Jorge's Exhortation of Self-Justification Before Men, part seven

There are few worse things that one can do with one’s precious Catholic time than to read revolutionary bilge such as Amoris Laetitia. It is particularly dangerous to one’s health to read it more than once. Indeed, the entirety of Wednesday, April 27, 2016, the Feast of Saint Peter Canisius, was spent re-reading much of the horrific document’s intolerable elegy in defense of the toleration of sin in the name of “mercy,” “love,” and “gradualness.” Although there is no way for me to tell how many more parts of this series need to be written, I can tell the relatively few remaining readers on this site (and that is not a complaint, just a factual statement) I hope to be done with these commentaries sooner or later. This is sheer, unadulterated penance, and the penance would be even greater if I tried to comment on every passage in Amoris Laetitia, something that I have chosen not to do as I do want to get back to other writing.

Amoris Laetitia is certainly a work heresy. Anyone who denies that this is so is not seeing matters clearly, to say the very least.

Indeed, Jorge Mario Bergoglio sprinkled conciliarspeak code words even those passages of Amoris Laetitia containing what the false “pontiff” offers his “advice” to married couples. Here are two such passages:

134. All this occurs through a process of constant growth. The very special form of love that is marriage is called to embody what Saint Thomas Aquinas said about charity in general. “Charity”, he says, “by its very nature, has no limit to its increase, for it is a participation in that infinite charity which is the Holy Spirit… Nor on the part of the subject can its limit be fixed, because as charity grows, so too does its capacity for an even greater increase”.135 Saint Paul also prays: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another” (1 Th 3:12), and again, “concerning fraternal love… we urge you, beloved, to do so more and more” (1 Th 4:9-10). More and more! Marital love is not defended primarily by presenting indissolubility as a duty, or by repeating doctrine, but by helping it to grow ever stronger under the impulse of grace. A love that fails to grow is at risk. Growth can only occur if we respond to God’s grace through constant acts of love, acts of kindness that become ever more frequent, intense, generous, tender and cheerful. Husbands and wives “become conscious of their unity and experience it more deeply from day to day”.136 The gift of God’s love poured out upon the spouses is also a summons to constant growth in grace.

139. Keep an open mind. Don’t get bogged down in your own limited ideas and opinions, but be prepared to change or expand them. The combination of two different ways of thinking can lead to a synthesis that enriches both. The unity that we seek is not uniformity, but a “unity in diversity”, or “reconciled diversity”. Fraternal communion is enriched by respect and appreciation for differences within an overall perspective that advances the common good. We need to free ourselves from feeling that we all have to be alike. A certain astuteness is also needed to prevent the appearance of “static” that can interfere with the process of dialogue. For example, if hard feelings start to emerge, they should be dealt with sensitively, lest they interrupt the dynamic of dialogue. The ability to say what one is thinking without offending the other person is important. Words should be carefully chosen so as not to offend, especially when discussing difficult issues. Making a point should never involve venting anger and inflicting hurt. A patronizing tone only serves to hurt, ridicule, accuse and offend others. Many disagreements between couples are not about important things. Mostly they are about trivial matters. What alters the mood, however, is the way things are said or the attitude with which they are said.  (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Amoris Laetita, March 19, 2016.)

All right, here we go for another round comments:

One can see that Bergoglio is applying a variety of conciliarism’s false premises to redefine and destabilize marriage in the same manner that the documents of the “Second” Vatican Council and the “magisterium” of the postconciliar “popes” have sought to redefine the entirety of the Catholic Faith even though many “conservative” commentators within the counterfeit church of conciliarism do not see this reality as of yet. Ah, but the reality is that Amoris Laetitia is but the end product of a rupture with Catholic Faith, Worship and Morals that began at that very same “Second” Vatican Council.

As has been noted in numerous commentaries on this site, the “Second” Vatican Council and the conciliar “popes,” starting with Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI, who inverted the very ends of marriage in Humanae Vitae, July 25, 1968, represented a definite rupture with the Catholic Faith, thereby endorsing the erroneous teaching of Father Hebert Dom and Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand that had been condemned specifically by Pope Pius XII on March 29, 1944. Although contained in part four of this never-ending series, it is useful to provide readers with it again to demonstrate that Amoris Laetitia is but the result of conciliarism, which made its definitive rupture with Catholic teaching on the ends of marriage with the issuance of Humanae Vitae:

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.)

All that Bergoglio is doing in Amoris Laetitia is to apply Modernism’s dogmatic evolutionism to the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony and to each of the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments concerning conjugal morality, starting with his contention that the indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage should not be presented as a “duty” or by “repeating doctrine.” The Argentine Apostate believes that doctrine repels Catholics and that the beauty of its truths have no capacity to convince them to adhere to it for love of God and for the sake of their own sanctification and salvation.

Yet is that Popes Leo XIII and Pius IX did precisely what is disparaged by “Pope Francis.” They saw it as their duty to defend and to teach the doctrine of marital indissolubility:

41. In the great confusion of opinions, however, which day by day is spreading more and more widely, it should further be known that no power can dissolve the bond of Christian marriage whenever this has been ratified and consummated; and that, of a consequence, those husbands and wives are guilty of a manifest crime who plan, for whatever reason, to be united in a second marriage before the first one has been ended by death. When, indeed, matters have come to such a pitch that it seems impossible for them to live together any longer, then the Church allows them to live apart, and strives at the same time to soften the evils of this separation by such remedies and helps as are suited to their condition; yet she never ceases to endeavor to bring about a reconciliation, and never despairs of doing so. But these are extreme cases; and they would seldom exist if men and women entered into the married state with proper dispositions, not influenced by passion, but entertaining right ideas of the duties of marriage and of its noble purpose; neither would they anticipate their marriage by a series of sins drawing down upon them the wrath of God.

42. To sum up all in a few words, there would be a calm and quiet constancy in marriage if married people would gather strength and life from the virtue of religion alone, which imparts to us resolution and fortitude; for religion would enable them to bear tranquilly and even gladly the trials of their state, such as, for instance, the faults that they discover in one another, the difference of temper and character, the weight of a mother's cares, the wearing anxiety about the education of children, reverses of fortune, and the sorrows of life.

43. Care also must be taken that they do not easily enter into marriage with those who are not Catholics; for, when minds do not agree as to the observances of religion, it is scarcely possible to hope for agreement in other things. Other reasons also proving that persons should turn with dread from such marriages are chiefly these: that they give occasion to forbidden association and communion in religious matters; endanger the faith of the Catholic partner; are a hindrance to the proper education of the children; and often lead to a mixing up of truth and falsehood, and to the belief that all religions are equally good.    

44. Lastly, since We well know that none should be excluded from Our charity, We commend, venerable brothers, to your fidelity and piety those unhappy persons who, carried away by the heat of passion, and being utterly indifferent to their salvation, live wickedly together without the bond of lawful marriage. Let your utmost care be exercised in bringing such persons back to their duty; and, both by your own efforts and by those of good men who will consent to help you, strive by every means that they may see how wrongly they have acted; that they may do penance; and that they may be induced to enter into a lawful marriage according to the Catholic rite. (Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum, February 10, 1880.)

32. In the first place Christ Himself lays stress on the indissolubility and firmness of the marriage bond when He says: "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder,"[31] and: "Everyone that putteth away his wife and marrieth another committeth adultery, and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery."[32]

33. And St. Augustine clearly places what he calls the blessing of matrimony in this indissolubility when he says: "In the sacrament it is provided that the marriage bond should not be broken, and that a husband or wife, if separated, should not be joined to another even for the sake of offspring."[33]

34. And this inviolable stability, although not in the same perfect measure in every case, belongs to every true marriage, for the word of the Lord: "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder," must of necessity include all true marriages without exception, since it was spoken of the marriage of our first parents, the prototype of every future marriage. Therefore although before Christ the sublimeness and the severity of the primeval law was so tempered that Moses permitted to the chosen people of God on account of the hardness of their hearts that a bill of divorce might be given in certain circumstances, nevertheless, Christ, by virtue of His supreme legislative power, recalled this concession of greater liberty and restored the primeval law in its integrity by those words which must never be forgotten, "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Wherefore, Our predecessor Pius VI of happy memory, writing to the Bishop of Agria, most wisely said: "Hence it is clear that marriage even in the state of nature, and certainly long before it was raised to the dignity of a sacrament, was divinely instituted in such a way that it should carry with it a perpetual and indissoluble bond which cannot therefore be dissolved by any civil law. Therefore although the sacramental element may be absent from a marriage as is the case among unbelievers, still in such a marriage, inasmuch as it is a true marriage there must remain and indeed there does remain that perpetual bond which by divine right is so bound up with matrimony from its first institution that it is not subject to any civil power. And so, whatever marriage is said to be contracted, either it is so contracted that it is really a true marriage, in which case it carries with it that enduring bond which by divine right is inherent in every true marriage; or it is thought to be contracted without that perpetual bond, and in that case there is no marriage, but an illicit union opposed of its very nature to the divine law, which therefore cannot be entered into or maintained."[34]

35. And if this stability seems to be open to exception, however rare the exception may be, as in the case of certain natural marriages between unbelievers, or amongst Christians in the case of those marriages which though valid have not been consummated, that exception does not depend on the will of men nor on that of any merely human power, but on divine law, of which the only guardian and interpreter is the Church of Christ. However, not even this power can ever affect for any cause whatsoever a Christian marriage which is valid and has been consummated, for as it is plain that here the marriage contract has its full completion, so, by the will of God, there is also the greatest firmness and indissolubility which may not be destroyed by any human authority.

36. If we wish with all reverence to inquire into the intimate reason of this divine decree, Venerable Brethren, we shall easily see it in the mystical signification of Christian marriage which is fully and perfectly verified in consummated marriage between Christians. For, as the Apostle says in his Epistle to the Ephesians,[35] the marriage of Christians recalls that most perfect union which exists between Christ and the Church: "Sacramentum hoc magnum est, ego autem dico, in Christo et in ecclesia;" which union, as long as Christ shall live and the Church through Him, can never be dissolved by any separation. And this St. Augustine clearly declares in these words: "This is safeguarded in Christ and the Church, which, living with Christ who lives for ever may never be divorced from Him. The observance of this sacrament is such in the City of God . . . that is, in the Church of Christ, that when for the sake of begetting children, women marry or are taken to wife, it is wrong to leave a wife that is sterile in order to take another by whom children may be hand. Anyone doing this is guilty of adultery, just as if he married another, guilty not by the law of the day, according to which when one's partner is put away another may be taken, which the Lord allowed in the law of Moses because of the hardness of the hearts of the people of Israel; but by the law of the Gospel."[36]

37. Indeed, how many and how important are the benefits which flow from the indissolubility of matrimony cannot escape anyone who gives even a brief consideration either to the good of the married parties and the offspring or to the welfare of human society. First of all, both husband and wife possess a positive guarantee of the endurance of this stability which that generous yielding of their persons and the intimate fellowship of their hearts by their nature strongly require, since true love never falls away.[37] Besides, a strong bulwark is set up in defense of a loyal chastity against incitements to infidelity, should any be encountered either from within or from without; any anxious fear lest in adversity or old age the other spouse would prove unfaithful is precluded and in its place there reigns a calm sense of security. Moreover, the dignity of both man and wife is maintained and mutual aid is most satisfactorily assured, while through the indissoluble bond, always enduring, the spouses are warned continuously that not for the sake of perishable things nor that they may serve their passions, but that they may procure one for the other high and lasting good have they entered into the nuptial partnership, to be dissolved only by death. In the training and education of children, which must extend over a period of many years, it plays a great part, since the grave and long enduring burdens of this office are best borne by the united efforts of the parents. Nor do lesser benefits accrue to human society as a whole. For experience has taught that unassailable stability in matrimony is a fruitful source of virtuous life and of habits of integrity. Where this order of things obtains, the happiness and well being of the nation is safely guarded; what the families and individuals are, so also is the State, for a body is determined by its parts. Wherefore, both for the private good of husband, wife and children, as likewise for the public good of human society, they indeed deserve well who strenuously defend the inviolable stability of matrimony.

38. But considering the benefits of the Sacrament, besides the firmness and indissolubility, there are also much higher emoluments as the word "sacrament" itself very aptly indicates; for to Christians this is not a meaningless and empty name. Christ the Lord, the Institutor and "Perfecter" of the holy sacraments,[38] by raising the matrimony of His faithful to the dignity of a true sacrament of the New Law, made it a sign and source of that peculiar internal grace by which "it perfects natural love, it confirms an indissoluble union, and sanctifies both man and wife."[39] (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

As noted in part six, the temptation is very, very strong to simply let these firm reiterations of Catholic teaching serve as the authoritatively Catholic refutation of the falsehoods and heresies contained within the text of Amoris Laetitia. To disparage the duty to teach the doctrine of the indissolubility of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony is to disparage Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, and this is precisely what Jorge Mario Bergoglio has done throughout the entirety of his presbyteral and “episcopal” life. It is what he has done by putting his name to the text written for him by Victor Manuel Fernandez.

Bergoglio’s insidious redefinition of marriage is experientially-based. Indeed, everything that this heretic believes about the Catholic Faith is experientially-based, and this is nothing other than pure Modernism as dissected by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907:

14. Thus far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist as a philosopher. Now if We proceed to consider him as a believer, and seek to know how the believer, according to Modernism, is marked off from the philosopher, it must be observed that, although the philosopher recognizes the reality of the divine as the object of faith, still this reality is not to be found by him but in the heart of the believer, as an object of feeling and affirmation, and therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena; but the question as to whether in itself it exists outside that feeling and affirmation is one which the philosopher passes over and neglects. For the Modernist believer, on the contrary, it is an established and certain fact that the reality of the divine does really exist in itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask on what foundation this assertion of the believer rests, he answers: In the personal experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the views of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics. The following is their manner of stating the question: In the religious sense one must recognize a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion of God's existence and His action both within and without man as far to exceed any scientific conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If this experience is denied by some, like the Rationalists, they say that this arises from the fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state necessary to produce it. It is this experience which makes the person who acquires it to be properly and truly a believer.

How far this position is removed from that of Catholic teaching! We have already seen how its fallacies have been condemned by the Vatican Council. Later on, we shall see how these errors, combined with those which we have already mentioned, open wide the way to Atheism. Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with that of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being found in any religion? In fact, that they are so is maintained by not a few. On what grounds can Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? Will they claim a monopoly of true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain, some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true. That they cannot feel otherwise is obvious. For on what ground, according to their theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever? Certainly it would be either on account of the falsity of the religious .sense or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the mind. Now the religious sense, although it maybe more perfect or less perfect, is always one and the same; and the intellectual formula, in order to be true, has but to respond to the religious sense and to the believer, whatever be the intellectual capacity of the latter. In the conflict between different religions, the most that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more truth because it is more vivid, and that it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find it unreasonable that these consequences flow from the premises. But what is most amazing is that there are Catholics and priests, who, We would fain believe, abhor such enormities, and yet act as if they fully approved of them. For they lavish such praise and bestow such public honor on the teachers of these errors as to convey the belief that their admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the sake of the errors which these persons openly profess and which they do all in their power to propagate.

15. There is yet another element in this part of their teaching which is absolutely contrary to Catholic truth. For what is laid down as to experience is also applied with destructive effect to tradition, which has always been maintained by the Catholic Church. Tradition, as understood by the Modernists, is a communication with others of an original experience, through preaching by means of the intellectual formula. To this formula, in addition to its representative value they attribute a species of suggestive efficacy which acts firstly in the believer by stimulating the religious sense, should it happen to have grown sluggish, and by renewing the experience once acquired, and secondly, in those who do not yet believe by awakening in them for the first time the religious sense and producing the experience. In this way is religious experience spread abroad among the nations; and not merely among contemporaries by preaching, but among future generations both by books and by oral transmission from one to another. Sometimes this communication of religious experience takes root and thrives, at other times it withers at once and dies. For the Modernists, to live is a proof of truth, since for them life and truth are one and the same thing. Thus we are once more led to infer that all existing religions are equally true, for otherwise they would not survive. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Once again, of course, one can see that a true pope has condemned the entire false foundation of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s “theology,” such as it is, that the false “pontiff” uses to accept each false religion as good and true in and of themselves and that he uses in Amoris Laetitia to accept the “goodness” of “stable bonds” that are said to exist between couples who demonstrate “love” for each other. Everything that exists, therefore, even if it is not “ideal” or “perfect,” is said to exist by the very ordained will of God.

Influenced by the late Father Walter Burghardt, S.J., who wrote that Protestant sects enjoy the favor of God by the sheer fact of their existence, Jorge Mario Bergoglio looks for the “good” in every sinful relationship imaginable, no matter how sick, twisted or perverted it may be.. And it is this false sense of tolerance that the conciliar “pope” is urging upon married couples by exhorting them to engage in “dialogue” in order to be “open to new ways of thinking” so as to realize “university in diversity” or “reconciled diversity.” In other words, Bergoglio is telling married couples to be as flexible in their “opinions,” including those pertaining to Faith and Morals, as he is. Everything is up for discussion and “dialogue” in the name of a search for the “common ground.”

While a few readers might protest that the Argentine Apostate is merely referring to differences of opinion on matters where people can disagree legitimately, such a restricted reading of Bergoglio’s words in paragraph thirty-nine ignores the fact that Bergoglio is seeking to relativize everything about the Catholic Faith. He believes that a husband or wife who, for example, hold to Catholic teaching that perverse sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are mortally must engage in a “dialogue” to agree to disagree with a spouse who takes a different “opinion.” This is not an unjust or unfair reading of what Bergoglio means to convey in paragraph thirty-nine.

Everything about Catholic Faith and Morals is up for “dialogue” in order for order for there to be “reconciled diversity” or “unity in diversity,” which is the exact same heretical line that was being used by ecumenists in the 1950s and that has been used by the conciliar “popes” since the end of the “Second” Vatican Council. Married couples, therefore, are to realize this kind of “reconciled diversity” on a range of matters about which they disagree, including points of the Holy Faith itself.  

Ever the blasphemer, Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes that the very Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, creates “diversity” among Christians:

What does the Holy Spirit do? I said he does something else, which perhaps one might think is division, but it isn’t. The Holy Spirit creates “diversity” in the Church. The First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12. He creates diversity! And this diversity is truly very rich, very beautiful. But then, the Holy Spirit himself creates unity, and so the Church is one in diversity. And, to use the word of an Evangelical whom I love very much, a “reconciled diversity” by the Holy Spirit. He creates both things: He creates the diversity of charisms and then He creates the harmony of charisms. Therefore, the early theologians of the Church, the early Fathers – I am speaking of the 3rdor 4thcentury – said: “The Holy Spirit is harmony,” because He creates this harmonious unity in diversity.

We are in the age of globalization, and we wonder what globalization is and what the unity of the Church would be: perhaps a sphere, where all points are equidistant from the center, all are equal? No! This is uniformity. And the Holy Spirit does not create uniformity! What figure can we find? We think of the polyhedron: the polyhedron is a unity, but with all different parts; each one has its peculiarity, its charism. This is unity in diversity. It is on this path that we, Christians, do what we call with the theological name of ecumenism. We try to have this diversity become more harmonized by the Holy Spirit and become unity. We seek to walk in the presence of God to be irreproachable. We seek to find the nourishment of which we are in need to find our brother. This is our way, this is our Christian beauty! I refer to what my beloved brother said at the beginning.  (Address to Pentecostal Community in Caserta, July 28, 2014.)

As has been pointed out on this site many times before, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI expressed his explicit support for the heresy of “unity in diversity” many times during his nearly eight years as the executive director of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, including when he did so in an ecumaniacal assembly in Cologne, Germany, on Friday, August 19, 2005:

We all know there are numerous models of unity and you know that the Catholic Church also has as her goal the full visible unity of the disciples of Christ, as defined by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council in its various Documents (cf. Lumen Gentium, nn. 8, 13; Unitatis Redintegratio, nn. 2, 4, etc.). This unity, we are convinced, indeed subsists in the Catholic Church, without the possibility of ever being lost (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 4); the Church in fact has not totally disappeared from the world.

On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return:  that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not!

It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity:  in my Homily for the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul on 29 June last, I insisted that full unity and true catholicity in the original sense of the word go together. As a necessary condition for the achievement of this coexistence, the commitment to unity must be constantly purified and renewed; it must constantly grow and mature. (Ecumenical meeting at the Archbishopric of Cologne English.)

It was just three years before the beginning of the “Second” Vatican Council in which Father Joseph Ratzinger, who had been under suspicion of heresy by the Holy Office during the pontificate of our last true pope thus far, Pope Pius XII, served as a peritus (expert), and that formed the revolutionary mind of Jorge Mario Bergoglio that Father Francis A. Connell wrote the following about the heresy of “unity in diversity”:

To characterize the relation between Catholics and Protestants as 'unity-in-diversity' is misleading, inasmuch as it implies that essentially Catholics are one with heretics, and that their diversities are only accidental. Actually, the very opposite is the true situation. For, however near an heretical sect may seem to be to the Catholic Church in its particular beliefs, a wide gulf separates them, insofar as the divinely established means whereby the message of God is to be communicated to souls--the infallible Magisterium of the Church--is rejected by every heretical sect. By telling Protestants that they are one with us in certain beliefs, in such wise as to give the impression that we regard this unity as the predominant feature of our relation with them, we are actually misleading them regarding the true attitude of the Catholic Church toward those who do not acknowledge Her teaching authority. (Father Francis Connell, Father Connell Answers Moral Questions, published in 1959 by Catholic University of America Press, p. 11; quoted in Fathers Dominic and Francisco Radecki, CMRI, TUMULTUOUS TIMES, p. 348.)

This is a precise and exact description of what the conciliar “popes” have done. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a heretic. So is his predecessor. So was his predecessor's “canonized” predecessor. So was his “canonized” predecessor's immediate predecessor and the soon-to-be “beatified” predecessor who promulgated the decrees of the “Second” Vatican Council, which was convened by the “canonized” supporter of the Sillon and of liturgical Jansenism.

Moreover, the true diversity is to be found within Holy Mother Church's many religious communities of men and women, each with its own distinctive charisms, and in the variety of personalities of her children who are attached to her maternal bosom without an iota of dissent.  

“Diversity” in doctrine is of the evil spirits, not the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, and it is this "diversity in unity" that Bergoglio wants married couples to make their own. In other words, everything is a matter of opinion.

Yes, I know this is a lot to extract from one of the more seemingly innocuous passages of Amoris Laetitia. However, there is little that is truly innocuous in the text of this miserable document, which contains the sort of material that has never issued forth from the pens of true popes or any of Holy Mother Church's Fathers, Doctors or Confessors at any point in her history. 

Paragraphs 142-153 of Amoris Laetitia descend into such graphic details concerning matters of marital intimacy that violate Catholic norms of modesty of speech as to make them unprintable on this site. I will include only two of them in this commentary in order to focus on an overview of their content. This applies also to the material about explicit instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.

Several points can be made by way of summary, however,

First, Paragraphs 142-153 of Amoris Laetitia are a continuation of the hideous “theology of the body” that resulted from Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II’s “catecheses” on The Book of Genesis that he gave at his general audience addresses in 1981 and 1982. A cottage industry glorifying passion as an end in and of itself that requires Catholics to become immersed in its pursuit. Conferences, seminars, parish workshops, textbooks and manuals have been dedicated to topics that had been the preserve of uninhibited sexologists as Alfred Kinsey, William Masters, Virginia Johnson, Alex Comfort and, among so many others, Ruth Westheimer.  

Second, the “theology of the body” paved the way for the incorporation of the same sort of immodest, indecent language into programs of “instruction” for engaged and married couples in parish after parish. Many seminaries under conciliar captivity and control have incorporated into their curricula the works of supposedly Catholic sexologists who have provided the same sort of “Catholic” gloss to the “insights” of the secularists listed just above that the then Monsignor James T. McHugh, working closely with Mary Calderone of the Sex and Information Committee of the United States (SIECUS), did when using the advice of secularists to provide the foundation for explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. Believing Catholics must be forever grateful to Mrs. Randy Engel for dissecting and refuting the so-called “theology of the body” that is endorsed by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his ghostwriter, Victor Manuel Fernandez. Please see Theology of the Body.

Third, the material contained in Paragraphs 142-153 of Amoris Laetitia provided a foundation for the “necessity” of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments found in Paragraphs 280-286. What is truly laughable is that Bergoglio, after using Paragraphs 142-153 as advice for the lust-lorn, discussed the importance of modesty in “sexual education.” Talk about hypocrisy.

This man’s own speech and behavior often is immodest and indecent and when many of his own “bishops” do not believe that “stable, loving” homosexual relationships are mortally sinful in the objective order of things. One of his “bishops,” Stanislas Lalanne (perhaps a relative of the late Jack LaLanne?), even expressed doubt, since qualified, that pedophilia was sinful (see French Apostate Stanislas Lalanne exercises jaw; jaw breaks in contortions). Well, then, what can one expect from a man who has coddled a serial predator, “Monisgnor” Battista Ricca, and has been very soft on his “bishops” for their own protection of perverted priests and presbyters? Hypocrisy is the order of the day. 

Such a loss of the sense of natural moral decency follows logically after losing the sense of horror of personal sin and what the sins of each man who has ever lived up to this point and who will live until the Second Coming of Christ the King on the Last Day to judge the living and the dead did to the Divine Redeemer once in time during His fearful Passion and Death and to the Church Militant here on the face of this earth. Not to be overlooked in this regard is the extent to which many of those the Argentine Apostate personally selected from the ranks of over three thousand “bishops” worldwide to participate in the current synod have supported the agenda of perversity as cheerleaders or who have been directly involved in it.

There is no need to descend once again into the muck and mire of the details about Godfried Danneels or Walter Kasper, or Timothy Radcliffe  or Christoph Schonborn or almost the entire membership of the Swiss and German conciliar “bishops’” conferences, et al., to demonstrate that Amoris Laetitia is all about reaffirming unrepentant sinners in their lives of natural and/or unnatural vice. 

Additionally, Bergoglio's full-throated endorsement of "sex education" ignores the fact that the panoply of programs that have existed for over four decades in parishes under conciliar control have done great violence to the innocence of children. 

As noted before,  Mary Calderone, the founder of the Sex and Information Committee of the United States of America, worked very closely with the-then “Monsignor” James T. McHugh of the National Conference of Catholic “Bishops”/United States Catholic Conference to introduce, propagate and institutionalize “sex education” in conciliar schools (see Mrs. Randy McHugh's The McHugh Chronicles and her definitive Sex Education - The Final Plague). his has been done despite the explicit prohibition against such instruction found in Pope Pius XI's Divini Illius Magistri that was reaffirmed by the Holy Office on March 21, 1931:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It does not get any plainer than that.

Yet it is that the conciliar revolutionaries have miseducated several generation of young Catholics to place themselves openly in occasions of sin. This is a denial of the efficacy of the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into human hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All  Graces.

How do children learn to grow in purity?

By being taught to love God with their whole hearts, minds, bodies, souls, and strength.

By eliminating, as far as is humanly possible, the incentives to sin as found in popular culture (eliminating the television as a starting point, of course), refusing to expose children to the near occasions of sin represented by immodestly dressed relatives or friends, refusing to permit them to associate with playmates whose innocence and purity have been undermined by the culture and by "education" programs that serve in public schools to be instruments of promoting sin and that serve in conciliar schools as the means of justifying it. By keeping our children close to the Sacraments, which means, of course, getting them out of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and making sure that the family Rosary is prayed every day with fervor and devotion.

Too Catholic?

Too unrealistic?

Just take a look at the statement issued by the Holy Office on March 21, 1931.

Do we need "theft instruction" in order to keep our children from stealing?

Do children, who are naturally curious, have to learn about the various forms of thievery available to them in order to know that it is wrong to violate the Seventh Commandment? Might such "theft instruction" actually serve as an incentive to the mischievous to steal?

The fact that the conciliar authorities in the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River have seen fit to defy the prohibitions against explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments because they are penultimate naturalists. That these hideous revolutionaries have had to ask the questions that they did is the direct result of their own defiance of Catholic teaching. This is not surprising as they are living and breathing apostates whose almost every word and action is in defiance of the Sacred Deposit of Faith.

Amoris Laeitia endorses that which has been condemned. In doing this, though, its text is in perfect conformity with the hideous teaching of Montini/Paul VI, Wojtyla/John Paul II and Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Amoris Laetitia is a result of the teleology of the false teaching about marriage propagated by Jorge Mario Bergoglio's predecessors. In plain English: error spawns consequences that spin uncontrollaby no matter the efforts to "correct" the natural processes of their mutation.

Fourth, there has never been any instance in the past when a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter has ever tried to “redeem” the mythical Greek “goddess” named Eros. Jorge Mario Bergoglio correctly pointed out in Amoris Laetitia that it was his predecessor as the universal public face of apostasy, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who used his first “encyclical” letter, Deus Caritas Est, December 25, 205, to discuss “eros,” a concept that had never been discussed in any true papal teaching prior to the death of our last true pope thus far, Pope Pius XII, on October 9, 1958:

147. This calls for a pedagogical process that involves renunciation. This conviction on the part of the Church has often been rejected as opposed to human happiness. Benedict XVI summed up this charge with great clarity: “Doesn’t the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life? Doesn’t she blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator’s gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine?”142 He responded that, although there have been exaggerations and deviant forms of asceticism in Christianity, the Church’s official teaching, in fidelity to the Scriptures, did not reject “eros as such, but rather declared war on a warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of eros… actually strips it of divine dignity and dehumanizes it”.143  (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Amoris Laetita, March 19, 2016.)

Readers can discern in this quoted passage from Ratzinger/Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est the same sort of scorn for the Catholic “past” as is possessed and expressed (ad infinitum, ad nauseam) by Bergoglio. Antipope Emeritus Benedict claimed that Holy Mother Church turned to “bitterness the most precious ting in life” with “all her commandments and prohibitions.”

The mention of “eros” in a supposedly “papal” encyclical letter prompted a former colleague of mine, one who is somewhat opposed to sedevacantism, shall we say (this is a native New York's form of mild understatement), to express astonished shock and dismay:

Clearly, the times have changed.  In fact, we encourage the reader to contrast and compare the first encyclical letter of Pope Pius X (excerpts of which appear below) with that of Pope Benedict XVI (Deus Caritas Est) and ask yourself one question: If in 1903 the situation in the Church struck a Saint as being desperate enough to warrant immediate papal warnings of the rise of Antichrist, why should it be that 103 years later, when the world is on the brink of universal apostasy, our Pope's first encyclical would make no mention at all of any such threat?   

There has been minimal discussion, in fact, of Pope Benedict’s first encyclical letter on Christian love.  It seems there is little about it to cause the world any great concern.  As the post-conciliar popes have long since removed their papal crowns and refused to actually rule the Church, it should come as no surprise to us that they are becoming less and less adept at addressing the resulting crisis.  After all, addressing that crisis carries with it a dual threat to the modern popes: 1) It at least implicitly indicts their Second Vatican Council which has rendered the Church much less powerful in the face of evil, and 2) It places them at odds with the world whose praise and good favor they seem so eager to court.

Catholics have been languishing in this peculiar ecclesial reality since 1965,  buffeted from all sides by the Godless and the Faithless, fearful of predator priests, scandalized by sodomite bishops, weeping over lost children, looking on through tears as churches built by grandfathers and great-grandfathers are sold to the highest bidder, pulling youngsters out of Catholic schools lest there they should lose the Faith, and, finally, taking desperate measures such as home schooling the little ones just to try to survive this nightmarish “new springtime”. 

And then...along comes the new Pope’s first encyclical on, of all things, “eros-agape”.  Huh? The captain of the Titanic is standing on the deck calling out the menu options and carefully checking the wine list as lifeboats are being lowered into the icy brine.  Evidently, he cannot hear the wailing cries of countless souls drowning in the sea of secularism at his feet.  He seems to have little or no inkling of what life for a Catholic family is like now that the Church has struck the iceberg of the Second Vatican Council.  He seems pathetically out of touch even with the few remaining Catholics who have not yet dived off the burning deck, and who are looking desperately back to him for guidance, for some sign that he understands their plight.  (Abortion and the Pope.)

Just as an aside, the Catholic Church can never make any terms with error, something that true pope after true pope has pointed out. See the appendix below.

It was even before the issuance of Deus Caritas Est that the late Francis “Cardinal” George, the conciliar “archbishop” of Chicago from May 7, 1997, to November 18, 2014, said the following before reading the text of Ratzinger/Benedict’s first encyclical letter:

Chicago, Ill., Jan 5, 2006 / 12:00 am (CNA).- It’s been said that in an era of rampant sexual misunderstanding, the late Pope John Paul II wrote more about true human love and sexuality than all of his predecessors put together. If Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George is correct, Pope Benedict XVI could follow suit in his first encyclical.

Although he admittedly has not seen the new document--which could be released within days--the Cardinal told the Chicago Sun Times that he has heard comments that the Holy Father may utilize this first official teaching to redeem the tarnished idea of eros, often known as “erotic love.”

ccording to reports, the Pope has asked Cardinal George to speak about the major themes of the new encyclical, entitled:  "Deus, Caritas Est," or "God is Love," during a gathering at the end of the month.

The Cardinal told the Sun-Times that in the document, the Pope will "talk about Christ, which is a good thing for a pope to talk about in his first encyclical. John Paul II did that…And he is going to talk about the relationship between love and truth, between agape and eros."

Cardinal George cited Swedish Lutheran author, Anders Nygren, who wrote in the mid-1900’s that while Agape--the unconditional love that God has for mankind is the only authentically Christian love, eros--named after the Greek god of love--is inherently selfish and turns man away from God.

"What the pope is going to do”, the Cardinal said, “is to try to save eros. That is to say that our own human love, our desires, are good in themselves.”

“The distinction”, he noted, “between agape and eros is not a clean one. In fact, one influences the other and therefore both should be considered good. But we are sinful creatures, so they can be misused."

Many expect Pope Benedict’s first encyclical to help shape the theme for the remainder of his papacy. John Paul II published 14 encyclicals, the first of which was Redemptor Hominis, or The Redeemer of Man.

He was also widely praised for his teaching on human sexuality, often referred to as a whole as the “Theology of the Body.” The late Pope taught that sexuality and the marital act helps man to imitate and embody the love of God through the communion of the Trinity.  (Francis George Says Benedict Trying to Save the Idea of Eros.)

Silly me. I thought that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ came to redeem souls, not “eros.” I thought that a true pope was supposed to advance the cause of the salvation of souls, not seek to “baptize” pagan myths as having anything to do with the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

There is thus a straight line from Wojtyla/John Paul II’s catecheses on the body from thirty-five years ago to Ratzinger/Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est to Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Amoris Laetitia. These heretics would have Catholics believe that the Catholic Church had been trapped in some kind of Jansenist prison until the 1960s by using the Ten Commandments and prohibitions to turn the legitimate privileges that God has ordained for the use of married couples alone into “bitterness.”

Such a self-serving and gratuitous exercise is nothing other than an effort to blame heretical distortions of Catholic teaching, such as propagated by the Albigenses and the Jansenists, as shaping the mind of Holy Mother Church’s popes and bishops and theologians prior to “Second” Vatican Council. The irony here is that the conciliar revolutionaries are liturgical Jansenists who have robbed most Catholics alive today of the true pleasures to be derived from the glories given to God in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, thereby making of their false liturgical services a pedestrian showcase of community self-congratulations that has driven many Catholics into the arms of waiting evangelical/fundamentalist Protestant sects or even into rank unbelief.

The Catholic Church has never denied or minimized the legitimate privileges of the married state. She has, however, taught that those pleasures must be used according to the laws of God and of nature and left open at all times in a woman’s child-bearing years to the conception of children. This is not to turn the privileges of the married state into “bitterness.” It is to call married couples to true holiness by fulfilling the will of God for them in their freely chosen state-in-life, which means that are to treat that which is holy, the married state, with reverence and gratitude for love of God and His great generosity to them.   

Fourth, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s exaltation of the passions and his discussion of matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments that are without precedence in the history of the Catholic Church thus stand condemned by the following words of Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930:

105. Consequently, since everything must be referred to the law and mind of God, in order to bring about the universal and permanent restoration of marriage, it is indeed of the utmost importance that the faithful should be well instructed concerning matrimony; both by word of mouth and by the written word, not cursorily but often and fully, by means of plain and weighty arguments, so that these truths will strike the intellect and will be deeply engraved on their hearts. Let them realize and diligently reflect upon the great wisdom, kindness and bounty God has shown towards the human race, not only by the institution of marriage, but also, and quite as much, by upholding it with sacred laws; still more, in wonderfully raising it to the dignity of a Sacrament by which such an abundant fountain of graces has been opened to those joined in Christian wedlock, that these may be able to serve the noble purposes of wedlock for their own welfare and for that of their children, of the community and also for that of human relationship.

106. Certainly, if the latter day subverters of marriage are entirely devoted to misleading the minds of men and corrupting their hearts, to making a mockery of matrimonial purity and extolling the filthiest of vices by means of books and pamphlets and other innumerable methods, much more ought you, Venerable Brethren, whom "the Holy Ghost has placed as bishops, to rule the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood,"[80] to give yourselves wholly to this, that through yourselves and through the priests subject to you, and, moreover, through the laity welded together by Catholic Action, so much desired and recommended by Us. into a power of hierarchical apostolate, you may, by every fitting means, oppose error by truth, vice by the excellent dignity of chastity, the slavery of covetousness by the liberty of the sons of God,[81] that disastrous ease in obtaining divorce by an enduring love in the bond of marriage and by the inviolate pledge of fidelity given even to death.

107. Thus will it come to pass that the faithful will wholeheartedly thank God that they are bound together by His command and led by gentle compulsion to fly as far as possible from every kind of idolatry of the flesh and from the base slavery of the passions. They will, in a great measure, turn and be turned away from these abominable opinions which to the dishonor of man's dignity are now spread about in speech and in writing and collected under the title of "perfect marriage" and which indeed would make that perfect marriage nothing better than "depraved marriage," as it has been rightly and truly called.

108. Such wholesome instruction and religious training in regard to Christian marriage will be quite different from that exaggerated physiological education by means of which, in these times of ours, some reformers of married life make pretense of helping those joined in wedlock, laying much stress on these physiological matters, in which is learned rather the art of sinning in a subtle way than the virtue of living chastely.

109. So, Venerable Brethren, we make entirely Our own the words which Our predecessor of happy memory, Leo Xlll, in his encyclical letter on Christian marriage addressed to the bishops of the whole world: "Take care not to spare your efforts and authority in bringing about that among the people committed to your guidance that doctrine may be preserved whole and unadulterated which Christ the Lord and the apostles, the interpreters of the divine will, have handed down, and which the Catholic Church herself has religiously preserved, and commanded to be observed by the faithful of every age."[82] (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

What more is there to say?

Amoris Laetitia does indeed make a “pretense of helping those joined in wedlock” by “laying much stress on these physiological matters, in which is learned rather the art of sinning in a subtle way than the virtue of living chastely.” It is not to be a Jansenist to condemn the “theology of body” as nothing other than the sort of depravity condemned by Pope Pius XI, a depravity that has indeed undermined the chaste love that God has ordained to exist between a husband and his wife.

We live at a time of complete apostasy and its attendant chaos, a time in which those who defect from nothing in that is contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith are considered “odd”. It is very fitting, therefore, that today is the feast day of the great Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, whose valiant deeds were described by Dom Prosper Gueranger. O.S.B., in The Liturgical Year in such a manner as apply the uncompromising heroism of this much-persecuted bishop and Doctor of the Holy Church, who was exiled on five different occasions from Alexandria, to our very own times of apostasy and betrayal today:

The Court of our divine King, during his grandest of seasons, is brilliant beyond measure; and to-day, it is gladdened by the arrival of one of the most glorious champions of the world of truth for his holy cause. Among the guardians of the word of truth, confided by Jesus to the earth, is there one more faithful than Athanasius? Does not his very name remind us of dauntless courage in the defense of the sacred deposit, of heroic firmness and patience in suffering, of learning, of talent, of eloquence–in a word, of everything that goes to from a Saint, a Bishop, and a Doctor of the Church? Athanasius lived for the Son of God; the cause of the Son of God was that of Athanasius; he who blessed Athanasius, blessed the eternal Word; and he who insulted Athanasius insulted the eternal Word.

Never did our holy faith go through a greater ordeal than in the sad times immediately following the peace of the Church, when the bark of Peter had to pass through the most furious storm that hell has, so far, let loose against her. Satan had vainly sought to drown the Christian race in a sea of blood; the sword of persecution had grown blunt in the hands of Diocletian and Galerius; and the Cross appeared in the heavens, proclaiming the triumph of Christianity. Scarcely had the Church become aware of her victory when she felt herself shaken to her very foundation. Hell sent upon the earth a heresy which threatened to blight the fruit of three hundred years of martyrdom. Arius began his impious doctrine, that he who had hitherto been adored as the Son of God was only a creature, though the most perfect of all creatures. Immense was the number, even of the clergy, that fell into this new error; the Emperors became its abettors; and had not God himself interposed, men would soon have set up the cry throughout the world that the only result of the victory gained by the Christian religion was to change the object of idolatry, and put a new idol, called Jesus, in place of the old ones.

But he who had promised that the gates of hell should never prevail against his Church, faithfully fulfilled his promise. The primitive faith triumphed; the Council of Nicaea proclaimed the Son to be consubstantial with the Father; but the Church stood in need of a man in whom the cause of the consubstantial Word should be, so to speak, incarnated–a man with learning enough to foil the artifices of heresy, and with courage enough to bear every persecution without flinching. This man was Athanasius; and everyone that adores and loves the Son of God, should love and honour Athanasius. Five times banished from his See of Alexandria, he fled for protection to the West, which justly appreciated the glorious confessor of Jesus’ divinity. In return for the hospitality accorded him by Rome, Athanasius gave her of his treasures. Being the admirer and friend of the great St. Antony, he was a fervent admirer of the monastic life, which, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, had flourished so wonderfully in the deserts of his vast patriarchate. He brought the precious seed to Rome, and the first monks seen there were the ones introduced by Athanasius. The heavenly plant became naturalized in its new soil; and though its growth was slow at first, it afterwards produced fruit more abundantly than it had ever done in the East.

Athanasius, who has written so admirably upon that fundamental dogma of our faith–the divinity of Christ–also has left us most eloquent treatises on the mystery of the Pasch: they are to be found in the Festal Letters which he addressed each year to the churches of his patriarchate of Alexandria. The collection of these Letters, which were once thought to be irretrievably lost, was found, a few years back, in the monastery of St. Mary of Scete in Egypt. The first, for the year 329, begins with these words, which beautifully express the sentiments we should feel at the approach of Easter: ‘Come, my beloved brethren, celebrate the feast; the season of the year invites you to do so. The Sun of justice, by pouring out his divine rays upon you that the time of the solemnity is come. At such tidings, let us keep a glad feast; let not the joy slip from us with the fleeting days, without our having tasted of its sweetness.’ During almost every year of his banishment, Athanasius continued to address a Paschal Letter to his people. The one in which he announced the Easter of 338, and which he wrote at Treves, begins thus: ‘Though separated from you, my brethren, I cannot break through the custom which I have always observed, and which I received from the tradition of the Fathers. I will not be silent; I will not omit announcing to you the time of the holy annual feast, and the day on which you must keep the solemnity. I am, as you have doubtless been told, a prey to many tribulations; I am weighed down by heavy trials; I am watched by the enemies of truth, who scrutinize everything I write, in order to rake up accusations against me and thereby add to my sufferings; yet notwithstanding, I feel that the Lord strengthens and consoles me in my afflictions. Therefore do I venture to address to you the annual celebration; and from the midst of my troubles, and despite the snares that beset me, I send you, from the furthermost part of the earth, the tidings of the Pasch, which is our salvation. Commending my fate into God’s hands, I will celebrate this feast with you; distance of place separates us, but I am not absent from you. The lord who gives us these feasts, who is himself our feast, who bestows upon us the gift of his Spirit–he unites us spiritually to one another, by the bond of concord and peace.’

How grand is the Pasch, celebrated by Athanasius, an exile on the Rhine, in union with his people who keep their Easter on the banks of the Nile! It shows us the power of the Liturgy to unite men and make them, at one and the same time, and despite the distance of countries, enjoy the same holy emotions and feel the same aspirations to virtue. Greeks or Barbarians, we have all the same mother country, the Church; but that which, after faith, unites us all into one family, is the Church’s Liturgy. Now there is nothing in the whole Liturgy so expressive of unity as the celebration of Easter. The unhappy Churches of Russia and the East, by keeping Easter on a different day from that on which it is celebrated by the rest of the Christian world, show that they are not a portion of the One Fold of which Our Risen Jesus is the One Shepherd. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Pascal Time, Book II, pp. 403-406.)

We must defend the Faith as we accept the rebukes that come out way in silence as we suffer in joy Christ the King as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially during this month of May and on this First Saturday in May, thanking Our Lord abundantly for opportunity to be more perfectly conformed to His Holy Cross and as we seek to draw inspiration from this prayer of Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., to our glorious Saint of this day:

Intercede for the country [Egypt] over which was extended thy patriarchal jurisdiction; but forget not this Europe of ours, which gave thee hospitality and protection. Rome defended thy cause; she passed sentence in thy favour, and restored thee thy rights; make her a return, now that thou art face to face with the God of infinite goodness and power. Protect and console her Pontiff, the successor of that Julius who so nobly befriended thee fifteen hundred years ago. A fierce tempest is now raging against the Rock on which is built the Church of Christ; and our eyes have grown wearied for a sign of calm. Oh! pray that these days of trial be shortened, and that the See of Peter may triumph over the calumnies and persecutions which are now besetting her, and endangering the faith of many of her children.

Thy zeal, O Athanasius! checked the ravages of Arianism; but this heresy has again appeared, in our own times, and in almost every country of Europe. Its progress is due to that proud superficial learning which has become one of the principal perils of the age. The Eternal Son of God, consubstantial with the Father, is blasphemed by our so-called philosophers, as being only Man–the best and greatest of men, they say, but still only Man. They despise all the proofs which reason and history adduce of Jesus’ divinity; they profess a sort regard for the Christian teaching which has hitherto been held, but they have discovered (so they tell us) the fallacy of the great dogma which recognizes in the Son of Mary the Eternal Word who became incarnate for man’s salvation. O Athanasius, glorious Doctor of of holy Mother Church! humble these modern Arians; expose their proud ignorance and sophistry; undeceive their unhappy followers, by letting them see how this false doctrine leads either to the abyss of the abominations of pantheism, or to the chaos of scepticism, where all truth and morally are impossibilities.

Preserve within us, by the influence of they prayers, the precious gift of faith, wherewith our Lord has mercifully blessed us. Obtain for us that we may ever confess and adore Jesus Christ our eternal and infinite God, ‘God of God; Light of Light; True God of True God; Begotten not men; who for us men, and for our salvation, took Flesh, of the Virgin Mary.’ May we grow each day in the knowledge of this Jesus, until we join thee in the face-to-face contemplation of his perfections. Meanwhile, by means of holy faith, we will live with him on this earth that has witnessed the glory of his Resurrection. How fervent, O Athanasius, was thy love of this Son of God, our Creator and Redeemer! This love was the very life of thy soul, and the stimulus that urged thee to heroic devotedness to his cause. It supported thee in the combats thou hadst to sustain with the world, which seemed leagued together against thy single person. It gave thee strength to endless tribulations. Oh! pray that we may obtain this love–a love which is fearless of danger, because faithful to him for whom we suffer–a Brightness of his Father’s glory, and Infinite Wisdom, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross. How else can we make him a return for his devotedness to us except by giving him all our love,as thou didst. O Athanasius! and by ever singing his praise in compensation for the humiliations which he endured in order to save us? (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Paschal Time: Book II, pp. 411-413.)

Saint Athanasius has given us marching orders, and those marching orders do not make us Pharisees, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, or “closed-minded:”

They have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way …

“You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day.

“Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.” (Letter of St. Athanasius to his flock.)

Let these words continue to be our consolation in these days when it is easier for most people to believe in the mythologies of naturalists in the political realm and the Modernist apologists of false "mercy" and a "God of Surprises" in the theological real, men who esteem false idols, than it is to hold steadfast to the Faith and lose human respect and possibly even earn the mockery, if not scorn, of one's own family members. Who wants to be "different" in this time of alleged "mercy"?

We turn to Our Lady with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they must be to Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, pledging to her in this month of May to pray the Litany of Loreto every day in addition to praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit. We can crown Our Lady as Queen of our hearts by making reparation for our sins and those of the whole world by enslaving ourselves to her Divine Son through her Immaculate Heart, giving unto whatever merit we earn each day so that she can dispose of that merit however she sees fit for the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity and for the good of souls in the Church Suffering in Purgatory and here in the Church Militant on earth.

The final victory belongs to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. We must consider it a privilege that we are alive in these times to plant a few seeds for the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and for the restoration of Christendom in the world.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Andrew the Apostle, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Appendix

The Catholic Church Makes No Terms With Error

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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