BETTER THAN A BAN: MORE MASSES, SMALLER CONGREGATIONS

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God's vengeance wasn't long in coming. Wednesday night, in  passing a world-beater abortion law, New Zealand MPs enact no-holds-barred combat on the unborn; Friday morning, NZ Bishops ban all Masses.

As Simon O'Connor stated in the coda to his speech opposing this frightful law: "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, saith the Lord" ((Rom 12;19).

Holy Mass is the force which keeps this silly, secular world turning. Without Holy Mass, the world would cease to be. Because His Church has proven undeserving, the Lord is now depriving us of the unimaginable benefits of the Eucharist.

I have long said that because weekday Masses are almost completely ignored by Sunday Mass-goers, and Sunday Masses almost completely ignored by weekday school-goers, our parish doesn't deserve a priest. The Lord is telling us now it doesn't deserve the Mass even - and neither, apparently, does the rest of New Zealand.

By its almost total silence the NZ Conference of Catholic Bishops (NZCCB) let that abortion legislation happen, and now that it's happened, they slap Parliament on the wrist with a wet bus ticket.

The bishops were "deeply disappointed", and "dismayed", "absolutely." The new law "will fail many women."

Contrast that with US Bishops' spokesman, Archbishop Joseph Naumann, who said of New York's similar version, "this legislation is evil, pure and simple", and called all Catholics "to fight with renewed vigour for the unborn". No such rallying call for Kiwi Catholics.

We know that at least one NZ bishop (now resigned - sex abuse) recoiled from the very idea of 'fighting' or militancy in the Church. He found it distasteful. It seemed he'd never heard of the Church Militant.

The Church Militant is us, the Church on earth as opposed to the Church Suffering (in Purgatory) and The Church Triumphant (in Heaven). Now more than ever before we must prove ourselves fighting fit by soldiering on in prayer.

This is not the time to empty holy water fonts, blithely excuse the faithful from their Sunday obligation and ban Masses! 

This is the time, with the world visited by such a divine chastisement, to increase the number of Masses celebrated - and count heads coming in the door maybe, but really, who's going to enforce the 100 rule? Will the police really pop round several times a Sunday? 

Faithful Poland's on to it: 

tps://www.lifesitenews.com/news/polish-bishops-call-for-more-masses-in-response-to-coronavirus-unimaginable-to-close-churches

"Poland’s bishops have called for more Masses as a response to the coronavirus epidemic. 

Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, has asked that extra Masses be made available so that the congregations will be smaller. " 

Simple as that. Is it too hard for our bishops?

"Just as hospitals treat diseases of the body, so the Church serves to, among other things, treat illness of the soul; that is why it is unimaginable that we not pray in our churches.” 

The response of Polish Catholic newspaper Polonia Christiana to the news of Gądecki’s request was “Thank God!” 

Currently there are only 22 cases of coronavirus in Poland, a contrast to Italy, where over 9,000 people have the virus, and hundreds have died. In Italy, among other measures, people are being asked to stay one to two meters (i.e roughly three to six-and-a-half feet) away from one another. 

Italian historian Roberto de Mattei has described how Pope St. Gregory the Great responded to a deadly plague during his pontificate. After his election in the year 590, Gregory led a penitential procession of the faithful throughout Rome.

“While the multitude traversed the city, in sepulchral silence, the pestilence reached such a point of fury, that in the brief space of an hour, eighty people fell dead to the ground. 

"However, Gregory didn’t cease for a second in exhorting the people to continue praying and insisted that the picture of the Virgin painted by St. Luke and kept in Santa Maria Maggiore, be brought to the front of the procession,” de Mattei recounted.

"The plague of the 6th century was seen as a punishment. After the procession, Gregory saw how angels settled themselves in a circle around Our Lady’s picture, and, raising his eyes, he “saw at the top of the castle an angel, who, after drying his sword dripping with blood, put it back in its sheath, as a sign that the punishment was over.”

This evening our parish was supposed to hold a Holy Hour for these intentions:

• for rain, and for farmers and gardeners stressed by the drought
• for people stressed by Covid-19 (and exploited to persecute faithful Catholics by the NZ Catholic Bishops' illicit ban on Communion on the tongue)
• in reparation and repentance for the abortion legislation, licensing unprecedented babykilling. 

Just before Exposition was due to start, I knocked on the presbytery door and asked, "Father, are we going ahead with Adoration?" (I could see he wasn't going anywhere.)

"It's just personal prayer," said Father. "They say." I got the gist. 

Eight parishioners showed up. Which was better than I'd expected.

Deo gratias.

To return to the theme of God's vengeance:

How badly do we have to behave, and how awful do things have to get, before we face up to the truth and accept that God, being Infinite Love, is also Infinite Justice? Should we be surprised that now, in addition to the bishops' cruel injustice of deprivation of Communion on the tongue - the norm - we are now deprived of the Mass? 

And how do we react to that truth, if/when we adjust to it?

Not by banning Masses! 

However, we must accept this chastisement, this privation, as a time of purification for us as individuals and as Church, a time of suffering which will call forth saints in the Divine Will, saints greater than those who have gone before us. 

Bishop Athanasius Schneider asks:

"How should Catholics react and behave in such a situation? 

We have to accept this situation from the hands of Divine Providence as a trial, which will bring us a greater spiritual benefit than if we had not experienced such a situation. 

One can understand this situation as a divine intervention in the current unprecedented crisis of the Church. God uses now the merciless world “sanitary dictatorship” to purify the Church, to awaken the responsible in the Church, and in first place the pope and the episcopate, from the illusion of a nice modern world, from the temptation to flirt with the world, from the immersion in temporal and earthly things. 

The powers of this world have now forcibly separated the faithful from their shepherds. The clergy is ordered by governments to celebrate liturgy without the people."

https://catholiccitizens.org/views/91385/we-glory-in-tribulations-living-the-faith-when-public-worship-is-prohibited/

Just track the progress of coronavirus and its concomitant 'sanitary dictatorship':

• Coronavirus began in China, where a Communist regime under Mao Tse Tung was responsible for the biggest mass murder in history, and "intensity" of religious persecution (of the tens of millions of converts to Christianity) not seen "since the Cultural Revolution" is linked to the Vatican's secret deal with the Communist government
• Coronavirus proceeded to Iran, where the underground Christian churches (with thousands of converts from Islam) have been similarly severely persecuted 
• Coronavirus then focused on Italy, a once Catholic country where a generation ago women commonly had four or more children and now average less than two; and the heart of the Catholic Church, Rome, where the Vatican is plagued by clerical sodomy and financial scandals, where traditional prelates are demoted, traditional Catholics ridiculed, and where last year pagan gods were publicly worshipped in the presence of the Pope. At least 28 priests have died of coronavirus now in Northern Italy alone.

And how does the bug get around? How does it travel? On international air flights and cruise ships. In other words, it's piggybacking round the world with the affluent - tourists, bureaucrats, or students who choose to spend their money on air tickets in preference to the putative children they choose not to have - and lots of priests and prelates.

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892) was a high ranking official of the Anglican church and achieved notoriety when he converted to Catholicism in the 19th century. He was a staunch supporter of papal infallibility and a close friend of Pope Leo XIII.

He had this to say:

“The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts very new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. 

"First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatize from the Faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism.

"Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible; hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. 

"Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.”