Vatican II & Pope Francis: Fr. Clovis Interviewed by Michael Matt

RTV in LONDON: Michael Matt interviews Father Linus Clovis. The conversation covers the question of refusing Communion to pro-abort politicians, the necessity of the TLM, Pope Francis, and Amoris Laetitia, which Father calls a "Trojan Horse." Plus, is Pope Francis an anomaly, or did Vatican II make Francis inevitable?

Fr. Gerald Murray: Of Truth and Idols

From The Catholic Thing today:

...Then Pope Francis made a startling claim: 

We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths. They can be comfortable idols, always within easy reach; they offer a certain prestige and power and are difficult to discern. Because the “truth-idol” imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart. Much worse, it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus... 

Truth is the conformity of mind and reality. The truth about God is understood when we accurately grasp the nature and purpose of His creation (natural theology), and when we believe in any supernatural revelation He may make. Jesus told us that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All truths have their origin in the Truth who is God made man. The Christian understands that the truth is a Person... 

Given this, is it possible to make the truth into an idol? Can Catholic dogmatic teachings and the truths of the moral law become false gods that we worship so as to gain “a certain prestige and power”? It’s not possible. The truth as taught by the Church is what unites us to the true God and frees us from the errors of idolatry. Truth is not an idol, it is the remedy to idolatry... 

Those who defend the Church’s constant teaching and practice on this matter have been subjected to various aspersions. Now they are being categorized as engaging in a horrific violation of the First Commandment because they treat Catholic doctrine as inviolable, and thus binding upon all believers. 

If truth could ever lose its quality of being the means to know the will of God, and become something false, and thus evil, then mankind is lost. Without immutable truth, we have no way to live in unity with God, with reality, and with one another. 

The good news is that truth can never be false. It’s not an idol, and to defend the truth is not to lead people away from God towards false worship, but rather to invite them to embrace what is, in fact, their deepest desire for goodness, happiness, and peace...

Read the whole essay by clicking this link:
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/04/21/of-truth-and-idols/

Fr. Hunwicke: Accountability

From today's post at Fr. Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment:

19 April 2018
Accountability  

Mgr Scicluna is to be complimented on having produced so lengthy a report (on sexual abuse in Chile) in such a comparatively short period of time, and, apparently, with so little secretarial assistance. And after himself needing surgery early in his mission.

In the Anglo-Saxon world of corporate accountability, at least a redacted summary of his Report would be available to the Public. As I write, I am unaware that anything has been made public other than PF's Letter to the Chilean Episcopal Conference. (Unfortunately, the 'story' by chance 'broke' just when our own Media were a trifle preoccupied with the possibility of a World War.) 

A 'Survivor' who, until she resigned, was a member of PF's Papal Commission on Abuse, commented:
"Now the focus has to be on the survivors who have been badly hurt by his words; then there has to be accountability."  

Regretfully, I have to say that her brutal words express an uncomfortable but simply unavoidable truth. We have not been told what Mgr Scicluna discovered about the transmission of the five-page Letter which one survivor gave to Cardinal O'Malley and which his Eminence is said to have guaranteed that he handed personally to PF. But as the uncorrected public record currently stands, it looks as though PF either never bothered to open and read the Letter; or that he read it and then forgot about its contents so comprehensively that he subsequently lost his temper and started shouting at questioners (he said he required, and had not yet been offered, 'proof'' ... a word subsequently emended to 'evidence').

This is where the demand for accountability becomes irresistible. 

We have a Roman Pontiff who has made himself a figure of mockery by his endless logorrhoea. It seems that he is unable to live without constant utterance; utterance which (unlike the words of his intellectually abler predecessors) is commonly riddled with vivid but obscure attacks, apparently often on those fellow-clergy who do not accept his own self-estimation. His 'magisterial' documents substitute inscrutable interminability for clarity. But in some contexts, a more than Trappist taciturnity magically and suddenly takes over from the compulsive loquacity. Cardinals formally offer him dubia or intellectuals send him a Filial Correction; he does not trouble even to acknowledge that he has received their communications. He refuses ... lovely Renaissance Court usage coming up here ... to "grant them an Audience". Abuse survivors transmit to him, via hand of Cardinal, long and detailed accounts of their abuse; the silence is total as they wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and the years pass by, with no comfort for their anguish 

It is an established pattern.  

Of course, a Roman Pontiff cannot read everything that anybody presses into his hand. But in previous pontificates, the Pontiff retained a certain formal distance and there were mechanisms, one imagines, by which his correspondence was handled appropriately at appropriate levels. And if there were mistakes, as in any human enterprise there undoubtedly will have been, presumably those responsible were held accountable. But PF seems to have eschewed such workaday mechanisms. He, apparently, prefers above all things to receive plaudits for his faux populism. So, by his own choice, it is he who is accountable for the mistakes. If the buck stops somewhere else, then he should have explained that earlier 

Our Most Holy Redeemer spoke sometimes with an almost Bergoglian frankness (Matthew 23?). But there is not much evidence that He habitually handled critics or questioners by "doing a Bergoglio": i.e. by saying not a syllable to them; turning his back on them; and walking away from them, wordless amid the clamour. 

In the Anglo-Saxon corporate world, a CEO who behaved like this would be tactfully removed. Or perhaps just removed without time wasted on tact. A Bergoglio would not survive as head master of an English Public School. You're laughing at me? Think about it. 

Indeed. That lady was right. First the focus does have to be upon those who have suffered. 

Then, accountability. 

Is there nobody left in the Vatican with the nous and the parrhesia  to explain to PF in simple Spanish what, in the real and practical world, accountability means?

Footnote: I commend to you the soon-to-be-published The Dictator Pope by Henry Sire. I find it convincing and compelling. If the facts about this pontificate were more widely known ...  

Posted by Fr John Hunwicke at 10:04

Jesus Never Called a Synod

Jesus Never Called a Synod

When Jesus Christ was calling his apostles to "come follow me," he was not seeking volunteers.  He chose men (and only men) who He knew would eventually be able to spread His mystical body (His Church) throughout the world.  He also did not survey them to determine what kind of Church they would feel comfortable in, or ask them to offer their ideas as to how His Church should serve her members.  So, would somebody (preferably a high-ranking prelate) explain to the current pontiff that there is no way Jesus would have called for volunteers from among a group of young, inexperienced, uncatechised, selfish teenagers and asked for their "opinions" on how to run His Church?   Fortunately, one young man from Boston, Massachusetts (who obviously is an exception to the just listed adjectives) had the courage to write to Pope Francis and do what apparently no prelate in the Curia was willing or courageous enough to do: Speak TRUTH!  That young man is John A. Monaco, and parts of his letter (which was posted by the web site One Peter Five on March 29, 2018) are reproduced below.  Unfortunately, the chance of any of John's "opinions" finding their way into the upcoming Synod report (which, no doubt, is already in final form) is less than slim.

An Open Letter to Pope Francis from a ‘Bold’ Youth

Your Holiness,

It is with a spirit of faith, hope, and love that I write this letter to you, the vicar of Christ on earth, the successor to St. Peter, the point of unity for all Catholic Christians. Truly, the Petrine office is one to which I faithfully submit in humble obedience. I pray for you and for the Church daily.

Countless times during your pontificate, you have emphasized the need for the youth to speak openly, boldly, and with courage. In fact, I recall you telling us youth at World Youth Day Rio 2013 to “make a mess.” You encouraged the bishops assembled for the 2014 Synod on the Family to “speak with parrhesia,” the Greek word meaning liberty, openness, fearlessness. In your words: “Speak clearly. Let no one say: ‘This you cannot say.’”...

As a 25-year-old male, I belong to the “giovani,” the young people to whom the Synod is directed. Truly, this is a turbulent time for the youth. We have inherited and experienced massive changes within our common life. Seismic shifts in socio-political institutions, the burden of economic insecurity, and the rapidly growing irreligious population among our peers have placed us in a situation unlike any prior generation’s. That stated, many of the young people I know around the world, though differing in language and culture, have a shared desire for truth, goodness, and beauty. All of us, from those who attend daily Mass and pray the rosary to the person questioning the existence of God, are searching for meaning and for ultimate happiness. We pray and live the words of St. Augustine of Hippo: “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee” (Augustine, Confessions, Book 1).

I speak not only for myself when I say the restless heart finds its rest in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We encounter God’s love most powerfully in the Holy Eucharist. Regardless of one’s formal theological education, many young people find this sort of rest in the Sacred Liturgy. Something should be said, then, about the way we often experience liturgy.

Young people today are not the young people of the 1960s. The Second Vatican Council tried its best to speak to “modern man,” but modern man of the 1960s and 1970s is now himself in his 70s. If the 1960s youth were marked by a sense of rebellion and anarchy, the youth of today desire stability, orthodoxy, and order. Unfortunately, such desire is often seen with suspicious and distrusting eyes. We are often called “rigid,” “close-minded,” and “unstable.” This is a most unfortunate pejorative claim marked against us...

Tradition is for the young. Many of us find ourselves attending the traditional Latin Mass for its sublime beauty, rich symbolism, and unquestionable sense of sacred worship. Unfortunately, when many of us express our love for tradition, we are insulted and unfairly labeled “ultra-conservatives.” We attend the Latin Mass not because we seek to escape from the world, but rather because we wish to sanctify it by being nourished through intentional, purposeful, and transcendent worship. Many of us rejoiced when your predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, issued Summorum Pontificum and aided it with the following words:

What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.  It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place...

Our desire for traditional, beautiful, and reverent liturgy should not be seen as disregarding issues of social justice. If anything, traditional liturgy fosters a more integral and authentic Christian social ethic. If we cannot worship and revere the Body of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, then we will never be able to truly revere and honor the Body of Christ in the world. Countless saints who have had a passion for serving the poor and marginalized have simultaneously adored the Lord in a spirit of awe and reverence. Consider St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa, both of whom expressed the need for Eucharistic reverence while stretching out their arms to the poor and needy. Traditional liturgy and the Church’s social teaching are not mutually exclusive...

Holy Father, I write these words after much prayer and reflection. I pray that the Holy Spirit guides and protects you and the Synod 2018. May it be a time of great renewal of the Church’s mission for the salvation of souls. And may we, the youth, serve at the vanguard.

Humbly,
John A. Monaco
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

You can read the entire letter at this link:  https://onepeterfive.com/open-letter-francis-bold-youth/

The Remnant: Gaudete et Exsultate: Demagogic Piety on the March

Christopher, writing yesterday at The Remnant:

Gaudete et Exsultate is exactly what we have come to expect from this drearily predictable pontificate. To quote Carl Olsen in Catholic World Report: “many good qualities and substantive passages… often overshadowed, or even undermined, by straw men, dubious arguments, and cheap shots.”

Bergoglian pronouncements in general are precisely vehicles for the delivery of straw men, dubious arguments and cheap shots, all invariably directed against orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Expressions of piety are wrapped around crass ecclesiastical demagoguery, a velvet glove for the clenched fist of militant humility so typical of the boorish cant of leftist Latin American clerics.

The document’s call for a living relationship with God animated by charity is belied by its repeated descent into the uncharitable caricature and outright calumny of those members of the faithful Bergoglio perceives as impediments to his maniacal designs. Herewith a sampling of the invective interwoven into the pious passages of the document:her Ferrara, writing yesterday at The Remnant:

https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3841-gaudete-et-exsultate-demagogic-piety-on-the-march

Remnant TV: FROM THE SYNOD ON YOUNG PEOPLE, Libera Nos Domine

Quo Vadis? Pat Archbold at The Remnant

From The Remnant today:

We will fight in our parishes, we will fight in our dioceses, we will fight every lupine shepherd in sheep's clothing, we will fight online, we will fight with our wallets, we must fight and never stop fighting. We don't fight in hopes of a truce or for some less-unholy middle ground.  We fight for all of it. 

Recently a question was put to me by a friend. That question, in its essentials is this, "What now?  What are our options, given the current trajectory? What are we, lay people and individual clergy who see what is happening, to do when the destroyers have all the power?  How do we persevere and preserve?  How can we?" 

Thinking to formulate a systematic policy-based response to stem the tide, I struggle with the idea that there might be no such thing, that there is no flanking maneuver or rope-a-dope strategy that can stop the invasion and pummeling most certainly coming our way. 

It is foolish to try and envision a path out of this disaster without first looking at the path that brought us here. I am not qualified to offer a treatise on the scourge of modernism over the last century and a half, nor do I think such knowledge is required to address the realities of the situation.  I take rather the view of the ordinary Englishman as the Nazi scourge scoured the last vestiges of freedom from the continent knowing that when that task was done, he too would face it, he and his. 

I was born in 1967 into a Church that had already surrendered to the enemy, I just didn't know it. After that surrender, it became the task of successive Pontiffs to cede ground in order to maintain something that still resembled that which they inherited.  The Popes that ceded the least territory to the enemy in order to "conserve" that which remained, were hailed as heroes on the global stage.  Those who put up little resistance and gave ground easily had to content themselves merely with sainthood.  But each in their turn gave precious ground to the enemy. 

Those few faithful that refused to flee and abandon the Church altogether were told by those they trusted that all the ground ceded to the enemy was of no value anyway, that is was actually an encumbrance better jettisoned to preserve those things that really mattered. Then those things that really mattered were artfully moved into the encumbrance category and jettisoned with the rest.  Better to do this, we were told, then to fight.  Fighting only made things worse, made the tiger clench its jaws even tighter.  Best not to wiggle and squirm, it just turns people off.  This was the "conservative" approach.  That we should only be concerned with the 5 year rolling average of truth and not focus on what was already lost. 

But with the current papacy things have changed, somewhat. Yes, more people are waking up to the fact that there is no land left between us and the tiger and it has us in its jaws.  Feeling the clench and the pain, there are those that are finally waking up to the reality of the threat posed.  There can be no doubt that this is a necessary and crucial step to mounting any serious resistance.  But old habits are hard to break.  I recently saw a prominent clergyman, once firmly committed to the "conservative" approach, but now valiantly resisting that which must be resisted, publicly pining for the Church of 2012.  If only we could return to that golden era, things could be grand again.  If only we could take a few steps back from the tiger, surely, we would be saved. But this is the same mindset of surrender that brought us to this precipice. 

So where does that leave us? What do we do? 

What we must first do is recognize that the enemy, modernism and its mitred minions, will never stop. They will never just take enough and stop.  They will never be satiated. They will relentlessly continue until there is nothing left of True Religion.  Digging trenches is not a strategy for victory, but merely a delaying tactic for inevitable defeat.  That means we cannot just fight this fight where the current lines are drawn, our aim has to be to take it back, all of it.  That means the aim must be the recovery of all Truth and return fully to traditional Catholicism in its liturgy and formulations of the Truth and every promulgated falsehood, whether direct or indirect, must be purged from the Church.  Yes, traditional Catholicism is the only answer.  Seeking any kind of middle ground leaves the enemy on the field.  That can never be tolerated.  There were those valiant men who told us this at the beginning of the onslaught, but all too many of us were not prepared to listen. 

We can make no pretense that our backs are not currently to the wall. And even though most of the Church at every level has fallen into the iron grip of the enemy, we can never despair, even if we are reduced to a most pitiable state, persecuted by our own even in concert with oppressive states, seeking sacraments in secret, or worse.  We have God's promise that the Church will survive.  And we further have the promise of His mother that the Church will be restored after this terrible way of the cross. 

But in the meantime, we fight. There is no fleeing to the hills in hopes that we will be left alone there to rebuild Christianity.  The enemy would never allow it.  We must fight them on everything.  

We shall fight against every unholy innovation of this dark and destructive Church, not just the new ones, but all those that have brought us to this state. 

We will fight in our parishes, we will fight in our dioceses, we will fight every lupine shepherd in sheep's clothing, we will fight online, we will fight with our wallets, we must fight and never stop fighting. We don't fight in hopes of a truce or for some less-unholy middle ground.  We fight for all of it.  And we can never stop fighting until that day God calls us home or He decides in His infinite wisdom that His body has suffered enough and provides for that break in the front that will send the enemy scurrying.  

It is not in our power to win any given battle or the war, it is ours only to fight for what is right. That is the strategy, fight and never stop fighting until the strategy emerges in God's good time.  And then fight some more until the enemy is defeated.  It is us or them.

An Unholy Alliance: the UN, Soros, and the Francis Papacy - Elizabeth Yore

VATICAN SCANDAL: Exploiting The Benedict Option

The Remnant: Christopher Ferrara on The "Benedict Letter"

Chris Ferrara, writing yesterday on The Remnant, provides (maybe) the final analysis of the now infamous doctored "Benedict Letter."

https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3789-more-fake-news-from-the-vatican-the-pope-in-the-attic-and-the-end-of-the-line-for-neo-Catholicism

The unprecedented and untenable division of the Church into traditionalist, “conservative” and liberal branches, with Bergoglio now clumsily attempting to saw off the first two branches, signals an historical turning point at which it seems only divine intervention of the most dramatic sort will be able to restore the Church to the path of Tradition from which her human element so tragically deviated at the Council. 

That day of divine reckoning seems almost to be upon us. But whenever it comes, and in whatever circumstances it takes place, our abiding faith in the Church’s indefectibility allows us confidently to predict an ultimately decisive defeat of what Pope Pius X, the sainted foe of Modernism in all its guises, denounced as the “unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO.”

FR. Hunwicke on The Benedict Letter

15 March 2018
Don't miss ...  

... the story all over the internet about how PF's spin-doctors gave the waiting world a deliberately mutilated and falsified letter of Benedict XVI. Just don't miss it!

This episode provides a hilarious, immensely funny insight into the minds of the cheap crooks who surround PF, and how far they are prepared to go to manufacture their Fake News. You couldn't .... as we say .... make it up! It epitomises the superbly corrupt and deliciously sleazy atmosphere of the Renaissance Court which sprawls at the luxurious top of the Santa Marta. 

Happily, the full text did emerge. GOTCHA! And it provides agreeable evidence that Ratzinger's old, deft, feline wit has not deserted the dear old man. Briefly summarised by me, his Letter says (and I've put into square brackets the section the spin-doctors didn't want you to see):

"Thank you for inviting me to write a page about the little books you sent me. I think they are splendid little books about my splendid successor. [Sadly, however, I haven't read them and I don't intend to do so. And I never comment on books I haven't read, so I won't be sending you a page.]" 

This pontificate simply gets better and better! Keep engaged and make sure you never miss a laugh!  

Posted by Fr John Hunwicke at 00:18

Fr. Ray Blake on That Letter from Pope Emeritus

FR. Fr. Ray Blake today:

https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/03/that-letter-from-pope-emeritus.html

Viganò's presentation has shown the amateurish relativistic and untrustworthy nature of its Communications Secretariate. 

There is certainly need for reform there if the Vatican is to be trusted. 

"Let you yes be yes and your no be no", is something forgotten in the Vatican.

The Remnant: Hilary White: Et Tu, Benedict?

https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3786-et-tu-benedict-some-final-thoughts-on-joseph-ratzinger

Who is the real Joseph Ratzinger?
I have had long-time Vatican watchers say to me, more than once, “Maybe it’s really just that he wasn’t who we thought he was.” I suspect there is a lot more to this than most people might imagine. I think we made the mistake of believing the press. We were delighted that the bitterly anti-Catholic media hated and feared him. We failed to recall that they know nothing at all about Catholicism. 

What the papers never told us was that as a young priest and theologian Joseph Ratzinger was known as a “progressive,” as the term was understood in 1962. This reputation was cemented during his work as the peritus, the theological advisor, of one of the Council’s most influential of the bishops of the progressive camp, Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne. Frings’ claim to fame in that great drama was a speech criticising the CDF – and its prefect Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani – for the “conservatism” in the “schema,” the documents prepared by the CDF for guiding the bishops’ discussions.

Pope Francis: The Movie (Catholics To Boycott)

SAINT Pope Paul VI? (When Pigs Fly!)

Down in the catacombs, Michael Matt looks as the life and legacy of one of the worst popes in history—the man Pope Francis now intends to canonize in October. Does papal infallibility seriously come into this farce? Please! At this point, claiming the Holy Ghost has anything even to do with such an obvious political stunt—aimed at canonizing the revolution of Vatican II—borders on the blasphemous. Plus, Francis is reportedly set to stab Chinese Catholics in the back in favor of Communist puppet bishops. Everybody okay with that? Has the Vatican lost its mind completely?

Fr. Hunwicke: Intrinsically Evil

From Fr. Hunwicke's Blog today:

6 February 2018
INTRINSECE MALUM (2) 

This year is the 25th anniversary of Veritatis Splendor, of S John Paul II; and the 50th anniversary of Humanae vitae, of Bl Paul VI. There is abundant evidence that the corrupted teachers who believe that they have been given a fair wind by PF are already employing this double aniversary for an onslaught upon both of those fine Magisterial assertions by Roman Pontiffs of what the Church has taught semper et ubique et ab omnibus. They are using Amoris laetitia, a document drafted in the very deepest levels of the Lowerarchy, almost certainly under the personal direction of Mr Under-Secretary Screwtape himself*, to "reinterpret" Humanae vitae. One such piece of 'work' is significantly headed "From Montini to Francis: development in fidelity". What this means, stripped of weaselly word games, is "Wow! We can use Section 8 of Amoris laetitia to subvert the meaning and authority of Humanae vitae; we can claim that our subversion is development rather than apostasy, and say that it still leaves the teaching of Papa Montini totally undamaged, nay rather, it affirms it". [This was essentially the argument used at the News Conference chaired by the Graf von Schoenborn to ... er ... 'launch' Amoris laetitia, when he was asked by Diane Montagna whether it contradicted Familiaris consortio.]

What these men, who have put their reason at the disposal of the Bent Eldil*, have in their sights is to destroy the notion that some human actions are intrinsically evil in such a way that no circumstances can render them otherwise.

We all need to be fortified against this already-happening attack of the Evil One. One could amass quite a reading list here; but I will suggest two things, one brief and at a 'lower' Magisterial level; and the second longer and at a 'higher' ... a very high ... Magisterial level. 

(1) S John Paul II, on June 5 1987, delivered a fine address still on the Vatican website in Italian and Spanish, but rediscovered and elegantly translated into English by [the same] Miss Montagna: Lifesitenews Wednesday January 31 2018.  It vigorouly and unambiguously upholds the plain and irreformable teaching of Humanae vitae.

(2) The majestic encyclical of S John Paul, Veritatis splendor was, I think I am right in saying, entirely ignored by Mgr Screwtape during the drafting of Amoris laetitia. In it, pope Wojtyla took head-on, and demolished, the relativistic, 'situational' ethical theories which were still being circulated. It deserves reading in toto. The particular section most concerned is in paragraphs 71-83 (pages 108-127 in the CTS edition). If you feel that one paragraph is all you can manage at this moment of time, just go for paragraph 80 (pages 122sqq.). It subsumes an important passage from (Vatican II's) Gaudium et Spes into its argumentation.

Our Enemy and our enemies are all going hell-for-leather on this subject. We need to be fortified.  

**Apologies to those unfamiliar with the writings of our Patrimonial C. S. Lewis; 'Screwtape' and 'the Bent Eldil' refer to his Daimonologia.

I'm sorry, but I shall not enable Comments which take this opportunity to attack Popes Paul VI and John Paul II.

Posted by Fr John Hunwicke at 10:05 

Fr. Ray Blake: Peronism and Corruption

From Fr. Ray Blake's Blog today:

http://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/01/peronism-and-corruption.html

Nowaday's everyone identifies the rule of Francis as in some sense Peronist, it is popular conclusion, I identified it at the beginning of his reign, if somewhat positively, as appealing to the ordinary man and trying to make the Papacy 'popular', that was a bit naive of me, it is actually Peron's Peronism, essentially about making the leader powerful.

Mariawald Trappist Abbey Closed Down -- Summorum Undone by Current Vatican Regime

From Rorate Caeli today:

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2018/01/mariawald-trappist-abbey-closed-down.html

In a letter dated November 21, 2008, Benedict XVI granted the abbey the privilege to return to the old usages of the Trappist Order in liturgy and monastic life. This concerned especially a return to the venerable Old Rite. The pope saw this project as a "renewal of the church in the spirit of tradition". Now this renewal is over before it could get off the ground. 

It is true that while the Church will survive all obstacles, religious houses, cathedrals, abbeys have been closed and destroyed many times before. Yet, we are confident in the hope that, just as abbeys ravaged by savagery, in the Reformation and in the post-conciliar storm, did not last forever, the current regime in the Vatican will not last forever either.

Fr. Ray Blake: Imagine Pastoral Opportunities

Not everyone thought the "marriage" performed by Pope Francis in mid-air.  This is from Fr. Ray Blake's Blog today:

Imagine if you lived in theatreland in London or New York and had priests competing with jugglers and street magicians, offering free marriages whilst people waited for tickets. 

Imagine the Marriage of Figaro with real Marriages! 

Imagine, Romeo and Juliet actually getting married! 

Imagine, a two for one offer at your local supermarket! Two couples at one go. 

Imagine the possibilities for an airport chaplain, you could marry people as they waited to check-in, or as they wait for luggage at the carousel.

Imagine the mass weddings that could take place at the next Glastonbury Rock Festival...

To read the whole post click on the link below:
http://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/01/imagine-pastoral-opportunities.html

Bellarmine Forum: John Manos on Papal Awards (and Papal Bull)

John Manos, writing yesterday at the Bellarmine Forum Blog:

https://bellarmineforum.org/2018/01/15/put-calf-oven-give-papal-awards-anyone-visits-slavery/

Pope Francis bestowed the honor of “Commander in the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great” upon Lilianne Plouman, a Dutch politician. Plouman is heralded as a global force to raise money for abortion. So, when pressured on this award, the Vatican issued a statement on January 15...  

“The honor of the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great received by Mrs. Lilianne Ploumen, former Minister of Development, in June 2017 during the visit of the Dutch Royals to the Holy Father, responds to the diplomatic practice of the exchange of honors between delegations on the occasion of official visits by Heads of State or Government in the Vatican.  Therefore, it is not in the slightest a placet [an expression of assent] to the politics in favor of abortion and of birth control that Mrs Ploumen promotes.”