An indulgence of 7 years is granted to all the faithful with a contrite heart, during the last half hour of the year and the first half hour of the following year, shall pray to the Most Holy Trinity in thanksgiving for benefits received; beseeching the same Holy Trinity for peace

Pope Saint Sylvester I did not abide heresy. He did not ent iable in the slightest. He confronted it as he sought the conversion of all non-Catholics to the true Faith. His firm defense of the Holy Faith as Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Vicar on earth must inspire us in our day to seek his intercession for the needs of the Church Militant on earth as she suffers in the catacombs as pretenders to the papal throne make their open accommodations to propositions that have been anathematized time and time again in the past by true popes and/or dogmatic councils.

The Church arose from the catacombs during the pontificate of Pope Saint Sylvester I. May his intercession for us now help to bring about a like arising from the catacombs in our own day as the falsehoods of the counterfeit church of conciliarism are wiped away once and for all.

Although so many Catholics in the world are without the Real Presence of Our Lord to adore, those who are so privileged in this time of apostasy and betrayal would be wise to end this year by spending time before Him in prayer as we pray our Rosaries in thanksgiving for the favors and graces received this year, in reparation for our sins and those of others this year, in petition for our spiritual and temporal needs and, of course, in adoration of the good God Who preserves our existence and Who wants us to show forth our love for Him by our fidelity to His teaching and our sorrow for our sins as members of His true Church.

The next original article should be ready for publication by the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord Jesus Christ, January 1, 2025.  

Yesterday's commentary, The Great Appeaser Has Died, was revised and expanded late Monday afternoon.

A blessed New Year of Our Lord 2025 to you all.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Pope Saint Sylvester I, pray for us.

Much meaningless sentimental mush is and undoubtedly will be written about the late President James Earl Carter, Jr., whose former presidency lasted just twenty-two days of a full eleven presidential terms since he left office on January 20, 1981, following his loss of forty-four states in a landslide to the then former Governor of the State of California, Ronald Wilson Reagan. This commentary, however, is not part of that literature.

I was a critic of James Earl Carter, Jr., during his life and I remain one after his death outside the pale of the Holy Catholic Church. The only saving grace of his failed presidency is that, in my estimation as a political scientist, what some considered the worst presidency in American history is now, thanks to the failures of the corrupt, indecent, vulgar, demagogue named Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., can be said to be the second worst in American history next to that of the soon-to-be former President Biden, who is not likely to live for another forty-four years as Carter did after his one term ended.

We must pray to Our Lady for our own daily conversion as well as pray for the conversion of all those in public as, to call to mind the words of Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews:

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10: 31.)

This commentary has been revised and expanded in several places late int the afternoon on Monday, December 30, 2024, the Sixth Day in the Octave of Christmas.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

This the concluding part of my series about the American Jewish Committee's glossary of supposedly anti-Semtic terms as published by the so-called United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who provided Catholic annotations to some of the glossary's entries.

This final commentary focuses solely on the glossary's entry for the adversary and Scriptural passages referring to the synagogue of satan," which was referenced by Pope Pius IX at the end of the Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864:

Venerable Brethren, you see clearly enough how sad and full of perils is the condition of Catholics in the regions of Europe which We have mentioned. Nor are things any better or circumstances calmer in America, where some regions are so hostile to Catholics that their governments seem to deny by their actions the Catholic faith they claim to profess. In fact, there, for the last few years, a ferocious war on the Church, its institutions and the rights of the Apostolic See has been raging…. Venerable Brothers, it is surprising that in our time such a great war is being waged against the Catholic Church. But anyone who knows the nature, desires and intentions of the sects, whether they be called masonic or bear another name, and compares them with the nature the systems and the vastness of the obstacles by which the Church has been assailed almost everywhere, cannot doubt that the present misfortune must mainly be imputed to the frauds and machinations of these sects. It is from them that the synagogue of Satan, which gathers its troops against the Church of Christ, takes its strength. In the past Our predecessors, vigilant even from the beginning in Israel, had already denounced them to the kings and the nations, and had condemned them time and time again, and even We have not failed in this duty. If those who would have been able to avert such a deadly scourge had only had more faith in the supreme Pastors of the Church! But this scourge, winding through sinuous caverns, . . . deceiving many with astute frauds, finally has arrived at the point where it comes forth impetuously from its hiding places and triumphs as a powerful master. Since the throng of its propagandists has grown enormously, these wicked groups think that they have already become masters of the world and that they have almost reached their pre-established goal. Having sometimes obtained what they desired, and that is power, in several countries, they boldly turn the help of powers and authorities which they have secured to trying to submit the Church of God to the most cruel servitude, to undermine the foundations on which it rests, to contaminate its splendid qualities; and, moreover, to strike it with frequent blows, to shake it, to overthrow it, and, if possible, to make it disappear completely from the earth. Things being thus, Venerable Brothers, make every effort to defend the faithful which are entrusted to you against the insidious contagion of these sects and to save from perdition those who unfortunately have inscribed themselves in such sects. Make known and attack those who, whether suffering from, or planning, deception, are not afraid to affirm that these shady congregations aim only at the profit of society, at progress and mutual benefit. Explain to them often and impress deeply on their souls the Papal constitutions on this subject and teach, them that the masonic associations are anathematized by them not only in Europe but also in America and wherever they may be in the whole world. (Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864.)

This would all be "obsolete" just a century later when the "Second" Vatican Council issued Gaudium et Spes and Dignatitis Humanae on December 7, 1965.

Pope Pius IX, however, condemned what the conciliar revolutionaries have sought to do at and since the “Second” Vatican Council: be reconciled to the world.

Doubt my word?

Well, perhaps you might accept the evidence provided by the mythical “restorer of tradition,” Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:

Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382.)

What happened in 1789? Wasn't there some kind of anti-Theistic revolution in France, the elder daughter of the Church? What did Pope Leo XIII write about such reconciling with the principles of the revolution just a year before he promoted the Bishop of Mantua, Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, to be the Patriarch of Venice?

Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is codifying a complete “reconciliation” between “the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution” and by seeking “to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.” Each of the current line of antipopes has paved the way for everything that the Argentine Apostate is doing currently. Bergoglio is just being kind enough to be very direct about intentions as he knows that most Catholics who are attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have grown us knowing nothing other than conciliarism’s corruption of Catholic Faith, Worship and Morals. He knows that most Catholics “just want to get along” with all others and that it “doesn’t make any difference what you believe as long as you are a ‘good’ person.” As to those Catholics who might and do object, Jorge simply dismisses those are being “rigid” and Pharisaical.

Bergoglio also knows that most Catholics do not know anything about—and would not care even if they were made aware—of the fact Pope Saint Pius X explained in very precise terms what would come of beliefs such as those held and promoted by The Sillon that became the basis of “globalist,” “one world religion” view of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his counterfeit church of conciliarism:

We fear that worse is to come: the end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion (for Sillonism, so the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the “Kingdom of God”. – “We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind.”

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.)

I have spent such time on the "Translate Hate" glossary even though most Catholics all across and up and down the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide during this time of apostasy and betrayal will not even know of its existence or pay any attention to it. However, as the Americanist spirit of religious indifferentism and a fear of being termed an anti-Semite unjustly requires a refutation of lies and a defense of the truth against old-fashioned verbal intimidation. We have baptized and confirmed to bear witness to the truths of the Catholic Faith no matter what it may cost us in human terms, and to be soldiers in the Army of Christ requires us to arm ourselves with the spiritual armor of the Holy Faith against error as we entrust all things to Our Lord through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary.

A blessed Sunday in the Octave of Christmas and Commemoration of Saint Thomas of Canterbury to you all.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Thomas a Becket, pray for us.

There was a time when there were real, honest-to-goodness Catholic Archbishops of Canterbury.

Let's see here, that would be from the time of Saint Augustine of Canterbury in 597 A.D. to the time of Reginald Cardinal Pole in 1558, a period of nearly a millennium.

The fortieth legitimate Archbishop of Canterbury is the saint whose feast we celebrate today, Saint Thomas a Becket, who was indeed a martyr for the Church's liberties. Saint Thomas a Becket asserted the rights of Christ the King as the Archbishop of Canterbury, insisting that clerics accused of civil crimes be tried in ecclesiastical, not civil, courts. This led him to clash with his onetime friend, King Henry II of the House of Plantagenet. Prefiguring another English king named Henry (this one, number The Eighth, from the House of Tudor), Henry II could not abide his former friend's resistance to his, Henry's attempt to assert royal power over the Church, leading him to uttering the words that would inspire three of his barons to murder the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, on this date in 1170, eight hundred forty-seven years ago now. The latter Henry, the one called "The Eighth," had Saint Thomas a Becket's relics destroyed as his martyrdom was a reminder to one and all that the Church has Divine Rights superior to those of the civil state.

King Henry II had to do public penance for uttering the words that resulted in the martyrdom of Saint Thomas a Becket. His son, King John I, having been slow to learn the lessons of his public penance, was forced by his barons and noblemen in the year 1215 to sign the Magna Carta to guarantee the rights of the Church under civil law in England. This was a victory for the liberties of the Catholic Church that had been won by the blood of this great champion of the Social Reign of Christ the King, Saint Thomas a Becket, whose intercession we seek this day and every day for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King in all nations, including the United States of America. Indeed, the situation we face in the United States of America today is the direct result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry.

Nations founded in the belief that men can pursue the common temporal good without subordinating themselves to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explications who believe that they can be "good" and "virtuous" on their own powers without belief in, access to or cooperation with Sanctifying Grace--are bound to degenerate over the course of time.

Statism is the only end result of the process of decay that must occur when nations reject the simple truth that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. And it is the statists of the present moment, enabled as they are at this time by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of conciliar revolutionaries, who sacrifice the legitimate national sovereignty and national security of their own nations in order to demonstrate their "solidarity" with "bettering" the world on a "global" basis.

A new commentary should appear within twenty minutes of this posting.

A continued blessed Sunday in the Octave of Christmas and a blessed Commemoration of Saint Thomas a Becket to you all!

Our Lady, Mother of God, pray for us.

Saint Thomas a Becket, pray for us.

Today, the Fourth Day within the Octave of Christmas, is the Feast the Holy Innocents, the children who were put to death at the orders of the jealous titular King of Judea who had been installed by the Roman occupiers to pacify resistance to their unjust occupation of the Holy Land.

King Herod the Great, whose sons Herod and Philip were no less corrupt and violent than he was, wanted to kill the Baby King Whom he thought to be a threat to his own political suzerainty, such as it was as a puppet ruler under the Roman occupiers. It meant nothing to him to wipe out so many innocent children in his quest to kill the Baby King, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who was born in Bethlehem to save, his, Herod the Great's, own immortal soul by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

There have been imitators of Herod the Great throughout history who have sought to put to death the followers of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in an insane effort to wipe the Faith off of the face of this earth. The names of these imitators are legion. Their likes are to be found in our own midst today as politicians of both major organized crime families of naturalism in the United States of America, the Democrat Party and the Republican Party, believe that a just social order can be established and maintained while innocent preborn human beings are slaughtered under cover of law and while the Sovereignty of Christ the King is denied in favor of the sovereignty of men and their false, naturalistic, semi-Pelagian and anti-Incarnational ideas.

That having been noted, however, it is important to point out that the Holy Innocents are honored as saints because they died in the place of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as a political potentate drunk with his own self-importance sought to kill the Newborn Baby King with a furious rage. The slaughter of the innocent preborn today, as horrible as it is and as deserving of our attention especially by means of praying Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary and by means of sidewalk counseling, is different in that the children being killed today are not being targeted specifically in the place of Our Lord.

Unlike the speculative conclusions offered by the "International Theological Commission" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in 2007, the Catholic Church has never held out "hope" that the souls of unbaptized infants go to Heaven, which is why the crime of the killing of the preborn is so monstrous as it kills the souls of those involved in the execution and denies the slaughtered babies the glory of the Beatific Vision. The Holy Innocents are saints because they were targeted quite specifically because of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and thus shed their blood on His account.

We need to invoke the intercession of the Holy Innocents today and every day to stop the shedding of the blood of the innocent under cover of law, praying to them especially that Catholics blinded by the allure of various naturalistic "strategies" to end the social evils of the day will be reminded of this truth stated by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

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.)

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ must reign as King of men and nations, my friends. Accept no naturalistic substitutes from the "Herods" of this world and their enablers in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who reject the Social Reign of the Newborn King, Our Divine Redeemer Whom Herod the Great sought to kill.

Work on the next commentary ceased only shortly before the formatting of this slightly revised reflection. I hope to have it completed late this afternoon or in the early part of this evening.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

The Holy Innocents, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, a son of Zebedee, was the youngest of the twelve Apostles. He was a virgin, a man who offered to His Divine Master, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, pure love in a heart that was not sullied by the world, the flesh and the devil.

This youngest Apostle with the purest heart was permitted to lean on Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's chest, wherein beat His Most Sacred Heart, at the Last Supper. And it was this purity of heart possessed by Saint John the Evangelist that led him to be present at the foot of the Holy Cross and to be given the singular privilege by Our Divine Redeemer of caring for His own Most Blessed Mother until the time of her death and bodily Assumption into Heaven.

Despite what the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI contended blasphemously in his Jesus of Nazareth book concerning the "disputed" nature of the human authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Saint John the Evangelist is indeed the human author of the Fourth Gospel and of his epistles and the Book of the Apocalypse.

Saint John is the Evangelist of the Incarnation of the Word whose Gospel provides us with Scriptural proofs for the doctrine of the Eucharist and for the Sacrament of Penance. And the Charity preached by Saint John the Evangelist was no exercise in empty sentimentality. For it was Saint John himself who wrote:

"Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And every one that loveth him who begot, loveth him also who is born of him. In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not heavy. " (1 John 5: 1-3.)

This reflection has been revised and expanded in several places over the years.

Today is the seventieth birthday of the courageous John Hinshaw, who remains imprisoned in Massachusetts for his participation in a rescue at an abortuary in Washington, District of Columbia, in 2020. I am praying that John and Joan Andrews Bell, two of the imprisoned rescuers whom I have known and prayed for over the decades, will be pardoned soon after President-elect Donald John Trump takes office on January 20, 2025. Please pray for John Hinshaw on his seventieth birthday today.

Although I have criticized the former and future president for his support of "exceptions," for his insistence that the slaughter of babies is a matter to be "decided" by "the mutable will of the people", for his support of the immoral practice of in vitro fertilization that kills thousands upon thousands of embyronic human beings every year, and for his refusal to enforce existing laws to ban the mailing of the human pesticide (the abortion pill), I do sincerely hope that President-elect Trump will keep his word and pardon each of the pro-life prisoners of conscience who are incarcerated in Federal prisons at this time. 

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us to remain faithful to the Catholic Faith.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us

What began as a two-part series has become a three-part series.

Part two of this series focuses on the term Decide as found the Catholic edition of the American Jewish Committee’s “Translate Hate” glossary of terms considered to be “anti-Semitic.”

Part three should appear tomorrow, the Feast of Saint John the Evangelist within the Octave of Christmas, before I move on to other work.

A blessed Feast of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr to you all.

Holy Mary, Mother God, pray for us now, and at the hour of our death.

Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, pray for us.

The shadow of the Holy Cross hung over the cave in Bethlehem even as the shepherds who had been called by angels from the nearby fields adored the Infant King alongside the Mother of God and her Most Chaste Spouse, Saint Joseph.

Holy Mother Church directs our attention to this fact today as we focus on the truth that the Birth of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Bethlehem on Christmas Day was to make possible our own spiritual rebirth in the Baptismal font and our birth unto eternal life at the moment of our deaths if we persist to the very end in states of Sanctifying Grace. The path to our salvation runs directly through the Holy Cross and it requires us to be willing to sacrifice riches and honors and pleasures and human respect and even our very lives to bear witness to Christ the King as He has revealed Himself to men exclusively through the Catholic Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

Saint Stephen the Protomartyr was willing to lay down his life as he preached the Gospel of the Divine Redeemer in an attempt to convert the Jews who were listening to him and engaging him in disputation. He exhibited the Virtue of Fortitude as he proclaimed the Gospel in the midst of insults an threats. And Saint Stephen the Protomartyr exhibited the Virtue of Charity as he prayed for his executioners, one of whom was the fire-breathing anti-Catholic zealot named Saul of Tarsus.

Saint Stephen's prayers at the time of his martyrdom and from eternity thereafter won the conversion of Saul, who became the Apostle to the Gentiles, Saint Paul the Apostle. Saint Stephen wanted to effect the conversion of his executioners. He did not seek to reaffirm them in their act of murder or to reaffirm them in the practice of Judaism. Saint Stephen did not dismiss or denigrate the gravity of their crimes. He simply did not hold those crimes against his persecutors as he prayed for their conversion.

We must pray always for those who hate us, for those who calumniate us, for those who have done us some injury in the past, for those who have rejected us for one reason or another. Praying for and forgiving those from whom we are estranged is not an option for a Catholic. It is an obligation of the interior life imposed directly by the God-Man Himself in the Sermon on the Mount.

If He forgives us so readily in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance, why are we so slow to forgive others who owe us but an infinitesimally small portion of what we owe Him for our own forgiven sins?

As the late Father John Hardon, S.J., noted in a 1996 conference in Sterling Heights, Michigan, at which I gave two presentations, "God permits us to sin so that we can forgive each other. Let me repeat myself here: God permit us to sin so that we can forgive each other."

A sinner who is contrite and thankful to God never withholds forgiveness from his fellow sinner. Saint Stephen teaches us that lesson today.

Are we going to learn it once and for all?

A continued merry and most blessed Christmas to you all.

A new article will be published within five minutes of this posting. 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, pray for us.