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Wrong Ways Jorge: Infallibly Wrong About Almost Everything, part one
Fresh off his apology tour of Greece and Cyprus that will be discussed later in part two of this two-part series, the insidious demon of an apostate, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has made some headlines indirectly by means of one of his infamous letters that are designed to undermine whatever few vestigial remnants of Catholicism are extant within the counterfeit church of conciliarism and, in a lot of cases, meant to serve as a contemptuous slap in the face of his two immediate predecessors—Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI—outside his “official” “teaching” capacity.
As readers of this website know very well, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been in the vanguard of supporting the entire agenda of the homosexual collective save for “marriage,” noting that, of course, he has given more than a wink and a nod now and again to “civil unions” for those engrossed in unnatural sins of gross perversity in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. He has even disparaged the gravity of natural sins (fornication, adultery) against Holy Purity as the “least of sins” despite a reservoir of teaching from Catholic saints on the gravity of such sins, doing so in his inflight interview when he said that he accepted the resignation of the conciliar “archbishop” of Paris, Michael Aupetit, on the “altar of hypocrisy” after it had been revealed that the supposed “prelate” had engaged in what he, Aupetit, called “ambiguous” behavior with a woman, including revealing what was not known previously: that Aupetit had been “massages” to his personal secretary:
Pope Francis: Before answering I will say: do the investigation, eh, do the investigation … because there is a danger of saying: he was condemned. Who condemned him? Public opinion, gossip. But what did he do? We don’t know, something … If you know why, say so, otherwise I cannot answer and you will not know why. Because it was his failure, a fault against the sixth commandment — but not total — of small caresses and massages that he gave to the secretary, so stands the accusation. This is sin, but it is not of the most serious sins, because the sins of the flesh are not the most serious. The gravest sins are those that are more angelic: pride, hatred. These are graver. So Aupetit is a sinner, as am I — I don’t know if you are aware ... but probably — as was Peter, the bishop on whom Jesus Christ founded the Church.
Why did the community of that time accept a sinful bishop, and with sins of such an angelic nature as denying Christ! But it was a normal Church, it was accustomed to everyone always being sinful, it was a humble Church. You can see that our Church is not used to having a sinful bishop. We pretend to say my bishop is a saint. … not this red hat … we are all sinners. But when the gossip grows, grows, grows, and takes away the reputation of the person. He will not be able to lead because he has lost the reputation, not because of his sin, which is sin — like Peter’s, like mine like yours — but because of the gossip of the people responsible for reporting things, a man who has lost his reputation so publicly cannot govern. And this is an injustice and that is why I accepted Aupetit’s resignation, not on the altar of truth, but on the altar of hypocrisy. This is what I want to say. (Full text: Bergoglio’s in-flight press conference from Greece.)
Comment Number One:
It is necessary to first of all deal with Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s unspeakable blasphemy against Saint Peter, our first pope.
Saint Peter’s triple denial of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He underwent His trial by the Jewish high priests on the morning of Good Friday was forgiven by Our Lord Himself, not by the “community,” and that triple denial was undone by Saint Peter’s triple profession of love when he received the official commission from Our Lord to “feed his lambs” and “tend his sheep”:
[16] He saith to him again: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. [17] He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved, because he had said to him the third time: Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep. [18] Amen, amen I say to thee, when thou wast younger, thou didst gird thyself, and didst walk where thou wouldst. But when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not. [19] And this he said, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had said this, he saith to him: Follow me. (John 21: 16-19.)
Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had promised the spiritual supremacy of Holy Mother Church as record in the Gospel of Saint Matthew and the promise was fulfilled when Saint Peter made His triple profession of love for Him to undo his cowardly triple denials that Our Lord had prophesied at the Last Supper that he would make. Saint Peter was forgiven by Our Lord, not by the “community.” Jorge Mario Bergoglio just can’t help but to blaspheme Our Lord, Our Lady, Saint Joseph, Saint Peter and any other saint in his quest to turn sanctity on its head in his ceaseless efforts to indemnify others for their sinful behavior.
Now, insofar as sins of the flesh being the least of sins, it is necessary to point out that there are differences between sins of passion, although most of these are the result of people placing themselves into the near occasions of sin, and sins of malice committed by those who have planned to sin and to persist in its state with no contrition and without any desire to reform their lives.
This having been noted, however, sins against Holy Purity, although less grave than sins of heresy and blasphemy in the hierarchy of evils, are nevertheless grave, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s dismissive view of them was dealt with as follows by Saint Alphonsus de Liguori:
THE man who indulges in impurity is like a person labouring under the dropsy. The latter is so much tormented by thirst, that the more he drinks the more thirsty he becomes. Such, too, is the nature of the accursed vice of impurity; it is never satiated. "As," says St. Thomas of Villanova, “the more the dropsical man abounds in moisture, the more he thirsts; so, too, is it with the waves of eternal pleasures." I will speak Today of the vice of impurity, and will show, in the first point, the delusion of those who say that this vice is but a small evil; and, in the second, the delusion of those who say, that God takes pity on this sin, and that he does not punish it.
First Point. Delusion of those who say that sins against purity are not a great evil.
1. The unchaste, then, say that sins contrary to purity are but a small evil. Like “the so wallowing in the mire" ("Sus lota in volutabro luti” 2 Pet. ii. 22) , they are immersed in their own filth, so that they do not see the malice of their actions; and therefore they neither feel nor abhor the stench of their impurities, which excite disgust and horror in all others. Can you, who say that the vice of impurity is but a small evil can you, I ask, deny that it is a mortal sin? If you deny it, you are a heretic; for as St. Paul says: "Do not err. Neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, etc., shall possess the kingdom of God." (1 or. vi. 9.) It is a mortal sin; it cannot be a small evil. It is more sinful than theft, or detraction, or the violation of the fast. How then can you say that it is not a great evil? Perhaps mortal sin appears to you to be a small evil? Is it a small evil to despise the grace of God, to turn your back upon him, and to lose his friendship, for a transitory, beastly pleasure?
2. St. Thomas teaches, that mortal sin, because it is an insult offered to an infinite God, contains a certain infinitude of malice. "A sin committed against God has a certain infinitude, on account of the infinitude of the Divine Majesty." (S. Thom., 3, p., q. 1, art. 2, ad. 2.) Is mortal sin a small evil? It is so great an evil, that if all the angels and all the saints, the apostles, martyrs, and even the Mother of God, offered all their merits to atone for a single mortal sin, the oblation would not be sufficient. No; for that atonement or satisfaction would be finite; but the debt contracted by mortal sin is infinite, on account of the infinite Majesty of God which has been offended. The hatred which God bears to sins against purity is great beyond measure. If a lady find her plate soiled she is disgusted, and cannot eat. Now, with what disgust and indignation must God, who is Purity itself, behold the filthy impurities by which his law is violated? He loves purity with an infinite love; and consequently he has an infinite hatred for the sensuality which the lewd, voluptuous man calls a small evil. Even the devils who held a high rank in heaven before their fall disdain to tempt men to sins of the flesh.
3. St. Thomas says (lib. 5, de Erud. Princ., c. li.), that Lucifer, who is supposed to have been the devil that tempted Jesus Christ in the desert, tempted him to commit other sins, but scorned to tempt him to offend against chastity. Is this sin a small evil? Is it, then, a small evil to see a man endowed with a rational soul, and enriched with so many divine graces, bring himself by the sin of impurity to the level of a brute?” Fornication and pleasure," says St. Jerome,” pervert the understanding, and change men into beasts." (In Oseam., c. iv.) In the voluptuous and unchaste are literally verified the words of David;” And man, when he was in honour, did not understand: he is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them." (Ps. xlviii. 13.) St. Jerome says, that there is nothing more vile or degrading than to allow oneself to be conquered by the flesh. ” Nihil vilius quam vinci a carne." Is it a small evil to forget God, and to banish him from the soul, for the sake of giving the body a vile satisfaction, of which, when it is over, you feel ashamed? Of this the Lord complains by the Prophet Ezechiel;” Thus saith the Lord God: Because thou hast forgotten me, and has cast me off behind thy back” (xxiii. 35.) St. Thomas says, that by every vice, but particularly by the vice of impurity, men are removed far from God. “Per luxuriant maxime recedit a Deo." (In Job cap. xxxi.)
4. Moreover, sins of impurity, on account of their great number, are an immense evil. A blasphemer does not always blaspheme, but only when he is drunk or provoked to anger. The assassin, whose trade is to murder others, does not, at the most, commit more than eight or ten homicides. But the unchaste are guilty of an unceasing torrent of sins, by thoughts, by words, by looks, by complacencies, and by touches; so that, when they go to confession they find it impossible to tell the number of the sins they have committed against purity. Even in their sleep the devil represents to them obscene objects, that, on awakening, they may take delight in them; and because they are made the slaves of the enemy, they obey and consent to his suggestions; for it is easy to contract a habit of this sin. To other sins, such as blasphemy, detraction, and murder, men are not prone; but to this vice nature inclines them. Hence St. Thomas says, that there is no sinner so ready to offend God as the votary of lust is, on every occasion that occurs to him.” Nullus ad Dei contemptum promptior." The sin of impurity brings in its train the sins of defamation, of theft, hatred, and of boasting of its own filthy abominations. Besides, it ordinarily involves the malice of scandal. Other sins, such as blasphemy, perjury, and murder, excite horror in those who witness them; but this sin excites and draws others, who are flesh, to commit it, or, at least, to commit it with less horror.
5. “Totum hominem," says St. Cyprian,” agit in triumphum libidinis." (Lib. de bono pudic.) By lust the evil triumphs over the entire man, over his body and over his soul; over his memory, filling it with the remembrance of unchaste delights, in order to make him take complacency in them; over his intellect, to make him desire occasions of committing sin; over the will, by making it love its impurities as his last end, and as if there were no God. "I made," said Job, “a covenant with my eyes, that I would not so much as think upon a virgin. For what part should God from above have in me?" (xxxi. 1, 2.) Job was afraid to look at a virgin, because he knew that if he consented to a bad thought God should have no part in him. According to St. Gregory, from impurity arises blindness of understanding, destruction, hatred of God, and despair of eternal life.” De luxuria cœcitas mentis præcipitatio, odium Dei, desperatio futuri sæculi generantur." (S. Greg., Mor., lib. 13.) St. Augustine says, though the unchaste may grow old, the vice of impurity does not grow old in them. Hence St. Thomas says, that there is no sin in which the devil delights so much as in this sin; because there is no other sin to which nature clings with so much tenacity. To the vice of impurity it adheres so firmly, that the appetite for carnal pleasures becomes insatiable.” Diabolus dicitur gaudere maxime de peccato luxuriæ, quia est maximæ adhœrentia: et difficile ab eo homo eripi potest; insatiabilis est enim delectabilis appetitus." (1, 2, qu. 73, a. 5, ad. 2.) Go now, and say that the sin of impurity is but a small evil. At the hour of death you shall not say so; every sin of that kind shall then appear to you a monster of hell. Much less shall you say so before the judgment-seat of Jesus Christ, who will tell you what the Apostle has already told you: "No fornicator, or unclean, hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God." (Eph. v. 5.) The man who has lived like a brute does not deserve to sit with the angels.
6. Most beloved brethren, let us continue to pray to God to deliver us from this vice: if we do not, we shall lose our souls. The sin of impurity brings with it blindness and obstinacy. Every vice produces darkness of understanding; but impurity produces it in a greater degree than all other sins.” Fornication, and wine, and drunkenness take away the understanding." (Osee iv. 11.) Wine deprives us of understanding and reason; so does impurity. Hence St. Thomas says, that the man who indulges in unchaste pleasures, does not live according to reason.” In nullo procedit secundum judicium rationis." Now, if the unchaste are deprived of light, and no longer see the evil which they do, how can they abhor it and amend their lives? The Prophet Osee says, that being blinded by their own mire, they do not even think of returning to God; because their impurities take away from them all knowledge of God.” They will not set their thought to return to their God; for the spirit of fornication is in the midst of them, and they have not known the Lord." (Osee v. 4.) Hence St. Lawrence Justinian writes, that this sin makes men forget God.” Delights of the flesh induced forgetfulness of God." And St. John Damascene teaches that “the carnal man cannot look at the light of truth." Thus, the lewd and voluptuous no longer understand what is meant by the grace of God, by judgment, hell, and eternity.” Fire hath fallen upon them, and they shall not see the sun." (Ps. Ivii. 9.) Some of these blind miscreants go so far as to say, that fornication is not in itself sinful. They say, that it was not forbidden in the Old Law; and in support of this execrable doctrine they adduce the words of the Lord to Osee: “Go, take thee a wife of fornication, and have of her children of fornication." (Osee i. 2.) In answer I say, that God did not permit Osee to commit fornication; but wished him to take for his wife a woman who had been guilty of fornication: and the children of this marriage were called children of fornication, because the mother had been guilty of that crime. This is, according to St. Jerome, the meaning of the words of the Lord to Osee.” Ideirco," says the holy doctor, “Fornicationis appelandi sunt filii, quod sunt de meretrice generati." But fornication was always forbidden, under pain of mortal sin, in the Old, as well as in the New Law. St. Paul says: “No fornicator or unclean, hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." (Eph. v. 5.) Behold the impiety to which the blindness of such sinners carry them! From this blindness it arises, that though they go to the sacraments, their confessions are null for want of true contrition; for how is it possible for them to have true sorrow, when they neither know nor abhor their sins?
7. The vice of impurity also brings with it obstinacy. To conquer temptations, particularly against chastity, continual prayer is necessary.” Watch ye, and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." (Mark xiv. 38.) But how will the unchaste, who are always seeking to be tempted, pray to God to deliver them from temptation? They sometimes, as St. Augustine confessed of himself, even abstain from prayer, through fear of being heard and cured of the disease, which they wish to continue. "I feared," said the saint, "that you would soon hear and heal the disease of concupiscence, which I wished to be satiated, rather than extinguished." (Conf., lib. 8, cap. vii.) St. Peter calls this vice an unceasing sin.” Having eyes full of adultery and sin that ceaseth not." (2 Pet. ii. 14.) Impurity is called an unceasing sin on account of the obstinacy which it induces. Some person addicted to this vice says: I always confess the sin. So much the worse; for since you always relapse into sin, these confessions serve to make you persevere in the sin. The fear of punishment is diminished by saying: I always confess the sin. If you felt that this sin certainly merits hell, you would scarcely say: I will not give it up; I do not care if I am damned. But the devil deceives you. Commit this sin, he says; for you afterwards confess it. But, to make a good confession of your sins, you must have true sorrow of the heart, and a firm purpose to sin no more. Where are this sorrow and this firm purpose of amendment, when you always return to the vomit? If you had had these dispositions, and had received sanctifying grace at your confessions, you should not have relapsed, or at least you should have abstained for a considerable time from relapsing. You have always fallen back into sin in eight or ten days, and perhaps in a shorter time, after confession. What sign is this? It is a sign that you were always in enmity with God. If a sick man instantly vomits the medicine which he takes, it is a sign that his disease is incurable.
8. St. Jerome says, that the vice of impurity, when habitual, will cease when the unhappy man who indulges in it is cast into the fire of hell. “Infernal fire, lust, whose fuel is gluttony, whose sparks are brief conversations, whose end is hell." The unchaste become like the vulture that waits to be killed by the fowler, rather than abandon the rottenness of the dead bodies on which it feeds. This is what happened to a young female, who, after having lived in the habit of sin with a young man, fell sick, and appeared to be converted. At the hour of death she asked leave of her confessor to send for the young man, in order to exhort him to change his life at the sight of her death. The confessor very imprudently gave the permission, and taught her what she should say to her accomplice in sin. But listen to what happened. As soon as she saw him, she forgot her promise to the confessor and the exhortation she was to give to the young man. And what did she do? She raised herself up, sat in bed, stretched her arms to him, and said: Friend, I have always loved you, and even now, at the end of my life, I love you: I see that, on your account, I shall go to hell: but I do not care: I am willing, for the love of you, to be damned. After these words she fell back on the bed and expired. These facts are related by Father Segneri (Christ. Istr. Bag., xxiv., n. 10.) Oh! how difficult is it for a person who has contracted a habit of this vice, to amend his life and return sincerely to God! O how difficult is it for him not to terminate this habit in hell, like the unfortunate young woman of whom I have just spoken.
Second Point. Illusion of those who say that God takes pity on this sin.
9. The votaries of lust say that God takes pity on this sin; but such is not the language of St. Thomas of Villanova. He says, that in the sacred Scriptures we do not read of any sin so severely chastised as the sin of impurity.” Luxuriæ facinus præ aliis punitum legimus." (Serm. iv., Dom. 1, Quadrag.) We find in the Scriptures, that in punishment of this sin, a deluge of fire descended from heaven on four cities, and, in an instant, consumed not only the inhabitants, but even the very stones." And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he destroyed these cities, and all things that spring from the earth." (Gen. xix. 24.) St. Peter Damian relates, that a man and a woman who had sinned against impurity, were found burnt and black as a cinder.
10. Salvian writes, that it was in punishment of the sin of impurity that God sent on the earth the universal deluge, which was caused by continued rain for forty days and forty nights. In this deluge the waters rose fifteen cubits above the tops of the highest mountains; and only eight persons along with Noah were saved in the ark. The rest of the inhabitants of the earth, who were more numerous then than at present, were punished with death in chastisement of the vice of impurity. Mark the words of the Lord in speaking of this chastisement which he inflicted on that sin: “My spirit shall not remain in man for ever; because he is flesh." (Gen. vi. 3.) "That is," says Liranus, "too deeply involved in carnal sins." The Lord added: “For it repenteth me that I made man." (Gen. vi. 7.) The indignation of God is not like ours, which clouds the mind, and drives us into excesses: his wrath is a judgment perfectly just and tranquil, by which God punishes and repairs the disorders of sin. But to make us understand the intensity of his hatred for the sin of impurity, he represents himself as if sorry for having created man, who offended him so grievously by this vice. We, at the present day, see more severe temporal punishment inflicted on this than on any other sin. Go into the hospitals, and listen to the shrieks of so many young men, who, in punishment of their impurities, are obliged to submit to the severest treatment and to the most painful operations, and who, if they escape death, are, according to the divine threat, feeble, and subject to the most excruciating pain for the remainder of their lives. “Thou hast cast me off behind thy back; bear thou also thy wickedness and thy fornications." (Ezec. xxiii. 35.) (Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, “On Impurity”.)
I thus dispense with Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s making light of the resignation of Michael Aupetit on “the altar of hypocrisy” except to note that the even one otherwise disposed to the Argentine Apostate, Vaticanologist John Allen of Crux News, has, after reviewing several other scenarios, hypostatizes that there is much to the Michael Aupetit story and that his “pope” knows all about it (see In Vatican’s clumsy stab at censorship, the massage becomes the message).
Jorge Mario Bergoglio makes light of lots of things that are very grave, including his own sins of heresy and blasphemy, some of which as they concern the heretical and schismatic Orthodox will discussed in part two.
As noted above, the false “pontiff” is ever ready to indemnify all manner of sins of impurity. The whole point of Amoris Laetitia, March 16, 2016, was to excuse sins of adultery and fornication in the name of “accompaniment” while inviting people in what he called “irregular” situations to receive what purports to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service.
“Pope Francis” is also an “equal opportunity” indemnifier of all manner of perversities, including the mutilation of one’s body by chemical and surgical means to achieve an ontological impossibility—to change one’s gender—(see Mutilating All Truth, Janauary 28, 2015)—and permitting his presbyters to baptize of children conceived as a result of in vitro fertilization to sodomites and/or lesbians, and he takes especial glee by his clever undermining of condemnations of conciliar officials against such behavior.
This is what Jorge Mario Bergoglio sought to accomplish by sending no less than two endorsement/non-endorsement letters to the leaders of the pro-perversity organization called “New Ways Ministry” this year:
Two letters to New Ways Ministry this year, Pope Francis commended the organization for its outreach to the LGBTQ community and referred to one of its co-founders, Loretto Sr. Jeannine Gramick, as "a valiant woman" who had suffered much for her ministry.
Written in Spanish on official Vatican stationery, Francis' letters mention that the pope is aware that New Ways Ministry's "history has not been an easy one," but that loving one's neighbor is still the second commandment, tied "necessarily" to the first commandment to love God.
"Thank you for your neighborly work," Francis wrote in a June 17 letter addressed to Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which is based in Mount. Rainier, Maryland.
"Despite what some church leaders might say or think of us, it appears that Pope Francis is happy that we're reaching out and helping to bring LGBTQ people into the church, and helping those who are here to stay," DeBernardo told NCR.
DeBernardo said he decided to publicly disclose the correspondence between New Ways Ministry and the pope in response to the Vatican's General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops removing a New Ways Ministry webinar video from a resources website for the 2021-2023 synod on synodality.
Reports in conservative Catholic media outlets indicated that the secretariat removed the video on Dec. 7 after learning that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had censured New Ways Ministry in 2010 for its support of civil marriage for same-sex couples. A spokesman for the secretariat has not returned requests for comment from NCR.
"We weren't planning on making the correspondence public," DeBernardo said, "but given this situation, it's important for people to know. We do believe [Francis] wants LGBTQ people speaking, and we think it'd be helpful for him and helpful for his message and his invitation of inclusion, that people know that he has been corresponding with us."
Francis' correspondence with New Ways Ministry – an organization that has often drawn the ire of church authorities who doubt the group's adherence to Catholic doctrine on homosexuality - is one more example of Francis striking a more conciliatory posture than his more conservative predecessors and the U.S. Catholic bishops.
"The Holy Father's warm letter to New Ways Ministry is not only another step in his outreach to LGBTQ people, but the beginning of a kind of rehabilitation for New Ways, and for [New Ways cofounder] Sister Jeannine [Gramick] as well, in recognition of their important ministry in our church," said Jesuit Fr. James Martin, editor-at-large of America Media who called for the Catholic Church to be more welcoming to LGBTQ people in his book, Building a Bridge.
On May 3, Francis wrote in response to a letter that DeBernardo had sent him on April 21 that he read DeBernardo's letter from an "attitude of shepherd closeness," and that the letter helped him to better understand New Ways Ministry's history.
"It helped me a lot to know the full story you tell me," Francis wrote. "Sometimes we receive partial information about people and organizations, and this doesn't help. Your letter, as it narrates with objectivity its history, gives me light to better understand certain situations."
In his second letter, which was handwritten and dated June 17, Francis thanked DeBernardo for his "heart, open to your neighbor." He also sent Sr. Jeannine Gramick his cordial regards.
"I know how much she has suffered," the pope wrote. "She is a valiant woman who makes her decisions in prayer."
In May 1999, the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine for the Faith declared that Gramick and fellow New Ways Ministry co-founder Fr. Robert Nugent were to be prohibited from pastoral work with homosexual people because of the "ambiguities and errors" of their approach. The notification was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the congregation's prefect who later became Pope Benedict XVI.
Since its founding in 1977, New Ways has run afoul of church authorities. In 1984, Archbishop James Hickey of Washington denied the organization any official authorization or approval of its activities. The late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, then the president of the U.S. bishops' conference, issued a statement in 2010 declaring that New Ways Ministry had no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church.
Some church officials in recent years have spoken at New Ways Ministry's events, including Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky. But the organization's strained history with the Catholic hierarchy reportedly caused its webinar video to be scrubbed from the synod secretariat's resources website.
The 75-minute video, entitled "From the Margins to the Center: LGBTQ Catholics & Synodality," features a webinar presentation by Fordham theologian Robert Choiniere, who is also the director of adult formation at St. Francis Xavier Church in Manhattan.
Martin, a consultor for the Vatican's Secretariat for Communications, told NCR that he was disappointed to see New Ways Ministry's video removed from the synod resources website "after some people complained."
"At the beginning of the synod, the Holy Father asked, 'Do we allow people to express themselves, to walk in faith even though they have had difficulties in life, and to be part of the life of the community without being hindered, rejected or judged?' " said Martin. "For LGBTQ Catholics, that is still an open question."
On Dec. 6, Martin tweeted a link to the New Ways Ministry video, which was then still on a website that the General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops created to share resources for the synod on synodality. Martin hailed it as a "small but historic step forward" in the church's relationship with LGBTQ people."
A day later, however, the video had been removed. Martin, who has more than 303,000 Twitter followers and often enrages Catholics on the right for his ministry to the LGBTQ community, said the removal of the video raises questions of how LGBTQ Catholic voices will be heard at the synod.
"There is no Vatican Dicastery for LGBTQ People or USCCB Office for LGBTQ People, so official channels are more or less nonexistent," Martin said.
DeBernardo argued that the General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops "made a big mistake" in taking down the video.
"Having our video up there was a way of showing that the Vatican was serious about reaching out to marginalized people, LGBTQ people in particular," said DeBernardo, who added that New Ways Ministry will continue to promote LGBTQ participation in the synod.
"We at New Ways Ministry have made a commitment to promote the synod experience," he said, "and we're going to continue to do so, but it just makes our work, which we believe is in service to the pope's mission, that much harder to do." (Pope Francis thanks New Ways Ministry in recent correspondence | National Catholic Reporter.)
Apart from applauding those who reaffirm those living lives of unrepentant perversity, Jorge Mario Bergoglio meant to take a very decided swipe against his nonagenarian neighbor who lives near him within the walls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River, and he meant to flush the following history, provided by Mrs. Randy Engel, who has documented the evil ways of New Ways Ministry more singularly and definitively than anyone else alive today, down the Orwellian memory hole:
In his classic work New Lies For Old — The Communist Strategy of Deception and Disinformation, ex-KGB Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn defines "strategic disinformation" as "a systematic effort to disseminate false information and to distort or withhold information so as to misrepresent the real situation, in, and policies of, the communist world and thereby to confuse, deceive, and influence the noncommunist world, to jeopardize its policies, and to induce Western adversaries to contribute unwittingly to the achievement of communist objectives."
Over the last 40 years, a similar program of strategic disinformation and deception has been waged against faithful Catholics in America by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/U.S. Catholic Conference (NCCB/USCC), known today as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
From day one, with malice and forethought, the NCCB/USCC, a creature of the Second Vatican Council (although its roots go back to the pre-Conciliar era), has been systematically attacking and undermining Catholic dogma, faith, and morals, thereby creating a climate of confusion, deception, and apostasy among rank and file Catholics.
And there is no area in which the USCCB's disinformation program has been more successful than in the realm of Catholic sexual morality as it applies to homosexuality and pederasty — the main driving forces behind the clerical sex abuse scandal in AmChurch today.
USCCB disinformation on New Ways Ministry
A recent case in point is the March 11, 2011, statement by the USCCB Committee on Doctrine and the USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, which was issued in response to a booklet titled "Marriage Equality: A Positive Catholic Approach," by New Ways Ministry Executive Director Francis DeBernardo.
The USCCB joint statement signed by Chairmen Donald Cardinal Wuerl and Bishop Salvatore Cordileone for their respective Committees reaffirmed an earlier statement made on February 12, 2010, by USCCB President Francis Cardinal George, OMI, concerning the non-Catholicity of New Ways Ministry, a pro-homosexual organization.
Cardinal George's February news release issued by the USCCB Media Department was prompted by New Ways' attack on the Catholic Church for its opposition, limited as it was, to homosexual and lesbian "marriages."
It was a masterpiece of deception and disinformation.
George stated that since New Ways' founding in 1977 (actually 1978) by Sr. Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Salvatorian priest Rev. Robert Nugent, "serious questions have been raised about the group's adherence to Church teachings on homosexuality." He also noted that in 1984, Archbishop James Hickey of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., ordered New Ways out of the Archdiocese, and Rome instructed the dynamic duo to separate themselves from the organization. Further, he explained that in 1999, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) permanently prohibited both Gramick and Nugent from any pastoral work dealing with homosexuals.
All these statements are true.
So, if they are true, why do I say that the Cardinal's remarks served as a vehicle for disinformation? Because it was what the Cardinal failed to say that was critical, not what he did say about New Ways.
Not only did Cardinal George fail to explain the true political and subversive nature of New Ways, he also failed to acknowledge the role that the USCCB, the organization of which he was president, has played in the meteoric rise of New Ways in AmChurch. This column is intended to make up for this sin of omission.
New Ways not a "ministry"
The essential thing to remember about New Ways is that it is not a "ministry" in any sense of the word. It is a political entity that is only incidentally religious — that is, it uses religion solely for political ends designed to subvert Catholic opposition to sodomy and other forms of sexual perversion.
According to Gramick and Nugent, New Ways exists "to explore and develop those areas that for many remain formidable obstacles to an acceptance of homosexual identity and expression as potentially morally good and healthy as heterosexuality in the Judaeo-Christian scheme."
Both founders were working for the homosexual group Dignity and the pro-Marxist Quixote Center when New Ways was incorporated in 1978.
In 1974, William Cardinal Baum had withdrawn Nugent's faculties for the Archdiocese of Washington. At this point, Nugent left the diocesan priesthood to join the "gay-friendly" Salvatorians.
In 1984, Cardinal Hickey kicked New Ways out of the D.C. Archdiocese, and the Holy See attempted to force the superiors of the School Sisters of Notre Dame and Salvatorians to make Gramick and Nugent relinquish their leadership position in New Ways. It did not work.
Both continued to work behind the scenes of New Ways. Together, Gramick and Nugent helped set up several front organizations including the Center for Homophobia Education, Catholic Parents Network, and the Catholic Coalition for Gay Civil Rights, one of the most powerful "gay" lobbying organizations in AmChurch, funded largely by Catholic religious congregations including the SSND and the Salvatorians.
DeBernardo, an avowed homosexual, was hired as Executive Director to replace Gramick and Nugent. He was a former reporter for The Tablet, the diocesan weekly for the Diocese of Brooklyn, headed at the time by homosexual Bishop Francis John Mugavero. Mugavero, who gave his blessings to a diocesan religious order of sodomites called the St. Matthew Community, was credited with inspiring the name — New Ways Ministry.
Among the politically-savvy serving on the Board of New Ways was another avowed homosexual, Xavieran Brother Joseph Izzo, who kept tabs on sodomites in the American hierarchy — knowledge that proved helpful in gaining access to the corridors of power at the NCCB/USCC, which already had a large contingent of homosexual prelates in key organizational positions dating back to its creation decades before.
Rev. Paul K. Thomas, a self-identified homosexual priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, was, and remains, a New Ways Board member. For many years he resided at 637 Dover Street, Baltimore, which just happened to be Nugent's address up until 2001.
New Ways gains access to the NCCB/USCC
From its earliest days, New Ways, unlike its Catholic opposition, routinely had access to AmChurch's national bureaucracy and its resources.
For example, Nugent was appointed a consultant for "sexual minorities" by the NCCB/USCC. He was also credited with writing the section on "Single Young Adult Sexual Minorities" found in the USCC's Department of Education publication Planning for Single Young Adult Ministry: Directives for Ministerial Outreach. New Ways has been permitted to distribute its "gay" propaganda at official NCCB/USCC conferences.
Nugent was one of three homosexual clerics who helped draft the infamous pastoral letter "Always Our Children." Before the Administrative Committee of the NCCB released the pro-"gay" document on September 30, 1997, Gramick bragged that she had seen the highly secret minutes of the bishops' November 1997 executive session during which the document was discussed and it seemed to her that "most bishops are behind the pastoral." Access is the name of the game, and New Ways has always had access to the NCCB/USCC and the USCCB.
AmChurch bishops back New Ways
Nor has New Ways ever lacked for support from the American hierarchy.
Among the well-known backers of New Ways have been Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, and Bishops and Auxiliary Bishops Joseph A.. Fiorenza, Thomas Gumbleton, Walter Sullivan, Matthew Clark, Kenneth J. Povish, John J. McRaith, Thomas J. Costello, Charles Buswell, Joseph Symons, Kenneth Untener, Francis A. Quinn, Leroy T. Mattheisen, Gerald O'Keefe, Joseph L. Imesch, Lawrence L. McNamara, William A. Hughes, Robert F. Morneau, Raymond A. Lucker, William Friend, John S. Cummins, John J. Snyder, Francis P. Murphy, Frank J. Rodimer, Peter A. Rosazza, and last but not least Donald W. Wuerl, former Bishop of Pittsburgh and current Archbishop of Washington, D.C., mentioned earlier in this article.
Wuerl's open door policy for Dignity and New Ways
When Wuerl became Bishop of Pittsburgh, replacing Bishop Anthony Bevilacqua, who become Archbishop of Philadelphia, he permitted Dignity/Pittsburgh homosexual "Masses" to continue for eight more years in not one but two parishes — St. Elizabeth in the Strip District and St. Pamphilus in Beechview. According to Ann Rodgers-Melnick, a besotted reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Banning Dignity was a sad moment for Wuerl."
Under Wuerl's watch, the Pittsburgh Diocese became a stomping ground for nationally-known doctrinal and moral miscreants, including Matthew Fox, Raymond Brown, and howling feminists Rosemary Radford Ruether and Monica Hellwig.
New Ways road show comes to Pittsburgh
In mid-October 1991, Gramick and Nugent brought their "Homophobia in Religion and Society" road show to four Catholic dioceses in Southwest Pennsylvania, including the Pittsburgh Diocese.
They came armed with letters of recommendation to the Ordinaries of the Dioceses of Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Altoona-Johnstown, and Youngstown (Ohio) from five AmChurch bishops who wanted their names kept secret. Here are their names:
- Bishop Kenneth J. Povish, Diocese of Lansing, Mich. (deceased)
- Bishop John McRaith, Diocese of Owensboro, Ky.
- Aux. Bishop Thomas Costello, Diocese of Syracuse, N.Y.
- Bishop Francis A. Quinn, Diocese of Sacramento, Calif.
- Bishop Eugene J. Gerber (deceased), head of the Wichita Diocese, who provided a letter of recommendation to Gramick and Nugent in 1990, but it was later withdrawn from circulation.
USCL opposes New Ways
Opposition to the Gramick/Nugent pro-homosexual presentation in the Pittsburgh Diocese was organized by the U.S. Coalition for Life, directed by yours truly. The USCL media blitz attracted the attention of the secular press, and in a pre-conference interview with the Pittsburgh Press, an unhappy Nugent whined to a reporter that USCL Director Randy Engel was exhibiting "a classic case of homophobia." Nugent assured the reporter that he and Gramick intended to uphold the positive things that the Church says about gay and lesbian people and that they would present the views of revisionist theologians right alongside official church teachings.
The New Ways Pittsburgh workshop was scheduled for October 12, 1991, at St. Mary's Convent on the Carlow College campus operated by the Sisters of Mercy.
The President of Carlow College defended the workshop on homophobia. In a curt letter to the USCL, Sister Sheila Carney, RSM, declared, "Our hosting of this program constitutes neither 'a violation of Vatican directives on homosexuality' nor a 'homosexualist scandal at St. Mary's Convent in Pittsburgh,' as your [USCL] memo suggests." "It is, rather, reflective of our community's commitment to promote the dignity of all persons," she concluded. The public relations director for the college stated that every member of the Mercy community was behind Nugent and Gramick, and that "Randy Engel is the only one who has objected to it."
Bishop Wuerl backs New Ways
Father Ronald Lengwin, the official spokesman for Bishop Donald Wuerl, told a Wanderer reporter that Wuerl was not convinced the workshop would violate Church doctrine. "We have been assured," said Lengwin, "that the presentation would not be contrary to the teaching of the Church. We live within that level of trust."
"Level of trust?" You've got to be kidding.
By 1991, when the road show came to Pittsburgh, the pro-sodomite activities of New Ways were so notorious that the Vatican's Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes had already established a special commission in the United States to "render a judgment as to the clarity and orthodoxy" of Gramick and Nugent's presentation on the Church's teaching on homosexuality.
Lengwin added that Bishop Wuerl could not cancel the program because it was being held on property owned by the Sisters of Mercy and it was not church property.
This is, of course, sheer nonsense. All religious orders remain in a diocese at the good pleasure of the Ordinary of the diocese and it was within Wuerl's power, had he chosen to exercise it, to tell the Sisters of Mercy to cancel the event or, at the very least, relocate the workshop off campus.
In any case, the New Ways road show came and went, and Bishop Wuerl remained silent... until his March 11, 2011, statement issued on behalf of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine.
The Maida Commission and beyond
Although it was created in March of 1988, the Maida Commission was not reactivated until January 24, 1994 — a period of five years and nine months, during which time Gramick and Nugent were running footloose and fancy free throughout numerous U.S. dioceses and abroad, peddling their doctrinal and moral poison.
The Maida Commission's ill-conceived and ill-fated investigation concluded in early 1996, when the Final Commission Report was filed with the Holy See. The Report praised Gramick and Nugent's "courage and zeal" and "love and compassion," in their "important and needed ministry," but alas, the Commission found their works "problematic" and doctrinally ambiguous, deficient, and erroneous.
In the meantime, because of unresolved grave doctrinal questions related to Gramick and Nugent's writings, the case had been transferred from the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life to the CDF, headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
The Vatican finally acts
On July 13, 1999, twenty-one years after Gramick and Nugent had created New Ways, and the homosexual colonization of AmChurch's male and female religious congregations was complete, the CDF publicly released its "Notification" concerning the final disposition on the matter.
Gramick and Nugent were permanently prohibited from any and all pastoral work with homosexuals (emphasis added).
Nugent, who unlike Gramick, the more "manly" of the two, agreed to make a "Profession of Faith" supporting the Church's teachings in opposition to homosexuality, was permitted to retain his priestly faculties, but was forbidden to preach and administer the sacraments for homosexual gatherings.
Today, Nugent resides at St. John the Baptist Church in New Freedom, Penna., although he spends much of his time abroad in England and Ireland, and visiting the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, an international ecumenical institute for theological research and pastoral studies. His latest book, Silence Speaks: Teilhard de Chardin, Yves Congar, John Courtney Murray, and Thomas Merton, was recently advertised in the Harrisburg diocesan paper, The Catholic Witness.
Gramick joins Sisters of Loretto
In August 2001, Gramick announced that she had left the School Sisters of Notre Dame and joined the equally liberal Sisters of Loretto based in Denver, which has its own homosexual ministry. The sisters established a "Sr. Jeannine Gay Ministry Fund," to enable Gramick to continue to campaign for the legitimization of sodomy, lesbianism, and an ever-expanding litany of sexual perversions.
On January 14, 2005, The National Catholic Reporter ran a story by Gramick titled "Finding empathy for Shanley — Nun says Christian response goes beyond guilt or innocence," an apologia for the notorious criminal pederast and homosexual Fr. Paul Shanley, who for more than 30 years was able to live out his NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Lover Association) fantasies with immunity, with the blessings of three Boston princes of the Church — Richard Cardinal Cushing, Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, and Bernard Cardinal Law.
Gramick's bombshell did not sit well with victims of clerical sexual abuse, who, if the truth be known, have never been the object of any real concern by New Ways or its founders.
More recently, Gramick has been traveling the world campaigning for homosexual rights, including the "right to marry," and pushing a documentary on her life and mission called In Good Conscience: Sister Jeannine Gramick's Journey of Faith.
Any faithful Catholic who has been holding his breath waiting for the USCCB or the Vatican to rein in the rebellious nun has long since died and been buried.
The USCCB continues to support pro-homosexual "ministries," with many larger dioceses like New York and San Francisco having established actual homosexual parishes such as St. Francis Xavier Parish in Manhattan and Most Holy Redeemer in the Castro District. The Ordinary for New York is the USCCB's new President, Archbishop Timothy Dolan. The Ordinary for San Francisco is Archbishop George H. Niederauer, former housemate of the Prefect for the CDF, William Cardinal Levada.
As for Cardinal George, his continued scandalous support for the pro-homosexual ministry Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach program (AGLO) — which he permitted to extend into the suburbs of Chicago in 2004 — makes his criticism of New Ways ludicrous, to say the least.
Ratzinger smiles on Gramick
As for Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XV, what can I say? Perhaps, it's better if I let Gramick explain his position on the matter.
On Sunday, 2008, the Malta Times ran an interview with Gramick titled "The Unlikely Rebel," by Ariadne Massa. The overseas interview was later reprinted in the Spring 2008 issue of Bondings, the official publication of New Ways, with an appropriately provocative sado/masochist title. [14]
Gramick told Massa that she was a member of the National Coalition of American Nuns, which backed marriage and all the sacraments for gays. She denied that Natural Law prohibits sodomy and lesbian acts. "These arguments are based on plumbing... one sexual organ fits in another... that's ridiculous! This is a very male-based theology," she said.
When the Maltese reporter asked Gramick if she feared being excommunicated by the Vatican for her radical pro-homosexual agenda, the sister replied, "No."
Gramick then told Massa about an incident which occurred during the CDF's investigation into her and Nugent's controversial ministry. She said that her provincial with the School Sisters of Notre Dame recommended that she and Gramick make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the foundress of the order to pray for a miracle. "Through sheer coincidence, travelling on the plane between Rome and Munich was Cardinal Ratzinger himself," Gramick said.
"My superior went up to him and said, 'Sr. Jeannine is a very good sister. We're very afraid she's going to get excommunicated.'" And he replied, "Oh, no no... it's not that level of doctrine." "She (Gramick) laughs, admitting that her miracle had happened on the plane," said Massa.
Now it is a matter of public record that the doctrinal problems of Gramick and Nugent concerning the morality of homosexuality were so grave and complex that the matter had to be transferred from the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes to the CDF. But, Gramick tells us that, Ratzinger, the future pope, said that "it's not that level of doctrine."
Perhaps at his next impromptu media talk, Benedict XV can enlighten American Catholics as to why the CDF has failed to monitor and enforce the prohibitions against the pro-abort, pro-homosexual, "Father-Mother God" sister.
An apology from the USCCB?
At the same time, perhaps the new President of the USCCB, Archbishop Archbishop Dolan of New York, with the assistance of Cardinal George and Cardinal Wuerl and Bishop Cordileone, can draft a short public apology for the 40 years of disinformation, deception, misdeeds, and misery that the USCCB, along with its liberal allies in the hierarchy and what passes for religious orders these days, have inflicted upon faithful Catholics in the United States, especially with regard to its failure to uphold and promote and teach the Catholic Church's teachings on the grave sins of homosexuality and its handmaiden, pederasty — homosexuality in its most pervasive and universal form.
Living in an age of organized perversion, it is all the more necessary that Catholics, indeed all civilized human beings, remember that the initial reaction of a normal person to perversion is one of shame and disgust. To shun perversions is a normal subconscious mental defense against contamination. When disgust and repulsion turn to sympathy, the normal individual becomes defenseless in the face of the perversion.
USCCB pro-homosexual actions and publications which promote an inordinate and false "compassion" for individuals caught up in the vice of sodomy have weakened Catholic opposition to the perversion, and rendered many Catholics defenseless before the onslaught of the Homosexual Collective.
The USCCB is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. The obvious long-term solution is to put the mad dog down. (New lies for old -- The USCCB and New Ways Ministry.)
No one has the right from God to identify himself by means of his inclination to commit any sin, no less a sin such as the sin of Sodom that cries out to Heaven for vengeance. The increasing numbers of people who identify themselves by such a predilection to the commission of sins against nature is the direct result of at least five decades of constant propagandizing by what Mrs. Randy Engel rightly calls the “Homosexual Collective” in behalf of the “mainstreaming” of sodomy and its ever-mutating related vices. Such “mainstreaming” is now part and parcel of so-called “public education” from pre-school through twelfth grade and it has become institutionalized in higher education as colleges and universities created entire departments dedicated to the perversity that is “LBGTQ Study” programs. American and multinational corporations require “diversity training” for those who do not accept what is considered to be a “normal” expression of human “love.” Hotels and catering halls display photographs on their websites of men holding hands with men and women holding hands with women to attract the “gay tourists.” Indeed, there is an entire industry related to “gay tourism.” The entertainment industry, which had been replete with very closeted practitioners of sodomy and other perversities for a very long time prior to the 1960s, became one of the chief vehicles of promoting the sodomite agenda of perversity.
Moreover, skilled homosexuals and lesbians seem to groom emotionally vulnerable people into their own twisted lives of perversity by manipulating and bribing them over the course of time. The recruitment programs at all educational levels from pre-school through graduate and professional school, the grooming of vulnerable individuals, the use of an unstable legal and constitutional system to militate in support of their “rights” and the promotion of the homosexual agenda in the mass media, an effort that began as early as November 1, 1972, the Solemnity of All Saints, mind you, as actors Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen starred in “That Certain Summer,” an American Broadcasting Company made-for-television motion picture, has created a world in which those who oppose any or all of this must be silenced and punished. Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s embrace of “civil unions” and his promotion of such as Father Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., and "Father" James Martin, S.J. is just a further ratification of the “maturity” of “diversity.”
Finally, there are no such things as “homosexual families” as (a) sodomites have no “right” to adopt children and then to place their immortal souls in jeopardy in an unnatural situation that is opposed to both the Order of Creation (Nature) and the Order of Redemption (Grace); and (b) many sodomites, lesbians, mutants and other members of the community of hardened sinners who base their self-identification of the basis of their perverse predilections resort to the immoral practice of in vitro fertilization, which involves the conception and then destruction of thousands embryonic babies, and surrogate mothers to “have” their own children. “Homosexual families,” Jorge? There are no such things.
We do not base human self-identification on the basis of an inclination to commit various sins. If we did, of course, perhaps we could refer to the "blasphemers' community" and the "killers' community" and the "thieves' community" and the "adulterers' community" and the "gossipers' community" and the "enviers' community." (Well, come to think of it, the counterfeit church of conciliarism is a collection of blasphemers, isn't it?) Human self-identification is not based on the inclination to commit any sins, and for Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of conciliar revolutionaries to reaffirm those inclined to the commission of perverse sins demonstrates that they, the conciliar revolutionaries, do not understand that true love of God requires us will the good of others. the ultimate good of others is the salvation of their immortal souls, which they conciliar revolutionaries impede, not advance, as they write about the "elements of true love" and concern that perverse sinners have for each other than can "inspire" others by the "sacrifices" they make for each other.
Some would say that such a conclusion is “harsh” and “judgmental.”
Well, here is a review for those prone to sentimentality and subjectivism:
1) God's love for us is an act of His divine will, the ultimate expression of which is the salvation of our immortal souls.
2) Our love for others must be premised on willing for them what God wills for us: their salvation.
3) We love no one authentically if we do or say anything, either by omission or commission, which reaffirms him in a life of unrepentant sin.
4) God hates sin. He wills the sinner to repent of his sins by cooperating with the graces He won for them on the wood of the Holy Cross.
5) Sin is what caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer unspeakable horrors on the wood of the Holy Cross and caused His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be thrust through with Seven Swords of Sorrow.
6) No one can say that he loves Our Lord or Our Lady if he persist in sin unrepentantly and/or celebrates the commission of sin in public acts of defiance against the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the Natural Law.
7) Each sin darkens the intellect and weakens the will, inclining us all the more to sin and sin again. We must, therefore, resolve never to sin again and to do penance for our sins as Our Lady herself implored us to do when she appeared in th Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, ninety years ago.
8) It is therefore forbidden for anyone of this parish or diocese to participate or support, whether morally or financially, any event whatsoever that celebrates any sin, whether natural or unnatural, and/or encourages people to persist in sin as a legitimate "lifestyle."
9) One of the Spiritual Works of Mercy is to admonish the sinner. We have an obligation to admonish those who are in lives on unrepentant sin to turn away from their lives of sin and to strive to pursue the heights of sanctity.
10) God has compassion on all erring sinners, meaning each one of us. He understands our weakness. He exhorts us, as He exhorted the woman caught in adultery, to "Go, and commit this sin no more."
11) It is not an act of "love" for people to persist in unrepentant sins with others.
12) It is not an act of "judgmentalness" or "intolerance" to exhort people who are living lives of unrepentant sin to reform their lives lest their souls wind up in Hell for eternity.
13) Mortal Sins cast out Sanctifying Grace from the soul. Those steeped in unrepentant mortal sin are the captives of the devil until they make a good and sincere Confession.
14) Certain sins cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Sodomy is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.
15) Those engaged in natural or unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments do not "love" the individuals with whom they are sinning. Authentic love cannot exist in a soul committed to a life against the Commandments of God and the eternal welfare of one's own soul, no less the souls of others.
16) Those engaged in natural or unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are not fit to adopt children.
17) Those engaged in natural or unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are not fit to adopt children because their very sinful lives put into jeopardy the eternal of the souls of the children they seek to adopt. It is not possible for people who are sinning unrepentantly to teach children to hate sin as God hates sin. They are immersed in sin. Pope Pius XI put it this way in Casti Connubii, December 31,1930:
But Christian parents must also understand that they are destined not only to propagate and preserve the human race on earth, indeed not only to educate any kind of worshippers of the true God, but children who are to become members of the Church of Christ, to raise up fellow-citizens of the Saints, and members of God's household, that the worshippers of God and Our Savior may daily increase. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31,1930.)
18) Those engaged in unnatural, perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are further unfit to adopt children because they have no right in the Divine positive law or the natural law to live together as a "couple." Once again, Pope Pius XI's Casti Connubii:
Nor must We omit to remark, in fine, that since the duty entrusted to parents for the good of their children is of such high dignity and of such great importance, every use of the faculty given by God for the procreation of new life is the right and the privilege of the married state alone, by the law of God and of nature, and must be confined absolutely within the sacred limits of that state. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31,1930.)
19) Those engaged in unnatural, perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandment have no right in the Divine positive law or the natural law to present a "model" of parenthood that is from the devil himself. The words that Saint Paul wrote about perversity in Rome in his own day are quite apropos of our own:
Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use against which is their nature.
And in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.
And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.
Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1: 24-32)
20) Matrimony was elevated to a Sacrament by Our Lord at the wedding feast in Cana. The Holy Sacrament of Matrimony is entered into by one man and by one woman to achieve these ends: the procreation and education of children, the mutual good of the spouses, a remedy for concupiscence. Pope Pius XI noted this in Casti Connubii:
This conjugal faith, however, which is most aptly called by St. Augustine the "faith of chastity" blooms more freely, more beautifully and more nobly, when it is rooted in that more excellent soil, the love of husband and wife which pervades all the duties of married life and holds pride of place in Christian marriage. For matrimonial faith demands that husband and wife be joined in an especially holy and pure love, not as adulterers love each other, but as Christ loved the Church. This precept the Apostle laid down when he said: "Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the Church,"[24] that Church which of a truth He embraced with a boundless love not for the sake of His own advantage, but seeking only the good of His Spouse.[25] The love, then, of which We are speaking is not that based on the passing lust of the moment nor does it consist in pleasing words only, but in the deep attachment of the heart which is expressed in action, since love is proved by deeds. This outward expression of love in the home demands not only mutual help but must go further; must have as its primary purpose that man and wife help each other day by day in forming and perfecting themselves in the interior life, so that through their partnership in life they may advance ever more and more in virtue, and above all that they may grow in true love toward God and their neighbor, on which indeed "dependeth the whole Law and the Prophets." For all men of every condition, in whatever honorable walk of life they may be, can and ought to imitate that most perfect example of holiness placed before man by God, namely Christ Our Lord, and by God's grace to arrive at the summit of perfection, as is proved by the example set us of many saints.
This mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)
21) It is never permissible to put even one child into spiritual, if not physical, jeopardy by claiming that so many others would be helped if the Church did not cooperate with an unjust law. Our Lord said that it would be better for one to have a millstone thrown around his neck and thrown into a lake than to lead one of his little ones astray. He was not joking.
22) Sinners must repent of the evil they have done in order to live lives of penance and mortification worthy of Saint Francis of Assisi.
A Catholic bishop would not hesitate to make these points. Alas, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is neither a priest nor a bishop, and he is not even a Catholic, something that should be pretty obvious by now.
He wants us to quit them by cooperating with the graces that His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross that flow into our souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.
Indeed, Holy Mother Church has long taught that we must perform the Spiritual Works of Mercy by admonishing and that there are nine ways by which we can become accessories to the sins of others. Here is a little review for you:
The Spiritual Works of Mercy
- To instruct the ignorant.
- To counsel the doubtful.
- To admonish sinners.
- To bear wrongs patiently;
- To forgive offences willingly;
- To comfort the afflicted;
- To pray for the living and the dead.
Catholics also believe that there are nine ways that they can be accessories to the sins of others:
- 1. By counsel.
- 2. By command.
- 3. By consent.
- 4. By provocation.
- 5. By praise or flattery of the evil done.
- 6. By silence.
- 7. By connivance.
- 8. By partaking.
- 9. By defense of the ill done.
Conciliarism is by its very false nature uncharitable as it makes a mockery of the authentic, immutable teaching that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by making it appear that it is somehow opposed to tenderness and mercy to follow these words that Saint Paul wrote in his Second Epistle to Saint Timothy:
[1] I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming, and his kingdom: [2] Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. [3] For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: [4] And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. [5] But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober. (2 Tim. 4: 1-15.)
A physician does not "judge" anyone if he warns him what might happen if he does not stop engaging in a certain course of behavior that is deleterious to his bodily health.
Similarly, one who warns another about the state of his soul as he persists in a life of unrepentant sin is simply performing a fundamental Spiritual Work of Mercy, and those who are inclined to and/or steeped in perverse sins against nature are not to be left without being remonstrated as this is a duty of a Catholic before God and to the eternal and temporal good of the sinner.
It is one thing to sin and to be sorry and then to seek out the mercy of the Divine Redeemer in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. It is quite another to persist in sin, no less perverse sins against nature, unrepentantly and to expect others to reaffirm him in those sins, whether explicitly by words of approval or implicitly by silence, which betokens consent. Catholics must judge the states of their own souls every night in their Examen of Conscience, and they have a duty to help others to recognize the serious states of sin into which they have plunged themselves, praying beforehand to God the Holy Ghost to fill them with wisdom and prudence so as to provide a warning in such a way that could plant a seed to get an unrepentant sinner to a true priest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio does not only refuse to this, but he has also said very plainly on a number of occasions now that “homosexuality” does not matter, and he has made absolutely no distinction between one’s being inclined to commit perverse sins against nature and those who do so and persist in doing so.
One of Jorge’s first such ventures occurred in the summer of 2013 when he telephoned Christopher Trutino, a Frenchman who based his self-identification upon his inclination to commit sins of unnatural vice in defiance of the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments:
Then on Friday, Mr. Lombardi denied newspaper reports in France that the pope had called a young Catholic gay man in Toulouse to reassure him. The man, Christopher Trutino, a 25-year-old salesclerk, had told a local paper, La Dépêche du Midi, that after he wrote a letter to the pope explaining his struggles to reconcile his sexuality and faith, Francis phoned him to counsel him. “Your homosexuality, it doesn’t matter,” he recalled the pope saying. “One way or another, we are all children of God.”
Some on Twitter and elsewhere on the Internet greeted reports of the call as a welcome change in the doctrinal rigidity of the church on the issue of homosexuality. But the Vatican’s denial of the reports fanned speculation that the call had been a hoax, while also prompting some to question whether the Vatican was dissembling to distance itself from a delicate topic.
Mr. Trutino is avoiding the media, and could not be reached for comment on Monday. But Cyril Doumergue, the journalist from La Dépêche du Midi who interviewed him, said he had sounded authentic and genuinely moved. But he said he believed Mr. Trutino may have been deceived. He said the young man told the newspaper that during the call — which he said began at 2 p.m. — the pope explained that he would later be receiving King Abdullah II of Jordan. But Ansa, the Italian news agency, said the king arrived at 11 a.m. and the meeting was over by 12:06 p.m.
“Christopher did not record the conversation, so it is impossible to know 100 percent what happened,” Mr. Doumergue said. (Francis is on the line and everyone's talking.)
Contrary to what "Father" Federico Lombardi, S.J., tried to claim, it was within a few short days that Jorge himself admitted the phone call and its contents in his now infamous interview with "Father" Antonio Spadoro, S.J.:
“Another example from recent days that I saw got the attention of newspapers: the phone call I made to a young man who wrote me a letter. I called him because that letter was so beautiful, so simple. For me this was an act of generativity. I realized that he was a young man who is growing, that he saw in me a father, and that the letter tells something of his life to that father. The father cannot say, ‘I do not care.’ This type of fruitfulness is so good for me.” (A Big Heart Open to God, America Magazine.)
Bergoglio thus admitted to “Father” Antonio Spadoro, S.J., in Interview Number Two in September of 2013 what Vatican spokesflack and spinmeister “Father” Federico Lombardi, S.J., had denied when news of the infamous phone call had first become public two weeks beforehand, and he made news two years later when he met two sodomite friends of his who had gotten civilly “married” in Argentina.
Gone are the days of official posturing by conciliar officials within the walls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River concerning various diocesan programs and “ministries” that curried favor with unrepentant practitioners of perversity. “Official” reprimands of such groups as “Dignity USA” and “New Ways Ministry” are things of the past. “Francis the Merciful” has tickled the itching ears of many pestilential vermin within the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that the conciliar Vatican had “tolerated” on a de facto basis even while reproving on a de jure basis. Almost the entirety of the sodomite agenda has received de facto endorsement from Bergoglio and his lieutenants.
Only the willfully blind can deny that Jorge Mario Bergoglio continues to advance the agenda of the Homosexual Collective because he believes that there is nothing inherently wrong with perverse sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. What is wrong, the Argentine Apostate believes, is the condemnation of those who are expressing their “love” in ways that require “acceptance” and “accompaniment.”
Although it took me far, far too long to recognize the truth of our ecclesiastical situation in this time of apostasy and betrayal, I have not wavered one little bit in the past fifteen and one-half years about the fact that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is not and can never be the Catholic Church and that the men who pranced around in white cassocks since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, have been pretenders to the Throne of Saint Peter.
The false mercy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, coupled with his denunciations of faithful Catholics, comes at a time when sin is being justified and enabled by the lords of Modernity, who deem as "haters" the very people Bergoglio sees as "hypocrites." None other than the Patron Saint of Moral Theologians, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, a Doctor of Holy Mother Church, had a few choice words about the delusions of the sorts of unprentant sinners whom Bergoglio believes are "judged" by merciless "hypocrites".
Consider the following passages from Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri’s sermon for Sexagesima Sunday:
The Devil brings sinners to hell by closing their eyes to the dangers of perdition. He first blinds them, and then leads them with himself to eternal torments. If, then, we wish to be saved, we must continually pray to God in the words of the blind man in the gospel of this day,” Lord, that I may see." Give me light: make me see the way in which I must walk in order to save my soul, and to escape the deceits of the enemy of salvation. I shall, brethren, this day place before your eyes the delusion by which the devil tempts men to sin and to persevere in sin, that you may know how to guard yourselves against his deceitful artifices
2. To understand these delusions better, let us imagine the case of a young man who, seized by some passion, lives in sin, the slave of Satan, and never thinks of his eternal salvation. My son, I say to him, what sort of life do you lead? If you continue to live in this manner, how will you be able to save your soul? But, behold! the devil, on the other hand, says to him: Why should you be afraid of being lost? Indulge your passions for the present: you will afterwards confess your sins, and thus all shall be remedied. Behold the net by which the devil drags so many souls into hell. “Indulge your passions: you will hereafter make a good confession." But, in reply, I say, that in the meantime you lose your soul. Tell me: if you had a jewel worth a thousand pounds, would you throw it into a river with the hope of afterwards finding it again? What if all your efforts to find it were fruitless? God! you hold in your hand the invaluable jewel of your soul, which Jesus Christ has purchased with his own blood, and you cast it into hell! Yes; you cast it into hell; because according to the present order of providence, for every mortal sin you commit, your name is written among the number of the damned. But you say.” I hope to recover God’s grace by making a good confession." And if you should not recover it, what shall be the consequences? To make a good confession, a true sorrow for sin is necessary, and this sorrow is the gift of God: if he does not give it, will you not be lost for ever? ("The Delusions of Sinners: Sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday," as found in Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, The Sermons of Saint Alphonsus Liguori For All the Sundays of the Year, republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1982, pp. 118-119.)
The conciliar revolutionaries, of course, live in a delusional world. Their world is so delusion that they do not even tell the unrepentant sinner that he has to make a good confession, not that the thought of doing so enters into the minds of most unrepentant sinners today.
Bergoglio embraces and enables the very crimes of Modernity that have contributed to the natural disasters of our present age, and he bears direct responsibility for the crimes of Modernism as advanced by the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
While it is certainly true that there has no declaration that the conciliar church is a counterfeit church, there has also been no such declaration about the papal vacancy either. We have to use our sensus Catholicus to understand that Holy Mother Church is the inerrant, spotless, mystical spouse of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head, and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and to understand that it is ontologically impossible for there to be a “heretical pope,” which is why there has never been such a thing despite the protestations of those in the “resist while recognize” camp.
Saint Robert Bellarmine wrote a defense of popes said to have erred in faith and, of course, Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B, wrote the following about Pope Honorius and why he was not guilty of heresy:
It were fitting that our attention should not be diverted, on this Vigil, from the august object which is occupying the Church in the preparation of her chants. But the triumph of Peter will shine out with all the more splendor in proportion as the testimony he rendered to the son of God is shown to have been maintained with all fidelity, during the long series of succeeding ages, by the Pontiffs, inheritors of his primacy. For a considerable time, the twenty-eighth of June was consecrated to the memory of Saint Leo the Great; it was the day chosen by Sergius I for the Translation of the illustrious Doctor, and indeed a more magnificent usher into tomorrow’s Solemnity could hardly be desired. From no other lips but his has Rome ever set forth, in such elevated language, the glories of these two Princes of the apostles and her own fame; never since the incomparable scene enacted at Cesarea Philippi, has the mystery of the Man-God been affirmed in manner so sublime, as on that day wherein the Church, striking the impious Eutyches at Chalcedon, received from Leo the immortal formula of Christian Dogma. Peter once more spoke by the mouth of Leo; yet far was the cause from being then ended: two centuries more were needed; and another Leo it was, even he whom we this day celebrate, who had the honor of ending it, at the Sixth Council.
The Spirit of God, ever watchful over the development of the sacred liturgy, by no means wished any change to be effected on this day in the train of thought of the faithful people. Thus when towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, the 11th of April was again assigned to Saint Leo I (for that was really the primitive place occupied by him on the cycle), Saint Leo II, the anniversary of whose death was this 28th of June, and who hitherto had been merely commemorated thereon, being now raised to the rank of a semi-double, came forward, as it were, to remind the Faithful of the glorious struggles maintained both by his predecessor and by himself, in the order of apostolic confession.
How was it that Saint Leo’s clear and complete exposition of the dogma and the anathemas of Chalcedon did not succeed in silencing the arguments of that heresy which refused to our nature its noblest title, by denying that it had been assumed in its integrity by the Divine Word? Because for Truth to win the day, it suffices not merely to expose the lie uttered by error. More than once, alas! history gives instances of the most solemn anathemas ending in nothing but lulling the vigilance of the guardians of the Holy City. The struggle seemed ended, the need of repose was making itself felt amidst the combatants, a thousand other matters called for the attention of the Church’s rulers; and so while feigning utmost deference, nay, ardor even, if needful, for the new enactments, error went on noiselessly, making profit of the silence which ensued after its defeat. Then did its progress become all the more redoubtable at the very time it was pretending to have disappeared without leaving a track behind.
Thanks, however, to the Divine Head, who never ceases to watch over his work, such trials as we have been alluding to, seldom reach to such a painful depth as that into which Leo II had to probe with steel and fire, in order to save the Church. Once only has the terrified world beheld anathema strike the summit of the holy mount. Honorius, placed on the pinnacle of the Church, “had not made her shine with the splendor of apostolic doctrine, but by profane treason, had suffered the faith, which should be spotless, to be exposed to subversion;” Leo II, therefore, sending forth his thunders, in unison with the assembled Church, against the new Eutychians and their accomplices, spared not even his predecessor. And yet, as all acknowledge, Honorius had otherwise been an irreproachable Pope; and even in the question at stake, he had been far from either professing heresy or teaching error. Wherein, then, did his fault lie?
The Emperor Heraclius, who, by victory had reached the height of power, beheld with much concern how division persistently lived on between the Catholics of his Empire and the late disciples of Eutyches. The Bishop of the Imperial City, the Patriarch Sergius, fostered these misgivings in his master’s mind. Vain of a certain amount of political skill which he fancied himself to possess, he now aimed at re-establishing, by his sole effort, that unity which the Council of Chalcedon and Saint Leo the Great had failed to obtain; thus would he make himself a name. The disputants agreed in acknowledging two Natures in Jesus Christ; hence to reply to these advances of theirs, one thing were needed, thought he, viz., to impose silence on the question as to whether there are him Him two Wills or only one. The enthusiasm with which this evident compromise was hailed by the various sects rebellious to the Fourth General Council showed well enough that they still preserved and hallowed all the venom of error; and the very fact of their denying, or (which came practically to the same thing) hesitating to acknowledge that in the Man-God there is any other Will than that proper to the Divine Nature, was equivalent to declaring that He had assumed but a semblance of Human Nature, since this Nature could by no means exist devoid of that Will which is proper to It. Therefore, the Monophysites, or partisans of the one Nature in Christ, made no difficulty in henceforth being called by the name of Monothelites, or partisans of the one Will. Sergius, the apostle of this novel unity, might well congratulate himself; Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, hailed with one accord the benefit of this “peace.” Was not the whole East here represented in her patriarchates? If Rome in her turn would but acquiesce, the triumph would be complete! Jerusalem, however, proved a jarring note in this strange concert.
Jerusalem, the witness of the anguish suffered by the Man-God in his Human Nature, had heard him cry out in the Garden of His Agony: Father, if it be possible, let this Chalice pass from me; yet, not My Will, but Thine be done! The City of dolors knew better than any other what to hold concerning these two Wills brought there face to face, yet which had, by the heroism of Incomparable Love, been maintained in such full harmony; the time for her to bear testimony was come. The Monk Sophronius, now her bishop, was by his sanctity, courage, and learning, up to the mark for the task that lay before him. But while, in the charity of his soul, he was seeking to reclaim Sergius, before appearing against him to the Roman Pontiff, the bishop of Constantinople already took the initiative; he succeeded thus, by a hypocritical letter, in circumventing Honorius, and in getting him to impose silence on the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Hence, when at last, Saint Sophronius, at the head of the bishops of his province assembled in council, thought it had become a positive duty on his own part to turn towards Rome, it was but to receive for answer a confirmation of the prohibition to disturb the peace. Woeful mistake! yet withal, it by no means directly implicated the Infallible Magistracy; it was a measure exclusively political, but one which was, all the same, to cost bitter tears and much blood to the Church, and was to result, fifty years later, in the condemnation of the unfortunate Honorius.
The Holy Ghost, indeed, who has guaranteed the infallible purity of the doctrine flowing officially from the Apostolic Chair, has not pledged himself to protect in a like degree, from all failure, either the virtue, or the private judgment, or even the administrative acts of the Sovereign Pontiff. Entering into the views of this marvellous solidarity which the Creator made to reign both upon earth and in heaven, the Man-God, when he founded the society of saints upon the authentic and immutable basis of the Faith of Peter, willed that to the prayers of all should be confided the charge of completing his work, by obtaining for the successors of Peter such preservative graces as do not of themselves necessarily spring from the divine Constitution of the Church.
Meanwhile Mahomet was just letting loose his hordes upon the world. Heraclius was now to learn the worth of his Patriarch’s lying peace, and was to come down lower in shame than he had been exalted in glory by his victories over the Persians, in the days when he had acted as the hero of the Cross. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt fell simultaneously beneath the blows of the lieutenants of the Prophet. Sophronius, placed as he was in the very midst of the scene of invasion, grew still greater under trial. Abandoned by the emperor, where the defense of the empire was at stake, disavowed by Rome, as regarded Faith, he alone intrepidly treated with Omar, as power opposed to power; and when about to die, still hoping against all hope in Rome, though thence had come a blow harder far to bear than that of the Caliph, he confided to Stephen of Dora the supreme, which the latter thus relates: “In his justice strong as a lion, contemning calumnies and intrigues, blessed Sophronius took me, unworthy as I am, and conducted me to the sacred spot of Calvary. There he bound me by an indissoluble engagement, in these words: Thou shalt have to render account to him who being God was voluntarily crucified for us according to the Flesh on this spot, when on the day of his terrible Coming he will appear in glory to judge the living and the dead, if thou defer or neglect the interests of his Faith now in peril. Well knowest thou, that I cannot in the body do this thing, being hindered by the incursion of the Saracens which our sins have deserved. But do thou set out as soon as possible, and go from these confines of the earth unto the furthest extremity, until thou reach the See Apostolic, there where are set the foundations of orthodox dogma. Go again and again, not once, not twice, but endlessly, and make known to the holy personages who reside in that place, the shock that these lands of ours have sustained. Importunately, ceaselessly, implore and supplicate, until Apostolic prudence at length determine, by its canonical judgment, the victory over these perfidious teachings.”
The Bishop of Dora was faithful to the behest of Sophronius. When, twelve years later, he gave this touching narrative at the Council of Lateran in 649, it was then the third time that despite the snares and other difficulties of the times, he could say: “We have taken the wings of a dove, as David speaks, and we have come to declare our situation to this See, elevated in the sight of all, this sovereign, this principal See, where is to be found remedy for the wound that has been made upon us.” Saint Martin I, who received this appeal, was one worthy to hear it; and soon afterwards he repaired by his own martyrdom the fault committed by Honorius, in suffering himself to be tricked by an impostor. His glorious death, followed by the tortures endured for the Truth by the saintly Abbot Maximus and his companions, prepared the victory which the heroic faith of Sophronius had announced to the Roman Pontiff. Admirable was this amends received by Holy Church for an odious silence: now were Her Doctors to be seen, with tongue plucked out, still continuing by divine power to proclaim that Christian dogma which cannot be enchained; still with lopped off hands, finding means, in their indomitable zeal, to affix to the mutilated arm the pen whose function, now made doubly glorious, continued thus to carry throughout the world the refutation of falsehood.
But it is time to come to the issue of this memorable contest. It is to be found in him whose feast we are this day celebrating. Saint Agatho had assembled the sixth General Council at Constantinople, at the request of another Constantine, an enemy of heresy and a victor over Islam. Faith and justice now did the work, hand in hand; and Saint Leo II could at last sing aloud: “O holy Mother Church, put off thy garb of mourning, and deck thee in robes of gladness. Exult now with joyous confidence: thy liberty is not cramped.” (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Pope Saint Leo II, July 3.)
Pope Saint Leo II fought against falsehood.
The conciliar "popes," including Joseph Alois Ratzinger, have embraced it.
Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres explained that Our Lord, quite unlike the sanguinity that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has for the sins of the flesh, would punish “heresy, blasphemy, and impurity,” meaning that they must be awfully serious in His holy sight, especially since He suffered their effects in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday:
While the founding mothers admired Mother Mariana's perfect observance of the rule and practice of virtue, there were other sisters who were stirred by jealousy. Mother Marina suffered insults and persecutions form those sisters without ever trying to justify herself or protest. Only at the foot of the Tabernacle did she confide her secret sorrows to her Beloved. One day in 1582, as she was praying before the altar, she saw the Tabernacle open and Christ Himself emerged, suffering as He had at Golgotha. The Blessed Virgin, at His feet, was shedding tears of pearls. Mother Mariana asked her, "My Lady, am I do blame for this sadness?"
"No, she replied, "it is not you, but the criminal world." Then as Our Lord began His Agony, she heard the voice of the Eternal Father saying, "This punishment will be for the 20th century." She saw three swords hanging over the head of Christ. On each was written, "I shall punish heresy, blasphemy and impurity." With this, she was given to understand all that would take place in the present era.
The Holy Virgin continued: "My daughter, will you sacrifice yourself for the people of this time?" Mother Mariana replied, "I am willing." And immediately the swords moved away from the agonizing Christ and buried themselves in the hear of Mother Mariana, who fell dead through the violence and pain. (Marian Therese Horvat, Ph.D., Our Lady of Good Success: Prophecies for Our Times, Tradition in Action, Inc., second edition, 2000, p. 27.)
Following Mother Mariana's "mysterious death and resurrection," Our Lady spoke to her again:
"Thus do I make it known to you that from the end of the 19th century and especially in the 20th century, in what is today the Colony and then will be the Republic of Ecuador, the passions will erupt and there will be a total corruption of customs, for Satan will reign almost completely by means of Masonic sects. They will focus particularly on the children in order to achieve this general corruption. Woe to the children of these times! It will be difficult to receive the Sacrament of Baptism, and also that of Confirmation. Making use of persons in positions of authority, the devil will assiduously try to destroy the Sacrament of Confession ...
"The same thing will happen with Holy Communion. Alas! How deeply I grieve upon manifesting to you the many and horrible sacrileges--both public and also secret--that will occur from such profanations of the Holy Eucharist! Often during this epoch, the enemies of Jesus Christ, instigated by the demon, will steal consecrated hosts from the churches so that they might profane the Eucharistic Species. My Most Holy Will will see Himself cast upon the ground and trampled upon by irreverent feet" . . . .
"Know, moreover, that Divine Justice releases terrible chastisements on entire nations, not only for the sins of the people, but especially for those of priests and religious persons. For the latter are called by the perfection of their state, to be the salt of the earth, the masters of truth and deflectors of divine wrath. Straying from their divine mission, they degrade themselves in such a way that, before the eyes of God, they quicken the rigor of the punishments. . . . (Our Lady of Good Success: Prophecies for Our Times, pp. 44-45; 63)
We should not be surprised, therefore, by the outbreaks of various natural disasters as they are instruments of God's justice. They are also, however, instruments of His ineffable mercy, providing survivors (and those in other parts of the world who become aware of various disasters) an opportunity to amend their lives and return to Him through His Catholic Church before they die sudden and sacramentally unprovided-for deaths. We must remember that there is nothing we can suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears that is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Lord to suffer during His Passion and Death, remembering also how our sins caused Seven Swords of Sorrow to be thrust through the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Yes, God punishes men for the sins, both in this life and, in the case of those who die in a state of Mortal sin, for all eternity in hell. This is simply His Divine Justice, which is not in the least in conflict with his ineffable mercy for erring sinners who seek to reform their lives by confessing their sins, both by kind and number as far as they are able to remember, to a true priest.
Men cannot sin wantonly without realizing terrible chastisements from God, something that Saint Alphonsus de Liguori made very clear in Preparation for Death:
The Lord does not wish us to be lost; and therefore, by the threat of chastisement, he unceasingly exhorts us to a change of life. Except you will be converted, He will brandish His sword. Behold, he says in another place, how many, because they would not cease to offend me, have met with a sudden death, when they were least expecting it, and were living in peace, secure of a life of many years. For whey they shall say: Peace and security: then shall sudden destruction come upon them. Again he says: Unless you shall do penance, you shall likewise perish. Why so many threats of chastisements before the execution of vengeance? It is because he wishes that we amend our lives, and thus avoid an unhappy death. "He," says Saint Augustine, "who tells you to beware, does not wish to take away your life." It is necessary, then, to prepare our accounts before the day of account arrives. Dearly beloved Christians, were you to die, and were your lot for eternity to be decided before night would your accounts be ready? Oh! how much would you give to obtain from God another year or month, or even another day, to prepare for judgment? Why then do you not now, that God gives you this time, settle the accounts of your conscience? Perhaps is cannot happen that this shall be the last day for you? Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day; for His wrath shall come on a sudden, and in the time of vengeance He will destroy thee. My brother, to save your soul you must give up your sin. "If then you must renounce it at some time, why do you not abandon it at this moment?" says Saint Augustine. Perhaps you are waiting till death arrives? But for obstinate sinners, the hour of death is the time, not of pardon, but of vengeance. In the time of vengeance He will destroy thee. (Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Preparation for Death.)
We are eyewitnesses to apostasy, which is why we need the help of Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, now more than ever before.
Today is the Feast of Saint Lucy of Syracuse, who is, as you might imagine, rather special in the Droleskey household as it was Saint Lucy to whom Sharon prayed to help her see the truth as she learned the Faith before converting in 1999 about eighteen months before I met here on March 11, 2001, and it is after Saint Lucy that our daughter is named.
The following prayers, found in The Raccolta, attest to Saint Lucy’s love of purity and her complete detachment from all created things:
God in his mercy was pleased to infuse into thy fair soul. By the light of this faith thou didst know how to despise the vain and fleeting things of this miserable world, and to keep thy eyes fixed on heaven, for which alone we were created. The honours, riches, and pleasures of this seductive world did not obscure thy mind, much less corrupt thy heart, to the injury of thy faith and of divine grace; so that far from consenting to the wicked proposals of the unjust judge, thou didst fearlessly and resolutely encounter even death rather than be unfaithful to thy celestial Lord. What shame for us, who, illumined also by faith and strengthened by grace, know not at all how to resist our guilty passions, despise the perverse maxims of the world, or frustrate the wiles of our enemy the devil! Therefore we beseech thee, dear Saint, to obtain for us greater light from God, to understand better that we are not made for earthly things, but for the things of heaven. Pater, Ave, Gloria.
O victorious martyr, St Lucy, admirable was thy virtue of hope, which kept alive in thee the desire of heaven and nourished that filial confidence in God, our most loving Father, which possessed thy heart. Animated with this virtue, while praying fervently for thy mother at the tomb of St Agatha, thou didst obtain for her health in sickness. Full of trust in God, in order to become more completely detached from the things of this earth, thou didst willingly distribute to the poor whatever still remained to thee of earthly treasure; and if courage and strength never failed thee in resisting the tyrant, and in standing firm in the faith in the midst of unspeakable torments, it was solely because thou didst place thy hope in Him who has promised never to abandon us in dangers, but to be to us a shield of defense, ready to work even miracles, such as actually happened in thy glorious martyrdom. Let us then freely confess that too great an attachment to things here below and too little confidence in God harden our hearts, and so deprive us of courage that we often miserably succumb to occasions of danger. Obtain for us, we beseech thee, O blessed St Lucy, a more firm trust in our Lord and God, that we may deserve in every untoward event of our lives to have Him for our helper and consoler. Pater, Ave, Gloria.
O glorious martyr of Jesus Christ, St Lucy, thy living faith and firm hope could not be separated from the fire of most ardent charity which inflamed thy heart, and made thee so ready to shed thy blood and sacrifice thy life for thy spouse Jesus. No wonder the flame of material fire which was applied to thy body by order of the tyrant could not penetrate it or reduce it to ashes. This fire was too weak beside that which burnt in thy breast; and so the impious prefect, seeing that his efforts were vain, ordered that thy throat should be completely severed with a sharp sword. Then it was that thy beautiful soul took its flight to heaven, there to repose on the breast of thy Jesus, and enjoy his heavenly delights for ever. Alas! we love creatures, and so weary ourselves on their account that we find our poor hearts not only void of consolation, but overwhelmed with bitterness. Obtain for us, dear Saint, we beseech thee, that we may be persuaded, once for all, that our true happiness should begin on this earth, in the love of that God who will be the true and the sole object of our perfect and eternal beatitude in heaven. Pater, Ave, Gloria.
Full of confidence in thy powerful intercession, O glorious martyr St Lucy, we beseech thee to intercede with thy divine spouse Jesus, that it may please Him to keep ever healthy the light of our bodily eyes, giving us at the same time the grace to make good use of them, so that on the day of the general resurrection they may become radiant with that heavenly light which will fit them to behold the ineffable beauties of the country of the blessed. Amen.
V. Pray for us, St Lucy.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray. hear our prayers, O God our Saviour, that as we rejoice in the constancy in the faith of the blessed St Lucy, virgin and martyr, so we may be filled with pious and devout affections. Through Christ our Lord.
Saint Lucy will help us to see the world more clearly through the supernatural eyes of the Holy Faith if we beg her to do so, and this feast day is a good time to start a lifetime devotion to her if one is not already so devoted.
Offer all the sufferings of the moment to the Throne of the Most Blessed Trinity as the consecrated slave of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart Mary, whose triumph will be manifest when will least expect it.
Sancta Lucia, ora pro nobis!
Vivat Christus Rex! Vivat Maria Regina Immaculata!
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, 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 Lucy, pray for us.