Not A Tradition Left Untouched

We are sensible beings. We are affected by the sights and sounds and smells that surround us. Children learn even as they are in their mothers' wombs to accustom themselves to familiar sounds (their parents' voices, those of their siblings if any have preceded them in this life, music, their parents' nightly praying of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary), which is why we must take great care to protect the eyes and ears of our children to shield them, as far as is humanly possible, from those sights and sounds that might damage their souls, especially by accustoming them to profanity, blasphemy, indecency, immodesty, and sacrilege. Many are the examples of parents across the ecclesiastical divide who do this so very well. Indeed, truth to be told, there are many home-schooling families who have yet to embrace anything close to the fullness of the Faith who do a better job of protecting their children from the ravages of our Americanist culture than some families in sedevacantist chapels who get deeply and personally offended if anyone, including a priest, attempts to wean them away from the television or motion pictures or professional sports or talk radio/television or rock "music" or the absurdity posed by the false opposites of the naturalist left and the naturalist right in American electoral politics, seeming not to care what they subject their childrens' eyes and ears to on a daily basis.

Louis and Zelie Martin went to extraordinary lengths to protect his five daughters from any sights and sounds that would deter them from their pursuit of sanctity, accustoming them to love the things of Heaven as they enjoyed in moderation and in due proportion the things of this earth which Louis's talents as a watchmaker and Zelie's talents a lace maker given them by God had bestowed upon them. Louis Martin continued to protect his daughters from any undue worldly influences after Zelie died in 1877, reading to them from Dom Prosper Gueranger's The Liturgical Year.

Children also learn from the bad things which their parents say or the images and sounds to which they are subjected.

To wit, there was a time a little over thirty years ago when I was in the home of a high school classmate and his wife and their then eighteen month-old daughter. I had gone to visit them to make pizza for them, something I used to do pretty regularly in those times for various families around the nation, prior to moving on in my teaching career from Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, New York, to Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois, after having obtained my doctorate in political science from the State University of New York at Albany. My friends' daughter, who called me "Uncle Tom," dropped a piece of pizza crust on the floor. She expressed her disappointment by using a profanity. Eighteen months old. Well, this is what she had learned from her mother. The little girl, who is now thirty-two years of age, had learned to speak profanely because this is what she had heard in her household. How was she to know that she was saying something wrong?

Holy Mother Church always has sought to protect her children from the profane and sacrilegious, surrounding her children in her Roman Rite with the glories of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and surrounding her children in each of her Eastern Rites with the magnificent splendor of the true liturgical diversity that marks the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Holy Mother Church wants to succor her children in the surety and stability offered by the true Faith, knowing that she is the exclusive custodian and sole, infallible explicator of that Faith, which was entrusted to her by her Divine Bridegroom and Invisible Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Immutable Second Person of the Blessed Trinity Who became Man in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate womb by the power of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost. Holy Mother Church always has sought to preserve her children from novelty and innovation, seeking to succor her children in the certainty expressed by these simple words contained in the Act of Faith:

The doctrines and the liturgies of the Catholic Church reflect the immutable of the Blessed Trinity--Father, Son and Holy Ghost--as Saint James noted in his Epistle:

This point was driven home in a lecture given on December 1, 1851, by the founding pastor of Saint Charles Borromeo Church, Brooklyn, New York, one Reverend Doctor Constantine Pise, who had been appointed pastor by the Archbishop of New York at the time, the Most Reverend John Joseph Hughes. (Kings and Queens and Suffolk Counties in the State of New York were then under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of New York. The Diocese of Brooklyn, which encompassed each of those three counties until the Diocese of Rockville Centre was created on April 6,1957, was created on July 29, 1853.) The lecture, which was found in the archives of The New York Times, which reported the lecture in full, believe it or not, contains a bit of Americanism at one point. Other than that, however, it is a marvelous summary of the Catholic Church's teaching on the nature unchanging nature of her teaching, founding in both Scripture and Tradition:

Before I discuss Father Pise's wonderful defense of Catholic teaching on the twin sources of Divine Revelation, a word or two is in order about his comparison between the authority of the Catholic Church and that of the government of the United States of America under the Constitution

Father Pise's remarks about the nature of the government of the United States of America under the Constitution demonstrate how completely unaware otherwise orthodox and devout and learned pastors of souls were about the lack of ultimate authority extant in the American constitutional system. As is typical to this day of men who accept uncritical the false, anti-Incarnational premises of the American founding, Father Pise, who devotion to the Faith is most certainly evident in the lecture quoted above, did not realize that a written constitution that admits of no higher authority above itself than the text of its own words is defenseless just as defenseless against efforts to deconstruct its text of its plain meaning as the words of Holy Scripture are in the hands of Protestants. Protestants reject the authority of the Catholic Church to guide them.

The American founding fathers did not believe that they had to submit themselves to any higher authority other than the "people," rejecting the patrimony of the Middle Ages wherein that era's great rulers understood that the Catholic Church had the right, as an absolute last resort exercised only after the discharge of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, to interpose herself with the civil authorities when the good of souls was being jeopardized. Father Pise could not imagine a conflict taking place between the supreme authority of the Constitution of the United States of America and the Faith. He would have been aghast at many of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the Twentieth Century, including the ones rendered in the cases of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Roe v. Wade (1973). Indeed, one wonders whether Father Pise accepted the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America just five years and three months later, in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, which ruled that not even "free" blacks were considered to be "citizens" under the Constitution. One wonders how Father Pise viewed the massive resistance in the City of New York itself to President Abraham Lincoln's conscription orders during the War between the States. Father Pise's contention that all citizens would obey the supreme authority of the government of the United States is thus not founded in historical fact and does not take into account that there might arise an occasion when Catholics would have to resist unjust laws and decisions that were in conflict with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.

I digress. The digression was necessary, however, to point out that Americanism, a cornerstone of Modernism and a precursor of the counterfeit church of conciliarism's view of Church-State relations, was deeply embedded in the minds and hearts of otherwise able, learned and devout pastors of souls who tried to exhort others that the Catholic Church was indeed the true Church.

The point of quoting the December 1, 1851, lecture from Father Pise, who had come by his Americanism quite honestly as he had been the first Catholic priest to serve as the chaplain to the United States Senate and was a close friend of President John Tyler (who was elected to the Senate of the Confederate States of America in 1861 but died before he could be sworn into office), is this: Father Pise was demonstrating to Catholics and non-Catholics alike that the teaching of the Catholic Church was not hers, that it belonged to her Divine Founder and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Father Pise chose to make Saint Paul's Second Epistle to the Thessalonians as the foundation for his lecture. Indeed, it is well worth quoting from that epistle once again:

The Catholic Church has always eschewed innovation or novelty. The true popes of the Catholic Church inveighed against novelty and innovation from the middle of the Eighteenth Century until the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958.

But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and clearly flows from their principles. For among the chief points of their teaching is the following, which they deduce from the principle of vital immanence, namely, that religious formulas if they are to be really religious and not merely intellectual speculations, ought to be living and to live the life of the religious sense. This is not to be understood to mean that these formulas, especially if merely imaginative, were to be invented for the religious sense. Their origin matters nothing, any more than their number or quality. What is necessary is that the religious sense -- with some modification when needful -- should vitally assimilate them. In other words, it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted and sanctioned by the heart; and similarly the subsequent work from which are brought forth the .secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of the heart. Hence it comes that these formulas, in order to be living, should be, and should remain, adapted to the faith and to him who believes. Wherefore, if for any reason this adaptation should cease to exist, they lose their first meaning and accordingly need to be changed. In view of the fact that the character and lot of dogmatic formulas are so unstable, it is no wonder that Modernists should regard them so lightly and in such open disrespect, and have no consideration or praise for anything but the religious sense and for the religious life. In this way, with consummate audacity, they criticize the Church, as having strayed from the true path by failing to distinguish between the religious and moral sense of formulas and their surface meaning, and by clinging vainly and tenaciously to meaningless formulas, while religion itself is allowed to go to ruin. "Blind'- they are, and "leaders of the blind" puffed up with the proud name of science, they have reached that pitch of folly at which they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which "they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other and vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, unapproved by the Church, on which, in the height of their vanity, they think they can base and maintain truth itself." (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

To penetrate still deeper into the meaning of Modernism and to find a suitable remedy for so deep a sore, it behooves Us, Venerable Brethren, to investigate the causes which have engendered it and which foster its growth. That the proximate and immediate cause consists in an error of the mind cannot be open to doubt. We recognize that the remote causes may be reduced to two: curiosity and pride. Curiosity by itself, if not prudently regulated, suffices to account for all errors. Such is the opinion of Our predecessor, Gregory XVI, who wrote: "A lamentable spectacle is that presented by the aberrations of human reason when it yields to the spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the Apostle it seeks to know beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying too much on itself it thinks it can find the truth outside the Catholic Church wherein truth is found without the slightest shadow of error." (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

The Church is without question a living organism, and as an organism, in respect of the sacred liturgy also, she grows, matures, develops, adapts and accommodates herself to temporal needs and circumstances, provided only that the integrity of her doctrine be safeguarded. This notwithstanding, the temerity and daring of those who introduce novel liturgical practices, or call for the revival of obsolete rites out of harmony with prevailing laws and rubrics, deserve severe reproof. It has pained Us grievously to note, Venerable Brethren, that such innovations are actually being introduced, not merely in minor details but in matters of major importance as well. We instance, in point of fact, those who make use of the vernacular in the celebration of the august eucharistic sacrifice; those who transfer certain feast-days -- which have been appointed and established after mature deliberation -- to other dates; those, finally, who delete from the prayerbooks approved for public use the sacred texts of the Old Testament, deeming them little suited and inopportune for modern times.

The use of the Latin language, customary in a considerable portion of the Church, is a manifest and beautiful sign of unity, as well as an effective antidote for any corruption of doctrinal truth. In spite of this, the use of the mother tongue in connection with several of the rites may be of much advantage to the people. But the Apostolic See alone is empowered to grant this permission. It is forbidden, therefore, to take any action whatever of this nature without having requested and obtained such consent, since the sacred liturgy, as We have said, is entirely subject to the discretion and approval of the Holy See.

The same reasoning holds in the case of some persons who are bent on the restoration of all the ancient rites and ceremonies indiscriminately. The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savor and aroma of antiquity. The more recent liturgical rites likewise deserve reverence and respect. They, too, owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who assists the Church in every age even to the consummation of the world. They are equally the resources used by the majestic Spouse of Jesus Christ to promote and procure the sanctity of man.

Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive tableform; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer's body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.

Clearly no sincere Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian doctrine more recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church, under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant fruit for souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas. No more can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation of the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources of canon law. Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity, discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation.

This way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. It likewise attempts to reinstate a series of errors which were responsible for the calling of that meeting as well as for those resulting from it, with grievous harm to souls, and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the "deposit of faith" committed to her charge by her divine Founder, had every right and reason to condemn. For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly Father of their souls' salvation (Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947.)

Catholics could always count on the surety of the doctrines proclaimed and the stability of the worship offered by Holy Mother Church in the centuries before the dawn of the era of conciliarism and its rage for innovation and novelty. Indeed, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI noted in his Christmas address to his conciliar curia on December 22, 2005, that innovation is something good for the life of the "Church:"

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.

On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.

As noted two days ago in Contradictors Contradicting Each Other as They Contradict the Faith, this is pure Modernism, used by the Modernists of the counterfeit church of conciliarism to bewilder Catholics with the complexity and the ambiguities and "nuances" of the new ecclesiology and false ecumenism and religious liberty and a "healthy secularity" and the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo itself. Innovation, uncertainty, confusion and complexity have been imposed upon Catholics in the conciliar structures by and with the consent of the antipopes of the past forty-nine years. Millions have been driven out of the true Church as a result, many into the waiting arms of Protestant evangelical and fundamentalist sects. As Pope Saint Pius X noted in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:

It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten

The Modernist passion for innovation has produced a liturgical abomination, which was designed of its nature to appeal to Protestants by stripping the Catholic liturgy of anything that could offend them (Annibale Bugnini, 1965). Instead of attracting Protestants to Catholicism (or conciliarism's ape thereof), the Novus Ordo drove Catholics out of the Church, some for good. The late Monsignor Klaus Gamber, who was not a traditionalist and was in favor of what the man who wrote the French preface for his The Reform of the Roman Liturgy called "the reform of the reform" (that man was Joseph Ratzinger, who praised a book calling the Novus Ordo a "rupture" with the Roman Rite, something that Ratzinger denied in Summorum Pontificum was the case, giving us a contradictor contradicting himself!), noted the matter this way:

Deep in the heart of every person there is the longing for home, and we can only experience the real meaning of home when we are away from it.

The word Heimat (home or fatherland) is a uniquely German concept. Exactly what meaning does it convey? Heimat is the environment known to us since childhood, the house in which we grew up, the natural surroundings with their people and their habits and customs. To us, the Heimat is always beautiful, even if others don’t share our feelings for it.

Man’s longing for home is his longing for what is familiar and known. It also is a longing for security based on the familiarity of a person’s surroundings. Finally, it is the sense of security that the small child feels when he is with his mother and that he misses as an adult when faced with the uncertainties of life.

The religious person seeks security in the Church as his Mother. In her he hopes to find shelter and help for his troubled soul, answers to the probing questions posed by his intellect, but above all, he wants certainty about the Last Things. What he seeks is an oasis of tranquillity and peace, peace such as the world cannot give (John 14:27).

Last, but certainly not least, the religious person seeks home and shelter in the celebration of liturgical worship. These observations apply equally to non-Christian religions. Missionaries come across these concepts all the time. When they bring individual members of a tribe to accept Christianity, they also tear them out of the social structure of their tribes, with all their rituals, customs and traditions. It usually takes some time until the newly converted adapt to their new home, [Christianity]: the old rituals of their tribe continue to pull them back with the force of a strong magnet.

A people that decides to relinquish its traditional rites is in acute danger of relinquishing its own existence as a people.

A [Roman] Catholic who ceased to be an active member of the Church for the past generation and who, having decided to return to the Church, wants to become religiously active again, probably would not recognize today’s [Roman Catholic] Church as the one he had left. Simply by entering a Catholic church, particularly if it happens to be one of ultra-modem design, he will feel as if he had entered a strange, foreign place. He will think that he must have come to the wrong address and that he has accidentally ended up in some other Christian religious community.

The accustomed [sacred art] in the church has disappeared. Instead of a cross hanging over the altar there now is some often indefinable work of art; the altar itself being a bare slab of rock, akin to a barrow. In vain will he look for the tabernacle on the altar; nor will he find the communion rail. He will miss the smell of incense that he remembers to have always lingered after Mass.

The [Roman Catholic] reformers of our liturgy have failed to consider adequately and address the issue of how the traditional forms of liturgical worship inspired among the faithful a sense of belonging, of feeling at home. They also failed to consider and deal with the Issue of the extent to which simply abolishing these forms of liturgy would also result in a loss of faith among the people.

The Solemn Requiem Mass according to the traditional form, which appealed directly to the heart, has almost completely disappeared. Yet here especially, great care should have been taken in introducing changes, because the customs associated with burial rites are the ones to which people in any cultural setting are most strongly attached. It will be some time until we will be in a position to measure fully the pastoral damage caused to the faithful by the reforms. We must expect that sooner or later we will be facing almost empty pews in our churches, as [some modernist Protestants] have been experiencing for decades now; while, we may point out, that has not been the case in the Lutheran Church which has maintained many of its traditional forms of liturgy. In the end, we will have to recognize that the new liturgical forms did not provide the people with bread, but with stones.

Particularly pernicious is the incessant nature of the changes to which we [in the Roman Catholic Church] are subjected. This is diametrically opposed to the concept of liturgy as our home. To abolish almost completely time-honored customs and traditions is synonymous with robbing a person of his religious home and thus shaking the foundations of his faith. Even a person who has but a superficial knowledge of how the psychology of a people works is bound to agree with these observations.

This is an excellent description of what the conciliar spirit of novelty and innovation has wrought in the life of ordinary Catholics, is it not? It is no wonder that many Catholics today no longer believe in basic tenets of the Faith even though some of them are maintained by the counterfeit church of conciliarism. The counterfeit church of conciliarism has undermined even its own opposition to abortion and contraception and other evils because it has undermined the very surety of Catholic teaching and popular piety that has been handed down to us over the centuries. No one can possibly even begin to calculate the harm that was done not only by the introduction of the Novus Ordo in 1969 but by the removal of various saints from the universal calendar of conciliarism and the re-writing of the Collects of the Propers of the Masses for those saints who remained on that calendar so as to eliminate all references to the miracles they wrought. Saint Raymond of Pennafort being carried aloft on his cloak over the sea to keep a preaching assignment? The body of Saint Catharine of Alexandria being moved by angels to Mount Sinai? "Modern" man simply cannot accept this as being true, right? Why should a poorly catechized Catholic in the conciliar structures think that the Catholic Church has any "final" word to say about anything, including abortion, when what he perceives as its officials are engaged in a never-ceasing effort to introduce novelties of one sort or another in things great and small?

The latest such innovation involves a "new" Nativity scene in the Piazza di San Pietro in the Vatican that places the Birth of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Nazareth, not Bethlehem:

LONDON: The traditional nativity scene built each Christmas in front of St Peter’s Basilica has shown Jesus being born in a stable in Bethlehem for 25 years. But, this year, the Vatican will do away with the manger.

The Vatican has decided to abandon the traditional stable and the straw-ladden setting, shifting it to Nazareth, and placing Jesus in his father Joseph’s carpentry shop in a bid to reflect the more straightforward scenario as described by St Matthew.

"It’s time for a change and a return to St Matthew’s gospel," Daily Telegraph quoted a spokesman of the State Department of the Vatican, which organises and builds the giant presepe, or the nativity scene, as saying.

"In fact, in place of the sheep and hay, there will be a model of three rooms. Jesus will lie in Joseph’s shop, complete with the typical work tools of a carpenter...On one side, the shop will be flanked with a covered patio, on the other there’ll be the inside of a pub, with its hearth." The new setting was inspired by two verses in St Matthew’s gospel, Chapter 1:24 and 1:25, the Vatican said, which state: "When Joseph woke up, he did as the Angel of God ordered and took Mary into his house. Without them knowing each other, a child was born and he called his name Jesus."

But, a decision has been made to place the nativity scene in Nazareth regardless, the spokesperson said. The traditional depiction of Jesus in a manger comes from St Luke’s gospel, which said there was no room at the inn”. But it is Matthew’s gospel which forms the basis for the Angelus prayer, and the view of Jesus in a carpenter’s workshop matches the Franciscan tradition. The nativity scene at St Peter’s for Christmas was started by Pope John Paul II in 1982. No more traditional nativity scene in Vatican

Time for a change and a return to Saint Matthew's Gospel? Here we see efforts by Modernists, whether with our without the approval of the the Modernist-in-Chief who lives on the fourth floor of the Apostolic Palace, to place one Gospel against another, one of the oldest tricks in the trade of Modernist Scriptural exegesis, dating back to the efforts of liberal German Protestant Scripture "scholars" in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century that influenced so many so negatively in the Catholic Church. This is also an effort to further convince ordinary Catholics that we really can't be sure about where Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was born. Imagination and innovation can be brought to bear on the matter, which is being made to appear to be an "open" question, one of legitimate speculation and debate.

The news article above from The Times of India contains the incredibly stupid assertion that verses twenty-four and twenty-five from Chapter One Saint Matthew's Gospel serve as the basis of The Angelus, which we pray at six o'clock in the morning, noon, and at six o'clock in the evening (and midnight if we have happen to be awake at that hour). What idiocy!

Here are verses twenty-four and twenty-five from Chapter One of Saint Matthew's Gospel as found in the Douay-Rheims Bible:

How does this form the basis of The Angelus? Perhaps one ought to look at the following passages in Saint Luke's Gospel and that of Saint John the Evangelist to find the basis of The Angelus:

Time for a change? When has a true pope of the Catholic Church sought to change the place of the Birth of the Divine Redeemer? When?

While it is true that Saint Francis of Assisi instituted the Nativity Scene in the year 1223, subjecting himself to great criticism as an "innovator" who was engaged in a sacrilegious endeavor, it must also be remembered that Saint Francis of Assisi sought and received the permission of Pope Honorius III to do so. Pope Honorius listened to the great apostle of poverty, Saint Francis, who wanted to depict the poverty of Our Lord's birth for the wealthy of Assisi, reminding them that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity came into the world in utter poverty and died in ignominy on the wood of the Holy Cross, condemned as a common criminal and buried in a grave that belonged to another man, Joseph of Arimathea. Our Lord was born in the wood of the manger, a feeding trough for animals, to die on the wood of the Holy Cross, which has become for us the true manger from which we are fed His very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Most Holy Eucharist. Our Lord was born in a cave after His foster-Father, who had returned to the city of his own live, the City of David, Bethlehem, found that there was no room for Him in the inn. Is there any room for Him in the "inns" of our hearts? Saint Francis wanted to illustrate these points graphically so that people would come to realize how the Nativity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is meant to change every aspect of their lives bar none.

Saint Francis was true to the actual historical account of the Nativity of Our dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The innovators of the counterfeit church of conciliarism believe that it is "time for a change" and a "return" to Saint Matthew's Gospel which not only nowhere contradicts the account given in the Gospel written by Saint Luke but states quite categorically in Chapter 2 that Our Lord was indeed born in Bethlehem!

A time to "return" to Saint Matthew's Gospel? Who is kidding whom? Do the conciliarists really think that Catholics are this dumb?

Well, the truth of the matter is, of course, that the conciliarists only care about themselves and their novelties and innovations that place into doubt the Received Teaching of the Catholic Church in ways that are both great and small. It was just over a year ago now that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI gave his personal approval for the "world premiere" of The Nativity Story motion picture, which portrayed Our Lady as a sulky, moody, disrespectful teenager, thereby denying the doctrinal effects of her Immaculate Conception. This blasphemous motion picture that was an affront to each of three members of the Holy Family was given a glowing introduction by the now John "Cardinal" Foley, the longtime president of the "Pontifical" Council for Social Communications. These are the correlative proofs of the spirit of apostasy and betrayal that characterizes the counterfeit church of conciliarism down to the littlest details.

Some will say that the display in Saint Peter's Square is no "big deal." Neither was the conciliar Vatican's endorsement of The Nativity Story. No big deal? Really? Consider these words of Saint Teresa of Avila:

Although marred a bit by the Americanism in which he had been steeped as a child, Father Charles Constantine Pise's 1851 defense of Catholic Tradition is something that is rejected by conciliarism, which sees nothing as stable, views truth itself as subject to different interpretations at different times according tot the circumstances of the moment, anchored in one place for a time only to be lifted up and anchored anew somewhere else. Alas, Who is Truth? God Himself? An entire cloud of witnesses testifies against the absurdities of Modernism that have been institutionalized by the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which must be rejected completely as being an enemy of the Divine Redeemer and thus of the sanctification and salvation of souls.

Breaking with conciliarism and the nonexsitent legitimacy of its apostate officials strains friendships and subjects one to all manner of humiliations. While we hope for a happy reunion in Heaven with those from whom we might be estranged at the moment, we also recognize that Our Lord became Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb and dwelt amongst us to suffer and die for us on the wood of the Holy Cross. We must suffer and die with Him every day, yes, the die the slow martyrdom, if you will, of calumny and rejection and ostracism for refusing to think that men who can tamper with the historical place of Our Lord's Birth are members of the Catholic Church in good standing:

While we pray, indeed without any bitterness whatsoever, for those who attack the Faith and who confuse and bewilder and deceive the faithful, recognizing that our own sins have contributed rather mightily to the Mystical Passion and Death of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we nevertheless must remain faithful despite our own sins and never once cede to apostates any claim of being Catholics who have any authority from God to command the obedience of men.

Christmas Day is six days away. Have we prepared to welcome the Christ-Child anew in our souls by making room for Him in the "inns" of our hearts by means of a good, integral Confession of our sins? Are we determined to do penance and to fast and to observe the laws of partial abstinence this Ember Wednesday? Are we really trying to say as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit? Are we joyfully offering up each of our crosses to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother? Are we praying for those from whom we are estranged? Do we forgive those who have injured us without harboring grudges for a single, solitary moment? Do we seek forgiveness from those whom we have hurt? Do we remember the Poor Souls in Purgatory each day? Are we meditating upon the Four Last Things (Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell)? Are we taking day each day to read at least a few passages from Sacred Scripture and to do some spiritual reading several times a week? Are we trying to live as the Holy Family lived?

Christmas Day is six days away. May Our Lady help us to keep the Tradition of the Catholic Church at all times so that we can celebrate Christmas Day and the entire Christmas Octave and Season with a gratitude that God has, through absolutely no merits of our own, sent us His graces through her loving hands to cling fast to Him in the catacombs where there is a complete and total rejection of the spirit of those who, to use the words of Pope Saint Pius X, have a such an eager passion for innovation.


© Copyright 2007, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.