Thanks to Ann Barnhardt at www.barnhardt.biz  we have our first glance at the tryouts for altar servers and the new processional hymn that will be used.

Altar Server Tryouts

New Processional Hymn: Lyrics Below

Lyrics:

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man’s world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world
A-ha, ah
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It’s a rich man’s world

Seems like the old adage of “follow the money” is very appropriate for the New Bergoglian Church with an Amazon Face, a Climate Change Face, the Face of the Poor and the Face of the Migrant invaders. Distribution of wealth is simply one aspect to their socialist shill game. It really seems to me that it is a hoax perpetrated on the faithful of the Catholic Church and a ruse to garner support for the deep pockets of the UN and other Western European Governments to support their NGO’s and naturally get lost along the way to the people that they are going to ‘accompany’ or ‘help’.

Donations are down by the faithful and the people do not go along with this present regime that never found a popular worldly endeavor that they don’t support and seem to be able to put a Biblical face on every scheme that they conjure up.

Think about it for a minute. The Church took its marching orders from the Germans during the Vatican II Council which funds them by their huge Church Tax. They are by far the richest pool of Catholic funds available to the Vatican. Well it seems that this is not enough to satisfy the present occupants but it is enough to let the Germans get away with whatever they want; including heresy and disobedience. If only Archbishop LeFebvre had that kind of money he would never have been excommunicated.

Let’s look at the issues that the world supports and yet the Church in Her Teachings would never have supported. Isn’t it interesting to see the Church turn a blind eye to the Teachings of the Faith in order to gain the support of the world?

1. The Poor
2. The Immigrants
3. LGBT and Gender Issues
4. Women’s Issues (generally this means contraception, abortion, and women priestesses among others)
5. Global Warming
6. Indigenous People of the Amazon
7. Socialism, Marxism and Communism
8. Ending Capitalism and supporting the redistribution of wealth

I’m sure that as more issues emerge and the more the UN and other nations support these efforts, the more the Faux Church with the Bergoglio Face will find some way to get money from these folks, support that which is immoral, and hide the rest for God knows what. After all we have no idea what in the world happens to the money after they get their hands on it. Our charities give their money to political and social groups that are anathema. But the Bishops keep on appealing to us to support them. Why? Because even if you don’t support them they will get money from the UN from Soros and other political pots of money that the Govt. has set aside for doing ‘good works’. It’s morally imperative that we help these poor and oppressed people, or planet or what have you.

Sadly it is all about money. If you didn’t already read or watch these, please do so:

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/08/the-catholic-churchs-amazon-synod-is-exploitation-of-the-poor-masquerading-as-the-opposite/

Well, I’ve been listening to the Media and the faithful who are listening to the Amazonian Synodal Cardinals who are listening to the Amazonian savages who, in turn, are listening to Mother Earth. And I presume Mother Earth is listening to a pantheon of gods and goddesses that are screaming out to us and to which we owe our complete attention: the god of trees, rocks, rivers, seas, birds, animals, insects or what have you.

So now that they have listened, what exactly did they hear? Anything of relevance to religion? Are we to compromise the Words of Christ or the words of Mother Church to the words of animistic tribesmen and their primitive beliefs regarding the planet and the gods that dwell therein? I hear nothing but the same Germanic foolishness that swept through Vatican II and now has invaded the Amazonian forests. In other words, what exactly was left unsaid by Christ and the Church that we now must learn from savages how to live our lives and structure our Church? How are we going to alter our worship and praise of the One True God? How are we to change our defined truths or water down and incorporate tribal ‘truths’ of a primitive culture into the Church Christ founded? What happened to our teaching that when the last apostle died, revelation ceased?

The Germans it seems to me have had itching ears for a very long time and long for new revelations, teachings, practices and beliefs. They don’t much care for the Church that Christ founded and was led by the Holy Spirit to blossom organically as it marches through history. They want to return to the pagans we all were before God began revealing himself to man; pre-Judaic life . . . a life of little gods of the earth and its creatures; fertility gods and war gods and the long history of myths that have circulated from the dawn of time.

Perhaps the sanest thing that we could do is to send all of the German Church to the Amazon to form a new Church and while they listen to the people of the earth we can return to listening to God, Holy Mother Church and the entire Communion of Saints.

Then perhaps we could get back to the business of saving of souls and the Germans and their new pagan friends can go fishing, dancing, and carousing without being condemned or locked up in Western culture for their perversions of morality and just about every other sick idea that has popped into their brains. But sadly it won’t happen as long as they hold the purse as Judas did.

Perhaps this is the real agenda: https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/08/the-catholic-churchs-amazon-synod-is-exploitation-of-the-poor-masquerading-as-the-opposite/

This is a teaser for Robert Cardinal Sarah’s book The Day Is Now Far Spent. You can buy it online. This is part of the introduction so that you might get a good idea as to whether it is a book that you would like to read.

ALAS, JUDAS ISCARIOT 

If these were silent, the very stones would cry out. —Luke 19:40 

A traitor. . . is one that swears and lies. —William Shakespeare, Macbeth 

Why speak up once more? In my last book, I invited you to silence. However, I can no longer be silent. I must no longer remain silent. Christians are disoriented. Every day from all sides, I receive calls for help from those who no longer know what to believe. Every day I meet in Rome with priests who are discouraged and wounded. The Church is experiencing the dark night of the soul. The mystery of iniquity is enveloping and blinding her. 

Every day the most terrifying news reports reach us. Not a week goes by without the revelation of a case of sexual abuse. Each one of these revelations comes to rend our hearts as children of the Church. As Saint Paul VI used to say, we are being invaded by the smoke of Satan. The Church, which ought to be a place of light, has become a  dwelling place of darkness. It ought to be a secure, peaceful family home, but look: it has become a den of thieves! How can we tolerate the fact that predators have entered among us, into our ranks? Many faithful priests behave every day as attentive shepherds, kindly fathers, and sure guides. But some men of God have become agents of the Evil One. They have sought to defile the pure souls of the littlest ones. They have humiliated the image of Christ that is present in every child. 

Priests throughout the world have felt humiliated and betrayed by so many abominations. Following Jesus, the Church is experiencing the mystery of the scourging. Her body is lacerated. Who is inflicting the lashes? The very ones who ought to love and protect her! Yes, I make so bold as to borrow the words of Pope Francis: the mystery of Judas hangs over our time. The mystery of betrayal oozes from the walls of the Church. The acts of abuse committed against minors reveal this in the most abominable way possible. But we must have the courage to look our sin in the face: this betrayal was prepared and caused by many other less visible, more subtle ones that, nevertheless, were just as profound. For a long time, we have been experiencing the mystery of Judas. What is now appearing in broad daylight has deep-seated causes that we must have the courage to denounce clearly. At its root, the crisis through which the clergy, the Church, and the world are going is a spiritual crisis, a crisis of faith. We are experiencing the mystery of iniquity, the mystery of betrayal, the mystery of Judas. 

Allow me to meditate with you on the figure of Judas. Jesus had called him, like all the other apostles. Jesus loved him! He had sent him to proclaim the Good News. But little by little, doubt had taken hold of Judas’ heart. Imperceptibly, he started to judge the teaching of Jesus. He told himself: This Jesus is too demanding, not very effective. Judas wanted to make the Kingdom of God come to earth right away, by human means and according to his personal plans. However, he had heard Jesus tell him: “Your thoughts are not my thoughts, your ways are not my ways” (see Is 55:8). Despite everything, Judas distanced himself. He no longer listened to Christ. He no longer accompanied him during those long nights of silence and prayer. Judas took refuge in worldly affairs. He busied himself with the purse, money, and commerce. The liar continued to follow Christ, but he no longer believed. He murmured. On Holy Thursday, the Master washed his feet. His heart must have been quite hardened, for he was not moved. The Lord was there in front of him, on his knees, a humbled servant, washing the feet of the one who was to hand him over. Jesus looked at him one last time, his eyes full of kindness and mercy. But the devil had already entered into Judas’ heart. He did not lower his eyes. Interiorly he must have pronounced the ancient words of rebellion: Non serviam, “I will not serve.” During the Last Supper, he took Communion even though his plan was set. This was the first sacrilegious Communion in history. And he betrayed him. 

Judas is for all eternity the traitor’s name, and his shadow hangs over us today. Yes, like him, we have betrayed! We have abandoned prayer. The evil of efficient activism has infiltrated everywhere. We seek to imitate the organization of big businesses. We forget that prayer alone is the blood that can course through the heart of the Church. We say that we have no time to waste. We want to use this time for useful social works. Someone who no longer prays has already betrayed. Already he is willing to make all sorts of compromises with the world. He is walking on the path of Judas. 

All sorts of things are challenged, and we tolerate it. Catholic doctrine is called into question. In the name of so-called intellectual positions, theologians amuse themselves by deconstructing dogmas and emptying morality of its profound meaning. Relativism is the mask of Judas disguised as an intellectual. How then can we be surprised to hear that so many priests break their commitments? We relativize the meaning of celibacy; we claim the right to have a private life, which is contrary to the priest’s mission. Some go so far as to claim the right to perform homosexual acts. Scandals follow one another, among priests and among bishops. 

The mystery of Judas is spreading. Therefore, I want to say to all priests: stay strong and upright. Certainly, because of a few ministers, you will all be labeled as homosexuals. They will drag the Catholic Church through the mud. They will present her as though she were made up entirely of hypocritical, power-hungry priests. Let not your heart be troubled. On Good Friday, Jesus was charged with all the crimes in the world, and Jerusalem shouted: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Notwithstanding the tendentious investigations that show you the disastrous situation of irresponsible churchmen who have an anemic interior life yet are in command of the very government of the Church, remain calm and confident like the Virgin and Saint John at the foot of the Cross. The immoral priests, bishops, and cardinals will in no way tarnish the luminous testimony of more than four hundred thousand priests throughout the world who, every day and faithfully, serve the Lord in holiness and joy. Despite the violence of the attacks that she may suffer, the Church will not die. This is the Lord’s promise, and his word is infallible. 

Christians are trembling, wavering, doubting. I want this book to be for them. To tell them: do not doubt! Hold fast to doctrine! Hold fast to prayer! I want this book to strengthen faithful Christians and priests. 

The mystery of Judas, the mystery of betrayal, is a subtle poison. The devil seeks to make us doubt the Church. He wants us to regard her as a human organization in crisis. However, she is so much more than that: she is the continuation of Christ. The devil drives us to division and schism. He wants to make us believe that the Church has betrayed us. But the Church does not betray. The Church, full of sinners, is herself without sin! There will always be enough light in her for those who seek God. Do not be tempted by hatred, division, manipulation. It is not a matter of believing a party, of rising up against each other: “The Master warned us against these dangers to the point of reassuring the people, even with regard to the bad shepherds: one must not abandon the Church, that seat of truth, because of them. . . . Therefore let us not become lost in the evil of division because of those who are wicked”, Saint Augustine said (Letter 105). 

The Church is suffering; she is trampled on, and her enemies are within. Let us not abandon her. All pastors are sinful men, but they bear within themselves the mystery of Christ. 

What is to be done, then? It is not a matter of organizing and implementing strategies. How could anyone think that we could improve things by ourselves? That would be to enter again into the lethal illusion of Judas. 

Given the surge of sins in the ranks of the Church, we are tempted to try to take things into our own hands. We are tempted to try to purify the Church by our own strength. That would be a mistake. What would we do? Form a party? A movement? That is the most serious temptation: the showy disguise of division. Under the pretext of doing good, people become divided, they criticize each other, they tear each other apart. And the devil snickers. He has succeeded in tempting good people under the appearance of good. We do not reform the Church by division and hatred. We reform the Church when we start by changing ourselves! Let us not hesitate, each one in his place, to denounce sin, starting with our own. 

I tremble at the thought that Christ’s seamless garment is in danger of being torn again. Jesus suffered agony when he saw in advance the divisions of Christians. Let us not crucify him again! His heart begs us: he thirsts for unity! The devil is afraid of being called by his name. He likes to drape himself in the fog of ambiguity. Let us be clear about one thing. “To call things by the wrong name is to add to the world’s misfortune”, Albert Camus said. 

In this book, I will not hesitate to use forceful language. With the help of the author and essayist Nicolas Diat, without whom little would have been possible and who has been unfailingly faithful since the writing of God or Nothing, I intend to take my inspiration from the Word of God, which is like a two-edged sword. Let us not be afraid to say that the Church needs profound reform and that this happens through our conversion. 

Forgive me if some of my words shock you. I do not want to put you to sleep with soothing, lying talk. I seek neither success nor popularity. This book is the cry of my soul! It is a cry of love for God and for my brethren. I owe to you, to you Christians, the only truth that saves. The Church is dying because her pastors are afraid to speak in all truth and clarity. We are afraid of the media, afraid of public opinion, afraid of our own brethren! The good shepherd gives his life for his sheep. 

Today, in these pages, I offer you what is at the heart of my life: faith in God. In a little while I will appear before the eternal Judge. If I do not hand on to you the truth that I received, what will I say to him then? We bishops ought to tremble at the thought of our guilty silences, our complicit silences, our over-indulgent silences in dealing with the world. 

People often ask me: What should we do? When division threatens, it is necessary to strengthen unity. This has nothing to do with a team spirit as it exists in the world. The unity of the Church has its source in the heart of Jesus Christ. We must stay close to it, in it. This heart that was pierced by the lance so that we might be able to take refuge there will be our house. The unity of the Church rests on four columns. Prayer, Catholic doctrine, love for Peter, and mutual charity must become the priorities of our soul and of all our activities. 

Buy the book to read more.

Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote a book by this title and Bp. Barron seems to accept his thesis; so what should we make of it? Is there but an empty hell and will all men eventually come to detest their sins and thus ask for pardon and rely on God’s infinite mercy in their regard simply because wishes that all men be saved? After all, Paul within the scriptures does write the following:

1 Timothy 2:1-4 (Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition)

1 I desire therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men:

2 For kings, and for all that are in high station: that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all piety and chastity.

3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour,

4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

5 For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus:

6 Who gave himself a redemption for all, a testimony in due times.

God obviously wishes for the salvation of all as we all should. For who does not pray for the salvation of the souls of their loved ones and friends? Who, for the love Christ, wishes the torments of hell on anyone who god created in His image and likeness and loves with a supernatural love all souls created as a father loves his own children and wishes the best for them?

But is it the same thing to hope and pray for the salvation of all men and in the sense of the Theological Virtue of Hope or ‘expectation’ that all men will be saved? Should we hold an expectancy that all men are saved and that hell is but only an empty place or state of being; a reality that exists but is completely harrowed of the damned?

Personally, it seems to be a most difficult quandary for those who might take that leap. For we know that we are to pray for all souls to escape the torments of hell for love God and His love of our souls. But is that the same as expectantly bridging such as great chasm as this and holding out false hope that hell is empty of souls? For if we do that, then it seems to me that Christ and the rest of Catholic Teaching and the gospels are misleading at the least or completely vague and ambiguous. And at the worst it points to a Christ who is self-contradictory not to speak of His Church that has continuously taught definitively on hell for 2000 years.

If the latter were true, then what else has Christ and His Church taught, that we find repugnant personally; that we can chalk up to ambiguity or outright contradiction? Can we believe anything at all that we have been definitively taught or is our personal truth the only truth; a truth resides purely within the eyes of each beholder? Is is subjective or relative to what we accept and don’t accept from the teachings of the faith? Are we each the arbiters of faith?

Does Heaven then exist? or purgatory? our personal judgement? the general judgement?

I pray for all souls who are passing from this life and who have died and hope that they reach the beatific vision as promised. But this hope that I hold is a worldly hope or wish and only right and just and I would hope as well that others will pray for me at the hour of my own death. But do I wish that Christ were lying or contradicting Himself? Theological hope is a more detached and rational hope that all that Christ and His Church are infallible in their depiction and that there is no trickery involved. It is not shrouded in fog and confusion.  For if it is then what is left to guide us in this life and what is there to hope for?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the following about our own personal hope, the virtue of hope in this regard:

It seems our hope good and just but that the outcome of our hope is ‘contingent’ on the way we live our lives. For the Catechism also states the following:

Our Lady of Fatima would have been cruel indeed had She shown the young children of Fatima the torments of hell; but that is exactly what she did. If nobody was there then why would she impress upon these children the need to pray for the souls of all men to seek repentance and come to Christ and to escape the ravages of hell?

Some have mentioned the Fatima Prayer as a counter to this: “O My Jesus, forgive us our sins. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy.” However, I would contend that this is a prayer for those who are living in the world and that they might receive the grace to avoid hell.

What do you think?

Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth.

–Jesus speaking at John 17:17

For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse

-Romans 1:20

Continue reading →

God defies definition. This is not to say that the concept GOD is incoherent (although humans are capable of misunderstanding, mischaracterising, and misrepresenting God). God is other; He is distinct from His creation, and yet – so Christianity teaches – God invites mankind to interact with Him. Such interaction requires some element of commonality; without it, there can be no communication. Christians understand God’s interaction with us to be through condescension; to understand Him fully is beyond us. The greatest act of condescension, as taught by the Gospel, is that God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

If God exists, the Incarnation is paradoxically both surprising and logical. God is by definition supremely benevolent. If this characteristic is removed, the concept of God becomes incoherent and God cannot exist: for anything that is incoherent is not real. (Note, incoherence itself has categories: humans can hold incoherent views in the realm of imagination; but this does not entail that such views correspond to anything in reality).

Such benevolence would lead to creation of a world. When that world went wrong (through free will), benevolence would lead to its redemption. The nature of human sin and is such that the path of redemption leads through the Incarnation of God Himself (although mankind did not clearly foresee or understand this; wisdom on this matter has come through revelation and hindsight).

Benevolence is a personal characteristic. Benevolence apart from personhood is incoherent. Feuerbach, an atheist, posited the idea that the concept GOD was a projection. He held that mankind, troubled by the hostility of the physical world and their own capacity for evil, created the concept GOD and chose to believe in God’s existence as a coping mechanism. It is more comforting to believe that the universe was created and created by a supreme Benevolence, than to accept that it simply exists and that there is no objective meaning to our existence.

Have we followed the route that Feuerbach described? Or have we believed in God because there is a God and because His nature and existence can – and must be – inferred from reality?

Can an eternal being exist without personhood? Is that a coherent concept? What is the substrate of existence? What is the ultimate Reality? It cannot be less than the glory of mankind – indeed it must be more.

The philosophy of emergent properties is a complex sub-discipline, much of which must lie beyond the scope of this post. However, it is sufficient to observe that our contingent minds cannot come from something that is not mind at all. Therefore, there must be a necessary Mind and that Mind must be co-extensive with Ultimate Reality.

(Intermediate great minds between humanity and God are also possible – thus thrones, principalities, powers, angels, demons, etc. However, God is logically necessary, which is why Greco-Roman paganism cannot be true, since its pantheon does not conform with the coherent definition of GOD.)

This post has served to introduce the main part of the argument. A following post will round off the series by unpacking that part in more detail.

Spiritual Fog of Vatican II

“Truly, if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy he could not have done it better.” __ Citation: The words of Dietrich Von Hildebrand, who was, nevertheless, a supporter of the Vatican II religion but felt compelled to make such a statement about the New Mass. Quoted by Michael Davies, Pope Paul’s New Mass, Kansas City, MO: Angelus Press, 1980, p. 80.

INTRODUCTION: THE SPIRIT OF THE COUNCIL

I think in reflecting back on the overall spirit that permeated the Second Vatican Council one might be struck by the fact that the overall mood was led by an unbridled desire for ecumenism, peace with the world at any cost, and ostopolitik or detente with those those who opposed us and were rightly considered heretics prior to the Council. It was a ‘false peace’ established not for the help and protection of the Catholic peoples but was in fact a complete surrender to the whole of our progressive  modernist world. In this regard, I think the above quote from Dietrich von Hildebrand may have limited the scope of how he might have viewed the ruinous results of this Screwtape Council’s overall theme; which of course used the liturgy as its primary means to rob Catholics of their culture; one might say it was their weapon of ‘mass (Mass) destruction’.

The Second Vatican Council was an Ecumenical Council but with a difference. In the previous 20 Councils of this type, the Councils were called to settle a matter of heresy, prevent a schism, to pronounce a new Dogma to be infallibly held or to generally protect the Church and Her Children from being misled by the modernist world and other threats to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith.

But this Council would be different; it was purely pastoral in nature and was not going to pronounce any new dogmas or warn of any clear and present danger to the Church and Her followers. However, it was not as if there were no dangers that needed to be expressed at the time; especially Communism, Modernism and Freemasonry which were running rampant in the world and had infiltrated the Church by many of the theologians of its day not to mention highly placed prelates and even ordinary pastors. Basic morality was breaking down and threatening not only Christian life but the very ethos that bound entire nations together. But it seems that ecumenism was to be bought at any price; even the price of the souls of Mother Church and Her hundreds of million sons and daughters. Instead of defending the Church against heresy it as though the Church was suing the World for terms of peace.

“In a 2007 book called The Metz Agreement, veteran French essayist Jean Madiran gathers a number of sourced claims, testifying that a deal was hatched during Soviet-arranged secret talks in 1962. The meeting, Madiran says, took place in Metz, France, between Metropolitan Nikodim, the Russian Orthodox Church’s then “foreign minister,” and Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, a senior French Vatican official. Metropolitan Nikodim was, according to Moscow archives, a KGB agent.

Various sources have since confirmed that an agreement was reached, instructing the Council not to make any direct attack on Communism. The Orthodox then agreed to accept the Vatican’s invitation to send a number of observers to the Council.”__ Read more here: Catholic News and World Report.

We also know that the original schema as drawn up for the Council were rather benign and one must wonder what the Church would have looked like had the progressives not taken control of the Council after its first session; for these first documents were in complete agreement with what had been stated prior to the Council and a condemnation of Communism was planned to be included within the documents. One also wonders if they might have made mention of both Modernism (battled against for about a 100 years) and Freemasonry which the Church had been fighting since its beginnings in the early-18th century and was a large reason for the French Revolution and its persecution of the Catholic Faith. These heresies were at least clear and present dangers to the Church which have only worsened since the close of Vatican II. One might say that the Church even capitulated in its rejection and opposition against these threats.

There was also a novel idea which took root within the Council of a collective Church; a collective redemption and salvation. It, of course, would have to abandon the idea that the objective Truth was in its entirety to be found in the One True Church. All flavors of religion and even non-religion were to be included in this collectivism and nobody was excluded. A globalist view was emerging which see quite prominently in the mainstream of Catholic teaching these days.

“. . . totalitarian ideology is not alone in sacrificing the individual to the collective; some of Teilhard de Chardin’s cosmic ideas, for instance, imply the same collectivistic sacrifice. Teilhard subordinates the individual and his sanctification to the supposed development of humanity.” __ Dietrich von Hildebrand.

So nobody can discount the thoughts of Teilhard de Chardin which exerted a strong influence upon the Council though he died some 7 years before the Council. His spirit lived on in the framers such as Hans Kung, Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, Cardinal Bea et al.

TURNING THE CHURCH FROM TRADITION TO MODERNISM

“When I read the documents relative to the Modernism, as it was defined by Saint Pius X, and when I compare them to the documents of the II Vatican Council, I cannot help being bewildered. For what was condemned as heresy in 1906 was proclaimed as what is and should be from now on the doctrine and method of the Church.” (Jean Guitton, Portrait du Père Lagrange, Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1992, pp. 55-56). Read more here.

A new era of the Church was being constructed while the 2000 year old Church was belittled and scoffed at. Our new Church would be up to date and modern as we embarked upon the aggiornamento (updating) called for by the Council. It would be a Church of dialogue, ecumenism and above all a Church that listens rather than a Church that teaches. We would now be in the world without passing judgment on the world. One could say that the old enemies of the Church, ‘the world, the flesh and the devil’ were no longer reasons to avoid worldliness or the ‘near occasion of sin’.  You will rarely hear either of these statements used today within hallowed walls of a parish.

This new globalist and collective sense of humanity led us from true charity to secular humanism, from nation states to open borders, from proclaiming the True Church to proclaiming the ideals of the French Revolution (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity). In short, we have turned the ideals of those who wished the complete destruction of the Catholic Church into being our own ideals as well. Ideals whose origin was to be found in the heresy of Freemasonry.

If that was not enough the sense of a new egalitarian spirit overcame us as well especially in adopting market socialism if not outright communism or marxism. Besides the Liberation Theology that is now lauded, one need only view the sellout of the underground Catholic Church in China and the recent beatifications of radical leftists to get a sense of how far this cancer has spread.

In a few words, ‘what once was up is now down and what once was down is now up’. The Church has been stood upon its head.

THE COUNCIL’S USE OF A SPIRITUAL WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

“[Evelyn] Waugh’s words in response to this revolution are arresting: “Church-going is now a bitter trial,” he wrote. Elsewhere he said, “the Vatican Council has knocked the guts out of me.” To a friend, he wrote, “I have not yet soaked myself in petrol and gone up in flames, but I now cling to the Faith doggedly without joy.” In another letter to a cleric, he sought to know the least he was “obliged to do without grave sin.” This is remarkable, coming from one of the most famous Catholic writers of the 20th century, one who had previously adored the Mass.” __ Read more here.

Neither the people nor the priests petitioned Rome for a change in the liturgy. For the liturgy in use for many centuries had produced countless saints and martyrs and theologians who are still the backbone of what we continue to believe; St. Thomas to this day is the most widely referenced theologian in the Catholic Church and cited more than any others in the new Catechism of the Catholic Faith. So why did they feel that this was such an important mandate for the Council to address?

Was it perhaps that it was too authentically Catholic? Too much of a feature of Catholic identity; our common Catholic Culture? One need only ask the question how one would go about destroying a culture, a nation. For the things that bind a culture together are primarily language (in this case Latin), traditions (no more meatless Fridays and few processions on feast days), music (Gregorian Chant being the identifiable music for the Catholic) and devotions which have somewhat been restored and hopefully will help us recover that which has been destroyed after the Council.  So if you attack these you attack not only the culture but the way we believe and the way live: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi or how we pray, is how we believe, is how we live. Since the change in the prayer of the Church following Vatican II we don’t need to look far to see that the way we believe and the way we live has changed radically. Our beliefs and our tolerance of immorality is almost identical to that of world at large. We no longer understand or transubstantiation nor do we recognize Christ in the Eucharist and we divorce at the same rate as protestants, accept same sex marriages, fornication outside of marriage and a host of other things that no Catholic would ever have accepted prior to the Second Vatican Council.

So was the reason for the changes to make the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass indistinguishable from a protestant ‘service’ and to minimize our focus on the Sacrifice during the Liturgy so that we would not scandalize the protestants? Annibale Bugnini who designed this liturgy seemed to think that this was what was needed and such a change was good for the Church: “We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants.”  – Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, main author of the New Mass, L’Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.

So, once again, how would destroy the Church if you were satan?  Would the nuclear option be the destruction of how we pray, believe and live? And would not the Mass be the logical place to accomplish this diabolical assault on the Faith?

Since the Novus Ordo was promulgated the fruit has been the loss of vocations, the emptying of pews and the dumbing down of the laity and the priesthood in their below par formations; Canon 249 has been neglected by our bishops which states the following.

Can. 249 The Charter of Priestly Formation is to provide that the students are not only taught their native language accurately, but are also well versed in latin, and have a suitable knowledge of other languages which would appear to be necessary or useful for their formation or for the exercise of their pastoral ministry.

Did we violate the mandate of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the first document of the Council?

36. 1. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

116. The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.

But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down in Art. 30.

Do we experience this in the normal Novus Ordo Liturgy today? Of course not. There was always obfuscating language and loopholes planted throughout the documents of the Council to give the bishops the necessary wiggle room to evade these norms.

How about communion on the hand? The bishops voted no, resoundingly at the Council. But we have it now. So how did we get it you might ask. I will leave that to your investigative skills but it isn’t pretty. How also did we get lay readers (male and female) and how did they violate the Vatican rule that if they were to be used that they could not do so from the sanctuary? Maybe its because the sanctuary is no longer that holy space reserved for the priest (which they like to call a presider these days) and his altar boys. And today we have female altar boys which is a outrage since they were always regarded as young men who might be led toward thinking of the priesthood for a vocation. It was a privilege extended to them and it was taken with a seriousness and a sense of awe. All of this has changed in the spirit of Vatican II; a spirit of egalitarianism and a distorted understanding of the Council’s wish to increase the ‘active participation’ of the laity at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

We could list literally hundreds of changes including the rewriting of other Rites of the Church which seems, ironically to have one thing in common amongst most of them; the absence of the exorcism that once took place in the Rites before a Blessing was given to a sacred thing or a sacred ministerial duty. How convenient when we have abandoned the spiritual realm for a realm that is at home in a fallen world that we were mandated to teach and to bring them the teachings of the True Church.

God have mercy on our soul but we allowed this to happen by allowing ourselves to become complacent about our education in the faith. It is not simply the hierarchy or our parish priests that bear this burden of closing a blind eye to the obfuscation of truth and the destruction of our Catholic Identity; though many will have much to answer for at their particular judgment.

Immaculate Heart of Mary have mercy on us. Sacred Heart of Jesus have mercy on us. Saint Joseph pray for us. Saints Peter and Paul pray for us. St. Michael the Archangel drive this diabolical infiltration from the Church and restore the Bride of Christ to once again be resplendent in this world; without spot or wrinkle.

In the previous post we concluded that there must be an ultimate, objective Reality. Plato, the Rationalists, Empiricists, and Transcendentalists all realised the problem of knowing what the reality is actually like. Descartes attempted to argue that our senses do tell us truths about the world because, having proved to his own satisfaction that God exists, God is not a deceiver. Berkeley denied the existence of mind-independent objects. Hume argued that the concept MIND-INDEPENDENT OBJECT is actually the result of confusion. Kant explicated the principle that certain concepts cannot be derived from experience, but are in fact necessary presuppositions in order to interpret experience.

Accepting the existence of the ultimate Reality is one thing. Showing that the Reality is God is another. Even if one shows the existence of God, further work is necessary to demonstrate that God corresponds to the figure found in the Bible, as opposed to that articulated by other religions. It certainly is true that the different religions are mutually exclusive. They cannot all be true. Either one is right or they are all wrong.

The Reality must be coherent. What is coherence? Coherence is the absence of contradiction. It must also be non-contingent. If it is ultimate, it depends on nothing else for its own existence.

However, reality is more than these things. Humans attach, for want of a better word, meaning to reality, which is bound up with the problem of Truth. The struggle between the Rationalists and Empiricists revealed the difficulty that arises when one tries to say what reality actually is, independent of our senses. And so, Kant elaborated transcendentalism. This epistemological wall that hinders penetration of the garden of ontology is the reason why metaphysicists sound like mystics.

Atheism is not a common metaphysical commitment among humans. It is very natural for humans to attribute personal qualities to the Reality. In attributing personal qualities, humans turn that Reality into God. The naturalness of such attribution, if accepted, is not an argument that the Reality actually is God. Since humans are capable of mistakes, this could be a mistake.

However, “attribution” is a misleading word. It assumes that humans are fashioning God, whereas they may in fact be discerning His qualities through legitimate reasoning. The argument from coherence seeks to show that the nature of the Reality can be sufficiently explored to demonstrate that the Reality is God.

The key to the problem is personality. Hume thought that an impersonal Reality was no less reasonable a proposition than God. Such being the case, with no side in Hume’s estimation having a conclusive power, the agnostic was perfectly entitled to withhold his assent. (The atheist, having an assertive position, would need further material before he could claim legitimacy).

Was Hume’s assessment correct? He stood in opposition to St Paul, who declared in the opening of the Epistle to the Romans that:

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse…

Although the context of this passage concerns other matters, the use of it in this post is appropriate. In order for Paul to address his view that humans are rebelling against God, he must presuppose that:

• God exists;
• Humans are capable of knowing that God exists;
• Humans are capable of knowing God’s will; and
• Humans are capable of freely choosing to disobey God’s will.

The following posts will tackle the problem of inferring personhood from the existence and nature of the Reality, and from that inference accepting that there is a God.

The debate between the rationalists and empiricists concerned the rationalists’ claim that there is a class of synthetic propositions that can be known a priori. Kant agreed with the rationalists on the existence of this class, claiming that various mathematical propositions were synthetic, but could be known a priori. To the best of my knowledge, he did not put the proposition, “God exists”, in this class.

The claim, “God exists”, seems to defy categorisation. It seems to be both analytic and synthetic – and more. Aquinas rightly perceived, as seen in his arguments, that our world of experience must be dependent on something beyond it. In other words, our experience is contingent, but the Great Reality is necessary. He wanted to say that the Great Reality is God. Hume held that this was a leap too far, that the inference of the Necessary Being could not, in and of itself, tell us whether that Being is God or simply an eternal universe.

This Necessary Being sits at the conjunction of the analytic and synthetic, of the a priori and a posteriori. The reasoning that leads our minds towards the inference of this Being’s existence tells us about both the structure of our conceptual world and objective reality. In other words, thoughts concerning the Necessary Being put us in touch with reality; this line of thought crosses from the phenomenal to the noumenal.

It should be noted, however, that humans cannot grasp God in His fullness. To enter the noumenal is not to know all or to know God in perfect exactitude. In this instance, it is to know that our thoughts have connected with the Great Reality.

Without the Objective, there is nothing at all. Nothing at all. Subjective existence, alone in the void, is a contradiction. This is because the subjective is contingent; it must depend on something else, ultimately upon the Great Reality.

This reasoning is not new. Long before Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant, Descartes explored the  conjunction of the analytic and synthetic. He realised that our world of experience could be a lie (the Evil Genius Hypothesis). He may not have had the language of analytic and synthetic, of a priori and a posteriori (these appear to have been codified by Kant), but he was able to work through the reasoning in his own language.

He wanted to show that God existed and that we could, in essence, trust our experiences and reasoning. While subsequent philosophers have found problems in his reasoning, and in the leap from the Great Reality to a personal God (on to which Christians must add further reasoning to show that God is Yahweh), his basic instincts are correct.

The next post will continue on the journey to the Argument from Coherence.