Vol 10 Issue 32 ~ Editor: Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward KrierAugust 12, 2017 ~ Saint Clare, opn!
1. Is the Chair of Peter Vacant? An Argument for Sedevacantism
2. Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
3. Saint Hippolytus
4. Family and Marriage
5. Articles and notices
Dear Reader:
August has been dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, with the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary falling on August 22, the octave day of the Assumption of Mary, as instituted by Pope Pius XII. This devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary took a special place in the devotions of those who accept the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima. A mother’s love and that of considering her love was impressed upon the seers of Fatima and these seers, as young as they were, gave up their innocent childhood pleasures to obtain the conversion of sinners by daily sacrifices. The endearment to the Lady who appeared to them motivated them to do everything to please her and when she asked that this devotion be spread, they did so in their own simple way. In the Memoirs of Lucia she writes:
A little while before going to hospital, Jacinta said to me: “lt will not be long now before I go to Heaven. You will remain here to make known that God wishes to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When you are to say this, don’t go and hide. Tell everybody that God grants us graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary; that people are to ask her for them; and that the Heart of Jesus wants the Immaculate Heart of Mary to be venerated at His side. Tell them also to pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for peace since God has entrusted it to her. If I could only put into the hearts of all, the fire that is burning within my own heart, and that makes me love the Hearts of Jesus and Mary so very much!”
Later, Lucia would be again visited by Our Lady and given more explicit instructions on how to make reparation through devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as found in Lucia’s Memoirs:
On December 10th, 1925, the most holy Virgin appeared to her (Lucia), and by her (Mary’s) side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was a child. The most holy Virgin rested her hand on her shoulder, and as she did so, she showed her a heart encircled by thorns, which she was holding in her other hand. At the same time, the Child said:
“Have compassion on the Heart of your most holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.”
Then the most holy Virgin said:
“Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”
As we celebrate the anniversary of Fatima, let us also, if possible, make the five first Saturdays to make reparation for our sins and the sins of others. Remember, Holy Communion is expected to be received at Mass, which is also the greatest Sacrifice one can offer to God. The devotions are to dispose our hearts and minds so that we can better unite ourselves with the Sacrifice Christ offers through the ministry of His priests. The Sacrament of Penance means that we cleanse ourselves of sin and resolve to sin no more. Only in this spirit can one be said to be living the message of Fatima. There are plenty of books on the life, death and Resurrection of Christ and the Life of Mary, particularly the Scriptural readings found in Bible or the daily Missal, as well as films—but one is spending time in union with Mary to reflect on the Mysteries of the Rosary.
As always, enjoy the readings and commentaries provided for your benefit. —The Editor
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Is the Chair of Peter Vacant?
An Argument for Sedevacantism
by Rev. Courtney Edward Krier
Third Contradiction: One Church or Many?
Two Documents were promulgated at the close of the Second Session on December 4, 1963. The first, The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, or Sacrosanctum Concilium, was a deceptive ploy to destroy the heart and soul of the Catholic Faith. In paragraph 4—which was pointed to the moment a priest or lay person questioned whether it would change the Mass—reads as follows:
4. Lastly, in faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way. The Council also desires that, where necessary, the rites be revised carefully in the light of sound tradition, and that they be given new vigor to meet the circumstances and needs of modern times.
The priest or lay person would then be told that the Mass would never change. But the following section from Wiltgen foreshadowed what this Constitution would do:
On March 5, L’Osservatore Romano announced the establishment of a Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, as promised by Pope Paul in his Motu proprio. The new commission had a membership of forty-two persons, representing twenty-six countries, with Cardinal Lercaro as President. On this commission were most of the Council Fathers who had been members of the Liturgical Commission, as well as many others; its Secretary was Father Annibale Bugnini, C.M., who had acted in the same capacity on the preparatory commission on the liturgy.
The most surprising name of all on this commission was that of Archbishop Felici, who had so thoroughly blue-penciled the Motu proprio and caused such commotion among the bishops and such embarrassment for the Holy Father. What had he done to merit a seat on this commission? He was a canon lawyer, but not a liturgist. The appointment had been promoted by Father Bugnini, who felt that the Archbishop deserved to be rewarded for what he had done in behalf of the schema in its early stages, when eighty-year-old Gaetano Cardinal Cicognani, older brother of the Secretary of State and President of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission, had hesitated in giving the necessary approval. Strong conservative elements in the Sacred Congregation of Rites were urging him to withhold his signature. Archbishop Felici, who reported regularly on the progress of the schemas and their distribution to Pope John, explained the difficulty that he was having with Cardinal Cicognani, since without his signature the schema was blocked, even though the required majority of the commission had already approved it. Before the audience was over, a plan was devised to obtain the desired signature.
Pope John called for his Secretary of State and told him to visit his brother and not to return until the schema was duly signed. On February 1, 1962, he went to his brother’s office, found Archbishop Felici and Father Bugnini in the corridor nearby, and informed his brother of Pope John’s wish. Later a peritus of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission stated that the old Cardinal was almost in tears as he waved the document in the air and said, “They want me to sign this, but I don’t know if I want to.” Then he laid the document on his desk, picked up a pen, and signed it. Four days later he died.(Op. cit., 140-141)
By force and threat Paul VI would do the same to every Latin Rite Catholic Bishop and priest: have them reject the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that had been the life of the Church for 1900 years. Four years after the Council, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass would also have its universal requiem except among those Bishops and priests who resisted first the pressure to change, and then, after recognizing the Conciliar Church as not possessing legitimacy as it directly contradicted and opposed past Catholic Councils and Papal teachings, continued to function as Bishops and priests in the Roman Catholic Church.
The implications of this document, as all duplicitous acts [One has only to think of the Affordable Care Act commonly referred to as Obamacare to realize what happens when the authors of a duplicitous bill is enacted that is not clear—there are always amendments and interpretations that extend well beyond what was originally presented and promised], would not be clear until 1969, when Giovanni Montini presented his Missale Romanum (April 3, 1969) and Novus Ordo MissaeNovus Ordo Missae, introduced between the First Sunday of Advent 1969 and Palm Sunday 1970. But on December 4, 1964, Giovanni Montini outright lied to the Bishops and all Catholics. As Wiltgen reports:
The new Constitution on the Liturgy, he [Montini] said, would simplify liturgical rites, make them more understandable to people, and accommodate the language used to that spoken by the people concerned. There was no question of impoverishing the liturgy, the Pope said; “on the contrary, we wish to render the liturgy more pure, more genuine, more in agreement with the Source of truth and grace, more suited to be transformed into a spiritual patrimony of the people.” (Op. cit., 139.)
As always when half-truths are published they are changed until a final, accepted version becomes official, various Motu proprios were released until, by March 2, a final one was given after “fifteen revisions had been made.” And Wiltgen adds, To many [Neo Modernists] Council Fathers, those few sheets of paper were a symbol of their victory over the Roman Curia [i.e., Catholic Church].(Ibid., 140.)
A second document was also promulgated, Inter Mirifica (The Means of Social Communication), which received little noticed and acceptance as wary journalists asked panel members for a full explanation of Article 12, which provided that the civil authority had the duty “to defend and protect a true and just availability of information; the progress of modern society utterly depends on this, especially as regards freedom of the press.” They were particularly disturbed at the statement that the civil authority had “the duty of seeing to it in a just and vigilant manner that serious danger to public morals and social progress do not result from a perverted use” of communications media. This appeared to open the door to state censorship of the press.
Three Catholic newsmen, Mr. Robert Kaiser of Time, Mr. John Cogley of Commonweal, and Mr. Michael Novak of the Catholic Reporter, decided to alert the Council Fathers. They set out their views in a short statement and had four periti attest that their statement was “worthy of consideration”; the periti were Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., Father Jean Danielou, S.]., Father Jorge Mejia, and Father Bernard Haring, C.SS.R. The statement termed the proposed decree on communications media “not an aggiornamento, but a step backward,” which might “one day be cited as a classic example of how the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council failed to come to grips with the world around it.” In two important passages, said the authors, the schema seemed to give the state “an authority over mass media which is dangerous to political liberty everywhere and which in some countries like the United States is proscribed by constitutional law.” . . . (Ibid., 132-133.)
The document would be ignored as Paul VI would remove the Index of Condemned Books on June 14, 1966, and the requirement of an imprimatur, except for specifically Church use (liturgical, scriptural, catechetical) or as a textbook in a “Catholic” school, would no longer be required.
With the close of 1963 the world would see the last of public devotion, filial piety and the Church as the center of life for the family. 1964 would open up to the Beatles, a changing Church that would no longer be Catholic, and God is dead with the anti-Christ crow’s foot replacing the dove as a symbol of peace.
(To be continued)
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The Ecclesiastical Year (1880)
INSTRUCTION ON THE TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
At the Introit of the Mass pray with the Church for God’s help to guard us against our enemies: When I cried to the Lord, he heard my voice, from them that draw near to me, and he humbled them, who is before all ages, and remains forever. Cast thy care upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee. (Ps. liv.) Hear, O God, my prayer, and despise not my supplication; be attentive to me, and hear me. Glory etc.
PRAYER OF THE CHURCH. O God, who dost manifest Thine almighty. power above all in showing pardon and pity: multiply upon us Thy mercy, that we running forward to the attainment of Thy promises, may be made partakers of Thy heavenly treasures. Through etc.
EPISTLE (i Cor. xii. 2-11.) Brethren, You know that when you were heathens; you went to dumb idols according as, you were led. Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man, speaking by the Spirit of God, saith Anathema to Jesus. And no man can say: the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost. Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who worketh all in all. And the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man unto profit. To one, indeed, by the Spirit, is given the word of wisdom: and to another, the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit: to another, faith in one Spirit: to another, the working of miracles: to another, prophecy: to another, the discerning, of spirits: to another, divers kinds of tongues: to another, of speeches. But all these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as he will.
EXPLANATION. The apostle here reminds the Corinthians of the great grace they received from God in their conversion, and urges them to be grateful for it; for while heathens, they cursed Jesus, but being now brought to the knowledge of the Spirit of God, they possess Christ as their Lord and Redeemer who can be known and professed only by the enlightenment of the Holy Ghost. The holy Spirit works in different ways, conferring His graces on whom He wills; to one He gives wisdom to understand the great truths of Christianity; to another the gift of healing the sick; to another the gift of miracles and of prophecy; to another the gift of discerning spirits, to know if one is governed by the Spirit of God, or of the world, Satan and the flesh; to another the gift of tongues. The extraordinary gifts, namely, those of working miracles, and of prophesying &c. became rarer as the faith spread, whereas the gifts which sanctify man will always remain the same.
[See Instruction on the gifts of the Holy Ghosts Pentecost.]
GOSPEL. (Luke xvii. 9-14.) At that time, Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves as just, and despised others. Two men went up into the Temple to pray: the one a Pharisee, and the other a Publican. The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this Publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I possess. And the Publican standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven, but struck his breast, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. I say to you: this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: because every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Why did Christ make use of this parable of the Pharisee and the Publican?
To teach us never proudly to condemn or despise a man, even though he should appear impious, for we may be deceived like the Pharisee who despised the Publican, whom he considered a great sinner, while, in reality, the man was justified before God on account of his repentant spirit.
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