by
Thomas A. Droleskey
As one who "fought within the structures" of conciliarism for well over twenty-five years, I have direct, firsthand experience of how the counterfeit church of conciliarism has devastated the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. This evidence is not, as some omniscient enablers of conciliarism contend, amassed as a result of a "gnostic" ability to discern with infallibility truths that are "hidden" from the rest of mere mortals. The evidence of conciliarism's harm to souls is empirical. It is undeniable, except, it appears, to those intent on enabling the enemies of souls in the conciliar Vatican and its allied chancery offices.
Time and space do not permit a full recitation of the empirical evidence demonstrating how conciliarism has offended God and harmed souls. A few examples from my own personal experience, some of which have been cited on this site before, as well as those told to me by others, who had learned of them firsthand themselves, will suffice for the moment.
There was the student at Nassau Community College in the Spring 1983 Semester who, despite having been through thirteen years of Catholic education, was mystified as to the identify of Judas Iscariot when I mentioned him in a class lecture.
There was the student at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University in the Fall 1995 Semester who, despite having been through thirteen years of Catholic education, had never heard of Original Sin and Adam and Eve's Fall from Grace in the Garden of Eden.
There are the countless numbers of fallen away Catholics, just ordinary people who are being led by the current of events rather than by the truths of the true Faith, we meet in our extensive travels who tell us that they were told by "priests" that one religion is a good as another.
There are the vocations directors, both of dioceses and religious communities, I dealt with in the 1970s who told me that the call to the priesthood comes from the "community," not from a bishop or a religious superior as a representative of God Himself, and that a man's ordination to the priesthood is ratified by the "applause of the community."
There was the priest in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Monsignor Thomas Gallagher, who said from the pulpit at a Novus Ordo daily Mass during Lent of 1994 who said the following: "All you have to do is to believe in a few articles of the Creed. Everything else is up for grabs."
There are the countless numbers of students who told me that they had been taught that Our Lord is present only symbolically, not actually, in the Blessed Sacrament. (We will leave aside the fact that Our Lord is not present in the Novus Ordo Missae because of its inherent invalidity.)
There was the priest, Monsignor Frederick Schaefer, now deceased, who told me in the Confessional at Saint Brigid's Church in Westbury, New York, in the Fall of 1980 that one cannot sin unless one's "fundamental option is against God."
There was the priest in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, who shall remain nameless, who said from the pulpit of a North Shore parish in the Spring of 1981 that his Scripture professor at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, New York, had said that one would have seen "nothing" if a video camera had been placed in front of Our Lord's tomb from the time it was sealed until after Easter Sunday, denying the Resurrection.
There was the priest in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Monsignor John Martin, then the pastor of Saint Killian's Church in Farmingdale, New York, who told a lay woman about ten years ago that "He did not rise, He did not rise" when questioned about his belief in the actual, bodily Resurrection of Our Lord after an "adult education" course he had given.
There was the priest at Holy Apostles Seminary, a Father Anderson, who in 1981 denied the Perpetual Virginity of Our Lady, prompting the late Father John Joseph "Jackie Boy" Sullivan, then sixty-five years of age, to beat him up with his fists.
There was the priest in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Father Robert Hayden, who said from the pulpit at Saint Dominic's Church in Oyster Bay, New York, in 1988 that "moral standards" are established "by the community."
There was the priest in the Diocese of Allentown, whose name I do not recall, who said on the Feast of the Assumption in 1980 the following: "Where are we going? We're all going to Heaven, of course!"
There is the priest in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Monsignor Frank Gaeta, who wrote a tract of Lenten "reflections" in 1994 in which he stated the following: "Make no mistake about it. Judas Iscariot is in Heaven." He finished that reflection with the following invocation, "St. Judas, pray for us."
There are the countless number of parishes that have demonstrated themselves to be "open" to those who are engaged in continuous, unrepentant acts of perversity in violation o the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.
There are the countless number of horror stories that have been told to me by parents about how their children have been spiritually molested by means of graphic classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.
There is the former student of mine from Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, during the 1985-1986 academic year who told me just yesterday that his twelve year-old son was told last year in a "Catholic" school in Staten Island, New York, that "Jesus is a sinner."
There is the story told to me by His Excellency Bishop Daniel Dolan on Thursday, June 6, 2007, the Feast of Corpus Christi, of a teacher in a "Catholic" school in New Jersey who said that Hell does not exist, something His Excellency had learned from recent refugees from the Novus Ordo who are moving from New Jersey to West Chester, Ohio.
There are the priests I have heard with my own ears voicing their support for contraception and abortion, making excuses also for pro-abortion Catholics in public life.
There was the former student of mine from Saint John's University in Jamaica, New York, who told me the heartbreaking story in 1988 that a Vincentian priest told her that it was "her decision" as to whether or not to kill her preborn baby. She told her husband of that counsel and they "decided" to kill their child, coming to regret it later.
There are the times when I have had to investigate conciliar "bishops" for their betrayals of the Faith, including those who sat by as what was said to be Eucharistic Adoration was denied to Catholics by their own "priests," and for their own perverse immorality, none of which mattered to conciliar Rome until the filing of lawsuits and the taking of depositions was about to begin. Men known for tolerating the grossest spiritual abuses of the young were kept in power by conciliar Rome to commit the grossest of physical abuses of the young.
There are the countless times I have witnessed the sort of "ecumenical" gatherings that have placed the true Faith on a level of equality with false religions.
There are the countless numbers of sacrileges I have witnessed at the Novus Ordo Missae, many of which were chronicled during my years with The Wanderer and in my G.I.R.M. Warfare. "Rock" Masses. "Clown" Masses. "Folk" Masses. "Polka" Masses. Liturgical "dance." Priests saying the second part of the "Eucharistic Prayer" in the nave of the Church while leaving what they believe to be the Real Presence of the God-Man on the Cranmer table. Improvised prayers, many of which are permitted by the General Instruction to the Roman Missal, especially during what is known in the new order of things as the "Penitential Rite." The proliferation of the laity in the sanctuary. What are believed to be consecrated Hosts strewn about churches as a result of the sacrilege of Communion in the hand.
This litany could go on ad infinitum. Those who want to close their eyes to the significance of this empirical evidence must convince themselves (and others) that these things are aberrations of the past forty years and not the actual, inevitable consequences of the ethos engendered by conciliarism and the abominations and novelties, both of the "approved" and "unapproved" varieties, that exist in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Although the situation gets worse and worse with each passing year and decade, we are assured by these omniscient enablers that all will be fine soon enough one day. It is thus rash, they assert, to draw any negative conclusions about conciliarism as a result of these empirical facts leaving aside, at least for the moment, the deeper theological issues that prove the counterfeit nature of conciliarism and the illegitimacy of its false shepherds.
The defenders of conciliarism and the conciliarists might, when confronted with the empirical facts listed above, also seek to excuse the conciliar "popes" and "bishops" of any responsibility for them, pointing out that Our Lord said that He alone would separate the wheat from the chaff. The parable of the wheat and the chaff, however, refers to the "wheat" of those who are trying to pursue holiness as members of the true Church and the "chaff" of those who have either fallen away from the Church, by means of Mortal Sin and/or apostasy, and those who are outside of the One Sheepfold of Christ. The parable of the wheat and the chaff does not mean that Our Lord wants individuals in positions of teaching "authority" to misrepresent His teaching or that He wants those who have ostensible authority over these propagators of error to be diffident in the face of the harm to souls caused by such propagation of error and scandal.
But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh. And if thy hand, or thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee having one eye to enter into life, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. (Mt. 18: 6-10)
As noted above, leaving aside the "meat" of the apostasies of conciliarism for a moment or two, the mere fact that "unapproved" novelties and heresies and abominations and sacrileges are left to fester without a word of correction from the conciliar officials, each of whom, including the postconciliar "pontiffs," has been fully informed as to their nature and extent, is a correlative proof of these officials' own lack of love for God and of the souls for whom He offered up His life to the Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross. As Father Frederick Faber noted, no one loves God truly unless he hates what God hates, namely, heresy. Those who tolerate heresy or who think that there is no need to denounce it forcefully show that they have fallen from any true understanding of the Catholic Faith and participate at least minimally as accessories, if not quite actively, in the heresies being committed under their direct authority.
Father Faber wrote about this hatred of heresy in the sixth decade of the Nineteenth Century:
This is particularly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is it to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world's view and condemn us; for there is a meek-looking positiveness about the timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is daring enough for a harsh judgment. Heresy can only be hated by an undivided heart. (The Dolors of Mary, 1857.)
If we hated sin as we ought to hate it, purely, keenly, manfully, we should do more penance, we should inflict more self-punishment, we should sorrow for our sins more abidingly. Then, again, the crowning disloyalty to God is heresy. It is the sin of sins, the very loathsomest of things which God looks down upon in this malignant world. Yet how little do we understand of its excessive hatefulness! It is the polluting of God’s truth, which is the worst of all impurities.
Yet how light we make of it! We look at it, and are calm. We touch it and do not shudder. We mix with it, and have no fear. We see it touch holy things, and we have no sense of sacrilege. We breathe its odor, and show no signs of detestation or disgust. Some of us affect its friendship; and some even extenuate its guilt. We do not love God enough to be angry for His glory. We do not love men enough to be charitably truthful for their souls.
Having lost the touch, the taste, the sight, and all the senses of heavenly-mindedness, we can dwell amidst this odious plague, in imperturbable tranquility, reconciled to its foulness, not without some boastful professions of liberal admiration, perhaps even with a solicitous show of tolerant sympathies.
Why are we so far below the old saints, and even the modern apostles of these latter times, in the abundance of our conversations? Because we have not the antique sternness? We want the old Church-spirit, the old ecclesiastical genius. Our charity is untruthful, because it is not severe; and it is unpersuasive, because it is untruthful.
We lack devotion to truth as truth, as God’s truth. Our zeal for souls is puny, because we have no zeal for God’s honor. We act as if God were complimented by conversions, instead of trembling souls rescued by a stretch of mercy.
We tell men half the truth, the half that best suits our own pusillanimity and their conceit; and then we wonder that so few are converted, and that of those few so many apostatize.
We are so weak as to be surprised that our half-truth has not succeeded so well as God’s whole truth.
Where there is no hatred of heresy, there is no holiness.
A man, who might be an apostle, becomes a fester in the Church for the want of this righteous indignation. (The Precious Blood, 1860)
Angelo Roncalli specifically rejected all of this in his opening address to the "Second" Vatican Council on October 10, 1962, thus laying the cornerstone for conciliarism's approach to dealing with those things that are even beyond the pale for hard-core conciliar revolutionaries:
At the outset of the Second Vatican Council, it is evident, as always, that the truth of the Lord will remain forever. We see, in fact, as one age succeeds another, that the opinions of men follow one another and exclude each other. And often errors vanish as quickly as they arise, like fog before the sun The Church has always opposed these errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She consider that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations Not, certainly, that there is a lack of fallacious teaching, opinions, and dangerous concepts to be guarded against an dissipated. But these are so obviously in contrast with the right norm of honesty, and have produced such lethal fruits that by now it would seem that men of themselves are inclined to condemn them, particularly those ways of life which despise God and His law or place excessive confidence in technical progress and a well-being based exclusively on the comforts of life. They are ever more deeply convinced of the paramount dignity of the human person and of his perfection as well as of the duties which that implies. Even more important, experience has taught men that violence inflicted on others, the might of arms, and political domination, are of no help at all in finding a happy solution to the grave problems which afflict them.
Not only is this a rejection of perennial teaching of the Catholic Church summarized so succinctly by Father Faber above, Roncalli's belief that error just kind of "goes away" if we are "positive" about the truth flies in the face of the history of the Catholic Church. Remember, Roncalli made a deal with the Russian Orthodox Church that there would be no condemnation or criticism of even mention of one of the worst naturalist heresies of all time, Communism, in exchange for the presence of "observers" from the schismatic and heretical Russian Orthodox Church at the "Second" Vatican Council, thus accustoming Catholics to accept silence about errors and heresies in exchange for this or that goal. This has nothing to do with Catholicism. Nothing.
Indeed, error must be opposed. Arianism did not simply go away. It was opposed by the likes of Saint Athanasius and Saint Basil and Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine. The Albigenses heresy did not simply go away. It was opposed by Saint Dominic and his Order of Preachers, especially by means of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary. Jansenism did not go away. It was denounced by Pope Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794. The errors of Protestantism on Justification and Purgatory and the Mass and the Priesthood were denounced solemnly by the Council of Trent. Saints Francis de Sales and Peter Canisius, among many others, sought to convert Calvinists in the wake of the Protestant Revolt. Saint Vincent Ferrer sought to convert those steeped in the errors of Talmudic Judaism and Mohammedanism. Saint Patrick sought to convert those steeped in the errors of the false beliefs of Druidism. Saint Josaphat sought to convert those steeped in the errors of Orthodoxy.
Error has never just "gone away." Catholics have always opposed error, doing so for the love of God and for the good of souls. Conciliarism rejects this, thus giving the "operation of error" that proceeds from and feeds into the ethos of "approved" errors propagated within its structures. Th Catholic Church has never adopted the approach of Angelo Roncalli or his second "successor" as a false pontiff, Albino Luciani, as is documented by Fathers Dominic and Francisco Radecki in Tumultuous Times:
John Paul I is often portrayed as a humble, saintly prelate of the Church. His doctrinal stand was very questionable as evidence by his pastoral letter of 1967 in which he advised his clergy to "see, if instead of uprooting and throwing down [error], it might be possible to trim and prune it patiently, bringing to light the core of goodness and truth which is not often lacking even in erroneous opinions" [Reference 839: Our Sunday Visitor, September 28, 2003, "Celebrating the Smiling Pope," by Lori Pieper.] This is like a doctor telling his patient: "I won't take out all the cancer; it might be good for you.
This diffidence in the face of error has infected the "clergy" in various "indult" communities in the conciliar structures into believing that they have absolutely no duty to oppose or denounce error, believing that "everyone knows" about modern errors and that the honor of the Blessed Trinity and the good of souls do not demand a firm and outspoken opposition to errors and a defense of the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith. This silence in the face of error has made it all the more possible for the conciliar revolutionaries to devastate souls with all manner of errors, both approved by conciliarism and unofficially unapproved, emptying the pews of churches under conciliar control and filling the hearts and souls of most, although not all, of those who remain with a veritable witches' brew of an admixture of truth and error, which is the very foundation of Modernism.
More directly to the point of the "approved" errors of conciliarism, however, no one has to have "gnostic" powers to contrast the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church with conciliarism's rejection of that teaching. Even individuals who are adamantly and steadfastly opposed to sedevacantism, such as James Larson and John Vennari, have used their plain Catholic reason to pronounce critically on the "theology" of Joseph Ratzinger. A conciliar priest, Father Regis Scanlon, O.F.M., Cap., wrote a piece that appeared seven years ago in New Oxford Review about the Hegelian approach of Ratzinger's mentor in The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The evidence that has been amassed concerning Joseph Ratzinger's embrace of one Modernist proposition after another has not been invented out of whole cloth.
Additionally, of course, numerous scholarly articles and books have been written to critique the abomination that is the Novus Ordo Missae, which was designed of its nature to do what Annibale Bugnini said in 1965 what it was meant to do:
We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants.
The late Monsignor Klaus Gamber, a liturgist who was not a traditionalist and was in favor of some degree of liturgical "reform," published The Reform of the Roman Liturgy as a scathing scholarly critique of the Novus Ordo Missae and the wreckage it had produced in the conciliar church in just twenty years. Was he a "gnostic" possessed of "secret" knowledge unavailable to others.
"Father" Richard John Neuhaus, not a friend of the restoration of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and certainly not a friend of the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King, nevertheless saw to it in January of 2004 to comment on an article written by Dr. Lauren Pristas, of Caldwell College in New Jersey, in The Thomist in 2003 on the texts of the Novus Ordo Missae. Here is what Father Neuhaus wrote:
"It is not simply that the English translations in the Mass tend toward banality. The problem goes back to the hurried putting together of the Paul VI Missal in Latin following the Second Vatican Council. That is the argument of “Theological Principles that Guided the Redaction of the Roman Missal” by Lauren Pristas (The Thomist, 67, 2003). Researching the statements of those in charge of the redaction, Pristas finds that they were quite explicit about their intention to adapt ancient texts to “the modern mind.” Sin and damnation are downplayed, and the distinctions between heaven and earth, the profane and the sacred, God’s grace and our efforts tend to be fudged.
“The traditional [Latin] orations are highly sophisticated and stunningly concise literary compositions that overflow with surplus of meaning—connotation far outstripping denotation,” Pristas writes. The redactors, however, believed that prayers should be “submissive to the principles required for a good homily: to have something to say, to know how to say it, and to stop after it has been said.” It is doubtful that most of the new prayers rise even to the level of a good homily. Far from overflowing with a surplus of meaning, upon careful examination they display a deficit of meaning. A good many of the prayers in the Mass can be adequately summarized by the petition, “Help us to be the really nice people we are.”
By so revising the prayers from all ages, Pristas writes, “it may be the case that nearly all the texts of our missal reflect the strengths and weaknesses, the insights and biases, the achievements and limitations of but one age, our own. . . . If this is indeed so, then Catholics of today, in spite of the access made possible by vernacular celebrations, have far less liturgical exposure to the wisdom of our past and the wondrous diversity of Catholic experience and tradition than did the Catholics of earlier generations.”
Obviously, Father Neuhaus believes that the problems can be resolved with better translations. He is wrong. The problem is the whole enterprise of reforming the closest thing to Heaven: the Mass of Tradition. I point out his quotation of Dr. Pristas to indicate that it a recognition of the problems with the whole foundation of the Novus Ordo Missae is pretty widespread. To pretend that such criticism does not exist or that it is confined to "gnostic traditionalists" across the ecclesiastical divide is the height of intellectual dishonesty.
As was noted as week ago today in
To Each One According to His Way, one either sees conciliarism is wrong or he does not. Those who contend that it is indeed a manifest rejection of the Catholic Faith have not simply stated this in a positivistic manner as though they had not provided proof after proof of their points concerning conciliarism's belief in the "evolution" of doctrine, the new ecclesiology, ecumenism (and all of its aspects, including mixing with false religions and the forbidding of "proselytizing" among Protestants and Jews and the Orthodox), religious liberty, the separation of Church and State, and episcopal collegiality. This has been done long, long before, say, late-comers such as Professor Gerald Christian Matatics and yours truly (both of us were denounced recently by Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski in the New Oxford Review) came to the conclusion that heretics cannot hold ecclesiastical office legitimately.
One of the first to see the truth of the situation facing Catholics in this age of apostasy and betrayal was Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M. S.T.D. (that's Doctor of Sacred Theology for those not familiar with the initials). He refused to offer Mass in the vernacular in the 1960s and came to the firm conclusion that we were face to face with the fact that heretics were claiming to hold ecclesiastical offices in a "church" that was not the Catholic Church founded by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. His very careful, scholarly reasoning of this point was made in a 2005 letter Father Gruner, including the following most salient points:
The one big enterprise of anti-sedevacantists is to justify the presence of a public heretic on the Chair of Peter. For anti-sedevacanists, that is the central issue in their wrong-way opposition to sedevacantists.
And what, Fr. Gruner, are the rationalizations that anti-sedevacantists use when insisting that the
Vatican II heretics on the Chair of Peter have all been legitimate Catholic Popes?
One of the favorite rationalizations of anti-sedevacantists is, Don’t judge the Pope! In that not too careful judgment of sedevacantists, you make them look as though they judge genuine Catholic Popes who profess the true and unchanged Catholic Faith of all times. To be truthful and accurate about this matter of “judging the pope,” you know you would have to accuse sedevacantists of judging an occupant of the Chair of Peter who does not profess the traditional and unchanged Catholic Faith, while the anti-sedevacantists wrongly imagine such a man to be a real Catholic Pope, despite what he does and teaches that is contrary to the Catholic Faith.
You anti-sedevacantists carelessly make it look as if any and all judgments about a Pope are automatically wrong. No one needs to tell you that God gave men in general the ability to judge between right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice, truth and error. You also know that, with the gift of the Catholic Faith, God gave us the ability to judge the difference between what is in accord with the Catholic Faith and what is contrary to the Catholic Faith.
You also know very well that we are obliged to profess the Catholic Faith fully, without holding back, and state frankly what we see to be contrary to that Faith, even in one who sits in the Chair of Peter. Anti-sedevacantists, to their shame, hold back on professing the Faith fully
when they refuse to declare that the Vatican II occupants of Peter’s Chair have been professing a new, ecumenical and un-Catholic religion, and cannot therefore possibly be even Catholics, much less Popes.
As you can plainly see, Father Gruner, your “Don’t judge the Pope” argument is a dead argument, useless in defense of anti-sedevacantism.
Another dead argument of anti-sedevacantists is the “visble church” argument. For anti-sedevacantists, the visibility of the church requires that someone must occupy the Chair of Peter, even if he be a public heretic and mixer or religions.
The truth is that Our Lord did indeed establish His Church as a visible Church, but what anti-sedevacantists don’t tell you is that His visible Church is one that professes and practices the unchanged one and only true Catholic Faith.
No one should need to remind you that Protestant churches, Jewish synagogue, Hindu temples and Moslem mosques are all highly visible. But of what use is that kind of visibility if the one and only True Faith is missing in such places?
A public heretic and mixer of religions on the Chair of Peter is also highly visible. But of what use is his kind of visibility for the salvation of men if he does not profess nor practice the traditional and unchanged Catholic Faith?
Still another dead argument of anti-sedevacantists is the mistaken notion that the Church would stop existing if the Chair of Peter remained unoccupied for an extralong period of time. So, supposedly, in order to safeguard the Church’s continued existence, anti-sedevacantists strangely insist that even a scandalous public heretic on the Chair of Peter must be recognized a legitimate Catholic Pope, just so the Papal Chair does not remain vacant for too long a time.
Father Gruner, who decides when the Chair of Peter has been vacant for too long a time for the Church to keep existing? Are the anti-sedevacantists the ones to decide this?
The fact is, Father Gruner, that men cannot destroy the Church. Men cannot make the Church stop existing. To use the technical term, men cannot destroy the indefectibility of the Church. The most that men can do is to help destroy the faith of the individual members of the Church, even to the point – as you yourself admit – that there would remain only a “remnant” of those faithful to Our Lord. Wherever the True Faith would still be professed and practiced, even if there were no Pope on the Chair of Peter, that is where the essential nucleus of the True Church would be.
No matter how long the Chair of Peter may remain vacant, and no matter how may fall away from Our Lord’s Church, nothing can possibly prevent God from restoring His True Church and the True Faith, nor, in fact, can anything prevent God from even raising up new members “from the very stones” if He so willed.
When Our Lord promised, “I will be with you all days…,” He surely meant that He would be with those professing the traditional and unchanged Catholic Faith. He could not possibly have promised to be with a public heretic and mixer of religions occupying Peter’s Chair, as if acknowledging such a one to be a genuine Catholic Pope.
It isn’t Our Lord, but the anti-sedevacantists who unthinkingly insist that a public heretic on Peter’s Chair is “still the Pope.” To anti-sedevacantists, he may still be the “Pope” and dress like a Pope, but he cannot possibly be a genuine Catholic Pope. Such a “Pope” is really nothing but the “Our kind of Pope” that the Freemasons were dreaming about long, long ago, and, in fact, actually predicted that the day would come when “our kind of Pope” would occupy the Chair of Peter.
Many of these points have been made by other scholars, men who have explained their reasoning quite carefully and logically without claiming to be infallibly guided or to have any "hidden" knowledge to discern our situation. Among the wonderful articles detailing the errors of conciliarism and the necessity of looking at our situation truthfully are: His Excellency Bishop Donald Sanborn's
Opinionisn,
The New Ecclesiology: An Overview,
O Sacrament Unholy,and his
Critical Analysis of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification; Father Anthony Cekada's
Resisting the Pope, Sedevacantism and Frankenchurch; His Excellency Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas's
Sedevacantism, A Study of the Doctrinal Errors of Dignitatis Humanae,
Response to Mr. Duddy’s Open Letter to Bishop Pivarunas and CMRI Religious and Comments on Mike Duddy’s Article on the Eucharistic Form of Consecration. Not to be overlooked as well is the aforementioned compendium written by Fathers Dominic and Francisco Radecki, Tumultuous Times and Griff Ruby's The Resurrection of the Catholic Church.
Mind you, this is just a partial listing of the serious books and articles that have been written about the attack on the Faith by the conciliar revolutionaries of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. There are those who disagree with the conclusions contained in these books. Fine. One cannot dismiss the arguments amassed therein by claiming, as Dr. Kozinski did recently, that to find any problems with the "Second" Vatican Council and the teachings of the postconciliar popes is an exercise in the presenting of hidden knowledge available only to the few. The evidence against conciliarism has been presented is vast. It does not take a "gnostic" to figure out that the prohibition of proselytizing Jews and Protestants and the Orthodox runs contrary to these words of Our Lord, spoken to the Eleven before He Ascended to the Father's right hand in glory on Ascension Thursday:
All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.(Mt. 28: 18-20)
Indeed, it takes a gnostic to reconcile Joseph Ratzinger's belief about the nature of doctrine and of the encyclical letters of the true popes who spoke out against Modernism with the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church. Ratzinger's 1990 beliefs, contained in L'Osservatore Romano, are contrasted with a pronouncement from the [First] Vatican Council, Pope Saint Pius X's Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, and Pope Pius XII's Humani Generis, August 12, 1950:
The text [of the Second Vatican Council] also presents the various forms of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms -- perhaps for the first time with this clarity -- that there are decisions of the Magisterium that cannot be a last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. Its nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times have influenced, may need further ramifications.
“In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from immersion in the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they become obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at the proper moment.” (L'Osservatore Romano, July 2, 1990)
Hence, that meaning of the sacred dogmata is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy Mother Church, and there must never be an abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.... If anyone says that it is possible that at some given time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmata propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has always understood and understands: let him be anathema. (Vatican Council, 1870)
Hence it is quite impossible to maintain that they absolutely contain the truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sense in its relation to man; and as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sense. But the object of the religious sense, as something contained in the absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion
It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: "These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts."On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason"; and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth." Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: "Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -- but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation." (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1950.)
Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)
The contrast between conciliarism and Catholicism is stark in any number of areas. One does not need "hidden" knowledge to discern the contrast. One can go insane by exerting great intellectual effort to find the "hidden Catholicism" in statements that are abject contradictions of past pronouncements and decrees. Ah, there is the point, however: Ratzinger is an Hegelian. Like his Hegelian mentor, Hans Urs von Balthasar, before him, Ratzinger believes that truth contains within itself the seeds of its own internal contradiction. This is an absurdity. This is Modernism. Anyone who refuses to admit this or who goes through all manner of unnecessary intellectual contortions to say that an abject contradiction of past pronouncements and decrees are really "legitimate developments of doctrine" fail to remember what the late John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote about the development of doctrine: that no legitimate development of doctrine can contradict anything that had gone before it. (This is a point I made in a presentation at The Catholic University of America on March 14, 2000, when then doctoral candidate Thaddeus Kozinski asked me if the defenders of religious liberty and the separation of Church and State were right in stating that these novelties were simply "legitimate developments of doctrine.")
The following statement of Joseph Ratzinger, contained in Principles of Catholic Theology, is simply a flat-out contradiction of Pope Leo XIII's reiteration of basic Catholic teaching in
Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.
Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382.)
Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)
Those seeking to reconcile conciliarism's rejection of the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the necessity of the civil state's recognizing her as the true religion and fostering those conditions in civil society conducive to the eternal welfare of its citizens can take no refuge in these words of Pope Pius XI, contained in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1923.
Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.
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There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.
It is necessary once again to point out that Joseph Ratzinger believes in not one blessed word of the following quotation from Pope Saint Pius X's Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906. Ratzinger believes that it is "enough" for what he thinks is the "Catholic Church" to have but one voice in a nation, that it is not necessary, indeed positively harmful, for the civil state to recognize any one religion, including Catholicism, holding up pluralism and "religious liberty" of the Constitution of the United States of America as the model for the "church" and for the world:
That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error."
Readers of this site know that these points have been made over and over again. One can judge whether or not it is possible to reconcile the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on just one point, that of separation of Church and State, with conciliarism's embrace of what its two most recent "pontiffs" have called a "healthy secularity." It does not take "hidden" knowledge to point out that two mutually contradictory statements cannot be true simultaneously, that God permitted one thing to be taught for 1,958 years and then commanded the exact opposite to be taught. The same point is made about ecumenism and the nature of the Church in Tumultuous Times.
The reason that I, a terrible sinner who lacks a regular, predictable source of income, travel around the nation in a broken down and constantly breaking down motor home with my wife and daughter is to help souls to see the world more clearly through the eyes of the true Faith, to plant the seeds for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen as the fruit of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. This, of course, does not have the "approval" of conciliar Rome. Deo gratias! I have no desire to be una cum (one with) public heretics who care not for the lost sheep. We are heartbroken at the many lost souls we meet in our travels, people who have never heard the truths of the Faith because no one has sought to evangelize them. Almost no one, certainly almost no false shepherd wearing a miter and answerable to the false pontiff in Rome, in the official structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism believes that they have any responsibility to seek converts. Indeed, they believe that they are forbidden to do so.
Thus it is that billions of people on the face of this earth have been left to spend their entire lives without being baptized, without their immortal souls being fed by the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the God-Man in the Most Blessed Sacrament, without ever being taught to offer up their daily sufferings to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, without understanding that we must pray for the Poor Souls in the Church Suffering in Purgatory and to live penitentially so as to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world. Most, although certainly not all, Catholics in the conciliar structures, are bereft of these basic truths because of the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions that have assaulted their Catholic senses unremittingly in the past four-plus decades.
Almost all of the people outside of anything to do with Catholicism, whether genuine or of the counterfeit variety, are totally lost to their own naturalistic devices, being swept up by one fad after another as they live for the moment and do not understand that each suffering they are asked to bear has been fashioned for them from all eternity by the very hand of God Himself and that nothing we suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death.This deformation of souls within ostensibly "Catholic" auspices and this abandonment of souls outside of anything to do with Catholicism is without precedent in the history of the Catholic Church. The lost sheep spoken of by Our Lord in the following passage from the Gospel according to Saint Matthew are no longer being sought. This is a fact. It is boasted about by the conciliar Vatican. It is practiced at the diocesan and parish levels in most instances. How can a Catholic not weep when considering how these words of have been ignored by those who believe that Our Lord's words can be contradicted by the "needs" of "modern" man?
For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. What think you? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them should go astray: doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the mountains, and go to seek that which is gone astray? And if it so be that he find it: Amen I say to you, he rejoiceth more for that, than for the ninety-nine that went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father, who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish. (Mt. 18: 11-14)
The organized forces of naturalism have achieved a victory, whose magnitude should not be minimized even though it is but temporary and will come to an end when God wills it to, that no other earthly enemy of the Faith in the past has ever achieved: an accommodation by the ostensible "leaders" of the Catholic Church with the anti-Incarnational premises of Modernity, convincing one and all that "denominationalism" is wrong, that the "better world" can be built along the sort of "inter-denominational" lines specifically condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:
We know only too well the dark workshops in which are elaborated these mischievous doctrines which ought not to seduce clear-thinking minds. The leaders of the Sillon have not been able to guard against these doctrines. The exaltation of their sentiments, the undiscriminating good-will of their hearts, their philosophical mysticism, mixed with a measure of illuminism, have carried them away towards another Gospel which they thought was the true Gospel of Our Savior. To such an extent that they speak of Our Lord Jesus Christ with a familiarity supremely disrespectful, and that - their ideal being akin to that of the Revolution - they fear not to draw between the Gospel and the Revolution blasphemous comparisons for which the excuse cannot be made that they are due to some confused and over-hasty composition.
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. . . .
However, let not these priests be misled, in the maze of current opinions, by the miracles of a false Democracy. Let them not borrow from the Rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church and of the people, the high-flown phrases, full of promises; which are as high-sounding as unattainable. Let them be convinced that the social question and social science did not arise only yesterday; that the Church and the State, at all times and in happy concert, have raised up fruitful organizations to this end; that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by consenting to dubious alliances, does not have to free herself from the past; that all that is needed is to take up again, with the help of the true workers for a social restoration, the organisms which the Revolution shattered, and to adapt them, in the same Christian spirit that inspired them, to the new environment arising from the material development of today’s society. Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.
A Catholic must hold to the fullness of the Faith without any concessions to the false ethos of conciliarism, which has done so much damage to souls, and to the false shepherds who pride themselves on having "met" the "needs" of the mythical entity known as "modern" man. Only those who care not for the souls who have been so betrayed and misled by conciliarism can attack those who dissent from nothing contained in the Deposit of Faith and who seek only to try to take off some of the debt owed for their own sins by seeking out the lost sheep and proclaiming the necessity of restoring Christendom in the world as the fruit of the Triumph of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Those who point out the contrast between conciliarism and Catholicism are not the problem facing the Church today. No one who takes a looks at the wreckage of souls can assert this truthfully. It is those who abandoned the cause of souls and fomented condemned errors and heresies and novelties and abominations who are the enemies of the Faith. While we must pray for these enemies of the Faith, we must nevertheless, as Pope Pius VI pointed out in Inscrutabile, December 25, 1775, oppose error vigorously.
All we can attempt to do in our short lifetimes here on earth is to plant a few seeds, doing so as the consecrated slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, getting ourselves, where possible, on a daily basis to the legitimate offerings of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition at the hands of true bishops and priests in venues that make no concessions at all to conciliarism or its "officials," spending time before Our Lord's Real Presence in fervent prayer and saying as many Rosaries as our states-in-life permit. No matter what humiliations we suffer in this life and how many names we are called for simply believing as Catholics have always believed and opposing novelties and errors and abominations that Catholics have always opposed, may we persist in states of Sanctifying Grace until the point of our dying breaths, so that we can hear these words from the Divine Redeemer Himself:
Well done, good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. (Mt. 25: 21)
Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint Barnabas, pray for us.
Saint John Facundas, pray for us.
Saints Basilides and Companions, pray for us.
Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Philip Neri, pray for us.
Saint Athanasius, pray for us.
Saints Monica, pray for us.
Saint Jude, pray for us.
Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.
Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.
Saint John Bosco, pray for us.
Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.
Saint Scholastica, pray for us.
Saint Benedict, pray for us.
Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.
Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.
Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.
Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.
Saint Augustine, pray for us.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.
Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.
Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.
Saint Lucy, pray for us.
Saint Monica, pray for us.
Saint Agatha, pray for us.
Saint Philomena, pray for us.
Saint Cecilia, pray for us.
Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.
Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.
Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.
Saint Athanasius, pray for us.
Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.
Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.
Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.
Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.
Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.
Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.
Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.
Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.
Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.
Saint Dominic, pray for us.
Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.
Saint Basil, pray for us.
Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.
Saint Sebastian, pray for us.
Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.
Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.
Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.
Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.
Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.
Saint Genevieve, pray for us.
Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.
Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us
Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.
Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.
Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.
Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.
Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.
Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.
Francisco Marto, pray for us.
Jacinta Marto, pray for us.
Juan Diego, pray for us.
The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888
O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil. Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven. That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels. Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage. Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory. That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity. These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered. Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory. They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude. Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations. Amen.
Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.
Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.
Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.
Response: As we have hoped in Thee.
Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.
Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.
Verse: Let us pray. O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls.
Response: Amen.
