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What's going on here? Last April, when Christ's supposed Vicar, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, first locked the doors of St Peter's in obedience to the civil authorities, the hierarchy tamely followed suit, locking churches and hiding in their palaces and presbyteries.
And there were howls of outrage all over the world from Catholics denied the Mass, the Sacraments and the Lord Himself in the Blessed Sacrament - because the papacy and priesthood exist to serve the people.
But now as we endure lockdown lunacy all over again it's taken as read - literally, in the parish newsletter - that Father should 'isolate' in his presbytery and have meals dropped off by kind parishioners who have no hope of him saying Mass on Sunday, let alone the Sacrament of the Sick if they're dying of Covid (not jolly likely).
Of course they want to accompany their priest, especially if he is elderly. But the tables have been turned. Now, the shepherd whose vocation is to feed his flock is being fed by them.
As priests themselves pray, in the Divine Office for Pastors:"Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Mt 5:15,16).
And - by no means unrelated - in the same newsletter, the current Pro-life Facts bulletin giving the horrific details of the Abortion Legislation Act passed by Ardern, Little&Co, Death Dealers to the Nation (demonically enough, on the Vigil of the Annunciation) is edited down to the single appalling fact that now, "a late term abortion may be provided if a qualified health professional considers it clinically appropriate". It's like, go for it! In a Catholic parish newsletter. Unbelievable.
The space saved is devoted to 'Covid-19 Safety Protocols' and a puff piece from Cardinal Dew about his healthy walking-wearing-a-mask habits and how it's 'an act of love' to get the ClotShot which has killed thousands and maimed many more.
Moving right along we arrive at another 'Catholic' publication, CathNews, the mouthpiece of the Marist Fathers. CathNews can't wait to tell us how the new Covid sign-in regulations will apply to Massgoers.
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| The circus comes to town |
Head Prefect Hipkins will ping churches $300-$1000 if they fail to keep records of people's visits either by scanning QR codes with the Covid-19 Tracer App or manually signing in.
A reader of this blog has been kindly informed by her husband that he has installed the app on her phone. She said thank you nicely but forebore to say she had no intention of using it. Oh but, you say, then if her church is pinged she should pay! "An unjust law is no law at all" (St Augustine, whose feastday is tomorrow), she would say, and might add "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
The Parish priest at St Mary of the Angels, Wellington’s central Catholic church, says the ‘common good’ demands churches get involved.
“St Mary’s relies on volunteers, and in the interest of the common good, we will do what we can to comply with government requirements,” said Fr Kevin Mowbray SM.
See? An order devoted to Our Blessed Mother Mary. Marist. Marxist now, nearly. Christ and His Church demand not the socialist ideology of "the common good", but that individuals save their souls.
... Palmerston North Cathedral priest, Dr Joseph Grayland told CathNews that the speed of the Delta variant outbreak is dramatic and the Cathedral parish will do all it can to aid in contact tracing.
Grayland said that most people already use the current sign-in system.
‘I have not seen anybody refuse to sign in when asked, but I have no way of knowing whether everybody has signed in or just waved their phone at the QR code,” Grayland says.
Our reader would like to assure Fr Grayland that if she were in the PN Cathedral parish (and she thanks God she's not) she would not be waving her phone. Because that would be deception. A lie.
Grayland admits his parish volunteer greeters are currently not yet equipped to deal with someone who refuses to sign in and there is little doubt there will be new skills to learn and procedures to follow.
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| Our Lady of Lourdes Palmerston North |
We can imagine. Karate, kickboxing, taekwondo ... Seriously, what opportunities for growth in the Church bureaucracy, which in Palmerston North at least is already somewhat oversized.
Note, in all of this, no appeal for prayer, for devotion to Our Blessed Mother and the saints, no vestige of a supernatural perspective. Would we get more Catholicity perhaps, from the papabile tipped to take the papacy when Bergoglio resigns as he's supposed to be doing, shortly, for reasons of age (nearly 85, same as Pope Benedict XVI when he 'resigned') and ill-health?
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| Bergoglio and Tagle - a lot in common |
Luis Antonio Tagle,a Filipino, is Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and so New Zealand as a mission country comes within his purview.
What does he think of the 'pandemic'? Just the fact that he calls it a 'pandemic', when world deaths have not risen since 2019, is more than a little offputting. He was educated by the Jesuits and has run Caritas International: same.
He had been asked what people who feel more anxious, stressed, and depressed due to the Covid-19 crisis could do to help themselves.
Accepting the current reality of the pandemic is a key way to cope, he said during a broadcast of “The Jesuit Hour,” a Jesuit Communications online talk show.
When life is not exactly as we want it to be it can help if people turn themselves towards ‘acceptance’, he explained.
“While we are here, let’s accept the situation and limitations, the fears and doubts of the situation today.
“If we accept the inconveniences in faith, we could get out of this as a better humanity.”
Humanity, note. A cardinal is surely supposed to point the way to divinity. It's the Novus Ordo effect: everything is predicated on the here and now, rather than on heaven and hell, where we are all without exception headed in the end, for all eternity.
Can we not see how our how our sense of right and wrong is gradually being stifled and suffocated - as in the acceptance now, after not much more than a year, of the fact that there are no Masses celebrated during this most dire time yet in the history of humanity; that meanwhile Father can enjoy his 'isolation' in his presbytery; that we can advise parishioners that they need only one medical professional (who could be a dentist or a chiropodist) to authorise killing your nearly full-term baby?
That we can submit to the illogical diktats of an evil Government, tamely wearing masks and waving our phones about at the command of Ardern, Little&Co, Death Dealers to the Nation?
Do we imagine that the Germans suddenly found themselves overnight complicit in the murder of six million Jews? No. All the way through the '30s and '40s they gradually had their innate sense of morality subdued and ultimately snuffed out by Hitler and his Nazis.
"And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Mt 20:28). |
| St Augustine of Hippo |
If you'd like to join the Transalpine Redemptorists for the Mass of St Augustine on his feast day tomorrow, at 7am, it is available online: Latin Mass Christchurch: Holy Mass - YouTube
From the
Confessions of St. Augustine, bishop
(Lib.
9,10-11:CSEL 33, 215-219)
Let us gain eternal wisdom
The day was now
approaching when my mother Monica would depart from this life; you know that
day, Lord, though we did not. She and I happened to be standing by ourselves at
a window that overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house. At the time
we were in Ostia on the Tiber. And so the two of us, all alone, were enjoying a
very pleasant conversation, "forgetting the past and pushing on to what is
ahead.." We were asking one another in the presence of the Truth - for you
are the Truth - what it would be like to share the eternal life enjoyed by the
saints, which "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, which has not even entered
into the heart of man." We desired with all our hearts to drink from the
streams of your heavenly fountain, the fountain of life.
That was the
substance of our talk, though not the exact words. But you know, O Lord, that
in the course of our conversation that day, the world and its pleasures lost
all their attraction for us. My mother said, "Son, as far as I am
concerned, nothing in this life now gives me any pleasure. I do not know why I
am still here, since I have no further hopes in this world. I did have one
reason for wanting to live a little longer: to see you become a Catholic
Christian before I died. God has lavished his gifts on me in that respect, for
I know that you have even renounced earthly happiness to be his servant. So
what am I doing here?"
Shortly, within five days or thereabouts, she fell sick with a fever. Then one day during the course of her illness she became unconscious. My brother and I rushed to her side, but she regained consciousness quickly.
We were overwhelmed with grief, but she held her gaze steadily upon us, and spoke further: "Here you shall bury your mother." I remained silent as I held back my tears. However, my brother haltingly expressed his hope that she might not die in a strange country but in her own land, since her end would be happier there.
When she heard this, her face was filled with anxiety, and she reproached him with a glance because he had entertained such earthly thoughts. Thereupon she said to both of us:
"Bury my body wherever you will; let not care of it cause you any concern. One thing only I ask you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be."
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