THE POPE IS NOT A CREATOR OF TRUTH

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It's a 'Pandora's Box', says Cardinal Burke. 'A toxic nightmare' said Cardinal Pell. 'A hostile takeover of the Catholic Church' says Cardinal Muller.

For many New Zealand Catholics, the Synod may turn out to be a Rubicon. If they stay with Francis church - as the parallel institution under construction since Vatican II (and even before then) is aptly called - until and through October's Synod they will find themselves stranded in mass apostasy as in the Arian crisis, and risk never finding their way back into the Body of Christ. Which would be hellish. Literally. https://catholicherald.co.uk/pandoras-box-cardinal-burke-pens-foreword-to-book-denouncing-synod-on-synodality/

One NZ Catholic crossed a personal Rubicon this morning, walking out of her N O parish Mass when Father interpreted "Whatever you bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven" as meaning the supposed pope's supposed right to change the Church. She says she won't be going back.

So that would mean two and a half-hours' drive every Sunday to attend a Latin Mass where priests of the Society of St Pius X preach the Gospel and Tradition and faithfulness to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, where the pews are stuffed full of parents with  children and babies for three Sunday Masses, and where she can go to confession (if she's early enough to get a seat in the confessional queue-pew) during Mass.

Her local parish liturgy, in the church where she made her first Holy Communion and was married, features:

• altar girls who come with not-so-sotto voce instructions from Father during Masshttps://onepeterfive.com/should-girls-serve-at-the-altar-a-former-altar-girl-weighs-in/
• hail-fellow-well met-ness in the church before and after Mass and at the Sign of Peace
• Communion in the hand with its dangers of sacrilege and blasphemy
• heretical ditties
• a home-grown 'Gloria' which doesn't make rational sense, never mind theological
• no children (except for altar girls and a boy or two, but only during term time and maybe a couple of Philippino infants)
• a noisy, ineffectual heat pump 
• Third World toilet facilities (with an ever-dwindling congregation, no funds to improve or replace them)  
• perennial puddles in the carpark (ditto)
• Prayers of the Faithful directed at the goddess Earth for saving the planet with responses in Te Reo for the three Maori in the congregation
• heretical homilies
• a tabernacle placed offside and pretty much ignored
• A Salvador Dali 'masterpiece' replicated in tapestry and donated by a Protestant, adorning the altar frontal. 
  
  
  

  

  Dali's 'Sacrament of the Last Supper' as the frontal for an altar on which Christ dies on the Cross

  
  
  
  
  

So why should any of this bother anyone? It seems not to bother the rest of the congregation. But it flies in the face of lex orandi, lex credendi (we pray as we believe), the principle which for 2000+ years sustained the Church in the devout celebration of the Latin Mass, but has slowly but surely been subsumed by the Novus Ordo and progressively progressive pontificates, culminating in that of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who to all intents and purposes is demolishing the Body of Christ and substituting for Her his own parallel Francis church, to front 'spiritually' for the WEF, the UN and the WHO. 

The way the Mass is celebrated at the Novus Ordo church in question belies the Real Presence. If congregants truly believed in the Presence of Our Lord, God Almighty, He Who made us and redeemed us by His bloody death on the Cross, Who has given us "every good thing", Who will judge each one of us individually at the hour of our death and consign us to heaven, purgatory or hell, and who is re-presented in His Passion at every Mass, not one of the features listed above would be in evidence.

Most telling evidence of lack of belief in the Real Presence is manifested in the fact that between Sundays the church is deserted. 

There's one weekday Mass - attended by 2 or 3 parishioners - and a Friday Mass ("just for the school children", said Father, but 1 or 2 adults go anyway), and monthly Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament (a parishioner's initiative, attended by 6 or 7). Apart from that, the church is empty.  Usually locked, and except for one daily visitor, empty.

These post-conciliar changes in the way we worship are the reason for Catholic churches emptied and closed by our bishops, all over New Zealand. And yet a parish priest ordained in the Latin Rite now maintains that Our Lord's words to St Peter, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven (Mt 18:18), gave popes licence to make such changes.

This is not to assign blame to the parish priest or his people. No. The belief of priests and people since the Second Vatican Council has been eroded by drastically inadequate catechesis, which is ultimately the responsibility of our bishops - who currently must be mulling over their eagerly-awaited statement clarifying for Catholics the extremely limited choices they face in election 2023, given the fact that none of the main parties qualifies for their vote. 

The bishops seem to be relying on Social Justice Week, brought to us per kind favour of Caritas which partners with Caritas Internationalis and its ties to an organisation promoting abortion and LGBTQ, to keep Catholics entertained in the meantime. But we digress. 

Citing the Second Vatican Council, Bishop (Athanasius) Schneider ... reminds the faithful that “the pope is not the creator of the truth, of the faith and of the sacramental discipline of the Church,” but rather its servant.

+Schneider also revisits the teaching on the papacy from the First Vatican Council in Pastor Aeternus, which says that the papal charism “does not mean that they [the popes] might make known some new doctrine, but that, by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles”. 

The bishop is also critical of the “ultramontanism” that arose in the 19th and 20th centuries which has “reached its peak in our days and created an insane pope-centrism and popolatry. 

In seeking to explain the dark night that the Church is now enduring, His Excellency said that God has “permitted this current extraordinary doctrinal and moral confusion in the Church” so that when the crisis has abated “the truth will shine brighter and the Church will become more spiritually beautiful” — especially for married couples, families, and popes. ”https://onepeterfive.com/bishop-schneider-kind-blasphemy-sinners-demand-access-holy-communion/

Way back in the '50s or '60s Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen was moved to ask, rhetorically, "Who's going to save our Church?" His response: "It's not our bishops, it's not our priests, it's not our religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. 

"Your mission is to see that the priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and the religious act like religious." 

Obviously the people of  +Sheen's time failed in their mission. Now, when the crisis is dire, let us not fail in ours. 

 

There comes a moment in our life when, through the disposition of Providence, we are faced with a decisive choice for the future of the Church and for our eternal salvation. I speak of the choice between understanding the error into which practically all of us have fallen, almost always without evil intentions, and wanting to continue to look the other way or justify ourselves.https://onepeterfive.com/vigano-vatican-ii-marked-the-beginning-of-a-false-parallel-church/

 

The Gospel narrative foretells the rejection of the Jews who were ungrateful toward Him who came to cure them, while the Gentiles have been faithful. For among the ten lepers, nine were Jews and only one was not.