Wake Up, George, This is Not "News"

A person who is not a reader of this website alerted to me the following commentary by the defender of most things in the conciliarverse named Dr. George Weigel (who has been featured in two previous commentarie on this website,Enjoy the Party, Georg e, Enjoy the Party fifteen years ago and in "Canonizing" The Montini Paradigm Shift (Revolution) eight years ago) who wrote recently to report that he could not find an Ascension Thursday “Mass” (he is a firm apologist of the  Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical travesty) in Rome on Thursday, May 14, 2026:

ROME. I missed the Ascension again this year, not from any slovenliness or laxity on my part, but because I was in Rome: the center of the Catholic world.

Why, you ask? Because in the Borgo district where I stay, the Ascension has been moved to the following Sunday (as in the rest of Italy), while three hundred yards up the Borgo Pio, in Vatican City, the Ascension is celebrated on Thursday, where it belongs.

Thus, on Thursday, May 14, I attended Mass for Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter at the Church of S. Maria in Traspontina, and three days later, at the North American College (whose magnificent Sunday liturgies I attend whenever possible), we celebrated the Seventh Sunday of Easter–for the College is on extraterritorial Vatican property and follows the Vatican’s liturgical calendar. So, no Ascension 2026 Mass for George.

This is, frankly, absurd.

It is biblically absurd, for the texts do not affirm that the Lord ascended into heaven “on the forty-third day,” but on the fortieth day. That is a calendrical notation rich with biblical and spiritual meaning, as the forty days between Easter and the Ascension parallel the forty days of the Lord’s fast in the desert before his public ministry, the experience that sets the temporal rhythm of the forty days of Lent, which then sets the stage for Easter.

It is pastorally counterproductive, because Christians live, or ought to live, as if they were in a different time zone: the time zone declared by the Lord at the beginning of the Lord’s public ministry, when he proclaimed that the kingdom of God is at hand, now. It is the time zone presaged in the Resurrection, which made the early Christians of Jewish origin do the previously unthinkable–shift their holy day, their sabbath, to Sunday. It is the time zone of the time-beyond-time that is affirmed in the Ascension, when the glorified human nature of Christ enters the eternal life of the thrice-holy God, the Trinity.

For the Church to accommodate its liturgical calendar to the conventions of the secular world is to weaken our distinctive sense of Catholic identity. Catholics are called to be a culture-reforming counterculture. To be that, we ought to experience the patterns of mundane, worldly time differently than the world we are seeking to convert. We have to live, concretely and specifically, in a different time-zone, if we are to be living examples to others that this world is the antechamber to the really real world, which is life in the presence of the God who created time and then entered time to redeem it.

It is one of the mysteries of the pontificate of Benedict XVI that he didn’t address this absurdity. Joseph Ratzinger was a lifelong scholar of the liturgy who knew that the “spirit of the liturgy” (as he styled a book) takes us out of mundane time into the time-beyond-time, precisely so that we can be cooperators with grace in redeeming the time.

So why didn’t he fix this Ascension Thursday/Sunday mess by mandating the annual celebration of the Ascension where it belongs: on Thursday of the sixth week of Easter, ten days before Pentecost? (As for the alleged difficulties that some would have in meeting the obligation to attend Mass on the Ascension if it occurred during the week, it has always been clear that, should the Sunday or holy day obligation of participation in the Eucharist pose an exceptional burden, the obligation is lifted.) Perhaps Benedict’s second successor could do something about this. I hope so.

There are too few ways in which Catholics visibly manifest their countercultural difference today. Making clear that we live in a different time-zone by fixing the Ascension where it belongs–thereby helping equip the saints for their culture-reforming mission–is a no-brainer. Let it be done, soon.

Then we can consider moving the solemnities of the Epiphany and Corpus Christi back where they belong, too. (The “Ascension Sunday” Absurdity.)

This absolutely hilarious, a real hoot, a regular riot, to call to mind what the fictional Ralph Kramden would sometimes say to his wife Alice when having a heated argument with her (“You’re a riot, Alice, a regular riot).

This a hilarious to me as I had the exact same experience on Ascension Thursday, May 27, 1993, during a trip to Rome to discuss the evils of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments that were being mandated by the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa, at the behest of some parents whom I had befriended during the nine months I spent teaching political science at Morningside College during the 1992-1993 academic year.

Additionally, although Dr. Weigel did not mention the name of the hotel where he stayed while in Rome recently, the marvelous hotel where I stayed on the Via Conciliazione in 1993 (and again in 1995 and 1996) was the famous Hotel Columbus, which also houses the offices of the Knights of Malta.

I wrote about that 1993 experience contemporaneously in The Wanderer and detailed it again on this website a year after coming the conclusion that what most people is the Catholic Church is but her counterfeit ape, the counterfeit church of conciliarism:

Yesterday was Ascension Thursday.

Or was it?

Well, it was Ascension Thursday in every chapel served by true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds.

It was Ascension Thursday in the chapels administered by the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X and the priests, some validly ordained and some not, who run "independent" chapels without the permission of the conciliar authorities while "recognizing" the esteemer of false religions as the validly reigning "pontiff."

It was Ascension Thursday even in many dioceses in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

However, it was not Ascension Thursday in all of the dioceses that are in the control currently of the revolutionaries of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Let me explain.

Several national "episcopal" conferences in the counterfeit church of conciliarism petitioned the conciliar Vatican about twenty years ago for "permission" to transfer the celebration of the Ascension of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ into Heaven forty days after His Resurrection on Easter Sunday to the Sunday before Pentecost Sunday. Otherwise, you see, that particular Sunday is called the "Seventh Sunday of Easter" in those dioceses in the conciliar structures that observe the Feast of the Ascension on the day of the week on which Our Lord actually Ascended into Heaven to take with Him the Sacred Humanity that He had assumed in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation and with Which He redeemed us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood. Among the places in the conciliar world where yesterday was observed as either the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker (an "optional memorial") or that of "Thursday in the Sixth Week of Easter."

Mind you, this confusion exists under the official aegis of what is called the Roman Rite of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. There is perhaps no better way to point out the insanity of this confusion by describing what I experienced in Rome in 1993.

It was on Wednesday, May 26, 1993, that I was given the "privilege" (or so I thought at the time) of assisting at the service offered by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II in his private chapel in the Apostolic Palace. I was one of thirty or so invitees. The then Monsignor Stanislaus Dziwisz, Wojtyla/John Paul II's longtime secretary and now the conciliar "cardinal archbishop" of Krakow, Poland, tapped me on the shoulder to ask me I spoke English, whereupon I was asked to serve as the "lector guy" for the Novus Ordo service. Heady stuff for a forty-one and one-half year old Catholic man who was still projecting Catholicism into the mind and heart of the man who had presided over the Assisi travesty just seven years before.

The next day, Thursday, May 27, 1993, was Ascension Thursday--or so I thought.

 I tried to assist at what I thought was Holy Mass that day at Santa Maria in Transpotina on the Via della Concilazione, which is located near the Tiber River about half a mile, if that, from the Basilica of Saint Peter.

There was a little problem, however. It was not Ascension Thursday in the Diocese of Rome, the "pope's" own diocese!

It was "Thursday in the Sixth Week of Easter." I walked out.

What did I do?

Simple.

I walked up the Via della Concilazione to go to what I thought was Holy Mass in the Basilica of Saint Peter in Vatican City, where it was Ascension Thursday!

Yes, you see, the Italian "bishops'" conference in the counterfeit church of conciliarism had gotten permission to transfer the observance of the Ascension of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ into Heaven to the following Sunday, otherwise known as the "Seventh Sunday of Easter" in the Novus Ordo world, while the "pope" observed the feast on its proper day.

Several dioceses in the western part of the United States of America, including those in the provinces of Los Angeles and San Francisco, had secured "permission" from the conciliar Vatican to transfer the Feast of the Ascension to the "Seventh Sunday of Easter" at around that same time.

The conciliar "episcopal" conference of England and Wales secured such permission in 2007.

There thus exists a veritable hodgepodge of liturgical celebrations in one "rite" of what alleges itself to be the Catholic Church on the same day. And it is now thanks to Summorum Pontificum and its interpretation and enforcement by "Pontifical" Commission" Ecclesia Dei that those Motu communities which find themselves working with dioceses where the Feast of the Ascension has been transferred to the following Sunday must adhere to the dictates of the Novus Ordo calendar within those dioceses, not to the calendar observed by the Catholic Church from time immemorial.

Those Motu communities working in dioceses under conciliar captivity where the Feast of the Ascension is observed on the following Sunday thus observed the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker yesterday. Other priests in those same communities working elsewhere observed Ascension Thursday. Ah, there is yet another wrinkle here. There were some places where Ascension Thursday was Ascension Wednesday evening:

A Vigil Mass will be offered on Wednesday, April 30, at 6:00 pm in the Extraordinary Use of Blessed John XXIII (Latin).  The Mass will be sung with a special choral setting by Franz Liszt. This will be a rare opportunity to celebrate the great feast with such extraordinary music.( http://www.oursaviournyc.org  Look under "Schedules" once on the site.)

Welcome to the Motu Madness Merry-Go-Round, a conciliar carousel that takes one round and round and around and up and down and up and down.

One enters the merry-go-round by the gate marked "1962."

One exits the merry-go-round by the gate marked "1969."

One will not leave by the same gate by which he had entered. One will leave only by the gate marked "1969," try as one might to exit by the entrance gate marked "1962." Y

Oh, I am sure that there are some in the Motu world who will point out that the American bishops received permission from Rome in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century to observe the Feast of Corpus Christi on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday in order to provide workers with an opportunity to participate in the Corpus Christi processions. What's so wrong with moving the Feast of the Ascension to a Sunday for the same reason (which was the ostensible rationale of the conciliar "bishops" in seeking permission some twenty years ago now for the transfer of the observance of the Feast of the Ascension)?

What's so wrong with moving the Feast of the Epiphany? 

What's wrong with this is that it makes the liturgical calendar of what purports to be the Catholic Church the prisoner of temporal considerations when it is the temporal world that should be organizing itself around the liturgical life of the Catholic Church. There are still countries in formerly Catholic Europe and in South America where the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Corpus Christi are public holidays.

Not so in the United States of America, the pluralistic land of "religious freedom" that is the "model" of Church-State relations for the rest of the world, according to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Here we have an example yet again of the influence of Americanism on the efforts of conciliarists to subject the life of the Church according to the life of the world when it must be the other way around.

The effort to move those in what used to be the "indult" world closer and closer to the Novus Ordo service has long been something near and dear to the hearts of the apparatchiks in "Pontifical" Commission Ecclesia Dei. This is why the corrupt Society of Saint John, which has now reinvented itself in Paraguay under the protection of Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano, the conciliar "bishop" of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, was viewed so favorably by some within the Ecclesia Dei commission.

Father Carlos Urrutigoity told me personally in November of 1999 that it was the goal of the Society of Saint John to "move" the liturgy "organically" without the "polemics" of the 1960s.

Father Urrutigoity wanted to "see" where the liturgy "would have gone" had there not been the fireworks caused by the way in which the Novus Ordo was constructed synthetically. In other words, Father Urrutigoity, whose personal charisma had convinced at least twelve priests in the Society of Saint Pius X of his theory in this regard, although only one other priest followed him, Father Daniel Fullerton, followed him out of the Society of Saint Pius X (along with several seminarians), believed that some kind of "liturgical renewal" was necessary and that he had been chosen by God the Holy Ghost to lead such a reform.

Even though the Society of Saint John finds itself in the relative obscurity of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, Father Urrutigoity's "vision" of "moving" the Mass of the ages along the path of "renewal" is indeed very much the mind of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

As has been noted before on this site, Ratzinger/Benedict's official spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., and Sandro Magister of the Chiesa website both have judged the mind of the current antipope quite well concerning the eventual merger of the Missal of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII with that of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI:

"Neither the Missal of Pius V and John XXIII -- used by a small minority -- nor that of Paul VI -- used today with much spiritual fruit by the greatest majority -- will be the final 'law of prayer' of the Catholic Church." (Father Federico Lombardi, Zenit, July 15, 2007.)

From this point of view, then, the new prayer for the Jews in the liturgy in the ancient rite does not weaken, but postulates an enrichment of the meaning of the prayer in use in the modern rite. Exactly like in other cases, it is the modern rite that postulates an enriching evolution of the ancient rite. In a liturgy that is perennially alive, as the Catholic liturgy is, this is the meaning of the coexistence between the two rites, ancient and modern, as intended by Benedict XVI with the motu proprio "Summorum Pontificum."

This is a coexistence that is not destined to endure, but to fuse in the future "in a single Roman rite once again," taking the best from both of these. This is what then-cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 2003 – revealing a deeply held conviction – in a letter to an erudite representative of Lefebvrist traditionalism, the German philologist Heinz-Lothar Barth. (Sandro Magister, A Bishop and a Rabbi Defend the Prayer for the Salvation of the Jews.)

It is the case already that there has been the "revision" of the Good Friday prayer for the adherents of the Talmud, a "revision" made at the behest of angry Talmudic rabbis. The Novus Ordo prefaces already are being incorporated into some of the offerings/simulations of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, something that is in absolutely perfect accord with the expressed desires of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as found in the accompanying letter that he wrote to the conciliar "bishops" on the occasion of the release of Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007:

It is true that there have been exaggerations and at times social aspects unduly linked to the attitude of the faithful attached to the ancient Latin liturgical tradition. Your charity and pastoral prudence will be an incentive and guide for improving these. For that matter, the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal. The "Ecclesia Dei" Commission, in contact with various bodies devoted to the usus antiquior, will study the practical possibilities in this regard. (Explanatory Letter - English.) 

The Motu Madness Merry-Go-Round comes replete with its own carousel music of giddiness and joy at having the "high church" celebrations as more and more efforts are made to get those being taken for quite a rite to exit only by the gate marked "1969."

 So what if a little silence about such matters as blaspheming and dishonor the majesty of God and the propagation of condemned propositions as being consonant with the Catholic Faith must be maintained? I

It's all for a "good end," right?

Things will "work out," right?

Well, go tell that to the saint who is commemorated today, Saint Athanasius.

Go tell that to the English martyrs, whose courage in the face of silence from most genuine bishops and priests of their day is the model that should inspire us, not the false "prudence" of those who believed then that things" would work out all right in the end" if only they kept quiet and kept their skins and their property and their respectability in the eyes of others in the process.

They kept their skins, all right.

Some of them also may have lost their immortal souls by preferring to remain silent in the wake of the Anglican effort to "reform" the liturgy and the Faith in incremental ways that are almost identical to what has been happening in the counterfeit church of conciliarism and what is taking place before our very eyes as the Motu Madness Merry Go-Round forces its riders to leave by the gate marked "1969."

Obviously, this did not all happen overnight. Giovanni Montini/Paul VI himself noted that the changes of the 1950s that were engineered by Fathers Fernando Antonelli, O.F.M., and Annibale Bugnini, C.M., were meant to lead to the Novus Ordo service, something that Pope Pius XII could not have imagined possible would be the result of the changes that he had authorized at the behest of these revolutionaries: 

Since the beginning of this liturgical renewal, it has also become clear that the formularies of the Roman Missal had to be revised and enriched. A beginning was made by Pius XII in the restoration of the Easter Vigil and Holy Week services; he thus took the first step toward adapting the Roman Missal to the contemporary mentality.” (Promulgation of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo Service, April 3, 1969.) (For a wonderful explication of the differences between the Missal of Pope Sandro Pius X and that of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII, please see His Excellency Bishop Daniel Dolan's The Pius X and John XXIII Missals Compared.) 

As was noted on this site a few days ago, Pope Gregory XVI, writing in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, warned against those seeking to impose novelties upon the Catholic Church:

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." (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.) (As found in Motu Madness Merry-Go-Round, May 2, 2008. I have only changed this commentary by dividing some of the longer paragraphs into shorter ones. The rest remains unchanged except with the removal of a link to a silly “frog merry ground” video, which you find here if you would like: Motu Madness Merry-Go-Round.)

There is really very little one can say to Dr. George Weigel except that what he thinks is news is no news at all, although he is correct to call the situation he encountered as "absurd" as  the entire conciliar enterprise is itself is a monstrous absurdity of Catholicism even though Weigel himself does not believe is the case.

Oh, perhaps it should also be noted that for all his supposed concern about the liturgy, the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was very sanguine about conciliar sect’s rearrangement of the Roman Calendar and he never had any intention of withdrawing various indults granted to “bishops” in various places around the world to move important solemnities such as the Ascension of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to Sundays and he never once said one word about the harm of the so-called “evening anticipation” service that has contributed to the Judeo-Masonic effort in the world to attack the sacral nature of Sundays and the obligations to keep the day holy.

Indeed, Ratzinger/Benedict was very sanguine about the Third Commandment’s obligation to worship God every Sunday that is the first of Holy Mother Church’s Six Precepts: Attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation:

I have nothing against people who, though they never enter a church during the year, go to Christmas midnight Mass, or go on the occasion of some other celebration, because this is also a way of coming close to the light. Therefore, there must be different forms of involvement and participation. (Ratzinger on the Future of Christianity.)

Ratzinger/Benedict's lack of regard for the Third Commandment is but a logical consequence for the lack of regard that he has for the First and Second Commandments as he has, as Benedict XVI, personally esteemed the symbols of five false religions with his priestly hands and has said that "Christians and Jews pray to the same Lord" and has called mosques and synagogues and even a mountain in Japan, Mount Hiei, atop which the Buddhists worship their devils as "sacred" places.

One who can so flagrantly violate the First and Second Commandments with such utter impunity demonstrates in the objective order of things, leaving aside subjective culpability solely to God Himself, Who alone knows the interior dispositions of souls, that he does not understand Who God is or what He has revealed to us through His true Church. This lack of understanding of the identity of God flows logically from Ratzinger/Benedict's lack of understanding of the nature of God and His Revelation, believing that the expressions of dogmatic truth are contingent on the historical circumstances in which they were formulated. One who gets such basic things wrong is not going to have much of a real sense of the horror of personal sin and how to respond to it appropriately, which is one of the reasons that Ratzinger/Benedict and his band of conciliar "bishops" have sought to protect perverted priests/presbyters time and time again until their cover-ups and abuse of power made headlines that could no longer be ignored.'

Moreover, thoese who think that there are significant areas of difference between the late "Pope Benedict XVI" and "Pope Francis" ought to consider the following passage from that 2001 interview that Ratzinger gave as it is clear that he was--and remains yet--as opposed to "closed in on itself" church as his successor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio:

Q. However, can the Church really renounce its aspiration to be a Church of the majority?

Cardinal Ratzinger: We must take note of the decrease in our lines but, likewise, we must continue to be an open Church. The Church cannot be a closed, self-sufficient group.

Above all, we should be missionaries, in the sense of proposing again to society those values that are the foundation of the constitutive form that society has given itself, and which are at the base of the possibility to build a really human social community. The Church will continue to propose the great universal human values. Because, if law no longer has common moral foundations, it collapses insofar as it is law. From this point of view, the Church has a universal responsibility. As the Pope says, missionary responsibility means, precisely, to really attempt a new evangelization. We cannot calmly accept the rest of humanity falling back again into paganism. We must find the way to take the Gospel, also, to nonbelievers. The Church must tap all her creativity so that the living force of the Gospel will not be extinguished.

Q: What changes will the Church undergo?

Cardinal Ratzinger: I think we will have to be very cautious when it comes to the risk of forecasts, because historical development has always produced many surprises. Futurology often crashes.

For example, no one risked forecasting the fall of the Communist regimes. World society will change profoundly, but we are still not in a position to predict what the numerical decrease of the Western world will imply, which is still dominant, what Europe´s new face will be like, given the migratory currents, what civilization, and what social forms will be imposed. What is clear, in any event, is the different composition of the potential on which the Western Church will be sustained. What is most important, in my opinion, is to look at the "essence," to use an expression of Romano Guardini. It is necessary to avoid elaborating fantastic pre-constructions of something that could manifest itself very differently and that we cannot prefabricate in the meanderings of our brain, but to concentrate on the essential, which later might find new ways of incarnating itself. A process of simplification is important, which will enable us to distinguish between what is the master beam of our doctrine, of our faith, what is of perennial value in it. It is important to propose again the great underlying constants in their fundamental components, the questions on God, salvation, hope, life, especially what has a basic ethical value. (On the Future of Christianity - Cardinal Ratzinger)

The lateJorge Mario Bergoglio merely expressed in a more vulgar, crude and profane manner what Ratzinger/Benedict expressed in the convoluted Hegelianism of the "new theology" he learned from the likes of his most influential mentor, Father Hans Urs von Balthasar. Bergoglio simply making the revolutionary teaching and practices of conciliarism more "accessible" to the multitudes, and Robert Francis Prevost is doing the same in his own “refined” but nevertheless determined manner.

Holy Mother Church had reminded us repeatedly that Catholicism is all or nothing, something that those in the “resist while recognize” movement ignore even at this late date:

There are some person, dear listeners, who hold almost everything with a firm faith that Catholics hold: but there is one thing or another, which they have not yet been able to accept completely, such as that purgatory exists, that sacred images are to be venerated, that the sovereign Pontiff is the vicar of Christ and the head of the whole Church. And since there are many things that they believe, and only one or two things that they do not believe and consider it is not important if taken together with the other articles, they think they are situated very well on the foundation of Christ. What is the difference, they say, even if I err in that one thing, which I still cannot believe, and at the judgment will the Lord be concerned about that? And will he not be mindful of the many difficult things I believe? Indeed, this is the way in which they flatter themselves; I serious rebuke them and say that they have fallen from grace and have laid their foundation on sand, and will have no part with Christ. Either the faith is had completely, or it is not had at all. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. I ask you (to clarify the matter with a crass example), when you order a pair of shoes from a shoemaker, if when they are finally made you find they are an inch shorter than your feet, do you not put them on and wear them? Your will say “I cannot wear them” But they are only an inch too short, so why can't you wear them, since they are just a little bit short of the right measurement? As, therefore, your shoes are either the right size for your feet or they have no value at all, so also the faith is either integral, or it is not the faith. Therefore no one should deceive himself. If we want to build a house which cannot be moved by wind or rain, we must lay the foundation of both rocks, that is, on Christ and Peter. (Sermons of St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J., Part II: Sermons 30-55, Including the Four Last Things and the Annunciation., translated from the Latin by Father Kenneth Baker, S.J., and published in 2017 by Keep the Faith, Inc., Ramsey, New Jersey, pp. 152-154.)

With reference to its object, faith cannot be greater for some truths than for others. Nor can it be less with regard to the number of truths to be believed. For we must all believe the very same thing, both as to the object of faith as well as to the number of truths. All are equal in this because everyone must believe all the truths of faith--both those which God Himself has directly revealed, as well as those he has revealed through His Church. Thus, I must believe as much as you and you as much as I, and all other Christians similarly. He who does not believe all these mysteries is not Catholic and therefore will never enter Paradise. (Saint Francis de Sales, The Sermons of Saint Francis de Sales for Lent Given in 1622, republished by TAN Books and Publishers for the Visitation Monastery of Frederick, Maryland, in 1987, pp. 34-37.)

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine:they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88). (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: ‘This is the Catholic Faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved’ (Athanasian Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim ‘Christian is my name and Catholic my surname,’ only let him endeavor to be in reality what he calls himself.

Besides, the Church demands from those who have devoted themselves to furthering her interests, something very different from the dwelling upon profitless questions; she demands that they should devote the whole of their energy to preserve the faith intact and unsullied by any breath of error, and follow most closely him whom Christ has appointed to be the guardian and interpreter of the truth. There are to be found today, and in no small numbers, men, of whom the Apostle says that: "having itching ears, they will not endure sound doctrine: but according to their own desires they will heap up to themselves teachers, and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables" (II Tim. iv. 34). Infatuated and carried away by a lofty idea of the human intellect, by which God's good gift has certainly made incredible progress in the study of nature, confident in their own judgment, and contemptuous of the authority of the Church, they have reached such a degree of rashness as not to hesitate to measure by the standard of their own mind even the hidden things of God and all that God has revealed to men. Hence arose the monstrous errors of "Modernism," which Our Predecessor rightly declared to be "the synthesis of all heresies," and solemnly condemned. We hereby renew that condemnation in all its fulness, Venerable Brethren, and as the plague is not yet entirely stamped out, but lurks here and there in hidden places, We exhort all to be carefully here and there in hidden places, We exhort all to be carefully on their guard against any contagion of the evil, to which we may apply the words Job used in other circumstances: "It is a fire that devoureth even to destruction, and rooteth up all things that spring" (Job xxxi. 12). Nor do We merely desire that Catholics should shrink from the errors of Modernism, but also from the tendencies or what is called the spirit of Modernism. Those who are infected by that spirit develop a keen dislike for all that savours of antiquity and become eager searchers after novelties in everything: in the way in which they carry out religious functions, in the ruling of Catholic institutions, and even in private exercises of piety. Therefore it is Our will that the law of our forefathers should still be held sacred: "Let there be no innovation; keep to what has been handed down." In matters of faith that must be inviolably adhered to as the law; it may however also serve as a guide even in matters subject to change, but even in such cases the rule would hold: "Old things, but in a new way." (Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, November 1, 1914.)

Besides this, in connection with things which must be believed, it is nowise licit to use that distinction which some have seen fit to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and those which are not fundamental, as they say, as if the former are to be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent of the faithful: for the supernatural virtue of faith has a formal cause, namely the authority of God revealing, and this is patient of no such distinction. For this reason it is that all who are truly Christ's believe, for example, the Conception of the Mother of God without stain of original sin with the same faith as they believe the mystery of the August Trinity, and the Incarnation of our Lord just as they do the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, according to the sense in which it was defined by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. Are these truths not equally certain, or not equally to be believed, because the Church has solemnly sanctioned and defined them, some in one age and some in another, even in those times immediately before our own? Has not God revealed them all? 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. But in the use of this extraordinary teaching authority no newly invented matter is brought in, nor is anything new added to the number of those truths which are at least implicitly contained in the deposit of Revelation, divinely handed down to the Church: only those which are made clear which perhaps may still seem obscure to some, or that which some have previously called into question is declared to be of faith.  (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

Yes, it is all or nothing with Catholicism.

It is black and white.

It is yea or nay.

It is “this” or “that.”

It is truth or error.

It is Christ or chaos.

We can must make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world by enslaving ourselves to her Divine Son through her Immaculate Heart, giving unto whatever merit we earn each day so that she can dispose of that merit however she sees fit for the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity and for the good of souls in the Church Suffering in Purgatory and here in the Church Militant on earth.

It was Our Lady who had prayed for our first pope while he was in chains. Her prayers secured the angel who rescued him miraculously from the clutches of Herod and the Jews. The event was so miraculous that the mother of Saint Mark the Evangelist, Saint Peter’s trusted disciple, saw that our first pope stood before her. Those with her refused to believe her. They refused to believe that the first pope had been miraculously rescued. Saint Peter had to continue to knock to gain entry!

The papacy is held in chains today. Our Lady will rescue the papacy just as miraculously as she rescued our first pope by means of her prayers. We must believe that she will do so as the Church Militant undergoes her Mystical Passion, Death and Burial in these our days. She is indeed our life, our sweetness and our hope. Saint Peter relied upon her. So must we!

We can plant the change for true change, that is, of a conversion of all men and their nations to the Catholic Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, by relying upon Our Lady just as Saint Peter did.

While we hope and pray that this will help a few Catholics to leave the conciliar structures and to reject the Gallican heresies of the Society of Saint Pius X as antithetical to authentic Catholic ecclesiology to embrace the true state of the Church Militant in this time of apostasy and betrayal, we must pray to Our Lady to help us to persevere in the true Catholic Faith to the point of our dying breaths. It matters not that we see the truth if we do not save our souls and if we do not bear ourselves charitably and patiently with our fellow Catholics who may be having as hard a time now to embrace the truth as some of us did for much longer than should have been the case.

May each Rosary we pray every day help to plant a few seeds for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter and thus of the right ordering of the Church Militant here on earth as the precondition to the establishment of right order in a world gone mad because of the errors of Modernity and Modernism, which has robbed Catholics of Sanctifying Grace and have robbed the world of a superabundance of the Actual Graces people need to live as befits redeemed creatures in perfect submission to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.