FAITHFUL PRIESTS URGED TO DEFY ILLEGAL ORDERS PROHIBITING MASS

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Oh, cue in the violins

Right on time for Ash Wednesday, Stalinda hits the red alert. 4 whole hours' warning for lockdown in Auckland and 'Level 2' for the restof us. 

And immediately our Catholic shepherds - Cardinal John Dew and all NZ's bishops - abandon their flocks. Unbelievable. Here we go again.  

'Ash Wednesday on Sunday! COVID continues to disrupt', cried that Marist rag, CathNews. 

The bishops leave us to observe Ash Wednesday, which heralds Lent, the most solemn time of the liturgical year, on our own. Mostly. They dithered for a couple of hours on Monday morning and then left it up to your diocese and/or parish priest to decide. 

It's diabolical, and I use the word advisedly.

Ss Peter and Paul, Puhoi

The Warkworth/Puhoi parish newsletter (with my emphases), which shot across my bows yesterday, is probably fairly typical of parish priests' response to this dereliction of duty by the bishops:

Warkworth / Puhoi Parish

15th February 2021

Dear Parishioners,

Yesterday evening we received the news that Auckland will go into Covid Alert Level 3 until Wednesday 17th February, 11:59pm.

Under Alert Level 3:

• Both Holy Name and Saints Peter & Paul churches will be closed.
• NO ASH WEDNESDAY SERVICES.
• All Parish activities are cancelled.
• Remember to check in on your neighbours and other parishioners – particularly those you know may need support in the form of shopping or a friendly voice on the end of the phone.

Sunday Mass continues to be televised on Shine TV on Sundays at 2pm.
Shine TV is found on Freeview Channel 25 or Sky Channel 201
Online resources:

• Auckland Catholic Diocese Website: https://www.aucklandcatholic.org.nz/ On this you’ll find links to prayer and liturgy resources.
• Facebook: Bishop Pat Dunn: https://www.facebook.com/bishoppatrick
  Bishop Michael Gielen: https://www.facebook.com/BishopGielen

Support: If you, or someone you know needs help please don’t hesitate to reach out.

• Parish Office – Fr Brian Lange  09 425 8545
• If you have no access to other support networks you can phone Auckland Emergency Management 0800 22 22 96
• St Vincent de Paul – 09 815 6122 or email: auckland@stvinnies.co.nz

Alert Level 2: When we return to Level 2 we will continue to follow the Ministry of Health guidelines. This is likely to mean that we can return to Mass with numbers limited to 100 and there will be a need to contact trace and clean the churches after each Mass.

Please share any relevant information with other parishioners, particularly those who do not have access to the internet.

Stay home, be healthy and be kind.

 May God bless you all.

Fr Brian Lange

"Good grief !!  What a lot of totalitarian fuss over the flu !!" Was the reaction of the reader of this blog who sent it my way. 

My suggestion to  Warkworth/Puhoi parishioners would be, "Why don’t you all ‘reach out’ to the good Fr Brian Lange for ‘support’, viz your most important ‘support’ as a Catholic, i.e. Holy Mass and Communion, and the distribution of ashes?  

After all, Fr Lange is literally asking for it!"

A Warkworth/Puhoi parishioner reckons that Fr Lange "thinks like we do. He would be in total agreement with us on this". 

And here's where it gets really interesting. The blog reader suggested that Fr Lange is under episcopal directions.

I replied that Father Lange is under no obligation to follow episcopal directions such as these (to cancel Masses). "He should resist," I said. 

Said blog reader pointed out that priests take a vow of obedience. I replied that priests are not obliged to obey bad bishops or bad orders. “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29), I said.

Said blog reader is a faithful Catholic and fierce defender of the faith. As such, his reply was  astonishing. As a NO Catholic, however, not so astonishing. He asserted that "The vow of obedience is not along the lines of “when I agree with the orders”.

"No," I said, "the vow of obedience is along the lines of “when God agrees with the orders.”  

As the great Saint Teresa of Jesus, Doctor of the Church, taught her nuns: "The one exception (to obedience) is an order involving sin, which of course God cannot want." That is always the case. No Christian should ever obey an order involving sin, or to put it another way: an unjust law is no law at all.

By Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen OCD - one of the best books to counter the NO effect

"The Catholic Church has taught from time immemorial that lex iniusta non est lex, an unjust law is no law at all — and it should not be obeyed," writes canonist Catherine Caridi, creator of the popular blog Canon Law Made Easy.

A Rome-based expert in canon law, Caridi is urging faithful clerics to defy illegal orders prohibiting the faithful from attending Holy Mass and receiving the sacraments.

Bishops' Conferences have "absolutely no authority" to make decrees canceling all public Masses, Dr. Caridi states. "The law is clear ... according to canon 455 it [such a decree] is invalid.""If priests are being told in your country that 'all public Masses must be canceled, by order of the bishops' conference,' this directive has no legal weight and should be disregarded," emphasizes the canonist. 

 

These bishops might be voting against the will of God 

The doughty Bishop Athanasius Schneider (where would we be without him and +Vigano?) quotes "the following stirring words of God (which) are doubtless applicable to those bishops who in this tribulation, caused by the sanitary dictatorship, denied their sheep the spiritual food of the sacraments, while feeding themselves with the food of the sacraments: 

“Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. …

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves” (Ez. 34:2-10). 

And with The Great Reset looming (assisted immeasurably by such shepherds) the Lord God may put a stop to feeding themselves and their sheep sooner than we think.  

The lockdown news broke on the feast of Saints Faustina and Jovita, brothers of noble birth, laymen who "preached Christianity fearlessly while their bishop lay in hiding". 

That day (Monday), a lay woman and reader of this blog went to Mass at St Mary's Palmerston North, and was denied Communion on the tongue. After Mass she prayed the Rosary on her own, out loud.

"Where is the charity?" she asked. "I've been left high and dry by the priest and parishioners (who usually join in the Rosary). Insensibility to one's neighbour is a sin against charity for priests and lay people but above all it's an offence to Our Blessed Mother, period! And the priests wil be judged more severely." 

She called on her favorite saints to join her in the Rosary, "to make up for the apathy, the indifference, the lukewarmness of souls. You would think under Level Two they would have been there on their knees but it looks like therefore, the Greater Chastisement is to come.

"We should call on Cardinal Dew to ask the whole Catholic Church in New Zealand to pray the spiritual weapon of the Rosary to eliminate COVID-19 as they did at the Battle of Lepanto!"

Our Lady, the Rosary and the Battle of Lepanto

Of course it's not COVID-19 which needs elimination (pace, dear reader) any more than any normal seasonal flu needs elimination. And it's not COVID-19 which "continues to disrupt" (pace, poor, pinko CathNews) it's Stalinda Ardern and her international cohort of globalist, Communist liars and propagandists - eagerly urged on by our witless bishops - who continue to "disrupt". 

CathNews, which seems to be our only source of information (does the NZ Conference of Catholic Bishops think we're not all that interested?) says:

If the Alert Level changes back to Level 1 on Wednesday night, we will look at having the belling and distribution of the ashes at Masses next Sunday”, Dew wrote.

Meanwhile, there will be no liturgical events nor parish gatherings in the Archdiocese, including weekday Masses, until the Alert Level changes back to Level 1.

Note how +Dew avoids the word 'Mass'. Now, in +Dew's book, the re-enactment of Christ's Sacrifice on Calvary is reduced to a 'liturgical event". 

All weekday and Ash Wednesday Masses are to be postponed in the Auckland region until at least Thursday”, Dunn said on Facebook.

Oh, so now the Auckland Archdiocese might celebrate 'Ash Thursday'. Or 'Ash Friday'. Is +Dunn serious? Christchurch Diocese is asked by +Martin "to sacrifice the liturgical celebration of Lent." No Ash Wednesday 'liturgies'. But he allows that Catholics can still begin a time of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. He has even gone so far as "to distribute a prayer resource to parishes for use at home. The resource will be available today to anyone who calls into a parish to collect one." +Martin is being "kind".

In Dunedin Diocese, no 'public gatherings over 100 people'. Palmerston North, still bishopless, says parishes can do their own thing. As one PN parish priest told CathNews, “We don’t need a bishop, we’re getting on nicely as we are.”

The Bishops met early Monday morning to discuss the latest Covid-19 alert level restrictions and given the limited time between the Prime Minister’s announcement and Ash Wednesday decided to respond best they could for each diocese.

Their first concern was the safety of people.

https://cathnews.co.nz/2021/02/15/ash-wednesday/

The bishops should know their first concern must be the safety of people's souls. If they don't know that, they shouldn't be bishops. If they do know it, then their first concern is obviously something else altogether. Any guesses on what that might be? 

"By such anti-pastoral measures ... bishops deprived the sheep from the spiritual food and strength which only the sacraments can provide. Instead of good shepherds ... bishops converted into rigid public officials. Those bishops revealed themselves to be imbued with a naturalistic view, to care only for the temporal and bodily life, forgetting their primary and irreplaceable task to care for the eternal and spiritual life" - Bishop Schneider (on 2020 lockdowns). 

Our NZ Bishops' response this time round, early on Monday morning while distraught restaurateurs were binning their steak tartares and anguished cake-makers trashing 3-tiered confections, should have been this:  

We will not comply. We will not cancel Masses. 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (detail)

Way back in May last year, Bishop Athanasius Schneider advised that “The lay faithful should speak and respectfully demand the return of public Masses. “I ask you, please, to importune the shepherds, to disturb them, all of us shepherds, so that we can give you the milk of grace, of doctrine and of leadership,” pleaded Bishop Schneider.  “Importune (us)!”

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bishop-schneider-lockdown-is-a-trial-that-can-bring-about-great-spiritual-benefit

NZ Catholics can expect however, on past performance, that our shepherd bishops will not be disturbed. The $60,000 question is, will our shepherd priests roll over and acquiesce to their bishops?

 

Bishop Athanasius Schneider said that bishops who have “directly prohibited their faithful access to the sacraments” during the coronavirus crisis have behaved as “fake shepherds.”

Schneider said that the almost worldwide ban on the public celebration of Holy Mass had made it seem as though “the ruthless historical persecutions of the Church were brought back” and that there had developed “[a]n atmosphere of the catacombs ... with priests celebrating Holy Mass in secrecy with a group of the faithful.”

“In the time of the plague, which had an incomparably higher mortality rate as the current epidemic of Covid-19, St. Charles Borromeo increased the number of the public celebrations of Holy Mass,” Schneider explained.

Schneider also called on Pope Francis and bishops around the world to understand the public cessation of Holy Mass and sacramental Holy Communion during the Covid-19 epidemic as a “divine rebuke” for the liturgical crisis in the Church for the past fifty years.

He said that the cessation of Holy Mass was “so unique and serious that one can discover behind all of this a deeper meaning.”

“This event has come almost fifty years after the introduction of Communion in the hand (in 1969) and a radical reform of the rite of Mass (in 1969/1970) with its protestantising elements (Offertory prayers) and its horizontal and instructional style of celebration (freestyle moments, celebration in a closed circle and towards the people).

The praxis of Communion in the hand over the past fifty years has led to an unintentional and intentional desecration of the Eucharistic Body of Christ on an unprecedented scale,” he said.

“The current cessation of public Holy Mass and Holy Communion could be understood by the Pope and bishops as a divine rebuke for the past fifty years of Eucharistic desecrations and trivializations and, at the same time, as a merciful appeal for an authentic Eucharistic conversion of the entire Church.” 

He called on Pope Francis to “issue concrete liturgical norms” in order to address irreverence to the Holy Eucharist, including making ad orientem celebration of the Eucharistic prayer compulsory and forbidding the reception of Communion in the hand.

Schneider concluded his address -

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bishop-schneider-bishops-who-banned-sacraments-during-pandemic-behaved-as-fake-shepherds - 

by speaking of the importance of listening to voices of faithful laity, who he said have been “humiliated and despised in the midst of the Church by an arrogant and undoubtedly Pharisaic clericalism.”  

“These little lovers and defenders of the Eucharist will renew the life of the Church in our day and these words of Jesus are rightly and deservedly applied to them: 

 “I bless you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have kept these things hidden to the wise and intelligent and you have revealed them to the little ones” (Mt 11, 25).