Harry Truman in His Masonic Robes

The State of West Virginia had a reputation for many decades as being one of the most fervently anti-Catholic states within the United States of America, a product of its overwhelmingly Protestant population and the influence of Freemasonry in all aspects of its social life.

Indeed, one of the key tests of Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s electability as a baptized Catholic in a mostly Protestant nation could win the West Virginia primary, which was held on Tuesday, May 10, 1960, against fellow Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey (DFL—Democrat Farmer Labor Party—Minnesota).

Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., the scion of the Kennedy family who made sure each of his four sins lost their holy innocence on their respective thirteenth birthdays, spent what is now believe to be over $1.5 million in West Virginia at a time when many states selected delegates to their party’s national nominating convents by means of state party conventions and not by primaries. Winning the West Virginia primary would “prove” that Kennedy could mount a serious campaign against the expected Republican presidential nominee, then Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon.Old Man Joe Kennedy actually went so far to as to give sheriffs in various counties of West Virginia to get out the vote for his son, something that embittered Humphrey, a good-hearted New Deal liberal who was always very “generous” with taxpayer dollars to “solve” social problems that were caused largely by the breakdown of the family from the consequences of contraception and divorce although he himself was not a wealthy man at all.

John Kennedy crushed Humphrey, who was five years his senior, in the May 10, 1960, West Virginia primary. Humphrey, who was a highly emotional man prone to cry publicly almost anything at any time, wept copious tears as he made his concession speech (yes, I saw it live even though I was fourteen days away from being eight and one-half years old). The Protestant had been defeated by a Catholic in a state where Catholics only made-up six percent of its population at the time (it is ten percent now according to the 2020 Census figures).

What is the point of all this?

Well, other than using information that I can no longer use in a classroom, I provided these facts to serve as a background for understanding the following story concerning West Virginia’s epic anti-Catholicism (which, to be fair, was not as all-encompassing as existed in many parts of the Deep South then, including all the states that had comprised the Confederate States of America ninety-nine years before the 1960 West Virginia presidential primary) that leads up to this commentary’s actual subject.

There is an old story, most likely apocryphal, of a Catholic man whose can ran out of gasoline while driving through the rural roads of West Virginia late one evening around 1950.

The man was fearful he might be shot or tar and feathered if he knocked on the wrong door in search of assistance to get gasoline.

Thus, after walking for a brief time down the road the man found a house where the lights were still on and, to his utter amazement, he could see a large photograph of Pope Pius XII hanging above the house’s fireplace.

Greatly relieved, the Catholic man knocked on the door and said, “Oh, thank you for opening the door. My car ran out of gasoline, and I was very fearful of what would happen to me if I knocked on the wrong door. It is so good the find fellow Catholics here in West Virginia in my time of need.”

It was the homeowner’s time to be amazed as exclaimed, “Catholics? Why do you think we are Catholics?”

Confused and a little nervous, the Catholic man stuttered and said, “Uh, well, you have a photograph of Pope Pius XII right there over your fireplace.”

The homeowner became very agitated, shouting, “Pius XII? The salesman told me that it was picture of Harry Truman in his Masonic robes.”

Pope Pius XII never wore any Masonic robes, of course, but the man who usurped the papacy, Angelo Roncalli is alleged to have done (see The Broken Cross - The Hidden Hand in the Vatican), although it is absolutely irrelevant to the plain fact that, despite occasional denunciations of Freemasonry by the Vatican in its conciliar captivity and its ban on membership in the lodges that have meant nothing to Catholics, such as Charles Rangel, who have persisted as members right up until they died, the conciliar “popes” and “bishops” have spoken and acted in entire consonance with the Judeo-Masonic spirit of religious indifferentism, tolerance of error, and “universal brotherhood.”

Pope Leo XIII reminded us in Humanum Genus that we must not be fixated upon who is or is not a member of Masonic lodges as what matters is the advancement of the Masonic spirit:

For, from what We have above most clearly shown, that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view -- namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism.

What We have said, and are about to say, must be understood of the sect of the Freemasons taken generically, and in so far as it comprises the associations kindred to it and confederated with it, but not of the individual members of them. There may be persons amongst these, and not a few who, although not free from the guilt of having entangled themselves in such associations, yet are neither themselves partners in their criminal acts nor aware of the ultimate object which they are endeavoring to attain. In the same way, some of the affiliated societies, perhaps, by no means approve of the extreme conclusions which they would, if consistent, embrace as necessarily following from their common principles, did not their very foulness strike them with horror. Some of these, again, are led by circumstances of times and places either to aim at smaller things than the others usually attempt or than they themselves would wish to attempt. They are not, however, for this reason, to be reckoned as alien to the masonic federation; for the masonic federation is to be judged not so much by the things which it has done, or brought to completion, as by the sum of its pronounced opinions. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1888.)

Yes, it is the sum of the "pronounced opinions" of Judeo-Masonry that matters, not any specific program or line of action, although there have been programs and lines of action (the establishment of public schools and the mandating of curricula of study, legislation liberalizing divorce, attempts at imposing laws forbidding the wearing of clerical garb in public and of the operation of parochial schools, the promotion of contraception and abortion and licentiousness in civil law and public culture) that members of the lodges have undertaken over the course of this nation's history that were meant to be detrimental to the Faith.

The Judeo-Masonic spirit convinces even believing Catholics that the social encyclical letters of our true popes don't apply to the United States of America, and that simple statements of Catholic truth, including the one below from Pope Saint Pius X's Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, have been made "obsolete" over the course of time:

For there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

The “pronounced opinions” of the conciliar sect are so entirely identifiable with those of Judeo-Masonry that the recent revelations about “Father” Robert Francis Prevost’s full, active, and conscious participation in a Pachamama idol service thirty-one years ago are nothing other than a correlative proof of how far those who have been formed in the false conciliar spirit of openness to the world and all its errors. The evidence itself, however, is not exclusively determinative as to whether “Pope Leo” fell from the Catholic Faith as one falls from the Catholic Faith entirely when he defects from just one of her teachings:

Someone may say: Do the heretics not believe in Christ? And what else do they proclaim but the gospel? Therefore why do they not lay their foundation on Rock? All heretics, brethren, think that they are laying their foundation on Christ, but they are very much mistaken. In their opinion they are laying their foundation on Christ, but actually they are placing it on sand. Pay careful attention, please, to what I am saying: there are two rocks on which we must place our buildings: the first one is Christ, the second is Peter. The Apostle says about the first No other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. About the second the Lord says,  And I will tell you, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. But if if no other foundation can any one lay,  how can we place Peter as another foundation? I will tell you, brethren: we do not make Christ and Peter foundations to an equal degree, but we place Christ as the first stone, and then we place Peter on top of this stone. Therefore Christ is not supported by Peter, but Peter is supported by Christ as part of the foundation. Therefore the first foundation, and the one which does not rest on another foundation, is Christ alone, so the Apostle says about him: No other foundation, that is, the first one, can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now, if you please, we will explain briefly how both Christ and Peter are the foundations. Therefore Christ is the first and preeminent foundation of our faith, because we believe that all those things are true, which Christ, which the wisdom of God as the first truth who cannot lie, has revealed to us either through the Scriptures or in some other way. We believe that our God is one and triune; we believe that all of us will be raised from the dead on the last day. Why do we believe these things? Because Peter, because Paul, because John taught these things? Not at all. Why therefore? Because the first truth, namely God, in whom there cannot be a lie, has deigned to reveal these things. Therefore our faith is based on Christ, who is the truth, as on the most solid foundation. And up to this point, brothers, we do not disagree with the heretic, since they openly affirm that whatever Christ said must be believed absolutely. And if nothing else were required, no heretic would be found. Therefore, what is it that makes a heretic? Where is the disagreement to be found? What is called in question? Actually it is this: What is it that Christ revealed without any doubt? For they contend that many things were revealed by Christ, the first truth, which we say were revealed by the father of lies. On the other hand, they think that many things are fictional creations, the author of which we acknowledge to be God himself. Therefore, who will be the judge? Did Christ, the wisdom of God, leave no one in the Church to whom we can go to resolve doubtful matters? Certainly he did leave someone. For otherwise what kind of a community would we have? Therefore, who is he? All the heretics will complain, but it is no one other than Peter. For he established him as his vicar, and after himself he made him the rock and foundation of the Church. To him alone he said: I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren. He said to him Feed my lambs; feed my sheep, that is, you are the one who must feed mothers, and sons, and bishops, and the people with the doctrine and word of truth. We believe whatever Christ deigned to reveal; but what Christ reveals or did reveal we learn from Peter and his successors, who sit in the same chair as he did. Therefore, since all the heretics disdain to build on this second rock, and since they refuse to learn from Peter and his successors, and produce dogmas of faith for themselves out of their own heads, why is it surprising if they are totally in error and are building on sand, when they believe they are building on Christ? And these statements about the foundation of the house could be sufficient, unless some had to be warned by me, whom I understand have fallen into the greatest error.

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

Father Baker’s description of the Catholicity of Saint Robert Bellarmine’s sermons contains an explanation as to why the saint rarely mentioned Martin Luther or John Calvin that applies to Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of revolutionaries as well:

“These sermons are one hundred percent Catholic. Often in passing he will refute an error of Luther and Calvin, but he does not spend a lot of time on that. For him they are simply heretics and so no longer members of the Church of Jesus Christ.” (Sermons of St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J., Part II: Sermons 30-55, Including the Four Last Things and the Annunciation., translated from the Latin by Father Kenneth Baker, S.J., and published in 2017 by Keep the Faith, Inc., Ramsey, New Jersey, p. 4.)

What am I doing spending my own time on the likes of Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV!?

Actually, Saint Robert Bellarmine did spend a good deal of time going after Luther and Calvin and their heresies in his Controversies, which Father Baker translated into English in 2015. He just did not do so during his sermons. Oh well, just when I thought I was off the hook.

Saint Robert Bellarmine’s teaching was, of course, reiterated by Saint Francis de Sales, and Popes Leo XIII and Benedict XV as follows:

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

On the one hand, therefore, it is necessary that the mission of teaching whatever Christ had taught should remain perpetual and immutable, and on the other that the duty of accepting and professing all their doctrine should likewise be perpetual and immutable. "Our Lord Jesus Christ, when in His Gospel He testifies that those who not are with Him are His enemies, does not designate any special form of heresy, but declares that all heretics who are not with Him and do not gather with Him, scatter His flock and are His adversaries: He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth" (S. Cyprianus, Ep. lxix., ad Magnum, n. I).

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

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88). (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1986.)

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

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

There is no such thing as “almost Catholic,” and there is certainly nothing called an “irreducible minima” of beliefs which one must hold to remain a member of the Catholic Church and thus to save his immortal soul. It is all or nothing. This is the teaching of the Catholic Church from which no one may dissent legitimately. No one who is intellectually honest can claim that the six conciliar claimants to the papacy have held the doctrine of the Catholic Church wholly and inviolably. It is these false claimants to the papacy who have not held to the truth of salvation. Indeed, these men have led Catholics and non-Catholics alike away from the salvation.

It continues to baffle my little pea-brain how any of this is unclear, and it matters not that a certain archbishop never saw this as no archbishop is the standard of the Holy Faith nor the Principle of Unity for Holy Mother Church no matter how many of his followers put loyalty to a person rather to the truths of the Holy Faith.

Thus, it is to have a far narrow view of the wider picture of the conciliar church’s promotion of the Great Apostasy to focus solely on this or that act of apostasy without realizing apostate acts such as the Pachamama idol worship service, which was inspired by the devil himself, are the consequence of the following ways in which conciliar represents an entirely different religion than Catholicism:

1. The claim that dogmatic truth can be understood in different ways at different times as the vagaries of historical circumstances and the limits of human speech to express the meaning of dogma accurately require constant re-evaluation. This is nothing other than Modernism’s dogmatic evolutionism, the concept of which has been condemned by Pope Pius IX (Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864; Vatican Council, Session III: Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870; Pope Saint Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, July 1, 1907; Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8. 1907; Praestentia Scripturae, November 18, 1907, and The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910, and by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)
2. The belief that the Church of Christ “subsists” in the Catholic Church but is not limited to her. Contrary to the very Divine Constitution of the Church and condemned through her history, most recently by: the Vatican Council, Session IV, Dogmatic Constitution of the Church; Pope Leo XIII, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 29, 1894, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896; Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.)
3. The belief that Protestant and other non-Catholic Christian denominations have elements and truth and sanctification. Condemned as in number 2.
4. The belief that it is necessary to conduct inter-religious “dialogue” to effect that which is said to be “lacking,” namely, Christian unity. Heretical, condemned in the Syllabus of Errors, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, Satis Cogntium, and by Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1929.
5. The belief that “inter-religious prayer services” with non-Catholics is pleasing to God. Contrary to Sacred Scripture, Apostolic Tradition and condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.
6. The belief the Judaism is a valid religion that enjoys the favor of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, and that the Mosaic Covenant has never been abolished. Heretical, contrary to the words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the consistent teaching of the Church Fathers and condemned by Pope Eugene IV and the Council of Florence in Cantate Domino, February 4, 1442, and most recently by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.)
7. The teaching that false religions have a “right from God” to propagate themselves and to be given ample public space to spread their errors in the name of “religious liberty.” Heretical. Contrary to the First Commandment and condemned consistently by our true popes since its spread in the late-Eighteenth Century. Among these condemnations have been: Pope Pius VI, Brief Quod aliquantum, March 10, 1791; Religious Liberty, a “Monstrous Right", Pope Pius VII, Post Tam Diuturnas; April 29, 1814, POST TAM DIUTURNAS, Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832; Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, and Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864; Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, and Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888; Pope Pius XII, Ci Riesce, December 6, 1953, who reiterated that error has no rights but that toleration, which had been discussed by Pope Leo XIII in Libertas Praestantissimum, is necessary in today’s world to advance the common good.
8. The belief in separation of church and state. Heretical. Condemned by Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832; Pope Pius IX, Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, and Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864; Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902; Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, and Iamdudum, May 24, 1911; Pope Benedict XVI, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum. November 1, 1914; and Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio. December 23, 1922, Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, and Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)
9. Episcopal collegiality. Contrary to the Divine Constitution of Holy Mother Church. The primacy of the Roman Pontiff was reiterated dogmatically in Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, First Dogmatic Constitution of the Church of Christ, July 18, 1870.
10. The inversion of the ends of marriage and “natural family planning.” Contrary to Divine Revelation and the Natural Law and specifically condemned by Pope Pius XII on April 1, 1944, and in his Address to Italian Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession, October 29, 1951.)

Mind you, this is just a partial listing of all that believing Catholics have had to accept as the conciliar revolutionaries keep pushing the envelope, expanding the boundaries and moving the goalposts to get to the point that rank pantheism will be accepted as Catholicism. Most Catholics in the conciliar structures, however, have swallowed all the doctrinal rubbish, all the burning of incense to false idols in temples of false worship, all the elegies of praise in behalf of religious liberty and separation of Church and state, all the liturgical outrages and abominations, all the “papal” warnings about “global warming” and the need to protect the environment, all the “papal” sellouts to Red China, all the “papal” endorsements of “open borders” and socialism—in other words, everything—churned out by their counterfeit church of conciliarism—hook, line and sinker. As I wrote in 2009, they like it!

The conciliar sect’s liturgical revolution, which was designed to accustom Catholics within the conciliar structures to a regime of ceaseless liturgical change as a means to convince them that doctrine and pastoral practice can change just as easily, has decimated belief in Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament as a dogmatic matter even though He is not really present in Novus Ordo churches and reduced weekly attendance at what purports to be Holy Mass to near record level lows.

The conciliar revolution against the Catholic Faith has had similar effects by alienating millions upon millions of Catholics from the any semblance of Catholicism and into the waiting arms of Protestant “evangelicals” or “fundamentalists,” especially in Latin America, or into becoming rank unbelievers living accord to worldly and carnal desires. Baptized Catholics who are deprived of true Catholic doctrine and starved of the supernatural nourishment offered them in the true Sacraments become ready prey for the devil and his minions, who do indeed prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

One formerly Catholic country after another in Europe has long ago endorsed almost a panoply of moral evils while embracing materialistic socialism, if not outright Marxism-Leninism, as the conciliar “popes” have celebrated that mythic “civilization of love” and, especially under Jorge Mario Bergoglio, have seen their pro-abort, pro-sodomite, anti-family, anti-freedom globalist leaders indemnified by the conciliar Vatican and its nuncios at almost every turn.

Flushed down the Orwellian memory hole, therefore, are the prophetic words of Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, and of Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Thus, the apostate acts pictured below are nothing other than the rotten fruit of a false religion, conciliarism, that is but the counterfeit ape of Catholicism:

October 27, 1986

October 27, 2011, above.

Ratzinger at the Blue Mosque, November 30, 2006

April 18, 2008, John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington, District of Columbia

Jorge Mario Bergoglio at Hindu temple, January 14, 2016

Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV, October 1, 2025.

These acts of apostasy cannot be explained away as they are part and parcel of the conciliar religion.

However, how many self-professed traditional Catholics with the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism uttered one word of criticism about Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s multiple acts of apostasy during his turn as the universal public face of apostasy between April 19, 2005, and February 28, 2013?

I can think of only one who did so occasionally, namely, the late John Vennari, the editor of Catholic Family News between 1995 and the time his death on April 4, 2017.

Everyone else amongst the self-appointed gatekeepers within the “resist while recognize” movement kept their mouths shut because the mythical “restorer of tradition,” Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, had issued Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, even though the late German “new theologian” himself admitted that the motu proprio was issued not because of any personal commitment of his to any version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition but to “pacify the spirits” of those Catholics who were “attached” to the “old” rite:

Leading men and women to God, to the God Who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith - ecumenism - is part of the supreme priority. Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of Light - this is inter-religious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is Love 'to the end' has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity - this is the social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical 'Deus caritas est'.

"So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church's real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who 'has something against you' and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents - to the extent possible - in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim Him and, with Him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

"Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things - arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them - in this case the Pope - he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint. (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, March 10, 2009.)

Fr Federico Lombardi, S.J., Director of the Holy See Press Office: What do you say to those who, in France, fear that the "Motu proprio' Summorum Pontificum signals a step backwards from the great insights of the Second Vatican Council? How can you reassure them?

Benedict XVI: Their fear is unfounded, for this "Motu Proprio' is merely an act of tolerance, with a pastoral aim, for those people who were brought up with this liturgy, who love it, are familiar with it and want to live with this liturgy. They form a small group, because this presupposes a schooling in Latin, a training in a certain culture. Yet for these people, to have the love and tolerance to let them live with this liturgy seems to me a normal requirement of the faith and pastoral concern of any Bishop of our Church. There is no opposition between the liturgy renewed by the Second Vatican Council and this liturgy.

On each day [of the Council], the Council Fathers celebrated Mass in accordance with the ancient rite and, at the same time, they conceived of a natural development for the liturgy within the whole of this century, for the liturgy is a living reality that develops but, in its development, retains its identity. Thus, there are certainly different accents, but nevertheless [there remains] a fundamental identity that excludes a contradiction, an opposition between the renewed liturgy and the previous liturgy. In any case, I believe that there is an opportunity for the enrichment of both parties. On the one hand the friends of the old liturgy can and must know the new saints, the new prefaces of the liturgy, etc.... On the other, the new liturgy places greater emphasis on common participation, but it is not merely an assembly of a certain community, but rather always an act of the universal Church in communion with all believers of all times, and an act of worship. In this sense, it seems to me that there is a mutual enrichment, and it is clear that the renewed liturgy is the ordinary liturgy of our time. (Interview of the Holy Father during the flight to France, September 12, 2008.)

Liturgical worship is the supreme expression of priestly and episcopal life, just as it is of catechetical teaching. Your duty to sanctify the faithful people, dear Brothers, is indispensable for the growth of the Church. In the Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum”, I was led to set out the conditions in which this duty is to be exercised, with regard to the possibility of using the missal of Blessed John XXIII (1962) in addition to that of Pope Paul VI (1970). Some fruits of these new arrangements have already been seen, and I hope that, thanks be to God, the necessary pacification of spirits is already taking place. I am aware of your difficulties, but I do not doubt that, within a reasonable time, you can find solutions satisfactory for all, lest the seamless tunic of Christ be further torn. Everyone has a place in the Church. Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at home, and never rejected. God, who loves all men and women and wishes none to be lost, entrusts us with this mission by appointing us shepherds of his sheep. We can only thank him for the honour and the trust that he has placed in us. Let us therefore strive always to be servants of unity! (Meeting with the French Bishops in the Hemicycle Sainte-Bernadette, Lourdes, 14 September 2008.)

Ratzinger/Benedict’s supposed magnanimity to traditionally-minded Catholics attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the mistaken belief that it is the Catholic Church and the conciliar entity has true sacramental rites, true bishops, true priests and continues to have true popes was based on sentiment towards those who have a “nostalgic” or “aesthetic” attachment to an “older” liturgy, not upon a desire to protect the inviolable integrity of the doctrines of the Holy Faith. Summorum Pontificum was bound to weaken over time as it was founded upon false premises that were not clear in the ever opaque, obscurantist, Hegelian mind of the late Antipope Benedict XVI.

Ratzinger/Benedict repeatedly contradicted himself in the explanatory letter accompanying Summorum Pontificum in 2007 and then in the explanatory letter he issued in early 2009 to explain why he lifted the ban of excommunication that his predecessor, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, had imposed upon Bishops Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson, and Alonso de Galaretta in 1988 after they had been consecrated without a “papal” mandate by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and co-consecrated by Bishop Antonio Castro de Mayer, both of whom remain “excommunicated” to this day.

However much he contradicted himself, Ratzinger/Benedict bought himself silence from most of those within the resist while recognize movement, including most of those within the Society of Saint Pius X, when he promoted the conciliar agenda and esteemed the symbols of false religions while also entering temples of false worship, many of which he called “sacred” or “jewels.”

Current reports indicate that Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV is considering lessening at least some of the very strict restrictions that his immediate predecessor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, imposed when he repealed Summorum Pontificum with Traditiones Custodes, July 16, 2021, the Commemoration of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, it is my belief that Prevost/Leo would so not to “pacify spirits” but to show himself “pastorally sensitive” to and “inclusive” of Catholics who “like” the Immemorial Mass of Tradition.

That concession having been made in fairness to “Pope Leo,” one of the chief consequences of any relaxation of the restrictions found in Traditiones Custodes, however, will be to obtain the same kind of silence about his own commitment to the conciliar agenda that was rendered by traditionally-minded Catholics within the conciliar structures to “Pope Benedict. Very few people within the conciliar structures would then ever mention “Father” Prevost’s Pachamama scandal as they will grateful “just to have the Mass,” which, objectively speaking, is staged almost exclusively by men who are not legitimately ordained to the Catholic priesthood. The Pachamama scandal would then just magically “go away.”

However, as Father Frederick William Faber pointed out in his reflection on the Sixth Dolor of Our Lady in The Foot of the Cross:

The love of God brings many new instincts into the heart. Heavenly and noble as they are, they bear no resemblance to what men would call the finer and more heroic developments of character. A spiritual discernment is necessary to their right appreciation. They are so unlike the growth of earth, that they must expect to meet on earth with only suspicion, misunderstanding, and dislike. It is not easy to defend them from a controversial point of view; for our controversy is obliged to begin by begging the question, or else it would be unable so much as to state its case. The axioms of the world pass current in the world, the axioms of the gospel do not. Hence the world has its own way. It talks us down. It tries us before tribunals where our condemnation is secured beforehand. It appeals to principles which are fundamental with most men but are heresies with us. Hence its audience takes part with it against us. We are foreigners, and must pay the penalty of being so. If we are misunderstood, we had no right to reckon on any thing else, being as we are, out of our own country. We are made to be laughed at. We shall be understood in heaven. Woe to those easy-going Christians whom the world can understand, and will tolerate because it sees they have a mind to compromise!

The love of souls is one of these instincts which the love of Jesus brings into our hearts. To the world it is proselytism, there mere wish to add to a faction, one of the selfish developments of party spirit. One while the stain of lax morality is affixed to it, another while the reproach of pharisaic strictness! For what the world seems to suspect least of all in religion is consistency. But the love of souls, however apostolic, is always subordinate to love of Jesus. We love souls because of Jesus, not Jesus because of souls. Thus there are times and places when we pass from the instinct of divine love to another, from the love of souls to the hatred of heresy. This last is particularly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is it to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. Many a convert, in whose soul God would have done grand things, goes to his grave a spiritual failure, because he would not hate heresy. The heart which feels the slightest suspicion against the hatred of heresy is not yet converted. God is far from reigning over it yet with an undivided sovereignty. The paths of higher sanctity are absolutely barred against it. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. We had, therefore, better hold our peace. If we understand God, and He understands us, it is not so very hard to go through life suspected, misunderstood and unpopular. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world's view and condemn us; for there is a meek-loving positiveness about timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is searing enough for harsh judgment. There are conversions where three-quarters of the heart stop outside the Church and only a quarter enters, and heresy can only be hated by an undivided heart. But if it is hard, it has to be borne. A man can hardly have the full use of his senses who is bent on proving to the world, God's enemy, that a thorough-going Catholic hatred of heresy is a right frame of man. We might as well force a blind man to judge a question of color. Divine love inspheres in us a different circle of life, motive, and principle, which is not only not that of the world, but in direct enmity with it. From a worldly point of view, the craters in the moon are more explicable things than we Christians with our supernatural instincts. From the hatred of heresy we get to another of these instincts, the horror of sacrilege. The distress caused by profane words seems to the world but an exaggerated sentimentality. The penitential spirit of reparation which pervades the whole Church is, on its view, either a superstition or an unreality. The perfect misery which an unhallowed  touch of the Blessed Sacrament causes to the servants of God provokes either the world's anger or its derision. Men consider it either altogether absurd in itself, or at any rate out of all proportion; and, if otherwise they have proofs of our common sense, they are inclined to put down our unhappiness to sheer hypocrisy. The very fact that they do not believe as we believe removes us still further beyond the reach even of their charitable comprehension. If they do not believe in the very existence our sacred things, how they shall they judge the excesses of a soul to which these sacred things are far dearer than itself? 

Now, it is important to bear all this in mind while we are considering the sixth dolor. Mary's heart was furnished, as never heart of saint was yet, yet with these three instincts regarding souls, heresy, and sacrilege. They were in her heart three grand abysses of grace, out of which arose perpetually new capabilities of suffering. Ordinarily speaking, the Passion tires us. It is a fatiguing devotion. It is necessarily so because of the strain of soul which it is every moment eliciting. So when our Lord dies a feeling of repose comes over us. For a moment we are tempted to think that our Lady's dolors ought to have ended there, and that the sixth dolor and the seventh are almost of our own creation, and that we tax our imagination in order to fill up the picture with the requisite dark shading of sorrow. But this is only one of the ways in which devotion to the dolors heightens and deepens our devotion to the Passion. It is not our imagination that we tax but our spiritual discernment. In these two last dolors we are led into greater refinements of woe, into the more abstruse delicacies of grief, because we have got to deal with a soul rendered even more wonderful than it was before by the elevations of the sorrows which have gone before. Thus, the piercing of our Lord with the spear as to our Blessed Lady by far the most awful sacrilege which it was then in man's power to perpetrate upon the earth. To break violently into the Holy of Holies in the temple, and pollute its dread sanctity with all manner of heathen defilement, would have been as nothing compared to the outrage of the adorable Body of God. It is in vain that we try to lift ourselves to a true appreciation of this horror in Mary's heart. Our love of God is wanting in keenness, our perceptions of divine things in fineness. We cannot do more than make approaches  and they are terrible enough. (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in England in 1857 under the title of The Dolors of Mary, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 291-295.)

Yes, we must hate heresy, and it does not matter whether people are “psychologically ready” to accept the truth or whether is to go “too far” to criticize this or that conciliar “pope,” a Catholic who truly loves God must hate what He hates, and He hates heresy and sacrilege.

We cannot be concerned about whether anyone will hate us because of our hatred of heresy, we must simply discharge our duties without fear of offending anyone, including our closest reilatives. It is that simple. We must bear witness to the truth without fear of the consequences for doing so and we must do so for the love of God and for the good the souls whom God’s Holy Providence places in our paths, especially when such souls express indifference about this or that antipapal sacrilege or apostate action.

Doing so does not make us one bit better than those who are not “ready” to accept the truth, but silence in the face of someone’s indifferent to or support of some antipapal action or speech is culpable, objectively speaking, before Christ the King Himself, but we must ask Our Lady for the graces to persevere in the truth and to defend it when occasion necessitates.

May the Rosaries we pray today, the Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Passiontide, plant the seeds for our own daily conversion and for those of all others who do not as yet understand the truth of our situation in this time of apostasy and betrayal to do so and thus to have access to the true Sacraments from truly ordained priests.

Our Lady of Dolors, pray for us.

Appendix

Dom Prosper Gueranger on The Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary

This Friday of Passion Week is consecrated, in a special manner, to the sufferings which the Holy Mother of God endured at the foot of the Cross. The whole of next week is fully taken up with the celebration of the mysteries of Jesus’ Passion; and, although the remembrance of Mary’s share in those sufferings is often brought before the Faithful during Holy Week, yet, the thought of what her Son, our Divine Redeemer, goes through for our salvation, so absorbs our attention and love, that it is not then possible to honor, as it deserves, the sublime mystery of the Mother’s compassion.

It was but fitting, therefore, that one day in the year should be Set apart for this sacred duty: and what day could be more appropriate, than the Friday of this Week, which, though sacred to the Passion, admits the celebration of Saints’ Feasts, as we have already noticed? As far back as the 15th century, (that is, in the year 1423,) we find the pious Archbishop of Cologne, Theodoric, prescribing this Feast to be kept by his people. (Labb. Concil t. 12, p 365) It was gradually introduced, and with the knowledge of the Holy See, into several other countries; and at length, in the last century. Pope Benedict XIII, by a decree dated August 22nd, 1727, ordered it to be kept in the whole Church, under the name of the Feast of the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for, up to that time, it had gone under various names. We will explain the title thus given to it, as also the first origin of the devotion of the Seven Dolours, when our Liturgical Year brings us to the Third Sunday of September, the second Feast of Mary’s Dolours. What the Church proposes to her children’s devotion for this Friday of Passion Week, is that one special Dolour of Mary — her standing at the Foot of the Cross. Among the various titles given to this feast before it was extended, by the Holy See to the whole Church, we may mention, Our Lady of Pity, The Compassion of our Lady, and the one that was so popular throughout France, Notre Dame de la Pamoison. These few historical observations prove that this feast was dear to the devotion of the people, even before it received the solemn sanction of the Church.

That we may clearly understand the object of this feast, and spend it, as the Church would have us do, in paying due honor to the Mother of God and of men, we must recall to our minds this great truth: that God, in the designs of his infinite wisdom, has willed that Mary should have a share in the work of the world’s Redemption. The mystery of the present feast is one of the applications of this Divine law, a law which reveals to us the whole magnificence of God’s Plan; it is also, one of the many realizations of the prophecy, that Satan’s pride was to be crushed by a woman. In the work of our Redemption, there are three interventions of Mary, that is, she is thrice called upon to take part in what God himself did. The first of these was in the Incarnation of the Word, who takes not Flesh in her virginal womb until she has given her consent to become His Mother; and this she gave by that solemn FIAT which blessed the world with a Savior. The second was in the sacrifice which Jesus consummated on Calvary, where she was present, that she might take part in the expiatory offering. The third was on the day of Pentecost, when she received the Holy Ghost, as did the Apostles, in order that she might effectively labor in the establishment of the Church. We have already explained on the Feast of the Annunciation, the share Mary had in that wonderful mystery of the Incarnation, which God wrought for his own glory and for man’s redemption and sanctification. On the Feast of Pentecost we shall speak of the Church commencing and progressing under the active influence of the Mother of God. Today we must show what part she took in the mystery of her Son’s Passion; we must tell the sufferings, the Dolours, she endured at the foot of the Cross, and the claims she thereby won to our filial gratitude.

On the fortieth day after the Birth of our Emmanuel, we followed, to the Temple, the happy Mother carrying her Divine Babe in her arms. A venerable old man was there, waiting to receive her Child; and, when he had Him in his arms, he proclaimed Him to be the Light of the Gentiles, and the glory of Israel. But, turning to the Mother, he spoke to her these heart-rending words: Behold! this Child is set to he a sign that shall he contradicted, and a sword shall pierce thine own soul. This prophecy of sorrow for the Mother told us that the holy joys of Christmas were over, and that the season of trial, for both Jesus and Mary, had begun. It had, indeed, begun; for, from the night of the flight into Egypt, up to this present day, when the malice of the Jews is plotting the great crime, what else has the life of our Jesus been, but the bearing humiliation, insult, persecution, and ingratitude? And if so, what has the Mother gone through? what ceaseless anxiety? what endless anguish of heart? But, let us pass by all her other sufferings, and come to the morning of the great Friday.

Mary knows, that on the previous night, her Son has been betrayed by one of his Disciples, that is, by one that Jesus had numbered among His intimate friends; she herself had often given Him proofs of her maternal affection. After a cruel Agony, her Son has been manacled as a malefactor, and led by armed men to Caiphas, His worst enemy. Thence, they have dragged Him before the Roman Governor, whose sanction the chief priests and the scribes must have before they can put Jesus to death. Mary is in Jerusalem; Magdalene, and the other holy women, the friends of Jesus, are with her; but they cannot prevent her from hearing the loud shouts of the people, and if they could, how is such a heart as hers to be slow in its forebodings? The report spreads rapidly through the City that the Roman Governor is being urged to sentence Jesus to be crucified. Whilst the entire populace is on the move towards Calvary, shouting out their blasphemous insults at her Jesus, will his Mother keep away, she that bore Him in her womb, and fed Him at her breast? Shall His enemies be eager to glut their eyes with the cruel sight, and His own Mother be afraid to be near Him?

The air resounded with the yells of the mob. Joseph of Arimathea, the noble counselor, was not there, neither was the learned Nicodemus; they kept at home, grieving over what was done. The crowd that went before and after the Divine Victim was made up of wretches without hearts, saving only a few who were seen to weep as they went along; they were women; Jesus saw them, and spoke to them. And if these women, from mere sentiments of veneration, or, at most, of gratitude, thus testified their compassion, — would Mary do less? could she bear to be elsewhere than close to her Jesus? Our motive for insisting so much upon this point, is that we may show our detestation of that school of modern rationalism, which, regardless of the instincts of a mother’s heart and of all tradition, has dared to call in question the Meeting of Jesus and Mary on the way to Calvary. These systematic contradictors are too prudent to deny that Mary was present when Jesus was crucified; the Gospel is too explicit, Mary stood near the Cross: (John 19:25) but, they would persuade us, that whilst the Daughters of Jerusalem courageously walked after Jesus, Mary went up to Calvary by some secret path! What a heartless insult to the love of the incomparable Mother.

No; Mary, who is, by excellence, the Valiant Woman, (Proverbs 31:10) was with Jesus as He carried his Cross. And who could describe her anguish and her love, as her eye met that of her Son tottering under His heavy load? Who could tell the affection, and the resignation, of the look He gave her in return? Who could depict the eager and respectful tenderness wherewith Magdalene and the other holy women grouped around this Mother, as she followed her Jesus up Calvary, there to see Him crucified and die? The distance between the Fourth and Tenth Station of the Dolorous Way is long: — it is marked with Jesus’ Blood, and the Mother’s tears.

Jesus and Mary have reached the summit of the hill, that is to be the Altar of the holiest and crudest Sacrifice: but the divine decree permits not the Mother as yet to approach her Son. When the Victim is ready, then She that is to offer Him shall come forward. Meanwhile, they nail her Jesus to the Cross; and each blow of the hammer was a wound to Mary’s heart. When, at last, she is permitted to approach, accompanied by the Beloved Disciple, (who has made amends for his cowardly flight,) and the disconsolate Magdalene and the other holy women, what unutterable anguish must have filled the soul of this Mother, when, raising up her eyes, she sees the mangled Body of her Son, stretched upon the Cross, with His face all covered with blood, and His head wreathed with a crown of thorns!

Here, then, is this King of Israel, of whom the Angel had told her such glorious things in His prophecy! Here is that Son of hers, whom she has loved both as her God and as the Fruit of her own womb! And who are they that have reduced Him to this pitiable state? Men — for whose sakes, rather than for her own, she conceived Him, gave Him birth, and nourished Him! Oh! if, by one of those miracles, which His Heavenly Father could so easily work, He might be again restored to her! If that Divine Justice, which He has taken upon Himself to appease, would be satisfied with what he has already suffered! But no: He must die; He must breathe forth His blessed Soul after a long and cruel agony.

Mary, then, is at the foot of the Cross, there to witness the death of her Son. He is soon to be separated from her. In three hours’ time, all that will be left her of this beloved Jesus will be a lifeless Body, wounded from head to foot. Our words are too cold for such a scene as this: let us listen to those of St. Bernard, which the Church has inserted in her Matins of this Feast. “O Blessed Mother! a sword of sorrow pierced thy soul, and we may well call thee more than Martyr, for the intensity of thy compassion surpassed all that a bodily passion could produce. Could any sword have made thee smart so much as that word which pierced thy heart, reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit:

“Woman! behold thy Son!’ What an exchange! — John, for Jesus! the servant, for the Lord! “the disciple, for the Master! the son of Zebedee, for the Son of God! a mere man, for the very God! How must not thy most loving heart have been pierced with the sound of these words, when even ours, that are hard as stone and steel, break down as we think of them! Ah! my Brethren, be not surprised when you are told that Mary was a Martyr in her soul. Let him alone be surprised, who has forgotten that St. Paul counts it as one of the greatest sins of the Gentiles, that they were without affection. Who could say that of Mary? God forbid it be said of us, the servants of Mary!” (Sermon on the 12 Stars)

Amidst the shouts and insults vociferated by the enemies of Jesus, Mary’s quick ear has heard these words, which tell her, that the only son she is henceforth to have on earth is one of adoption. Her maternal joys of Bethlehem and Nazareth are all gone; they make her present sorrow the bitterer: she was the Mother of a God, and men have taken Him from her! Her last and fondest look at her Jesus, her own dearest Jesus, tells her that He is suffering a burning thirst, and she cannot give Him to drink! His eyes grow dim; His head droops; all is consummated!

Mary cannot leave the Cross; love brought her thither; love keeps her there, whatever may happen! A soldier advances near that hallowed spot; she sees him lift up his spear, and thrust it through the breast of the sacred Corpse. “Ah,” cries out St. Bernard, “that thrust is through thy soul, O Blessed Mother! It could but open His side, but it pierced thy very soul. His Soul was not there; thine was, and could not but be so.” (Sermon on the 12 Stars) No, the undaunted Mother keeps close to the Body of her Son. She watches them as they take it down from the Cross; and when, at last, the friends of Jesus, with all the respect due to both Mother and Son, enable her to embrace it, she raises it upon her lap, and He that once lay upon her knees receiving the homage of the Eastern Kings, now lays there cold, mangled, bleeding, dead! And as she looks upon the wounds of this divine Victim, she gives them the highest honor in the power of creatures, — she kisses them, she bathes them with her tears, she adores them, but oh I with what intensity of loving grief!

The hour is far advanced; and before sunset, He, Jesus, the author of life, must be buried. The Mother puts the whole vehemence of her love into a last kiss, and oppressed with a bitterness great as is the sea, (Lamentations 1:4, 2:13) she makes over this adorable Body to them that have to embalm and then lay it on the sepulchral slab. The sepulcher is closed; and Mary, accompanied by John, her adopted son, and Magdalene, and the holy women, and the two disciples that have presided over the Burial, returns sorrowing to the deicide City.

Now, in all this, there is another mystery besides that of Mary’s sufferings. Her dolours at the Foot of the Cross include and imply a truth, which we must not pass by, or we shall not understand the full beauty of today’s Feast. Why would God have her assist in person at such a scene as this of Calvary? Why was not she, as well as Joseph, taken out of this world before this terrible day of Jesus’ Death? Because God had assigned her a great office for that day, and it was to be under the Tree of the Cross that she, the second Eve, was to discharge her office. As the heavenly Father had waited for her consent before He sent His Son into the world; so, likewise, He called for her obedience and devotedness, when the hour came for that Son to be offered up in sacrifice for the world’s Redemption. Was not Jesus hers? her Child? her own and dearest treasure? And yet, God gave Him not to her, until she had assented to become His Mother; in like manner, He would not take Him from her, unless she gave Him back.

But, see what this involved, see what a struggle it entailed upon this most loving Heart! It is the injustice, the cruelty, of men that rob her of her Son; how can she, His Mother, ratify, by her consent, the Death of Him, whom she loved with a twofold love, as her Son, and as her God? But, on the other hand, if Jesus be not put to death, the human race is left a prey to Satan, sin is not atoned for, and all the honors and joys of her being Mother of God are of no use or blessing to us. This Virgin of Nazareth, this noblest heart, this purest creature, whose affections were never blunted with the selfishness which so easily makes its way into souls that have been wounded by original sin, what shall she do? Her devotedness to mankind, her conformity with the will of her Son who so vehemently desires the world’s salvation, lead her, a second time, to pronounce the solemn FIAT: she consents to the immolation of her Son. It is not God’s justice that takes Him from her; it is she herself that gives Him up; but, in return, she is raised to a degree of greatness, which her humility could never have suspected was to be hers: — an ineffable union is made to exist between the two offerings, that of the Incarnate Word and that of Mary; the Blood of the Divine Victim, and the Tears of the Mother, flow together for the redemption of mankind.

We can now understand the conduct and the courage of this Mother of Sorrows. Unlike that other mother, of whom the Scripture speaks, — the unhappy Agar, who, after having sought in vain how she might quench the thirst of her Ismael in the desert, withdrew from him that she might not see him die; — Mary no sooner hears that Jesus is condemned to death, than she rises, hastens to Him, and follows Him to the place where He is to die. And what is her attitude at the foot of His cross? Does her matchless grief overpower her? Does she swoon? or fall? No: the Evangelist says: “There stood by the Cross of Jesus, His Mother.” (John 19:25) The sacrificing priest stands, when offering at the altar; Mary stood for such a sacrifice as hers was to be. St. Ambrose, whose affectionate heart and profound appreciation of the mysteries of religion have revealed to us so many precious traits of Mary’s character, thus speaks of her position at the foot of the Cross: “She stood opposite the Cross, gazing, with maternal love, on the wounds of her Son; and thus she stood, not waiting for her Jesus to die, but for the world to be saved.” (In Lucam Ch. 23)

Thus, this Mother of Sorrows, when standing on Calvary, blessed us who deserved but maledictions; she loved us; she sacrificed her Son for our salvation. In spite of all the feelings of her maternal heart, she gave back to the Eternal Father the divine treasure He had entrusted to her keeping. The sword pierced through and through her soul, but we were saved; and she, though a mere creature, cooperated with her Son in the work of our salvation. Can we wonder, after this, that Jesus chose this moment for the making her the Mother of men, in the person of John the Evangelist, who represented us? Never had Mary’s Heart loved us as she did then; from that time forward, therefore, let this second Eve be the true Mother of the living! (Genesis 3:20) The Sword, by piercing her Immaculate Heart, has given us admission there. For time and eternity, Mary will extend to us the love she has borne for her Son, for she has just heard Him saying to her that we are her children. He is our Lord, for He has redeemed us; She is our Lady, for she generously co-operated in our redemption.

Animated by this confidence, Mother of Sorrows! we come before thee, on this Feast of thy Dolours, to offer thee our filial love. Jesus, the Blessed Fruit of thy Womb, filled thee with joy as thou gavest him birth; we, thy adopted children, entered into thy Heart by the cruel piercing of the Sword of Suffering. And yet, Mary! love us, for thou didst cooperate with our Divine Redeemer in saving us. How can we not trust in the love of thy generous Heart, when we know, that, for our salvation, thou didst unite thyself to the Sacrifice of thy Jesus? What proofs hast thou not unceasingly given us of thy maternal tenderness, O Queen of Mercy! O Refuge of Sinners! untiring Advocate for us in all our miseries! Deign, sweet Mother, to watch over us, during these days of grace. Give us to feel and relish the Passion of thy Son. It was consummated in thy presence; thine own share in it was magnificent! Oh! make us enter into all its mysteries, that so our souls, redeemed by the Blood of thy Son, and helped by thy Tears, may be thoroughly converted to the Lord, and persevere, henceforward, faithful in his service. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, The Dolors of Mary, Friday in Passion Week.)