GERMANY'S O.S. T-SHIRT WOULD FIT NZ CHURCH

To comment, please open your gmail account, use my email address, Facebook, Twitter or Messenger. Scroll down for other comments.


"How dare you!"

I make no apologies for borrowing from the lexicon of poor, angry little poster girl for 'climate change', Greta Thunberg - who insists on no carbon production. At all.

But it's Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, Archbishop of Vienna, Austria, to whom I address these words. 

"I wonder what possessed you, Your Eminence; what induced you to cover the high altar of your 12th-century St Stephen's Cathedral - your 'cathedra', or seat - with a much larger than life woman's long-sleeved purple T-shirt?"

Truly. I kid you not. To give you an idea how large, it's 80 sq m of fabric. It masquerades, according to the cathedral website, as a modern Lenten veil (Fastentuch). Yeah right.

The Austrian 'artist' who 'created' the oversize t-shirt is also known for his depictions of naked men, complete with genitals, in various positions. His name is Erwin Wurm. I guess with a name like that, we're not surprised that he over-compensates for his under-valued masculinity.

To appreciate the scale of this blasphemy you need the visual, and here it is: 



And before you women start going, oh what a gorgeous colour, beautiful fabric, where did he get it, we need to know a little of this guy's back story. In addition to the pix of middle-aged naked chaps on his website, Erwin the Wurm is known also for images which mock priests and religious.

Are you dumbfounded yet? How can the Austrians stomach this, you ask? What does a Viennese like Alexander Tschugguel, who threw the Pachamama idols in the Tiber, think? I don't want to put ideas into his head, but will he perhaps steal into St Stephen's at crack of dawn with an extension ladder and a pair of scissors - and, we hope, his camera?

The Austrians, I suggest, have arrived at this pretty pass very gradually, over the years since Vatican II, by inuring themselves just like we have in NZ, to abuses like female 'Eucharistic Ministers' (yes, I was one of them) surging forth from the congregation at the 'Lamb of God' to take hold of the Most Precious Body of the Son of God with their fingers and hand it out to Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Those good ladies took a fair bit of persuading - by their pastors - to do it, and it was a bit of a shock at the time, but we all got used to it. 

That was the thin end of one of many wedges in the Vatican/Jesuit toolbox. Its thick end is women priests.

Oh, that's drawing a very long bow, you say. Maybe. But I intuit that Herr Wurm's 'artwork' of a woman's t-shirt draped over the high altar of Sacrifice - for two thousand years exclusively a male domain - is a great big, tasteless, purple hint of what's to come. 
Let's not be gulled any more, people. This is a somewhat unsubtle symbol of women's usurpation of the place assigned by God to men in the Church, as in society as a whole. 

I could wade deep into murky psychological waters and speculate on Herr Wurm's distorted self-image and apparent personal rejection of his masculinity as a manifestation of the rejection and dumbing-down of men by the ladies of the liberal left in the media. 

I could wade into political waters likewise and read in this T-shirt the socialist agenda of aforementioned women who seized on contraception and then abortion and sterilisation as means to the end of destroying their fertility, the family and the future of the human race, all to achieve the pseudo 'equality' which in practice means their supremacy.

Oh, now she's getting carried away, you say. Pope Francis has said no to women priests. But Pope Francis says no when he really means yes. At least, that's what Cardinal Oswald Gracias, one of the Pope's C6 Council of Cardinals and head of the Indian bishops' conference, thinks. 

Because a couple of days ago Cardinal Gracias claimed the path to married priests is still "open". Pope Francis, he says, is "very clever" (I take this to be in comparison with his own good self) in "endorsing the final document" of the Amazon Synod, which endorsed ordination of married men who are already deacons, and proposed further study on the 'female diaconate'.

Cardinal Gracias wants "greater responsibilities for women in the Catholic Church". And what Modernist cardinals want, Modernist cardinals get, right? At least they do under this papacy.  

Have these particular cardinals - Schonborn and Gracias -  got a death wish? Or are they just comedians? A t-shirt as Lenten veiling of a cathedral's high altar would be funny if it weren't blasphemous, but get this: +Gracias says - of the Pope who has divided the Church - "He's got to carry everybody with him ... we go slower than we would like to go because of that". 

Dear Cardinal Gracias, how slow can you go? I mean also how low can you go? How long will it take you, Schonborn, Marx (does he have a famous grandad?) and the gang to complete your base, ignoble intent to undermine the Church's foundations, the Sacraments?  

Oh well, if you do yourself out of your job by white-anting your Employer, you're guaranteed a future as a stand-up comic. "We have not," says the cardinal, employing the papal or is it the royal, we, "applied our mind to it."

Here's the thing: in his post-synodal document (no. 94, I think it might go up to no. 1004), the pope says, "women who have a central part to play in Amazonian communities should have access to positions, including ecclesial service, that do not entail Holy Orders and that can better signify the role that is theirs ... these services entail public recognition and a commission from the bishop." 

To clarify: so in the Amazon lady bus drivers, for example, should be able to get positions, including driving church buses, without becoming priests, and signs on their buses saying 'Lady Bus Driver' - and a commission from the bishop. Oh, and it has to be done in "a way that reflects their womanhood". Would 'Lady Bus Driver' fill the bill? Maybe make it pink ...

Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, papal ghostwriter and theological adviser, chimes in with the suggestion of a new 'Amazonian rite' as part of a 'synodal novelty' established by the pope. 

He and his cohorts just don't get it. The Church cannot be about 'novelty' and 'surprises'; The Church is the Truth which cannot be changed: She the Bride of "Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today; and the same for ever" (Heb 13:8).

We haven't finished with German cardinals yet (is there something in the Teutonic holy water?) Enter stage far left, Cardinal Walter Kasper, lurking in the wings since 2019, when he suggested another 'novelty' that has somehow found its way almost word for word into the pope's post-synodal exhortation. 

Kasper envisaged "a female ministry without ordination". He told LifeSite that women could give out Holy Communion, hold a Liturgy of the Word and "even rule over parishes". 

Well, here in 'progressive' Aotearoa NZ, we do all that already. Look, we're ahead of Germany, even! Behold the wedge effect on us Kiwis, we whom Gordon McLauchlan once called, with plenty of justification, "smiling zombies, lazy and smug" (The Passionless People (1976).





A recent comment from Cardinal Gerhard Mueller seems pertinent to the pic above, of Cardinal Kasper chatting with His Holiness. (+Mueller, a German but with apparent immunity to Teutonic holy water, has the signal honour of being sacked by Pope Francis as Prefect for the Congregation of the Faith, for defending Church doctrine on Communion for adulterers.) 

“The primacy of the Pope is being undermined by the sycophants and careerists at the papal court," says +Mueller. He referred to famous 16th century theologian Melchior Cano:

“Those who defend blindly and indiscriminately any judgment whatsoever of the Supreme Pontiff concerning every matter weaken the authority of the Apostolic See; they do not support it; they subvert it; they do not fortify it…. Peter has no need of our lies; he has no need of our adulation.” 

+Mueller has also made a strong defence of the three-fold mission of the priest – to preach, to sanctify, and to govern. 

I believe the uproar over a female diaconate was a red herring intended to distract the faithful's attention from what's really going down. Now that we're inured to the above goings-on, we're nicely softened up for a deeper insertion of the wedge, with Cardinal Kasper's inspiration of 'special garments' for these women, and once they're dressed up, as the pope states in Querida Amazonia, their "administration of) certain sacraments and a liturgical blessing for women". 

This presumably entails more than being told peremptorily, as I was by my PP, "You can be a 'Eucharistic Minister' "(the extent of my catechesis). In Querida Amazonia the pope refers to "public recognition and a commission from the bishop". Wouldn't that be nice? Can you not see women lining up to be measured for their vestments a la Anglican 'vicars' and commissioned by the bishop?

So forget about a 'female diaconate', people, because now it's embarrassingly been proven there never was such a thing historically, as Cardinal Kasper admits. But then in the next breath he acknowledges that "women have many functions in the Church that go far beyond those female deacons (who never existed) had in the first millenium."  So let's just call the same thing by different name. 

The Vatican spin-doctors will be working on it, because as Austen Ivereigh, papolater-in-chief,  said on Feb 12 in The Tablet, this new lay ministry could be “much bigger" (than the female diaconate). 
https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/cardinal-kasper-predicted-pope-francis-would-introduce-female-ministry-heres-how-it-happened

Ask yourself, whatever could that be, which is 'much bigger than the female diaconate'? Ivereigh writes: “The really radical move... is in paragraphs 99 - 103, which best reflect Francis’s discernment of where God’s gift of creative 'new' thinking is making itself felt (as if God has changed His thinking to suit the Modernists) .... One of the (Amazon) synod’s organisers told me that this was 'much bigger than the female diaconate', given the number of women who lead Amazon communities; and also better reflected the desire of those women to have their authority recognised but without being clericalised.”

“For those with eyes to see and ears to hear,” Ivereigh continues, “the Pope is not just following a path out of the debate over the viri probati, but looking to a whole new kind of female-specific leadership in the Church.

"The Pope asks us "to transcend limited perspectives and ‘pragmatic’ solutions mired in partial approaches, in order to seek paths of inculturation that are broader and bolder ... "People may see this as the major fruit of the Amazonian synod.”

But Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes - a retired curial cardinal, another German but one living in Rome and obviously with acquired immunity to the Teutonic holy water, has queered not just Ivereigh's pitch but the Pope's. 

Cardinal Cordes detects in Querida Amazonia a footnote (remember Amoris Laetitia, anyone?) which he says quotes canon law in a defective way. He rejects the notion of separating the priesthood from its governing mission proposed by the Pope, by which one Professor Michael Bohnke*triumphantly declares that Pope Francis has "cracked a clerical monopoly". 

Not so fast. The Pope had referred, in footnote 136, to canon 517§2, which gives a bishop the possibility of tasking laymen with the participation in putative leadership roles in the field of pastoral care. 

But this canon actually states that: “If, because of a lack of priests, the diocesan bishop has decided that participation in the exercise of the pastoral care of a parish is to be entrusted to a deacon, to another person who is not a priest, or to a community of persons, (the bishop) is to appoint some priest who, provided with the powers and faculties of a pastor, is to direct the pastoral care"(emphasis added). 

See how we, the faithful of the Palmerston North Diocese, should be praying the Rosary and exposing the Blessed Sacrament for the intention of a holy bishop! But no: at St Brigid's, Pahiatua for example, the daily Rosary has been canned. Might we ask why?

I did ask, and was told a parish worthy has claimed that "people want to pray in their own way", and not at Adoration. There you have it: anthropocentrism, rampant.

And at St Joseph's, Waipukurau this morning, on the First Sunday in Lent - season of mortification, fasting, penance and prayer - Father told us once again (Sunday after Sunday, same heresy) that we're all going to Heaven and there's nothing we can do to earn it. 

No, of course we can't earn it, but we must "work out our salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12).   



*Let us note that Prof Bohnke writes for the German bishops’ news website Katholisch.de., managed until the resignation of Father Hans Langendörfer, one of the most influential figures in the German Church, widely credited with running the 'synodal path' behind the scenes - and incidentally, associated with a pornography scandal. Fr Langendörfer announced his resignation as head of the secretariat of the German bishops’ conference - and a loss of 200,000 Catholics to the Church in 2018. Gott in Himmel! 
We note also that Father Langendörfer is a Jesuit ...

https://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/father-hans-langendoerfer-key-german-church-leader-resigns-position

CONNECT THE DOTS: THE NEW MASS, ABORTION,CRITERIA FOR SELECTION IN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

To comment please open your gmail account, use my email address, Facebook Messenger or Twitter. Scroll down for other comments.


"The most beautiful thing this side of Heaven" -  the Traditional Latin Mass - has stayed with me all through this past week, after my experience of the sung High Mass at St Anthony's SSPX in Whanganui last Sunday. 

And now, having quoted the famed Father Faber of Brompton Oratory, I'm going to descend from the sublime to the gor' blimey and do something my mother told me never to do: make a personal remark. But as it's about a group rather than an individual, and is a compliment, not a "cheeky remark", I think she'd let me off.

It struck me, looking at the rows of girls, mostly teenagers, in front of me at Mass, all veiled and wearing skirts or dresses, that in comparison with girls just about everywhere else, how slender they all were. What's more, the women in that church were too, I think, from memory. Sounds trivial perhaps, but the reason why, which struck me almost at the same moment, is far removed from trivia.

Those girls, and their mothers and grandmothers, lead ordered lives. They're guided by laws laid out for their care and protection by God in His commandments and by Jesus Christ His Son in His Gospel - laws which proscribe contraceptives for example - laws explained and preached with clarity and precision by the holy priests of the Society of St Pius X every Sunday and every day in between in 'sermonettes', at their daily Masses and services.

And those priests give witness to those laws by their dress (collar and cassock), and an asceticism which obviously inspires their students - and their deportment. 

Not for them the palsy-walsy 'Father Tom, Dick or Harry", approach. They're called by their surnames, even though mostly they're not easy to pronounce. Not for them kisses and hugs, but a handshake; for a tete-a-tete a woman sits the opposite side of the table and the door is left open; in the car she's consigned to the back seat: no accusations of 'sex abuse' could easily be made against a priest of the SSPX. 

Most importantly, in Confession there's no chance of offering a weeping penitent a tissue (or a hug leading to further developments); confessor is separated from penitent by a grille. 

Which leads me to ponder how an SSPX priest in the most unhappy State of Victoria, Australia, be dobbed in for not reporting a sin of pedophilia confessed in the dark, through a grille? Do the Keystone Cops of Oz expect Father to leap off his chair immediately after giving absolution to whisk round the other side and yank the penitent out of the confessional in order to identify him, so he can dob him in? Has Mr Plod thought this one through? 

But back to deportment: another thing which struck me was the ram-rod straight backs of the altar boys, eight of them at least, and a couple not much more than 6 years old, as they made their genuflections (with hands clasped). Lots of genuflections, with the utmost seriousness. And they took their booklets of thanksgiving prayers after Communion, used them and replaced them with seriousness, too.

And that makes me think of the DRS of a Catholic primary school who stopped me teaching the new entrants to go down on both knees before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the monstrance. "They're too young," she said. 

Ahem. Sr Bernice of sometimes unhappy memory had me and all my classmates in the 'Infants', aged 5, going down on both knees. I don't believe children's intelligence has deteriorated that much in the interim. 

If only that DRS could see the St Anthony's altar boys, even the littlest, all perfectly drilled in all the complicated moves required of them throughout a sung Latin High Mass.

In the week since that Mass, which I described to my kids in their nightly email - before I read Fr Faber's words - as "a glimpse of Heaven", I've read laments from a priest (Fr Thomas Curley, New York) and a bishop (+Edmund Forester, Stamford, England, for the Immemorial Mass, the ancient Roman Rite of Holy Mass, and their fulminations against the calamitous consequences for Church and society of its exchange for the 'New Mass' and the "arbitrary deformations of the liturgy (which) caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church" (Pope Benedict XVI). 

We know what they are:

• Communion in the hand
• Sidelining the tabernacle
• Removal of altar rails
• Mass celebrated facing the people, turned away from God
• 'Prayers of the Faithful' which stop just short of invoking Greta Thunberg's intercession 
• Abolition of Prayers for the Church
• Near-abolition of the saints and need for their intercession
• Abolition of Gregorian chant
• Introduction of banal 'songs'
• Loss of hand missals
• Abolition of statues
• Abolition of Father's private thanksgiving and instead,
• Father's compulsory mixing and mingling outside after Mass
• Introduction of 'overheads'
• Introduction of 'spiritual' banners
• Male and female lectors, the latter often in skirts little more than a frill around the waist
• 'Ministers of the Eucharist' in phalanx
• Disappearance of genuflection
• Chatter in church - even or especially by the priest
• 'Liturgy Committees' to make the 'celebration' more 'appealing'
• Eulogies at funeral Masses canonising the dear departed
• White vestments instead of black for funerals: BE HAPPY!
• Abolition of purgatory
• Abolition of hell
• Dialectic in homilies instead of doctrine in sermons
• No mention of contraception, soon followed by:
• Abolition of the 'A-word': abortion

To return to Father Faber, over 100 years ago at the Brompton Oratory, describing the Latin Mass - the Mass that recently-canonised Cardinal Newman, the leader of the Oxford movement into the Church, said that he could attend forever, and not be tired:

“It came forth out of the grand mind of the Church, and lifted us out of earth and out of self, and wrapped us round in a cloud of mystical sweetness and the sublimities of a more than angelic liturgy, and purified us almost without ourselves, and charmed us with the celestial charming, so that our very senses seemed to find vision, hearing, fragrance, taste, and touch beyond what earth can give.” 

By way of contrast, let's look at CathNews NZ this week, to discover the some fruits of "the revolution" of Vatican II and the 'New Mass'.

"Going to a Catholic school," says CathNews, "and attending Sunday Mass are not necessarily a package deal to many Catholic families." In other words, few Catholic school families go to Mass.

"Taranaki priest Simon Story says many Catholic families approach him ... to get their children into a Catholic school. ... Those families are often nowhere to be seen at Sunday Mass." In other words, they don't turn up. 

Poor Father Story. "It definitely is disheartening when parents seem to think that attending a Catholic school is all that is required to demonstrate a Catholic faith ... As Sunday mass (sic, in a 'Catholic' news service) is at the core of Catholic life, it is disappointing ... By far the majority of Catholics don't practise their faith anyway," Story (sic, in a 'Catholic' news service) admits. 

And why is that? Because, let's face it, for people without deep faith and with a bit of a social life, the 'New Mass' is boring, banal, and a waste of time. 

But who would want to miss the kind of experience described above, by St John Henry Newman and Father Faber? It's the kind of experience we all hunger for, that our friends and our kids go to rock concerts and Big Days Out and Gay Pride parades and watch porn and get drunk and stoned for, and that experience was confiscated - by the Church. 

Take a look at 'some of the criteria for preference' for places in Catholic schools now: 

• A child being baptised or preparing to be (in other words, Mum and Dad say, "Oh yes, we'd like little Carter/Hudson/McKenzie to be baptised" and little so-and-so is in)
• At least one parent being Catholic (as in, baptised a Catholic once upon a time)
• The child's participation at school could lead to the parents having the child baptised (yeah, right)
• One or both parents, are preparing to become Catholic ("Oh right, Father, that sounds like a plan")

"Given these criteria," Cathnews asks plaintively, "the question is, why is there a gap between the appeal of a Catholic education and those who actively practice (sic) the faith?"

Well for one thing, you could drive a truckload of pseudo-Catholics through those 'criteria'. They're simply laughable. 

For another, the appeal of a Catholic education in a secular society is - even with only a few shreds of true Catholicity hanging from its coat-tails - it still gets better results than a secular one. 

For another, Cathnews is comparing apples and oranges. The question should be, why the gap between those who want a Catholic education and those who practise the faith? Those who practise the faith will ensure their children have that Catholic education. 

Those who don't practise the faith want prestige, smaller classes and better exam results. For them, 'Catholic education' actually has no appeal, and they should not be given it. 

"It is not good to take the bread of the children, and cast it to the dogs" (Mt 15:26). And don't tell me that "the whelps also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters" (ibid 27), because, "Jesus answering said to her "... great is thy faith" (ibid 28). 

The Canaanite woman was granted what she asked because of her great faith. Parents asking for a Catholic education for its prestige, niceness and exam results have no faith, and unless they have actually proved they want faith, by baptism and weekly Sunday Mass attendance for them and their children, to give them a Catholic education is depriving Catholic children of their "bread".

Dear Father Story. "When he talks to parents he reiterates that baptism is a choice to take on the Christian life and faith and that parents agreed to support their children on that pathway." So when he talks to parents he reiterates that parents agreed to support their children, etc? 

Spit it out, Cathnews. I suppose you mean that when Father talks to parents about baptism they say they'll bring their children to Mass. But mostly they don't. Okay?

"He says he has found that Catholic school enrolment can provide a gateway for some families back into the church. Definitely there would be a large number of families included in that bracket.” 

So going to a Catholic school might mean that lots of families might go to Mass on Sundays. And that's about it. They might.

Putting a classic post-Vat2 spin on this dismal account of the 'new springtime of the Church', Cathnews headlines it as "Demand for Catholic education high". That's one way of putting it. I suppose. 

Another fruit of 'the springtime of the Church' which came to my notice this week was the selection  as a semi-finalist for their 'prestigious' New Zealander of the Year Award by Kiwibank (close your account, instanter!) of Dame Margaret Sparrow, abortionist par excellence, who presided over the killing of tens of thousands of unborn children, by violent and painful dismemberment, at the infamous Parkview Abortion Clinic in Wellington in the '80s and '90s. 

It was outside Parkview, protesting (on hospital land, verboten) that I was arrested and banged up for the rest of the day, the last to be freed of our group - which incidentally included Father Story's heroic mother, Gwen. I believe his vocation to the priesthood is the fruit of Gwen's subsequent months and months of incarceration in Arohata Women's Prison for continuing to protest against the dreadful crimes of Dr Sparrow. 

The only consolation is, Dame Margaret didn't even make the finals of Kiwibank New Zealander of the year. (The irony is, it was won by an actor, Jennifer Ward-Lealand - oops, I nearly forgot to say she's a 'Maori advocate'). 

Maybe a few too many Kiwibank accounts were closed and letters written by Catholics of the pre-Vatican II era, who in attending the Ancient Roman Rite of Holy Mass had heard the evil of abortion condemned forthrightly from the pulpit, and learned something of the mystery and wonder of God, that mystery and wonder of which I had a glimpse at St Anthony's SSPX Whanganui, one week ago today.

But cheer up, people, cheer up, priests! Here's Pope Benedict again, in one of the last speeches of his papacy:

"The Church is ever renewed, she is always reborn. The future belongs to us. Of course, there is a false optimism and a false pessimism. A false pessimism tells us that the epoch of Christianity is over. No: it is beginning again!

"The false optimism was the post-Council optimism, when convents closed, seminaries closed, and they said "but  ... nothing, everything is fine!" ... No! Everything is not fine.

There are also serious, dangerous omissions and we have to recognise with healthy realism (NB, Cathnews NZ) that in this way things are not all right, it is not all right when errors are made.

However, we must also be certain at the same time that if, here and there, the Church is dying because of the sins of men and women, because of their non-belief, at the same time she is reborn.

The future really belongs to God: this is the great certainty of our life, the great, true optimism that we know. 

The Church is the tree of God that lives forever and bears within her eternity and the true inheritance: eternal life. 

A footnote: Usus antiquior means “the ancient usage,” or more literally, the usage that is “older than old.”

The first Mass, the archetype of Masses, was consummated at Calvary in Latin as the Roman soldiers, its ministers, went about their grueling business.  By the time it was over, some of the Romans believed (cf. Mark 15:39), and others did not.  The Jews watched it all unfold.  Some of them understood the Romans’ language well, others only dimly or not at all.  Some of them believed (cf. Luke 23:42), others did not.  We, the new Israel, now watch, some comprehending the Latin and some not, some believing and some not (cf. John 6:66-69).

In spiritual terms, however, it is not accurate to speak of the “first” Mass, of Masses in the plural, or of any Mass in the past tense.  That is because, as Heaven views things (and Hell too), there is only one Mass, which began on Good Friday at Jerusalem and continues everywhere until the last day, on which will occur the second coming—this time in glory—of Jesus Christ, Who is your God and mine.  On that day, we still might not fully comprehend the Latin, but there will no longer be any unbelievers, anywhere.
.https://propria.org/

Tony Sumner says:
1st Corinthians 5:12 it’s our job to judge.

COMBINED ASH WEDNESDAY SERVICE AT ST PETER'S ANGLICAN, PN, NOT 'NICE', NOT ECUMENICAL

To comment please open your gmail account, use my email address, Facebook Messenger or Twitter. Scroll down for other comments.

" Wednesday 26 February,  Combined Ash Wednesday Service 7.30 p m, Holy Trinity Anglican Church Woodville"

Going round the PN Diocesan traps I was told of this headline in the Tararua Parish bulletin. It had leapt to the eagle eye of a certain Dannevirke parishioner who recognises it for what it is. 

"A combined Ash Wednesday service," you might say, "how nice, joining with the Anglicans; how ecumenical."

It might seem harmless, anodyne, but it's not. It's not 'nice'; it's not even ecumenical. 

True ecumenism, the only unity that the Catholic Church recognizes, is the unity of faith, worship and government, by which all members of the Mystical Body are united with each other and with their Head, Christ and His Vicar on earth (see Matthew 16:18; John 21:16-17; Ephesians 4:16).

The Catholic Church in its Magisterium has condemned services such as Woodville's Ash Wednesday 'Combined Service' and any other such 'ecumenical' meetings or initiatives that are not founded on the unity of faith.  

“The disciples of Christ must be united principally.” The law of faith is absolute, because without “the teachings of Christ whole and uncorrupted,” without  “one law of belief and one faith of Christians,” there would be neither unity in the Church, nor true charity." (MORTALIUM ANIMOS, ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI ON RELIGIOUS UNITY.)

http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19280106_mortalium-animos.html

Getting together with 'fellow Christians' is the false ecumenism promoted in New Zealand by our liberal clergy, who given the dearth of good vocations to the priesthood since Vat II lack the intellectual rigour of the Traditional Latin Mass clergy, and also their discipline of contemplation and knowledge of the Doctors of the Church, and so are easily beguiled by the sort of corrupt reading supplied in the leftist Cathnews, sadly 'the most visited Catholic website in Australia'. 

So now to Pope Francis, whose pic above was taken in an unguarded moment ... 

This week, Cathnews informs our priests that, "it's disappointing but not a surprise that Pope Francis decided not to respond to the Amazon synod’s recommendation that the Catholic Church ordain mature, married men to make up for the huge shortage of priests in the Amazon region."

Of course it's not a surprise: this is a Jesuit writing, and Jesuits (who probably impress our diocesan priests mightily) are never surprised. Not even the Jesuit pope's 'God of surprises' would catch them unawares.

"Francis did not say yes to married priests, but neither did he really say no ..."

Fr Thomas Reese SJ sums up Querida Amazonia this week pretty much the same way Carmelite Canto Fermo did last Friday, which is gratifying. 

Except he didn't mention the pope's implied repudiation of the First Commandment in his ominous endorsement of 'certain religious practices' (and neither had I: that's another story). 

But in confirming that "Discussion of the matter will continue" (as I predicted), Father Reese qualifies that by saying, "Previous papacies said no to even discussing the topic."

Trust a Jesuit to point that out, implying of course that in putting heresy on the table for discussion, this papacy is an improvement on the pontificates of the last two millenia. 

"He recycles the old recommendations of praying for vocations and enlarging the role of the laity," says Fr Reese. "I am all for these solutions, but we have been praying for vocations for more than a century, and we have been increasing the role of the laity since the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965."

Excuse me, Father Reese, but lay people haven't been led in prayer for vocations by their priests in NZ for years. Instead, the clergy bang on about how they're getting fewer and older (and so more in need of cossetting with days off, etc). You'd think they don't want more priests - and with some priests of this Diocese, that is exactly the case. 

As for "increasing the role of the laity since the Second Vatican Council", it's been a disaster. Look at the results. Tell us about it.

Fr Reese says that "by accident or by plan, (married deacons) will create the cadre of candidates for priesthood if he ever allows for exceptions."

"If". As if it's "if". It's a matter of when.

"But Francis is not open to ordaining women to the diaconate. His arguments against women deacons were disappointing and patriarchal." 

Patriarchal, for the obvious reason that the Church is patriarchal: God is our Father, and Jesus Christ Son of God is Head and Spouse of the Church. Apparently Jesuits, and by implication the priests who read Cathnews, can shrug off such niceties, such trivialities.

https://cathnews.co.nz/2020/02/17/yes-nor-no-married-priests/

But not so Sister Bernadette Riess, English coordinator for Vatican News. She has other ideas. She refuses to accept that women are not proper to the Sacrament of Holy Orders, any more than orange juice instead of water is proper to the Sacrament of Baptism. 

In the opinion of Sister Riess, spokesperson for the Vatican, the idea of female deacons is "still up for discussion".

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vatican-spokesman-popes-amazon-synod-exhortation-is-magisterium...final-document-is-not

It's Amoris Laetitia revisited: the bone the pope threw to the Church then was no blessings for homosexual unions. While the traditional Church chewed happily away on that, modernist, progressive bishops and dioceses simply went ahead making allowances for the divorced and 'remarried', at first sub rosa, but now openly.

For instance in Geneva, Switzerland, where Holy Mass will be celebrated on February 29 in the historic Catholic cathedral appropriated to the use of the 'Reformed' Protestant Church by John Calvin, and as you'd expect, it being a Protestant church now, Protestants are invited. Not just to attend Holy Mass but to receive Holy Communion. 

And no one said boo, because 'open' or 'inter' Communion is now common in Geneva. 

"Protestants receiving  communion," said the (Protestant) Parish Council President, "is already done locally in many parishes during ecumenical celebrations where Protestants and Catholics invite each other to the Lord's Supper and to communion,” he said. 

https://www.christianpost.com/news/protestants-to-take-catholic-communion-at-calvins-cathedral-in-geneva-on-leap-year-day.html

This is where NZ's liberal bishops are leading us; up the garden path of 'Combined Services' to heretical, syncretic liturgies as are 'common' now in Geneva. I bet Geneva started with 'combined services' too. 

Just as 'Amoris Laetitia' was a Trojan horse for inter-communion, so 'Querida Amazonia' will smuggle in married priests, then women deacons, then women priests. 

But only if faithful lay people led by faithful priests and bishops allow it. But we mustn't allow it. 

We won't. We will resist.

Bob Gill says:

It looks like Woodville’s combined service with the Holy Trinity Anglican Church is a follow-on from Palmerston North Cathedral which is having a combined service too with St Peter’s Anglican Church on Ruahine Street at 7pm on the same day: https://pncathedral.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/CHS-16-Feb-2020-6th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-Year-A.pdf

ANY MELBOURNE PRIEST HEARING CONFESSIONS MAY BE ARRESTED AND BANGED UP

to comment please open your gmail account, use my email address, Facebook Messenger or Twitter. Scroll down for other comments.


It's official, it's legal, it's Ozzie, it's sickening. 
As of yesterday, any Catholic priest in Victoria, Australia is liable to be arrested for hearing confessions. 

All the police need to do (and it shouldn't be too hard, even for Melbourne's Keystone Cops - vide Cardinal George Pell) is send in a nark to confess to some fictitious sin of pedophilia, then sit back and wait, while Father chews his fingernails and tosses and turns at night. 

When the statutory time for reporting such an offence is up, they can arrest and charge him for failure to disclose, and Father could be banged up for three years.

"Our promise," says Attorney-General Jill Hennessey piously, " to put the safety of children ahead of the secrecy of the confession is in full effect and there is no excuse."

No excuse for Father then, for committing a most serious sin in violating the seal of the confessional and incurring one of the most severe penalties under the law of the Catholic Curch, that of immediate excommunication latae sententiae (canon 1381).

Plenty of excuse for Catholics however, for failing to confess their sins at least once a year, and not just Catholic men - sadly, as we know, women are capable of pedophilia, too. 

And if priests prefer to break the seal of the confessional rather than risk imprisonment, Catholics could feel justified in not confessing any sins to such priests. In other words, they would no longer be able to practise their faith. 

And priests will no longer be able to preach their faith freely, either. Because any priest who makes himself known - as a certain Cardinal Pell did, for offending the sensitivities of LGBTQ+ people - by preaching or teaching that their ways (or the ways of abortionists, or Planned Parenthood, or euthanasia proponents, or Freemasons) are evil, is likely to be targeted and trapped by the fuzz, as Cardinal Pell was.

Brother Alexis Bugnolo (Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate and author of the 'From Rome' blog) advises priests to protect themselves by declaring publicly that they will not abide by this law, in order to prevent loss of confidence in the clergy among the faithful during the administration of the sacrament.

 FEBRUARY 17, 2020 FROM ROME EDITOR 8 COMMENTS

Priests may also refuse absolution to anyone confessing such a sin if the penitent will not agree to self-report and sign a contract authorizing the priest to report him. St Alphonsus de Liguori, Doctor of the Church, counselled priests to refuse absolution to 'penitents' who weren't willing to make restitution or report themselves for grave crimes. 

But the fact remains that this law is iniquitous. It attacks the heart of the Church, the Eucharist, inasmuch as forgiveness of serious sin in the Sacrament of Penance is a prerequisite to the reception of the Eucharist in Holy Communion. 

Any Catholic in juridical authority or the police who assists or insists on the imposition of this evil law will incur on him or herself, as an accomplice, excommunication by Canon 1329.

Can Australians depend on their bishops to declare an intention of  imposing excommunication on anyone who enforces this law? Remember, they've lost their leader, Cardinal Pell, himself locked away in solitary confinement on charges trumped up by this very same police force of Victoria, for crimes only an idiot or a malevolent would find credible.

So it's sickening too, to read in Cathnews, 'Australia's most frequently visited Catholic website', no fewer than three articles on the 'disgraced' Cardinal Pell's impending final appeal, including a related story from the Vatican on his original conviction, with not the slightest reference to his need of prayers, or the need of prayer for the Church throughout Australia, as evidenced by the heinous law in the State of Victoria which ironically came into effect the very same day.

The Catholic Church in Australia is now under legal persecution. But we know from two thousand millenia of history what persecution does for the Catholic Church. 

Persecution produces prophets. And saints.




vi

DOES THE POPE MEAN WHAT HE SEEMS TO SAY? IS HE EVEN A GOOD CATHOLIC?

To comment, please open your gmail account, use my email address, Facebook, Messenger or Twitter. Scroll down for other comments.

There we were on Wednesday, thinking that Pope Francis had given married priests and priestesses the go-by, and thanking God for it.

But many traditional Catholics will by now have smelt a rat. Was it too good to be true? 

We didn't have to wait long for doubts to seep in; we surely suspected the worst when neo-Cardinal Michael Czerny got up on his hind legs at the press conference following the release of Querida Amazonia ('Beloved Amazon', for the benefit of any non-Spanish speaking faithful hereabouts) and declared (if one may use such an assertive verb for the cardinal's meretricious flim-flam) that the matter is not “closed” and remains “unresolved,” part of the “synodal process,” which is a “journey” along a “long road". 

Do you suspect this man might be a Jesuit, like the pope who - instead of Jesus Christ - would appear to be his master? You're right. Czerny told the press that while the Synod's Final Document is not strictly magisterial, it has a “certain moral authority” and that to “ignore it would be a lack of obedience to the Holy Father’s legitimate authority.” Well, of course he'd give the final document 'considerable weight': it recorded the worthy bishops' two-thirds vote in favour of permanent married deacons in the Amazon Basin.

Oh, but hang on: while on the one hand according to the cardinal to ignore the final document of the Synod would be disobedient, on the other hand "to find one or other point difficult could not be considered a lack of faith…” 

So we're supposed to obey it, even though it's not magisterial and even if there are bits of it which in faith we can't accept? Que?

And then in La Civilta Cattolica, close papal adviser - yes, another Jesuit - Father Antonio Spadaro writes that, “Francis accepts (the Final Document) entirely and accompanies it, guiding its reception within the synodal journey, which is in progress and certainly cannot be said to be concluded.”

Querida Amazonia is a triumph of Jesuitical persiflage. Although appearing to rule out married priests, and priestesses, it goes all around the houses to say so, and lectures us on how to save the planet instead of souls. 

It's perhaps worth giving Cardinal Czerny's eloquence more space: “So the particular proposals, on many different levels, different scopes and even of different kinds of importance, remain on the table as proposals of the synod which he encourages the Church in the Amazon and the Church everywhere to read and appreciate, to benefit from and apply, in proportion in the reality in which they find themselves,” he said. 

Can you believe it? Dah-de-dah-de-dah.

But in comparison with some of the 'poetry' quoted - in a pontifical document, for heaven's sake - Czerny sounds terrific. How about this:

"Make the river your blood
Then plant yourself,
blossom and grow:
let your roots sink into the ground
forever and ever,
and then at last
become a canoe,
a skiff, a raft,
soil, a jug,
a farmhouse and a man”.

Yes indeed, this doggerel comes to the faithful in an apostolic exhortation by the Roman pontiff. It all reminds us of nothing more than, "Let your words be yes, yes: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil" (Mt 5, 37).  

Has the Church been thrown a bone? Is Querida Amazonia calculated to soothe the sorely-tried nerves of traditional Catholics  who are marshalling throughout the world in ever-increasing numbers to resist this pontificate, supported by the usus antiquior and their Saviour in humbly kneeling to receive Him on the tongue?

Pope Francis is too cunning and subtle by half; he would not want to go down in history as having precipitated a schism overtly, as by admitting married men to  priesthood and ordaining deaconesses in contradiction of two millenia of Church teaching, he surely would. 

No. Instead, he:

• makes a token gesture towards 'prayer'
• snuggles up to the world's greatest proponents of abortion and population control like Jeffrey Sachs
• says the Church must obey the United Nations (since when did the Bride of Christ have to kow-tow to the world?)
• has henchmen like Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, sit by sniggering while Sachs declares Donald Trump, the most pro-life, Christian US president in history, as the world's public enemy No 1 - at the Vatican. Way to go, Bergoglio! As some - surely not moi - would say.

+Sorondo, by the way, states that "those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese” and has proclaimed the Communist state of China as “extraordinary ... You do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs”. Instead, there is a “positive national conscience”.  

And US presidential Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders - who supports partial-birth abortion - calls Pope Francis a socialist, and as a socialist himself he means that in the nicest possible way. But how come? Pope Pius XI has stated that, "No one can be a good Catholic and a socialist". 

To ask "Is the Pope a Catholic?"  used to be a joke. But now, with Bernie Sanders' word for it, we're quite justified in asking seriously, as Michael Matt of the Remnant newspaper points out, "Is the Pope a good Catholic?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBUHhQrct_M&feature=emb_title

It's all very diverting - and we suspect it's meant to be, to divert our attention while the German prelature, apparently reeling at this apparent roadblock on their 'Synodal Path' to an end to celibacy, regroups, rebounds and re-addresses their agenda, and gets on imperturbably to implement it by using their wealth and influence on the two-thirds of the world's bishops who agree with them - New Zealand's lacklustre lot among them. 

"They do it with mirrors", as Miss Marple once said. This sham pontificate is reflected in priests who continue to turn their backs to the Lord in the tabernacle, and stroll away from Him exposed in the monstrance to have a nice cup of tea, who celebrate Our Lady of Lourdes and her message of prayer and penance with a Pool Party, who cancel Hours of Adoration; and the bishops who close Catholic churches (and Catholic schools, but what good purpose do they serve, anyway?) and allow one scandal, like Communion in the hand, to succeed another like sex abuse, in their Dioceses - as for instance in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

The whole Amazon Thing, Querida Amazonia and the Final Document (at last; how many reams of paper did it take?) of the Amazon Synod and the syncretism which preceded it, looks to some commentators including this one like a hand grenade chucked into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to reduce it to fragments in self-governing, faux-magisterial episcopal conferences.

"The “synodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium” would invest national episcopal conferences—in turn a novelty invented by Paul VI—with a “juridical status…  as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority…"
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/4768-inspiration-or-calculation-why-did-bergoglio-duck-married-priests-and-lady-deacons

And - red alert! - if you ferret around enough you may discover that "It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralization'."

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/october/documents/papa-francesco_20151017_50-anniversario-sinodo.html

Our chief shepherd announced on Wednesday that he "would like to officially present" (sic) the Final Document of the Synod. Take heed that in yet another of the documents he churns out relentlessly, under his apostolic constitution  Episcopalis Communio (EC) “if it is expressly approved by the Roman Pontiff, the final document [of a synod] participates in the ordinary magisterium of the Successor of Peter". 

Mark my words (I'm sounding like Sister Bernice of sometimes unhappy memory) we have not heard the last of married priests and priestesses. This pope - frankly referred to by many commentators as 'Bergoglio', so disenchanted and disillusioned are they by his guile - puts up QA as a smokescreen, behind which the liberal bishops will advance their agenda. 

Or you could say the Church is at a crossroads where there is dirty work indeed, where lulled into a false sense of security by an apparent ban on wives running presbyteries and women ironing their feminine little clerical collars, the faithful will be led on and on in this absurdly dragged-out “synodal process,” which is a “journey” along a “long road".

Yes, the pope does exhort us to pray for vocations to the priesthood (doesn't that take you back?). The point is, God never lets His Bride, the Church, lack for vocations. What She lacks is boys and men whose ears are open to His call, shut out as it is by cellphones, headphones, and assorted electronic devices. 

Just about the only time in the week you could guarantee that young guys are device-free is Mass time. Doesn't that tell you not just the reason for no 'vocations' - those shoddily celebrated 'New' Masses with the ornamentation and innovation thought necessary to make the liturgy attractive to young men, and Protestantized 'homilies' which give same absolutely no incentive to heed the call, even if they're present at Mass to hear it - but also the means to remedy the situation? 

The humble priests and lay faithful, we "the little ones" of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church must rouse ourselves now to set out seriously, not along a rose-strewn 'Synodal Path' but along the "strait and narrow way that leads to God"; that is, the way of contemplative prayer, especially in the Holy Mass, especially in the Traditional Latin Mass. 

It is only by our prayer, by many rosaries and many 'New' Masses patiently endured and fervently prayed, and many Holy Hours of contemplation that the Holy Spirit has intervened to snatch this victory, at least temporarily, from the jaws of Satan. Keep it up, faithful Catholics!  

Leaving the Gethsemane of our Church behind - and 50 years would seem long enough to have spent there, even if we like the disciples have fallen asleep on the job, which we have - we must with rosary in hand accompany Our Blessed Mother and Our Lord  Jesus Christ on the painful ascent to the Calvary of His Church - and to her resurrection.

Bruce Tichbon says:

The skilled Catholic commentators have quickly identified the apparent strategy behind the Amazon process.  Querida Amazonia creates enough confusion that the Synod's Final Document can be treated as authoritative enough for individual bishop's conferences to proceed towards married and female priests.  It will happen in a way that Rome can seemingly dodge the doctrinal issues.  The laity and a few in the hierarchy (who are now treated as mostly as dissidents) will point out the screaming flaws but Rome will ignore them.

The responsibility of Pope Francis is to provide clear doctrinal road signs.  Instead he covers the road with land mines.  Is this helping to save souls?

I say:

Except for your last para, I think that's exactly what this unskilled commentator said, but perhaps not clearly enough. Thank you for making the point that the responsibility of the pope is to provide clear doctrinal road signs. which I intended to add today anyway, after hearing Father Laisney's sermon yesterday. 

At the sung High Mass at St Anthony's Whanganui,  Father Francois Laisney SSPX stated that Pope Francis failed to fulfill his his first duty as pope: his responsibility to teach.