CHURCHES CLOSED, COMMUNION DENIED IN THE LAND OF MORDOR

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Seems like Satan has the Body of Christ in a stranglehold.

In New Zealand the dismantling of the Catholic Church is proceeding apace: in the Wairarapa, from Pūkaha Mount Bruce to the Remutaka Pass, only two churches now remain open.

Now defunct and up for sale are St Mary's, Carterton (an embarrassment for years, so gloomy is its aspect), St Anthony of Padua's, Martinborough (where historic secular buildings are cherished and still in use) and Sacred Heart Greytown (which will suffer a fate similar to Napier's 'The Mission' and 'The Old Church' (aaargh!).

And how has this horrendous fait accompli come to pass, you ask? The immediate answer - according to Cardinal John Dew, chief architect of this sad misfortune - is  "complexities faced by the parish, with its multiple communities and the “difficulties in the consultation process within the parish”. So he's decided to close the churches. This is what he calls a "pastoral approach". 

Tell that to 95 year-old Yvonne Riddiford, whose family has worshipped at St Anthony of Padua, Martinborough for generations. What does she put it down to?

"Total defeatism." 

Mrs Riddiford (I should think she's a 'Mrs' but in their story Stuff doesn't accord her the courtesy of an honorific) is of a generation that doesn't easily admit defeat. 

Martinborough parishioner 95 year-old Yvonne Riddiford is "desperately sad"

But Cardinal Dew will be gratified to know that Mr Kieran McAnulty, MP for Wairarapa ('himself a Catholic', says Stuff) agrees with him - as McAnulty would agree, with a Prince of the Church. McAnulty reckons several people have contacted him to lobby to keep the churches open. How desperate those Catholics must have been, to bring themselves to ask McAnulty a favour ...

But Stuff reports him as saying there are 'realities that the church authorities had to tackle'.

“At a sentimental level," says McAnulty, "I totally agree it is a shame that the church that I was baptised and had my first holy communion and confirmed in, in Carterton is no longer going to remain operational."

Sentimentality is about all we can expect in this context, from an MP who voted for abortion up to birth, euthanasia and recreational cannabis and who describes himself as a Catholic, but presents himself for Communion at Mass. Feelings are obviously much more important to Mr McAnulty than the truth.

If I may allow myself a short but significant digression: a 'good Catholic' of the Palmerston North Diocese earnestly assured me last week that he is 'a Eucharistic Minister'. He's not. The only Eucharistic Minister is the priest. But as 'a Eucharistic Minister', this chap knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that "you can NEVER refuse Communion to anyone. Only God can judge. You can't." 

Oh dear. He's been told this by a priest, so he totally believes it. O me miserum. How often does one have to repeat the difference between judging a person and judging his/her acts? 

Serious sin against God or against neighbor makes one unworthy to receive Holy Communion, until the sin has been confessed and forgiveness received through the Sacrament of Penance.

If the lack of right disposition is serious and public, and the person, nevertheless, approaches to receive the Sacrament, then he is to be admonished and denied Holy Communion. In other words, the Church cannot remain silent and indifferent to a public offense against the Body and Blood of Christ: Cardinal Raymond Burke.

https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/discipline-regarding-the-denial-of-holy-communion-to-those-obstinately-persevering-in-manifest-grave-sin-1230

“At the same time," Mr McAnulty opines, "we have to face up to the fact that a lot of these buildings are earthquake-prone ... it’s very much a case of use it or lose it.

“The church (sic) is faced with significant costs to keep up buildings that a relatively small number of people are attending, they can’t keep these buildings going for large congregations twice a year at Christmas and Easter.”https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/123513298/parishioners-devastated-as-last-rites-given-to-rural-churches

Well there you are. Straight from the horse's mouth. It's true that an horrific percentage of 'Catholics' rarely attend Mass, with families that have shrunk away to just over replacement rate since the advent of the pill, and when they do get to Mass, for the majority it's in a perfunctory fashion and as if they're there to be entertained. But they are poorly catechised, ignorant and spiritually starving, unconfessed and unrepentant - of sins unknown to them.

For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. 30Therefore are there many infirm and weak among you, and many sleep (I Cor 11:29).

That is the problem which must be addressed, and not by the defeatist 'solution' of closing churches, which only serves to aggravate the loss of souls for eternity which it causes. 

St  Anthony of Padua, Martinborough, a perfect gem inside and out

St Mary's Carterton which just needs TLC

Sacred Heart Greytown whose interior probably matches its exterior: noble simplicity

The (Wairarapa) parish pastoral council at the time was opposed to the closure of any of the five churches in the parish area.

According to a recent article in the Wairarapa Times Age, the parish council had acknowledged their financial situation was bad, but said that “with transparency, restoration of trust and certainty, regular giving would increase.”

According to the CathNews NZ website, at least four parish council members have resigned, as well as two parish council chairpersons.

https://nzcatholic.org.nz/2020/11/23/decision-made-to-sell-three-wairarapa-churches-vatican/

At the time of the proposed closures, the Wairarapa Parish Pastoral Council response to a reduction in parishes was “no”.

It lobbied to retain all five churches with a call for leadership on how to achieve this. https://cathnews.co.nz/2020/09/10/3-wairarapa-churches-sale/

We are at a loss to know, your Eminence, how selling three churches can be "a pastoral approach". A pastoral approach would surely exclude the support for the revolutionary, violent Black Lives Matter movement implied by the Archdiocese in removing a sign innocently proclaiming "All Lives Matter" from Masterton's St Patrick's - which is now, with St Teresa's in Featherston, one of only two churches remaining in the whole of the Wairarapa.

In a statement Dew said, "as Archbishop for the diocese, I do not support the placement of that sign. It should not have been put there.

"A church should not be politicised this way. A church should be a safe space for everyone, a place where everyone feels welcome without being confronted with politicised material that some could find unwelcoming or offensive."  

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/06/archbishop-of-wellington-condemns-all-lives-matter-message-at-church.html

Well there you go. That attitude, aglow with the thoroughly discredited 'Spirit of Vatican II' is at base the reason why these three churches have gone up for sale, and why the Church in New Zealand is disintegrating.. 

Ordering the removal of a sign erected by parishioners possessed of a lively conscience defending unborn babies - who were abandoned by the NZ Bishops' Conference's dereliction of duty in failing to oppose the evil socialist agenda of Jacinda Ardern - betrays the very 'clericalism' that +Dew himself and his liberal confreres in bishops' conferences around the world would deplore.

Did Jesus Christ Himself regard His church, the temple in Jerusalem, as a 'safe space for everyone, a place where everyone feels welcome' when he drove out the money changers with a whip?

And when he had seen afar off a fig tree having leaves, he came if perhaps he might find any thing on it. And when he was come to it, he found nothing but leaves. For it was not the time for figs. And answering he said to it: May no man hereafter eat fruit of thee any more for ever. And his disciples heard it.  

And they came to Jerusalem. And when he was entered into the temple, he began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the chairs of them that sold doves.

And he suffered not that any man should carry a vessel through the temple;  And he taught, saying to them: Is it not written, My house shall be called the house of prayer to all nations? But you have made it a den of thieves. Which when the chief priests and the scribes had heard, they sought how they might destroy him. For they feared him, because the whole multitude was in admiration at his doctrine.  

And when evening was come, he went forth out of the city. And when they passed by in the morning they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.

 And Peter remembering, said to him: Rabbi, behold the fig tree, which thou didst curse, is withered away. And Jesus answering, saith to them: Have the faith of God. (Mk 11, 13-22).

How do you square that Reading, your Eminence, with a church being 'a safe space'? 

It would seem that 'a safe space for everyone' is a 'safe space' for a senior prelate to get away with his declared intention of saying Mass 'as quickly as possible' - a prelate who says he 'can't wait for women priests' and who expedites that agenda by illicitly promoting women to the pulpit to deliver 'Advent Reflections' at the cathedral's Sunday Masses. 

While this is the parlous state of affairs in the PN Diocese, odds are that in the Wellington Archdiocese - the Land of Mordor, spiritually speaking - they are worse.

In preaching and teaching doctrine contrary to Christ's and to the Magisterium, priests and prelates themselves are the ones who have made His Church into a den of thieves, stealing from the whole multitude of the faithful the doctrine which they once so admired. No wonder that multitude has departed. No wonder their empty churches are closed and up for sale.

Has it not occurred to you, your Eminence, that Jesus might have cursed your Archdiocese as He cursed the fig tree because it had no fruit for Him to eat? We the faithful - no longer a multitude, but still a remnant - rely on the Tree of Life for our spiritual food, the word of God, and we go to the Tree every Sunday, and behold there is no fruit of doctrine on It. And so the Tree, the Church, has withered away. 

Jesus tells us, "Have the faith of God." In calling for "transparency, restoration of trust and certainty" with confidence that "regular giving would increase", the Wairarapa Parish Pastoral Council would seem to possess more of the faith of God than their Chief Shepherd, the cardinal.

Above all, your Eminence, the Jesus Who exhibited His anger in the Temple and at the fruitless fig tree, might well have cursed the Tree of Life of the Wellington Archdiocese for having no food on it for the remnant of the multitude who humbly ask for their right to Holy Communion on the tongue, a centuries-old tradition which expresses and signifies the reverent respect of the faithful towards the Holy Eucharist and avoids the danger of profaning the Eucharistic species. 

It is up to you, your Eminence, to reconsider your outrageous and unjust ban on Holy Communion on the tongue, rooted as that ban is in 'the Spirit of Vatican II', a council which like the Synod of Pistoia (1786) would best be forgotten. 

I quote Pope Gregory VII, reformer and crusader Pope, whose words may be applied to the silence of our bishops in the face of the evil of this Labour Government as well as to their compliance with that Government's edicts re Communion on the tongue:

For us it is better to face, if necessary, our due death of the flesh at the hand of tyrants, rather than consent by our silence, whether out of fear or convenience, to the ruin of the Christian law. We know in fact that our holy Fathers said: He who, in consideration of his office, does not oppose evil men; it is as if he agrees with them: and whoever does not eliminate the evils which should be repressed; it is as if he committed them" (Registrum,  IV, I).

Pope St Gregory VII

And it is up to us, the faithful, to pray for our priests, bishops, cardinal and Pope, asking God's forgiveness for their theft of sacred doctrine and Christ's Body and Blood in the Eucharist, and for our apathy and negligence in tolerating that theft, so that the Tree of Life, the Catholic Church in New Zealand, will bear fruit once again. 

Christ Driving out the Money-changers
El Greco