Saint Catharine of Siena: As Rigidly Opposed to Idolatry as Moses Himself

Unlike the conciliar “popes,” Moses did not make “nice” with idolaters, and neither did Saint Catherine of Alexandria, which is why it is useful to explain Moses’s own hatred of idolatry in complete fidelity to the First Commandment to understand why the angels transported the body of Saint Catherine to Mount Sinai  after her martyrdom in Alexandria.

William Thomas Walsh, explaining the rationale behind The Inquisition and the procedures used to ferret out Jews masquerading as Catholics (and Catholics who had apostatized to do the work of the Jews and other infidels), explained that Moses dealt severely those who profaned the true God of Divine Revelation by daring to show the slightest amount of respect to false religions, their temples, their idols and their adherents:

The children of Israel were chosen very explicitly by the Creator of mankind for the loftiest of destinies, of which obviously there were two parts:

(1)   To keep the knowledge and worship of one true God alive among all the savage superstitions and vile debaucheries of less favored nations.

(2)    To receive, in good time, the Holy One of God who should come to the earth to save not only the Hebrews but all men; and to give Him to mankind.

This privilege was conferred conditionally:

“Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: You have seen what I have done to the Egyptians, how I have carried you upon the wings of eagles, and have taken you to myself. If therefore you will hear my voice, and keep my covenant, you shall be my peculiar possession above all people: for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a priestly kingdom, and a holy nation.” (Exodus, XIX: 3-6.)

In this promise lies an explanation of a great deal of the strange history of the Chosen People, with it alternating triumphs and defeats, glories and humiliations, virtues and sins, even to our own day. It was not merely that their great law-giver gave them principles by which all the affairs of life were regulated more intelligently, in a human sense, that those of any other ancient people; that he anticipated modern theories of hygiene, and even the distinction of our law books, make about burglary, as a crime committed “in the night season” – and with this, the right of a man to kill a burglar, but not a daytime thief.” It was not that the Jews had a harsh law of justice alone, contrasting with a Christian law of charity alone – this is a vulgar error, pregnant with conclusions unfair to both Jews and Christians. The same Moses who, in those rude and dangerous times, told them to exact “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe,” also transmitted these commands:

“Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart, but reprove him openly, lest thou incur sin through him. Seek not revenge, no be mindful of the injury of thy citizens. Thou shalt love thy friend as thyself, I am the Lord. . .”

“Neither, shalt thou gather the bunches of grapes that fall down in thy vineyard, but shalt leave them to the poor and the strangers to take . . .”

“Thou shalt not calumniate thy neighbor, nor oppress him by violence. The wages of him that hath been hired by thee shall not abide with thee until the morning. . .”

“If a stranger dwell in your land, and abide among you, do not upbraid him: but let him be among you as one of the same country: and you shall love him as yourselves: for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God . . .” 

“You shall not hurt a widow or an orphan. If you hurt them they will cry out to me, and I will hear their cry: and my rage shall be enkindled, and I will strike you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.

“If you lend money to any of my people that is poor, that dwelleth with thee, thou shalt not be hard upon them as an extortioner, nor oppress them with usuries.”

The Hebrews, too, then, were told to love their neighbors. But they were not encouraged to confuse charity for fellow men with a sentimental and suicidal toleration for false ideas. (William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquisition, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1940, pp. 6-8.)

Permit me to offer two comments at this point.

First, William Thomas Walsh’s superb summary of Moses’s leadership of the Chosen People teaches us that, unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio, there is no conflict between justice and charity—or between doctrine and “mercy”—as posited so frequently by Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Second, Moses’s intolerance for false ideas and sentimentality mirrored Pope Saint Pius X’s summary, contained in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour’s own intolerance for falsehood and sentimentality:

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.  (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Moses was a figure of Our Lord. It is thus impossible for there to be any contradiction at all between Moses’s intolerance for idolatry and error and that of Our Lord’s. The conciliar “popes” have professed belief in a concept of Our Lord that is imaginary. Indeed, it is heretical and blasphemous.

Wait.

The rest of William Thomas Walsh’s description of Moses’s intolerance of idolatry and his treatment of those who practiced it is yet even more riveting:

Custodians of the holy truth which alone could lead man back to the primal felicity of daily communion with God, which he had lost through the sin of disobedience, they held this higher that any human consideration, holier even than human life itself. Moses, acting under divine inspiration, never hesitated to shed blood rather than let his Chosen People become like the Egyptians, with their corruption Astarte, or those Phoenicians who sacrificed innocent babies to their idol Moloch. Crimes against God were, in mind of Moses (by God illuminated), crimes against Being Itself. Hence, when he returned from the holy mount to find that his his people had made to themselves (with his own brother's connivance) a molten calf of gold, to which they bowed in adoration, and to which they sacrificed victims, he was so angry that he cast the tables of the Law from his hand, and shattered them, he burnt the calf and beat it into powder, he made the Hebrews drink water containing the dust of it, and assembling all the sons of Levi, men marked for the holy priesthood, “he said to them, 'Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: Put every man his sword upon his thigh: Go, and return from fate to fate through the midst of the camp, and let every man kill his brother, and friend, and neighbor.' And the sons of Levi did according to the words of Moses, and there were slain that day about three-and -twenty thousand men.”

Stern justice? It was necessary if the revelation of the Creator of mankind was to be kept alive in the world; if all the human race was not to sink into a state of degredation below that of beasts. It was necessary, this slaughter of 23,000, to prevent the loss of far more, in peace and in war, who would perish if the Chosen People scorned the spiritual and abased themselves before the material. No merely human cause, no liberal reform, no promise for the proletariat, no misty vision of progress in the future, could have justified it. Such punishment could be meted out justly only by the outraged majesty of a patient God, whose only alternative would have been to forsake or destroy a hopelessly corrupted world.

Thus Moses dealt with all offenses against the Almighty: with unnatural vice, which would have made the children of Israel as soft, as foul as forsaken as the pagans around them; with adultery, which struck at the heart of the family and therefore the foundation of society; above all, with offenses against the revealed Truth itself. Of magicians and soothsayers, of spiritualists, of a man or woman in whom there dwelt a pythonical or divining spirit, he said, “Dying let them die: they shall stone them; their blood be upon them.” and if a daughter of a priest was “taken in whoredom,” she was to be burned to death. (This form of capital punishment was not invented in the Middle Ages.)

Schism was punished with equal severity, for it challenged a leadership which was divine as well as political. When Core and his friends rose up against Moses, the great prophet called down upon them the anger of God, “and immediately, as he had done speaking, the earth broke asunder under their feet: and opening her mouth, devoured them with their tents and all their substance. And they went down alive into hell, the ground closing upon them, and they perished from among the people.” Others were destroyed by plague, 14,700 dying in all.

Moses had toleration for what might be called the human weaknesses of human nature, but he had none at all for those which cut, the holy cord that bound souls to their Maker. For idolatry, the sin against the first commandment, “I am the Lord thy God . . .Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.” he had but one answer. The only good idolater were dead idolaters. Their portion was the sword, and their lands were confiscated by the Children of Israel. He never forgot the terrible lesson of the Golden Calf. He remembered, too, the feeble excuse Aaron had offered for his share in that abomination, “Let not my lord be offended: for thou knowest this people, that they are prone to evil;” and he was constantly on the alert for some repetition of the offense. Moses, was aware, doubtless, that those who had received great spiritual gifts would be most tempted by the devil, and if once they fell, would sink lower than less favored sinners.

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.  (Sonnet 94.)

Idolatry, worst of sins, never failed to beget a spawn of other sins, especially those most degrading to human nature. The people of Madian had taken this fatal path, and had become worse than beasts. They adored an idol called Beelphegor, in whose honor they offered up sacrifices, and indulged, like other idolators, in promiscuous orgies. Evidently, too, they had a sort of secret society into which the worshippers of Beelphegor had to be initiated; an old custom among people who have some guilty secret to conceal. They also had an obscene idol named Phogor. (William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquisition, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1940, pp.8-10.)

Permit another brief comment at this juncture.

Although Jorge Mario Bergoglio has continued the “tradition” of his predecessors in the seat of apostasy have set concerning the praise of false religions and the esteeming of their temples and symbols, the Argentine Apostate has exceeded them in many respects, especially by excusing sins, both natural and unnatural, against the holy virtue of Purity.

The only kind of intolerance that Jorge Mario Bergoglio shows is for Catholics who hold fast to true Catholic Faith, Worship, and Morals. He is a shameless celebrator of vice and iniquity. Such shamelessness comes all too naturally to those who violate the First and Second Commandments that Moses took seriously. After all, Moses received those Commandments from God Himself atop Mount Sinai.

Here is the final excerpt about Moses’s intolerance for idolatry as found in William Thomas Walsh’s Characters of the Inquistion:

“And Israel at that time abode in Settim, and the people committed fornication with the daughters of Moab, who called them to their sacrifices. And they ate of them, and adored their gods. And Israel was initiated to Beelphegor: upon which the Lord being angry, said to Moses, 'Take all the princes of the people, and hang them up on gibbets against the sun' . . . and Moses said to the judges of Israel, 'Let every man kill his neighbors, that have been initiated to Beelphegor.'”

The Hebrews who had not been corrupted took arms, and slew 24,000 of the wretches who had worshipped the false god. Phineas the son of Eleazor, seeing Zambri, of the tribe of Simeon, enter a brothel with a harlot of Madian name Cozbi, went in after them with a dagger, “and thrust both of them through together, to wit, the man and the woman in the genital parts.” Nor did the retribution stop there. The Madianites had become so dehumanized that their complete extinction was commanded by God. Moses sent twelve thousand well-armed men against them. “And when they had fought against the Madianites and had overcome them, they slew all the men. And their kings Evi, and Recem, and Sur, and Hur, and Rebe, five princes of the nation. Baldam also the son of Beor they killed with the sword. And they took their women and their children captives, and all their cattle, and all their goods. And all their possessions they plundered: and all their cities, and their villages, and castles, they burned. And they carried away the booty, and all that they had taken both of men and of beasts. And they brought to Moses, and Eleazor the priest, and to all the multitude of the children of Israel.

“Why have you saved the women? Demanded Moses in anger. “Are not these they that deceived the children of Israel by the counsel of Baalam, and made you transgress against the Lord by the sin of Phogar, for which also the people was punished? Therefore kill all that are of the male sex, even of the children: and put to death the women that have carnally known men.”

Moses was growing old, and he himself, because of his sin at the Waters of Contradiction, could never see the Land of Promise; but in a magnificent discourse, after giving the tables of the Law again to Israel, he described it as “a land which floweth with milk and honey. For the land, which thou goest to possess, is not like the land of Egypt, from whence thou camest out, where, when the seed is sown, waters are brought in to water it after the manner of gardens. But it is a land of hills and plains, expecting rain from heaven. And the Lord thy God doth always visit it, and his eyes are upon it from the beginning of the year unto the end thereof. If then you obey my commandments, which I command you this day that you love the Lord your God, and serve him with all your heart, and with all your soul, He will give to your land the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your corn, and your wine, and your oil, and your hay out of the fields to feed your cattle, and that you may eat and be filled. Beware lest perhaps your heart be deceived, and you depart from the Lord, and serve strange gods, and adore them: and the Lord being angry shut up heaven, that the rain come not down, not the earth yield her fruit, and you perish quickly from the excellent land which the Lord will give you. (Deuteronomy, XI: 9-17.) (William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquisition, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1940, pp. 10-12.)

Everyone who reads this site should know by now that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a figure of Antichrist. He is also, despite his great fondness for Talmudic Judaism, as much of a despiser of the Ten Commandments as was Martin Luther himself.

Bergoglio’s hatred of those who keep the Ten Commandments is just one of many things he has in common with an Augustinian monk named Father Martin Luther who he, the Argentine Apostate, believes is a “witness” to Our Lord:

“[The commandments] only purpose is to show man his impotence to do good and to teach him to despair of himself” (ref: Denifle’s Luther et Lutheranisme, Etude Faite d’apres les sources. Translation by J. Paquier (Paris, A. Picard, 1912-13), Volume III, p. 364).

“We must remove the Decalogue out of sight and heart” (ref. De Wette 4, 188)

“If we allow them – the Commandments – any influence in our conscience, they become the cloak of all evil, heresies and blasphemies” (ref. Comm. ad Galat, p.310).

“It is more important to guard against good works than against sin.” (ref. Trischreden, Wittenberg Edition, Vol. VI., p. 160).  (As found at: The Thirty-Three Most Ridiculous Things Martin Luther Ever Wrote.)

This is pretty much an exact representation of what Jorge Mario Bergoglio has said repeatedly.

There is a direct connection between Bergoglio’s contempt for the First and Second Commandments and his open encouragement of those who are engaged unrepentantly in what are Mortal Sins in the objective order of things while expressing concern for the “environment” and for “saving the planet.” Such a man has no use for any talk of what he believes is a given for one and all, especially for non-Catholics, namely, salvation.

As the words of Holy Writ quoted above by William Thomas Walsh prove beyond any question, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s evangelization in behalf of a religion of sentimentality and false charity make him a mortal enemy of Our Lord and of His true Church, thus making him—and most of his “bishops”—mortal enemies of the souls for whom Our Divine Redeemed shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday to redeem.

As mentioned earlier, Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, and it was to this very mountaintop that angels took the martyred body of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, whose feast is celebrated on November 25 annually, after she was executed for refusing the worship the sort of false gods that the conciliar “popes” and their “bishops” have esteemed so regularly:

This Catharine was a noble maiden of Alexandria, who from her earliest years joined the study of the liberal arts with fervent faith, and in a short while came to such an height of holiness and learning, that when she was eighteen years of age she prevailed over the chiefest wits. When she saw many diversely tormented and haled to death by command of Maximin, because they professed the Christian religion, she went boldly unto him and rebuked him for his savage cruelty, bringing forward likewise most sage reasons why the faith of Christ should be needful for salvation.

Maximian marvelled at her wisdom, and bade keep her, while he gathered together the most learned men from all quarters and offered them great rewards if they would confute Catharine and bring her from believing in Christ to worship idols. But the event fell contrariwise, for many of the philosophers who had come to dispute with her were overcome by the force and skill of her reasoning, so that the love of Christ Jesus was kindled in them, and they were content even to die for His sake. Then did Maximin strive to beguile Catharine with fair words and promises, and when he found it was lost pains, he caused her to be hided, and bruised with lead-laden whips, and so cast into prison, and neither meat nor drink given to her for the space of eleven days.

At that time Maximin's wife and Porphyry the Captain of his host, went to the prison to see the damsel, and at her preaching believed in Jesus Christ, and were afterwards crowned with martyrdom. Then was Catharine brought out of ward, and a wheel was set, wherein were fastened many and sharp blades, so that her virgin body might thereby be most direfully cut and torn in pieces, but in a little while, as Catharine prayed, this machine was broken in pieces, at the which marvel many believed in Christ. But Maximin was hardened in his godlessness and cruelty, and commanded to behead Catharine. She bravely offered her neck to the stroke and passed away hence to receive the twain crowns of maidenhood and martyrdom, upon the 25th day of November. Her body was marvelously laid by angels upon Mount Sinai in Arabia. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.)

Yes, Saint Catherine of Alexandria preferred martyrdom rather than offending the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, by given any credence whatsoever to false idols. She refused to worship the strange gods as she was faithful to the First Commandment that Moses, the zealous promoter of true doctrine and worship as it existed in his time, was given on the very mountaintop where angels had laid her holy body.

Ah, but the conciliar revolutionaries do not believe in miracles such as the angelic transportation of the body of Saint Catherine from Alexandria, Egypt, to Mount Sinai.

Just look at the Collect for feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria and consider the fact that "Opening Prayer" for the "optional memorial" in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service is the prayer found in the conciliar church’s  Common for Martyrs that makes no specific reference to Saint Catherine of Alexandria at all:

O God, Who didst give the law to Moses on the summit of Mount Sinai and by means of Thy holy angels didst miraculously place there the body of blessed Catherine, Thy virgin and martyr, grant we beseech Thee, that, by her merits and intercession, we may be able to come unto the mountain which is Christ. (Roman Missal.)

This prayer accepts as a fact that the body of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, martyred for her clear witness to the Faith, was transported by angels to Mount Sinai. Some "scholars" contend that Saint Catherine of Alexandria never existed. Is it beyond the power of God to send angels to transport the body of one of His holy martyrs by means of His angels? Why is there a bias against believing in the omnipotence of God? A Catholic who has been given the grace to have a serene and childlike Faith will not be surprised to see in eternity, please God he or she dies in a state of Sanctifying Grace, that the supposed "legends" that lack "scholarly evidence" are indeed factual and marvelous proofs of how God has chosen to confound His prideful creatures by His power and glory.

Although Father F. X. Lasance, the editor of the New Roman Missal, was himself skeptical of the story of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, here is what is contained in the Saint Andrew Daily Missal, which contains an excerpt from the Roman Breviary: 

"The illustrious virgin Catherine," says the Roman breviary, "was born at Alexandria. Having from youth combined the study of the liberal arts with the ardour of faith, she soon rose to high perfection both in doctrine and in holiness, and at the age of eighteen surpassed the most learned. She rebuked the Emperor Maximian for tormenting the Christians, and he, filled with admiration for her learning, assembled from all parts the most learned men, to bring her over from the faith of Jesus to the worship of idols. The contrary happened, for several were converted to Christianity by the cogency of her arguments.

"Maximian then ordered her to be scourged with rods and with whips weighted with lead. Then he had her tied to wheels armed with sharp swords. But the machine broke down and the tyrant caused her to be beheaded. She died about A.D. 310. She is one of the fourteen Auxiliary Saints. Christian philosophers, scholars, orators and lawyers honour her as their patroness."

Mount Sinai, where the body of Saint Catherine was carried by angels, is also the place where God's ministering angels brought His law to Moses. Let us with the Church invoke the intercession of Saint Catherine so that we may reach Jesus, the law-giver of our souls. (As found in the Saint Andrew Daily Missal.)

Holy Mother Church issued the Breviary under the guidance of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost. Was she wrongly guided to do so? The rational man of Modernity and Modernism thinks so. Catholics know that this is impossible.

Just look at the “opening prayer” for the “optional memorial” of Saint Catherine of Alexandria for this, November 25 to see how all reference to the miraculous transportation of our Saint’s body by angels from Alexandria to Mount Sinai has been omitted by Bugnini and company in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service:

Almighty ever-living God, who gave Saint Catherine of Alexandria to your people as a Virgin and an invincible Martyr, grant that through her intercession we may be strengthened in faith and constancy and spend ourselves without reserve for the unity of the Church. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son. who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

No, like Moses before her and millions upon millions of Catholic martyrs after her, Saint Catherine of Alexandria did not make “nice” with idolaters, and we must never find ourselves “una cum” (one with) those who not only make “nice nice” with idolaters but who insult Catholics of the past who refused to do so and those of the present who understand that conciliarism itself is a form of idolatry.

May our daily recitation of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary and the patient bearing of our crosses help us to plant the seeds for the restoration of a true and legitimate pope on the Throne of Saint Peter by seeking to make reparation for our sins as the consecrated slave of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Viva Cristo Rey!  

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Alexandria, pray for us.