The underground Church in China continues in its bloody martyrdom January 13, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in catachesis, disaster, episcopate, error, General Catholic, Holy suffering, horror, martyrdom, mortification, Papa, persecution, priests, Revolution, sadness, scandals, secularism, sickness, Society, the struggle for the Church, Virtue.comments closed
This item is a couple of months old, but I had only heard of it a few days ago, and so maybe it’s new to you, too. Cardinal Kung 
Foundation – the ONLY Church-group in China worthy of support, as it is the only one that is not compromised with the so-called “patriotic church” in any way – informed the world this past November that Father Pedro Wei He Pung had been found dead, floating in a Chinese river, under extremely suspicious circumstances. The government claims suicide, this writer believes the Chicom government had him killed.
Excerpts from the press release:
Father Pedro WEI HePing (蔚和平神父), a young underground Catholic Priest in China, died a week ago on November 6. He was 41 years old. The Cardinal Kung Foundation has learned that Father Wei’s body was found floating in a river in the City of Taiyuan (太原) in Shanxi (山西) Province. The cause of death was not determined, but the government authority claimed that it was a case of suicide. Knowing Father Wei for almost two decades since his student days, this foundation and many of his friends believe that it is out of his character to commit suicide…….
…….Since his return to China in 2007, he devoted himself totally in pastoral work, particularly in extremely poor and desolated areas. He gave many retreats and seminars at underground convents and seminaries. With a special focus on youth development, he started “Pilgrimage on Foot” and personally led many youth groups on pilgrimage, walking hundreds of miles as a way of faith formation and character building. His zeal in vocation led him to established an underground seminary, taught by priests with advanced overseas qualifications.
Fr. Wei, through his hardwork and organization skills, made great contribution in China church in less than a decade. He shared with us many of his future plans. He commanded the respects and cooperation of his contemporaries in other dioceses. Would such a zealous good shepherd with strong faith commit suicide? What was the true cause of his death? This myth must be solved.
The Catholic Church in China has been divided into two groups since 1957 when the communist government made the Roman Catholic Church illegal. Those believers who refused to renounce their fidelity with the Roman Pontiff in spite of severe persecution became known as the underground Church. Consequently, they continue to suffer severe repercussions, harassment and restriction. Another group, commonly known as the open Church, is founded and controlled by the Chinese government through the Catholic Patriotic Association which, as characterized by Pope Benedict XVI, is an organization “independent of the Holy See, in the religious sphere” and “is incompatible with Catholic doctrine”. This group of bishops/clergy surrender the life of the church to the Chinese government authority. While doing this, a large number of these open church bishops had sought and received the Vatican approval, while continuing their roles in the Patriotic Association Churches.
Which is really a scandal in its own right. The Church, since the days of JPII at least, has played footsie with the communist government in interminable negotiations aimed at regularizing the “open” church. In many respects, the true Church is treated as an embarrassment by Church authorities (not limited to this pontificate). The Vatican has willingly regularized a number of “patriotic” bishops put forth by the Chinese government, some of which have made indications of fealty to Rome, others of which have not. A Christmas newsletter form the Society had this to say on these negotiations:
Now that the situation of those underground bishops [several of which are imprisoned, some for decades] who are currently imprisoned due to defending their communion with the Pope appear to have been put on the back burner by the Holy See’s negotiation delegation [led by the uber-liberal Cardinal Parolin], did Cardinal Kung and thousands of other bishops and clergy including Bishop Zhumin of Boading and Bishop Ma of Shanghai overemphasize the importance of fidelity and communion with the Supreme Pontiff, to the extent of giving up their lives, or accepting decades of imprisonment in order to keep their communion with the Pope?
In the view of Cardinal Zen, the Archbishop Emeritus of Hong Kong, “the talks are a waste of time. The Chinese party will never give nearly enough to make a deal palatable to the Vatican.” On the other hand, Cardinal Tong, current Archbishop of Hong Kong, is of the opinion that “keeping dialogue open means that a better deal with China could develop.”
Well, that’s the post-conciliar Church, always in for more dialogue. Though I fear any deal reached under this pontificate could bear very poorly for the true Church in China.
Please remember the millions of souls attached to that long suffering underground Church in your prayers. It must be incredibly painful and difficult to feel that even the Vatican does not always value the fidelity they have shown to Holy Mother Church. They are sadly far from alone. It seems oftentimes in recent years, it is those who show the most faithfulness and devotion to our timeless Church are those who are viewed as inconvenient, even embarrassing, by the institutional powers that be.
In which case, the prayers we offer now may be efficacious for ourselves at some not too distant date.
Our moral superiors in the academic left January 13, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, catachesis, disaster, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, paganism, Revolution, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sexual depravity, sickness, Society.comments closed
Great column by RS McCain. He notes that the leftist academics (and the students they churn out, year after year) who set themselves up as our collective moral superiors, fit to pass judgment on all the failings they perceive among us, the unenlightened, are an odd lot to proclaim superiority over anyone. He catalogs a partial list of academics convicted of grave crimes or guilty of bizarre public behavior just over the past couple of years. Some of these individuals have (or had) a very wide public profile and wielded significant influence within academia.
Something to bear in mind when contemplating sending off the children you have prayed, sweat, and struggled over for years off to college:
Liberal intellectuals are convinced that the rest of us are so stupid we need them to tell us what to think. Their narcissism manifests itself as a contempt for the common sense of ordinary Americans, an attitudeThomas Sowell analyzed in The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. [I would argue, even more, it manifests as a specific and intentional rejection of Christian morality and Scholastic reasoning. Those have to be destroyed in order to convince people to buy into the leftist shibboleths] What inspires the Left’s rage — the source of their constant accusations that ordinary Americans are racist, sexist homophobes — is simply that the Left expects the rest of us to accept their authority as Our Moral Superiors™ and they become angry when we refuse to do so. [For a demonstration of that, I received some jackass comments from left wing trolls due to my blog being linked by the Dallas Morning News.] The children of privilege spend Daddy’s money to get an Ivy League diploma and how dare you fail to acknowledge their right to tell you how to live?
However, the intellectual class harbors so many lunatics, perverts and criminals that one suspects the faculty hiring process systematically excludes decent and honest people from academic employment. The psychotic Professor Hugo Schwyzer’s 2013 meltdown was just the tip of an iceberg of degenerate madness in academia. Walter Lee Williams, whose works include Overcoming Heterosexism and Homophobia, was “an eminent professor of gender and sexuality studies” at the University of Southern California before he pleaded guilty in federal court to traveling the world to pursue sex with boys as young as 9. Columbia University political science Professor David Epstein copped a plea bargain for having incest with his daughter. Rutgers University Professor Anna Stubblefield was convicted of sexually molesting a mentally disabled man. Lehigh University Professor Yujie Ding was convicted of federal fraud charges, and Florida State University Professor James Doran was convicted of embezzlement. One could make a long list of university faculty — Professor Alyssa Azotea (psychology, Simmons College),Professor Michael Dean Stroup (economics, Stephen F. Austin State University), Professor James Francis Quinn (criminology, University of North Texas), Professor Douglas Paul Dohrman (health science, Texas A&M University), Professor Christopher DeZutter (chemistry, University of Minnesota-Rochester), Professor Noel Campbell (business, University of Central Arkansas), Professor Kevin Sullivan (public health, Emory University), Professor Amol Kharabe (business, Ohio University),Professor J. Martin Favor (African American studies, Dartmouth College), to name just a few recent cases — arrested on child pornography charges. The FBI says self-described “boy lover” Professor James Cavalcoli used the Internet in his attempt to meet a minor for sex. And, of course, there was University of Georgia Professor Max Reinhart, who was charged with prostitution for peddling himself online as a transvestite named “Sasha.”
Goodness. 17 names. That’s quite a panoply of perversion and moral degradation.
But it’s not altogether surprising. Look, it’s easy to paint one’s ideological adversaries as horrific monsters – the other side does it all the time – but look what leftism advocates. Hedonism. Self-pleasing. Rejection of authority. Rejection of traditional authority. The destruction of the family. Sexual immorality. General immorality. Theft in the form of “income redistribution.” The list goes on and on.
Is it really likely that souls deeply steeped in such beliefs, holding them to be so very dear and so very much above all that Christofascist bunk (that just happened to create Western Civilization and all the rights, privileges, and material wealth they couldn’t live without) that they strive to undermine and destroy every day, would not eventually begin to fall into levels of degradation to the point of breaking the law and injuring others (like the soul-destroying crime of raping children)? Or is it the other way around? Are people attracted to leftism because they find immorality attractive to begin with? Rejection of virtue and the trumpeting of vice as virtue, all wrapped in a politico-religious system that portrays doing so the height of goodness and right……it’s likely all a self-reinforcing vicious circle like the many-staired descent into hell.
And they expect us to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of indoctrination by such warped individuals? I don’t think so.
Book Recommendation: The Collaborator by Mitchell Hadley January 13, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Dallas Diocese, fun, General Catholic, Papa, reading, Revolution, the struggle for the Church, Tradition.comments closed
I’m not sure I make a very good book reviewer. Either I go into too much detail, or not enough. Book reviewing probably takes more skill as a writer than I possess.
I almost never read fiction. 99% of what I read is Church-related, while I still read an occasional military history or technical book. Over time, I just kind of began to feel I had better things to do than read a make-believe story. I generally find truth stranger, and more interesting, than fiction.
So when I give a very strong recommendation for a fiction book, perhaps that means something. It surely means I greatly enjoyed it, and, in this case, felt I directly benefited from having read it. The book I am referring to is Mitchell Hadley’s The Collaborator, a fiction tale set in the present-day Church with a pontiff who looks, acts, and has a background very similar to Pope Francis. However, that pope, and his protagonist, the Prefect of the CDF, are never named.
Without providing any spoilers, the plot centers around a radical new pontiff’s attempts to remake the Church, and the disturbing evidence that emerges from his background in a troubled Latin American country where his rise to power may have been just a bit too convenient. What he chose to do to gain that power form the main plot of the book, and also set the stage for the final conflict between pope and prefect.
I mentioned in a previous post that The Collaborator is very much in the mold of Windswept House and other Malachi Martin books, though without the overt darkness. Another key difference is that author Hadley does not hint that he has special inside knowledge regarding conspiracies at the highest levels of the Church. He’s a regular, involved Catholic like you or I, and while he certainly did research, there are no claims of any “true revelations” masquerading as fiction or anything like that. He’s simply taken what we know about the current pope, and his background, and extrapolated out a bit from there.
Having said that, I think it important to note that The Collaborator was written before many very telling events took place, like the Ordinary Synod, the changes to the annulment process and the Year of Mercy. I think it was written before the revelations surrounding the “St. Gallen Group” of progressive cardinals who apparently, by their own admission, illicitly collaborated in electing Pope Francis. In some respect, Hadley’s book reads as prophetic.
And, in several ways, I thought it helped me understand Pope Francis better. Somehow – and perhaps this is just me and my own imagination working with the author’s – I felt like, reading this slight imagining on this progressive pope’s background and his cooperation with an authoritarian regime (among many other aspects of his life), I felt like I came away with a better understanding of who Pope Francis is. It certainly didn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Quite the contrary. It confirmed, even more, what a grave threat we face in this pontificate. And it instilled in me even greater concern over the lengths to which Francis and this modernist cabal may go in their efforts to remake the Church in their image.
On a practical level, the books a very fast read. Mitchell Hadley is a man who writes in a fluid, easy to read style. But as I said before, the book is not a screed. He tries to give a fair representation of progressive belief, while making clear which side (progressive/orthodox) he believes is right. But I want to be clear the book is not just one long rant against this pope or anyone else. The book tells an engaging story, and doesn’t spoon feed every detail to the reader. There is room to think and draw one’s own conclusions, which I appreciate.
I really strongly recommend the book. It’s only $15 and I get a nice kickback*, so make sure to buy 10 or 20 copies. I usually take forever to read a book, but this one got me so engaged I finished it in a couple of days (bear in mind, I read parts of 12-15 different books daily). I think all readers will enjoy it. We always complain about a lack of good, current-day material in this sick culture….well, here’s a good, brand new book to read!
Again, you can order the book from here, in both print and electronic formats.
*-not really
New Franciscan “gospel of mercy” yielding predictable results: impiety, hardness of heart January 13, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, catachesis, different religion, disaster, episcopate, error, General Catholic, horror, Papa, Sacraments, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sickness, Society, the struggle for the Church.comments closed
Sandro Magister has an article at Chiesa that includes a letter he received from an Italian priest. That priest relates how souls are now using the new, false gospel of mercy to refuse correction in the confessional, and, even more, express an unrepentant, almost proud attitude towards their sins, even very grave ones (including abortion). They basically go into the confessional now expecting absolution (and approval to receive the Blessed Sacrament, which is odd) irrespective of their lack of contrition or their total lack of purpose of amendment. And they often directly quote Pope Francis in defense of their new-found reprobate sense.
Magister prefaces that letter with a number of statistics…….the attitude that Pope Francis is instilling in souls is bearing its inevitable fruit. When people are told that ancient, cherished beliefs, fought for and defended for so long, no longer really matter, and that God is just a cosmic Pez dispenser of endless forgiveness and salvation in spite of our sinfulness and lack of faith, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that many souls will conclude all this religion stuff is a bunch of hooey, and that they are just as well blowing it all off and watching football on Sunday. IOW, when the hierarchy attacks the Doctrine of the Faith, the faithful respond by falling away in huge droves.
First, some of Magister’s statistics:
At the Wednesday general audiences there was a drop from 1,199,000 visitors in 2014 to 704,100 in 2015. While for the Sunday Angelus the fall was from 3,040,000 to 1,585,000.
…….Other revelations are much more indicative in this regard. For example, the official figures that ISTAT compiles every year in Italy on the daily life of a gigantic sampling of citizens, made up of almost 24,000 families, for a total of 54,000 individuals residing in 850 cities large and small.
In the most recent annual report made public, relative to 2014, the “percentage of persons over the age of 6 who go to a place of worship at least once a week” turned out to be 28.8 percent……..
…….During the seven years of the pontificate of Benedict XVI, this same indicator was consistently above 30 percent in Italy, on average around 32-33 percent. Decisively higher than in 2014, the first full year of the pontificate of Francis and the one in which his popularity reached its peak. [So can it be inferred that Francis is directly responsible for a ~5% falloff in Mass attendance in a single year, a HUGE figure and one that represents an enormous tragedy for hundreds of thousands of souls?]
Now to excerpts from the priest’s incredible letter:
The facts are these. Since the opening of the Holy Year backed by Pope Francis and on the occasion of the Christmas festivities of 2015 – as also since Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been sitting on the throne of Peter – the number of faithful who approach the confessional has not increased, neither in ordinary time nor in festive. The trend of a progressive, rapid diminution of the frequency of sacramental reconciliation that has characterized recent decades has not stopped. On the contrary: the confessionals of my church have been largely deserted. [The priest earlier related that he makes an effort to offer Confession frequently]
I have sought comfort for this bitter consideration by imagining that the basilicas connected to the Holy Year in Rome or in other cities, or the shrines and convents, have been able to attract a larger number of penitents. But a round of phone calls to some fellow priests who regularly hear confessions in these places (using the opportunity of the Christmas wishes that I extend every year) has confirmed my observation: lines of penitents that are anything but long, everywhere, even less than at the festivities of past years…….[Doctrinal indifference leads to sacramental indifference, and soon, a total collapse of faith]
…….Distrusting the value of the numbers, because even the salvation of one soul has an infinite value in the eyes of God, I reviewed the “quality” of the confessions I have heard and I asked – while respecting the secret of the confessional concerning the identity of the penitent – for news from a few fellow confessors of long experience. The picture that presents itself is certainly not a happy one, both concerning the awareness of sin and in reference to the awareness of the prerequisites for obtaining God’s forgiveness (in this case as well, I know that the term “forgiveness” is giving way to “mercy” and is in danger of being mothballed soon, but at what theological, spiritual, and pastoral cost?). [An incalculable one, to be sure]
[Now for the amazing tales…….] Two examples stand for all. One middle-aged gentleman whom I asked, with discretion and delicacy, if he had repented of a repeated series of grave sins against the seventh commandment “do not steal,” of which he had accused himself with a certain frivolity and almost joking about the circumstances, certainly not attenuating, that had accompanied them, responded to me with the words of Pope Francis: “Mercy knows no limits” and by showing surprise that I would remind him of the need for repentance and for the resolution to avoid falling back into the same sin in the future: “I did what I did. What I will do I will decide when I go from here. What I think about what I have done is a question between me and God. I am here only to have what everyone deserves at least at Christmas: to be able to receive communion at midnight!” And he concluded by paraphrasing the now archfamous expression of Pope Francis: “Who are you to judge me?” [Simply one instance of this kind is an incredible damnation of the errors people are absorbing from this pontificate. Words and actions have huge consequences at times. Off the cuff statements can be incredibly damaging. We now have souls falling into the gravest of sin, and, even worse, assuming titanic presumption regarding their status with regard to salvation and God’s infinite mercy, and infinitesimal justice. Each one of these souls represents a human tragedy of infinite proportions, and experience shows that those invincibly convinced by Church authorities (and this from the very highest) of erroneous beliefs are almost impossible to persuade otherwise, because they have heard what they have always wanted to hear, they have been confirmed in their sin from an authoritative source. That is the tragedy of this pontificate on an individual level.]
One young lady, to whom I had proposed as an act of penance connected to the sacramental absolution of a grave sin against the fifth commandment “do not kill” [almost certainly an abortion] that she kneel in prayer before the Most Holy Sacrament exposed on the altar of a church and perform an act of material charity toward a poor person to the extent of her means, responded to me with annoyance that “no one must ask for anything in exchange for God’s mercy, because it is free,” and that she had neither the time to stop at a church to pray (she had to “run around doing Christmas shopping downtown”), nor money to give to the poor (“who don’t even need it that much, because they have more than we do”). [Do you see the kind of titanic hubris, a veritable permanent antidote to humility, that is being created?]
It is evident that a certain message, at least as received from the pope and come down to the faithful, easily lends itself to being misunderstood, mistaken, and therefore of no help in the maturation of a sure and upright conscience in the faithful concerning their sins and the conditions of their remission in the sacrament of reconciliation.
I haven’t much else to add. These are souls who may well never find their way back to the life of Grace. And I’m certain they are not the only two examples possible, I would wager there are tens or hundreds of thousands like them around the world right now. They have been taught that the Blessed Sacrament is a “right,” not an incredible gift of which we shall always remain completely unworthy, even if our practice of the Faith and virtue by of enormous sanctity. And I imagine these folks are waltzing their way out of the Church, waltzing to Francis’ tune. There really are not words for this, it’s really an unspeakable tragedy.
Thanks to reader FM for the link.
Awesomeness: Not. One. Dime. In Action January 13, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, catachesis, Dallas Diocese, episcopate, General Catholic, It's all about the $$$, manhood, persecution, secularism, Society, the struggle for the Church, true leadership.comments closed
A local Catholic I know sent me a photo of his reply to the fundraising mailing he received from the Diocese of Dallas for the Bishop’s Annual Appeal. I think you can sense he’s rather nonplussed over Bishop Farrell’s diatribe against a great portion of the faithful in his very strong pro-gun control rant from last week.
His response is, I think, not just apropos, but vital: Not. One. Dime.:
Identity deleted, obviously.
Whether the NRA or some other, not-so-compromised Catholic entity, I’ve got to agree with this response. On the heels of an unprecedented $125 million fundraising push, including some of the steepest assessments I’ve ever heard of (well nigh 50% of all monies donated remain with the diocese, even though parishes are required to meet certain mandated targets – they see barely half that money back), I think it a very appropriate message to simply say “no thanks.” You can keep your political rants, and I’ll keep my money, thank you very much.
In fact, I’ve long argued that about the only ability the laity have to influence the Church, locally and at large, is the power of the purse. The laity’s function in the modern, corporatist Church is basically as a source of funding. Were that funding to be denied, and were it clearly communicated that the denial was based on opposition to the continued disastrous direction of the Church, perhaps some change might be effected.
Admittedly, it’s a bit of a long shot, but aside from our constant recourse to prayer and penance, it’s about the only shot we have.
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