A Saint for our time October 21, 2014
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, catachesis, Christendom, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, Interior Life, manhood, martyrdom, persecution, religious, Saints, sanctity, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
Saint Edmund Campion was a noted English scholar, revert to the Faith, Jesuit, priest, and martyr to the atrocious Elizabethan persecution of Catholics. Campion had been an Oxford scholar with some 
sympathies to the Faith when the English persecution got restarted under Queen Elizabeth. He chose to leave the country, entered the famous seminary at Douai, and wound up becoming a Jesuit. Some years later, he was sent by the Jesuits and the Pope to help sustain the many suffering and still faithful Catholics of England after decades of protestant repression. He knew that his mission to England would be his last, that he would be inevitably caught, tortured, and killed, as had virtually every other priest sent or remaining in hiding in England.
When he first arrived in England, it came to Campion’s mind to record a testament to the real motives behind his efforts, knowing that the Elizabethan authorities would try to portray him as a treasonous wretch set upon destroying Elizabeth and her totalitarian Tudor state. This document became known as “Campion’s Brag” and recorded not only his motives, but also his denunciation of some notable protestant errors. The letter quickly became public and there was a furious response from the authorities. More publishings from Campion, destroying more protestant errors, quickly ramped up the pressure, and Campion was inevitably betrayed and brought to incredible suffering.
But I thought the closing portion of Campion’s Brag, as contained in Evelyn Waugh’s very readable little biography of the Saint, was most appropriate for these very trying times. They reveal such a wonderful Catholic sense of being, an ethos, that perseveres joyfully even in the midst of unimaginable suffering and repression. It is the endless charity of the Saints, and their upholding of constant Truth, that has sustained the Faith for these many centuries. I found Campion’s witness very edifying and helpful as we continue to worry over the future of our beloved Church:
….Many innocent hands are lifted up to Heaven for you daily by those English students, [at the seminary at Douai] whose posterity shall never die, which beyond the seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you Heaven, or to die upon your pikes. And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league – all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England – cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, [where the executions of priests took place] or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted; so it must be restored. [We should keep this in mind within our own struggles and concerns today]
If these my offers be refused, and my endeavors can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigor, I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almighty God, the Searcher of Hearts, Who send us His Grace, and set us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at least be friends in Heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.
———–End Quote———–
Such beautiful sentiment! What great charity, to beg that even one’s tormentor and oppressor may happily meet with you in Heaven! That is truly a great example for our times, when many may be tempted to 
wrath, hatred, and despair. It is so very difficult to maintain charity for those we see working, striving to destroy our glorious Faith, planted indeed by God Incarnate in the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, but it is also absolutely necessary.
Our Blessed Lord told us that we shall be judged on the judgment we mete out to others. Ouch. I need to stick that to my monitor and look upon it every time I write! Our Lord also commanded us to be merciful to all, especially those who treat us cruelly or harm us. Again, so very counter to our fallen natures, but absolutely key to our sanctification!
So do not let yourself be scandalized out of the Church! It has happened to many, and cognizance of that should probably temper more of my writings. Yes we must oppose error at every turn with great force, as the great Saint Edmund Campion did to his death, but we must also do so with love in our hearts and not the hatred of factionalism. I know I struggle with that personally, this writing, it does take a toll. Don’t let them take your peace!
And Saint Edmund and his cohort did triumph in the end, the Faith was sustained – crippled, stunted, but remaining – in England in spite of literally centuries of the cruelest persecution, and bloomed back into full flower in the 1830s when the persecution was finally lifted. It breathed anew for a century or more before the new dark times fell, before the worldwide heresy of modernism became so dominant. But the experience of these English Catholics and martyrs should give us hope as Campion’s example did them. We must remain faithful, even as the giants in our Church seem to fall to the world, the flesh, and the devil.
God bless all of you! May He sustain you to endure these terrible trials.
It is worse than useless to attempt conciliation with the revolutionary spirit abroad in the world October 21, 2014
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Basics, disaster, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, sadness, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sexual depravity, Society, SOD, the enemy.comments closed
So said Pope Leo XIII’s biographer Fr. Bernard O’Reilly, writing in 1886. I think his comments are a rebuke to many in the Church who think they can make nicey-nice with the world and still keep some semblance of doctrinal integrity. In fact, what the world demands, what the secular elite demands, is total apostasy. A few quotes from Life of Pope Leo XIII, published 1887:
In truth, it would have been worse than useless to attempt to conciliate the spirit which rules the governments, and administrations, the legislatures, or the revolutionary press during all these fateful years. Conciliation, so far as they were concerned, meant more than to compromise on the most sacred principles; it meant virtual, if not formal, renouncement of one’s most cherished and conscientious convictions. It meant apostasy.
End quote. But even 130 years ago, there were far too many priests and even, then, a handful of bishops who were ready to suborn the Church to the errors of the world, especially those most revolutionary errors unleashed in 1789, which became the replacement religion for a growing number of Churchmen as the 1800s advanced. As Father O’Reilly notes, these internal enemies of the Church were the worst right religion has ever had:
It is not to be denied that among the very worst enemies of religion in Italy from 1846 to 1886 were some of her own ministers. Among these may have been men of unimpeachable moral conduct, who, carried away by the powerful current of revolutionary ideas and sentiments……….deemed the established religion as an obstacle and an enemy, and combated it with all their might.
End quote. So, the crisis we face today has had a long history of preparation. Satan loves to make use of priests and bishops of God’s Holy Church who have fallen into sin and error (almost invariably, both – as Aquinas and many other Doctors have said, public error is almost invariably driven by private sin). But I don’t know if ever in the Church’s history satan has been able to capture so many priests, so many bishops, so many cardinals, and then we have the special problem of the moment, the Holy Father himself. I stop short of tying the Holy Father directly to satan’s influence……..I just can’t do it, right now.
There have been some really excellent, if very troubling, articles on the Synod of Darkness in the secular press of late. Rorate quoted one, and I read this one last night. Really very strong and disconcerting commentary. I highly recommend reading both pieces.
Both authors reach the same conclusion I reached a year ago, and have repeated from time to time since: this Kasperite gambit attacking marriage, the family, and now the Church’s opposition to sodomy, is of such significance that even a slight weakening of “pastoral” practice in their regard will be – not could be, but will be – sufficient to utterly obliterate not just the Moral Doctrine of the Faith, all of which is so tightly interrelated and intertwined, but also destroy any and all remaining moral authority the Church has. As Rorate stressed, these radical modernist cardinals and bishops are actually pursuing the destruction of their own office and influence, but I’m not sure if they view that as a feature or a bug. New Catholic got it exactly right: “No Marriage, No Infallibility, No Papacy, No Catholic Church.”
I believe many in the Church, especially in the West and most especially in the episcopate in Western countries, are thoroughgoing modernists who have exchanged faith in worldly sexular paganism for faith in Jesus Christ. Some or perhaps even many or most may be actively, consciously seeking out the destruction of the Church. These men are essentially unreachable absent a moral miracle. But I do suspect there are also a good number who have simply not thought the logic of their actions through, who are so swept up in their own narrow concerns, their church taxes, the applause of the world, and enormous peer pressure, that they are contributing to a course whose resolution they would not want to see realized. Now is a very good time for these men to step back and take a very hard, very prayerful look at what they are unleashing on Christ’s Church. Because I do fully agree that the Church Herself, or at least Her human element, hangs in the balance with the radical, soul and doctrine destroying heresies some are trying to codify in Church practice if not formally in law (but I wouldn’t hold my breath on the latter, either).
I’ll conclude with some of Rorate’s comments on the fate of the Church hanging in the balance with a dangerously novel Holy Father and a group of radicals in the episcopate eager to divorce the Church from the Bridegroom:
If divorce and remarriage are acceptable, in “specific circumstances” and after a “path of penance”, then certainly Our Lord Jesus Christ can rightfully repudiate and divorce his newly-adulterous Catholic Bride.Yes, the stakes are that high, though some have not completely grasped that they are digging their own grave…….………Anarchy and subversion are not a one-way street, cardinal Marx, two can play that game: if you like to destroy Divine Law by dismissing it as “taboo”, then beware:the next taboo to fall is your claim to speak for anyone but yourself.
Progressive Synod spokesman Fr. Thomas Rosica: Holy Family the ultimate “irregular” family! October 21, 2014
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, asshatery, Basics, disaster, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, sadness, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sexual depravity, sickness, SOD.comments closed
These guys, they just don’t get it. The below is such an outrageous attack on the sensus fidei that only someone essentially outside the Faith – Roman collar or no – could make such a statement.
What did Father Rosica, head of the “Salt+Light” network that nobody watches, say? In a now deleted tweet, he said that when it came to irregular families, the Holy Family was the exemplar!
Vox Cantoris has apparently known Fr. Rosica for a looong time and diagnoses his mentality:
Father Tom Rosica is Executive Producer at Salt + Light (a failed Catholic cable channel of no hope with 1000 viewers, I get more blog hits a day than they have viewers). He is President of a 200 year old Catholic University which just sold off its property, has no students is reduced to a chaplaincy and exists only now as a “charter,” — it has a charter!). He is a Consultor to the Pontifical Council on Social Communications and a former Chaplain at Toronto’s Newman Centre (where he attempted to have Catholics arrested for protesting the appearance of Vatican II peritus, ex-priest and heretic Gregory Baum). [Oh, the heavy, repressive hand of the “merciful!”]
….. To refer to the Holy Family as irregular is repugnant, it is blasphemous.
It also reveals clearly the intent.
This sham of a Synod, the secrecy engineered by Urdo, Forte, Lombardi and yes, Tom Rosica and sanctioned by the Pope himself and their intent to change doctrine by stealth is now plain to the world.
I know Tom Rosica. I know how he works since 20 years ago when I volunteered to teach Gregorian chant at the Newman Centre. This is pure Rosicanism.
They are not finished, they are coming back with a vengeance and we must be vigilant to stop them.
Calling the Holy Family “irregular’ was no accident.
It was intentional – it was a signal to canonise those “irregular” families such as divorced and remarried, same-sex couples with adopted children or those conceived through a turkey-baster!
Of course. And a prime part of the agenda – which is the destruction of the entire doctrinal edifice of the Faith, moral and otherwise, the better to accord with their true religion, leftism – is to make statements just like this and then retract them, under pressure, the damage already having been done. Now some left wing Katholyc can gaily quote the Consultor to the Pontifical Council on Social Communications and the English language reporter on the Synod as having “canonized” the perverse and the adulterous.
Tweets like this are of a piece, and part of the same program, as the midterm “Relatio” that bore absolutely no resemblance to the actual Synod interventions and was in fact written days or weeks in advance of the Synod even starting. The final report was to be the same save for the revolt that broke on on Thursday, October 16. That revolt resulted in the final report being less egregious, but many problems, and threats, remain. Even after the Synod closes next year – and what a happy day that will be! – there remains the usual post-synodal apostolic exhortation that will be penned by Pope Francis, ostensibly guided and informed by the Synod discussions, but who can have any confidence in that.
One major coup that has already been pulled is that even most orthodox Catholics are now assuming a Synod like this has some actual doctrinal authority. I would say, this is by and large false, and could be totally false. These synods are a post-conciliar novelty, first off. Secondly, the Synod itself claimed to be strictly “pastoral,” rather like the claims of Vatican II, but we know how that has worked out in practice. But finally, I am dubious to the authority a very small subset of the episcopate meeting, granted, under the supervision of the pontiff, has. A Synod is not an ecumenical council. And if it defines no doctrine, then it really has no doctrinal authority.
But again, we know how the modernists have played fast and loose with these types of affairs, dating back to Vatican II. Even at the Synod, the Vatican never corrected the press when it took the mid-term relatio and proclaimed the Church had changed its Doctrine. That demonstrates a willing connivance in the profusion of doctrinal error, which also would obliterate the authority of whatever body proclaimed such, like the various “robber councils” early in the Church or the disgraced Synod of Pistoia in 1786. These are exceedingly difficult judgments to make and in sane times it would be up to the normal bastion of orthodoxy,the Holy See, to make such determinations. But we have been in unprecedented times now for some decades and we don’t have a lot of past experience in the Church to look to for a guide when the Holy See, the Curia, much of the episcopate, the whole panoply of institutions intended to guard and defend the Truth Christ has revealed go off the rails themselves.
Thus I do not know what to counsel other than to pray and to continue to present that Truth and oppose the errors that are being promoted, from whatever source. I do not know what else we possibly can do. That opposition can take many forms, from just silently rejecting error to angry (if respectful) protests made to the Nuncio or the Vatican itself. But we cannot allow these scandals to take away our peace and our virtue or derail our sanctification. Easy to say, hard to do, I know.
Kasper continues to lie, and threatens retaliation towards Cardinal Burke October 21, 2014
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Basics, disaster, error, foolishness, General Catholic, persecution, sadness, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sexual depravity, Society, SOD, unadulterated evil.comments closed
He’s just a peach of a man. And this is the one who does “serene theology” and is the most influential theologian for this pontificate?
But when you’re the big man’s boy, the “designated success,” you can get away with anything. Anyone who follows the news knows that the self-anointed elites are above the rules they create for the rest of us, and I’m certain Kasper the Klown Kardinal (KKK for short) counts himself in that camp.
First, KKK made the amazing statement to the unquestioning, fawning German Catholic mainstream media that he didn’t even speak at the Synod. It took about 5 seconds for that lie to be exposed:
This Monday, Franca Giansoldati in Il Messaggero reported Kasper’s words on the outcome of the Synod: among other things, he said the following:“I am not disappointed. There was just a discussion, and now the issue will be deepened. I did not speak at the Synod, I did not want to push my positions. It will be seen, I am calm.”
Why did he say that? Because the atmosphere in Rome is so heavy for him after the defeat of the manipulation strategy of which he was the centerpiece during the historic debates of October 16, as well as due to his anti-African words and his lying about it, that he wanted to appear “above the fray,” and save his doomed position safely for the 2015 assembly.Well, that did not last for long. Shortly after this declaration became public, Matteo Matzuzzi, religious correspondent for Il Foglio,tweeted back:“Card. Kasper: ‘I did not speak at the Synod’. But the official records of the Press Office show that he spoke on October 8, in the afternoon.“
Could it be that lying is the entire foundation of his theology? No wonder, as Roberto de Mattei proved, his entire thesis on “communion for remarried divorcees” is based on an immensely and embarrassingly deceptive presentation of historical evidence. Is it possible that this is just the way his mind works always? If so, it does not appear that more “Church Tax Money” is the right answer.Lie and threaten, lie and threaten, with the occasional disdainful remark: it seems to be his modus operandi. Does this merit a theological award or perhaps, rather, another kind of more thorough evaluation?
Even if he had not spoken, what of it? It is his proposal that drove the discussion, it was his minions in the German episcopate that made the favorable interventions (primarily)……so even this false claim is preposterous and dumb on its face.
But that’s not all KKK’s been up to. He’s evidently hopping mad at Cardinal Burke for having the temerity to question his most exalted and serene authority:
Another comment made by Cardinal Kasper in speaking with Kath.net is quite breathtaking: he talked again about a “deliberate dirty trick” to denounce him. [Oh, now speaking one’s mind in defense of the Faith is a “deliberate dirty trick!” Just how exalted an opinion does KKK have of himself?] “The fact that Catholic media (and unfortunately a cardinal in person) should participate in it, in order to tear down another position morally, is shameful,” Kasper opined.[Hello? Pot, kettle? The claim is outrageous anyway. He hasn’t hesitated to tear down his opposition. He just doesn’t like return fire]When Kath.net asked as a follow-up question who that cardinal was, Kasper unfortunately gave no answer. The retired Curial Cardinal announced, however, that “other journalists” are going to take action against such “undignified machinations”
So now it’s with threats! How is that for “undignified machinations?” KKK, you are a prince among men, I tell you what! A one man demonstration of all that is wrong with the Church. Please keep talking! Please please please don’t shut your mouth! A few more months of this and you will have so discredited yourself and your position that no one with a conscience will be able to approach within 15 feet of you.
But, then again, I would take that threat pretty seriously. This is pretty conclusive evidence that much of the “mainstream Catholic” media is deeply in bed with the modernists – as if we needed confirmation of that! It does further indicate the bankruptcy of the modernist’s position and their own incredible immorality, at least as evidenced by their own chosen leader. Once again, sort of restating the obvious, but there is some benefit when the wolf in sheep’s clothing shows his teeth.
What a scandalous little man. Incredible.
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