The Pro-Life Miracle

It is a marvel to me that abortion is an issue in American politics, that even the likes of Donald Trump is pro-life.

That is a staggering reality for anyone who has been watching the cultural demise of America over the past several decades.

While everyone is apparently OK with onanism and the condom and the poison of the contraceptive pill, homosexualism, the sister vice to onanism, (the twin daughters of lust), also has the day. And despite that widespread and accepted perversion of fundamental morality, most Americans today, especially the younger generations, are Pro-Life!

That is why the demons are angry and causing mayhem.

Saint Michael the Archangel, cast out the demon of immorality which is swallowing our children from even before the time they are conceived!

Faith: Knowledge of Love; Love: Manifestation of Faith

"...Love needs faith in order to understand itself. It needs faith in Christ as the constant reminder that only one is good--God. And He is love..."

"...In love man has the reality of his spiritual life, but he has it also in the Word; and, in order not to collapse into sentimental self-deception, the spirituality of his existence must always be enlightened anew by the light of the Word. He has eternal life in the love of God, but he also has it in his faith in Christ..."

(Plinthos translation)


...Die Liebe braucht den Glauben, um sich selbst zu verstehen. Sie braucht den Glauben an Christus als die stete Mahnung, daß nur einer gut ist--Gott. Unde der ist die Liebe...

...Der Mensch, hat in der Liebe die Wirklichkeit seines geistigen Lebens, aber er hat sie auch im Wort, und vom Licht des Wortes muß die Geistigkeit seiner Existenz immer wieder beleuchtet werden, um nicht in einem Selbstbetrug des Gefühls ze zerfallen. Er hat sein ewiges Leben in der Liebe zu Gott, aber er hat es auch im Glauben an Christus...

"The Reality of Christ" in Ferdinand Ebner, Schriften Band I, Fragmente, Aufsätze, Aphorismen: Zu einer Pneumatologie des Wortes, München: Kösel, 1963.


This thought calls to mind two other texts
1) Saint Augustine in the Confessions asking God which comes first--that I know You or that I love You.
2) Pope Saint John Paul II's doctoral thesis on Faith in Saint John of the Cross where he says that for Saint John of the Cross faith consists in love. What is interesting in the Ebner text is that Ebner also says it the other way around, that love needs faith. Faith is the knowledge of love. You only recognize love with faith.

Illicit Confessionals

Most parish Churches in the USA (and the bishops who oversee them) are breaking Canon Law with the exclusive "confessional rooms" in those churches, exposing their priests and people to scandal.

Can. 964 §1. The proper place to hear sacramental confessions is a church or oratory.
§2. The conference of bishops is to establish norms regarding the confessional chair (sedem confessionalem); it is to take care, however, that there are always confessional chairs (sedes confessionales) with a fixed grate between the penitent and the confessor in an open place so that the faithful who wish to can use them freely.
§3. Confessions are not to be heard outside a confessional chair without a just cause.

This thought came to mind when an Opus Dei priest recently asked if I would hear confessions for him at a certain parish because it does not have a proper confessional, which I declined, explaining that I too am bound to the canonical norm of an open confessional with a screen!

Protecting God's priests!

I like the language of the law which speaks of "the confessional chair" (sedes confessionales) not a "confessional room!" The only proper room for confessions, according to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, therefore, is the parish Church! The "confessional" is no room at all, just a chair with a fixed grill between the confessor and the penitent. In any case, every church must have a traditional confessional with an inseparable wall between priest and penitent. That is the norm!

Catholic Lawyers and Parish Trustees Should Act!

In the wake of a decade and a half of civic obsession with sexual abuse in the Catholic Church it is time for the Catholic Church to lead the offensive charge against the sexual abuse everywhere else which is still being largely covered-up and ignored.

Concerned lay men and women of every parish (especially in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey), especially legal and law-enforcement professionals, should go to City Hall and demand the public criminal records of the city (including the crimes in schools) of 2017 (never mind for the past hundred years!), and make those results public.

We want to know how many cases of sexual abuse crimes have been reported in 2017.

How many credibly accused perpetrators?

How many of the criminals were immediate family?
How many were employed by public schools: teachers, coaches, administrators, etc.?
How many were medical professionals: doctors, psychologists, etc.?
How many were clergy, with a breakdown for each religious denomination?
What other significant group is disproportionately represented among the criminals?
What were the ages of the victims in each of the above cases?

This blogger is quite sure that, given the hyperbolic civil and media detraction against the Catholic Church on this, the Catholic churches would come out practically immaculate in this regard!

With millions of reports over the past fifteen years on the Catholic Church there has not been any comprehensive report on these crimes in any other area of our society!

This smearing of the Catholic Church is the work of the anti-Christ, plain and simple.

All Catholic laity should get out there and clear the good Name of our Holy Mother the Church. The Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. She has her Judases, but she also has Jesus Christ, The Most Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints and Angels of all ages. Catholics are the best equipped to clean up the moral mess of our age.

By the way, sexual crimes are only the tip of the iceberg of sexual immorality and perversion in our sexually permissive society. It is total hypocrisy to selectively criminalize sexual immorality. That simply promotes every manner of abuse and perversion. If you tell people "If it feels good, do it!" then of course the men will abuse the vulnerable.

Homophile Fake News 101: German Clergy Male Homosex

You  know it is fake news if they have to repeat it a thousand times, and if they all regurgitate it, uncritically, the same way! Even EWTN is on board! It's the homophile German Bishops' Report on homosexual clergy.

The report, of which you have undoubtedly already heard, always the same way, says, according to the script: "over half of the victims were under thirteen." After they report the exact number of nearly a century of victims, they throw out that sloppy "the cup is half full" generalization. Any intelligent person will say, of course "the cup is also half empty!" "Tell us how many!" And, was it under thirteen or thirteen and under? If it was thirteen and under that means that most were also "thirteen and older," or simply, "over thirteen." Surprise, surprise, the original Reuters reporting of the Report says "thirteen and under!" which, of course, means most were over thirteen ("thirteen" commonly meaning having completed the thirteenth birthday).

Let's simplify. Say you have three cases: 11, 13, and 17 years old. You can say most were "thirteen and younger" but you can also say most were "thirteen and older!" "Thirteen and younger" is an awkward expression anyway. The common way of saying that is "under 14." But the homosexualists want to emphasize minors in order to cover-up the homosex. So, the majority of the victims were over thirteen! And the majority were males. That is homosexuality, pure and simple, men on boys/men!

The real news takeaway from this fake news, which should not come as news at all, is that the abuse is perpetrated exclusively by men (all priests are men) and the victims are not usually children but at least prepubescent young men, and grown men.  But there is also something else. The narrative is also falsified because it does not even consider the adult abuse victims of homosexuality, which has been the big real story in America this Summer.

We need a report on the bishops and priests having sex with adult seminarians and with other priests, etc.! Surely they know about that too! And, we should not expect any surprises there either. They fag the doctrine, they fag the liturgy, they fag the "statistics," it should come as no surprise to find they were fags all along.

If it quacks like a duck...!

Of course we know that homosexuality is not the only sexual problem, but it happens to be the majority of the clergy abuse everywhere!!! Just say it! Don't fag the statistics.

Public School Predators' Cover-Up

Catholic League Chief, Bill Donahue, Calls on Attorney General to Investigate Sex Abuse in Public Schools


September 12, 2018

Dear Attorney General

In the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on the Catholic clergy, many states are considering a similar probe of offending priests. They should do so, with one caveat: they should also investigate the clergy of all other religions, private non-sectarian institutions, and public sector entities. Not to do so would be manifestly unjust and indefensible.

No attorney general or lawmaker would convene a grand jury on criminal behavior and then decide to focus exclusively on African American neighborhoods. They would have to include white-collar crimes, the kinds of acts that are mostly committed by affluent whites.

That is why it smacks of bigotry to single out the Catholic Church when investigating the sexual abuse of minors: We don't own this problem. Indeed, there is less of a problem today with this issue in the Catholic Church than in any societal institution, religious or secular.

For the last two years for which we have data, .005 percent of the Catholic clergy have had a credible accusation made against them. In the case of Pennsylvania, all the offending priests are either dead or have been thrown out of the priesthood. The same pattern exists elsewhere.

If you want to pursue molesters, you should begin by launching a grand jury probe of the public schools. This means they must be explicitly mentioned in any bill that would suspend the statute of limitations; otherwise they will be exempted under the antiquated doctrine of sovereign immunity. There are many good reasons why the public schools command scrutiny.

Consider two investigations of sexual abuse in the public schools. Published nine years apart, by two separate media outlets, they found that removing abusers from the teaching profession is very difficult.

In October 2007, the Associated Press (AP) published a series of articles, “Sexual Misconduct Plagues U.S. Schools,” that were based on its investigation. It found that between 2001-2005, 2,570 educators had their teaching credentials revoked because of sexual misconduct. It detailed 1,801 cases of abuse: more than 80 percent of the victims were students, and most of the offenders were public school teachers.

What happened to the molesters? “Most of the abuse never gets reported,” the AP said. Moreover, far too many of the offending educators were able to remain in the teaching profession. Often this was done by simply moving the “mobile molesters” to another school or district, a practice so widespread that it's called “passing the trash.”

In December 2016, USA Today published its own series on abuse in the public schools. It found that “passing the trash” was still the norm: abusive teachers were able to move to new teaching jobs, or to other employment working with youth.

USA Today found the same resistance to change as reported by AP: (a) “Administrators have pursued quiet settlements rather than public discipline” (b) “Unions have resisted reforms,” and (c) “Lawmakers have ignored a federal mandate to add safeguards at the state level.”

USA Today also found the same reasons why change proved elusive: (a) It cited “examples in every state” of secrecy agreements, many of which were “cemented in legally binding contracts” (b) most states refused to abide by a 2015 federal law requiring states to ban such secrecy agreements (only five states—Connecticut, Texas, Missouri, Oregon and Pennsylvania — had such bans in place), and (c) the federal government still “does not maintain a database of teachers who have sexually abused children.”

Regarding the last point, in 2009 Congress tried to rectify this by passing the Student Protection Act. It would have required the U.S. Department of Education to maintain a national database of educators terminated from a public or private school for sexual misconduct with a student. But, as USA Today found, it “died amid fierce opposition from national teachers organizations, which had concerns about due process for teachers accused of misconduct.”

In conclusion, if a grand jury investigation of Catholic dioceses is warranted, then fairness dictates that the public schools be subjected to one as well. Indeed, they should be your first priority.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

Humanae Vitae Conference: Seton Hall University October 27th

50 years ago, Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the Catholic Church's teachings regarding married love, responsible parenthood, and the rejection of artificial contraception. Join us for a memorable conference, including theological presentations and discussion on this significant document.

Saturday, October 27, 2018
9 a.m.-6:30 p.m.

Seton Hall University, Bethany Hall
400 South Orange Avenue
South Orange, NJ 07079

Conference: $50 per person/ $25 for students
Group rate: $40 per person for groups of five or more

Limited seating available.
R.S.V.P. by October 8.

For more information, please e-mail theology@shu.edu

Schedule

9 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast

10 a.m  Welcome
Monsignor Joseph R. Reilly, S.T.L., Ph.D., Rector/Dean,
Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology

Introduction and Overview
Justin Anderson, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Christian Ethics,
Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology

"'We Have Not Made Ourselves': Anthropology and Vocation in Light of Humanae Vitae"
Holly Taylor Coolman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology,
Providence College

11:15 a.m. Break

11:30 a.m.
"Humanae Vitae and the Joy of the Gospel: From Paul VI to Pope Francis"
Eric Johnston, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Undergraduate Theology,
Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology

"Ecology and the Family from Humanae Vitae to Francis"
Joseph Rice, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology,
Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology

12:30 p.m. Lunch

1:30 p.m. "Modernity and the Teaching of Humanae Vitae"
David L. Schindler, Ph.D., Dean Emeritus,
Pontifical John Paul II Institute, Catholic University of America

"Nature as the Well-Spring of Freedom: On a Founding Anthropological Presupposition of Humanae Vitae"
D.C. Schindler, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Metaphysics & Anthropology,
Pontifical John Paul II Institute, Catholic University of America

2:30 p.m. Break

2:45 p.m.
"John Paul II's Reading of Humanae Vitae in His Theology of the Body"
Michael Waldstein, Ph.D., S.S.L., Th.D., Senior Faculty Fellow,
Ratzinger Institute for Biblical Theology,
Franciscan University of Steubenville

3:45 p.m. Break

4 p.m.

Panel Discussion
Closing Remarks

5:30 p.m. Vigil Mass


Speaker Biographies

Holly Taylor Coolman, Ph.D.
Holly Taylor Coolman teaches theology at Providence College in Rhode Island. A doctoral graduate of Duke University, her areas of expertise include Christology, ecclesiology, Christian theologies of Judaism, and Jewish-Christian relations. She is a wife to one and mom to four.

Eric Johnston, Ph.D.
Eric M. Johnston, Associate Professor of Undergraduate Theology, earned a B.A. in Theology and Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas, MN, in 2000; an M.A. in Systematic Theology from Boston College in 2002; and a Ph.D. in Medieval Theology from The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., in 2008. His doctoral dissertation was on "The Role of Aristotelian Biology in Thomas Aquinas's Theology of Marriage," one topic within his broader interest in Thomas's theology of grace. He is also interested in topics related to spirituality and political philosophy. His recent articles have appeared in The Thomist, Logos, Crisis, and Homiletic and Pastoral Review.

Joseph Rice, Ph.D.
Joseph Rice, Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology, earned his Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America. He also holds degrees from the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum (Rome) and the University of Notre Dame. Prior to earning his doctorate, he was Assistant to the President of Anáhuac University (Mexico City). A classically trained specialist in the philosophical thought of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), Rice’s primary interests lie in investigating questions of intersubjectivity, conditions for authentic participation in community, the ethics of marriage and family and the experience of conscience as related to self-constitution. He has presented and published internationally on the ethics of globalization, questions of faith and reason, issues in intersubjectivity and a personalist account of phenomenological self-constitution. He has held research fellowships from the Catholic University of Lublin (Poland), the Kosciuszko Foundation, the Dr. Robert R. Banville Foundation and the Earhart Foundation and has served on the editorial staff of (ITAL) The Review of Metaphysics and Sacerdos (UNITAL). His classes include History of Philosophy III, Philosophy of Being, Philosophical Ethics and Theory of Knowledge.

D.C. Schindler, Ph.D.
D.C. Schindler is Associate Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology at the John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (Notre Dame, 2017), Love and the Postmodern Predicament: Rediscovering the Real in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth(Cascade, 2018), and a translation of Ferdinand Ulrich’s Homo Abyssus: The Drama of the Question of Being(Humanum, 2018). He lives in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife, Dr. Jeanne Heffernan Schindler, and their three children.

David L. Schindler, Ph.D.
Formerly a Weaver Fellow (1972-73) and a Fulbright Scholar (1974-75, Austria), Schindler taught in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame (1979-92), where he received tenure in 1985, and at Mount St. Mary’s University (1976-79), where he received tenure in 1978. Since 1982 he has been editor-in-chief of the North American edition of (ITAL) Communio: International Catholic Review (UNITAL), a federation of journals founded in 1972 by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Henri de Lubac, and other European theologians. He serves as editor of the series “Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought” with Eerdmans Publishing Company. Schindler has published over 75 articles (translated into nine languages) in the areas of metaphysics, philosophical issues in biology and biotechnology, and the relation of theology/philosophy and culture. He is the author of Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation (T&T Clark and Eerdmans, 1996); and also of Ordering Love: Liberal Societies and the Memory of God (Eerdmans, 2011). His most recent edited collections are Love Alone is Credible: Hans Urs Von Balthasar as Interpreter of the Catholic Tradition (Eerdmans, 2008); and (with Doug Bandow) Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny (ISI, 2003). Other edited collections include Beyond Mechanism: The Universe in Recent Physics and Catholic Thought (1986); Act and Agent: Philosophical Foundations of Moral Education, with Jesse Mann and Frederick Ellrod (1986); Catholicism and Secularism in America (1990); and Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work (1991). Schindler was appointed by Pope John Paul II as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity from 2002 to 2007.

Michael Waldstein, Ph.D., S.S.L., Th.D.
Michael Maria Waldstein is Senior Faculty Fellow at the newly founded Ratzinger Institute for Biblical Theology (Steubenville), which is building up a doctoral program in biblical studies. Until December 2017, he was the Max Seckler professor of theology at Ave Maria University in Florida. He began his service as scholar and teacher in 1988 at the University of Notre Dame, where he received tenure in 1996. From 1996 to 2006 he served as the founding president of the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, and as the St. Francis of Assisi Professor of New Testament (2006-2008). He was a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family (2003-2009), the Board of Trustees of the University of Eichstaett, Germany (2007-2011). He is an Ordinary Academician of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome (2011-). He holds a B.A. from Thomas Aquinas College, a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Dallas, an S.S.L. (summa cum laude) from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and a Th.D. from Harvard University in New Testament and Christian Origins. His published works include a critical edition of the four Coptic manuscripts of Secret John, and a new translation of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (the Introduction appeared as a separate book in Polish), as well as numerous articles on the Gospel of John, Gnosticism, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Paul II and Hans Urs von Balthasar in journals such as Journal of Early Christian Studies, Nova et Vetera, Modern Theology, Communio, Anthropotes, Forum Teologiczne, and Lateranum.

A Lesson for Bishops: Magistra Philosophia's fidelity to her disciples: Esto Vir (be a man)!

It is because you don't know
the end and purpose of things
that you think the wicked and the criminal
have power and happiness. Boethius

Sed væ non cognoscentibus suam miseriam: et amplius væ illis, qui diligunt hanc miseram et corruptibilem vitam! Kempis, I, 22, 14.


Magistra Philosophia (Philosophy the Teacher) to Boethius, in prison awaiting execution.

...It could not be right that Philosophy should leave an innocent man companionless on the road (Philosophiae fas non erat incomitatum relinquere iter innocentis)...

...Do you think that this is the first time that Wisdom has been attacked and endangered by a wicked society? Did I not often of old also, before my Plato's time, have to battle in mighty struggle with arrogant stupidity?...

...So it is no wonder if we are buffeted by storms blustering round us on the sea of this life, since we are especially bound to anger the wicked. Though their forces are always large, yet we should hold them in contempt, for they are leaderless and are simply carried hither and thither at random in their crazed ignorance (quoniam nullo duce regitur, sed errore tantum temere ac passim lymphante raptatur). If ever they range against us and press about us too strongly, Wisdom our captain withdraws her forces into her citadel, while our enemies busy themselves ransacking useless baggage. But we are safe from all their mad tumult and from our heights we can laugh at them as they carry off all those worthless things; we are protected by such a wall as may not be scaled by raging stupidity.

He who has ground proud fate beneath his heel
Calm in his own well-ordered life
And has looked in the face good and ill fortune
Still able to keep erect his unconquered head (Invictum potuit tenere vultum),
He shall not be troubled by the rage or threats of the sea
Driving the turning tide up from the deep,
Nor by Vesuvius
However often it break from its deep forges
Flinging its smoking fires abroad,
Nor by the blazing thunderbolt
That strikes down lofty towers.
Why are wretched men so stupefied
By cruel tyrants raging with no real power?
Leave hope and fear aside
And anger is impotent, weaponless;
But he who trembles with fear and desire,
Fickle at heart, nor master of himself,,
Has thrown away his shield, and left his post,
And links the chain by which he can be led (Nectit qua valeat trahi catenam).

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978, Bk. I, 2-4, pp. 140-145.


Cf. The final scene of "Criminal Lawyer" (1937), the public self-disclosure of the corrupt official, is a great witness to the freedom of telling the entire truth and coming clean: "I am a man unfit to hold the office I now hold... [He] laughed at justice... I am a free man."

Homosexualism is a Sin Against Faith

It is very important to distinguish between
1) homosexualism/homophilia,
2) homosexual activity, and
3) "homosexuality."

1) Homosexualism is an ideology which claims that homosexual activity and "homosexuality" are OK, even OK with God; that they are good. Homosexualism is a sin against the Truth, the truth of faith, distorting the moral law, an attack on the Author of man and woman Himself; it is an attack on God Himself who said "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Matthew 5:27. The homosexualist says "Thou canst commit adultery." It places a false lord over the Lord Himself. That is the mission of Dignity. Dignity claims to serve two masters: Satan and God. If you avowedly love sin you hate God. "No man can serve two masters," says the Lord. Matthew 6:24. Homosexual affectation is a form of homosexualism.
Homosexualism has no place in the Catholic religion and should be eradicated at all levels.

2) Homosexual activity is another category of sin. That is the decision to do the sinful homosexual act and/or actually doing it. There are people who fall into homosexual sin without being ideological homosexualists or "homosexuals" in temperament, i.e. with no homosexual tendency at all. This is the action (whether in the will or in physical activity or both), plain and simple.
This sin, if repented, need not, in itself present an impediment to sound doctrine and upright moral life, as long as there is no danger of scandal, leading others into sin.

3) "Homosexuality" is the male on male or female on female attraction, an unnatural venereal attraction; as in bestial desire or incestuous desire in which a man desires venereal pleasure with animals or with his own kin respectively. "Homosexuality" is a tendency, an emotional compulsion which need not be present in the homosexualist/homophile who simply approves of that disordered emotion and/or activity. The person afflicted with the homosexual tendency, the "homosexual," need not be a homosexualist, he need not even acquiesce in the least to that personal disorder. In fact, there are many persons afflicted with the homosexual desire who totally reject it; they never act out on it because they know it is evil; they follow the Truth and the Law of God, which is the same thing; they love and follow God, Jesus Christ; they are chaste; they do not sin; they are living martyrs of an unwanted tendency against which they manfully fight. That is the mission of Courage.
The homosexual tendency should be considered an impediment to holy orders and to any type of leadership in the Church because of the obvious conflicts it creates for the "homosexual" and the scandal which those conflicts cause, leading many into sin.

It is Not True to Say that Homosexuality is Not a Sin

The Effeminate in Scripture

"Thou Shalt Not Lie" Pope Francis Finally Investigated

Weeks into Pope Francis' silence regarding the serious allegations against him, the mainstream media finally breaks its collusion in that silence. It is Germany, "Der Spiegel," which finally breaks the moratorium.

As with the McCarrick story, notice the long delay of the homosexualist "New York Times" to carry this story (which, after Viganò, everyone already knows) fairly; they protect their bed-fellows.

The article interviews Argentinian abuse victims who claim they have been ignored for years by the Holy Father. These allegations may partly explain why Pope Francis has never visited his native Argentina and Buenos Aires, and why he is presently silent regarding the Viganò claims.

An interesting note regarding the "Der Spiegel" magazine is that Peter Seewald, it's chief editor from 1981-1987, after his 1996 book interview with Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, reverted to his Catholic faith from avowed atheism, and has since become Pope Benedict's biographer and a chief champion of the truth.

This unbearable "Silence of the Shepherd" is getting ever louder! It cries to heaven for answers! Even "Der Spiegel" must speak.

Cf. Why Viganó’s testimony will go down as the ‘clarifying moment’ of Francis’ papacy

N.B. An heroic confessor of the faith in the exclusively Catholic journalist push for transparency in this Edward Pentin of "The National Catholic Register."

And, lest anyone forget, homophilia is the glaring, lingering, denied and ignored problem which will not go away by itself! It needs to be excised. That's the crisis today! It is, at heart, a crisis of faith which promotes, defends, ignores and covers up for false doctrine regarding basic Judeo-Christian (including Muslim) morality.

Homosexualism: We Need to Coin a New Term

Social Reformer Myth vs. Religion's Absolute Truth

Auguste Comte's Progress Myth => "Science" Solve-All

"It is useless to judge a religion from the point of view of the politician or the social reformer. We shall never create a living religion merely as a means to an end, a way out of our practical difficulties [as proposed by all secular humanists: e.g. Comte, Marx, and the American Democratic Party today]. For the religious view of life is the opposite to the utilitarian. It regards the world and human life sub specie æternitatis. It is only by accepting the religious point of view, by regarding religion as an end in itself and not as a means to something else, that we can discuss religious problems profitably. It may be said that this point of view, by regarding religion as an end in itself and not as a means to something else, that we can discuss religious problems profitably. It may be said that this point of view belongs to the past, and that we cannot return to it. But neither can we escape from it. The past is simply the record of the experience of humanity, and if that experience testifies to the existence of a permanent human need, that need must manifest itself in the future no less than in the past."

"Stages in Mankind's Religious Experience (1931)" in Christopher Dawson, Dynamics of World History, La Salle, Illinois: Sherwood Sugden & Co., 1978, 168.

According to Dawson man never "outgrows" his need for God and ultimate answers. Man is essentially in need of God, his Author and End. Man is relational, his ultimate meaning consists in his unavoidable relation to His Creator and Lord.

"Thus, although God is not myself, nor a part of my being, 'yet the relation of dependence that my life, my powers, and my operations bear to His Presence is more absolute, more essential, and more intimate than any relation I can have to the natural principles without which I could not exist... I draw my life from His Living Life...; I am, I understand, I will, I act, I imagine, I smell, I taste, I touch, I see, I walk, and I love in the Infinite Being of God, within the Divine Essence and substance...'" Ibid., 170.

The Religious Problem
"...[M]an is capable of separating himself alike from God and from nature, of making himself his last end and living a purely self-regarding and irreligious existence.
"And yet the man who deliberately regards self-assertion and sensual enjoyment as his sole ends, and finds complete satisfaction in them--the pure materialist--is not typical; he is almost as rare as the mystic. The normal man has an obscure sense of the existence of a spiritual reality and a consciousness of the evil and misery of an existence which is the slave of sensual impulse and self-interest and which must inevitably end in physical suffering and death. But how is he to escape from this wheel to which he is bound by the accumulated weight of his own acts and desires? How is he to bring his life into vital relation with that spiritual reality of which he is but dimly conscious and which transcends all the categories of his thought and the conditions of human experience? This is the fundamental religious problem which has perplexed and baffled the mind of man from the beginning and is, in a sense, inherent in his nature." Ibid., 172.

Without Plato We Cannot See Rightly

WHAT DEL NOCE SAW

by Michael Hanby First Things, June 2017

The Crisis of Modernityby augusto del noce
translated by carlo lancellottimcgill-queens, 336 pages, $110

There is no greater ideologue, nor any more earnest in his self-delusion, than the pragmatist who thinks he is free of ideology. Our liberal elite is full of people whose unshakeable confidence in their own correctness relieves them of the burden of self-knowledge. Yet pragmatism is the milieu in which we all now live, move, and have our being, the horizon beyond which we cannot see. To apprehend this, we need the perspective of an outsider.

This perspective comes to us in The Crisis of Modernity, a posthumous collection of essays composed between 1968 and 1989 by the Italian Catholic philosopher Augusto Del Noce. Del Noce was remarkably prescient, anticipating the eventuality of same-sex marriage when such things were barely whispered among the avant-garde. He was perhaps the first to grasp that we live in a technological society dominated by scientism and eroticism. Each disdains the natural order, reducing the environment and the human body to mere instruments. Del Noce’s metaphysical assessment of scientism and the sexual revolution provides a much-needed corrective to the American tendency to treat these problems discretely, and in the latter case, moralistically, but his real genius lies in recognizing the political form that these great changes assumed.

Like Wilhelm Reich, who popularized the term, Del Noce sees the sexual revolution as the culmination of “total revolution.” It is one face of a “new, more dangerous, and more radical form of totalitarianism” than any seen heretofore, “even though these new positions claim to represent the highest degree of democracy and anti-fascism.” Unlike previous authoritarianisms, it is not a positive political program bent on world domination, but a negative “totalitarianism of disintegration” aimed at the perpetual destruction of antecedent order.

The order marked for destruction can be summed up in one word: Europe—the intellectual and spiritual synthesis of Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem. The new totalitarianism proceeds by negating every form of transcendence, especially the religious truth and universal reason which Del Noce calls “Platonism.” It reconceives reality as “a system of forces, not of values.” Being and nature are dissolved into the flux of history. And truth is reduced to social and psychological “situations” to be administered by social scientists.

This totalitarianism is total because it does away with the idea of truth and universal reason, reducing the one to pragmatic function and the other to empirical analysis. This scientism ushers in what Del Noce, following Michele Federico Sciacca, calls “the reign of stupidity.” Argument becomes impossible because truth claims are attacked as expressions of class interest, bigotry, or psychosis. Ultimate questions can no longer be posed in a public way, much less answered. “Only what is subject to empirical observation and can be empirically represented . . . ‘is,’” and so thinking itself is reduced to the refinement of technique and the multiplication of means. After the negation of transcendence, politics itself becomes the transcendental horizon, and ethics, like truth, is subsumed under the form of war.

Del Noce describes how the defeat of Marxism as a viable political and economic program coincides with its ultimate triumph as a social and cultural force. Somehow, a philosophy championing global proletarian revolution and a workers’ utopia ended up as the philosophy of Nietzsche’s last men, the Western bourgeoisie. Del Noce chalks this up to the contradiction in Marxist thought between historical materialism (which leads to relativism) and dialectical materialism, which fuels the absolute demands of the revolutionary spirit. Classical Marxism denied traditional metaphysics and elevated becoming over being, but it at least retained a belief in an objective order of values reflecting the necessities of history. Over time, though, the teleology and eschatology of dialectical materialism could not withstand the “rebellion against being” latent in Marx’s thought. The “spirit of negation” thus eventually negates Marxism’s own eschatology. If utopianism were to survive, it would be “a utopianism in the modern sense, which first appeared when Bacon equated science with power.”

The transformation was brought about through the eventual merging of Marxism with psychoanalysis. “Class warfare” in the West was subordinated to a more generalized “warfare against repression” aimed especially at marriage and the family, the most deep-seated sources of “oppression.” It is only here, with the advent of sexual revolution, that Marxist revolution could truly become total.

Marxism was a much less viable political force in America than it was in Europe, but that did not make America immune to technocratic absolutism. Del Noce understands that the essential metaphysical presuppositions of technocracy—the reduction of form to force, being to history, substance to operation, truth to function, knowledge to engineering, and authority to power—were present in America long before the arrival of the Frankfurt School. He concurs with Reich that America is the most fertile soil for sexual revolution and quotes approvingly the words penned by Sciacca in 1954, when American anti-communism was strong.

Even if society in the United States calls itself Christian, American philosophy is essentially all atheistic. Not only that: it is marked by the idolatry of science, the tool that will radically change humanity by producing technical development, and will bring to mankind all the happiness that man by his ‘nature’ can desire.

Perhaps, then, technocracy exemplifies some sort of evolutionary “convergence.” The influence of any one strand of thought matters less than the mere fact of the technological unfolding of modernity.

Whatever the philosophical sources of our crisis, and they are legion, Del Noce has grasped its essence. And he warns that it will continue apace until we somehow rediscover an ethics distinct from politics, a truth distinct from function, an authority distinct from power. He approvingly cites the words of Erich Fromm: “for the first time in history the physical survival of the human race depends on a radical change of the human heart” and adds that “for the first time in history worldly survival is entrusted to religious conversion.” Yet Del Noce is no simple triumphalist. He maintains that progressive Catholicism (a category that for him would include both the Catholic left and elements of the Catholic right) has aided and abetted the new totalitarianism and made its home comfortably within it. We see this whenever the Church renounces her own inherent “Platonism” by speaking in the language of psychology, sociology, economics, and politics rather than in her native tongues of metaphysics and theology. If Del Noce is correct, then, deliverance from our civilizational crisis begins not merely with conversion to Christianity, but with the conversion of Christianity to the truth of its own Logos. In the cunning of providence, the crisis of modernity may yet provide the occasion to rediscover and embrace this truth.

Michael Hanby is associate professor of religion and philosophy of science at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America.

Unchastity Repentance Card, Plinthos Copy/Paste Version

Second Chance 

You CAN start over!!! 

Do you feel hurt and empty?
    Do you feel used and ashamed?

Did you just want to be loved?
    Did you think that sex was love?

Do you wish you had waited until marriage?
    Do you want to be free?

Do you want to start over?
    Then DO IT because YOU CAN!!!

It’s Never too late to change!

TURN TO GOD...
Who loves you with REAL love. Allow Him to love you. Pray! Ask God to forgive you and let Him forgive you, especially by going to Confession. Jesus died for you; He is God; He loves you. The Blood of Jesus will free you from your sin and guilt and give you back your self-respect. Accept His grace to forgive yourself and to live a chaste life.

REGAIN YOUR VIRGINITY...
(spiritually and emotionally) and make the commitment from this day forward to save yourself for your future husband or wife.

DECIDE ON CHASTITY...
say “Yes!” to the goodness of God’s plan for your sexuality. SEX IS SACRED! YOU DESERVE THE BEST!

MAKE NEW FRIENDS...
who will love you, encourage you and support your decision to remain chaste.

AVOID TEMPTATIONS...
(persons, places and things—especially alcohol and drugs) that will weaken your resolve to be chaste.

PRAY...
to do God’s will everyday of your life.

YOUR ARE PRECIOUS TO HIM...
He wants you to spend eternity with Him. THERE IS HOPE! You don’t have to hurt anymore.

BE THE PERSON GOD CREATED YOU TO BE! 

YOU HAVE A SECOND CHANCE!

Unchastity Repentance Card, Great for Parishes

I just came across this card in a parish rectory. It is designed for teenagers but certainly appropriate also for adults, clerics and laity!

What dirties a boy dirties also the man. Cf. Escriva.

We must also add, what dirties a layman dirties also, a fortiori, the cleric or religious of whatever rank.

Let every man examine himself.

Ember Days: Fasting for the Special Sanctification of the Clergy

Traditional calendars mark the Ember Days of the Quatuor Tempora recommended by the Church and usually have an explanation similar to the one below.

"Ember days are on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday following the First Sunday in Lent and after Pentecost Sunday, during the third full week of September and after the Third Sunday of Advent.

"They are days of fasting for the special sanctification of the four seasons and for obtaining God's blessing on the clergy, for whose ordination the Ember Saturdays are specially set apart."

"The Propers of the Mass reflect the Season in which they occur and include additional lessons said before the Gospel." (2018 Liturgical Calendar, The Seraphim Company, Inc.; Cf. TAN Saints Calendar).

Indeed, the universal liturgical law of the Church requires that every diocese publish calendars indicating the Rogation and Ember Days of the year and how to keep them!

"Each diocese should have its own Calendar and Proper of Masses. For its part, the Conference of Bishops should draw up a proper Calendar for the nation or, together with other Conferences, a Calendar for a wider territory, to be approved by the Apostolic See.

"In carrying out this task, to the greatest extent possible the Lord’s Day is to be preserved and safeguarded, as the primordial feast day, and hence other celebrations, unless they are truly of the greatest importance, should not have precedence over it. Care should likewise be taken that the liturgical year as revised by decree of the Second Vatican Council not be obscured by secondary elements.

"In the drawing up of the Calendar of a nation, the Rogation Days and Ember Days should be indicated (cf. no. 373), as well as the forms and texts for their celebration, and other special measures should also be kept in mind." General Instruction of the Roman Missal, USCCB, 2010, 394.

Since the bishops are largely negligent in this (who in today's Church has even so much as heard about Rogation Days, Ember Days?) it is up to the faithful to produce and disseminate and use such calendars, for the good of the Church.

Dangerous People are Teaching Your Kids

Homosexualism's Communist Underpinnings

A key error of Marxism is the placement of the Second Great Commandment of "love thy neighbor as thyself" ahead of the First and Greatest Commandment, love God totally.

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment.
And the second is like to it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these. Mark 12:30-31

When you invert that order, removing God and the truth to second place, then the good completely loses its grounding, moral confusion takes the day.

(Cf. James V. Schall, The Regensburg Lecture, South Bend, Indiana, St. Augustine's Press, 2007, 17.)

Lust, the source of all sexual sins, is the counterfeit of love. It is selfishness in place of selflessness.

Remember that Judas was "concerned about the poor" because he kept the apostolic purse and was a thief. Cf. John 12:6.

P.S. When the communists came to take over Cuba, Castro and all his court, they came with rosaries around their necks! But their false secular-humanist doctrine gives them away! You cannot love man without loving God because you neither know what love is nor do you have any real incentive to pursue it, especially when it requires sacrifice and discipline. Do not trust homosexualists, especially who claim to love Jesus! It's a big lie. It's the same lie of Judas.

"Communist, Mobster, Homosexuals"

Saint Peter Arbues (San Pedro Arbues)

Today we commemorate, at Saragossa in Spain, (in the year 1485) St Peter de Arbues, first Inquisitor of the faith of the Kingdom of Aragon, who was cruelly butchered by relapsed Jews for the sake of that Catholic faith which he had zealously protected by virtue of his office. Pope Pius IX added him to the list of Martyr Saints.

The Roman Martyrology, editor Canon J.B. O'Connell, Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1962.

Relativism's Clericalism

That type of clericalism which usurps ecclesial authority to promote homosexual perversion for the corruption of souls is a very specific type of clericalism. It is a clericalism which hates the truth, hates the Church and spreads confusion. It is an anti-clerical clericalism. We could call it the clericalism of relativism, or, if you prefer, homo-clericalism.

You see, some clericalism does actually believe in right doctrine and upright conduct, and still abuses authority. That is clericalism in the strict sense.

To call unchastity clericalism is therefore inaccurate. A misnomer. Typical Pope Francis equivocation.

Popes are Dispensable; Christ, His Church, and Peter, Remain

Some are saying that if you remove the Pope you remove the Church. Not true. Look at Pope Emeritus Benedict. He removed the Pope, and the Church, well, goes on. A sequel to the great abdicator Pope would be just fine. And it is quite OK for faithful Catholics to call for the Pope to resign for the good of the Church. And it would be just fine for the Pope to heed that call of the faithful for that same good.

Why is it that when the secular world calls for a resignation the Church authority capitulates, but when the faithful Catholics call for a resignation it is deemed somehow inappropriate? Whom is the Church serving? And, anyway, aren't "we the Church?"

Recall canon 212 §3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, [the Christian faithful] have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.

Blog on Christian faithful to put an end to the heresy and immorality of the Catholic hierarchy. For over fifty years they've been fagging the sacred doctrine, fagging the sacred liturgy, and now we discover, surprise, surprise! that they've been fagging themselves! If it quacks like a duck...!

And we need to call it out!

All the heterodox Catholics who were always so keen on lay involvement in the Church are now somehow squeamish when the laity are finally speaking out for the good of the faith and morals of the ages. We simply demand that our clergy promote the Catholic religion and condemn whatever is contrary to it, especially within their own ranks. And we shall not desist, lest we betray the Lord of all Popes and priests.

What is presently being borne out for the whole world to see is the competence and driving force of the sensus fidei fidelium.

The crisis/scandal is not in the reports but it the sins. To my mind the far greater crisis was from 1960 through the 1990's, when the sins were being propagated and roundly ignored and the innocent were being systematically corrupted. From around 1990 to the present much of that filth has been coming to light, thank God, and we must have it out! But, make no mistake, that immorality was programmatic, for it follows very logically false doctrine.

I'll give one example. The year was 1990. A "retreat" of all the seminarians of a small US diocese with the bishop and his entourage. The main feature of the retreat was worship of the elements. Gathered at a beach house, we prayed around a bowl of sea grass and sand and prayed a Native Indian prayer to the four winds, standing to face the respective winds as we did so. All of it was very queer, including the pontifical mass which we systematically had on the cottage coffee table, never in the local Catholic church. I never again went on a retreat with that diocese which I left the following year.

Chastity and Corporal Mortification

Arrested emotional development, according to psychologists, may result in disordered affections which tend toward sexual sins. That defect may be corrected by prayer and penance.

As Christ says in one rendition of the Gospel, there are certain demons which are expelled only by prayer and fasting. Cf. Mark 9:28 Fasting is a fundamental Christian act of piety. Basically, it is a form of corporal mortification, which is deliberately going against one's physical appetites by foregoing licit pleasures and suffering physical pain for the sake of Christ and His Cross, fulfilling the Gospel injunction of our Lord:

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; for he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, and cast away himself? Luke 9:23-25

Having said that it is important to note two things, the supernatural and the natural element. Repentance and sacramental absolution through the ministry of the Church brings salvation at once, entire spiritual integrity of the person making him fit for heaven. But the acquisition of the virtue of penance is the work of an entire lifetime: therefore "Watch ye, and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh weak." Matthew 26:40-43

Our Popes and Bishops, Cardinals, Religious Superiors, Monsignors, Rectors of Seminaries, Pastors, indeed all Priests, Deacons and men and women of faith, need to discipline themselves in the body for Jesus' sake. It was corporal mortification which made the difference between Sodom and Ninive. Ninive was saved be cause the people did penance, physical penance.

And the men of Ninive believed in God: and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least. And the word came to the king of Ninive; and he rose up out of his throne, and cast away his robe from him, and was clothed with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published in Ninive from the mouth of the king and of his princes, saying: Let neither men nor beasts, oxen nor sheep, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water. And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry to the Lord with all their strength, and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn, and forgive: and will turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish? And God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not. Jonah 3:5-10

Corporal Mortification
On Diets and Fasting
Ember Days
The Traditional Lenten Fast

"Communist, Mobster, Homosexuals"

My dad, a Cuban refugee, pulled out of the Bay of Pigs fiasco because his mentor gave him inside knowledge that the government organizers of the invasion were communist, mobster, and homosexual who were designing the invasion to fail, in collusion with Castro.

That thought came to mind in light of the sociology Ph.D. Theodore McCarrick's disgrace and the below documentary on Saul Alinsky, communist mobster backed by the hierarchy of the Church.

Our present day homosexualism has been festered by the Anti-Catholic pro-communist power in America for decades, with its tandem opposition to and subversion of Catholicism, e.g. The New York Times newspaper as an official organ of the power. The Jesuit run America Magazine is an example of distortion of the Catholic faith by unfaithful Catholic clergy.

P.S. Atheism => amoralism (e.g. the end justifies the means) is an essential tenet of communism.

Suggestion: Move the Homily to the End of Mass, and Make it Optional. You Would See the Churches Full.

Stilum Curiæ
2 September 2018
Marco Tosatti

Excuse my unloading, but I understand why people don't go to Mass anymore, and I have the solution. If anyone else can tell those who need to be told, for example the reigning Pontiff, may he do it and I won't hold him to copyright.

I immediately give the remedy, divided in two options.

The first: move the homily to the end of Mass, and make it optional. Which means that after the final blessing he who wishes may stay to be instructed and edified. He, rather, who would prefer to stay in the state of grace in which the celebration of the sacrifice has left him, can go.

The second: guarantee that every Sunday there is a Mass without a homily, or with a homily strictly regulated under three minutes. In three minutes one can synthesize the spiritual essence of the Scripture, and give to the faithful points for personal reflection, without watering down the soup or doing verbal theater. Certainly, one can always mentally say the Rosary, but...

I went to Mass today in a large Roman church, because of my schedule. Believe me if I tell you that during the homily I wanted to get up and leave. Among the other examples of formal purity--it was the scene of the Pharisees scandalized because the disciples ate without washing their hands; and from a hygienic standpoint they were surely right--the connection was made with the pre-eucharistic fast. It was being said, as if it were an achievement, that now one hour is enough. However, before the Council one had to fast--at least the priest, he added--from midnight. And if one had to celebrate an early Mass, that might be OK. But if one had to celebrate later in the morning "it was a twelve hour fast!" seeing the protruding belly of the celebrant which formed a fine contour under his vestments one could be sure that his fasting business would not be more than sixty one minutes... Then at the moment for the exchange of peace he left the altar and came to great EVERYONE. We were around forty people, standing like scarecrows in an unnatural pause, which broke the entire sacred rhythm. The Church does not need liturgists but choreographers to show that the event has a rhythm which leads to a climax and that to break it is a disaster. Indeed for spiritual concentration, the recollection of those who participate in it. I may be bad, but I had the great impression that the celebrant was merely reciting. Speaking of Pharisees...

(Plinthos translation)

Most Priests (never mind Deacons!) Should Perhaps Not Preach at Mass!

Homiletic Directory Sermon Program

Ave Maria

Gregorian Chant

Gregorian Chant

Palestrina (1525-1594)

Friedrich Handel (1685-1759)

Mozart (1756-1791)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Rossini (1792-1868)

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809 - 1847)

Charles Gounod (1818-1893)

Josef Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)

Franz Listz (1811-1886)

Franz Listz (1811-1886)

Franz Listz on Schubert (1811-1886)

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

Vladimir Vavilov (1925-1973)

Las Cigarreras

A Respectful Response to Pope Francis' Despisal of the Cassock

"During an August 1st gathering with a group of Jesuits the Holy Father said: 'I am happy to receive you. Thank you so much for this visit, it does me good. When I was a student, when you had to go to the Superior General, and when with the Superior General we had to go to the Pope, you wore the cassock and the mantello. I see that this fashion no longer exists, thank God.' The Pope can be seen in the photos with a group of Jesuits with clerical shirts of various colors and styles, all with a clerical collar; no one is wearing his cassock, except the Pope.

"Now, I, as a priest, am accustomed to show respect to the Pope, but I don't understand these comments at all. I don't see how comments like this cannot do more harm than good. The use of the cassock and the mantello, Holy Father, is not a 'fashion,' but a sign of deeper respect for one's priestly dignity. Do you think that the faithful prefer their priests in sweaters and polo shirts? No, Holy Father; when the simple people see a priest in his cassock they always say things like: 'he looks like a real priest!' Because the habit, sometimes, does make the monk.

"I remember an old religious hospitalized in the last days of his life imploring the nurses to not deprive him of his habit (they should wash it...), because he had never separated himself from his habit, he was always faithful to it. Because, know, Holy Father, that these 'deconstructionist' expressions foreshadow the total rejection of ecclesiastical attire, including that being worn by those who were visiting You.

"Your predecessor of venerated memory Saint John Paul II in 1982 said: 'We the envoys of Christ to preach the Gospel, have a message to transmit, whether it is expressed with words or also with external signs, above all in the present world which is so keen on the language of images. The clerical habit, as that of the religious, has a particular significance; for the diocesan priest it has principally the character of a sign, which distinguishes him from the worldly environment in which he lives; for the religious it expresses also the character of consecration and manifests the eschatological end of the religious life. The habit, therefore, aids the evangelical ends and elicits reflection on the reality which we represent in the world and on the primacy of the spiritual values in the existence of man, which we affirm. By means of such a sign, it is made easier for others to arrive at the Mystery, of which we are bearers, and at Him to Whom we belong and Whom we wish to announce with all of our being.

"I esteem my confreres who wear a distinctive clerical garb according to their state in life, and I esteem even more those who wear the cassock, as I do, a deeper sign of separation from the world and of belonging to the supernatural dimension."

Abate Faria
Stilum Curiae, 9-8-18
(Plinthos translation)

Thirteen Reasons I Wear the Cassock Rather Than the Clerical Suit

Munda et muni, Domine!

Here is the closing prayer for the extraordinary form Roman liturgy during this week of the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, from which I draw the above ejaculation for the Lord's cleansing and protection of Holy Mother Church.

Ecclésiam tuam, Dómine, miserátio continuáta mundet et múniat: et quia sine te non potest salva consístere; tuo semper múnere gubernétur.
Per Dóminum nostrum Iesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum.

O Lord, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church, and because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness.
Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end.

divinumofficium.com

Pope Benedict on Humanae Vitae October 2, 2008

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI ON THE OCCASION OF THE 40th ANNIVERSARY OF PAUL VI'S ENCYCLICAL HUMANAE VITAE

To Mons. Livio Melina
President of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute
for Studies on Marriage and Family

I learned with joy that the Pontifical Institute of which you are President and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart have opportunely organized an International Congress on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, an important Document that treats one of the essential aspects of the vocation to marriage and the specific journey of holiness that results from it. Indeed, having received the gift of love, husband and wife are called in turn to give themselves to each other without reserve. Only in this way are the acts proper and exclusive to spouses truly acts of love which, while they unite them in one flesh, build a genuine personal communion. Therefore, the logic of the totality of the gift intrinsically configures conjugal love and, thanks to the sacramental outpouring of the Holy Spirit, becomes the means to achieve authentic conjugal charity in their own life.

The possibility of procreating a new human life is included in a married couple's integral gift of themselves. Since, in fact, every form of love endeavours to spread the fullness on which it lives, conjugal love has its own special way of communicating itself: the generation of children. Thus it not only resembles but also shares in the love of God who wants to communicate himself by calling the human person to life. Excluding this dimension of communication through an action that aims to prevent procreation means denying the intimate truth of spousal love, with which the divine gift is communicated: "If the mission of generating life is not to be exposed to the arbitrary will of men, one must necessarily recognize insurmountable limits to the possibility of man's domination over his own body and its functions; limits which no man, whether a private individual or one invested with authority, may licitly surpass" (Humanae Vitae, n. 17). This is the essential nucleus of the teaching that my Venerable Predecessor Paul VI addressed to married couples and which the Servant of God John Paul ii, in turn, reasserted on many occasions, illuminating its anthropological and moral basis.

Forty years after the Encyclical's publication we can understand better how decisive this light was for understanding the great "yes" that conjugal love involves. In this light, children are no longer the objective of a human project but are recognized as an authentic gift, to be accepted with an attitude of responsible generosity toward God, the first source of human life. This great "yes" to the beauty of love certainly entails gratitude, both of the parents in receiving the gift of a child, and of the child himself, in knowing that his life originates in such a great and welcoming love.

It is true, moreover, that serious circumstances may develop in the couple's growth which make it prudent to space out births or even to suspend them. And it is here that knowledge of the natural rhythms of the woman's fertility becomes important for the couple's life. The methods of observation which enable the couple to determine the periods of fertility permit them to administer what the Creator has wisely inscribed in human nature without interfering with the integral significance of sexual giving. In this way spouses, respecting the full truth of their love, will be able to modulate its expression in conformity with these rhythms without taking anything from the totality of the gift of self that union in the flesh expresses. Obviously, this requires maturity in love which is not instantly acquired but involves dialogue and reciprocal listening, as well as a special mastery of the sexual impulse in a journey of growth in virtue.

In this perspective, knowing that the Congress is also taking place through an initiative of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, I am likewise eager to express in particular my appreciation for all that this university institution does to support the International Paul VI Institute for Research in Human Fertility and Infertility for Responsible Procreation(ISI), which it gave to my unforgettable Predecessor, Pope John Paul II, thereby desiring to make, so to speak, an institutionalized response to the appeal launched by Pope Paul VI in paragraph n. 24 of the Encyclical, to "men of science". A task of the ISI, in fact, is to improve the knowledge of the natural methods for controlling human fertility and of natural methods for overcoming possible infertility. Today, "thanks to the progress of the biological and medical sciences, man has at his disposal ever more effective therapeutic resources; but he can also acquire new powers, with unforeseeable consequences, over human life at its very beginning and in its first stages" (Instruction on respect for human life in its origin and on the dignity of procreation, Donum vitae, n. 1). In this perspective, "many researchers are engaged in the fight against sterility. While fully safeguarding the dignity of human procreation, some have achieved results which previously seemed unattainable.
"Scientists therefore are to be encouraged to continue their research with the aim of preventing the causes of sterility and of being able to remedy them so that sterile couples will be able to procreate in full respect for their own personal dignity and that of the child to be born" (ibid., n. 8). It is precisely this goal that is proposed by the ISI Paul VI and by other similar centres, with the encouragement of the ecclesiastical authority.

We may ask ourselves: how is it possible that the world today, and also many of the faithful, find it so difficult to understand the Church's message which illustrates and defends the beauty of conjugal love in its natural expression? Of course, in important human issues the technical solution often appears the easiest. Yet it actually conceals the basic question that concerns the meaning of human sexuality and the need for a responsible mastery of it so that its practice may become an expression of personal love. When love is at stake, technology cannot replace the maturation of freedom. Indeed, as we well know, not even reason suffices: it must be the heart that sees. Only the eyes of the heart succeed in understanding the proper needs of a great love, capable of embracing the totality of the human being. For this, the service that the Church offers in her pastoral care of marriages and families must be able to guide couples to understand with their hearts the marvellous plan that God has written into the human body, helping them to accept all that an authentic process of maturation involves.

The Congress that you are celebrating therefore represents an important moment of reflection and care for couples and families, offering them the results of years of research in both the anthropological and ethical dimensions, as well as that which is strictly scientific, with regard to truly responsible procreation. In this light I can only congratulate you and express the hope that this work will bear abundant fruit and contribute to supporting couples on their way with ever greater wisdom and clarity, encouraging them in their mission to be credible witnesses of the beauty of love in the world. With these hopes, as I invoke the Lord's help on the work of the congress, I impart a special Apostolic Blessing to all.

From the Vatican, 2 October 2008

BENEDICTVS PP. XVI