Italy’s Culture War – “Italians often say that the system is too stable. General elections just reshuffle members of the political class, which rarely change very much. Except maybe this time.” A New Sign of Our Times (The Catholic Thing)
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Maureen McKinley milks one of her family’s goats in their backyard with help from three of her children, Madeline (behind), Fiona and Augustine on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. McKinley and her family own two goats, chickens, a rabbit, and a dog. / Jake Kelly
Denver Newsroom, Aug 10, 2021 / 16:32 pm (CNA).
With five children ages 10 and under to care for, and a pair of goats, a rabbit, chickens and a dog to tend to, Maureen and Matt McKinley rely on a structured routine to keep their busy lives on track.
Chores, nap times, scheduled story hours – they’re all important staples of their day. But the center of the McKinleys’ routine, what focuses their family life and strengthens their Catholic faith, they say, is the Traditional Latin Mass.
Its beauty, reverence, and timelessness connect them to a rich liturgical legacy that dates back centuries.
“This is the Mass that made so many saints throughout time,” observes Maureen, 36, a parishioner at Mater Misericordiæ Catholic Church in Phoenix.
“You know what Mass St. Alphonsus Ligouri, St. Therese, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Augustine were attending? The Traditional Latin Mass,” Maureen says.
“We could have a conversation about it, and we would have all experienced the exact same thing,” she says. “That’s exciting.”
Recent developments in the Catholic Church, however, have curbed some of that excitement. On July 16, Pope Francis released a motu proprio titled Traditiones custodis, or “Guardians of the Tradition”, that has cast doubt on the future of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) – and deeply upset and confused many of its devotees.
Pope Francis’ directive rescinds the freedom Pope Benedict XVI granted to priests 14 years ago to say Masses using the Roman Missal of 1962, the form of liturgy prior to Vatican II, without first seeking their bishop’s approval. Under the new rules, bishops now have the “exclusive competence” to decide where, when, and whether the TLM can be said in their dioceses.
In a letter accompanying the motu proprio, Pope Francis maintains that the faculties granted to priests by his predecessor have been “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”
Using the word “unity” a total of 15 times in the accompanying letter, the pope suggests that attending the TLM is anything but unifying, going so far as to correlate a strong personal preference for such masses with a rejection of Vatican II.
Weeks later, many admirers of the “extraordinary” form of the Roman rite – the McKinleys among them – are still struggling to wrap their minds and hearts around the pope’s order, and the pointed tone he used to deliver it.
Maureen McKinley says she had never considered herself a “traditionalist Catholic” before. Instead, she says she and her husband have just “always moved toward the most reverent way to worship and the best way to teach our children.”
“It didn’t feel like I became a particular type of Catholic by going to Mater Misericordiæ. But since the motu proprio came out, I feel like I have been categorized, like I was something different, something other than the rest of the Church,” she says.
“It feels like our Holy Father doesn’t understand this whole group of people who love our Lord so much.”
McKinley isn’t alone in feeling this way. Sadness, anger, frustration, and disbelief are some common themes in conversations among those who regularly attend the TLM.
They want to understand and support the Holy Father, but they also see the restriction as unnecessary, especially when plenty of other more pressing issues in the Church abound.
Eric Matthews, another Mater Misericordiæ parishioner, views the new restrictions as an “attack on devout Catholic culture,” citing the beauty that exists across the rites recognized within the Church. There are seven rites recognized in the Catholic Church: Latin, Byzantine, Alexandrian or Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite, and Chaldean.
“It’s the same Mass,” says Matthews, 39, who first discovered the TLM about eight years ago. “It’s just different languages, different cultures, but the people that you have there are there for the right reasons.”
Eric and Geneva Matthews with their four children. / Narissa Lowicki
Different paths to the TLM
The pope’s motu proprio directly affects a tiny fraction of U.S. Catholics – perhaps as few as 150,000, or less than 1 percent of some 21 million regular Mass-goers, according to some estimates. According to one crowd-sourced database, only about 700 venues – compared to over 16,700 parishes nationwide – offer the TLM.
Also, since the motu proprio’s release July 16, only a handful of bishops have stopped the TLM in their dioceses. Of those bishops who have made public responses, most are allowing the Masses to continue as before – in some cases because they see no evidence of disunity, and in others because they need more time to study the issue.
But for those who feel drawn to the TLM – for differing reasons that have nothing to do with a rejection of Vatican II – it feels as if the ground has shifted under their feet.
Maureen McKinley wants her children to understand the importance of hard work, of which they have no shortage when it comes to their urban farm. After morning prayer, Maureen milks the family’s goats with the help of the children. Madeline (age 10) feeds the bunny; Augustine (7) exercises the dog; John (6) checks for eggs from the chickens; and Michael (4) helps anyone he chooses.
With a noisy clatter in the kitchen, the McKinleys eat breakfast, tidy up their rooms, and begin their daily activities. They break at 11 a.m. to head to daily Mass at Mater Misericordiæ, an apostolate of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), where they first attended two years ago.
Matt, 34, wanted to know how the early Christians worshipped.
“The funny thing about converts is they’re always wanting more,” says Maureen, who was, at first, a little resistant to the idea of attending the TLM because she didn’t know Latin. “Worship was a big part of his conversion.”
Maureen agreed to follow her husband’s lead, and they continued to attend the TLM. What kept them coming back week after week was the reverence for the Eucharist.
“Matt had a really hard time watching so many people receive communion in the hand at the other parish,” says Maureen. “He says he didn’t want our kids to think that that was the standard. That’s the exception to the rule, not the rule.”
Reverence in worship also drew Elizabeth Sisk to the TLM. A 28-year-old post-anesthesia care unit nurse, she attends both the Novus Ordo, the Mass promulgated by St. Paul VI in 1969, and the extraordinary form in Raleigh, North Carolina, where her parish, the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, offers the TLM on the first Sunday of the month.
Sisk has noticed recently that more people in her area — especially young people who are converts to Catholicism — are attending both forms of the Mass. While the Novus Ordo is what brought many of them, herself included, to the faith, she feels that the extraordinary form invites them to go deeper.
“We want to do something radical with our lives,” Sisk says. “To be Catholic right now as a young person is a really radical decision. I think the people who choose to be Catholic right now, we’re all in. We don’t want ‘watered-down’ Catholicism.”
Elizabeth Sisk stands in front of Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina.
With the lack of Christian values in the world today, Sisk desires “something greater,” which she says she can tell is happening in the TLM.
Many TLM parishes saw an increase in attendance during the pandemic, as they were often the only churches open while many others shut their doors or held Masses outside. This struck some as controversial, if not disobedient to the local government. For others, it was a saving grace to have access to the sacraments.
The priests at Erin Hanson’s parish obtained permission from the local bishop to celebrate Mass all day, every day, with 10 parishioners at a time during the height of the COVID pandemic.
“We were being told by the world that church is not necessary,” says Hanson, a 39-year-old mother of three. “Our priest says, ‘No, that’s a lie. Our church is essential. Our salvation is essential. The sacraments are essential.’”
Andy Stevens, 52, came into the Church through the TLM, much to the surprise of his wife, Emma, who had been a practicing Catholic for many years. Andy was “very adamantly not going to become Catholic,” but was happy to help Emma with their children at Mass. It wasn’t until they attended a TLM that Andy began to think differently about the Church.
“He believed that you die and then there is nothing, and he never really spoke to me about becoming a Catholic,” says Emma, 48, who was pregnant with their seventh child at the time.
Andy noticed an intense focus among the worshippers, which he recognized as a “real presence of God” that he didn’t see anywhere else. After the birth of their 7th child, he joined the Church.
All 12 of the Stevens’ children prefer the TLM to the Novus Ordo.
Emma and Andy Stevens with their 12 children in Oxford, England.
“It’s a Mass of the ages,” says their eldest son, Ryan, 27. “I can feel the veil between heaven and earth palpably thinner.”
A native of Chicago, Adriel Gonzalez, 33, remembers attending the TLM as a child, which he did not particularly like. It was “very long, very boring,” and the people who went to the TLM were “very stiff and they could come off as judgmental” towards his family, he says.
Gonzalez, who also attended Mass in Spanish with his family, didn’t understand the differences among rites, since Chicago was a sort of “salad bowl, ethnically,” he says, and Mass was celebrated in many languages and forms.
He took a step back from faith for some time, he says, noting that he had a “respectability issue” with the Christianity he grew up with. He watched as some of his friends were either thoughtless in the way they practiced their faith, or were “on fire,” but lacked intentionality. When he did come back to the faith, it was through learning about the Church’s intellectual tradition.
He spent time in monasteries and Eastern Catholic parishes with the Divine Liturgy because there was “something so obviously ancient about it.” He decided to stay within the Roman rite with a preference for a reverent Novus Ordo.
When he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gonzalez committed to his neighborhood parish, which had a strong contingent of people who loved tradition in general. The parish instituted a TLM in the fall of 2020, when they started having Mass indoors again after the pandemic.
Hallie and Adriel Gonzalez.
“If I’m at a Latin Mass, I’m more likely to get a sense that this is a time-honored practice, something that has been honed over the millennia,” he says. “There is clearly a love affair going on here with the Lord that requires this much more elaborate song and dance.”
For Eric Matthews, the TLM feels a little like time travel.
“It could be medieval times, it could be the enlightenment period, it could be the early 1900s, and the experience is going to be so similar,” he says.
“I just feel like that’s that universal timeframe – not just the universal Church in 2021 – but the universal Church in almost any time period. We’re the only church that can claim that.”
What happens now?
The motu proprio caught Adriel Gonzalez’ attention. He sought clarity about whether his participation in the extraordinary form was, in fact, part of a divisive movement, or simply an expression of his faith.
If it was a movement, he wanted no part of it, he says.
“As far as I can tell, the Church considers the extraordinary form and the ordinary form equal and valid,” says Gonzalez. “Ideally, there should be no true difference between going to one or the other, outside of just preference. It shouldn’t constitute a completely different reality within Catholicism.”
With this understanding, Gonzalez says he resonated with some of the reasoning set forth in the motu proprio because it articulated that the celebration of the TLM was never intended to be a movement away from the Novus Ordo or Vatican II. Gonzalez also emphasized that the extraordinary form was never supposed to be a “superior” way of celebrating the Mass.
Gonzalez believes the Lord allowed the growth in the TLM “to help us to recover a love for liturgy, and to ask questions about what worship and liturgy looks like.” He would have preferred if what was good was kept and encouraged, and what was potentially dangerous “coaxed out and called out.”
Mater Misericordæ Catholic Church in Phoenix, Arizona. / Viet Truong
Erin Hanson, of Mater Misericordiæ, agrees.
“If [Pope Francis] does believe there is division between Novus Ordo and traditional Catholics, I don’t think he did anything to try to fix that division,” she says.
Hanson would like to know who the bishops are that Pope Francis consulted in making this decision, sharing that she doesn’t feel that there is any of the transparency needed for such a major document. If there are divisions, she says, she would like the opportunity to work on them in a different way.
“This isn’t going to be any less divisive if he causes a possible schism,” Hanson says.
According to the motu proprio and the accompanying letter, the TLM is not to be celebrated in diocesan churches or in new churches constructed for the purpose of the TLM, nor should new groups be established by the bishops. Left out of their parish churches, some are worried their only option to attend Mass will be in a recreation center or hotel ballroom.
Eric Matthews hopes that everyone is able to experience the extraordinary form at least once in their life so they can know that this is not about division.
“I can’t imagine someone going to the Latin Mass and saying, ‘This is creating disunity,’” he says. “There’s nothing to be afraid of with the Latin Mass. You’re just going to be surrounding yourself with people that really take it to heart.”
Maureen McKinley was home sick when her husband Matt found out about the motu proprio. He had taken the kids to a neighborhood park, where he ran into some friends who also attend Mater Misericordiæ. They asked if he had heard the news.
“I felt disgust at a document that pretends to say so much while actually saying so little and disregards the Church’s very long and rich tradition of careful legal documents,” Matt McKinley says.
Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix stated that the TLM may continue at Mater Misericordiæ, as well as in chapels, oratories, mission churches, non-parochial churches, and at seven other parishes in the diocese. Participation in the TLM and all of the activities of the parish are so important to the McKinleys that they are willing to move to another state or city should further restrictions be implemented.
For now, their family’s routine continues the same as before.
At the end of their day, the McKinleys pray a family rosary in front of their home altar, which has a Bible at the center, and an icon of Christ and a statue of the Virgin Mary. They eat dinner together, milk the goat again, and take care of their evening animal chores. After night prayer, the kids head off to bed, blessing themselves with holy water from the fonts mounted on the wall before they enter their bedroom.
“The life of the Church springs from this Mass,” Maureen says. “That’s why we’re here—not because the Latin Mass is archaic, but that it’s actually just so alive.”
Cardinal Raymond Burke gives the final blessing during the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage Mass in Rome on Oct. 25, 2014. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Denver Newsroom, Jul 23, 2021 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
Catholic clergy and lay people around the world continue… […]
7 Comments
@Italy’s Culture War. “The Italian bishops will now in a difficult spot between papal preferences and popular sentiment. It will be interesting to see if they can all get past the slurs about ‘fascism’ and help Europe come to grips with a populism that is not without its perils – a challenging new sign of our times” (Robert Royal).
In his usual scholarly objective, though quietly partisan manner, an art, Royal favors events in Italy as a fortuitous turn of events. That in respect to the Francis’ ideology [as this writer perceives it, more evidently expressed here than Robert Royal’s similar expressions] of unlimited massive emigration [mainly Muslims] destroying Christian cultures, tacit approval of LGBT agendas of cultural political domination, saving the planet at the cost of infants in the womb.
Ursula von der Leyen [born in Flemish Belgium Ursula Albrecht] married to a German nobleman Heiko von der Leyen, Ursula member of German parliament, Chairman European Commission, now Giorgia Meloni’s arch enemy [Ursula darkly said she has ‘tools’], and likely a major issue for the EU’s, UN’s great ideological patron, Pope Francis. It’s the old British march The World Turned Upside Down, in real life tempo [allegedly played marching in surrender by a defeated British army at Bunker Hill]. By golly, even liberal Sweden, Royal reports, just voted in a conservative govt.
Drama. Will His Holiness call in his seers, Fr Spadaro, Austen Ivereigh, cardinal Kasper? I would say it, though it sounds trite, lacking appropriate rules of humor, will he secretly offer sacrificial homage to environmental goddess Pachamama. But I won’t.
Protestantism is ‘Faith Alone’, while Catholicism is Catechism 2068 . . . the mission of teaching all peoples, and of preaching the Gospel to every creature, so that all men may attain salvation through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments.”
Possessing Faith in Jesus great enough to Move Mountains, Yet Jesus burns them in hell as ‘Evildoers’.
Matthew 7:21 The True Disciple.
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. When that day comes, many will plead with me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ have we not prophesied in your name? have we not exorcized demons by its power? Did we not do many miracles in your name as well? Then I will declare to them solemnly, I never knew you. Out of my sight, you evildoers!
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Excellence of the gift of love.
Now I will show you the way which surpasses all the others. If I speak with human tongues and angelic as well, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and, with full knowledge, comprehend all mysteries, if I have faith great enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
John 14:15
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
1 John 5:3
For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome,
John 14:23
Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.
John 15:22
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me also hates my Father. If I had not done works among them that no one else ever did, they would not have sin; but as it is, they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But in order that the word written in their law might be fulfilled, ‘They hated me without cause.’
John 5:27
“The Father has given over to him power to pass judgment because he is Son of Man; no need for you to be surprised at this, for an hour is coming in which all those in their tombs shall hear his voice and come forth. Those who have done right shall rise to live; the evildoers shall rise to be damned.”
Matthew 11:20 Reproaches to Unrepentant Towns.
Then he began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And as for you, Capernaum: ‘Will you be exalted to heaven? You will go down to the netherworld.’ For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
Deuteronomy 7:9
“Understand, then, that the LORD, your God, is God indeed, the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant down to the thousandth generation toward those who love him and keep his commandments, but who repays with destruction the person who hates him; he does not dally with such a one, but makes him personally pay for it. You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments, the statutes and decrees which I enjoin on you today.
Catechism of the Catholic Church; Ten Commandments
Catechism 2068 The Council of Trent teaches that the Ten Commandments are obligatory for Christians and that the justified man is still bound to keep them; The Second Vatican Council confirms: “The bishops, successors of the apostles, receive from the Lord . . . the mission of teaching all peoples, and of preaching the Gospel to every creature, so that all men may attain salvation through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments.”
Catechism 2055 When someone asks him, “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” Jesus replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.” The Decalogue must be interpreted in light of this twofold yet single commandment of love, the fullness of the Law: The commandments: “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Catechism 2052 “Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” To the young man who asked this question, Jesus answers first by invoking the necessity to recognize God as the “One there is who is good,” as the supreme Good and the source of all good. Then Jesus tells him: “If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” And he cites for his questioner the precepts that concern love of neighbor: “You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.” Finally Jesus sums up these commandments positively: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Catechism 2083 Jesus summed up man’s duties toward God in this saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This immediately echoes the solemn call: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD.” God has loved us first. the love of the One God is recalled in the first of the “ten words.” the commandments then make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God.
“Top 5 Heresies Among American Evangelicals (Christianity Today)”
“Among evangelicals, 94 percent believe “sex outside of traditional marriage is a sin” and 91 percent believe abortion is a sin, both the highest levels since the survey began.”
I had a coworker run a route with me. He was a Pentecostal minister on his honeymoon. He had convinced one of his flock that she was ‘unevenly yoked”. So the young 28 year old, married mother of four, divorced her husband, as advised by her minister. The minister then realized the immediate need for her and her children to have a caretaker, so he in his fifties, married her, in his Assemblies of God, ‘church’. I responded, “Well couldn’t you have cared for her and her family, Without Having Sex with her?”
The Protestants believe in sex outside of Traditional Marriage is a sin, but they have manipulated Traditional Marriage to include the divorced and remarried. I read online where a Protestant Pentecostal minister was astounded at all the old men with young wives in his congregation.
Jesus makes it clear, if you want to go to heaven, do not commit Adultery through divorce and remarriage.
Mark 10:6
At the beginning of creation God made them male and female; for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become as one. They are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore let no man separate what God has joined.” Back in the house again, the disciples began to question him about this. He told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and the woman who divorces her husband and marries another commits adultery.”
Mark 10:17
“Good Teacher, what must I do to share in everlasting life? Jesus answered, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not kill; You shall not commit adultery;'”
@Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. “We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the Antichrist” (Archbishop Krakow Karol Wojtyla 1976 Philadelphia).
Our future John Paul II was prophetic. Perhaps a sense of things to come through his great devotion to the Mother of God, and our Mother, lovingly conferred to us by Christ from the Cross.
Cardinal Carlo Maria Caffarra was appointed 2006 by John Paul II to the executive Committee of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Caffarra was also devoted to Our Lady and like John Paul believed we were actually in end times, that becoming his conviction following publication of Amoris Laetitia perceived by him as a threat to the traditional family. Accordingly he participated [with Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, and the late Cardinal Joachim Meisner] in drafting the Dubia forwarded to Pope Francis, a list of questions regarding sections that suggested change to doctrine on marriage and reception of the Eucharist, to which Francis has declined to respond.
Cardinal Caffarra had met and befriended Sr Lucia Dos Santos, one of the three Portuguese children to whom Our Lady appeared at Fatima. They exchanged letters, the substance of which was Lucia’s belief in an alleged revelation [private revelation is always considered private, and not necessarily actual by the Church unlike public revelation such as the mysteries of Christ, the Virgin birth] that the final battle would be centered on the sanctity of the family.
Whether that assumed revelation to Lucia was actual, what is undeniable is that events since support it.
A Christian family is the nucleus of the Church faithful, and the major institution of a cohesive society [see social scientist Emile Durkheim]. If the family is deconstructed by Church recognition of homosexual unions, which is precisely a main agenda of the Synod on Synodality, already proposed as doctrine by the German Synodalweg, the Bishop of Rome relegating himself [virtually] and other bishops as mere facilitators the Church will inevitably divide, an anti church in opposition to Christ’s Mystical Body.
Neuer Anfang, a faithful German Catholic body in opposition to Synodalweg, and the latter’s heretical assumption of doctrine opposed to the universal Christian definition of marriage, of sexual identity, of Holy Orders, of Christ, and the Eucharist foresees that divide in Germany. Although, this break with Christ is linked to the Synod on Synodality, which severs the Magisterial head from the body, in effect severing Christ from the Church [the infallible authority invested by Christ in the Chair of Peter the visible link that maintains spiritual coherence].
If such occurs, inclusive of the bishop who claims the Chair of Peter, we can be assured that Christ will support and guide the faithful Body. Should it be the end, Christus Vincit.
Fr Morello, you are a brave and honest man! Bless you for setting out the consequences of any change in the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding Homosexual acts.
The church seems to hurtling helter skelter to schism and suicide over this of all issues!
It’s beyong amazing that the proponents of this development cannot see that all the churches throughout the world that have already gone down this road are in steep (in some cases terminal) decline.
Once this one issue has been ‘relativised’ there will be no stopping as the flood gates will be opened to every strange doctrine that there has ever been.
And the Catholic Church too will have relinquished all claims that it may make to antiquity, as in Apostolicity, Orthodoxy, Catholiciity and Holiness.
Yes James, what you said 2022 on the proliferation of the evil of homosexuality is true, that it will open the floodgates “to every strange doctrine that there has ever been”. Now becoming increasingly apparent 2023.
@Italy’s Culture War. “The Italian bishops will now in a difficult spot between papal preferences and popular sentiment. It will be interesting to see if they can all get past the slurs about ‘fascism’ and help Europe come to grips with a populism that is not without its perils – a challenging new sign of our times” (Robert Royal).
In his usual scholarly objective, though quietly partisan manner, an art, Royal favors events in Italy as a fortuitous turn of events. That in respect to the Francis’ ideology [as this writer perceives it, more evidently expressed here than Robert Royal’s similar expressions] of unlimited massive emigration [mainly Muslims] destroying Christian cultures, tacit approval of LGBT agendas of cultural political domination, saving the planet at the cost of infants in the womb.
Ursula von der Leyen [born in Flemish Belgium Ursula Albrecht] married to a German nobleman Heiko von der Leyen, Ursula member of German parliament, Chairman European Commission, now Giorgia Meloni’s arch enemy [Ursula darkly said she has ‘tools’], and likely a major issue for the EU’s, UN’s great ideological patron, Pope Francis. It’s the old British march The World Turned Upside Down, in real life tempo [allegedly played marching in surrender by a defeated British army at Bunker Hill]. By golly, even liberal Sweden, Royal reports, just voted in a conservative govt.
Drama. Will His Holiness call in his seers, Fr Spadaro, Austen Ivereigh, cardinal Kasper? I would say it, though it sounds trite, lacking appropriate rules of humor, will he secretly offer sacrificial homage to environmental goddess Pachamama. But I won’t.
“Not a Buffet”
Protestantism is ‘Faith Alone’, while Catholicism is Catechism 2068 . . . the mission of teaching all peoples, and of preaching the Gospel to every creature, so that all men may attain salvation through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments.”
Possessing Faith in Jesus great enough to Move Mountains, Yet Jesus burns them in hell as ‘Evildoers’.
Matthew 7:21 The True Disciple.
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. When that day comes, many will plead with me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ have we not prophesied in your name? have we not exorcized demons by its power? Did we not do many miracles in your name as well? Then I will declare to them solemnly, I never knew you. Out of my sight, you evildoers!
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Excellence of the gift of love.
Now I will show you the way which surpasses all the others. If I speak with human tongues and angelic as well, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and, with full knowledge, comprehend all mysteries, if I have faith great enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
John 14:15
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
1 John 5:3
For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome,
John 14:23
Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.
John 15:22
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me also hates my Father. If I had not done works among them that no one else ever did, they would not have sin; but as it is, they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But in order that the word written in their law might be fulfilled, ‘They hated me without cause.’
John 5:27
“The Father has given over to him power to pass judgment because he is Son of Man; no need for you to be surprised at this, for an hour is coming in which all those in their tombs shall hear his voice and come forth. Those who have done right shall rise to live; the evildoers shall rise to be damned.”
Matthew 11:20 Reproaches to Unrepentant Towns.
Then he began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And as for you, Capernaum: ‘Will you be exalted to heaven? You will go down to the netherworld.’ For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
Deuteronomy 7:9
“Understand, then, that the LORD, your God, is God indeed, the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant down to the thousandth generation toward those who love him and keep his commandments, but who repays with destruction the person who hates him; he does not dally with such a one, but makes him personally pay for it. You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments, the statutes and decrees which I enjoin on you today.
Catechism of the Catholic Church; Ten Commandments
Catechism 2068 The Council of Trent teaches that the Ten Commandments are obligatory for Christians and that the justified man is still bound to keep them; The Second Vatican Council confirms: “The bishops, successors of the apostles, receive from the Lord . . . the mission of teaching all peoples, and of preaching the Gospel to every creature, so that all men may attain salvation through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments.”
Catechism 2055 When someone asks him, “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” Jesus replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.” The Decalogue must be interpreted in light of this twofold yet single commandment of love, the fullness of the Law: The commandments: “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Catechism 2052 “Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” To the young man who asked this question, Jesus answers first by invoking the necessity to recognize God as the “One there is who is good,” as the supreme Good and the source of all good. Then Jesus tells him: “If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” And he cites for his questioner the precepts that concern love of neighbor: “You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.” Finally Jesus sums up these commandments positively: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Catechism 2083 Jesus summed up man’s duties toward God in this saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This immediately echoes the solemn call: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD.” God has loved us first. the love of the One God is recalled in the first of the “ten words.” the commandments then make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P78.HTM
What exactly is the purpose of all this and why is it here? How does any of this specifically relate to the content of this piece?
“Top 5 Heresies Among American Evangelicals (Christianity Today)”
“Among evangelicals, 94 percent believe “sex outside of traditional marriage is a sin” and 91 percent believe abortion is a sin, both the highest levels since the survey began.”
I had a coworker run a route with me. He was a Pentecostal minister on his honeymoon. He had convinced one of his flock that she was ‘unevenly yoked”. So the young 28 year old, married mother of four, divorced her husband, as advised by her minister. The minister then realized the immediate need for her and her children to have a caretaker, so he in his fifties, married her, in his Assemblies of God, ‘church’. I responded, “Well couldn’t you have cared for her and her family, Without Having Sex with her?”
The Protestants believe in sex outside of Traditional Marriage is a sin, but they have manipulated Traditional Marriage to include the divorced and remarried. I read online where a Protestant Pentecostal minister was astounded at all the old men with young wives in his congregation.
Jesus makes it clear, if you want to go to heaven, do not commit Adultery through divorce and remarriage.
Mark 10:6
At the beginning of creation God made them male and female; for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become as one. They are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore let no man separate what God has joined.” Back in the house again, the disciples began to question him about this. He told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and the woman who divorces her husband and marries another commits adultery.”
Mark 10:17
“Good Teacher, what must I do to share in everlasting life? Jesus answered, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not kill; You shall not commit adultery;'”
@Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. “We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the Antichrist” (Archbishop Krakow Karol Wojtyla 1976 Philadelphia).
Our future John Paul II was prophetic. Perhaps a sense of things to come through his great devotion to the Mother of God, and our Mother, lovingly conferred to us by Christ from the Cross.
Cardinal Carlo Maria Caffarra was appointed 2006 by John Paul II to the executive Committee of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Caffarra was also devoted to Our Lady and like John Paul believed we were actually in end times, that becoming his conviction following publication of Amoris Laetitia perceived by him as a threat to the traditional family. Accordingly he participated [with Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, and the late Cardinal Joachim Meisner] in drafting the Dubia forwarded to Pope Francis, a list of questions regarding sections that suggested change to doctrine on marriage and reception of the Eucharist, to which Francis has declined to respond.
Cardinal Caffarra had met and befriended Sr Lucia Dos Santos, one of the three Portuguese children to whom Our Lady appeared at Fatima. They exchanged letters, the substance of which was Lucia’s belief in an alleged revelation [private revelation is always considered private, and not necessarily actual by the Church unlike public revelation such as the mysteries of Christ, the Virgin birth] that the final battle would be centered on the sanctity of the family.
Whether that assumed revelation to Lucia was actual, what is undeniable is that events since support it.
A Christian family is the nucleus of the Church faithful, and the major institution of a cohesive society [see social scientist Emile Durkheim]. If the family is deconstructed by Church recognition of homosexual unions, which is precisely a main agenda of the Synod on Synodality, already proposed as doctrine by the German Synodalweg, the Bishop of Rome relegating himself [virtually] and other bishops as mere facilitators the Church will inevitably divide, an anti church in opposition to Christ’s Mystical Body.
Neuer Anfang, a faithful German Catholic body in opposition to Synodalweg, and the latter’s heretical assumption of doctrine opposed to the universal Christian definition of marriage, of sexual identity, of Holy Orders, of Christ, and the Eucharist foresees that divide in Germany. Although, this break with Christ is linked to the Synod on Synodality, which severs the Magisterial head from the body, in effect severing Christ from the Church [the infallible authority invested by Christ in the Chair of Peter the visible link that maintains spiritual coherence].
If such occurs, inclusive of the bishop who claims the Chair of Peter, we can be assured that Christ will support and guide the faithful Body. Should it be the end, Christus Vincit.
Fr Morello, you are a brave and honest man! Bless you for setting out the consequences of any change in the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding Homosexual acts.
The church seems to hurtling helter skelter to schism and suicide over this of all issues!
It’s beyong amazing that the proponents of this development cannot see that all the churches throughout the world that have already gone down this road are in steep (in some cases terminal) decline.
Once this one issue has been ‘relativised’ there will be no stopping as the flood gates will be opened to every strange doctrine that there has ever been.
And the Catholic Church too will have relinquished all claims that it may make to antiquity, as in Apostolicity, Orthodoxy, Catholiciity and Holiness.
Yes James, what you said 2022 on the proliferation of the evil of homosexuality is true, that it will open the floodgates “to every strange doctrine that there has ever been”. Now becoming increasingly apparent 2023.