Documents issued by the counterfeit church of conciliarism usually are based upon false premises and/or contain errors, whether one or many, obscure and blatant, as the means to propagate teaching that it is at variance with the patrimony of the Catholic Church, she who is the spotless, mystical bride of Her Divine Founder, Invisible Head, and Mystical Spouse, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
A recurring error that underlies the conciliar church’s view of Catholic Faith and Morals is a preoccupation with the "dignity of man” and his condition in the world that has lent itself to a naturalistic view of world events and a concept of morality that is based upon “man” and not upon the Divine Positive Law nor even the Natural Law. None other than Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI himself explained the “accomplishments” of the “Second” Vatican Council in terms of her “service” to “man” on the merely natural level without regard for the sanctification and salvation of his immortal soul as a member of the Catholic Church:
But we cannot pass over one important consideration in our analysis of the religious meaning of the council: it has been deeply committed to the study of the modern world. Never before perhaps, so much as on this occasion, has the Church felt the need to know, to draw near to, to understand, to penetrate, serve and evangelize the society in which she lives; and to get to grips with it, almost to run after it, in its rapid and continuous change. This attitude, a response to the distances and divisions we have witnessed over recent centuries, in the last century and in our own especially, between the Church and secular society -- this attitude has been strongly and unceasingly at work in the council; so much so that some have been inclined to suspect that an easy-going and excessive responsiveness to the outside world, to passing events, cultural fashions, temporary needs, an alien way of thinking . . ., may have swayed persons and acts of the ecumenical synod, at the expense of the fidelity which is due to tradition, and this to the detriment of the religious orientation of the council itself. We do not believe that this shortcoming should be imputed to it, to its real and deep intentions, to its authentic manifestations. (Address During The Last General Meeting Of the "Second Vatican Council.)
And what aspect of humanity has this august senate studied? What goal under divine inspiration did it set for itself? It also dwelt upon humanity's ever twofold facet, namely, man's wretchedness and his greatness, his profound weakness -- which is undeniable and cannot be cured by himself -- and the good that survives in him which is ever marked by a hidden beauty and an invincible serenity. But one must realize that this council, which exposed itself to human judgment, insisted very much more upon this pleasant side of man, rather than on his unpleasant one. Its attitude was very much and deliberately optimistic. A wave of affection and admiration flowed from the council over the modem world of humanity. Errors were condemned, indeed, because charity demanded this no less than did truth, but for the persons themselves there was only warming, respect and love. Instead of depressing diagnoses, encouraging remedies; instead of direful prognostics, messages of trust issued from the council to the present-day world. The modern world's values were not only respected but honored, its efforts approved, its aspirations purified and blessed. (Address During The Last General Meeting Of the "Second Vatican Council.)
Yes, the “pleasant side of man” has certainly manifested itself over the past fifty years.
A worldwide genocide, waged by chemical and surgical means, of innocent preborn children.
The worldwide vivisection of living human beings for their vital bodily organs in order to transplant them into those on the point of their natural deaths.
The worldwide starvation and dehydration of disabled human beings.
The worldwide use of “hospice” as a means to expedite the deaths of chronically or terminally ill patients in the name of “compassion.”
Big Pharma’s worldwide control of how human beings are to be overmedicated and used as guinea pigs to refine various formulae for “curing” problems created by Big Ag’s genetic manipulation of our food sources.
The worldwide campaign to institutionalize euthanasia for the sick and suffering and to oppose the imposition of the death penalty upon those adjudged guilty of heinous crimes after the administration of the due process of law.
The worldwide campaign to advance the sin of Sodom and its related vices as “human rights.”
The worldwide campaign to use junk science to promote the ideology of evolutionism and to promote a pantheistic protection of the environment and draconian measures to retard “global warming.”
The worldwide use of telecommunications as a means to attack and undermine the innocence of the young and to promote all manner of sins, both natural and unnatural, against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments by human beings of all ages.
The worldwide control of what is said to be “news” by master illusionists who want to condition, control, manipulate and agitate the masses into accepting uncritically whatever is said to be “reality” because it has been “reported” as such.
The worldwide campaign by national and supranational governmental agencies to institutionalize statism by the issuance of hundreds of thousands of regulations and the imposition of countless taxes, fees, and fines to limit the use of private property and to seek to criminalize speech deemed “hateful” by our caesars.
The worldwide creation and nurturing of a caste of citizens who are dependent upon the state for their very daily needs, thus accustoming entire generations of human beings to become wards of the civil state.
The worldwide use of social engineering to change the demographic composition of neighborhoods and communities.
The dominance of multinational banks and corporations whose only loyalty is to the bottom line and to the promotion of a social agenda that is anti-family and anti-life as they practice usury to enslave those with average or below average incomes in exchange for their being able to finance the purchases of their homes, vehicles, clothing and major appliances.
The systematic warfare against the expression of Christianity in public as a means of protecting “diversity” and of promotion “toleration,” especially for Mohammedans, whose swollen ranks in the once Catholic states of Europe have resulted in one of Talmudism’s long-sought goals: the elimination of the Holy Name of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, from public view.
An endless procession of wars, many of them waged simultaneously, that have killed and wounded millions upon millions of people and have laid waste entire lands and made refugees of untold millions of people.
Yes, yes, yes.
The “pleasant side of man.”
Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI was steeped in delusions, which have been fostered by the illusion that the work of the “Second” Vatican Council has been that of the Catholic Church and that the “liturgical reform” has enabled men to communicate with God more fully:
You see, for example, how the countless different languages of peoples existing today were admitted for the liturgical expression of men's communication with God and God's communication with men: to man as such was recognized his fundamental claim to enjoy full possession of his rights and to his transcendental destiny. His supreme aspirations to life, to personal dignity, to his just liberty, to culture, to the renewal of the social order, to Adajustice and peace were purified and promoted; and to all men was addressed the pastoral and missionary invitation to the light of the Gospel.
We can now speak only too briefly on the very many and vast questions, relative to human welfare, with which the council dealt. It did not attempt to resolve all the urgent problems of modem life; some of these have been reserved for a further study which the Church intends to make of them, many of them were presented in very restricted and general terms, and for that reason are open to further investigation and various applications.
But one thing must be noted here, namely, that the teaching authority of the Church, even though not wishing to issue extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements, has made thoroughly known its authoritative teaching on a number of questions which today weigh upon man's conscience and activity, descending, so to speak, into a dialogue with him, but ever preserving its own authority and force; it has spoken with the accommodating friendly voice of pastoral charity; its desire has been to be heard and understood by everyone; it has not merely concentrated on intellectual understanding but has also sought to express itself in simple, up-to-date, conversational style, derived from actual experience and a cordial approach which make it more vital, attractive and persuasive; it has spoken to modern man as he is.
Another point we must stress is this: all this rich teaching is channeled in one direction, the service of mankind, of every condition, in every weakness and need. The Church has, so to say, declared herself the servant of humanity, at the very time when her teaching role and her pastoral government have, by reason of the council's solemnity, assumed greater splendor and vigor: the idea of service has been central. (Address During The Last General Meeting Of the "Second Vatican Council.)
The servant of humanity, not the Mystical Spouse of Christ the King to advance the work of the sanctification and salvation of souls.
Modern man as he is?”
Ah, yes, this is exactly what Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s “Jubilee Year of Mercy” was all about as he brought to global prominence a false moral theology that was popularized by many Jesuit revolutionaries in the 1950s, prompting this rejoinder from our last true pope just about thirteen months before his death on October 9, 1958:
The more serious cause, however, was the movement in high Jesuit circles to modernize the understanding of the magisterium by enlarging the freedom of Catholics, especially scholars, to dispute its claims and assertions. Jesuit scholars had already made up their minds that the Catholic creeds and moral norms needed nuance and correction. It was for this incipient dissent that the late Pius XII chastised the Jesuits’ 30th General Congregation one year before he died (1957). What concerned Pius XII most in that admonition was the doctrinal orthodoxy of Jesuits. Information had reached him that the Society’s academics (in France and Germany) were bootlegging heterodox ideas. He had long been aware of contemporary theologians who tried “to withdraw themselves from the Sacred Teaching authority and are accordingly in danger of gradually departing from revealed truth and of drawing others along with them in error” (Humani generis).
In view of what has gone on recently in Catholic higher education, Pius XII’s warnings to Jesuits have a prophetic ring to them. He spoke then of a “proud spirit of free inquiry more proper to a heterodox mentality than to a Catholic one”; he demanded that Jesuits not “tolerate complicity with people who would draw norms for action for eternal salvation from what is actually done, rather than from what should be done.” He continued, “It should be necessary to cut off as soon as possible from the body of your Society” such “unworthy and unfaithful sons.” Pius obviously was alarmed at the rise of heterodox thinking, worldly living, and just plain disobedience in Jesuit ranks, especially at attempts to place Jesuits on a par with their Superiors in those matters which pertained to Faith or Church order (The Pope Speaks, Spring 1958, pp. 447-453). (Monsignor George A. Kelly, Ph.D.,The Catholic College: Death, Judgment, Resurrection. See also the full Latin text of Pope Pius XII's address to the thirtieth general congregation of the Society of Jesus at page 806 of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis for 1957: AAS 49 [1957]. One will have to scroll down to page 806.)
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was trained by the very sort of revolutionaries whose false moral theology was condemned by Pope Pius XII in 1957, and it is this false moral theology, which is nothing other than Judeo-Masonic moral relativism, which itself is the product of the Protestant Revolution’s theological relativism. Modernism is, of course, the synthesis of all heresies, as one can see by examining the following from his “homily” on December 8, 2016, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary that opened his festival of sin and sentimentality that was advertised as a “Jubilee Year of Mercy”:
Today, as we pass through the Holy Door, we also want to remember another door, which fifty years ago the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council opened to the world. This anniversary cannot be remembered only for the legacy of the Council’s documents, which testify to a great advance in faith. Before all else, the Council was an encounter. A genuine encounter between the Church and the men and women of our time. An encounter marked by the power of the Spirit, who impelled the Church to emerge from the shoals which for years had kept her self-enclosed so as to set out once again, with enthusiasm, on her missionary journey. It was the resumption of a journey of encountering people where they live: in their cities and homes, in their workplaces. Wherever there are people, the Church is called to reach out to them and to bring the joy of the Gospel. After these decades, we again take up this missionary drive with the same power and enthusiasm. The Jubilee challenges us to this openness, and demands that we not neglect the spirit which emerged from Vatican II, the spirit of the Samaritan, as Blessed Paul VI expressed it at the conclusion of the Council. May our passing through the Holy Door today commit us to making our own the mercy of the Good Samaritan. (Jorge's Blather for the Inauguration of the Jubilee of Unrepentant Sinners.)
This is almost exactly what Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI said on December 8, 1965, the sort of falsehood that had been condemned time and time again by our true popes right up to the time of the death of Pope Pius XII in 1957.
Dignitatis Infinita, therefore, is simply a logical expression of the anthropocentric “patrimony,” if you will, that was expressed during the “Second” Vatican Council and has been the hallmark of the false pontificates of Montini/Paul VI, Albino Luciani/John Paul I, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Dignitatis Infinita’s anthropocentric view of morality is a faithful continuation of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI’s commitment to the “service of humanity.”
As is the case with many conciliar documents, however, Dignitiatis Infinita contains much that is true and is stated very well. What makes the document insidious, though, is how its text temporizes condemnations of various moral evils by basing such condemnations on false, naturalistic premises, starting with its stated belief that a study of the “dignity of the human person” should be based on the “latest developments on the subject in academia and the ambivalent ways in which the concept is understood today,” something that Victor Manuel Fernandez noted in his preface to the document:
During the Congresso of 15 March 2019, the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith decided to commence “the drafting of a text highlighting the indispensable nature of the dignity of the human person in Christian anthropology and illustrating the significance and beneficial implications of the concept in the social, political, and economic realms—while also taking into account the latest developments on the subject in academia and the ambivalent ways in which the concept is understood today.” An initial draft of the text was prepared with the help of some experts in 2019 but a Consulta Ristretta of the Congregation, convened on 8 October of the same year, found it to be unsatisfactory.
The Doctrinal Office then prepared another draft ex novo, based on the contribution of various experts, which was presented and discussed in a Consulta Ristretta held on 4 October 2021. In January 2022, the new draft was presented during the Plenary Session of the Congregation, during which the Members took steps to shorten and simplify the text. (Dignitatis Infinita, April 2, 2024.)
Interjection Number One:
Holy Mother Church has nothing “new” to “learn” about man. She is the repository of all that is all that is contained in Divine Revelation, and she needs no supposedly “new” insights about man, who is the zenith of God’s creative handiwork, from any other source. God created man out of the dust of earth and endowed him with a rational, immortal soul made unto His own image and likeness:
And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.
And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.
And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.
And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat:
And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon. And it was so done.
And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And the evening and morning were the sixth day. (Genesis 1: 26-31)
Subsequently, of course, our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell from grace and lost their Original Innocence, thereby disrupting man’s relationship with God and disordering the whole of forces of nature that He had created for their own use and pleasure:
5 And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it.
16 And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: 17 But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death. 18 And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself. 19 And the Lord God having formed out of the ground all the beasts of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name. 20 And Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field: but for Adam there was not found a helper like himself.
21 Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it. 22 And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam. 23 And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. 24 Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh. 25 And they were both naked: to wit, Adam and his wife: and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2: 15-35.)
Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise? 2 And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die. 4 And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death. 5 For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat. 7 And the eyes of them both were opened: and when they perceived themselves to be naked, they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons. 8 And when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise at the afternoon air, Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord God, amidst the trees of paradise. 9 And the Lord God called Adam, and said to him: Where art thou? 10 And he said: I heard thy voice in paradise; and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. (Genesis 3: 1-10.)
11 And he said to him: And who hath told thee that thou wast naked, but that thou hast eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? 12 And Adam said: The woman, whom thou gavest me to be my companion, gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13 And the Lord God said to the woman: Why hast thou done this? And she answered: The serpent deceived me, and I did eat. 14 And the Lord God said to the serpent: Because thou hast done this thing, thou art cursed among all cattle, and beasts of the earth: upon thy breast shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. 15 I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.
16 To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee. 17 And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. 18 Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth. 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return. 20 And Adam called the name of his wife Eve: because she was the mother of all the living.
21 And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife, garments of skins, and clothed them. 22 And he said: Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. 23 And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure, to till the earth from which he was taken. 24 And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. (Genesis 3: 1-24.)
Bishop Richard Challoner commented on verses seven and fifteen, supra:
[7] "And the eyes": Not that they were blind before, (for the woman saw that the tree was fair to the eyes, ver. 6.) nor yet that their eyes were opened to any more perfect knowledge of good; but only to the unhappy experience of having lost the good of original grace and innocence, and incurred the dreadful evil of sin. From whence followed a shame of their being naked; which they minded not before; because being now stript of original grace, they quickly began to be subject to the shameful rebellions of the flesh.
[15] "She shall crush": Ipsa, the woman; so divers of the fathers read this place, conformably to the Latin: others read it ipsum, viz., the seed. The sense is the same: for it is by her seed, Jesus Christ, that the woman crushes the serpent's head.
Our first parents fell from Grace, but God promised that there would be a New Eve, Our Lady, who would crush the serpent’s head by the seed born of her, namely, His own Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that she will crush the serpent’s head.
The Easter Exsultet proclaims how the “necessary sin” of happy made it possible for God to sacrifice His only-begotten Son on the wood of the Holy Cross to win back for us that which had been lost by the first Adam’s disobedience:
Let now the heavenly troops of angels rejoice: let the divine mysteries by joyfully celebrated: and let a sacred trumpet proclaim the victory of so great a King. Let the earth also be filled with joy, being illumined with such resplendent rays: and let it be sensible that the darkness, which overspread the whole world, is chased away by the splendour of our eternal King. Let our mother, the Church, be also glad, finding herself adorned with the rays of so great a light: and let this temple resound with the joyful acclamations of the people. Wherefore, beloved brethren, you who are now present at the admirable brightness of this holy light, I beseech you to invoke with me the mercy of almighty God. That He who has been pleased, above my desert, to admit me into the number of His levites, will, by an infusion of His light upon me, enable me to celebrate the praises of this candle. . . .
It is truly right and just that with all of the ardor of our hearts and minds, and through the agency of our voices, we should proclaim the invisible almighty Father, and His only-begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who paid the debt of Adam for us to His eternal Father, and with His Precious Blood washed away the penalty of Original Sin. This is the paschal feast in which the true lamb is slain, whose blood hallowed the doorposts of the the faithful. This is the night on which your brought our forefathers, the children of Israel, in the flight from Egypt, dry-shod through the Red Sea. This is the night in which the light of the pillar of fire destroyed the darkness of sin. This is the night which at this hour restores to grace and unites in holiness throughout the world those who believe in Christ, separating them from worldly vice and the darkness of sin. This is the night in which Christ burst the bonds of death and arose victorious from the grave. For life itself, without redemption, would be of no avail to us.
O how admirable is Thy goodness towards us! O how inestimable is Thy love! Thou hast delivered up Thy Son to redeem a slave. O truly necessary sin of Adam, which the death of Christ has blotted out! O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer! It is of this night that Scripture says: “And the night shall be as bright as day. And the night shall light up my joy.” The holiness of this night banishes wickedness and washes away sin. and restores innocence to the fallen. It puts to flight hatred, brings peace and humbles pride. (Easter Exsultet.)
There is nothing more about the human being one needs to know or can learn. Man was created by God, fell from grace, but was restored to His friendship by means of His Divine Son’s Redemptive Act to atone for our sins. Although even the souls of the baptize suffer from the vestigial aftereffects of Original Sin (the darkened intellect, the weakened will, the overthrowing of the delicate balance between the higher rational faculties and the lower sensual passions in favor of latter—concupiscence), they have the benefit of having access to Sanctifying Graces to help them to overcome their base inclinations and scale the heights of personal sanctity. Period.
No studies in anthropology can provide any new “insights” into the nature of human being. The conciliar sect’s reliance upon the secular sciences to “understand” man and to define “human dignity” in the modern world is not only misplaced but disordered.
To the next section of Victor Manuel Fernandez’s preface to Dignitatis Humanae:
Following this, on 6 February 2023, the amended version of the new draft was reviewed by a Consulta Ristretta, which proposed some additional modifications. An updated version was then submitted for the Members’ consideration during the Ordinary Session of the Dicastery (Feria IV) on 3 May 2023, where Members agreed that the document, with some adjustments, could be published. Subsequently, Pope Francis approved the deliberations of that session during the Audience granted to me on 13 November 2023. On this occasion, he also asked that the document highlight topics closely connected to the theme of dignity, such as poverty, the situation of migrants, violence against women, human trafficking, war, and other themes. To honor the Holy Father’s directions, the Doctrinal Section of the Dicastery dedicated a Congresso to an in-depth study of the Encyclical Fratelli Tutti, which offers an original analysis and further consideration of the theme of human dignity “beyond all circumstances.” (Dignitatis Infinita, April 2, 2024.)
Interjection Number Two:
Dignitatis Infinita is but the legacy of Dignitatis Humanae, December 7, 1965, which contained a few well stated Catholic truths in the beginning of its brief text before mixing a dose of poison almost immediately thereafter prior to launching into a complete departure from the Catholic Church’s absolute condemnation of the modern concept of “religious liberty” as she, ever seeking the common good and mindful of the circumstances in which men live, tolerated false beliefs without ever once conceding their right to exist or to evangelize open in civil society.
Dignitatis Humanae stated that non-Catholic religions have a “right” from God, Who loathes all false religions, to exist and to propagate themselves in society:
A sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man,(1) and the demand is increasingly made that men should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty. The demand is likewise made that constitutional limits should be set to the powers of government, in order that there may be no encroachment on the rightful freedom of the person and of associations. This demand for freedom in human society chiefly regards the quest for the values proper to the human spirit. It regards, in the first place, the free exercise of religion in society. This Vatican Council takes careful note of these desires in the minds of men. It proposes to declare them to be greatly in accord with truth and justice. To this end, it searches into the sacred tradition and doctrine of the Church-the treasury out of which the Church continually brings forth new things that are in harmony with the things that are old. (Dignitatis Humanae, December 7, 1965.)
An Observation:
One can see here that Dignitatis Humanae was setting out on a course that emphasized the “responsible use of freedom” in a “quest for the values proper to the human spirit,” stressing the “free exercise of religion in society” by claiming to have searched “into the sacred tradition” in other to “bring forth new things that are in harmony with the things that are old.” This was intellectually dishonest as even the chief architect of Dignitatis Humanae, Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., admitted that the document could not be reconciled with the Catholic Church’s consistent condemnation of the religious liberty. The Catholic Church has made concessions to the existence of the concept of religious liberty so as to protect her own right to teach and sanctify her children while making no concessions whatsoever to the belief that false religions have an inherent “right” to exist.
Dignitatis Humanae reinforced Lumen Gentium’s (November 21, 1964) claim that the one true religion “subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church,” it goes on from there to statement that the Catholic Faith is the one true religion in its second paragraph, the document proceeds from there to undermine that fact by claiming that “the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself”, which is abjectly false. Dignitatis Humanae was a departure from Catholic teaching and even its progenitors understood at the time understood this fact and celebrated it.
It is essential to stress the revolutionary nature of what happened at the “Second” Vatican Council in order to understand that Dignitatis Infinita is not a reinforcement of Catholic moral teaching but an insidious effort to base such teaching upon the “dignity of man” as understood today rather than on man’s duty to obey God and His Commandments, and the keystone upon which this insidious effort was based was and remains nothing other than dogmatic evolutionism, which was openly endorsed in the debates on the decree on Divine Revelation and religious liberty.
To wit, Albert “Cardinal” Meyer, then the conciliar “archbishop” of Chicago, took to the floor to recommend that schema on Divine Revelation include a frank recognition of the belief that Holy Mother Church could fail in her interpretation of Tradition and other doctrines, whose formulation may have more to do, Meyer, believed, with the historical circumstances of the time rather than any true “connection” with sound teaching. The intervention of “Cardinal” Meyer, who continued the work of his predecessor, Samuel Cardinal Stritch, of aligning the Archdiocese of Chicago with one Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation (everything ties together, ladies and gentlemen), caught the attention, of course, of none other than a German peritus, Father Joseph Ratzinger, whose acceptance of the Modernist precept of the evolution of dogma was the means by which he has sought to dispense with “past” teaching because of its supposedly historically “conditioned” nature.
Yes, according to the likes of apologists for the “Second” Vatican Council and the “magisterium" of the conciliar “popes” tradition is “historically conditioned” and “still developing” in order to determine “what is doctrine to be preserved and what is “historically conditioned.”
Father Francis Sullivan, S.J., explained that there was a remarkable similarity between the points about Tradition that had been made by Albert “Cardinal” Meyer, Father Joseph Alois Ratzinger and the report of the so-called “Faith and Order Commission” of the pro-abortion, pro-perversity, pro-contraception supporter of one world governance, the World Council of Churches, which has a sorry history of supporting Communist regimes around the world:
In his commentary on the way the question of tradition was handled at Vatican II, Ratzinger made a positive reference to the same way this question had been treated by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches in a conference that took place in Montreal in July of 1963, between the first and second sessions of Vatican II. It is illuminating to see how the report of that conference anticipated the question raised by Meyer and Ratzinger about the need to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic traditions. The report began by distinguishing between different meanings of the word tradition. ‘We speak of the Tradition (with a capital T), tradition (with a small t), and traditions. By the Tradition is meant the Gospel itself, transmitted from generation to generation in and by the Church itself. Christ himself present in the life of the Church. By tradition is meant the traditionary process. The term traditions is meant in two senses, to indicate both the diversity of forms of expression and also what we call confessional traditions, for instance what we call the Lutheran tradition or the Reformed tradition.
The report gave a fuller explanation of what it meant by the Tradition in a passage that Ratzinger quoted with approval in his commentary on Dei Verbum. There the Faith and Order Commission had said: “Thus we can cay that we exist as Christians by the Tradition of the Gospel (the paradosis of the kerygma) testified in Scirpture, transmitted in and by the Church, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Tradition taken in this sense is actualized in the preaching of the Word, in the administration of the Sacraments and worship, in Christian teaching and theology, and in mission and witness to Christ by the lives of the members of the Church.
The report went on to speak of traditions and of their evaluations. It said:
“But this tradition which is the work of the Holy Spirit is embodied in traditions (in the two senses of the word, both as referring to diversity in forms of expression, and in the sense of separate communions). The traditions in Christian history are distinct from, and yet connect to, the Tradition. They are the expressions and manifestations in diverse historical forms of the one truth and reality which is Christ. The evaluation of the traditions poses serious problems. For some, questions such as these are raised. It is possible to determine more precisely what the content of the one Tradition is, and by what means? Do all traditions which claim to be Christian contain the Tradition? How can we distinguish traditions embodying the true Tradition and merely human traditions? Where do we find the genuine Tradition, and where impoverished tradition or even distortion of Tradition? Tradition can be a faithful transmission of the Gospel, but also a distortion of it. In this ambiguity the seriousness of the problem of tradition is indicated. These questions imply a search for a criterion. This has been the main concern of the Church from the beginning.”
There is a remarkable agreement between the point that Cardinal Meyer raised in his intervention at the Second Vatican Council, the commentary that Joseph Ratzinger wrote on chapter 2 of Dei Verbum, and the report of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. All three agree on the necessity of distinguishing between Tradition, as the whole mystery of Christ as it has been handed on in the teaching, life, and worship of the Church, and traditions, which are the particular beliefs and practices in which that mystery has been embodied in the ongoing life of the church. Obviously, such beliefs and practices must have a venerable history and be widely shared to be justified as “traditions.” But the problem is, whether the venerable history and wide diffusion of a particular tradition necessarily means that this is an authentic rather than a distorting tradition; in other words, whether it is a genuine embodiment of divine Tradition or merely human tradition. (Father Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., Catholic Tradition and Traditions. Michael J. Lacey and Francis Oakley, editors, The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 114-115. See The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity.)
None other than the late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, who, of course, understood in the 1960s that it was not possible, humanly speaking, to realize the Social Reign of Christ the United States of America given the firm grip that error had on the mind of most Americans, although he was always unyielding in his defense of the Church’s true social teaching, explained that the attempt to historicize Catholic teaching did indeed have roots in Americanism, citing specifically Pope Leo XIII’s Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae in doing so.
Monsignor Fenton explained the problem in a treatise on the background of what led Pope Saint Pius X to issue The Oath Against Modernism on September 1, 1910, emphasizing the importance of the sainted pontiff’s introductory text to the Oath itself:
The Modernists and their most influential sympathizers were, in great part, drawn from the ranks of the Catholic clergy. Thus they were, in the words of the introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum, the "enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us." These Catholics who taught or favored Modernism were the men whose influence within the true Church of Jesus Christ St. Pius X sought to counter by the teaching and the directives contained in the Sacrorum antistitum.
(6) Finally, in the introduction to this famous Motu proprio, St. Pius X makes it very clear indeed that the Bishops of the Catholic Church were bound in conscience by the obligations of their office to act energetically against this teaching that contradicted the divinely revealed truth proposed as such by the true Church. The "defence of the Catholic faith" and strenuous efforts "to see to it that the integrity of the divine deposit suffers no loss" are definitely not works of supererogation. These are the duties prescribed by Our Lord Himself for the leaders of the Church, which He has purchased by His blood.
The conclusion to this document, the last of the three great anti-Modernist declarations issued by the Holy See during the reign of St. Pius X, is even more enlightening than the introduction. In this we see how St. Pius X enunciated, more clearly than in any other document, the most fundamental position of the Modernists. The text of this conclusion follows:
Moved by the seriousness of the evil that is increasing every day, an evil, which We cannot put off confronting without the most grave danger, We have decided to issue and to repeat these commands. For it is no longer a case, as it was in the beginning, of dealing with disputants who come forward in the clothing of sheep. Now we are faced with open and bitter enemies from within our own household, who, in agreement with the outstanding opponents of the Church, are working for the overthrow of the faith. They are men whose audacity against the wisdom that has come down from heaven increases daily. They arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men.
To counter such attempts against the evangelical doctrine and the ecclesiastical tradition, there will never be sufficient vigilance or too much severity on the part of those to whom the faithful care of the sacred deposit has been entrusted. (Sacrosanctum Antistitum: The Background of The Oath Against Modernism.)
One can see very clearly that Pope Saint Pius X’s introduction to The Oath Against Modernism stands as a stinging rebuke to the “living tradition” of Albert “Cardinal” Meyer and Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II and, of course, the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict’s philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned “hermeneutic of continuity”.
Monsignor Fenton went on to explain the connection between Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae and The Oath Against Modernism:
It is interesting to note the parallel between what St. Pius X says about the intentions of the Modernists and what his great predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, had to say about the basic premise of the errors he pointed out and condemned in his famed letter, the Testem benevolentiae. St. Pius X declares that the Modernists "arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men." And Pope Leo XIII states:
The principles on which the new opinions We have mentioned are based may be reduced to this: that in order the more easily to bring over to Catholic doctrine those who dissent from it, the Church ought to adapt herself somewhat to our advanced civilization, and, relaxing her ancient rigor, show some indulgence to modern theories and methods. Many think that this is to be understood not only with regard to the rule of life, but also to the doctrines in which the deposit of faith is contained. For they contend that it is opportune, in order to work in a more attractive way upon the wills of those who are not in accord with us, to pass over certain heads of doctrines, as if of lesser moment, or so to soften them that they may not have the same meaning which the Church has invariably held. 7
Thus, when we examine the actual texts of the Testimonium benevolentiae and of the Sacrorum antistitum, it becomes quite apparent that Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were engaged in combating doctrinal deviations that actually sprang from an identical principle, the fantastically erroneous assumption that the supernatural communication of the Triune God could and should be brought up to date and given a certain respectability before modern society. The men who sustained the weird teachings condemned by Pope Leo XIII, a document, which, incidentally, did not denounce any mere phantom body of doctrine, and the men who taught and protected the doctrinal monstrosities stigmatized in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis, based their errors on a common foundation. The false Americanism and the heresy of Modernism were both offshoots of doctrinal liberal Catholicism.
This belief that the meaning of the Church's dogmatic message was in some way subject to change and capable of being improved and brought up to date was definitely not an explicit part of the original or the more naive stage of the liberal Catholic movement. The first components of liberal Catholicism, during the earlier days of the unfortunate Felicite De Lamenais, were religious indifferentism, some false concepts of human freedom, and the advocacy of a separation of Church and state as the ideal situation in a nation made up of members of the true Church. But, after these teachings had been forcefully repudiated by Pope Gregory XVI in his encyclical Mirari vos arbitramur, a new set of factors entered into this system. These were inserted into the fabric of liberal Catholicism because the leaders of this movement persisted in defending as legitimate Catholic doctrine this teaching, which had been clearly and vigorously condemned by the supreme power of the Catholic magisterium. Most prominent among these newer components of liberal Catholicism were minimism, doctrinal subjectivism, and an insistence that there had been and that there had to be at least some sort of change in the objective meaning of the Church's dogmatic message over the course of the centuries. 8
The liberal Catholic since the time of Montalembert has been well aware of the fact that the basic theses he proposes as acceptable Catholic doctrine have been specifically and vehemently repudiated by the doctrinal authority of the Roman Church. If he is to continue to propose these teachings as a member of the Church, he is obliged by the very force of self-consistency to claim that the declarations of the magisterium, which condemned his favorite theses do not at this moment mean objectively what they meant at the time they were issued. And, if such a claim is advanced about the Mirari vos arbitramur, there is very little to prevent its being put forward on the subject of the Athanasian Creed. Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were well aware of the fact that the advocates of the false Americanism and the teachers and the protectors of the Modernist heresy were employing this same discredited tactic.
This common basis of the false doctrinal Americanism and of the Modernist heresy is, like doctrinal indifferentism itself, ultimately a rejection of Catholic dogma as a genuine supernatural message or communication from the living God Himself. It would seem impossible for anyone to be blasphemous or silly enough to be convinced, on the one hand, that the dogmatic message of the Catholic Church is actually a locutio Dei ad homines, and to imagine, on the other hand, that he, a mere creature, could in some way improve that teaching or make it more respectable. The very fact that a man would be so rash as to attempt to bring the dogma of the Church up to date, or to make it more acceptable to those who are not privileged to be members of the true Church, indicates that this individual is not actually and profoundly convinced that this dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church is a supernatural communication from the living and Triune God, the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. It would be the height of blasphemy knowingly to set out to improve or to bring up to date what one would seriously consider a genuine message from the First Cause of the universe.
The conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum brings out more clearly than any other statement of the Holy See the fact that Modernism sprang from the same basic principle, as did the false Americanism pointed out and proscribed in the Testem benevolentiae of Pope Leo XIII. (Sacrosanctum Antistitum: The Background of The Oath Against Modernism.)
Anyone who cannot understand that Monsignor Fenton’s brilliant analysis lays bare the heresies of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and of the conciliar “popes,” including the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, the supposed “restorer of Tradition,” and his successor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is not being intellectually honest.
Those who want to continue to criticize those of us who are completely unyielding in our opposition to Americanism, which was nothing other than an effort on the part of American bishops in the Nineteenth Century to “celebrate,” not merely “tolerate,” the ethos of religious liberty and separation of Church and State as harbingers of Dignitatis Humane and Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, and the “social magisterium,” if you will, of the conciliar “popes,” may do so only by ignoring the fact that Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton himself saw the direct connection between Americanism and Modernism.
Indeed, Ratzinger/Benedict himself said on December 22, 2005, that the “hermeneutic of continuity” explained the “new teaching” of the “Second” Vatican Council on religious liberty and separation of Church and State:
Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.
Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.
These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.
It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.
On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.
Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.
It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.
The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.
The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)
This address is what served as the proximate motivation for me to review once again the material that I had studied periodically in the preceding two years concerning the plausibility of sedevacantism as the only logical explanation in accord with Catholic teaching to explain such heresies against the nature of dogmatic truth and such blasphemies against the martyrs of the early Church were the work of men who had lost the Catholic Faith and thus could not hold ecclesiastical office within the ranks of Holy Mother Church. In other words, Ratzinger/Benedict’s “official” endorsement of Americanism is what led me to review the fact that the problem is not with this or that particular conciliar “pope;” the problem is with a false religion based on Modernism and the “New Theology” that the conciliar “popes” have endorsed and propagated.
I will let the late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton have the final words as the analysis he provided below demonstrates very clearly that the Seine and the Potomac flowed into the Tiber at the “Second” Vatican Council just as much as the Rhine and have produced a “humanitarian,” “non-religious” “pope,” Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is just as much the end-product of conciliarism as former President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro was the ultimate end product of Americanism:
In this conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum, St. Pius X expressly recognizes the fact that the Modernists and their sympathizers, the anti-anti-Modernists, were actually working, in agreement with the most-bitter enemies of the Catholic Church, for the destruction of the Catholic faith. It is interesting and highly important to note exactly what St. Pius X said. He definitely did not claim that these men were working directly to destroy the Church as a society. It is quite obvious that, given the intimate connection between the Church and the faith, a connection so close and perfect that the Church itself may be defined as the congregatio fidelium, the repudiation of the Catholic faith would inevitably lead to the dissolution of the Church. Yet, for the Modernists and for those who co-operated in their work, the immediate object of attack was always the faith itself. These individuals were perfectly willing that the Catholic Church should continue to exist as a religious society, as long as it did not insist upon the acceptance of that message which, all during the course of the previous centuries of its existence, it had proposed as a message supernaturally revealed by the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. They were willing and even anxious to retain their membership in the Catholic Church, as long as they were not obliged to accept on the authority of divine faith such unfashionable dogmas as, for example, the truth that there is truly no salvation outside of the Church.
What these men were really working for was the transformation of the Catholic Church into an essentially non-doctrinal religious body. They considered that their era would be willing to accept the Church as a kind of humanitarian institution, vaguely religious, tastefully patriotic, and eminently cultural. And they definitely intended to tailor the Church to fit the needs and the tastes of their own era.
It must be understood, of course, that the Modernists and the men who aided their efforts did not expect the Catholic Church to repudiate its age-old formulas of belief. They did not want the Church to reject or to abandon the ancient creeds, or even any of those formularies in which the necessity of the faith and the necessity of the Church are so firmly and decisively stated. What they sought was a declaration on the part of the Church's magisterium to the effect that these old formulas did not, during the first decade of the twentieth century, carry the same meaning for the believing Catholic that they had carried when these formulas had first been drawn up. Or, in other words, they sought to force or to delude the teaching authority of Christ's Church into coming out with the fatally erroneous proposition that what is accepted by divine faith in this century is objectively something different from what was believed in the Catholic Church on the authority of God revealing in previous times.
Thus the basic objective of Modernism was to reject the fact that, when he sets forth Catholic dogma, the Catholic teacher is acting precisely as an ambassador of Christ. The Modernists were men who were never quite able to grasp or to accept the truth that the teaching of the Catholic Church is, as the First Vatican Council designated the content of the Constitution Dei Films, actually "the salutary doctrine of Christ," and not merely some kind of doctrine, which has developed out of that teaching. And, in the final analysis, the position of the Modernists constituted the ultimate repudiation of the Catholic faith. If the teaching proposed by the Church as dogma is not actually and really the doctrine supernaturally revealed by God through Jesus Christ Our Lord, through the Prophets of the Old Testament who were His heralds, or through the Apostles who were His witnesses, then there could be nothing more pitifully inane than the work of the Catholic magisterium. (Sacrosanctum Antistitum: The Background of The Oath Against Modernism.)
The following passage, contained in the quotation from Monsignor Fenton's article of sixty-four years ago, is an exact description of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Victor Manuel Fernandez:
What these men were really working for was the transformation of the Catholic Church into an essentially non-doctrinal religious body. They considered that their era would be willing to accept the Church as a kind of humanitarian institution, vaguely religious, tastefully patriotic, and eminently cultural. And they definitely intended to tailor the Church to fit the needs and the tastes of their own era. (Sacrosanctum Antistitum: The Background of The Oath Against Modernism.)
The purpose of this digression with respect to Digntatis Infinita is to illustrate the fact that the conciliar sect’s entire ethos has been shaped by a preoccupation with the “dignity of man” rather than man’s duty to obey the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as the counterfeit church of conciliarism has become, despite its gratuitous references to Catholic teaching now and again, a non-doctrinal religious body, which is why Jorge Mario Bergoglio insisted that such things as “poverty, the situation of migrants, violence against women, human trafficking, war, and other themes” be included for study in the next of the new document. The execution of preborn children, one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, is the fourth specific topic covered near the end of Dignitatis Infinita after “the drama of poverty,” “the plight of migrants” (many of whom are running amok in American cities,” and “sexual abuse.”
Despite Dignitatis Infinita’s references to Sacred Scripture and its gratuitous references to the Church Fathers and even to Saint Thomas Aquinas, its understanding of “human dignity” is Sillonistic and Personalist. Indeed, the document’s text states that personalism, which was near and dear to the hearts of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI and Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, provided a new foundation for Christian anthropology:
Building upon some recent philosophical reflections about the status of theoretical and practical subjectivity, Christian reflection then came to emphasize even more the depths of the concept of dignity. In the twentieth century, this reached an original perspective (as seen in Personalism) that reconsidered the question of subjectivity and expanded it to encompass intersubjectivity and the relationships that bind people together.[24] The thinking flowing from this view has enriched contemporary Christian anthropology.[25] (Dignitatis Infinita, April 2, 2024.)
Longtime readers of this website understand that the Personalism of Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand and Father Herbert Doms was specifically condemned by Pope Pius XII on April 1, 1944:
Certain publications concerning the purposes of matrimony, and their interrelationship and order, have come forth within these last years which either assert that the primary purpose of matrimony is not the generation of offspring, or that the secondary purposes are not subordinate to the primary purpose, but are independent of it.
In these works, different primary purposes of marriage are designated by other writers, as for example: the complement and personal perfection of the spouses through a complete mutual participation in life and action; mutual love and union of spouses to be nurtured and perfected the psychic and bodily surrender of one’s own person; and many other such things.
In the same writings a sense is sometimes attributed to words in the current documents of the Church (as for example, primary, secondary purpose), which does not agree with these words according to the common usage by theologians.
This revolutionary way of thinking and speaking aims to foster errors and uncertainties, to avoid which the Eminent and Very Fathers of this supreme Sacred Congregation, charged with the guarding of faith and morals, in a plenary session on Wednesday, the 29th of March, 1944, when the question was proposed to them: “Whether the opinion of certain writers can be admitted, who either deny that the primary purpose of matrimony is the generation of children and raising offspring, or teach that the secondary purposes are not essentially subordinate to the primary purpose, but are equally first and independent,” have decreed that the answer must be: In the negative. (As found in Henry Denzinger, Enchirdion Symbolorum, thirteenth edition, translated into English by Roy Deferrari and published in 1955 as The Sources of Catholic Dogma–referred to as “Denziger,” by B. Herder Book Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and London, England, No. 2295, pp. 624-625. For a further discussion of the heresy of personalism, please see Mrs. Randy Engel’s The Phenomenology of Dietrich von Hildebrand and His Novel Teaching on Marriage and Theology of the Body.)
The “human dignity” mentioned throughout the text of Dignitatis Infinita, based as it is upon Personalism, is, as mentioned above, the same essential concept of “dignity” that was the basis of The Sillon, which was described by Pope Saint Pius X as in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, as being based upon a diminished and distorted Christ:
To reply to these fallacies is only to easy; for whom will they make believe that the Catholic Sillonists, the priests and seminarists enrolled in their ranks have in sight in their social work, only the temporal interests of the working class? To maintain this, We think, would be an insult to them. The truth is that the Sillonist leaders are self-confessed and irrepressible idealists; they claim to regenerate the working class by first elevating the conscience of Man; they have a social doctrine, and they have religious and philosophical principles for the reconstruction of society upon new foundations; they have a particular conception of human dignity, freedom, justice and brotherhood; and, in an attempt to justify their social dreams, they put forward the Gospel, but interpreted in their own way; and what is even more serious, they call to witness Christ, but a diminished and distorted Christ. Further, they teach these ideas in their study groups, and inculcate them upon their friends, and they also introduce them into their working procedures. Therefore they are really professors of social, civic, and religious morals; and whatever modifications they may introduce in the organization of the Sillonist movement, we have the right to say that the aims of the Sillon, its character and its action belong to the field of morals which is the proper domain of the Church. In view of all this, the Sillonist are deceiving themselves when they believe that they are working in a field that lies outside the limits of Church authority and of its doctrinal and directive power. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
Yes, conciliarism is based upon the acceptance of “truths” that can must be “historicized,” making them no truths at all, and upon a “diminished and distorted” concept of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and Dignitatis Infinita, despite its seeming Catholic aspects, is a production straight out the same factory of error that produced Dignitatis Humanae and Amoris Laetitia.
The next segment of this series will examine Dignitatis Infinita’s reliance upon the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Fratelli Tutti as its claim that there has been a “growing understanding” about “human dignity” as though Holy Mother Church had somehow been negligent in her fostering the true dignity of human beings as redeemed creatures whom she has always nourished with the light of Divine Truth and the mother’s milk of the Holy Sacraments.
On the Solemnity of Saint Joseph
Today is the Solemnity of Saint Joseph in Paschal Tide in those traditional venues that follow the General Roman Calendar of 1954.
We have the assurance that Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Curch and the Protector of the Faithful, whose solemnity in Paschaltide, a feast that originated with Pope Pius IX in 1847 as the Patronage of Saint Joseph before being given its current name, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, by Pope Saint Pius X in 1911 and positioned in 1913 on the Wednesday following the Second Sunday after Easter, is very close to us in our sufferings and difficulties and trials today.
Consider Dom Prosper Gueranger’s stirring words about how devotion to Saint Joseph had grown in the Nineteenth Century, which was a time of great tumult throughout what had once been the glories of Christendom in Europe. Dom Prosper Gueranger’s words about Saint Joseph have direct relevance to our times today:
The goodness of God and our Redeemer’s fidelity to his promises have ever kept pace with the necessities of the world; so that, in every age, appropriate and special aid has been given to the world for its maintaining the supernatural life. An uninterrupted succession of seasonable grace has been the result of this merciful dispensation, and each generation has had given to it a special motive for confidence in its Redeemer. Dating from the 13th century, when, as the Church herself assures us, the world began to grow cold—each epoch has had thrown open to it a new source of graces. First of all came the Feast of the Most Blessed Sacrament, with its successive developments of Processions, Expositions, Benedictions and the Forty Hours. After this followed the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus (of which St. Bernardine of Sienna was the chief propagator), and that of Via Crucis or Stations of the Cross, with its wonderful fruit of compunction. The practice of frequent Communion was revived in the 16th century, owing principally to the influence of St. Ignatius and the Society founded by him. In the 17th was promulgated the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was firmly established in the following century. In the 19th, devotion to the Holy Mother of God has made such progress as to form one of the leading supernatural characteristics of the period. The Rosary and Scapular, which had been handed down to us in previous ages, have regained their place in the affections of the people; Pilgrimages to the Sanctuaries of the Mother of God, which had been interrupted by the influence of Jansenism and rationalism, have been removed; the Archconfraternity of the Sacred Heart of Mary has spread throughout the whole world; numerous miracles have been wrought in reward for the fervent faith of individuals; in a word, our present century has witnessed the triumph of the Immaculate Conception—a triumph which had been looked forward to for many previous ages.
Now, devotion to Mary could never go on increasing as it has done without bringing with it a fervent devotion to St. Joseph. We cannot separate Mary and Joseph, were it only for their having such a close connection with the mystery of the Incarnation:—Mary, as being the Mother of the Son of God; and Joseph, as being guardian of the Virgin’s spotless honor, and Foster-Father of the Divine Babe. A special veneration for St. Joseph was the result of increased devotion to Mary. Nor is this reverence for Mary’s Spouse to be considered only as a just homage paid to his admirable prerogatives: it is, moreover, a fresh and exhaustless source of help to the world, for Joseph has been made our Protector by the Son of God himself. Hearken to the inspired words of the Church’s Liturgy: “Thou, O Joseph! art the delight of the Blessed, the sure hope of our life, and the pillar of the world!” Extraordinary as is this power, need we be surprised as its being given to a man like Joseph, whose connections with the Son of God on earth were so far above those of all other men? Jesus deigned to be subject to Joseph here below; now that he is in heaven, he would glorify the creature to whom he consigned the guardianship of his own childhood and his Mother’s honor. He has given him a power which is above our calculations. Hence it is that the Church invites us, on this day, to have recourse, with unreserved confidence, to this all-powerful Protector. The world we live in is filled with miseries which would make stronger hearts than ours quake with fear: but let us invoke St. Joseph with faith, and we shall be protected. In all our necessities, whether of soul or body—in all the trials and anxieties we may have to go through—let us have recourse to St. Joseph, and we shall not be disappointed. The king of Egypt said to his people, when they were suffering from famine: go to Joseph! the King of Heaven says the same to us: the faithful guardian of Mary has greater influence with God than Jacob’s son had with Pharaoh.
As usual, God revealed this new spiritual aid to a privileged soul, that she might be the instrument of its propagation. It was thus that were instituted several Feasts, such as those of Corpus Christi, and of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the 16th century, St. Teresa (whose Writings were to have a worldwide circulation) was instructed by heaven as to the efficacy of devotion to St. Joseph: she has spoken of it in the Life (written by herself) of Teresa of Jesus. When we remember that it was by the Carmelite Order (brought into the Western Church in the 13th century) that this devotion was established among us—we cannot be surprised that God should have chosen St. Teresa, who was the Reformer of that Order, to propagate the same devotion in this part of the world. The holy solitaries of Mount Carmel—devoted as they had been, for so many centuries, to the love of Mary—were not slow in feeling the connection that exists between the honor paid to the Mother of God and that which is due to her virginal Spouse. The more we understand St. Joseph’s office, the clearer will be our knowledge of the divine mystery of the Incarnation. As when the Son of God assumed our human nature, he would have a Mother; so also, would he give to this Mother a protector. Jesus, Mary and Joseph—these are the three whom the ineffable mystery is continually bringing before our minds.
The words of St. Teresa are as follows:“I took for my patron and lord the glorious St. Joseph, and recommended myself earnestly to him. I saw clearly … that he rendered me greater services than I knew how to ask for. I cannot call to mind that I have ever asked him at any time for anything which he has not granted; and I am filled with amazement when I consider the great favors which God hath given me through this blessed Saint; the dangers from which he hath delivered me, both of body and soul. To other Saints, our Lord seems to have given grace to succor men in some special necessity; but to this glorious Saint, I know by experience, to help us in all: and our Lord would have us understand that, as he was himself subject to him upon earth—for St. Joseph having the title of father, and being his guardian, could command him—so now in heaven he performs all his petitions. I have asked others to recommend themselves to St. Joseph, and they too know this by experience; and there are many who are now of late devout to him, having had experience of this truth.” (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)
Saint Joseph, the just and silent man of the House of David, suffered in his holy life. He suffered without fear. He trusted in the Providence of God, taking unto himself the care of God’s very Mother, the Singular Vessel of Devotion through which would be conceived and pass into the world his, Saint Joseph’s, foster-Son, Whom he loved with a tender devotion and perfection as though He had been his own flesh and blood. He suffered intense sorrows of his soul during his lifetime.
Saint Joseph suffered pain at the lowly poverty of the birthplace of his foster-Son.
Saint Joseph suffered pain at the Circumcision as he watched the shedding of the first droplets of his foster-Son’s Most Precious Blood.
Saint Joseph listened with patient concern to the Prophecy of Simeon that a Sword of Sorrow would pierce the Immaculate Heart of Most Chaste Spouse.
Saint Joseph suffered as he had to to take the Holy Family into exile, finding a place for the Holy Family to live and to find work to support Our Lady and Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
Saint Joseph suffered sorrow during the difficult journey back from Egypt.
Saint Joseph’s good heart suffered ruing the loss of his foster-Son for three day.
Oh yes, Saint Joseph suffered. He suffered, however, without fear, without panic, without histrionics, without even uttering a word that is recorded in Sacred Scripture. Saint Joseph had sorrows. He had concerns. True enough. However, Saint Joseph trusted in God entirely. So we must we, especially since his Divine foster-Son has given him to us to be the Patron of the Universal Church and the Protector of the Faithful.
Saint Joseph outlived the wretched Herod the Great, who sought the life of the Christ-Child. Saint Joseph will help us outlive, at least spiritually, the Herods of the present day who populate the halls of government and the institutions of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Saint Joseph is near. Very near. Why live in fear?
Saint Joseph also had his joys in life (Saint Gabriel’s message of joy and comfort, the Birth of his very Saviour in Bethlehem, the great honor given to him to give his foster-Son his Holy Name, Jesus, knowing the effects of his foster-Son’s Redemptive work, seeing the idols of Egypt fall at the feet of the Infant Jesus, his holy life with Our Lady, his ever-Virginal spouse, and Our Lord, and his finding Our Lord after having lost Him for three days). So will we, both in this life and, please God and by the intercession of Our Lady and Good Saint Joseph we die in states of Sanctifying Grace, if we maintain the perfect equanimity of spirit as possessed Saint Joseph throughout his own sorrows and glories. (A formula for meditating on the Sorrows and Glories of Saint Joseph is appended at the end of this article.)
Why live in fear with Saint Joseph so near?
The only thing that matters in each of our lives is dying in a state of Sanctifying Grace with Perfect Contrition for our sins. The devil wants us live in fear and in a constant state of panic about this or that piece of legislation or this or that manufactured virus that is spread so as to put us into a panic and to increase the size and scope of governmental power over our lives. Saint Joseph, the terror of demons, wants to live in peace now as members of his Divine Son’s Catholic Church so that he, the Patron of Departing Souls, can be better able to assist us at the hour of our deaths as we invoke his fatherly protection after that of His Most Chaste Spouse, Our Lady.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I love you. Save souls!
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for us now and in death’s agony!
Saint Joseph provided spiritual and temporal security and comfort to the Mother of God and his foster-Son, Who he was told by Saint Gabriel the Archangel had been conceived by the power of God the Holy Ghost. He will provide that same spiritual and temporal security to us, will he not? Indeed, hasn’t he done so throughout the course of our lives?
Saint Joseph is helping us in this era of apostasy and betrayal. The foster-father of Our Divine Redeemer, Who offered up His life on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins, intercedes for our spiritual fathers on earth, our true bishops and our true priests who make no concessions to the counterfeit church of conciliarism or to its false shepherds who blaspheme his foster-Son by falling down, at least figuratively, if not literally, in front of the same false idols that fell in front of his foster-Son in Egypt.
Why live fear with Saint Joseph as near to us as he was to Our Lady and Our Lord on earth. He is even closer to them now in Heaven?
Why live in fear with Saint Joseph so near?
The readings for Matins in today's Divine Office contain a sermon by Saint Bernardine of Siena about our the man of House of David chosen to be Our Lady’s Most Chaste Spouse and her Divine Son’s most tenderly loving foster-father, Saint Joseph:
When any special favours are conferred upon a reasonable being, it is the common rule that whenever the grace of God electeth such and such an one for such and such a grace, or for such and such an high post of duty, the person so elected receiveth all the gifts of grace which be needful for him in that state of life whereunto he is called, and receiveth them abundantly. Of this there is an excellent instance in the case of the holy Joseph, the socalled father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the real husband of her, who is Queen of the world, and Lady of Angels. He had been elected by the Eternal Father to be the faithful nurse and warder of His two chief treasures, that is, His Son, and Joseph's own Wife. This duty Joseph faithfully discharged, and consequently the Lord hath said to him: Well done, thou good and faithful servant enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Matth. xxv. 21.
This man Joseph, if we compare him with the Universal Church of Christ, is he not that elect and chosen one, through whom, and under whom, Christ is orderly and honestly brought into the world? If, then, the Holy Universal Church be under a debt to the Virgin Mother, because it is through her that she hath been made to receive Christ, next to Mary she oweth love and worship to Joseph. Joseph is the key of the (Church of the Saints) which were under the Old Testament, in whose person the noble structure of Patriarchs and Prophets reacheth her completion and realiseth her promises. He is the only one of them who actually enjoyed in full fruition what God had been pleased to promise before to them. It is, therefore, with good reason that we see a type of him in that Patriarch Joseph who stored up corn for the people. But the second Joseph hath a more excellent dignity than the first, seeing that the first only gave to the Egyptians bread for the body, but the second was the watchful guardian for all the elect of that Living Bread Which came down from heaven, of Which whosoever eateth will never die.
There can be no doubt that Christ still treateth Joseph in heaven with that familiarity, honour, and most high condescension which He paid him, like a Son to a father, while He walked among men; nay, rather, that He hath now crowned and completed those habits. We may very reasonably suspect that it was with a peculiar meaning that Christ said (to him) Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. The joy of being blessed for ever entereth into the heart of man, but when the Lord said (to Joseph), Enter thou into joy, He probably meant mystically to bid him realise a joy which should not be within him only, but outside him also, above him, and below him, and all round about him, and overflowing him as it were a great bottomless pit of joy to swallow him up altogether. Therefore, O thou blessed Joseph! remember us! In thy helpful prayers, make intercession for us with Him Who vouchsafed to be supposed thy Son! Likewise, obtain some pity for us from that most blessed Maiden who was thy wife, and the Mother of Him, Who, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen. (Matins, The Divine Office, Solemnity of Saint Joseph in Paschaltide.)
No, we have nothing whatsoever to fear from the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil if we rely upon the patronage of the Patron of the Universal Church and the Protector of the Faithful, Saint Joseph. His holy patronage and protection will help to restore a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter, whereupon the consecration, although late, of Russia to her Immaculate Heart by him and all the true bishops in the world will be acomplished to effect the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as the fulfillment of Our Lady's Fatima Message.
On this glorious feast day, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph in Paschaltide, may we put aside the needless fear and panic caused by the naturalists in the civil realm and the conciliarists in the counterfeit church of conciliarism as we beseech him as follows each morning and each night of our lives:
O Saint Joseph, whose protection is so great, so strong, so prompt before the throne of God, I place in thee all my interests and desires. O thou Saint Joseph, do assist me by thy powerful intercession, and obtain for me from thy divine Son all spiritual blessings, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord; so that, having engaged here below thy heavenly power, I may offer my thanksgiving and homage to the most loving of fathers. O Saint Joseph, I never weary contemplating thee, and Jesus asleep in thy arms; I dare not approach while He reposes near thy heart. Press Him in my name and kiss His fine head for me, and ask Him to return the kiss when I draw my dying breath. Saint Joseph, Patron of departing souls, pray for me. Amen!
May we pray an extra set of the Joyful Mysteries of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary today to honor Saint Joseph, who has been given to us to help us to get home to Heaven by living in the same spirit of confident hope and trust in God’s Holy Will as characterized his entire life on earth. Our reward will be Heavenly if we maintain our steadfast devotion to Saint Joseph, and you might even be amazed at what he does for you temporally if you invoke him with confidence and trust on a daily basis.
Why live in fear with Saint Joseph so near?
Shouldn’t we draw nearer to Saint Joseph in this life so that he will be as close as possible to us as we prepare to enter the next?
Why live in fear with Saint Joseph so near?
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church and Protector of the Faithful, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.
Pope Saint Anicetus, pray for us.
The Litany of Saint Joseph
Kyrie, eleison.
R. Christe, eleison. |
Lord, have mercy on us.
R. Christ, have mercy on us. |
Kyrie, eleison.
Christe, exaudi nos.
R. Christe, audi nos. |
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
R. Christ, graciously hear us. |
Pater de caelis, Deus,
R. miserere nobis. |
God the Father of heaven,
R. have mercy on us. |
Fili, Redemptor mundi, Deus,
R. miserere nobis. |
God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
R. have mercy on us. |
Spiritus Sancte Deus,
R. miserere nobis. |
God the Holy Ghost,
R. have mercy on us. |
Sancta Trinitas, unus Deus,
R. miserere nobis. |
Holy Trinity, one God,
R. have mercy on us. |
Sancta Maria,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Holy Mary,
R. pray for us. |
Sancte Ioseph,
R. ora pro nobis. |
St. Joseph,
R. pray for us. |
Proles David inclyta,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Renowned offspring of David,
R. pray for us. |
Lumen Patriarcharum,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Light of Patriarchs,
R. pray for us. |
Dei Genetricis Sponse,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Spouse of the Mother of God,
R. pray for us. |
Custos pudice Virginis,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Chaste guardian of the Virgin,
R. pray for us. |
Filii Dei nutricie,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Foster father of the Son of God,
R. pray for us. |
Christi defensor sedule,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Diligent protector of Christ,
R. pray for us. |
Almae Familiae praeses,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Head of the Holy Family,
R. pray for us. |
Ioseph iustissime,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Joseph most just,
R. pray for us. |
Ioseph castissime,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Joseph most chaste,
R. pray for us. |
Ioseph prudentissime,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Joseph most prudent,
R. pray for us. |
Ioseph fortissime,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Joseph most strong,
R. pray for us. |
Ioseph oboedientissime,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Joseph, most obedient,
R. pray for us. |
Ioseph fidelissime,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Joseph most faithful,
R. pray for us. |
Speculum patientiae,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Mirror of patience,
R. pray for us. |
Amator paupertatis,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Lover of poverty,
R. pray for us. |
Exemplar opificum,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Model of artisans,
R. pray for us. |
Domesticae vitae decus,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Glory of home life,
R. pray for us. |
Custos virginum,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Guardian of virgins,
R. pray for us. |
Familiarum columen,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Pillar of families,
R. pray for us. |
Solatium miserorum,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Solace of the wretched,
R. pray for us. |
Spes aegrotantium,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Hope of the sick,
R. pray for us. |
Patrone morientium,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Patron of the dying,
R. pray for us. |
Terror daemonum,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Terror of the demons,
R. pray for us. |
Protector sanctae Ecclesiae,
R. ora pro nobis. |
Protector of Holy Church,
R. pray for us. |
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
R. parce nobis, Domine. |
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
R. spare us, O Lord. |
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
R. exaudi nobis, Domine. |
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
R. graciously hear us, O Lord. |
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
R. miserere nobis. |
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
R. have mercy on us. |
V. Constituit eum dominum domus suae.
R. Et principem omnis possessionis suae. |
V. He made him the lord of his household.
R. And prince over all his possessions. |
Oremus
Deus, qui in ineffabili providentia beatum Ioseph sanctissimae Genetricis tuae Sponsum eligere dignatus es, praesta, quaesumus, ut quem protectorem veneramur in terris, intercessorem habere mereamur in caelis: Qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen. |
Let us pray
O God, in Thy ineffable providence Thou wert pleased to choose Blessed Joseph to be the spouse of Thy most holy Mother, grant, we beg Thee, that we may be worthy to have him for our intercessor in heaven whom on earth we venerate as our Protector; Thou who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen. |
Saint Joseph Altar, Christ the King Church Parish Hall, Lafayette, Lousiana, Laetare Sunday, March 18, 2007
Seven Sorrows and Joys of Saint Joseph
Among the many exercises of piety practiced in honor of St. Joseph, there is one generally known, namely, that of meditating on his Seven Sorrows and Seven Joys. This devotion owes its origin to a celebrated event, never omitted by any historian of the Saint.
It is as follows:
Two Fathers of the Franciscan order were sailing along the coast of Flanders, when a terrible tempest arose, which sank the vessel, with its three hundred passengers. The two Fathers had sufficient presence of mind to seize hold of a plank, upon which they were tossed to and fro upon the waves, for three days and nights. In their danger and affliction, their whole recourse was to St. Joseph, begging his assistance in their sad condition. The Saint, thus invoked, appeared in the habit of a young man of beautiful features, encouraged them to confide in his assistance, and, as their pilot, conducted them into a safe harbor. They, desirous to know who their benefactor was asked his name, that they might gratefully acknowledge so great a blessing and favor. He told them he was St. Joseph, and advised them daily to recite the Our Father and Hail Mary seven times, in memory of his seven dolors or griefs, and of his seven joys, and then disappeared.
(Recite one Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be after each number)
1. St. JOSEPH, Chaste Spouse of the Holy Mother of God, by the SORROW with which thy heart was pierced at the thought of a cruel separation from Mary, and by the deep JOY that thou didst feel when the angel revealed to thee the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation, obtain for us from Jesus and Mary, the grace of surmounting all anxiety. Win for us from the Adorable Heart of Jesus the unspeakable peace of which He is the Eternal Source.
2. St. JOSEPH, Foster-Father of Jesus, by the bitter SORROW which thy heart experienced in seeing the Child Jesus lying in a manger, and by the JOY which thou didst feel in seeing the Wise men recognize and adore Him as their God, obtain by thy prayers that our heart, purified by thy protection, may become a living crib, where the Savior of the world may receive and bless our homage.
3. St. JOSEPH, by the SORROW with which thy heart was pierced at the sight of the Blood which flowed from the Infant Jesus in the Circumcision, and by the JOY that inundated thy soul at thy privilege of imposing the sacred and mysterious Name of Jesus, obtain for us that the merits of this Precious Blood may be applied to our souls, and that the Divine Name of Jesus may be engraved forever in our hearts.
4. St. JOSEPH, by the SORROW when the Lord declared that the soul of Mary would be pierced with a sword of sorrow, and by thy JOY when holy Simeon added that the Divine Infant was to be the resurrection of many, obtain for us the grace to have compassion on the sorrows of Mary, and share in the salvation which Jesus brought to the earth.
5. St. JOSEPH, by thy SORROW when told to fly into Egypt, and by thy JOY in seeing the idols overthrown at the arrival of the living God, grant that no idol of earthly affection may any longer occupy our hearts, but being like thee entirely devoted to the service of Jesus and Mary, we may live and happily die for them alone.
6. St. JOSEPH, by the SORROW of thy heart caused by the fear of the tyrant Archelaus and by the JOY in sharing the company of Jesus and Mary at Nazareth, obtain for us, that disengaged from all fear, we may enjoy the peace of a good conscience and may live in security, in union with Jesus and Mary, experiencing the effect of thy salutary assistance at the hour of our death.
7. St. JOSEPH, by the bitter SORROW with which the loss of the Child Jesus crushed thy heart, and by the holy JOY which inundated thy soul in recovering thy Treasure on entering the Temple, we supplicate thee not to permit us to lose our Saviour Jesus by sin. Yet, should this misfortune befall us, grant that we may share thy eagerness in seeking Him, and obtain for us the grace to find Him again, ready to show us His great mercy, especially at the hour of death; so that we may pass from this life to enjoy His presence in heaven, there to sing with thee His divine mercies forever.
Let Us Pray
O God, Who in Thine ineffable Providence has vouchsafed to choose Blessed Joseph to be the Spouse of Thy most holy Mother; grant, we beseech Thee, that we may deserve to have him for our intercessor in heaven whom on earth we venerate as our holy protector: Who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen. (Seven Sorrows and Joys of Saint Joseph)
