemned by Pope St. Pius X, whose heresies lived on to be re-hatched at Vatican II by the liberal theologians, and canonized by the conciliar popes.

If one were to set out to destroy the Catholic faith, a good place to begin would be to tamper with the Sacraments, the Sacrament of Baptism, for instance. But every well instructed Catholic knows that the essential rite of Baptism requires the pouring of water upon the head of the person (or immersing the person in the water) while saying the words: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (or Holy Spirit).  

If the priest baptizing were to say, “I pour upon you the life-giving waters of salvation, that you may share the life of the Holy Trinity,” we would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Sacrament was invalid, and that the person would have to be re-baptized using the form that is required for validity. We would not have to wait for the theologians to debate the matter, or for the Holy See to issue a decree of nullity. Any Catholic in his right mind would know that the attempted Baptism was invalid. Any attempt by the “liturgical experts” to change the essentials of the Sacrament would not have been tolerated by the Catholic faithful.   

But consider some of the other sacraments. Most of us knew little of what was required, for instance, for the valid consecration of a bishop. In a ceremony rarely witnessed by most of the faithful, the Sacrament was administered in Latin amid mysterious and lengthy rites. Change the form of this Sacrament, and who would notice? Then what better way to destroy the Catholic Church than to render invalid the Sacrament of Holy Orders, since true bishops are absolutely necessary if the Church is to survive?    

The essential matter and form for the valid consecration of a bishop was determined by Pope Pius XII on November 30, 1947, in the Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 40, 1948, 5-7), a document which appears to have all the essential characteristics of infallibility. Even if it does not, it is certainly an authoritative document, which Pope Pius expected to be taken most seriously. With the laying on of hands, the consecrating bishop was to say the words of the Preface, “of which,” says the pope, “the following are essential and therefore necessary for validity: ‘Fill up in Thy priest the perfection of Thy ministry and sanctify him with the dew of Thy heavenly ointment, this thy servant decked out with the ornaments of all beauty’” (Comple in sacerdote tuo ministerii tui summum, et ornamentis totius glorificationis instructum coelestis unguenti rore sanctifica).At the end of the document Pope Pius XII states: “We teach, declare, and determine this, all persons not withstanding, no matter what special dignity they may have, and consequently we wish and order such in the Roman Pontifical... No onetherefore is allowed to infringe upon this Constitution given by us, nor should anyone dare to have the audacity to contradict it...”

Pope Pius XII’s body had hardly begun “a-mouldering in the grave” when the agents of change began working in earnest to destroy the Catholic faith. Paul VI, once the confidant and trusted friend of Pope Pius XII, had that “audacity to contradict” when he published his own decree in 1968. In vain did Pope Pius XII “teach, declare, and determine” what was required for the validity of the Sacrament of Orders. Paul VI would introduce entirely new words, requiring them for validity, words which were never used for the consecration of a bishop in the Roman Rite: “So now pour out upon this chosen one that power which is from you, the governing Spirit whom you gave to your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, the Spirit given by him to the holy apostles, who founded the Church in every place to be your temple for the unceasing glory and praise of your name” (Pontificalis Romani, June 18, 1968).

As to why Paul VI found it necessary to discard the essential words of the traditional form of consecration and replace them with entirely different words, he says “…it was judged appropriate to take from ancient sources the consecratory prayer that is found in the document called the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome, written at the beginning of the third century.”

Judged appropriate? By whom? None other than Archbishop Annibale Bugnini and his associates of the “Consilium,” who invented the Novus Ordo Mass. And who on earth was Hippolytus of Rome? He was an anti-pope of the third century who separated from Rome because of doctrinal differences and established a schismatic church, although he later returned to the Catholic Church and died a martyr. Who knows but that his “Apostolic Tradition” was drawn up for his schismatic sect? 

And whatever became of Pope Pius XII’s Apostolic Constitution, Sacramentum Ordinis?  The name Sacramentum Ordinis was even given to another document by John Paul II, probably as a red herring to throw us off the track.  

What conclusion does one draw? The Catechism of the Council of Trent states: “In our Sacraments… the form is so definite that any, even a casual deviation from it renders the Sacrament null.” We would never tolerate a change in the form of the Sacrament of Baptism. Never! Can we blithely accept a total deviation in the form of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, a change which omits the part of the traditional form declared essential for validity by Pope Pius XII? I think not! Pope Pius XII changed nothing of the traditional form, but merely designated which part of the form was essential for validity. Paul VI omitted that essential part of the form and replaced it with something entirely new. Not even popes (certainly not would-be popes) can change the form of a Sacrament. Whom do we trust, Pope Pius XII who carefully guarded the traditional sacramental form handed down from ages past, or Paul VI? Paul VI, who on the flimsiest of pretexts changed the essential form of a Sacrament, thus rendering it invalid. The result is that we are left with a whole generation of pseudo-bishops attempting to govern the Church without the grace of office. A miter and a bishop’s ring do not a bishop make. And the Kingdom is brought to desolation (Lk.11:17).  

But even among traditionalists many refuse to consider the possibility of invalid sacramental rites. It’s more convenient to think that if the pope says so it’s got to be OK. But Paul VI told us the Novus Ordo Mass was OK, and look where that has brought us. The day must come when all awaken to the fact that the Church has been brought low by an apostasy more monstrous than we have been willing to admit. Only then will the true bishops emerge, a true pope will restore the hierarchy, and the Church will rise more glorious than ever. “And all mankind shall see the salvation of God” (Lk.3:6).  (Father Louis J. Campbell, "A Kingdom Brought to Desolation (Lk.11:17)," Third Sunday of Lent, March 27, 2011, Saint Jude Shrine, Stafford, Texas.)

The passage of time does not make any man in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who believes himself to be a “bishop” or “priest” no matter his refusal to accept the truth of the matter. Although it is very difficult and humbling for such a person to admit that his orders are not valid, especially if he has been acting as a “bishop” or “priest” for many years, it must be remembered that it was equally difficult for Anglican “priests” such as Father Frederick William Faber to admit that their orders were invalid. Indeed, Father Faber, for one, struggled with the matter quite a bit as the falsehood that is Anglicanism had been existence for over three hundred years when he converted to the true Faith in 1848. We should pray to Father Faber to help those “bishops” and presbyters in the conciliar structures who know that something is wrong to do their due diligence, study the matter with great dispassion and a love of truth—and then to be unhesitating in its acceptance.

Fourth, presuming himself to be a priest, though, the Reverend Frank Pavone has had an obligation to be obedient to the men he has presumed to be his bishops. A man is not ordained to the priesthood to do his own business. He is ordained to the priesthood to be about the business of the sanctification and salvation of souls. A priest must render obedience to his bishop and accept whatever penalty, no matter how unjust it may be in the objective order of things once all canonical appeals have been exhausted. This is not a matter of discussion or debate. Father Charles Coughlin, for example, who was very politcally active in his opposition to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, obeyed the decision of the Archbishop of Detroit, Edward Aloysius Cardinal Mooney, to quit his political activities and return soley to his life as the founding pastor of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, at which he remained as pastor until his retirement in 1966, thirteen years before he died in 1979. Father Coughlin, unlike Frank Pavone, was obedient, not defiant.

Fifth, no priest is ordained to be a political activist, no less to become so highly associated with a particular political party or candidate that he is ready to compromise Catholic principles lest he does anything that hurts those he believes are going to “solve” problems electorally, judicially, legislatively, or administratively. This is what I wrote in 2004 when the Reverend Pavone kept silent after his then “pro-life” “hero,” President George Walker Bush, endorsed the pro-abortion, pro-perversity United States Senator Arlen Specter (D-R-D, Pennsylvania), over a partly pro-life, partly pro-abortion challenger, United States Representative Patrick Toomey:

How can a man, namely, George W. Bush, claim that he is working in behalf of the culture of life and for the day when "every child will be welcomed in life and protected by law" when he works to elect pro-aborts to serve in public office, no less appoints pro-aborts to the highest offices in his own administration? There is a disconnect here, people. Wake up. George W. Bush would not campaign for anyone who was tainted with even a whiff of racial bigotry or hostility to Jewish interests. Why do people like Father Frank Pavone and Austin Ruse and Deal Hudson and the sycophants at the National Right to Life Committee continue to be silent as this president campaigns for pro-aborts and funds contraceptive abortifacients here and around the world? Why have we not heard one word from these influential sources about the introduction of contraception as one of the first things that followed our troops into Afghanistan and Iraq? Are they afraid of losing their White House passes and photo opportunities?

A man who believes himself to be a Catholic priest must speak out about moral issues and oppose evil, but he is not to become immersed in the grind of partisan politics. To oppose moral evil is a duty of our Catholic Faith. Those considering themselves to be priests, however, must rise above the political fray and exhort the faithful to reject evil while praying for the conversion of those who support it.

While it is true that one’s political judgments are matters of legitimate discussion and debate, a priest is not ordained to be involved in partisan politics, and to do so in this instance has given the enemy of moral truth from Argentina ammunition to claim that any opposition from the pulpit to abortion is a “political” matter, which it is not. 

Sixth, there would be no need for any organization named “Priests for Life” in the Catholic Church. Every Catholic, whether members of the clergy, consecrated religious life, or the laity are called to believe in and to defend the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the natural Law when necessity compels them to do so.

Seventh, the Reverend Pavone was wrong to have used the body of an aborted baby while giving a presentation about Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton’s unqualified support for baby-killing in 2016. If a baby is a human being from the first moment to conception as we know it to be, then its dead body is to be treated with dignity and given a proper burial, not used for show and tell purposes while one, in the heat of the moment, uses God’s Holy Name in vain.

Now, although I will discuss this matter in greater detail when commenting about Bergoglio’s hypocrisy, I have known many priests and presbyters who have, sadly, use the phrase uttered by the Reverend Pavone on a regular basis. The late Monsignor George A. Kelley, a co-founder of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a major figure in the Archdiocese of New York during his lifetime, used such language regularly in front of scholars and seminarians, and he was far from alone. No one threatened to excommunicate him, and I remember an incident involving a priest in the 1950s and my father’s best friend, Mr. Robert Berkelmann, who was also one of the worst drivers in world history, in which the priest used every swear word imaginable after “Uncle Bob” had damaged his car badly in a parking space.

Mind you, such blasphemous speech on the part of a priest, whether true or putative, is scandalous, and those who utter such blasphemy commit a Mortal Sin in the objective order of things, the gravity of which is elevated in the case of the Catholic clergy. As scandalous as it is, however, blasphemy, which is never to be taken lightly as it is directly prohibited by the Second Commandment, can be forgiven in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. It is not an excommunicable offense.

Eighth, as important as the daily slaughter by chemical and surgical means of the innocent preborn is as one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, the duty of a diocesan priest is to sanctify and instruct the faithful. The way to end the protection of sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance under cover of law is not political. Men and their nations must be converted to the Catholic Church, which must exercise direct power in the sanctioning of civil authorities after exhausting her Indirect Power of teaching, preaching, and exhortation when they propose to do or have in fact done things contrary to the law of God and thus to the good of souls.

All this having been noted, it is important as a matter of justice to point out that the Reverend Frank Pavone did very important work defending Mrs. Theresa Schindler-Schiavo from her cruel death by dehydration and starvation that was sanctioned by the then conciliar “bishop” of Saint Petersburg, Florida, Robert Lynch, has personally saved the lives of many babies, and has brought several people, including the late Norma McCorvey (“Jane Doe” of Roe v. Wade), into what he thought was the Catholic Church. As one who presumes himself to be a priest, though, his first duty is obedience to the man he presumes to be his bishop, not to “Priests for Life,” and there is little more about this that needs to be said except to say that today’s conciliar revolutionaries, who are the theological descendants of those who disobeyed popes and bishops for decades prior to the “Second” Vatican Council have destroyed the sensus Catholicus to such an extent that even believing Catholics have come to view disobedience of those they accept as legitimate ecclesiastical officials as virtuous and heroic. This is Protestantism writ large.

Heresy is the Gravest Sin One Can Commit, and Priests Must Oppose It

Sins against God, however, are graver in the hierarchy of evils than sins against men. Heresy is thus the gravest sin one can commit, and the counterfeit church of conciliarism has been built upon and continues to promote one Modernist heresy after another:

• The conciliar “popes” have made war upon the very the nature of dogmatic truth, cleaving to the philosophically absurd notion that dogmatic truth can never be expressed adequately at any one point in time, that each expression of dogma is necessarily "conditioned" by the historical circumstances in which it was pronounced. Condemned by the [First] Vatican Council, Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, and The Oath Against Modernism, and by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.  (See Antichrist Has Shown Us His Calling Card .)
• The “Second” Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium, November 21, 1964, the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, instituted the false ecclesiology of "full" and "partial" communion that flies in the face of the teaching of the Catholic Church, a teaching documented by Bishop Donald Sanborn in The New Ecclesiology: An Overview and The New Ecclesiology: Documentation and Communion: Ratzinger's Ecumenical One-World Church). This “new ecclesiology,” of course, was the handiwork of none other than Father Joseph Alois Ratzinger, who was acting upon a recommendation by a German Lutheran "observer" at the "Second" Vatican Council, suggested should be placed into the text of Lumen Gentium, November 21, 1964, in order to give formal recognition to the "elements" of "sanctification" that he believed exists in the "ecclesial" (Protestant) "communities" and in the Orthodox churches. In other words, the man who is considered the “great dogmatist” helped to attack the Sacred Deposit of Faith at the "Second" Vatican Council to help to give birth to the heresy that is the “new ecclesiolgy, whose principal contention was refuted prophetically by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943: ​​​

Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. "For in one spirit" says the Apostle, "were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free." As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. And therefore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered - so the Lord commands - as a heathen and a publican. It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit. (Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has taken the “new ecclesiology” to mean that all “believers,” including those who deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, are saved as long as they “do good," and he has built on the foundation of the attack upon the monarchical nature of the papacy that is "episcopal collegiality" to use "local churches" as laboratories for the development of subjective applications of Holy Mother Church's received teaching on Faith and Morals in the name of "synodality." 

The conciliar popes, of course, reject what Ratzinger/Benedict called disparagingly the “ecumenism of the return,” and Jorge Mario Bergoglio has gone so far as to issue endless apologies to Protestants and the Waldensians for the manner in which they had been “persecuted” by Catholics in the past, thereby making a mockery of the exhortations of one true pope after another for such a return of non-Catholics to the true Church. Thousands of "papal," "episcopal," sacerdotal/presbteryal "interfaith" prayer services have been held in full violation of admonitions of Saints Paul the Apostle and John the Evangelist as well as the the specific condemnation and prohibition of such services by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.

Despite all their protestations to the contrary, the conciliar "popes," starting with Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI and continuing to the present time under Jorge Mario Bergoglio, have given "joint blessings" with non-Catholic clergymen and engaged in endless services exhibiting a syncretism for which millions of Catholic martyrs gave up their lives rather than to even give the appearance of doing andhave endorsed, at least on a de facto basis, the very sort of religious indifferentism condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, by Pope Pius IX in The Syllabus of Errors and Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864, by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, and Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, by Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, and by the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII, July 5, 1948:

Mixed gatherings of non-Catholics with Catholics have been reportedly held in various places, where things pertaining to the Faith have been discussed against the prescriptions of the Sacred Canons and without previous permission of the Holy See. Therefore all are reminded that according to the norm of Canon 1325 § 3 laypeople as well as clerics both secular and regular are forbidden to attend these gatherings without the aforesaid permission. It is however much less licit for Catholics to summon and institute such kind of gatherings. Let therefore Ordinaries urge all to serve these prescriptions accurately.

These are to be observed with even stronger force of law when it comes to gatherings called “ecumenical”, which laypeople and clerics may not attend at all without previous consent of the Holy See.

Moreover, since acts of mixed worship have also been posed not rarely both within and without the aforesaid gatherings, all are once more warned that any communication in sacred affairs is totally forbidden according to the norm of Canons 1258 and 731, § 2.

Given at Rome, at the premises of the Holy Office, on June 5^th 1948. (This was translated by those who run Novus Ordo Watch. See The Holy Office's 1948 Canonical Warning against Ecumenical Gatherings.)

The “Second” Vatican Council proclaimed the heresy of “religious liberty and the conciliar “popes” have consistently praised nonexistent ability of false religions to "contribute" to the "betterment" of nations and the world. Condemned by Pope Pius VI in Brief Quod aliquantum, March 10, 1791, Religious Liberty, a “Monstrous Right Pope Pius VII in Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, and by Pope Pius IX in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

• Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio have endorsed and even praised the Protestantism’s and Judeo-Masonry’s concept of the "separation of Church and State," a thesis called absolutely false by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, and have have rejected outright the obligation of the civil state to recognize the Catholic Church as its official religion and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, an obligation reiterated by pope after pope following the rise of the religiously indifferentist civil state of Modernity.
• The conciliar “popes,” therefore, are social modernists of the sort described by Ratzinger/Benedict, therefore, falls into the category of a social modernist described by Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.
• Wojtyla/John Paul II became the first conciliar “pope” to enter into a Mohammedan mosque, doing so on May 7, 2001, in Damascus, Syria, paving the way for Ratzinger/Benedict and Bergoglio to do the same, thus engaging in acts of apostasy and blasphemy as they, who have believed themselves to be Successors of Saint Peter, have permitted themselves treated as inferiors while treating treated places of false worship that are hideous to God as worthy of respect, thereby scandalizing Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s little ones no end.
• Ratzinger/Benedict termed Mount Hiei in Japan, where the adherents of the Tendei sect of Buddhism, worship their devils, as "sacred," a term he used to describe the mosque of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem on May 12, 2009, and Bergoglio is constantly praising the temples of false religions as sacred places that give honor and glory to God.
• The conciliar “popes” have rejected the clarity and certainty of the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas, in favor of the condemned precepts of the so-called “New Theology” and they have held a view on the Doctrine of Justification that, in essence, hinges on the belief that the Fathers of the Council of Trent, who met under the influence and protection of God the Holy Ghost, were wrong (as is explained in Attempting to Coerce Perjury.)
• The counterfeit church of conciliarism has promulgated abominable, sacrilegious and sacramentally invalid liturgical rites, including the the aforementioned Novus Ordo liturgical travesty and the conciliar rites of "epsiscopal ordination"--the conciliar terminology, presbyteral "ordination," Confirmation and the so-called "Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick." The Novus Ordo service has been the chief means by which the conciliar authorities have broken down the senusus Catholicus of older Catholics and brainwashed three successive generations into accepting the doctrinal heresies and false moral teaching of a religious sect that is nothing other than the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church. Even the Sacrament of Penance has been renamed, at least in many places within the conciliar structures, as the "Sacrament of Reconciliation" as the faithful have the option of going to what they think is Confession on a "face to face" basis while sitting down rather than kneeling. 
• The egalitarianism of the conciliarism is such that the conciliar "popes" have granted permission for the administration of what they think is Holy Communion in the hand, to abolish, at least on a de fact basis, kneeling for what is purported to be Holy Communion,  abolished the Communion rail in many Catholic churches held in conciliar captivity, designed new church buildings and wreckovated others for the Cranmer Table to be in the nave of the church and to be circular in shape and permitted a veritable army of laity, including women, into the what used to be called the sanctuary of a Catholic Church.
• The conciliar "popes" and their "bishops" have taught that the Old Covenant God gave to Moses was never superseded by the New and Eternal Testatment that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ insyituted at the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and ratified as He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday, thus rejecting as "obsolete" the plain, immutable teaching of the Catholic Church as summarized very succintly by Pope Pius II in Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943:

28.That He completed His work on the gibbet of the Cross is the unanimous teaching of the holy Fathers who assert that the Church was born from the side of our Savior on the Cross like a new Eve, mother of all the living. [28] "And it is now," says the great St. Ambrose, speaking of the pierced side of Christ, "that it is built, it is now that it is formed, it is now that is .... molded, it is now that it is created . . . Now it is that arises a spiritual house, a holy priesthood." [29] One who reverently examines this venerable teaching will easily discover the reasons on which it is based.

29.And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area -- He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel [30] -the Law and the Gospel were together in force; [31] but on the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees, [32] fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, [33] establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race. [34] "To such an extent, then," says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, "was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom." [35]

30. On the Cross then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death, [36] in order to give way to the New Testament of which Christ had chosen the Apostles as qualified ministers; [37] and although He had been constituted the Head of the whole human family in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, it is by the power of the Cross that our Savior exercises fully the office itself of Head in His Church. "For it was through His triumph on the Cross," according to the teaching of the Angelic and Common Doctor, "that He won power and dominion over the gentiles"; [38] by that same victory He increased the immense treasure of graces, which, as He reigns in glory in heaven, He lavishes continually on His mortal members it was by His blood shed on the Cross that God's anger was averted and that all the heavenly gifts, especially the spiritual graces of the New and Eternal Testament, could then flow from the fountains of our Savior for the salvation of men, of the faithful above all; it was on the tree of the Cross, finally, that He entered into possession of His Church, that is, of all the members of His Mystical Body; for they would not have been united to this Mystical Body. (Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.)

• The innocence and purity of the young have been undermined and corrupted by explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, instruction that was specifically prohibited by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929, and reaffirmed by the Holy Ofice under his pontificate on March 21, 1931:

65. Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers.

66. Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind; and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.

67. In this extremely delicate matter, if, all things considered, some private instruction is found necessary and opportune, from those who hold from God the commission to teach and who have the grace of state, every precaution must be taken. Such precautions are well known in traditional Christian education, and are adequately described by Antoniano cited above, when he says:  

Such is our misery and inclination to sin, that often in the very things considered to be remedies against sin, we find occasions for and inducements to sin itself. Hence it is of the highest importance that a good father, while discussing with his son a matter so delicate, should be well on his guard and not descend to details, nor refer to the various ways in which this infernal hydra destroys with its poison so large a portion of the world; otherwise it may happen that instead of extinguishing this fire, he unwittingly stirs or kindles it in the simple and tender heart of the child. Speaking generally, during the period of childhood it suffices to employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice. (Passage and double-indented quotation as found in Pope Pius XI's Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

I) Can the method be approved, which is called "sexual education," or even "sexual initiation?"

Response: In the negative, and that the method must be persevere entirely as set forth up to the present entirely as set forth up to the present by the Church and saintly men, and recommended by the Most Holy Father in the Encyclical Letter, "On the Christian Education of Youth," given on the 31st day of December, 1929. Naturally, care must especially be taken that a full and solid religious instruction be given to the youth of both sexes without interruption; in this instruction there must be aroused a regard, desire, and love for the angelic virtue; and especially must it be inculcated upon them to insist on prayer, to be constant in the sacraments of penance and the Most Holy Eucharist, to be devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mother of holy purity, with filial devotion and to commit themselves wholly to her protection; to avoid carefully dangerous reading, obscene plays, associated with the wicked, and all occasions of sin.

By no means, then, can we approve what has been written and published in defense of the new method especially in these recent times, even on the part of some Catholic authors. (Henry Denzinger, Enchirdion Symbolorum, thirteenth edition, translated into English by Roy Deferrari and published in 1955 asThe Sources of Catholic Dogma--referred to as "Denziger," by B. Herder Book Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and London, England, Nos. 2183-2185, pp. 597-598.)

• Sins against Holy Purity, including fornication and adultery have been minimized and those who persist in states of public scandal by means of these sins have been welcomed to receive what the conciliar revolutionaries purport to be the Sacraments without reforming their lives.
• Similarly, those practice and persist in perverse sins of unnatural vice have been welcomed in the name of a false concept of "mercy" and their lifestyles of perdition have been celebrated by many conciliar "bishops" and priests/presbyters worldwide without any "papal" rebuke under the current Bergoglian regime--and only infrequently and inconsistently before the elevation of the Argentine Apostate to his current position as the universal public face of apostasy. 
• The counterfeit church of conciliarism has inverted the ends proper to the Sacrament of Matrimony and endorsed what is, in essence, a Catholic form of “natural” contraception, and enshrined this inversion in their corrupted 1983 Code of Canon Law:

856. The primary object of marriage is the procreation and education of offspring; the secondary purpose is mutual assistance and the remedy of concupiscence. (This can be found on page 205 of the following link, which is the 1917 Code of Canon Law in English:  1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law.)

Can.  1055 §1. The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized. (Canon 1055.1 1983 Conciliar Code of Canon Law. By the way, Father Vigano, your beloved Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II propagated the so-called 1983 Code of Canon Law. Not even a true pope can change something that exists in the very nature of things. Why no criticism of "Saint John Paul II"?)

The entire fabric of the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s teaching on the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, including its endorsement of the falsehood that is "natural family planning," is built on the fabric of the inversion of the ends of marriage that was condemned personally by Pope Pius XII on March 29, 1944, a condemnation that he cited and reiterated in the strongest terms possible in his aforementioned Address to Italian Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession, October 29, 1951:

Certain publications concerning the purposes of matrimony, and their interrelationship and order, have come forth within these last years which either assert that the primary purpose of matrimony is not the generation of offspring, or that the secondary purposes are not subordinate to the primary purpose, but are independent of it.

In these works, different primary purposes of marriage are designated by other writers, as for example: the complement and personal perfection of the spouses through a complete mutual participation in life and action; mutual love and union of spouses to be nurtured and perfected the psychic and bodily surrender of one’s own person; and many other such things.

In the same writings a sense is sometimes attributed to words in the current documents of the Church (as for example, primary, secondary purpose), which does not agree with these words according to the common usage by theologians.

This revolutionary way of thinking and speaking aims to foster errors and uncertainties, to avoid which the Eminent and Very Fathers of this supreme Sacred Congregation, charged with the guarding of faith and morals, in a plenary session on Wednesday, the 29th of March, 1944, when the question was proposed to them: “Whether the opinion of certain writers can be admitted, who either deny that the primary purpose of matrimony is the generation of children and raising offspring, or teach that the secondary purposes are not essentially subordinate to the primary purpose, but are equally first and independent,” have decreed that the answer must be: In the negative. (As found in Henry Denzinger, Enchirdion Symbolorum, thirteenth edition, translated into English by Roy Deferrari and published in 1955 as The Sources of Catholic Dogma–referred to as “Denziger,” by B. Herder Book Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and London, England, No. 2295, pp. 624-625. It should be pointed out in this regard that the Reverend Frank Pavone and Priests for Life are supporters of "natural family planning," which is based on the very personalism condiemned by Pope Pius XI in 1944 and again in 1951. For antidotes, please see Fifty Years After Humane Vita and Life, Death, and Truth: Under Attack by Medicine and Law.

• The conciliar revolutionaries have placed the safety of the body over the sanctification and salvation of souls while deifying the natural environment and allying very formally with one anti-population, pro-abortion, pro-contraception nogoodnik and their organizations dedicated to the propagation of Communist, globalist, statist propaganda that empower the civil state, deprive men of their legitimate liberties, gut industries, heavily tax citizens and make national sovereignty a relic that belongs in the same category as the  Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the immutable Sacred Deposit of Faith. Naturalism and Pantheism, not Catholicism, guide the conciliar ideologues who are rigidly committed to the propagation of junk science while offending God by means of their hideous liturgies, false doctrines, false teaching on moral theology and false pastoral theology that leads men on the path to eternal ruin. (See Jorge's Band of Theological Racketeers Legitimize Paul Ehrlich)

It was on Saturday, October 15, 2022, the Feast of Saint Teresa of Jesus, that it was announced that Jorge Mario Bergoglio appointed a pro-abort atheist ally of the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab to the very misnamed “Pontifical” Academy for Life:

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Pontifical Academy for Life on Saturday announced Pope Francis’ appointment of pro-abortion, World Economic Forum-linked economist Mariana Mazzucato as one of its new “Ordinary Academicians.”

Mazzucato, a self-described “atheist” and professor of economics at University College London (UCL), was first announced as one of the PAL’s new appointees in an October 15 press release which stated, “The Pontifical Academy for Life is organizing the next Assembly, which is set for Feb. 20-22, 2023, on the theme ‘Converging on the Person. Emerging Technologies for the Common Good.'”

According to the release, “This is a topic of great relevance in these years because ethical reflection is unavoidable in the face of a world that is profoundly changing before our eyes … In this sense, it is important that the Pontifical Academy for Life include women and men with expertise in various disciplines and from different backgrounds, for a constant and fruitful interdisciplinary, intercultural and interreligious dialogue.”

“On behalf of all the Academicians, we express heartfelt thanks to Pope Francis for the attention with which he follows our work,” added the release. “And we reaffirm our commitment to bring into the world that Gospel-based prophetic inspiration and vocation in order to promote human life always and everywhere.”

While the PAL says this appointment is part of its larger goal of fostering an “ethical” and “Gospel-based” reflection to “promote human life always and everywhere,” in addition to being a speaker at the WEF – the globalist group behind the socialist, anti-Christian “Great Reset” agenda – Mazzucato is also enthusiastically pro-abortion, in direct contradiction to the infallible and unchangeable teaching of the Catholic Church.

In June, following the United States Supreme Court’s overturning of the landmark 1973 pro-abortion Roe v. Wade decision, Mazzucato tweeted “So good!” in response to a pro-abortion commentator making anti-Christian statements disparaging the Bible while condemning the court’s pro-life ruling.

“I don’t care that you’re a Christian, I don’t care what the Bible says, like I feel like its a clown show like sitting here trying to decipher what your little mythical book has to say about these very real political issues,” said left-wing political commentator Ana Kasparian in the video which Mazzucato threw her support behind.

“I do not believe in Christianity which means that you do not get to dictate the way I live my life based on your religion, I don’t care what the Bible says … I don’t care about your [expletive] religion.”

In 2016, Mazzucato also tweeted favorably about Pope Francis’ support of the so-called “climate change” agenda, saying, “As an atheist, never thought I would love a Pope this much.”

Appointing people who hold positions in direct opposition to the Catholic faith has become a trend in the Vatican during Francis’ pontificate.

Last year, Francis appointed pro-abortion population control activist Jeffrey Sachs to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and in 2017, appointed a pro-abortion Anglican minister to the PAL.

Outside of his appointments of non-Catholics to official positions in Rome, Francis also has a history of appointing heterodox prelates to high-ranking positions of authority within the Church’s clerical hierarchy.

In September, Francis appointed pro-LGBT Portuguese Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça as Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, just months after his June decision to promote a collection of pro-LGBT and anti-Latin Mass cardinals to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. (Pope appoints pro-abortion World Economic Forum speaker to Pontifical Academy for Life.)

Obviously, no true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter would so such a thing, something that is lost on those who continue to believe that the Catholic Church, she who is the spotless, mystical bride of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head, and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, can in any way be responsible for what is taught and done by her counterfeit ape, the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and that there has been in the past such a thing as a heretical pope, something that is an ontological impossibility.

Allying themselves openly with George Soros and his Soros Foundation, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has endorsed "palliative care," which is nothing other than the killing of the sick and whoever else is said to be suffering from a "declining" "quality of life," and encouraged Catholics to give their consent to be vivisected for their vital bodily organs under the aegis of the medical industry's manufactured myth of "brain death" that provided scientific cover for the "legalization" of the sort of barbarous practices to which the Aztecs and other pagans were so devoted. (See  Chronicling the Adversary's Global Takeover of the Healthcare Industry and Attack Dogmatic Truth, Open the Doors Wide for George Soros.)

Mind you, this is just a very partial and incomplete listing of the many ways in which the counterfeit church of conciliarism collectively has defected from the Holy Faith. All that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing is to the put the “finishing touches,” if you will, on all that has gone before him. The Argentine Apostate has used his daily screeds at the Ding Dong School of Apostasy at the Casa Santa Marta and exhortations and encyclicals such as Evangelii Gaudium, November 26, 2013, Laudato Si, May 24, 2015, and Amoris Laetitia, March 16, 2016, to map out a program of theological relativism that has suborned hardened sinners in their lives and wickedness and given aid and comfort to every leftist, statist, collectivist, globalist, pro-abort, pro-perversity and pro-“palliative care” politician and social leader on the face of the earth. The truth is plain for all but the culpably blind to see: conciliarism is a false religion, and it has been such openly since the promulgation of Lumen Gentium on November 21, 1964, after its occult beginnings in the six years leading up to its release.

A believing Catholic has a responsibility to recognize heresy for what it is and to recognize that the Catholic Church can never countenance heresy and that there has never been nor can there ever be a heretical pope as each is an ontological impossibility.

Although one does not remain inert and passive in the face of the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn by chemical and surgical means (and the killing of innocent human beings by means of the medical industry’s manufactured, profit-making myth of “brain death” and human vivisection, the starvation and dehydration of brain-damaged human beings, and “palliative care”/hospice, outright euthanasia, suicide, assisted suicide, physician assisted suicide), a Catholic must recognize that one of the reasons that the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Commandments have been increasingly under attack by medicine and law is that the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Commandments have been under attack by the conciliar revolutionaries, who are themselves the greatest blasphemers par excellence in human history.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Long History of Blasphemy and Countenancing Abominable Sacrileges

It is to state the obvious that the Reverend Frank Pavone’s “excommunication” for “blasphemous communications” is hypocritical given the fact that conciliarism is in se a work of both heresy and blasphemy, starting with the following blasphemous contention that served as the basis of Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned “hermeneutic of continuity”:

1971: "In theses 10-12, the difficult problem of the relationship between language and thought is debated, which in post-conciliar discussions was the immediate departure point of the dispute. 

The identity of the Christian substance as such, the Christian 'thing' was not directly ... censured, but it was pointed out that no formula, no matter how valid and indispensable it may have been in its time, can fully express the thought mentioned in it and declare it unequivocally forever, since language is constantly in movement and the content of its meaning changes." (Fr. Ratzinger: Dogmatic formulas must always change.)

1990: "The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time."

(Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6, cited at Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete)

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.

Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.

These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.  

On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.

Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.

It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.

The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.

The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

Ratzinger/Benedict’s belief that it was “necessary” to “learn” the “truth” about his repackaged and relabeled dogmatic evolutionism means that the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, had kept it hidden from Holy Mother Church until the “Second” Vatican Council and that He did not direct the expression of dogmatic truths by the Fathers of the Church's dogmatic councils, a belief that is as blasphemous as it is heretical.

This is what Pius XII wrote in Humani Generis about how the "new theologians" deny that the true meaning of doctrines may be known and understood with metaphysical certitude?

Let me remind you:

34. It is not surprising that these new opinions endanger the two philosophical sciences which by their very nature are closely connected with the doctrine of faith, that is, theodicy and ethics; they hold that the function of these two sciences is not to prove with certitude anything about God or any other transcendental being, but rather to show that the truths which faith teaches about a personal God and about His precepts, are perfectly consistent with the necessities of life and are therefore to be accepted by all, in order to avoid despair and to attain eternal salvation. All these opinions and affirmations are openly contrary to the documents of Our Predecessors Leo XIII and Pius X, and cannot be reconciled with the decrees of the Vatican Council. It would indeed be unnecessary to deplore these aberrations from the truth, if all, even in the field of philosophy, directed their attention with the proper reverence to the Teaching Authority of the Church, which by divine institution has the mission not only to guard and interpret the deposit of divinely revealed truth, but also to keep watch over the philosophical sciences themselves, in order that Catholic dogmas may suffer no harm because of erroneous opinions. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

“Pope Francis” himself has blasphemed Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Most Blessed Mother as he has distorted and misrepresented the teaching of the work of various saints, including, the Patron Saint of Moral Theologians, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori.

Here is a brief review:

Here are the pertinent passages from Bergoglio’s “homily,” followed by just a bit of commentary and refutation:

In the Gospel, we have just heard the greeting of the angel to Mary: Rejoice, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Rejoice, Mary, rejoice. Upon hearing this greeting, Mary was confused and asked herself what it could mean. She did not fully understand what was happening. But she knew that the angel came from God and so she said yes. Mary is the Mother of Yes. Yes to God’s dream, yes to God’s care, yes to God’s will.

It was a yes that, as we know, was not easy to live. A yes that bestowed no privileges or distinctions. Simeon told her in his prophecy: “a sword will pierce your heart” (Lk 2:35), and indeed it did. That is why we love her so much. We find in her a true Mother, one who helps us to keep faith and hope alive in the midst of complicated situations. Pondering Simeon’s prophecy, we would do well to reflect briefly on three difficult moments in Mary’s life.

1. The first moment: the birth of Jesus. There was no room for them. They had no house, no dwelling to receive her Son. There was no place where she could give birth. They had no family close by; they were alone. The only place available was a stall of animals. Surely she remembered the words of the angel: “Rejoice, Mary, the Lord is with you”. She might well have asked herself: “Where is he now?”.

2. The second moment: the flight to Egypt. They had to leave, to go into exile. Not only was there no room for them, no family nearby, but their lives were also in danger. They had to depart to a foreign land. They were persecuted migrants, on account of the envy and greed of the King. There too she might well have asked: “What happened to all those things promised by the angel?”

3. The third moment: Jesus’ death on the cross. There can be no more difficult experience for a mother than to witness the death of her child. It is heartrending. We see Mary there, at the foot of the cross, like every mother, strong, faithful, staying with her child even to his death, death on the cross. There too she might well have asked: “What happened to all those things promised to me by the angel? Then we see her encouraging and supporting the disciples. (Jorge Blasphemes Our Lady once again.)

The English translation of Bergoglio’s “homily” rendered Saint Gabriel’s words to Our Lady at the Annunciation as “Rejoice, full of grace. The Lord is with you” not “Hail, full of grace,” which he used in the Spanish text that he used in Caacupe, Paraguay, nine days ago (“Alégrate, llena de gracia. El Señor está contigo”). Omitted in both versions, however, are the words that follow Saint Gabriel’s angelic salutation to Our Lady, “blessed are thou amongst women. Here is the text as found in the Latin Vulgate that was translated by Saint Jerome himself: “et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit have gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus.” (Luke 2: 26.)

I do not believe that this omission was accidental as Bergoglio heretically blasphemed Our Lady when he said that the Fiat to the holy will of God (not the “dream” of God as He is omniscient, knowing all things to the end of time) “bestowed no privileges or distinctions” upon her.

Well, let us start with one privilege and distinction given to no other woman: Our Lady became the Mother of God at the moment of the Annunciation. No special privilege or distinction, Jorge? (See Appendix D below for Father Adolf Tanqueray's defense of the Divine Materinity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and its privileges, which Father Tanqueray summarized as follows: "From the dignity of the Divine Maternity proceed all the privileges granted to the Blessed Virgin, her most perfect sanctity, and her supernatural relations with creatures.")

Blasphemer.

Heretic.

Blaspheming heretic.

Obviously, Our Lady had been prepared for the moment of the Annunciation upon which our very salvation rested by her having been preserved from all stain of Original and Actual Sin from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception in the womb of our Good Saint Anne.

Pope Pius IX explained the doctrinal effects of her Immaculate Conception that had clothed her with Perfect Integrity of body and soul when he solemnly defined the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception in Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854:

Mary Compared with Eve

Hence, it is the clear and unanimous opinion of the Fathers that the most glorious Virgin, for whom "he who is mighty has done great things," was resplendent with such an abundance of heavenly gifts, with such a fullness of grace and with such innocence, that she is an unspeakable miracle of God -- indeed, the crown of all miracles and truly the Mother of God; that she approaches as near to God himself as is possible for a created being; and that she is above all men and angels in glory. Hence, to demonstrate the original innocence and sanctity of the Mother of God, not only did they frequently compare her to Eve while yet a virgin, while yet innocence, while yet incorrupt, while not yet deceived by the deadly snares of the most treacherous serpent; but they have also exalted her above Eve with a wonderful variety of expressions. Eve listened to the serpent with lamentable consequences; she fell from original innocence and became his slave. The most Blessed Virgin, on the contrary, ever increased her original gift, and not only never lent an ear to the serpent, but by divinely given power she utterly destroyed the force and dominion of the evil one.

Biblical Figures

Accordingly, the Fathers have never ceased to call the Mother of God the lily among thorns, the land entirely intact, the Virgin undefiled, immaculate, ever blessed, and free from all contagion of sin, she from whom was formed the new Adam, the flawless, brightest, and most beautiful paradise of innocence, immortality and delights planted by God himself and protected against all the snares of the poisonous serpent, the incorruptible wood that the worm of sin had never corrupted, the fountain ever clear and sealed with the power of the Holy Spirit, the most holy temple, the treasure of immortality, the one and only daughter of life -- not of death -- the plant not of anger but of grace, through the singular providence of God growing ever green contrary to the common law, coming as it does from a corrupted and tainted root.

Explicit Affirmation . . .

As if these splendid eulogies and tributes were not sufficient, the Fathers proclaimed with particular and definite statements that when one treats of sin, the holy Virgin Mary is not even to be mentioned; for to her more grace was given than was necessary to conquer sin completely. They also declared that the most glorious Virgin was Reparatrix of the first parents, the giver of life to posterity; that she was chosen before the ages, prepared for himself by the Most High, foretold by God when he said to the serpent, "I will put enmities between you and the woman."-unmistakable evidence that she was crushed the poisonous head of the serpent. And hence they affirmed that the Blessed Virgin was, through grace, entirely free from every stain of sin, and from all corruption of body, soul and mind; that she was always united with God and joined to him by an eternal covenant; that she was never in darkness but always in light; and that, therefore, she was entirely a fit habitation for Christ, not because of the state of her body, but because of her original grace.

. . . Of a Super Eminent Sanctity

To these praises they have added very noble words. Speaking of the conception of the Virgin, they testified that nature yielded to grace and, unable to go on, stood trembling. The Virgin Mother of God would not be conceived by Anna before grace would bear its fruits; it was proper that she be conceived as the first-born, by whom "the first-born of every creature" would be conceived. They testified, too, that the flesh of the Virgin, although derived from Adam, did not contract the stains of Adam, and that on this account the most Blessed Virgin was the tabernacle created by God himself and formed by the Holy Spirit, truly a work in royal purple, adorned and woven with gold, which that new Beseleel made. They affirmed that the same Virgin is, and is deservedly, the first and especial work of God, escaping the fiery arrows the the evil one; that she is beautiful by nature and entirely free from all stain; that at her Immaculate Conception she came into the world all radiant like the dawn. For it was certainly not fitting that this vessel of election should be wounded by the common injuries, since she, differing so much from the others, had only nature in common with them, not sin. In fact, it was quite fitting that, as the Only-Begotten has a Father in heaven, whom the Seraphim extol as thrice holy, so he should have a Mother on earth who would never be without the splendor of holiness.

This doctrine so filled the minds and souls of our ancestors in the faith that a singular and truly marvelous style of speech came into vogue among them. They have frequently addressed the Mother of God as immaculate, as immaculate in every respect; innocent, and verily most innocent; spotless, and entirely spotless; holy and removed from every stain of sin; all pure, all stainless, the very model of purity and innocence; more beautiful than beauty, more lovely than loveliness; more holy than holiness, singularly holy and most pure in soul and body; the one who surpassed all integrity and virginity; the only one who has become the dwelling place of all the graces of the most Holy Spirit. God alone excepted, Mary is more excellent than all, and by nature fair and beautiful, and more holy than the Cherubim and Seraphim. To praise her all the tongues of heaven and earth do not suffice.

Everyone is cognizant that this style of speech has passed almost spontaneously into the books of the most holy liturgy and the Offices of the Church, in which they occur so often and abundantly. In them, the Mother of God is invoked and praised as the one spotless and most beautiful dove, as a rose ever blooming, as perfectly pure, ever immaculate, and ever blessed. She is celebrated as innocence never sullied and as the second Eve who brought forth the Emmanuel.  (Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854.)

What style of speech did Jorge Mario Bergoglio choose to use nine days ago?

Indeed, did Bergoglio's style of speech make it appear as though Our Lady "never lent an ear to the serpent" when he spoke as follows on December 20, 2013?

“The Gospel does not tell us anything: if she spoke a word or not… She was silent, but in her heart, how many things told the Lord! ‘You, that day, this and the other that we read, you had told me that he would be great, you had told me that you would have given him the throne of David, his forefather, that he would have reigned forever and now I see him there!’ Our Lady was human! And perhaps she even had the desire to say: ‘Lies! I was deceived!’ John Paul II would say this, speaking about Our Lady in that moment. But she, with her silence, hid the mystery that she did not understand and with this silence allowed for this mystery to grow and blossom in hope.” (Ever Talkative Apostate: Silence guards one's relationship with God.)

Our Lady did not understand, Jorge?

Blasphemer.

Heretic.

Does Bergoglio's style of speech make it appear that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, the fairest flower of our race, was "never in darkness but always in light"?

Here is a brief list of three of other privileges granted to the august Mother of God, the very fairest flower of the human race who had been chosen by God to be the New Eve and the Ark of the New Covenant, the very Singular Vessel of Honor in whose Virginal and Immaculate Womb His Co-Eternal and Co-Equal Divine Son, the Eternal Word Himself through Whom all things were made, was made Incarnate by the working of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost:

1. Our Lady’s Perpetual Virginity, a doctrine denied both by Gerhard Ludwig Muller, the prefect of the misnamed conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and by the man whose works he has been assigned the task of collecting for publication, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.
2. Our Lady is the Queen of Heaven and of Earth. Not a "special privilege or distinction, Jorge?
3. Our Lady is the Mediatrix of All Graces, something signified by the Miraculous Medal that she herself told Saint Catherine Laboure, a spiritual daughter of Saint Vincent de Paul, the founder of the Congregation of the Mission whose feast was commemorated yesterday, Sunday, June 19, 2015, the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, and by the fact that the unreformed Roman Missal permits a commemoration of Our Lady under this title on May 31, which is the Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
4. Our Lady is the Co-Redemptrix, something that Pope Leo XIII taught in Iucunda Semper Expectatione, September 8,1894:

The recourse we have to Mary in prayer follows upon the office she continuously fills by the side of the throne of God as Mediatrix of Divine grace; being by worthiness and by merit most acceptable to Him, and, therefore, surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven. Now, this merciful office of hers, perhaps, appears in no other form of prayer so manifestly as it does in the Rosary. For in the Rosary all the part that Mary took as our co-Redemptress comes to us, as it were, set forth, and in such wise as though the facts were even then taking place; and this with much profit to our piety, whether in the contemplation of the succeeding sacred mysteries, or in the prayers which we speak and repeat with the lips. First come the Joyful Mysteries. The Eternal Son of God stoops to mankind, putting on its nature; but with the assent of Mary, who conceives Him by the Holy Ghost. Then St. John the Baptist, by a singular privilege, is sanctified in his mother's womb and favored with special graces that he might prepare the way of the Lord; and this comes to pass by the greeting of Mary who had been inspired to visit her cousin. At last the expected of nations comes to light, Christ the Savior. The Virgin bears Him. And when the Shepherds and the wise men, first-fruits of the Christian faith, come with longing to His cradle, they find there the young Child, with Mary, His Mother. Then, that He might before men offer Himself as a victim to His Heavenly Father, He desires to be taken to the Temple; and by the hands of Mary He is there presented to the Lord. It is Mary who, in the mysterious losing of her Son, seeks Him sorrowing, and finds Him again with joy. And the same truth is told again in the sorrowful mysteries.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is in an agony; in the judgment-hall, where He is scourged, crowned with thorns, condemned to death, not there do we find Mary. But she knew beforehand all these agonies; she knew and saw them. When she professed herself the handmaid of the Lord for the mother's office, and when, at the foot of the altar, she offered up her whole self with her Child Jesus -- then and thereafter she took her part in the laborious expiation made by her Son for the sins of the world. It is certain, therefore, that she suffered in the very depths of her soul with His most bitter sufferings and with His torments. Moreover, it was before the eyes of Mary that was to be finished the Divine Sacrifice for which she had borne and brought up the Victim. As we contemplate Him in the last and most piteous of those Mysteries, there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother, who, in a miracle of charity, so that she might receive us as her sons, offered generously to Divine Justice her own Son, and died in her heart with Him, stabbed with the sword of sorrow. (Pope Leo XII, Iucnda Semper Expectatione, September 8, 1894.)

This is, of course, all quite foreign to the naturalistic and Modernist mind of the blaspheming heretic named Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

No special privileges?

Well, anyone who wants to have the heavenly assistance of the Mother God nunc, et in hora mortis ought to rise immediately to defend her honor, not to exculpate the hideous blaspheming heretic from Argentina.

Additionally, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has praised numerous blasphemous works of art, has said and done nothing while Catholic churches, including cathedrals, in conciliar captivity have hosted scandalous celebrations of sodomy, up to and including “transgenderism,” which Bergoglio himself has reaffirmed at least by implication in his meetings with those who have mutilated their bodies to do the biologically impossible, namely, to “change” their gender, and has said the following about Saint Alphonsus de Liguori:

One hundred and fifty years ago, on 23 March 1871, Pius IX proclaimed Saint Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori Doctor of the Church.

The Bull of proclamation of Saint Alphonsus as Doctor illustrates the specific nature of his moral and spiritual offering, known how to show “the sure way in the tangle of contrasting opinions of rigourism and laxity” [1].

One hundred and fifty years after this joyous event, the message of Saint Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori, patron of confessors and moralists, and model for the whole of the outbound missionary Church, still vigorously indicates the high road for bringing consciences to the welcoming face of the Father, since “the salvation which God offers us is the work of his mercy” (EG 112).

Listening to reality

The Alphonsian theological approach was born from listening to and accepting the weaknesses of the men and women who were most abandoned spiritually. The Holy Doctor, formed according to a rigourist moral mentality, converted to “benignity” through listening to reality. (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Propaganda Adddress to Redemptorists in Conciliar Captivity, March 23, 2021.)

Interjection Number One:

This is all just blasphemous nonsense.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori preached with clarity about the existence of objective truths from the pulpit while treating with compassion truly repentant sinners in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance whose consciences had been singed by his sermons and who had been edified by our Saint’s austere live and zeal for souls. There is no conflict for a bishop or a priest to be firm in his preaching while extending the healing balm in the confessional with gratitude that Our Lady’s graces had brought souls made by Mortal Sin to a rebirth of life by means of the absolution provided to those who confess their sins sincerely and demonstrate an ardent desire to amend their lives.

Furthermore, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s statement that Saint Alphonsus de Liguori had a “conversion” from “rigorism” to “benignity” is disproved by Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B. in his panegyric on our Saint’s feast day, August 2. Saint Alphonsus de Liguori was a firm opponent of Jansenism, a movement that was based upon a nonexistent “laxity” and meant to restrict the channels of salvation open to sinners. Nevertheless, however, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori preached moral truths clearly as explained the realities of hell and the simple fact that sinners must resolve to reform their lives sooner rather than later, asking “Who has promised you tomorrow.”

Herewith is part of Dom Prosper Gueranger’s panegyric as contained in his The Liturgical Year:

To this great Saint, great both in works and in doctrine, are directly applied these words of the Holy Ghost: they that instruct many to justice shall shine as stars for all eternity. At the time he appeared, an odious sect was denying the mercy and the sweetness of our heavenly Father; it triumphed in the practical conduct of even those who were shocked by its Calvinistic theories. Under pretext of a reaction against an imaginary school of laxity, and denouncing with much ado some erroneous propositions made by obscure persons, the new Pharisees had set themselves up as zealous for the law. Stretching the commandments, and exaggerating the sanction, they loaded the conscience with the same unbearable burdens which the Man-God reproached the ancient Pharisees with laying on the shoulders of men; but the cry of alarm they had raised in the name of endangered morals had nonetheless deceived the simple, and ended by misleading even the best. Thanks to the show of austerity displayed by its adherents, Jansenism, so clever in veiling its teachings, had too well succeeded in its designs of forcing itself upon the Church in spite of the Church. Unsuspecting allies within the holy city gave up to its mercy the sources of salvation. Soon in too many places, the sacred Keys were used but to open hell; the Holy Table, spread fthe preservation and increase of life in all, became accessible only to the perfect; and these latter were esteemed such, according as, by a strange reversion of the Apostle’s words, they subjected the spirit of adoption of sons to the spirit of servitude and fear. As to the faithful who did not rise to the height of this new asceticism, “finding in the tribunal of penance, instead of fathers and physicians, only exactors and executioners,” they had but to choose between despair and indifference. Everywhere legislatures and parliaments lent a hand to the so-called reformers, without heeding the flood of odious unbelief that was rising around them, without seeing the gathering storm clouds.

Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites: because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men, for you yourselves do not enter in; and those that are going in, you suffer not to enter … Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites: because you go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him the child of hell twofold more than yourselves. Not of your conventicles was it said that the sons of Wisdom are the Church of the just, for it was added: Their generation is obedience and love. Not of the fear which you preached did the Psalmist sing: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom; for even under the law of Sinai the Holy Spirit said: Ye that fear the Lord, believe him: and your reward shall not be made void. Ye that fear the Lord, hope in him: and mercy shall come to you for your delight. Ye that fear the Lord, love him: and your hearts shall be enlightened. Every deviation, whether towards rigor or weakness, offends the rectitude of justice; but, especially since Bethlehem and Calvary, no sin so wounds the divine Heart as distrust; no fault is unpardonable except in the despair of a Judas, saying like Cain: My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon.

Who then, in the somber quietism into which the teachers then in vogue had led even the strongest minds, could find once more the key of knowledge? But Wisdom, says the Holy Ghost, kept in her treasures the signification of discipline. Just as in other times she had raised up new avengers for every dogma that had been attacked: so now, against a heresy which, in spite of the speculative pretensions of its beginning, had only in its moral bearing any sort of duration, she brought forth Alphonsus Liguori as the avenger of the violated law and the Doctor by excellence of Christian morality. A stranger alike to fatal rigorism and baneful indulgence, he knew how to restore to the justices of their Lord their rectitude, and at the same time their power of rejoicing hearts, to his commandments their luminous brightness, whereby they are justified in themselves, to his testimonies the purity which attracts souls and faithfully guides the simple and the little ones from the beginnings of Wisdom to its summits. It was not only in the sphere of casuistry that Alphonsus succeeded, in his Moral Theology, in counteracting the poison which threatened to infect the whole Christian life. While on the one hand he never left unanswered any attack made at the time against revealed truth, his ascetic and mystical works brought back piety to its traditional sources, the frequentation of the Sacraments, and the love of our Lord and his Blessed Mother. The Sacred Congregation of Rites, after examining in the name of the Holy See the works of our Saint, and declaring nothing deserving of censure was to be found therein, arranged his innumerable writings under forty separate titles. Alphonsus, however, resolved only late in life to give to the public, through the press, the lights which flooded his soul; his first work, the golden book of Visits to the Most Holy Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin, did not appear till the author was nearly fifty years of age. Though God prolonged his life beyond the usual limits, he spared him neither the double burden of the episcopate and the government of the Congregation he had founded, nor the most painful infirmities, nor still more grievous moral sufferings.

“I have not hid thy justice within my heart: I have declared thy truth and thy salvation.” Thus sings the Church in thy name today, in gratitude for the great service thou didst render her in the days of sinners, when godliness seemed to be lost. Exposed to the attacks of an extravagant pharisaism, and watched by a skeptical and mocking philosophy, even the good wavered as to which was the way of the Lord. When the moralists of the day could be forge letters for consciences, the enemy had a good chance of crying: Let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke from us. The ancient wisdom revered by their fathers, now that it was compromised by these foolish teachers, seemed but a ruined edifice to people eager for emancipation. In this unprecedented extremity, thou, O Alphonsus, wast the prudent man whom the Church needed, whose mouth uttered words to strengthen men’s hearts. (Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, August 2, Feast of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori.)

As is always the case, of course, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s blasphemous misrepresentation of the life and work of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori was an effort to claim that Holy Mother Church’s Doctor of Moral Theology was a veritable prophet preparing the way for Bergoglio’s own “smell of the sheep” moral relativism that has served as the foundation of entire career as a lay Jesuit revolutionary, most notably in Amoris Laetitia, March 19, 2016.

Although it is sickening to have to do so, I will return to Bergoglio’s transparent effort to portray himself as the “pope” who has “fulfilled” the “missionary vision” to which he claimed that Saint Alphonsus de Liguori was “converted” over the case of his life as a priest, founder, and bishop:

The missionary experience in the existential peripheries of his time, the search for those far away and listening to confessions, the founding and guidance of the nascent Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, and in addition the responsibilities as bishop of a particular Church, led him to become a father and maser of mercy, certain that “God’s paradise is the heart of man” [2].

The gradual conversion towards a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry, capable of closeness to the people, of being able to accompany their steps, to share in their real life even in the midst of great limits and challenges, drove Alphonsus to review, not without effort, even the theological and juridical grounding he had received in the years of his formation; initially marked by a certain rigour, it then turned into a merciful, dynamic approach, an evangelising dynamism able to act by attraction.

In theological disputes, preferring reason to authority, he did not stop at the theoretical formulation of principles, but rather allowed himself to be interrogated by life itself. Advocate of the least, the frail and those discarded by the society of his time, he defended the rights of all, especially the most abandoned and the poor. This approach led him to the final decision to place himself at the service of consciences that sought, even amid a thousand difficulties, the right thing to do, faithful to God’s call to holiness.

Saint Alphonsus, then, was neither lax nor strict. He was a realist in the true Christian sense, because he understood clearly that “at the very heart of the Gospel is life in community and engagement with others” (EG 177). (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Propaganda Adddress to Redemptorists in Conciliar Captivity, March 23, 2021.)

Interjection Number Two:

This is all a complete lie. This is as delusional as anything that comes out of the mouths of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Jennifer Psaki, Charles Schumer, Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi, or Robert Manfred. (I omitted any reference to Kamala Harris as she is so busy running the government, it would appear, as to have any time to speak publicly). Indeed, Bergoglio’s effort to claim that Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri as a forerunner of his own moral relativism is nothing other than the delusion of a man who enables sin, a man who is steeped in the sins of heresy, apostasy, sacrilege, and ceaseless blasphemies against Our Lord, Our Lady, and the Saints, and it is very interesting that he quotes not one word from Saint Alphonsus de Liguori and, instead, draws upon his own Evangelii Gaudium, November 25, 2013

This is what Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri had to say about the delusions of sinners:

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. ("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.)

This is not exactly the way that “Father” Jorge Mario Bergoglio or "Bishop" Jorge Mario Bergoglio or “Archbishop” Jorge Mario Bergoglio or “Cardinal” Jorge Mario Bergoglio” or “Pope Francis” has ever spoken or written

No matter the Reverend Frank Pavone’s sins against the Second Commandment, which must not be minimized at all, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the greatest blasphemer alive today, and he suborns blasphemy on the part of his fellow Jacobin/Bolshevik revolutionaries with impunity. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a hypocrite, and he is one who, being diabolically inspired, loves to be a source of agitation n the souls of “pro-life” Catholics who are prone to support a man he truly hates, former President Donald John Trump.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Hatred of Donald John Trump and the Clergy Who Support Him

Make no mistake about it, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s “excommunication” of Reverend Frank Pavone is a Christmas gift to Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi, Richard Durbin, Patricia Murray, Susan Collins, Kathleen Hochul, Gavin Newsom, Michelle Lujan Grisham, Edward Markey, and every other pro-abortion, pro-perversity politician in the United States of America and the rest of the world, and in this regard it should be remembered that it was just about sixteen months into his antipapal presidency that he lifted the suspension of the unrepentant Marxist named Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, who was a major figure in the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua forty-three years ago:

MARYKNOLL, N.Y., Aug. 1, 2014 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Vatican has issued a decree that lifts its 29-year suspension on Father Miguel F. d'Escoto Brockmann, a Maryknoll priest. The Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers is the mission society of the U.S. Catholic Church.

Father d'Escoto, 81, was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on June 10, 1961. He helped found Orbis Books, the theological publication division of Maryknoll, and he was an official with the World Council of Churches. During the 1970s, Father d'Escoto became engaged in politics in Nicaragua. He joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a political party that overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle and established a revolutionary government.

For his political actions, involvement in the Sandinista government and failing to resign from a political office (Nicaragua foreign minister) held in violation of his ministry, Father d'Escoto was suspended from his priestly duties by the Vatican.

In the notification from the Vatican dated August 1, 2014, "The Holy Father has given His benevolent assent that Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann be absolved from the canonical censure inflicted upon him, and entrusts him to the Superior General of the Institute [Maryknoll] for the purpose of accompanying him in the process of reintegration into the Ministerial Priesthood."

The lifting of the suspension allows Father d'Escoto to resume his priestly duties.

Father d'Escoto has remained a member of the Maryknoll Society with residence in Nicaragua. From September 2008 until September 2009, he presided over the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly as its president. (Vatican Lifts Suspension on US Missionary Priest.) 

This completely sanitized piece of propaganda, issued by the Maryknolls themselves, overlooks Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman's bloody participation in the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, his active support and reliance for financial and military assistance from the mass murdering Fidel Castro and his more recent career as an official at the pro-abortion, pro-perversity World Council of Churches and his praise for supporters of abortion and perversity while he was the President of the United Nations General Assembly from 2008 to 2009. At least Daniel Ortega, who maintained close ties during his current term in office of President of Nicaragua to the late Venezulean dictator Hugo Chavez prior to the latter's death on March 5, 2013, refuses to support baby-killing under cover of the civil law. Miguel d'Escoto Brockman is unrepentant in his support of the chemical and surgical assassination of the innocent preborn in their mothers' wombs.

Leftists of all stripes not only get a free pass from “Pope Francis” but receive his warm embrace whenever he meets them. Antipope Bergoglio has gone out of his way to reaffirm both Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi after the latter was told by her “archbishop,” Salvatore Cordileone, that she was banned from receiving what purports to be Holy Communion at the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination (see Not Exactly from the Excommunication Scene in Becket, Jorge "Claps Back" at Salvatore Cordileone and Stands Up for Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi and Her Pro-Abort Ilk, and  Georgie "The Chin" Bergoglio Strikes Again on Behalf of the Pro-Aborts). He pulled the rug out from Cordileone by meeting with Pelosi shortly after Cordileone’s disciplinary action was made known, and his “excommunication” of Frank Pavone is meant, I believe, to smoke out others within his hierarchy” in the United States of America who are “pro-life” and whom he believes are closeted supporters of Donald John Trump.

Furthermore, Jorge Mario Bergoglio knows full well that his Christmas gift to the likes of Biden and Pelosi is also a “gift” of Christmas coal in the stockings of “conservative” Catholics within the conciliar structures, and he is willing to run the risk of open schism within his false religious sect to rid himself of “Pharisees” and “Pelagians” once and for all. He knows exactly what he is doing, and, paraphrasing one of the fictional Maxwell Smart’s stock lines, is enjoying every minute of it.

Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., on the Nature of the Papacy and Papal Infallibility

Many past commentaries on this site have cited the writing of the late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton about the necessity of assenting to everything that a pope causes to be inserted into his Acta Apostolicae Sedis. For purposes of this commentary, however, I would like to call upon the writing of Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., a legendary giant of a German missionary to the United States of America in the Nineteenth Century who preached throughout the Midwest and who wrote many books in defense of the Holy Faith, including one entitled Protestantism and Infidelity.

Father Weninger wrote a book entitled On The Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope When Teaching the Faithful, and On His Relation to a General Council after the doctrine of Papal Infallibility had been solemnly proclaimed by Pope Pius IX and the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council that document how the doctrine was always believed and taught prior to its proclamation while also explaining the meaning of the doctrine in that no one can dissent from any teaching on a true pope on Faith and Morals even when not solemnly defined:

In a work, which owes its authorship to Moehler, and bears the title “Athanasius the Great, and the Church” of his we find the following pertinent reflection: “As the Pope succeeds to the authority of Peter, and thus becomes the head, with which all the members form an organic whole, the several Churches should be guided, in matters of faith, by his controlling care. When the Arian heresy devastated the fairest fields of the Church, and, with the malignity inspired by hatred, aimed its missiles, in a special manner, against Athanasius, all the Catholics, no less than this noble champion of the truth, instinctively looked toward the Holy See for support. Thence resulted a marvelous union of forces. Those who advocated the divinity of the invisible head, appealed to the visible head, and, when assured of his favor and countenance, they cheerfully returned to their homes to offer the remainder of their lives as a holocaust on the altar of the faith. Thus the history of Athanasius is like an epitome of the history of the Primacy, at that epoch. The record of his fortunes and his devotion is not a mere episode, a bare recital of isolated facts, but an abridgment of the most momentous events, which are felt, in their effects, by the remotest posterity.” (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., On The Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope When Teaching the Faithful, and On His Relation to a General Council, Third Edition. New York: Sadlier and Company, 1890; Cincinnati, Ohio: John P. Walsh, 1890.)

Interjection Number One:

This passage alone speaks volumes about the necessity of accepting a true  and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter as the infallibly authoritative teacher of the Catholic Faith and the need to make sacrifices for the Faith, a concept that is reject as “foolish” by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is not a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter as he hath not the Catholic Faith, which, as Saint Robert Bellarmine taught, is either had in its entirety, or it is not held at all.”

Returning now to the text of Father Weninger’s book:

The thought so happily expressed by this learned author, is well exemplified in our own times, when again the eyes of all Catholics instinctively look upon Pius IX, who, by his energy, is daily strengthening the bonds of Catholic unity.

In a letter of St. Basil's (f378), forwarded by the Deacon Sabinus to Pope St. Damasus, we read the following: “To your Holiness it is given to distinguish the adulterated and spurious from the pure and orthodox, and to teach, without alteration, the faith of our forefathers.” The holy Doctor then subjoins: “We pray and conjure your Holiness to send letters and legates to your children in the Orient, that we may be confirmed in the faith, if we have followed the path of truth, or be reproved, if we have gone astray. There is no one but your Holiness, to whom we can turn for help.”  Pietati tuce donatum est a Domino , scilicet ut, quod adulterinum est, a legitimo et puro discernas et Jidem patrum sine ulla subtractione prcedices. (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., On The Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope When Teaching the Faithful, and On His Relation to a General Council, Third Edition. New York: Sadlier and Company, 1890; Cincinnati, Ohio: John P. Walsh, 1890.)

Interjection Number Two:

A true pope is able to distinguish “the adulterated and spurious from the pure and orthodox, and teach, without alteration, the faith of our forefathers.”

Is this what the conciliar “popes” have done?

Of course not, and this is proof alone that these men have been antipopes of the highest order.

All right?

Back to Father Weninger:

Optatus, the learned and well-known Bishop of Melevi (f390), is the author of a book, entitled “Contra Parmenianum ,” in which he invokes, against some erratic spirits of his day, the authority of the Roman See, established by St. Peter. “Thou knowest,” remarks he, “and thou darest not deny, that at Rome, Peter established the Episcopal Chair, which he was the first to occupy, thus securing to all the blessings of perfect unity.” “In qua una Cathedra Uni ab omnibus servaretur.”

The Donatists themselves, conscious of the prevailing belief, which regarded Rome as the infallible teacher of Christian nations, seeking to give to their errors the semblance of orthodoxy, maintained, at the center of the Christian world, a bishop of their own choosing, to make the faithful of Africa believe that Rome tolerated their errors, and remained in communion with them.

The views, entertained by St. Ambrose (f 397), on the prerogative of the Roman See, are manifest, as well from his verbal declarations, as from his personal relations with the Sovereign Pontiff. In a letter, which he, in concert with other Bishops, addressed to Pope Siricius, the saintly Prelate gives utterance to the following sentiment: “In the pastorals of your Holiness, we recognize the care of the shepherd, who watches the entrance of the sheep-fold; who protects from harm the flock intrusted to him by our Lord; who, in fine, deserves to be followed and obeyed by all. As you well know the tender lambkins of the Lord, you keep guard against the wolves, and like a vigilant shepherd, prevent them from dispersing the fold.” “Dignus, quern oven Domini audiant et sequantur; et ideo, quia nosti oviculas Christi, lupos deprehendis et occurris quasi providus pastor, ne inti morsibus perjidia ma feralique ululatu dominicum ovile dispergant. But the unity of the fold, here referred to, demands above all unity of faith. (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., On The Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope When Teaching the Faithful, and On His Relation to a General Council, Third Edition. New York: Sadlier and Company, 1890; Cincinnati, Ohio: John P. Walsh, 1890.)

Interjection Number Three:

Seriously, my friends, does anyone who has an ounce of rationality believe that the conciliar “popes” have guarded the “tender lambkins of” Our Lord safe “against the wolves,” or have they not been wolves themselves who have raised wolves of their own repulsive skins to blaspheme Our Lord and Our Lady and to disparage as “foolish” the teachings of the true Church?

We now to return to Father Francis Weninger on Papal Infalliblity:

In compliance with an ordinance from the Pope, the holy Doctor forbade the troublesome Jovinians the Episcopal city of Milan.

In a funeral oration on his brother Satyrus, he eulogized the zeal of the deceased in the cause of the Roman Church, and alluded, with undisguised satisfaction, to his custom of inquiring from all, whom he chanced to meet, whether they were in communion with the See of Peter. If Satyrus discovered that they had failed in this respect, he rebuked them, because he considered that thereby they had cut themselves loose from the communion of the whole Church.

In his forty-seventh sermon, the Saint advanced the principle: “Where Peter is, there is the Church.” “Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia.” If this axiom is once admitted, it is plain that Peter and his successors, when acting as vicars of Christ, can never err in doctrinal decisions. If they could, the Church herself would be in error. But this supposition destroys the very idea of the church. Therefore, according to St. Ambrose, Peter and his successors can never lapse into error. (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., On The Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope When Teaching the Faithful, and On His Relation to a General Council, Third Edition. New York: Sadlier and Company, 1890; Cincinnati, Ohio: John P. Walsh, 1890.)

Interjection Number Four:

It has been the conciliar “popes” themselves, as part of a synthetic religion that claims to be but is not the Catholic Church, who have severed themselves from communion with the See of Peter as where the conciliar “popes” have been and continue to be, a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter is not to be found.

The conciliar “popes” have taught error, but a true pope “can never err in doctrinal decisions,” an ontological impossibility that would make liar out of Our Lord Himself, Who promised that the gates of hell would never prevail against His Holy Church, the Catholic Church, the one and only true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

We return to Father Weninger once again:

A passage in the eleventh sermon of the Holy Bishop bears upon the same point: “Peter is the immovable basis, which supports the entire superstructure of Christianity.” “Petrus, saxum immobile, totius operis Christiani compagem molemque continet.” The Church of Rome, he exclaims, may have sometimes been tempted, but it has never been altered. “Aliquan dotentata, mutata nunquam.” . . . .

In his treatise against Ruffinus, he bursts forth into this brief profession of faith: The Roman Church can not countenance error, though an angel should come to teach it.” (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., On The Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope When Teaching the Faithful, and On His Relation to a General Council, Third Edition. New York: Sadlier and Company, 1890; Cincinnati, Ohio: John P. Walsh, 1890.)

Interjection Number Five:

The Catholic Church is the spotless, virginal mystical bride of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head, and Mystical Bridegroom. It is impossible for her to teach error and it impossible for a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter to lead her into error, a truth that has been repeated throughout the course of her history:

These firings, therefore, with all diligence and care having been formulated by us, we define that it be permitted to no one to bring forward, or to write, or to compose, or to think, or to teach a different faith. Whosoever shall presume to compose a different faith, or to propose, or teach, or hand to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth, from the Gentiles or Jews, or from any heresy, any different Creed; or to introduce a new voice or invention of speech to subvert these things which now have been determined by us, all these, if they be Bishops or clerics let them be deposed, the Bishops from the Episcopate, the clerics from the clergy; but if they be monks or laymen: let them be anathematized. (Constantinople III).

These and many other serious things, which at present would take too long to list, but which you know well, cause Our intense grief. It is not enough for Us to deplore these innumerable evils unless We strive to uproot them. We take refuge in your faith and call upon your concern for the salvation of the Catholic flock. Your singular prudence and diligent spirit give Us courage and console Us, afflicted as We are with so many trials. We must raise Our voice and attempt all things lest a wild boar from the woods should destroy the vineyard or wolves kill the flock. It is Our duty to lead the flock only to the food which is healthful. In these evil and dangerous times, the shepherds must never neglect their duty; they must never be so overcome by fear that they abandon the sheep. Let them never neglect the flock and become sluggish from idleness and apathy. Therefore, united in spirit, let us promote our common cause, or more truly the cause of God; let our vigilance be one and our effort united against the common enemies.

Indeed you will accomplish this perfectly if, as the duty of your office demands, you attend to yourselves and to doctrine and meditate on these words: "the universal Church is affected by any and every novelty" and the admonition of Pope Agatho: "nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished; nothing changed; nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning." Therefore may the unity which is built upon the See of Peter as on a sure foundation stand firm. May it be for all a wall and a security, a safe port, and a treasury of countless blessings. To check the audacity of those who attempt to infringe upon the rights of this Holy See or to sever the union of the churches with the See of Peter, instill in your people a zealous confidence in the papacy and sincere veneration for it. As St. Cyprian wrote: "He who abandons the See of Peter on which the Church was founded, falsely believes himself to be a part of the Church . . . .

But for the other painful causes We are concerned about, you should recall that certain societies and assemblages seem to draw up a battle line together with the followers of every false religion and cult. They feign piety for religion; but they are driven by a passion for promotingnovelties and sedition everywhere. They preach liberty of every sort; they stir up disturbances in sacred and civil affairs, and pluck authority to pieces.(Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

7. It is with no less deceit, venerable brothers, that other enemies of divine revelation, with reckless and sacrilegious effrontery, want to import the doctrine of human progress into the Catholic religion. They extol it with the highest praise, as if religion itself were not of God but the work of men, or a philosophical discovery which can be perfected by human means. The charge which Tertullian justly made against the philosophers of his own time "who brought forward a Stoic and a Platonic and a Dialectical Christianity" can very aptly apply to those men who rave so pitiably. Our holy religion was not invented by human reason, but was most mercifully revealed by God; therefore, one can quite easily understand that religion itself acquires all its power from the authority of God who made the revelation, and that it can never be arrived at or perfected by human reason. In order not to be deceived and go astray in a matter of such great importance, human reason should indeed carefully investigate the fact of divine revelation. Having done this, one would be definitely convinced that God has spoken and therefore would show Him rational obedience, as the Apostle very wisely teaches. For who can possibly not know that all faith should be given to the words of God and that it is in the fullest agreement with reason itself to accept and strongly support doctrines which it has determined to have been revealed by God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived? (Pope Pius IX, Qui Pluribus, November 9, 1846.)

As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth. (Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834.)

In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which  it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

There are some, indeed, who recognize and affirm that Protestantism, as they call it, has rejected, with a great lack of consideration, certain articles of faith and some external ceremonies, which are, in fact, pleasing and useful, and which the Roman Church still retains. They soon, however, go on to say that that Church also has erred, and corrupted the original religion by adding and proposing for belief certain doctrines which are not only alien to the Gospel, but even repugnant to it. Among the chief of these they number that which concerns the primacy of jurisdiction, which was granted to Peter and to his successors in the See of Rome. Among them there indeed are some, though few, who grant to the Roman Pontiff a primacy of honor or even a certain jurisdiction or power, but this, however, they consider not to arise from the divine law but from the consent of the faithful. Others again, even go so far as to wish the Pontiff Himself to preside over their motley, so to say, assemblies. But, all the same, although many non-Catholics may be found who loudly preach fraternal communion in Christ Jesus, yet you will find none at all to whom it ever occurs to submit to and obey the Vicar of Jesus Christ either in His capacity as a teacher or as a governor. Meanwhile they affirm that they would willingly treat with the Church of Rome, but on equal terms, that is as equals with an equal: but even if they could so act. it does not seem open to doubt that any pact into which they might enter would not compel them to turn from those opinions which are still the reason why they err and stray from the one fold of Christ. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.) 

For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.) 

There are some, indeed, who recognize and affirm that Protestantism, as they call it, has rejected, with a great lack of consideration, certain articles of faith and some external ceremonies, which are, in fact, pleasing and useful, and which the Roman Church still retains. They soon, however, go on to say that that Church also has erred, and corrupted the original religion by adding and proposing for belief certain doctrines which are not only alien to the Gospel, but even repugnant to it. Among the chief of these they number that which concerns the primacy of jurisdiction, which was granted to Peter and to his successors in the See of Rome. Among them there indeed are some, though few, who grant to the Roman Pontiff a primacy of honor or even a certain jurisdiction or power, but this, however, they consider not to arise from the divine law but from the consent of the faithful. Others again, even go so far as to wish the Pontiff Himself to preside over their motley, so to say, assemblies. But, all the same, although many non-Catholics may be found who loudly preach fraternal communion in Christ Jesus, yet you will find none at all to whom it ever occurs to submit to and obey the Vicar of Jesus Christ either in His capacity as a teacher or as a governor. Meanwhile they affirm that they would willingly treat with the Church of Rome, but on equal terms, that is as equals with an equal: but even if they could so act. it does not seem open to doubt that any pact into which they might enter would not compel them to turn from those opinions which are still the reason why they err and stray from the one fold of Christ. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

There can be no doubt in anything pertaining to the Catholic Faith as Pope Pius XI has assured us that the teaching authority of Holy Mother Church 'was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men."

Indeed, Pope Pius XI also reminded us that the Catholic Church enjoys a perpetual immunity from error and heresy:

Not least among the blessings which have resulted from the public and legitimate honor paid to the Blessed Virgin and the saints is the perfect and perpetual immunity of the Church from error and heresy. (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, December 11, 1925.)

No, I am not yet through with quoting from Father Weninger’s book on Papal Infallibility:

In his 157th letter he remarks: “The Catholic faith derives so much strength and support from the words of the Apostolic See, that it is criminal to entertain any doubts concerning it.” “In verbis sedis Apostolicce tarn antiqua aique fundala, certa et clara est Catholica jides, ut nefas sit de ilia dubitare.” (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., On The Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope When Teaching the Faithful, and On His Relation to a General Council, Third Edition. New York: Sadlier and Company, 1890; Cincinnati, Ohio: John P. Walsh, 1890.)

Final Interjection:

Yes, it is completely criminal to entertain any doubts concerning the teaching of the Apostolic See.

Why does anyone persist in the mistaken Gallicanist belief that one can do so?

The late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, who was the much-respected theologian and editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review between 1943 and 1963, reached the conclusion that everything a true pope causes to be placed into his Acta Apostolicae Sedis is binding, thus closing all discussion upon a given subject. This means there no Catholic is free to “dissent” or to question publicly any point of what a true pope inserts into his Acta:

The text of the Humani generis itself supplies us with a minimum answer.  This is found in the sentence we have already quoted: "And if, in their 'Acta,' the Supreme Pontiffs take care to render a decision on a point that has hitherto been controverted, it is obvious to all that this point, according to the mind and will of these same Pontiffs, can no longer be regarded as a question theologians may freely debate among themselves."

Theologians legitimately discuss and dispute among themselves doctrinal questions which the authoritative magisterium of the Catholic Church has not as yet resolved.  Once that magisterium has expressed a decision and communicated that decision to the Church universal, the first and the most obvious result of its declaration must be the cessation of debate on the point it has decided.  A man definitely is not acting and could not act as a theologian, as a teacher of Catholic truth, by disputing against a decision made by the competent doctrinal authority of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth.

Thus, according to the clear teaching of the Humani generis, it is morally wrong for any individual subject to the Roman Pontiff to defend a thesis contradicting a teaching which the Pope, in his "Acta," has set forth as a part of Catholic doctrine.  It is, in other words, wrong to attack a teaching which, in a genuine doctrinal decision, the Sovereign Pontiff has taught officially as the visible head of the universal Church.  This holds true always an everywhere, even in those cases in which the Pope, in making his decision, did not exercise the plenitude of his apostolic teaching power by making an infallible doctrinal definition.

The Humani generis must not be taken to imply that a Catholic theologian has completed his obligation with respect to an authoritative doctrinal decision made by the Holy Father and presented in his published "Acta" when he has merely refrained from arguing or debating against it.  TheHumani generis reminded its readers that "this sacred magisterium ought to be the immediate and universal norm of truth for any theologian in matters of faith and morals."[9]  Furthermore, it insisted that the faithful are obligated to shun errors which more or less approach heresy, and "to follow the constitutions and decrees by which evil opinions of this sort have been proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See."[10]  In other words, the Humani generis claimed the same internal assent for declarations of the magisterium on matters of faith and morals which previous documents of the Holy See had stressed.

We may well ask why the Humani generis went to the trouble of mentioning something as fundamental and rudimentary as the duty of abstaining from further debate on a point where the Roman Pontiff has already issued a doctrinal decision, and has communicated that decision to the Church universal by publishing it in his "Acta."  The reason is to be found in the context of the encyclical itself.  The Holy Father has told us something of the existing situation which called for the issuance of the "Humani generis."  This information is contained in the text of that document.  The following two sentences show us the sort of condition the Humani generis was written to meet and to remedy:

"And although this sacred magisterium ought to be the immediate and universal norm of truth on matters of faith and morals for any theologian, as the agency to which Christ the Lord has entrusted the entire deposit of faith - that is, the Sacred Scriptures and divine Tradition - to be guarded and defended and explained, still, the duty by which the faithful are obligated also to shun those errors which approach more or less to heresy, and therefore 'to follow the constitutions and decrees by which evil opinions of this sort have been proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See,' is sometimes ignored as if it did not exist.  What is said in encyclical letters of the Roman Pontiffs about the nature and constitution of the Church is habitually and deliberately neglected by some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they claim to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks."[11]

Six years ago, then, Pope Pius XII was faced with a situation in which some of the men who were privileged and obligated to teach the truths of sacred theology had perverted their position and their influence and had deliberately flouted the teachings of the Holy See about the nature and the constitution of the Catholic Church.  And, when he declared that it is wrong to debate a point already decided by the Holy Father after that decision has been published in his "Acta," he was taking cognizance of and condemning an existent practice.  There actually were individuals who were contradicting papal teachings.  They were so numerous and influential that they rendered the composition of the Humani generis necessary to counteract their activities.  These individuals were continuing to propose teachings repudiated by the Sovereign Pontiff in previous pronouncements.  The Holy Father, then, was compelled by these circumstances to call for the cessation of debate among theologians on subjects which had already been decided by pontifical decisions published in the "Acta."

The kind of theological teaching and writing against which the encyclical Humani generis was directed was definitely not remarkable for its scientific excellence.  It was, as a matter of fact, exceptionally poor from the scientific point of view.  The men who were responsible for it showed very clearly that they did not understand the basic nature and purpose of sacred theology.  For the true theologian the magisterium of the Church remains, as the Humani generis says, the immediate and universal norm of truth.  And the teaching set forth by Pope Pius IX in his Tuas libenter is as true today as it always has been.

But when we treat of that subjection by which all Catholic students of speculative sciences are obligated in conscience so that they bring new aids to the Church by their writings, the men of this assembly ought to realize that it is not enough for Catholic scholars to receive and venerate the above-mentioned dogmas of the Church, but [they ought also to realize] that they must submit to the doctrinal decisions issued by the Pontifical Congregations and also to those points of doctrine which are held by the common and constant agreement of Catholics as theological truths and conclusions which are so certain that, even though the opinions opposed to them cannot be called heretical, they still deserve some other theological censure.[12]

It is definitely the business of the writer in the field of sacred theology to benefit the Church by what he writes.  It is likewise the duty of the teacher of this science to help the Church by his teaching.  The man who uses the shoddy tricks of minimism to oppose or to ignore the doctrinal decisions made by the Sovereign Pontiff and set down in his "Acta" is, in the last analysis, stultifying his position as a theologian. (The doctrinal Authority of Papal allocutions.)

Are there any further questions about the binding nature of what a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter places in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis?

Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton denounced "the shoddy tricks of minimism to ignore the doctrinal decisions made by the Sovereign Pontiff and set down his his 'Acta'."

Yet it is that more and more people are resorting to "the shoddy tricks of minimism" to ignore the doctrinal decisions made by "Pope Francis" that he causes to be set down in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.

To what end?

To the end of avoiding what even a conciliar "cardinal," now deceased, admitted in February of 2005 when Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II was suffering from the final stages of Parkinson's Disease just three months before his death:

It is true that the canonical doctrine states that the see would be vacant in the case of heresy. ... But in regard to all else, I think what is applicable is what judgment regulates human acts. And the act of will, namely a resignation or capacity to govern or not govern, is a human act. (Cardinal Says Pope Could Govern Even If Unable to Speak, Zenit, February 8, 2005.)

It does not take one with a doctorate in sacred theology to see that Jorge Mario Bergoglio and each of his predecessors have been heretics. It simply takes the courage to recognize the truth of the state of the Church Militant in this time of apostasy and betrayal, and those who feel themselves compelled to disobey “papally” approved edicts must come to grips with the fact that the Catholic Church would never undertake any action that would give tacit, no less explicit, support and/or affirmation to those in public life who openly dissent from her Received Teaching. What is happening now is the work of the devil, who is author, sustainer, and preternatural guide of all things conciliar. The Reverend Frank Pavone and those who support him must come to grips with this truth or be forever consigned to fighting against what they think is Holy Mother Church, something that in of itself is diabolical.

As the O Antiphons Continue

We put our hopes solely in Christ the King, Who condescended to be born for us in humility, poverty, and anonymity at Midnight on Christmas Day, and His true Church, the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

Reflection on the O Antiphons that we pray in Vespers from December 17 to December 24, Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., provided some commentary that is as relevant to our circumstances today as they were when his Light of the World was published in Germany in 1954. (The entire texts of Father Baur's reflections on the first three O Antiphons can be found in the appendices below.)

Father Benedict Baur’s reflection on the antiphon prayed on December 17, “O Wisdom,” contains the following passages that describe both the ignorance of the naturalists—the “sensible” men of the world—and the faith of those who duly submissive to the Church founded by Wisdom Incarnate:

Divine Wisdom clothes itself in the nature of a man. It conceals itself in the weakness of a child. It chooses for itself, infancy, poverty, obedience, subjection, obscurity. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the produce of the prudent I will not reject. . . . Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but since we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews, indeed, a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.  . . . But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong. And the base things of the world and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and the things that are not, that He might bring to naught the things that are” (1 Cor.19 ff.).

Come, O Divine Wisdom, teach us the way of knowledge. We are unwise; we judge and speak according to the vain standards of the world, which is foolishness in the eyes of God. Come, O divine Wisdom, give us the true knowledge and the taste for what is eternal and divine. Inspire us with a thirst for God’s holy will help us seek God’s guidance and direction enlighten us in the teachings of the holy gospel, make us submissive to Thy holy Church. Strengthen us in the forgetfulness of self, and help us to reign ourselves to a position of obscurity if that be Thy holy will. Detach our hearts from resurgent pride. Give us wisdom that we may understand that “but one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42). “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Matt. 16:26.) The Holy Spirit would have us know that one degree of grace is worth more than all worldly possessions.

“The sensual man,” with only his natural ability, his unaided human talents, “perceiveth not these thing that are of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:14). Eternal Wisdom is foolishness to such a man. He cannot understand because he is not spiritually minded. The spiritual man is guided by the Holy Ghost, penetrates and values all things in the light of divine Wisdom, who “Himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ,” the eternal Wisdom (1 Cor. 2:15f.).

The wisdom of God appears to us in the crib, in poverty, in silence, in the weakness of childhood, in the gospel message: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, those who suffer persecution for Christ’s sake. The wisdom of God is made manifest in the foolishness of the cross. (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954, “O Divine Wisdom,” pp, 77-78.)

Father Baur’s reflection on “O Adonai,” which was prayed last night, Sunday, December 18, 2016, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, echoes themes that had been written by Pope Pius XI over three decades earlier, reiterating the sad state of those who prefer to believe that Our Lord, if He is truly the Divine Redeemer, has no place in public life, or that all mention of His Holy Name must be banished from social discourse:

O Adonai, O almighty God, stretch forth Thy arm and save us. The enemy of our salvation, the enemy of souls, the enemy of the Church rises with great power seeking to destroy belief in God, in Christ, and in the Christian religion. Men have wandered far from the true God; they have turned their backs on Him and made for themselves grave images. They have banished God from their thoughts and from their lives. God is a disturbing element which they would be glad to be rid of. Any other molestation they will gladly suffer, no matter how foolish and disturbing it is.

“Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and ye gates thereof be very desolate with the Lord. For My people have done two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” (Jer. 2: 12 f.). Both men and nations have lost all peace and tranquility. All virtues, innocence, fidelity, honor, honesty, and even a man’s word may be bought for gold. Scarcely one man can be found who trusts another. Nation has risen against nation, and man against man. Few are they who are faithful to their duty. The spirit of self-sacrifice is rarely to be found. Whether men read, study, or work, their actions are characterized by a spirit of restlessness and disquietude. All their striving produces few results, except to make them more tired, empty, and soulless. And yet they perish in their efforts to do without God and without Christ. Thus they live in spite of the fact “there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4: 12.). Only He, the almighty God, can save us. (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World,  Volume I, “O Adonai,” pp. 79-80.)

Yes, this describes all naturalists including Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

“All their striving produces few results, except to make them more tire, empty, and soulless. And yet they perish in their efforts to do without God and without Christ.”

This is a perfect description of the vain babbling that so many people accept as “wisdom” in this world, which is indeed in the grip of the adversary, something that Father Baur pointed out in his reflection for today’s antiphon, “O Root of Jesse”:

“Come to deliver us and tarry not.” The world cries out for Christ its King, who shall cast out the Prince of this world (John 12:31). The prince of this world established his power over men as a result of original sin. He exercises his lordship very efficiently, and has led man men into apostasy and idolatry, and has brought them into the temples where he himself is adored. He even dared to approach our Lord, after His fast of forty days in the desert to tempt Him to fall down before him and adore him. Even after we had been delivered from the servitude of Satan through the death of Christ on the cross, the prince of this world attempts to exercise his power over us. “The devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). Like a bird of prey he hovers above us waiting for a favorable opportunity to seize us and to lead us into sin. Often enough he transforms “himself into an angel of light” (1 Cor. 11:14). The sworn enemy and adversary of Christ and of all that is good, he devotes his entire energy and his great intelligence to the task of establishing a kingdom of sin and darkness which is opposed to God and to Christianity.

Satan establishes his power over deluded over men in a way that is perfectly obvious. When he has gained control over the body of man, he uses it for his own purposes, as though it were he who actually controls and animates the body in place of the human soul. He often exerts his influence over men by harassing them and hindering them by his external works, as is so evident in the lives of some holy men and women. In these trying times, when faith in Christ and in God has largely disappeared, when the propaganda of a pagan culture is broadcast everywhere, and the forces of evil and falsehood rise up to cast God from His throne, who does not feel the power of the devil? Does it not appear that we are approaching that time when Satan will be released from the depths of hell to work his wonders and mislead, if possible, even the elect? (Apoc. 20:2; Matt. 24:24.)

“Come, tarry not.” Observe not how thoroughly the world of today has submitted to the reign of Satan. Mankind has abandoned the search for what is good and holy. Loyalty, justice, freedom, love, and mutual trust are no longer highly regarded. Establish, O God, Thy kingdom among us, a kingdom established upon truth, justice, and peace. “Come, tarry not.” “Thy kingdom come.” (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954. pp. 81-82.

We must cry out for Christ the King in the midst of the madness of these times.

We must make reparation for our sins, including our own sins of indifference or lukewarness towards—if not outright rejection of—the necessity of viewing everything in the world through the eyes of true Faith at all times and without any exception whatsoever.

We must make use of this holy week of Our Lady’s Expectation to pray her Most Holy Rosary, especially the Joyful Mysteries, with renewed fervor and with the authentic Supernatural Virtue of Hope that our souls will be prepared properly for the celebration of the Nativity the Baby Jesus on Christmas Day, and that they will be disposed to receive Him in Holy Communion with renewed fervor, purity, and devotion.

Catholics are never without hope!

Catholics hope in Christ the King and in the Revelation He has entrusted to His true Church as they rely upon the maternal intercession of the Mediatrix of All Graces, she who is our very “life, our sweetness, and our hope,” to help us to live in such a way in this life so as to be prepared at all times to die in a state of Sanctifying Grace as a member of the Catholic Church and thus adore God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost in the unending Easter Sunday of glory in Heaven that the Newborn Christ the King came to win for us on the wood of the Holy Cross.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

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

Appendix A

Father Benedict Baur on "O Divine Wisdom"

“O Wisdom, who camest out of the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly, come to teach us the way of prudence.” 

O Wisdom! The Savior whom we shall find as a weak babe in the crib is the Wisdom which from eternity proceeds from the Father. The eternal Wisdom which comes to us in the person of the Savior, has devised everything that is: heaven and earth, angels and men, matter and spirit, the entire universe. It has formed all creatures and given them their outward form and their place in the order of creation. It has fixed the wonderful order of nature, and it governs its laws. The power of this gentle and mighty Spirit has its eternal designs upon the world and pervades and governs all that exists. Eternal Wisdom, resting as a child in the lap of Thy mother, I believe in Thee. How great Thou art in the works of Thy creation, how wonderful is the order of Thy universe, how merciful in the work of redemption, how sublimely humble in Thy crib, how divinely wise in the teachings of Thy gospel, how provident in the work of Thy holy Church! O divine Wisdom, let me understand Thee!

Divine Wisdom clothes itself in the nature of a man. It conceals itself in the weakness of a child. It chooses for itself, infancy, poverty, obedience, subjection, obscurity. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the produce of the prudent I will not reject. . . . Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but since we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews, indeed, a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.  . . . But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong. And the base things of the world and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and the things that are not, that He might bring to naught the things that are” (1 Cor.19 ff.).

Come, O Divine Wisdom, teach us the way of knowledge. We are unwise; we judge and speak according to the vain standards of the world, which is foolishness in the eyes of God. Come, O divine Wisdom, give us the true knowledge and the taste for what is eternal and divine. Inspire us with a thirst for God’s holy will help us seek God’s guidance and direction enlighten us in the teachings of the holy gospel, make us submissive to Thy holy Church. Strengthen us in the forgetfulness of self, and help us to reign ourselves to a position of obscurity if that be Thy holy will. Detach our hearts from resurgent pride. Give us wisdom that we may understand that “but one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42). “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Matt. 16:26.) The Holy Spirit would have us know that one degree of grace is worth more than all worldly possessions.

“The sensual man,” with only his natural ability, his unaided human talents, “perceiveth not these thing that are of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:14). Eternal Wisdom is foolishness to such a man. He cannot understand because he is not spiritually minded. The spiritual man is guided by the Holy Ghost, penetrates and values all things in the light of divine Wisdom, who “Himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ,” the eternal Wisdom (1 Cor. 2:15f.). 

The wisdom of God appears to us in the crib, in poverty, in silence, in the weakness of childhood, in the gospel message: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, those who suffer persecution for Christ’s sake. The wisdom of God is made manifest in the foolishness of the cross. (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954, “O Divine Wisdom,” pp, 77-78.)

Appendix B

Father Baur on "O Adonai"

“O Addonai (O almighty God), and leader of the house of Israel, who didst appear to Moses in the burning bush and didst give to him the law on Mount Sinai, come with an outstretched arm to redeem us.” 

O Addonai! The Redeemer whom we await was already the Redeemer in the Old Testament. He it was who appeared to Moses in the burning bush in the desert and gave him the commission to lead Israel out of the bondage of Egypt. Through Moses, He wrought great signs in Egypt and rescued His people from the power of the tyranny of the Pharaohs. He led His people with power through the Red Sea and gave them the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. He led them through the desert, provided food and drink, and ushered them into the Promised Land. He appears now also as Redeemer of the Church of the New Law. He is the Savior and guide of those have been baptized in the Church. Little child of the crib, so small, so weak, so silent, how mighty must You be to rescue us from passion, from temptation, and from the power of Satan! We believe in Your power, we trust in the strength of Your arm, we follow with confidence Your leadership and Your guidance.

O Adonai, O almighty God, stretch forth Thy arm and save us. The enemy of our salvation, the enemy of souls, the enemy of the Church rises with great power seeking to destroy belief in God, in Christ, and in the Christian religion. Men have wandered far from the true God; they have turned their backs on Him and made for themselves grave images. They have banished God from their thoughts and from their lives. God is a disturbing element which they would be glad to be rid of. Any other molestation they will gladly suffer, no matter how foolish and disturbing it is.  

“Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and ye gates thereof be very desolate with the Lord. For My people have done two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” (Jer. 2: 12 f.). Both men and nations have lost all peace and tranquility. All virtues, innocence, fidelity, honor, honesty, and even a man’s word may be bought for gold. Scarcely one man can be found who trusts another. Nation has risen against nation, and man against man. Few are they who are faithful to their duty. The spirit of self-sacrifice is rarely to be found. Whether men read, study, or work, their actions are characterized by a spirit of restlessness and disquietude. All their striving produces few results, except to make them more tired, empty, and soulless. And yet they perish in their efforts to do without God and without Christ. Thus they live in spite of the fact “there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4: 12.). Only He, the almighty God, can save us.

Thou art He “who didst appear to Moses in the burning bush,” “I have seen the affliction of My people in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of the rigor of them out of the hands of the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land into a good and spacious land, into a land that floweth with milk and honey” (Exod. 3:7f.). Thus spoke the Lord to Moses from the bush which burned but has not been consumed, which is a figure of God’s condescension to assume the weakness of human nature. The human nature of Christ is united to the burning divine nature, and yet it is not consumed.

As Moses approached the burning bush, so we approach the divine Savior in the form of a child in the crib, or in the form of the consecrated host, and falling down we adore Him. “Put off the shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. . . . I am who am” (Exod. 3:5, 14).

O Adonai, almighty God! Mighty in the weakness of a child, and in the helplessness of the Crucified! Thou, almighty God, mighty in the wonders that Thou hast worked. Mighty in guiding, sustaining, and developing Thy Church! “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). Thou art mighty in the healing and redemption of souls, mighty in Thy love for us, who are so unworthy of Thy love. Instant are Thou in mercy, and all-sufficient in every need. Come and save us.

“Come with an outstretched arm to redeem us.” This is the cry of the Church for the second coming of Christ on the last day. The return of the Saviour brings us plentiful redemption. “Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you” (Matt. 25:34).  (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World,  Volume I, “O Adonai,” pp. 79-80.)

Appendix C

Father Baur on "O Root of Jesse"

“O Root of Jesse, who standest as an ensign of the people, before whom kings keep silence and the Gentiles shall make supplication, come to deliver us and tarry not.”

Christ the King, the Lord! Divine Wisdom, Adonai, the powerful God, is at the same time man with flesh and blood at the house of Jesse, the father of King David. The glory that once clothed the royal family has faded and withered, leaving only a blighted and withered root. But from this root is to spring a glorious blossom, the King of the world. “He shall rule from sea to sea and from river unto the ends of the earth. Before Him the Ethiopians shall fall down and His enemies shall lick the ground. The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall serve Him” (Ps. 71:8-11). To Him God has said, “Thou art My Son. . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for Thy possession” (Ps. 2:7 f.).

“He shall be great. . . . and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David, His father, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob forever. And of His kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:32. f.). In the face of Roman power He shall declare, “I am a King” (John 18:37). On the throne of the cross they shall proclaim His kingship in the three universal languages of the time: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19). He will send forth apostles, for all power is given Him “in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, . . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 29: 18-20). Before Him a Herod, a Domitian, and a Diocletian shall tremble. A Julian will be obliged to confess, “Galilean, Thou hast conquered.”

He will establish His kingdom in the world, a kingdom of truth, of justice, and of grace. He who was cast off by men and fastened to the cross, will make that cross a throne. The Lord rules as a king from His cross. He is remembered gratefully and loved by millions who leave all earthly things, father and mother and all else, to follow Him. They devote their health, their life, even their blood, to His service. Root of Jesse. Thou standest as an ensign of the nations, and kings are silent in reverence before Thee. 

“Come to deliver us and tarry not.” The world cries out for Christ its King, who shall cast out the Prince of this world (John 12:31). The prince of this world established his power over men as a result of original sin. He exercises his lordship very efficiently, and has led man men into apostasy and idolatry, and has brought them into the temples where he himself is adored. He even dared to approach our Lord, after His fast of forty days in the desert to tempt Him to fall down before him and adore him. Even after we had been delivered from the servitude of Satan through the death of Christ on the cross, the prince of this world attempts to exercise his power over us. “The devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). Like a bird of prey he hovers above us waiting for a favorable opportunity to seize us and to lead us into sin. Often enough he transforms “himself into an angel of light” (1 Cor. 11:14). The sworn enemy and adversary of Christ and of all that is good, he devotes his entire energy and his great intelligence to the task of establishing a kingdom of sin and darkness which is opposed to God and to Christianity.

Satan establishes his power over deluded over men in a way that is perfectly obvious. When he has gained control over the body of man, he uses it for his own purposes, as though it were he who actually controls and animates the body in place of the human soul. He often exerts his influence over men by harassing them and hindering them by his external works, as is so evident in the lives of some holy men and women. In these trying times, when faith in Christ and in God has largely disappeared, when the propaganda of a pagan culture is broadcast everywhere, and the forces of evil and falsehood rise up to cast God from His throne, who does not feel the power of the devil? Does it not appear that we are approaching that time when Satan will be released from the depths of hell to work his wonders and mislead, if possible, even the elect? (Apoc. 20:2; Matt. 24:24.)

“Come, tarry not.” Observe not how thoroughly the world of today has submitted to the reign of Satan. Mankind has abandoned the search for what is good and holy. Loyalty, justice, freedom, love, and mutual trust are no longer highly regarded. Establish, O God, Thy kingdom among us, a kingdom established upon truth, justice, and peace. “Come, tarry not.” “Thy kingdom come.” (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954. pp. 81-82.)