Talk About Clothing The Emperor!

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Nearly two weeks have passed since Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's book length interview with German journalist Peter Seewald became big news when the Vatican's semi-official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published excerpts that included the conciliar "pontiff's" assertion that the use of a certain type of prophylactic can be justified in some situations to prevent the spread of a social disease that can be contracted almost exclusively by means of unchaste behavior in violation of the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.

Ratzinger/Benedict's comments, which have been "clarified" twice now by his spinmeister, "Father" Federico Lombardi, S.J., have created worldwide confusion that has been exploited by the very people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike who are part of what Mrs. Randy Engel correctly calls "The Homosexualist Collective," whose efforts to promote the use of this prophylactic have been opposed with vigor by conservative Catholics in the conciliar structures. Many "conservative" Catholic publications ran article after article exalting the late John "Cardinal" O'Connor's oft-repeated line that the use of this prophylactic to prevent the spread of a social disease was the "big lie." Some of these very same Catholics are, whether on their own websites or in various publications, seeking to clothe the naked emperor, Ratzinger/Benedict, despite the fact that the cascade of confusion and disarray engendered by the "pope's" remarks and the subsequent "clarifications" have given a "green light" to the members of the "homosexualist collective" to proceed with ready abandon.

You doubt my word? To quote an former high school teacher of mine who died just about three years ago now, just look and see for yourself:

JOHANNESBURG — The three large blue and white boxes of condoms appeared to be the elephant in the room at the Catholic AIDS clinic, a trailer beside the church in a dusty red-soil settlement in the world's most AIDS-riddled nation.

But parish priest Rev. Didier Lemaire showed no embarrassment when asked about the stash of 600 condoms, set conveniently on an examination couch so one could grab a few on the way out the door. Lemaire said Pope Benedict XVI's groundbreaking statement about the selective use of condoms only cements what Catholic AIDS workers have said for years.

"What the pope is saying, many priests have been saying for a long time," said Lemaire. He said eschewing condoms when people have AIDS goes against the commandment "Thou shalt not kill."

Pope Benedict's comments have far-reaching implications for Africa, the continent with the highest numbers of AIDS victims — and the fastest-growing number of Catholic converts. But it is more important because the Catholic Church is the biggest private provider of AIDS care in the world, providing antiretroviral treatment, home-care visits and counseling to one in four of the world's 33.3 million AIDS patients, according to the Catholic charity Caritas International. In 2008, members of the Catholic HIV and AIDS network spent 180 million euros (about $235 million) on assistance, it said.

For many Catholics in the front lines watching people die of AIDS, Benedict's pronouncement confers a belated blessing on what they are already doing. They hope Benedict's comments are just a precursor to opening up further conversation.

"The people in the trenches have been allowing people to use condoms for 10 years now," said Sr. Elaine Pearton at Lemaire's Inkanyezi parish. She said Catholic AIDS workers did not want to lay down the moral law for patients who might not be Catholic, and that they were acting on church teaching that "your conscience is the highest authority."

Pearton is among the Catholic religious and lay workers who were in the vanguard confronting AIDS in South Africa, where 5.7 million of about 50 million people are infected. Pearton said she advised condoms for couples, Catholic and otherwise, where one partner was infected with AIDS.

"We don't hand them out (indiscriminately) for people to make balloons out of," she said, laughing. "But if someone needs them to protect themselves from a deadly hazard, we just give them a box."

Benedict was quoted in a book as saying that condom use by people such as male prostitutes showed they were moving toward a more responsible sexuality by aiming to protect their partners from a deadly infection. Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi elaborated last week after speaking to the pope that the same logic could be applied to women prostitutes.

Basically, the pope acknowledged that the church's long-held stance against birth control does not justify putting lives at risk. His statement startled many Catholics and angered others. Some conservative Catholic theologians have said bluntly that they disagree with the pope, and that condoms still represent an immoral use of artificial birth control.

Among those punished by the church for their views on condom use is a German priest, the Rev. Stefan Hippler, whose "Hope" project in Cape Town hands out condoms to the HIV-positive. When Hippler last year started to care for HIV-positive priests and nuns, his diocese in Germany recalled him.

Hippler is prohibited from preaching but continues his AIDS work, now funded by the South African diocese and not the German Bishops' Conference.

The Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference in a statement Wednesday reiterated its 2001 declaration, then rather revolutionary even though it omitted the dreaded "condom" word. The bishops said, "When one spouse is infected with HIV/AIDS they must listen to their consciences. They are the only ones who can choose the appropriate means, in order to defend themselves against the infection."

Still, Catholic AIDS workers insisted that only abstinence and fidelity can provide a long-term solution to ending the AIDS pandemic. They said condoms should not be distributed indiscriminately, for fear they might promote promiscuity and worsen the crisis. The largest Catholic donor in the world, the U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services, has reiterated that it will not be distributing condoms. (Catholic AIDS workers: Pope echoing us.)

 

Do you think Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is going to rein in these people who are now running with the opening that he has given them? If you do, just let me know when it happens, all right?

True popes do not engender this kind of confusion and disarray on matters of Faith and Morals on almost incessant basis. Their words are measured. They are uttered only in their official capacity, never in the means of interviews wherein they give rise to speculative thinking and novel applications of moral teaching. It would have been unthinkable for any true pope to speak in explicit terms about matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, no less to seek to make the commission of Mortal Sins against Holy Purity "safe" from their physical consequences as the very end for which the act itself is frustrated and/or perverted. It is never morally licit to premeditate the commission of a sin predicated on attempting to limit the physical effects of the sin.

The moral principles at work here have been discussed in five different articles on this site last week (If Them, Why Not Others?, Let the Olympic Games of Absurdity Begin!, Razing The Last Bastions, Nothing New Under Benedict's Sun and Words and Actions Without Consequences. There is no need to belabor here what has been stated in those articles. No true Successor of Saint Peter and no canonized saint of the Catholic Church would put the supposed welfare of bodies over the offense given to God and the harm done to souls by the commission of Mortal Sins, especially those that are fully premeditated.

True Catholic popes and true Catholic bishops and true Catholic priests teach the faithful to avoid even the near occasion of sin, not to "plan" how they are to be kept "safe" from possible physical effects of the sins that they plan to commit and have no intention of refraining from committing in the future. Those who want to sin despite the exhortations given them by the true shepherds of Holy Mother Church are on their own as God withdraws His graces from them until such time as they choose to seek Him out in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance with a contrite heart and firm purpose of amendment as they resolve to do penance for their sins and to live more penitentially from the time they enter the confessional and are then absolved of their sins by an alter Christus acting in persona Christi.

Some of those trying to defend Ratzinger/Benedict's comments admit that they do not understand what their "pope" meant to say while attempting to justify their own interpretation of it:

We don't know, or at least I don't know, all that Benedict XVI meant by his rather elliptical remarks. We do know that he did not change the Church's condemnation of contraceptive acts. We also can be confident that he did not intend to teach that condom use is sometimes legitimate. If he meant to teach that, he surely would not have used the context of an interview with a journalist to do so.

As to his opinions on the theological positions set forth above, his remarks do not commit him one way or another.

But whatever his theological opinions might be on the issue, I do not think they are a matter of overriding importance. In the end, the Church should only ever teach authoritatively on a moral issue when she is clear on Jesus' will for that issue -- in other words, when the magisterium, through discernment, prayer, theological inquiry and pastoral experience, agrees that some judgment on some moral issue is certainly true. No such judgment is set forth in the remarks in the Pope's new book, "Light of the World."  (Belated Reflections.)

 

The article just cited is an offense against the virtue of modesty as it descends into the sort of graphic terminology for widespread, indiscriminate public consumption that was condemned by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929:

65. Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers.

66. Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind; and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.

67. In this extremely delicate matter, if, all things considered, some private instruction is found necessary and opportune, from those who hold from God the commission to teach and who have the grace of state, every precaution must be taken. Such precautions are well known in traditional Christian education, and are adequately described by Antoniano cited above, when he says:

Such is our misery and inclination to sin, that often in the very things considered to be remedies against sin, we find occasions for and inducements to sin itself. Hence it is of the highest importance that a good father, while discussing with his son a matter so delicate, should be well on his guard and not descend to details, nor refer to the various ways in which this infernal hydra destroys with its poison so large a portion of the world; otherwise it may happen that instead of extinguishing this fire, he unwittingly stirs or kindles it in the simple and tender heart of the child. Speaking generally, during the period of childhood it suffices to employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

 

What applies to the young applies to us all.

Could you imagine Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face speaking in the terms as the "expert" who wrote the article cited just above?

Could you imagine the Cure of Ars, Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, speaking in the terms as the "expert" who wrote the article cited just above?

Could you such terminology as used by Ratzinger/Benedict or many of his defenders passing from the lips of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina?

It is without precedent in the history of the Catholic Church for a true pope to speak of delicate matters of personal purity in graphic terms that wind up being open invitations to millions upon millions of people speaking openly and publicly about matters that should not be passing from our lips. Not even husbands and wives are supposed to talk in graphic terms about the privileges of the married state. The fact that any of this is being discussed publicly is but a sign of the wholesale loss of the sensus Catholicus that has gripped even those Catholics in the conciliar structures who used to fight strongly and very courageously against any implication that it was in the slightest bit morally permissible to make an inherently evil act safe from either its spiritual or physical consequences.

Moreover, the fact that the "expert" who wrote the article does not really understand what Ratzinger/Benedict was trying to say in his interview with Peter Seewald, never mind the "clarification" of the "clarification" given by "Father" Federico Lombardi that has prompted many out there in the absolute never-never land of conciliarism to keep waiting for that further "clarification" that will set their minds and hearts at ease, is itself a very telling signal of apostasy as it was not necessary to guess what a true pope meant to say. True popes spoke clearly. They spoke precisely in terms of Scholasticism, not in the foggy muck of ambiguity and vagueness and contradiction and paradox that surrounds the minds of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, steeped as he is in the propositions of the "new theology" that were condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.

Truth be told, of course, Humani Generis, sticks in the craw of the likes of Ratzinger/Benedict and many of his defenders, especially those who like to say that popes can "err" in their encyclical letters, as Humani Generis is a ringing condemnation of the "new theology's" rejection of Scholasticism. The entirety of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's philosophical and theological formation was founded in a set of propositions condemned in Humani Generis, which is why there were not "papal" celebrations of its sixtieth anniversary of issuance nearly four months ago now.

Humani Generis also poses a problem for those who contend, as in the case of one glib apologist for Ratzinger/Benedict's"legitimacy," that, for example, parts of  Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII's Pacem in Terris, April 11, 1963, which Roncalli/John XXIII was told by Mario Luigi "Cardinal" Ciappi, O.P., contained statements that contradicted Pope Gregory XVI's and Pope Pius IX's condemnation of religious liberty, could be rejected. No, a true pope cannot err in a encyclical letter. He cannot contradict what has been taught by a previous true pontiff. And the faithful must give their assent to what is taught by our true popes in their encyclical letters:

This is what Pope Pius XII taught us at Number Twenty in Humani Generis, August 12, 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";[3] 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.

 

The late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, who had taught my own late seminary professor, Father John Joseph "Jackie Boy" at Saint Bernard's Seminary in Rochester, New York, in the late-1930s, wrote a superb explication of the teaching authority of encyclical letters a year before Humani Generis, and I thank Mr. Jerry Meng, the author of Joseph Ratzinger Is Not the Pope, for providing me with information about Father Fenton's material, which appeared in the American Ecclesiastical Review, that I had read several years ago but had faded into the deeper recesses of my memory in the meantime. Thank you, Mr. Meng. To Father Fenton:

It would manifestly be a very serious fault on the part of a Catholic writer or teacher in this field, acting on his own authority, to set aside or to ignore any of the outstanding doctrinal pronouncements of the Rerum novarum or the Quadragesimo anno, regardless of how unfashionable these documents be in a particular locality or at a particular time. It would, however, be a much graver sin on the part of such a teacher to pass over or to discountenance a considerable section of the teachings contained in these labor encyclicals. In exactly the same way and for precisely the same reason it would be seriously wrong to contravene any outstanding individual pronouncement in the encyclicals dealing with the relations between Church and State, and much worse to ignore or disregard all of the teachings or a great portion of the teachings on this topic contained in the letters of Pius IX and Leo XIII.

It is, of course, possible that the Church might come to modify its stand on some detail of teaching presented as non-infallible matter in a papal encyclical. The nature of the auctoritas providentiae doctrinalis within the Church is such, however, that this fallibility extends to questions of relatively minute detail or of particular application. The body of doctrine on the rights and duties of labor, on the Church and State, or on any other subject treated extensively in a series of papal letters directed to and normative for the entire Church militant could not be radically or completely erroneous. The infallible security Christ wills that His disciples should enjoy within His Church is utterly incompatible with such a possibility. (Doctrinal authority of Papal Encyclicals.)

 

To wit, Pope Saint Pius X wrote the following about the falsehood represented by the separation of Church and State:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. . . . Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

 

Gee, I wonder who has spent a great deal of the past 2,056 days endorsing this false thesis: Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, that's who. This cannot be. It is impossible for a true Roman Pontiff to contradict another on a matter that is part of the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication.

Some glib commentators might protest that not every papal statement demands our assent, that we can "sift" through what a true pope says. This is false, which is one of the reasons why true popes never spoke in interviews as they knew that their words, which were carefully chosen and vetted by theological advisers (yes, the rendering of this word as "advisors" is also accepted usage), carried the weight of their papal office, that the faithful weren't and could not be expected to make unnecessary distinctions between "official" and "unofficial" words and deeds, which was the whole point of Words and Actions Without Consequences.

Monsignor Fenton elaborated on this point when applying the teaching stated by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis to the authority of papal allocutions:

Despite the fact that there is nothing like an adequate treatment of the papal allocutions in existing theological literature, every priest, and particularly every professor of sacred theology, should know whether and under what circumstances these allocutions addressed by the Sovereign Pontiffs to private groups are to be regarded as authoritative, as actual expressions of the Roman Pontiff's ordinary magisterium.  And, especially because of the tendency towards an unhealthy minimism current in this country and elsewhere in the world today, they should also know how doctrine is to be set forth in the allocutions and the other vehicles of the Holy Father's ordinary magisterium if it is to be accepted as authoritative.  The present brief paper will attempt to consider and to answer these questions.

The first question to be considered is this: Can a speech addressed by the Roman Pontiff to a private group, a group which cannot in any sense be taken as representing either the Roman Church or the universal Church, contain doctrinal teaching authoritative for the universal Church?

The clear and unequivocal answer to this question is contained in the Holy Father's encyclical letter Humani generis, issued Aug. 12, 1950.  According to this document: "if, in their 'Acta' the Supreme Pontiffs take care to render a decision on a point that has hitherto been controverted, it is obvious to all that this point, according to the mind and will of these same Pontiffs, can no longer be regarded as a question theologians may freely debate among themselves."[6]

Thus, in the teaching of the Humani generis, any doctrinal decision made by the Pope and included in his "Acta" are authoritative.  Now many of the allocutions made by the Sovereign Pontiff to private groups are included in the "Acta" of the Sovereign Pontiff himself, as a section of the Acta apostolicae sedis.  Hence, any doctrinal decision made in one of these allocutions that is published in the Holy Father's "Acta" is authoritative and binding on all the members of the universal Church.

There is, according to the words of the Humani generis, an authoritative doctrinal decision whenever the Roman Pontiffs, in their "Acta," "de re hactenus controversa data opera sententiam ferunt."  When this condition is fulfilled, even in an allocution originally delivered to a private group, but subsequently published as part of the Holy Father's "Acta," an authoritative doctrinal judgment has been proposed to the universal Church.  All of those within the Church are obliged, under penalty of serious sin, to accept this decision. . . .

Now the questions may arise: is there any particular form which the Roman Pontiff is obliged to follow in setting forth a doctrinal decision in either the positive or the negative manner? Does the Pope have to state specifically and explicitly that he intends to issue a doctrinal decision on this particular point?  Is it at all necessary that he should refer explicitly to the fact that there has hitherto been a debate among theologians on the question he is going to decide?

There is certainly nothing in the divinely established constitutional law of the Catholic Church which would in any way justify an affirmative response to any of these inquiries.  The Holy Father's doctrinal authority stems from the tremendous responsibility Our Lord laid upon him in St. Peter, whose successor he is.  Our Lord charged the Prince of the Apostles, and through him, all of his successors until the end of time, with the commission of feeding, of acting as a shepherd for, of taking care of, His lambs and His sheep.[7]  Included in that responsibility was the obligation, and, of course, the power, to confirm the faith of his fellow Christians.

And the Lord said: "Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.  But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren."[8]

St. Peter had, and has in his successor, the duty and the power to confirm his brethren in their faith, to take care of their doctrinal needs.  Included in his responsibility is an obvious obligation to select and to employ the means he judges most effective and apt for the accomplishment of the end God has commissioned him to attain.  And in this era, when the printed word possesses a manifest primacy in the field of the dissemination of ideas, the Sovereign Pontiffs have chosen to bring their authoritative teaching, the doctrine in which they accomplish the work of instruction God has commanded them to do, to the people of Christ through the medium of the printed word in the published "Acta."

The Humani generis reminds us that the doctrinal decisions set forth in the Holy Father's "Acta" manifestly are authoritative "according to the mind and will" of the Pontiffs who have issued these decisions.  Thus, wherever there is a doctrinal judgment expressed in the "Acta" of a Sovereign Pontiff, it is clear that the Pontiff understands that decision to be authoritative and wills that it be so.

Now when the Pope, in his "Acta," sets forth as a part of Catholic doctrine or as a genuine teaching of the Catholic Church some thesis which has hitherto been opposed, even legitimately, in the schools of sacred theology, he is manifestly making a doctrinal decision.  This certainly holds true even when, in making his statement, the Pope does not explicitly assert that he is issuing a doctrinal judgment and, of course, even when he does not refer to the existence of a controversy or debate on the subject among theologians up until the time of his own pronouncement.  All that is necessary is that this teaching, hitherto opposed in the theological schools, be now set forth as the teaching of the Sovereign Pontiff, or as "doctrina catholica."

Private theologians have no right whatsoever to establish what they believe to be the conditions under which the teaching presented in the "Acta" of the Roman Pontiff may be accepted as authoritative.  This is, on the contrary, the duty and the prerogative of the Roman Pontiff himself.  The present Holy Father has exercised that right and has done his duty in stating clearly that any doctrinal decision which the Bishop of Rome has taken the trouble to make and insert into his "Acta" is to be received as genuinely authoritative.

In line with the teaching of the Humani generis, then, it seems unquestionably clear that any doctrinal decision expressed by the Sovereign Pontiff in the course of an allocution delivered to a private group is to be accepted as authoritative when and if that allocution is published by the Sovereign Pontiff as a part of his own "Acta."  Now we must consider this final question: What obligation is incumbent upon a Catholic by reason of an authoritative doctrinal decision made by the Sovereign Pontiff and communicated to the universal Church in this manner?

The text of the Humani generis itself supplies us with a minimum answer.  This is found in the sentence we have already quoted: "And if, in their 'Acta,' the Supreme Pontiffs take care to render a decision on a point that has hitherto been controverted, it is obvious to all that this point, according to the mind and will of these same Pontiffs, can no longer be regarded as a question theologians may freely debate among themselves."

Theologians legitimately discuss and dispute among themselves doctrinal questions which the authoritative magisterium of the Catholic Church has not as yet resolved.  Once that magisterium has expressed a decision and communicated that decision to the Church universal, the first and the most obvious result of its declaration must be the cessation of debate on the point it has decided.  A man definitely is not acting and could not act as a theologian, as a teacher of Catholic truth, by disputing against a decision made by the competent doctrinal authority of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth.

In line with the teaching of the Humani generis, then, it seems unquestionably clear that any doctrinal decision expressed by the Sovereign Pontiff in the course of an allocution delivered to a private group is to be accepted as authoritative when and if that allocution is published by the Sovereign Pontiff as a part of his own "Acta."  Now we must consider this final question: What obligation is incumbent upon a Catholic by reason of an authoritative doctrinal decision made by the Sovereign Pontiff and communicated to the universal Church in this manner? (The doctrinal Authority of Papal allocutions.)

 

The crashing sound you hear in the background is the whole facade of the false ecclesiology of the "resist but recognize" movement that has been propagated in the past forty years as the "answer" to "resisting" the decrees of the "Second" Vatican Council and the "encyclical" letters and statements and allocutions of the conciliar "popes" crumbling right to the ground.

The rejections, for example, of the clear and consistent Catholic condemnation of religious liberty and separation of Church and State while endorsing the sort of false ecumenism condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, and while propagating the "new ecclesiology" of the "new theology" that is a public and manifest rejection of the very nature of the Church as summarized by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943, are no mere acts of "modification" of past papal statements as they are applied in the world today. They are a wholesale rejection of Catholic truth, which is why they have been shrouded in a cloud of ambiguity and paradox as to deceive many of the elect.

The Catholic Church does not use the language of ambiguity and paradox. Statements by her true popes never give people license to interpret them in such a way as to commit sin after sin against Holy Purity. Pope Pius XI explained in Mortalium Animos that the Catholic Church brings forth her teaching with ease and security:

For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

 

Those want to take refuge in the belief that Ratzinger/Benedict's comments to Peter Seewald in The Light of the World, including those comments pertaining to the nature of Talmudic Judaism that are in defiance of the clear teaching of the Catholic Church and are thus very displeasing and offensive to God, are merely "private" because they are not going to be included in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official commentary of the Holy See, just take a look at what is included in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis from the conciliar "popes," including to cite just one example, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II's "encyclical letter" Ut Unum Sint, May 25, 1995, that was a total contradiction of Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos. Indeed, Ut Unum Sint pretended as though Mortalium Animos had never been written as the two are impossible to reconcile. There is not one, that's right, not one footnote citation of any true pope in the whole of that encyclical letter. How could there be such  a reference? No such pope ever spoke in such a way prior to the "Second" Vatican Council and its aftermath, and it is impossible for one to do so now.

It is also impossible for any true Successor of Saint Peter to be so oblivious to the way that his remarks could be misconstrued on matters pertaining to the salvation of souls and the right ordering of men and their nations on a matter so clear as the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. Then again, of course, what's the big deal about this rhubarb when you turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to one of your own "bishops" when he denies that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins and when you yourself deny publicly and openly the nature of dogmatic truth and esteem the symbols of false religions and call their places of false worship as "sacred" and that "believers" of these false religions are called to "build the better world" and "promote world peace"? It's relatively small potatoes to speak obscurely on matter so vital to souls when you get the First and Second Commandments wrong so repeatedly.

Let those who want to clothe the conciliar emperor do so. The rest of us, some of whom are terrible, terrible sinners (my hand is raised high at the moment), will simply accept the madness and the absurdity of this present moment as a just chastisement for our own sins as we seek to make reparation for those sins by offering up all of the sufferings of this time, whether personal or social or ecclesiastical, to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In the midst of the incredible spin-doctoring against truth taking place before our very eyes, we must, as always, have recourse to Our Lady as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit and as we keep her company in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in our time in fervent prayer before her Divine Son's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. She will help us to cleave only to true bishops and to true priests who make absolutely no concessions to the abominable apostasies and blasphemies and sacrileges of conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its "popes" and "bishops" who offend God so boldly, so openly and so brazenly--and with the full support and admiring approval of most of the world's baptized Catholics.

While each person must come to recognize this for himself (it took me long enough to do so; I defended the indefensible for far too long!), we must nevertheless embrace the truth once we do come to recognize and accept it without caring for one moment what anyone else may think about us as we make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

As I noted months ago now, we can never grow accustomed to apostasies that can never become acceptable with the passage of time. We can never grow accustomed to offenses given to God by the conciliar "popes" and their conciliar "bishops." We must never "spin" in their behalf.

We must cleave to the Catholic Church, not to the counterfeit church of conciliarism, as we attempt to plant the seeds for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as we seek to live more and more penitentially, making reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our own many sins and for those of the whole word.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

 

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 John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Sylvester the Abbot, pray for us.

Saint Peter Chrysologus, pray for us.

Saint Barbara, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints