Vol 10 Issue 50 ~ Editor: Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward Krier
December 16, 2017 ~ Saint Eusebius, opn!

1. Is the Chair of Peter Vacant? An Argument for Sedevacantism
2. Gaudete Sunday
3. Saint Lazarus
4. Family and Marriage
5. Articles and notices

Dear Reader:
This next week there will be the ember days of winter kept. On these days the Church imposes upon her faithful the obligation to fast and to also abstain from meat except for the main meal of Wednesday and Saturday. It is not much to exact from her children. True mothers always watch over the diet of their children, making sure they eat healthy, denying them many unhealthy foods and limiting them on others. Holy Mother Church is no less solicitous for her children. Knowing that good mothers will watch over their children, she does not impose the fast on those under 21; and knowing that the frail elderly need to take smaller, but more frequent nutrition, she does not impose it upon those over 59 (i.e, 60 years and older). She does this because she is looking not at the physical heath of those between 21 and 59, but because she has regard for the spiritual health. If her children can say no to the bodily desires in such a small request, to not eat between meals and limit the two smaller meals in quantity, but only having one large meal, she feels more confident that her children will be able to say know to the temptations of the flesh in more weighty matters. But she does so, and so instructs us, with a clear motive: for priestly vocations and those preparing for the priesthood; for God’s blessing with the fruits of the earth; and, finally, during this season of Advent, a preparation for the feast of Christmas. May the faithful not neglect this obligation, but rather take advantage of the graces to be received in its observation.
I would also expect that faithful Catholic parents, being that this is the last week before Christmas, are teaching their children that all Catholics are preparing for the coming of the birth of Christ, that some signs that this is the focus will be expressed by a nativity scene where the children are instructed as to the various aspects of the scene, and that the finale of the season will be when the family goes to Mass and witness, once again, Christ coming down upon the altar and then Christ being laid on the tongue of the recipient as Mary laid Christ in the manger. If parents join the world presentation of a holiday and the children are deprived of the reality by only awaiting a Kris Kringle parody of Saint Nicholas it would be tragic and the reason their children will grow up non-Catholic in a world of lies.
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

Sixth Contradiction: Holy Mass: A Sacrifice or a Meal?

If you turn a 9 topsy-turvy, you have a 6 and place it with ’66 it truly has significance when one arrives at the year 1966. Everything began to become topsy-turvy and antiChrist: A war we were told we were winning in Vietnam we were losing. Peace that was to be obtained by a United Nations was confronted by more civil wars than ever before. The young people were turning away from respect of elders and, obedient to the Rock music to which they were listening, they rebelled against the moral order. By March 4, John Lennon of the Beatles could tell Maureen Cleave of the London Evening Standard that the Beatles are “more popular than Jesus now”. And on April 8 the Time magazine cover story asks “Is God Dead?” The contents called religious leaders to no longer stress belief in God as living the ideas of their religion since modern science was now able to answer all the “mysteries” of the ancients and medicine would eventually be able to find all the cures to suffering and illness, eliminating a need to turn to God for the answers. Scientists were able to send rockets into space, even to the moon and beyond, as the Russian space probe, Venera 3, reached Venus on March 1 and United States Surveyor 1 landed in the Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon on June 2, so the Earth was no longer the center of the Universe in the psyche of human beings although self still remained the center of purpose.
The dark side was appearing even more prevalent with Anton LaVey founding the Church of Satan in San Francisco with a number of followers; while on April 20, Timothy Leary started the League for Spiritual Discovery with LSD as its sacrament and giving birth to the drug culture The climax would not be Woodstock in 1969, but when Nico [Christa Päffgen] and the Tangerine Dreams performed in the Rheim’s Cathedral on December 13, 1974, with the approval of the Conciliar Church, and in which drug use was part of the “religious experience”. The scene inside this ancient landmark of Catholic Faith in France was a chaotic medley of young people sprawled throughout the Cathedral interior while high on drugs to participate in their “religious experience”, saturated with the smell of relieved urine and feces that erased away the centuries of incensed offered to God.
Meanwhile, the Conciliar Church was busy with its committees selectively choosing progressive narcissists to develop new liturgical forms that stressed humanism rather than the divine (the only divine acknowledged was the claim of the divine in humanity). Though these committees were generally futile, since Giovanni Montini already had Annibale Bugnini working with seven protestants to formulate a Novus Ordo service, it did serve well to have a cheerleading squad to welcome the unwelcomed.
By 1967, instead of the nations turning to God they were turning from God. Albania declared itself an atheist state while The Rolling Stones released (December 8) an album called Their Satanic Majesties Request. Hair, a Rock Musical portrayal of a Bohemian group’s communal life of rebellion, was put on stage and became so successful that it grew into a Broadway hit the following year—even though it was no more than a portrayal of anti-war drug addicts engaging in promiscuous sex and capable of only verbalizing obscenities. Such seeming absurdity of acceptance of the appalling is attributed to the hypnotic beat of rock music by some, though its promotion must have been well financed in that it allowed what was not only counter-culture but degradation for it to become mainstream. Apparently this was the direction Giovanni Montini was moving the Conciliar Church in as he wrote in his encyclical Populorum progressio on March 26, 1967, in which he states:

The progressive development of peoples is an object of deep interest and concern to the Church. This is particularly true in the case of those peoples who are trying to escape the ravages of hunger, poverty, endemic disease and ignorance; of those who are seeking a larger share in the benefits of civilization and a more active improvement of their human qualities; of those who are consciously striving for fuller growth.

Giovanni Montini seemed to be another Nero playing the violin while Rome burned. Instead of seeing the destruction of the Church, Montini could only see a new world order built upon a humanity he seemed to not understand was unable to progress without grace. And, with the Council’s call to protest against state overstepping its competence and for the benefit of the whole human family, . . . contribute to the formation of a type of man who will be cultivated, peace-loving and well-disposed towards all his fellow men (Gaudium et spes, 74) there were no longer Masses and Novenas led by the Clergy and Religious, rather you had Phillip and Daniel Berrigan and other priests leading protests and burning draft cards along with Nuns in habits. It would become apparent that one would no longer associate Sisters in a convent, but on the streets with Martin Luther King, Caesar Chavez, and other Communist supported activists. Today, of course, they don’t wear habits, but these women still claim to be nuns having a vocation tackling social issues rather than leading our young women to sanctity as witnessed with the “Nuns on the Bus” in the present day. This is not to say that the social issues are not a concern—for justice is what all must strive for and charity compels the individual to assist one in need when able: He that hath the substance of this world, and shall see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him: how doth the charity of God abide in him? (1 John 3:17) Still, when one came to him to complain of injustice, Our Lord refused to interfere:

And one of the multitude said to him: Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him: Man, who hath appointed me judge, or divider, over you? And he said to them: Take heed and beware of all covetousness; for a man’ s life doth not consist in the abundance of things which he possesseth. (Luke 12:13-15)

Instead of Catholic young men and women flocking to the Seminaries and Convents, there was the opposite effect. The following chart is from http://cara.georgetown.edu/frequently-requested-church-statistics/ (Retrieved August 27. 2016):

Clergy, Religious, 1965 1970 1975 1980 2015
Total priests 58,632 59,192 58,909 58,398 37,578
Diocesan priests 35,925 37,272 36,005 35,627 25,868
Religious priests 22,707 21,920 22,904 22,771 11,710
Priestly ordinations 994 805 771 593 515
Graduate-level
seminarians 8,325 6,602 5,279 4,197 3,650
Religious sisters 179,954 160,931 135,225 126,517 48,546
Religious brothers 12,271 11,623 8,625 7,941 4,200

1965 was considered the apex of vocations. Michael Davies (Liturgical Revolution, Vol. II, 304) has quoted the Times of 24 May, 1976, that in the United States alone over 10,000 priests left the priesthood since 1965 and 35,000 nuns had abandoned their convents. One can only recall the Protestant Reformation and the rejection of the Catholic faith to bring such an apostasy of priests and religious. 1967 began the avalanche of lay Catholics leaving the Church as the teachings of Vatican II began to show its fruits. When the introduction of Conciliar changes to the Mass began to take place in January 1965, immediately it was universally denounced by Catholics who saw the consequences of the Document by the immediate introduction of the vernacular in the Mass and the use of the table, whereby the priest faced the congregants. To Catholics gathered in Rome to protest such changes, Giovanni Montini addressed them with these words:

Beloved Sons and Daughters! At an audience like this, our friendly conversation must deal with the subject of the day: the application of liturgical reform to the celebration of Holy Mass. If the public nature of this meeting didn’t make it impossible, We would like to ask—as We do in private conversations—about your impressions of this great new event. It deserves the attention of everyone. We believe, however, that your reply to Our question would not be very different from those that We have been receiving these days.
Liturgical reform? You can reduce the replies to two categories. The first comprises the replies that indicate a certain confusion, and hence a certain amount of annoyance. Previously, according to these observers, everything was peaceful; everyone could pray as he wished; we understood all about the way in which the ceremony was carried on. Now, everything is new, surprising, changed; even the ringing of the bells at the Sanctus has been done away with. And then those prayers that one doesn’t know where to find; Communion being received standing up; and Mass ending cut short with a blessing. Everyone responding, a lot of people moving around, ceremonies and readings recited out loud. . . In short, there is no longer any peace, and we understand less than we did before; and so on.
We won’t offer a criticism of these observations, because We would have to point out how they reveal very little penetration into the meaning of the religious rites and give evidence not of true devotion and a true sense of the meaning and value of Holy Mass, but rather a certain spiritual laziness that isn’t personal effort on understanding and participating in order to better comprehend and carry out the most sacred of religious acts, in which we are invited, and indeed obliged, to join.
We will just repeat what is being said over and over again these days by all priests who are pastors of souls and by all the good teachers of religion. First, it is inevitable that there be a certain amount of confusion and annoyance in the beginning. It is in the very nature of a reform of age-old religious customs that have been piously observed, a reform that is practical-not to mention spiritual-that it should produce a little agitation that will not always be pleasant. But, secondly. a little bit of explanation, a little bit of preparation, a little bit of careful help, will quickly remove the uncertainties and soon produce a feeling and a taste for the new order. For, thirdly, you mustn’t believe that after a while people are going to go back to being quiet and devout, or lazy, as they were before.
No, the new order will have to be something different; and it will have to prevent and strike at the passivity of the faithful present at Holy Mass. Before, it was enough to attend; now, it is necessary to participate. Before, presence was enough; now, attention and action are demanded. Before, a person could doze and perhaps even chat, but no longer; now, he has to listen and pray.
We hope that the celebrants and the faithful will soon have the new liturgical books, and that these, in their literary and their typographical form, will reflect the dignity of the ones that went before. The assembly is becoming alive and active. Being present means allowing the soul to enter into activity in the form of attention, response, singing, action. The harmony of a community act that is carried out not just with an external gesture, but with an inner movement of the sentiment of faith and devotion, impresses a very special strength and beauty upon the rite. It becomes a chorus, a concert; it turns into the rhythm of an immense wing soaring toward the heights of divine mystery and joy.
The second category of comments reaching Us after the first celebrations of the new liturgy is marked by enthusiasm and praise. These people say: at last we can understand the complicated, mysterious ceremony, and follow it; at last we really enjoy it; at last the priest is talking to the faithful, and you can see that he is acting with them and for them.
We have very moving statements from ordinary people, from children and teenagers, from critics and observers, from pious persons who are eager for fervor and for prayer, from men of long and solid experience and lofty training. They are positive statements. A very distinguished old gentleman of great heart, and of a spirituality so deep as to be never fully satisfied, felt obliged to go to the celebrant after the first celebration of the new liturgy to tell him quite frankly of his happiness at having finally taken part in the holy Sacrifice to the full spiritual measure-perhaps for the first time in his life.
Perhaps this admiration and this kind of holy excitement will calm down and soon dissolve into a new kind of peaceful habit. What is there that man doesn’t get used to? But it is to be believed that the note of religious intensity that the new form of the rite calls for, will not grow less; and along with it the awareness of an obligation to carry out two spiritual acts simultaneously: one of true, personal participation in the ceremony, with all the essentially religious qualities that this implies; the other of communion with the assembly of the faithful, with the “ecclesia”, The first of these acts tends towards love of God; the second, toward love of neighbor. Here you have the Gospel of charity, which is being made real and active in the souls of our time. It is really something beautiful, something new, something great, something full of light and hope.
But you understand very well, beloved Sons and Daughters, that this new liturgy, this spiritual rebirth, cannot come about without your cooperation, without your wholehearted and serious participation. This compliance on your part is so important to Us that, as you can see, We have made it the subject of this talk of Ours. With confidence that you will really welcome it warmly, We promise you many, many graces from the Lord, which, with Our Apostolic Blessing, We wish to assure for each of you from this moment on. (English translation quoted from Liturgical Revolution Vol. III, 547-549; original Italian: http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/it/audiences/1965/documents/hf_p-vi_aud_19650317.html.)
(To be continued)
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Dr. Pius Parsch
The Church’s Year of Grace (1957)

THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Station at St. Peter’s

1. Gaudete Sunday: A Joyous Day in Advent. Like children awaiting the Christ Child, we are hardly able to restrain our happiness over the coming of the Lord. Actually it is Christmas joy anticipated. The Church modifies her colors; instead of violet she uses rose, a softened hue of violet and thus a compromise between the colors symbolizing penance and joy. Unlike other days in Advent, the altar is adorned with flowers; organ music is permitted;
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