Small ‘g’ gods.

Vol 10 Issue 42 ~ Editor: Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward Krier
October 21, 2017 ~ Saint Hilarion, opn!

1. Is the Chair of Peter Vacant? An Argument for Sedevacantism
2. Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
3. St. Philip, Bishop
4. Family and Marriage
5. Articles and notices

Dear Reader:
Is a belief in a god necessary to make a person moral? I use a small ‘g’ because many religions, such as the Mohammedans and Jews claim a belief in a “god”, but generally are completely immoral—worse than perhaps no religion. The Japanese worship a “god” (the emperor), but they are moral in some respects (honest, hardworking, respectful) but immoral in others (suicide, abortion). Even the Stoics, in ancient Rome, were moral compared to those who worshipped the gods of their times. Therefore, natural virtue can stand out in opposition to a belief in a concept of a “god” that accepts immorality (fornication, drunkenness, revenge, adultery, etc.) But contrast this with a belief in God Who forbids all immorality: Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God. (Gal. 5:20-21) It means a distinction must be made: Those who believe in God and those who believe in a god. Those who believe a god can be compared to those who do not believe in God because they are the same, that is, if they are moral, as Saint Paul reminds us, it is only because the law is written in the heart (cf. Rom. 2:15). But those who have a true faith in God, know that they must live by the Spirit of God: The fruit of the Spirit is, charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, [23] Mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. Against such there is no law. [24] And they that are Christ’s, have crucified their flesh, with the vices and concupiscences. (Gal. 5:22-24). That the Conciliar Church agrees with the indifference of the world is only because, like the Jews, they have rejected a God Who rewards the good and punishes the wicked and preferred to crucify a Christ that proclaims the kingdom of God is not of this world (cf. John 18:36). A PRC article states:
Most U.S. adults now say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values (56%), up from about half (49%) who expressed this view in 2011. This increase reflects the continued growth in the share of the population that has no religious affiliation, but it also is the result of changing attitudes among those who do identify with a religion, including white evangelical Protestants.
Surveys have long shown that religious “nones” – those who describe themselves religiously as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – are more likely than those who identify with a religion to say that belief in God is not a prerequisite for good values and morality. So the public’s increased rejection of the idea that belief in God is necessary for morality is due, in large part, to the spike in the share of Americans who are religious “nones.”
[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/16/a-growing-share-of-americans-say-its-not-necessary-to-believe-in-god-to-be-moral/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=98724c046f-RELIGION_WEEKLY_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-98724c046f-399903989]

Sandro Magister writes of Bergoglio, the leader of the Conciliar Church:
On Wednesday, October 11, at the general audience in Saint Peter’s Square, Francis said that such a judgment [Last Judgement] is not to be feared, because “at the end of our history there is the merciful Jesus,” and therefore “everything will be saved. Everything.”
In the text distributed to the journalists accredited to the Holy See, this last word, “everything,” was emphasized in boldface.
At another general audience a few months ago, on Wednesday, August 23, Francis gave for the end of history an image that is entirely and only comforting: that of “an immense tent, where God will welcome all mankind so as to dwell with them definitively.”
[http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2017/10/20/worlds-end-update-the-last-things-according-to-francis/]
Therefore, what is “morality” to those who do not believe in God (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) if everyone receives the same end? And therefore, does it matter if one believes in a god?
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

Fourth Contradiction: Unity or Disunity?
(Continued)
The teachings embodied by both Mortalium animos (1928) of Pius XI and the Instructio (1949) of Pius XII was upheld by Samuel Cardinal Stritch in his Pastoral Letter, which is also presented here as it was certainly fresh in the minds of all:

There are men outside the Church professing the Christian name who deplore the divisions which exist among them. They talk about setting up and establishing a Christian unity, or as they sometimes say, a unity of Christian action. They are mindful of the words of our Blessed Saviour to His apostles, spoken the night before He died: “Yet not for these only do I pray, but for those also who through their word are to believe in me, that all may be one, even as thou, Father in me and I in thee; that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory that thou hast given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them and thou in me; that they may be perfected in unity. and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and that thou hast loved them even as thou hast loved me” (John 17: 20-23). They gather in international organizations; they hold congresses, conventions and assemblies. Wide publicity attends their meetings and assemblies. You are familiar with what they are doing, because you read of these conventions and assemblies and organizations in your daily newspapers.
Quite naturally the question arises in your minds, what should be the opinion of a Catholic, what his attitude with regard to these organizations and their activities? The answer of the Church to this question is: the Catholic Church does not take part in these organizations or in their assemblies or conferences. She does not enter into any organization in which the delegates of many sects sit down in council or conference as equals to discuss the nature of the Church of Christ or the nature of her unity, or to propose to discuss how to bring about the unity of Christendom, or to formulate a program of united Christian action. She does not allow her children to engage in any activity of conference or discussion based on the false assumption that Roman Catholics too are still searching for the truth of Christ. For to do so would be to admit that she is but one of the many forms in which the true Church of Christ may or may not exist; that she does not preserve in herself the unity of faith, government and worship willed by Our Lord for His Church; that she does not know the true meaning and nature of that unity and of those other God-given properties by which she is distinguished not only as the one but as the holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Such an admission she can never make, for she is now as she has always been the one and only Spouse of Christ, the one and only Mystical Body of Christ, the one and only Church of Christ.
It cannot be admitted that the unity willed by Our Lord for His Church has never existed or does not exist today. For such an admission would falsely imply that the will and the preaching of Christ were inefficacious and that His prayer to the Father still remains unheard after almost two thousand years. It would mean that the Holy Spirit, poured out upon the Apostles and abiding forever in the Church founded on them, had failed in His mission. Such a failure is, of course, unthinkable. No, the unity Jesus gave to His Church is an evident and unmistakable thing. It consists, as we have indicated, very simply in three things. The first is that all the members of the Church believe the same truths, handed down by Sacred Scripture and divine tradition, as taught to them by the infallible teaching authority established in the Church by Christ Himself. The second is that all obey the divinely constituted authority of the Church in all that pertains to their moral life and the salvation of their souls. The third is that all share in the same worship of God and use the same means of sanctification, as directed and provided by the Church’s teaching and ruling authority: in the concrete, that all participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the prayer of the Church, and that all admit and use according to their station in life the seven holy sacraments instituted and given to us by Jesus Christ Himself.
Now this unity, clear and obvious as it is, exists in the Church of Christ today. It is found in the Roman Catholic Church and in her alone. She and she alone is the true Church of Jesus Christ. There is only one way to the unity so anxiously sought by some men. That is the entrance into the fold of the Church of Christ, participation in her life, submission without reserve to her teaching and ruling authority. If we are asked, does the Roman Catholic Church desire the unity of all believing men, our reply is that she by all means desires unity, but not a unity forged according to fallible human conceptions. The unity she wishes for all Christians and offers to those who seek it is that which was established in her by Jesus Christ Himself and preserved in her always by His almighty power.
If the Catholic Church does not take in these international and national councils, conferences and assemblies, it is not because she is not interested in cooperating with Our Lord in bringing His other sheep into His fold. She longs for, prays for, and does all that she can to restore the complete unity once existing among believers in Christ. She spares no effort to repair the divisions which arose when men in the East during the 9th century and in the West during the 16th century separated themselves from the one flock of Christ, cut themselves off from the one Body of Christ. She always holds the door open and is ready to greet with outstretched arms all those who come into the unity established by Christ in His Church. She offers them the truth and prays ardently that they may receive the light of the Holy Spirit in their minds to see it, His love and courage in their wills to embrace it. Earnestly, incessantly, the Catholic Church prays that all men may come into that Christian unity which was established in her by Jesus Christ, her founder.
This attitude of the Church with regard to our separated brethren is not one of arrogance and pride. Far from it. It is rather that of a loving parent towards erring children. She knows her duty to Christ. She mingles love and firmness. Like Christ Our Lord, she is filled with compassion and sympathy towards those who grope in the darkness of error; but she cannot betray His trust to her, she cannot be false to the charge He has given her to preserve the deposit of faith confided to her, to keep it intact and uncontaminated by falsehood, to preach it to men in all its purity and integrity.
Some men will try to tell you that the Catholic Church became corrupt, that she corrupted the doctrine of Christ, and that to such an extent that some found it necessary in conscience to break away from her, that they themselves might preserve the truth of the Gospel. Your answer will be that the Church of the 16th century believed and taught nothing that was not believed and taught by the Church of the first and second centuries: a divinely established hierarchy, the primacy and infallibility of the Bishop of Rome, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the seven sacraments, the divine Maternity of Mary, most worthy of honor and devotion, and all the God-given truths contained in Holy Scripture and the divine tradition entrusted by Our Lord to His Apostles and through them to their successors. The Catholic Church has never tampered with the truth revealed by God through His Son Jesus Christ. She has never taken away a single tenet nor added a single doctrine to that revelation. If in the course of time, under the impulse and guidance of the Holy Spirit, she has come to a clear and explicit realization of beliefs which before she held and taught in an implicit manner, no reasonable man can say that she has thus invented man-made dogmas. That evils existed in the 16th century need not be denied. That the reformation of discipline and morals brought about by the great Council of Trent was indeed salutary should be admitted. But the truth of Christ always remained in His Church in all of its pristine purity uncontaminated. The institution that Jesus formed has by the power of God been preserved from the beginning, essentially the same throughout the ages. Christ promised that the gates of hell would never prevail against her. That promise was kept in the 9th and the 16th centuries, as it is kept in the 20th century, and will be kept until the end of time.
Accordingly, it is understood that the faithful of the Catholic Church may not in any capacity attend the assemblies or councils of non-Catholics seeking to promote unity of the Church. We ask you, however, to pray for our separated brothers and to beg God to give them the gift of Catholic faith. They need great graces to overcome prejudices, to break down the wall of misunderstanding which has long existed between us. Pray that they, with God’s grace, may find the Church of Christ, the Mother Church which waits for them with open arms and longs to receive them. Pray that they may come to look upon Mary the Mother of Jesus as their own true Mother in Christ. Pray that, like the Magi of old, they may be given the star of faith to find “the Child with Mary, His Mother.”
Our faith demands that we practice real Christian charity. We would be less than Christian if we excluded from that charity any man, no matter what his condition or what his professions. Holding firm to the faith that is in us, we shall live in charity with all our fellow citizens. With few exceptions, they believe in God, and many of them believe that our Blessed Saviour was God and man and the Saviour of all men. In this great country, which we love with a true patriotic love, there are things which we can do in cooperation with our fellow citizens. The great specter of an armed atheism is on the horizons of our free world. We know its hatred of religion, and we know how it has poured out that hatred principally on the Church in the countries in which it has obtained control by violence. There are many things as citizens which we with our fellow citizens can do and should do. We are ready to unite with them as citizens in the doing of these things. Their discussion of many of the social problems which confront us in our day will prove helpful to us. We are not an isolated group in our democracy. No group in our country is more devoted to our democracy than our Catholic people. We realize that in this day all men of good will, and particularly all men who kneel and pray to the living God, should unite against two common dangers: the danger of atheism, especially communistic atheism, and the danger of secularism, which with specious rhetoric, at least in effect, would banish God from all our social thinking. If in the unity of the Church established by Christ we do not take any part in conventions or meetings or assemblies which have for their purpose establishing some sort of man-made unity among Christian sects, we are always ready and anxious on the civic and social levels to work together with our fellow citizens, particularly with those who worship the living God, for the good of our country and of society. Let Christian charity reign in you and let it be your motivating spirit in dealing and associating with your fellow citizens. In our country there obtain a variety of religious beliefs. In this condition and in these circumstances we shall live together in charity; and while we shall not sacrifice one iota of our faith taught us by Holy Mother Church, we shall collaborate earnestly and honestly with our fellow citizens against godlessness in public and social life, against the aggressions and encroachments of those evils which are attacking the very foundations of our democracy. To all men of good will we issue the invitation to join with us and to work with us, even with the limitations which obtain, for that measure of good which is possible for us to secure.
As by the faith which you profess in common with your fellow Catholics everywhere, you witness to the unity, catholicity and apostolicity of Christ’s Church, take care also to show forth always in your lives her exalted holiness. Let everyone realize that it is especially by the example of his life lived in accord with the teachings of our faith. that those not of the fold will be inspired with the desire to know the Catholic Church better and even to accept her doctrine. Keep before your eyes the ineffable sanctity of Jesus, the Man-God, whose Sacred Heart is the abyss of all virtues. Look always to His Immaculate Mother, the sinless Virgin Mary, our Mother and protectress in the struggle against the forces of evil. Turn with eager devotion to your patron Saints in whom each one will find the model of that Christian virtue of which he stands most in need. Strive to grow stronger in faith, more confident in hope, and above all more generous and ardent in charity, in love of God and your fellow men. In this day of confusion, in this day when many hearts are yearning for peace, you, as Catholic people, in your daily lives, should be a beacon to all men. Remember that our Blessed Saviour prayed for the “other sheep” which were not of His fold, that there might be one sheepfold and one shepherd. Unite yourselves with Him in this prayer. Show forth in your daily lives the holiness of the Church. Let your fellow citizens who are not of the household of the faith see in you a shining example of Christian charity which embraces all men in the love of God.
We desire, dear sons and daughters in Christ, that you pray fervently to Saints Peter and Paul. Pray for yourselves and pray for our separated brothers that they may come to know the Church of Christ and that they may be given the grace to find peace and joy in it. In this Marian Year, when you are fervently praying to our Blessed Lady the Mother of God, remember your brothers and ask our Blessed Lady to bring them into the unity of the Church.
(Cardinal Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago, 29 June, Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, 1954; cf. Canon Law Digest IV, 378-84)
(To be continued)
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Fr. Leonard Goffine
The Ecclesiastical Year (1880)

INSTRUCTION FOR THE TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The Introit of the Mass is an humble prayer, by which we acknowledge that we are punished for our disobedience: All that thou hast done to us, O. Lord, thou hast done in true, judgment: because we have sinned against thee, and have not obeyed thy commandments: but give glory to thy name, and deal with us according to the multitude of thy mercy. (Dan. iii. 28.) Blessed are the undefiled in the way: who walk in the law of the Lord. (Ps. cxviii.). Glory &c.

PRAYER OF THE CHURCH. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy mercy to Thy faithful pardon and peace; that they may both be cleansed from all their offences, and serve Thee with a quiet mind. Thro’.

EPISTLE. (Ephes. v. 15-21.) Brethren, See how you walk circumspectly, not as unwise, but as wise redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore, become not unwise, but understanding what is the will of God. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is luxury: but be ye filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord: giving thanks always for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God and the Father; being subject one to another in the fear of Christ.

How may we redeem time?
By employing every moment to gain eternal goods, even should we lose temporal advantages thereby; by letting no opportunity pass without endeavoring to do good, to labor and, suffer for love of God, to improve our lives, and increase in virtue.
Do you wish to know, says the pious Cornelius á Lapide, how precious time is: Ask the damned, for these know it from experience. Come, rich man, from the abyss of hell, tell us what you would give for one year, one day, one hour of time! I would, he says, give a whole world, all pleasures, all treasures, and bear all torments. O, if only one moment were granted me to have contrition for my sins, to obtain forgiveness of my crimes, I would purchase this moment with every labor, with any penance, with all punishments, torments and tortures which men ever suffered in purgatory or in hell, even if they lasted hundreds, yes, thousands of millions of years! O precious moment upon which all eternity depends! O, how many moments did you, my dear Christian, neglect, in which you could have served God, could have done good for love of Him, and gained eternal happiness by them, and you have lost these precious moments. Remember, with one moment of time, if you employ it well, you can purchase eternal happiness, but with all eternity you cannot purchase one moment of time!

ASPIRATION. Most bountiful God and Lord! I am heartily sorry, that I have so carelessly employed the time which Thou hast given me for my salvation. In order to supply what I have neglected, as far as I am able, I offer to Thee all that I have done or suffered from the first use of my reason, as if I had really to do and suffer it still; and I offer it in union with all the works and sufferings of our Saviour, and beg fervently, that Thou wilt supply, through His infinite merits, my defects, and be pleased with all my actions and sufferings.

Be not drunk with wine, wherein is luxury!

[On the vice of drunkenness see the third Sunday after Pentecost Here we will speak only of those who make others drunk by encouragement.] The Persian King Assuerus expressly forbade that any one should be urged to drink at his great banquet. (Esth. i. 8.) This heathen who knew from the light of reason, that it is immoral to lead others to intemperance, will one day rise in judgment against those Christians who, enlightened by the light of faith, would not recognize and avoid this vice. Therefore the Prophet Isaias (v. 22.) pronounces woe to those who are mighty in drinking and know how to intoxicate others; and St. Augustine admonishes us, by no means to consider those as friends, who by their fellowship in drinking would make us enemies of God.
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