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

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" 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