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July 5 Article
No Better than the Chicoms
The rise of statism in supposedly "democratic republics" such as the United States of America should come as no surprise to any Catholic. Statism must arise in each and every country where Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is not recognize as King as He has revealed Himself to men exclusively through His true Church and where Our Lady is not honored as our Immaculate Queen. The differences between overtly totalitarian regimes and Western regimes are merely matters of degree, not of kind. Totalitarians kill preborn babies. So do we. Totalitarians imprison people and torture them without trial in the name of "national security." So do we. Although it is apparently so difficult for some who want to romanticize about the American founding to admit this fact, the plain truth is that the statist "church," if you will, is the only possible result of a nation whose civil governance is founded in the belief that men can organize themselves and pursue social order without reference to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted to His true Church and without belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. It does not matter how "nice" a man George Washington was or even that he might have saved his soul by converting to the Faith, as some fairy tales assert. George Washington and the other founders believed in the lie of naturalism, which has led us directly to the situation in which the leaders of the United States of America are pretty much indistinguishable from the Chicom leaders of Red China. Naturalist monkey see, naturalist monkey do, quite literally in this instance, as you will discover in this freshly minted article (which goes over a lot of familiar territory).
We had a most wonderful visit with the exemplary Catholic scholar Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., and Sister Mary Olive Rowley yesterday morning after Father Martin's First Friday Votive Mass of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. I asked Father Martin a lot of questions about various issues. He gave me some superb answers, which I will share with you in an upcoming article. His Franciscan spirit and demeanor gives one a glimpse of that of the holy founder of the Order of Friars Minor, who was in his own right moulded by the very image of Christ Crucified.
This is the First Saturday of the month. Make sure to pray a Rosary of reparation after Holy Mass in honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as we meditate upon the mysteries contained therein.
The next article on this site will appear in a few days, depending upon my ability to function following our return to Ohio from Illinois and the lecture that I give at Saint Gertrude the Great Church this Sunday morning. Keep checking.
July 4 Revised Articles
A Day of Reparation, Not of Celebration and A Catechism of the Social Reign of Christ the King
One of the consistent themes of my writing and speaking and teaching in the past twenty years is the Catholic teaching on the necessity of each civil state's recognizing the true religion and according her the favor and the protection of the laws as it, the civil state, seeks to foster those conditions in civil society wherein its citizens can better sanctify and thus save their souls as members of the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation. The founding of this nation, which took place 232 years ago this day, was based upon false, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles that were bound to bring us to the point of degeneracy where we find ourselves at the present time. And it is no accident at all that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believes that the American model of Church-State relations is the one to be followed throughout the world, directly contradicting these words of Pope Leo XIII in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895:
The main factor, no doubt, in bringing things into this happy state were the ordinances and decrees of your synods, especially of those which in more recent times were convened and confirmed by the authority of the Apostolic See. But, moreover (a fact which it gives pleasure to acknowledge), thanks are due to the equity of the laws which obtain in America and to the customs of the well-ordered Republic. For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)
Pope Leo XIII taught in Libertas, June 20, 1888, that Holy Mother Church will make accommodations to the actual, concrete circumstances in which her children find themselves in a particular nation at a particular point in salvation history. The Church will make use of whatever "freedom" is accorded her in the constitutions of pluralistic republics to do her work to sanctify her children and to teach them according to the Mind of the Divine Redeemer Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as He has discharged It exclusively to her for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. Holy Mother Church will not, however, concede anything to erroneous principles as she makes accommodations to inauspicious circumstances that occur within the Providence of God. Holy Mother Church must continue to exhort her children to know her Social Teaching and to pray and to work for the Catholicization of their nations. True patriotism--true love--of one's nation, something that is a duty of the Natural Law, wills the good of one's nation, the ultimate expression of which is her Catholicization in every single one of her aspects without any reservation or qualification whatsoever.
Pope Leo XIII made this abundantly clear in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:
From day to day it becomes more and more evident how needful it is that the principles of Christian wisdom should ever be borne in mind, and that the life, the morals, and the institutions of nations should be wholly conformed to them. For, when these principles have been disregarded, evils so vast have accrued that no right-minded man can face the trials of the time being without grave anxiety or consider the future without alarm. Progress, not inconsiderable indeed, has been made towards securing the well-being of the body and of material things, but the material world, with the possession of wealth, power, and resources, although it may well procure comforts and increase the enjoyment of life, is incapable of satisfying our soul created for higher and more glorious things. To contemplate God, and to tend to Him, is the supreme law of the life of man. For we were created in the divine image and likeness, and are impelled, by our very nature, to the enjoyment of our Creator. But not by bodily motion or effort do we make advance toward God, but through acts of the soul, that is, through knowledge and love. For, indeed, God is the first and supreme truth, and the mind alone feeds on truth. God is perfect holiness and the sovereign good, to which only the will can desire and attain, when virtue is its guide.
But what applies to individual men applies equally to society -- domestic alike and civil. Nature did not form society in order that man should seek in it his last end, but in order that in it and through it he should find suitable aids whereby to attain to his own perfection. If, then, a political government strives after external advantages only, and the achievement of a cultured and prosperous life; if, in administering public affairs, it is wont to put God aside, and show no solicitude for the upholding of moral law, it deflects woefully from its right course and from the injunctions of nature; nor should it be accounted as a society or a community of men, but only as the deceitful imitation or appearance of a society.
As to what We have called the goods of the soul, which consist chiefly in the practice of the true religion and in the unswerving observance of the Christian precepts, We see them daily losing esteem among men, either by reason of forgetfulness or disregard, in such wise that all that is gained for the well-being of the body seems to be lost for that of the soul. A striking proof of the lessening and weakening of the Christian faith is seen in the insults too often done to the Catholic Church, openly and publicly -- insults, indeed, which an age cherishing religion would not have tolerated. For these reasons, an incredible multitude of men is in danger of not achieving salvation; and even nations and empires themselves cannot long remain unharmed, since, when Christian institutions and morality decline, the main foundation of human society goes together with them. Force alone will remain to preserve public tranquillity and order. But force is very feeble when the bulwark of religion has been removed, and, being more apt to beget slavery than obedience, it bears within itself the germs of ever-increasing troubles. The present century has encountered memorable disasters, and it is not certain that some equally terrible are not impending.
The very times in which we live are warning us to seek remedies there where alone they are to be found -- namely, by re-establishing in the family circle and throughout the whole range of society the doctrines and practices of the Christian religion. In this lies the sole means of freeing us from the ills now weighing us down, of forestalling the dangers now threatening the world. For the accomplishment of this end, venerable brethren, We must bring to bear all the activity and diligence that lie within Our power. Although we have already, under other circumstances, and whenever occasion required, treated of these matters, We deem it expedient in this letter to define more in detail the duties of the Catholics, inasmuch as these would, if strictly observed, wonderfully contribute to the good of the commonwealth. We have fallen upon times when a violent and well-nigh daily battle is being fought about matters of highest moment, a battle in which it is hard not to be sometimes deceived, not to go astray and, for many, not to lose heart. It behooves us, venerable brethren, to warn, instruct, and exhort each of the faithful with an earnestness befitting the occasion: that none may abandon the way of truth.
It cannot be doubted that duties more numerous and of greater moment devolve on Catholics than upon such as are either not sufficiently enlightened in relation to the Catholic faith, or who are entirely unacquainted with its doctrines. Considering that forthwith upon salvation being brought out for mankind, Jesus Christ laid upon His Apostles the injunction to "preach the Gospel to every creature," He imposed, it is evident, upon all men the duty of learning thoroughly and believing what they were taught. This duty is intimately bound up with the gaining of eternal salvation: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be condemned." But the man who has embraced the Christian faith, as in duty bound, is by that very fact a subject of the Church as one of the children born of her, and becomes a member of that greatest and holiest body, which it is the special charge of the Roman Pontiff to rule with supreme power, under its invisible head, Jesus Christ .
Now, if the natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we had birth, and in which we were brought up, so that every good citizen hesitates not to face death for his native land, very much more is it the urgent duty of Christians to be ever quickened by like feelings toward the Church. For the Church is the holy City of the living God, born of God Himself, and by Him built up and established. Upon this earth, indeed, she accomplishes her pilgrimage, but by instructing and guiding men she summons them to eternal happiness. We are bound, then, to love dearly the country whence we have received the means of enjoyment this mortal life affords, but we have a much more urgent obligation to love, with ardent love, the Church to which we owe the life of the soul, a life that will endure forever. For fitting it is to prefer the good of the soul to the well-being of the body, inasmuch as duties toward God are of a far more hallowed character than those toward men.
Moreover, if we would judge aright, the supernatural love for the Church and the natural love of our own country proceed from the same eternal principle, since God Himself is their Author and originating Cause. Consequently, it follows that between the duties they respectively enjoin, neither can come into collision with the other. We can, certainly, and should love ourselves, bear ourselves kindly toward our fellow men, nourish affection for the State and the governing powers; but at the same time we can and must cherish toward the Church a feeling of filial piety, and love God with the deepest love of which we are capable. The order of precedence of these duties is, however, at times, either under stress of public calamities, or through the perverse will of men, inverted. For, instances occur where the State seems to require from men as subjects one thing, and religion, from men as Christians, quite another; and this in reality without any other ground, than that the rulers of the State either hold the sacred power of the Church of no account, or endeavor to subject it to their own will. Hence arises a conflict, and an occasion, through such conflict, of virtue being put to the proof. The two powers are confronted and urge their behests in a contrary sense; to obey both is wholly impossible. No man can serve two masters, for to please the one amounts to contemning the other.
As to which should be preferred no one ought to balance for an instant. It is a high crime indeed to withdraw allegiance from God in order to please men, an act of consummate wickedness to break the laws of Jesus Christ, in order to yield obedience to earthly rulers, or, under pretext of keeping the civil law, to ignore the rights of the Church; "we ought to obey God rather than men." This answer, which of old Peter and the other Apostles were used to give the civil authorities who enjoined unrighteous things, we must, in like circumstances, give always and without hesitation. No better citizen is there, whether in time of peace or war, than the Christian who is mindful of his duty; but such a one should be ready to suffer all things, even death itself, rather than abandon the cause of God or of the Church.
Conflicts between the civil state and the Catholic Faith were bound to arise in the United States of America because of the false premises upon which it was founded. Men need to submit all at all times, both personally and collectively in the institutions of civil governance, to the authority of the Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls. She has the Divinely-appointed right to discharge the duties imposed upon her to enforce the Social Reign of Christ the King. Any nation that does not recognize this is doomed to degenerate over the course of time.
True, the confessionally Catholic State is not a guarantor of the rightly ordered society any more than being in a state of Sanctifying Grace is a guarantee for an individual that he will persevere until the end of his life in such a state. Just as being in a state of Sanctifying Grace is the necessary precondition for salvation, so is it the case that the confessionally Catholic State is the necessary precondition for a just social order that takes account at all times of First and Last Things.
Other articles in the past year that have dealt with these issues include
Cut From the Same Cloth, Babbling Inanities of Americanism, No Place for Christ the King in the "New Theology," Admiringly Understanding the Mind of an Arch-Americanist,
Awash in the Muck of the Potomac,
Cause and Effect,
Aborting Christ the King, and Abort the Faith, Abort Babies, among many others.
Celebrate today if you want. It's a "free" country, right? I love my country, which is why I choose to make reparation for the sins committed by this nation throughout its history as a direct consequence of the false premises upon which it was founded on this very day. I pray for the day when we will have the Catholic States of America and the generic, Masonic motto of "In God We Trust" will be replaced by shouts of "Viva Cristo Rey!"
As we were on the road (in the Trail Blazer, not the motor home, which is just too expensive to drive long distances save for when we have to drive from, say, Connecticut, to Ohio, for Speaking appearances) today to be able to assist at First Friday Mass offered by the hands of Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., and to see Sister Mary Olive Rowley again, there was no time to write an original article. One will be composed today, God willing and Our Lady interceding. It will deal with the fact that the method of interrogation used by American officials at the detention center in Guantanamo, Cuba, was based entirely upon a manual written by the Red Chinese Communist authorities in 1958. No wonder the Bush administration is not going to boycott the gigantic exercise in globalism that is the summer Olympics, being held this month in Beijing, Red China. Birds of a statist feather do flock together, after all.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
Once again, our thanks to those who have donated to us in the past few weeks. We are very grateful to those who have make their non-tax-deductible gifts to us.
July 3 Article
Abort the Faith, Abort Babies
As work progressed on several articles simultaneously into the early hours of yesterday morning, the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the description of this new article must be brief: it deals with the scandal of the complicity of the conciliar "bishop" of Richmond, Virginia, in the killing of a preborn human being that was arranged by employees of "Catholic" Charities in Richmond nearly six months ago now. This is, so very sad to note, the logical result of aborting the Catholic Faith in favor of conciliarism's "reconciliation" to the principles of the "new era inaugurated in 1789." To abort the Faith and the immutable doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King will result inevitably in alleged "Catholics" having some part to play in the abortion of human beings in their mothers' wombs. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
I want to thank the nine people who sent us checks via "snail mail" in the past eleven days. One gentleman, a very kind soul, sent us two different checks. Another check was given to us in person by a parishioner of Saint Gertrude the Great Church in West Chester, Ohio. We are very grateful to those who have answered our request for help, noting that we continue to need non-tax-deductible gifts from more of you who support the work of this site and have the means to make such a gift. Thanks.
There might be another original article tomorrow, July 4, 2008, in addition to republished articles dealing with Americanism. Work on the travelogue has indeed started. That work gets interrupted for articles of substance. Two such articles take precedence over the travelogue at this time. Soon. Soon.
July 2 Revised Article
Revised: Magnificat
Today is the great feast of the Visitation, the day on which Our Lady's three month visit to her cousin Saint Elizabeth ended. We have so much to learn from this feast, upon which we meditate every day if we pray all three sets of mysteries of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary on a daily basis. Among these lessons taught by the Visitation is the discharge of Charity to our neighbor. And what could be more charitable on the part of Our Lady than to make haste to the hill country of Judah immediately after consenting to become the very Mother of God by bringing the unborn Jesus to converse with His precursor and cousin, Saint John the Baptist, who was freed from Original Sin on April 2, just eight days after Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Incarnation in the tabernacle of Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb?
We also learn that all generations will call Our Lady blessed? Do Protestants call Our Lady blessed? Do they sing with Saint Elizabeth her praises "and blessed art thou amongst women"? We must sing those praises at all times, making sure to defend Our Lady's honor with Protestants, many of whom are fallen away Catholics.
We are also reminded of the inviolability of all innocent human life. Saint Elizabeth recognizes that her very Redeemer is inside of the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of her cousin, Our Lady. The unborn Saint John the Baptist leaps for joy when he hears the beautiful, melodious voice of the Mother of God pierce his ears inside of Saint Elizabeth's womb. The two cousins, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and Saint John the Baptist, converse in delights described so poignantly by Dom Prosper Gueranger in his The Liturgical Year. (This article has been substantially revised from its first posting in 2004.)
A blessed Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to you all.
There should be an original article, dealing with the complicity of "Bishop" Francis Di Lorenzo of Richmond, Virginia, in an abortion arranged by "Catholic" Charities in his diocese, posted later on today. Another original article is in the works. It is the next installment in the travelogue. That should be posted tomorrow morning, July 3, 2008.
Our mail should arrive from Connecticut today at some point. I will have some idea at that point of how many readers of this site have responded to my recent appeals. We'll see what nine days' worth of accumulated mail brings forth. Saint Joseph, pray for us!
Finally, the usual suspects are upset about Father Martin Stepanich's guest article from two days ago. Catholic truth is what is, and Father Stepanich has defended Catholic truth very ably. Would that more people would reflect on his wisdom rather than responding with angry screeds and letters of denunciation for a faithful priest of God who has suffered much as a result of his fidelity to the immutable doctrine of the Catholic Church.
July 1 Revised Article
Revised: The Laver of Our Redemption
There will be revised articles published for most of the next few days, although it is my intention to have a new article ready for publication by tomorrow, July 2, 2008, the Feast of the Visitation.
Today is the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Our Lord shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem us. Profuse amounts of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus were shed when He was scourged at the pillar and crowned with thorns. Droplets of the Most Precious Blood of Our Divine Redeemer were shed during His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The merits won for us by the shedding of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces. We must ask Our Lady, in whose Virginal and Immaculate Womb Our Lord received His Most Precious Blood, to help us to be signed at all times with the Laver of our redemption. We must ask Our Lady to have the lintels of the doorposts of our hearts signed with the Precious Blood of Jesus so that we will be ready to face the moment of our Particular Judgments with confidence, not Presumption, confidence in the Its merits at that hour as Our Lady, whom we have invoked throughout our lives, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary, prays for us then as she does now during our lives.
A blessed feast of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus to you all.
A brief update on the fund-raising efforts carries with it the following news: about twenty donors, four giving more than once, have donated online since June 15, 2008. That's less than one percent of the known viewership of this site. Perhaps our mail, which will be forwarded to us this week, will bring better news. All I can do is to repeat once again that we need your help and ask those of you who support the work of this site and who have the means to assist us to do so at this time. This appeal is made especially to those who have do have the means to make such a contribution but who have not done so in the past. Thank you.
June 30 Guest Article
The "UnBaptized Saints" Deception (by Father Stepanich)
Truth be told, last week's spate of articles has tuckered me out some. The next original article of mine to appear on this site must be delayed for a day or so.
In the meantime, however, I am presenting for your consideration an article written by the estimable Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., on one of the most misunderstood theological issues of the day: the authentic Catholic teaching on the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.
Father Stepanich was ordained to the priesthood on May 18, 1941, and will turn ninety-three years of age in November of this year. He holds an earned doctorate in Sacred Theology. His article, which was published in The Four Marks and is being reprinted with the most kind permission of Mrs. Kathleen Plumb, the publisher-editor of The Four Marks, is a thorough treatment of why the teachings of the late Father Leonard Feeney, S.J., on Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus are not consonant with the true Catholic teaching.
The mere fact that this article is being posted will cause some readers, I am sure, to vent their spleens. Please read Father Stepanich's article dispassionately. Mr. Michael Cain, the erstwhile and hard-working publisher of the Daily Catholic website, has informed me that Mr. Griff Ruby is starting his own series of articles on this same subject. You may read the first installment at:
www.DailyCatholic.org/issue/08Jun/jun30str.htm. These two articles complement each other very well, as you will see. And Mr. Ruby's second installment, which will be published on the Daily Catholic website a week from today, July 7, 2008, goes into the misinterpretation of papal bulls on the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus that have been accepted by so many Catholics, thus making it appear in their minds that the true Catholic teaching on the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus is what is erroneous, if not heretical, not the misinterpretations of Father Feeney on the doctrine that arose over sixty years ago or so.
We must adhere to nothing other than Catholic truth. Father Stepanich has given us just that. It is always a sign of weakness when those seeking to defend the errors about the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus resort to the ad hominem, as Father Feeney himself did when giving Father Stepanich and the late Mr. Walter Matt, the founding publisher-editor of The Remnant, what Father Martin called "the ugly business" when responding to an article of Father's that ran in The Remnant in 1973. The ad hominem is used quite a bit by many of those who make it their life's work to defend the misinterpretations of the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus that have been accepted by so many Catholics.
Those who still have questions after reading this article should write to Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., c/o Saint Gertrude the Great Church, 4900 Rialto Road, West Chester, Ohio 45069. However, I would urge those who think that they know more than a true priest with an earned doctorate in Sacred Theology to think again and to recognize that they can learn much from from Father Stepanich. We have.
Please listen to His Excellency Bishop Daniel Dolan's sermon of yesterday, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul:
“Meditation (Part 8): The 1st Sorrowful Mystery.” Father Anthony Cekada had an excellent one for June 22, 2008, the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost,
“Trads, Why Can’t We All Just Get Along.”
Yesterday, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, was the thirty-third anniversary of priestly ordination of His Excellency Bishop Donald Sanborn, the thirty-second anniversary of priestly ordination of His Excellency Bishop Daniel Dolan, and the thirty-first anniversary of priestly ordination of Father Anthony Cekada. Heartiest congratulations to each of them.
I will try to have an original article tomorrow, the Feast of the Most Precious Blood, along with a republished article on the great feast we celebrate that day, July 1, 2008.
Please also review the Donations page that was updated two days ago. Thank you.
June 28 Article
Submit to and Obey the One World Church
Believe that Joseph Ratzinger is indeed "Pope" Benedict XVI? Fine and dandy. Accept with joy and equanimity the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service, replete now with kneeling at "papal" "Masses." Accept with joy and equanimity the new ecclesiology and false ecumenism and inter-religious prayer services, replete with the occasional acts of esteem shown to the symbols of false religions, and religious liberty and the separation of Church and State, and denials of the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture and support for the ideology of evolutionism and the denial of the immutable doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King. Accept the gradual, perhaps every very gradual, incorporation of elements that belong to the Novus Ordo service into the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Accept the fact that traditionally-minded priests in the conciliar structures must concelebrate, at the very least, the Novus Ordo service once a year.
Oh, don't believe that the novelties and innovations and errors and heresies of the "Second" Vatican Council and its aftermath require your obedience? Recognize, then, that these wicked things cannot issue forth from the Catholic Church and seek shelter in the safe haven provided by true bishops and true priests in the catacombs where no concessions are made to conciliarism or to the leaders of its One World Church. One either submits to and obeys the One World Church, or one submits to and obeys the Catholic Church, which can never make any concessions to error, which never sanctions blasphemies, which can only teach and do what her Divine Bridegroom, her Invisible head, taught and did.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for us. Saint Irenaeus, pray for us.
A revised Donations letter has been posted. It goes something like this: we are very close to being "belly up." Very close. Very, very close. We are grateful for the few responses that have we have received in the past week. Those few responses are far from what we need to pay bills right now. We really do need to your help. Thanks.
The next original article, the miniature travelogue, will be posted on Monday, June 30, 2008, the Commemoration of Saint Paul. Time will then be devoted to the recording of more lectures for the video lecture program. These lectures will be posted after they are recorded. A number of republished/revised articles will be posted July--along with an occasional original article as time permits. A series of Sunday lectures begins at Saint Gertrude the Great Church on July 6, 2008. Details will be provided as soon as they are finalized.
June 27 Article
What Does the Faith Really Teach? (WDTFRT)
Although it appears as though the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X is going to reject the ultimatum laid down by the conciliar Vatican, some "conservative" Catholic commentators cannot see why there is such a fuss over what one of their number has called "loftier theological arguments," stating that all people want is a reverent Mass and good preaching. Loftier theological arguments? Catholic truth is indivisible. It is one. We must defend each truth of the Catholic Faith, including the truth that continues to be denied by the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X: that heretics and blasphemers who deny articles of the Faith are no longer members of the Catholic Church and can be accorded no recognition in other way than in our prayers for their conversion. Loftier theological arguments? That is how a "High Anglican" emotes. It is also how conciliar "conservatives" emote in a fury of sentimentality and illogic that is willing to throw the Deposit of Faith as It has been transmitted to us by Holy Mother Church under the inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, through the centuries in order to indemnify the words and actions of the conciliar "pontiffs." Loftier theological arguments indeed.
I should have a miniature travelogue posted at some point tomorrow, the Feast of Saint Irenaeus and the Vigil of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. A substantive article will be posted on Sunday, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul and the Commemoration of the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost.
We do need help, your help, at this time. Responses have been few and far between lately. Any consideration that those of you who support the work of this website and who have the means to be of assistance can give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Sincerely yours in Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen. Thomas A. Droleskey.
June 26 Article
Is He or Isn't He?
The hour is very late (or early) on June 26, 2008. We experienced yet another perfectly fitted cross yesterday as the studs in the hub on the left front of the Trail Blazer broke, causing the car to wobble badly. I did not know what was happening, thinking that all of the front end work for which expenditures we are still trying to recoup had come apart. The tow truck operator who saw what had happened said, "You must have an angel watching over you! I've never seen anything like this before." There was nothing holding the left front tire to the car as we drove. Nothing. Nothing except our Guardian Angels. This could have happened back in Connecticut. It was in God's Providence for it to happen in Ohio. I will write this up and post the story tomorrow, June 27, 2008. The car is at a repair shop. All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!
Oh, you want to know about this article? Read it, will you? Seriously, the new article is about the terms being offered by the conciliar Vatican to the Superior General of the Society of Pope Saint Pius X, His Excellency Bishop Bernard Fellay. As the conciliar Vatican itself has released the terms, which are, as is explained in the article, thoroughly Catholic, this commentary is being offered before the decision is made by Bishop Fellay to respond "positively" to the Vatican's demands.
The demands made by the conciliar Vatican take full advantage of the novel ecclesiology that has advanced by the Society of Saint Pius X, that it is possible to recognize a validly reigning pontiff while at the same time resisting his decrees and denouncing his words and actions. The conciliar Vatican is demanding an end to criticism of the "Holy Father" as the price of "full citizenship" in its counterfeit agenda. No Catholic can, as I have come to recognize after years of procrastination and obstinacy, "resist and recognize" a validly reigning pontiff. Then again, no validly reigning pontiff would do or say the things that the conciliar "pontiffs" have said and done. This brings us to the fundamental question: Is he, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, the pope or is he not the pope? If he is, then submission with docility is his due from us. If he is not, then to "recognize" him as a true pope is say that God is indifferent to words and actions that run contrary to the defined teaching of His true Church and indifferent as well to attacks on the very nature of truth, which are attacks on His own very nature.
We must be grateful to all of the far-seeing prelates and clerics who have seen the truth of our ecclesiastical situation as far back as thirty-five years ago. We must adhere to their spiritual guidance as we attempt to get home to Heaven without making any concessions at all to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds.
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
June 25 Article
What About Christ the King?
What about Christ the King? He is nowhere to be found when the conciliarists get together with representatives from Talmudic Judaism. Indeed, He is nowhere to be found in the "social teaching" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which has made its "reconciliation" with the naturalistic and anti-Incarnational and religiously indifferentist principles of Modernity. This brief article examines a meeting that took place between March 11-13, 2007, in Jerusalem between representatives of conciliarism and Talmudic Judaism, a meeting that produced a statement of principles that clearly left no place at all for Christ the King or for Mary our Immaculate Queen. Nothing other than business-as-usual for the conciliarists. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Another article should appear tomorrow, June 26, 2008.
Haven't heard from too many of you concerning the recent appeals for non-tax-deductible gifts. Saint Joseph, pray for us!
June 24 Revised Article
Revised: His Name Shall be John
This is a slightly revised article on the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. It is quite telling that this last of the Old Testament Prophets and the Precursor of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, his very cousin, has his birthday commemorated liturgically. The only other birthdays so commemorated are of the One Whose straps of His sandals he was unworthy to loose and Our Lady herself. Saint John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of Our Lord to assume His Public Ministry by means of his preaching. We should pray to Saint John the Baptist every day to help to prepare the way for the coming of Our Lord into our souls by means of Holy Communion! This great, uncompromising apostle of Truth Incarnate can teach us how to be uncompromising to that same Truth Incarnate in our own days of apostasy of betrayal. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Our miniature adventure is over. The motor home's engine began to stall on Saturday evening, June 21, 2008, on Interstate 80 east of Youngstown, Ohio. The problem turned out to be the relatively new air filter, which was serving as a sieve to pour water into the engine. Thank you, Ford engineers for another great design. We are now in a campground near Saint Gertrude the Great Church. I will provide details of upcoming speaking appearances after they are finalized.
An original article should appear tomorrow, June 25, 2008. (Looks as though interest in such articles has waned a lot in recent weeks. All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!) I will not post any commentary on the press reports of a pending agreement between the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X and the counterfeit church of conciliarism until and unless such an agreement is reached and its terms announced. I can assure you, however, that its tenor will be a little different than one I had drafted for the printed pages of Christ or Chaos in 2001 when it appeared that such an agreement would be reached before Easter that year, April 15, 2001. The tentative title of that article, which had been inserted in a draft of the May, 2001, issue of the old Christ or Chaos, was "Thank you, Holy Father!" That's not going to be the title of any article that appears on this site if such an agreement does in fact materialize. (Yes, I was really that dumb and blind seven years ago!)
A blessed Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist to you all!
June 23 Article and Update
Lessons From the Past
This new article, albeit a brief one, focuses on some of the lessons to be learned from the lives of Saint Paulinus and Saint Alban. Those who disparage the Social Reign of Christ the King, preferring the false allure of the various ideologies of the false opposites of the naturalist left and the naturalist right, could stand to learn some of those lessons once and for all.
This new article has been delayed as a result of yet another motor home engine breakdown. I will not give specifics at this time except to say that we are safe and in a mercifully quiet campground which was located reasonably near to a location where we could assist at a true offering of Holy Mass by a fully Catholic priest who makes no concessions to conciliarism or to its false shepherds. We accept this current cross with joy and with gratitude, recognizing, of course, that it comes from the very hand of God and is meant to be given back to His Most Sacred Heart through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, His Most Blessed Mother. I know that my many sins deserve far, far worse than I am permitted to suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears!
Yes, I decided, despite the lack of donations (we are, as always, grateful to those few who have donated), to do some speaking, the details of which will be announced soon, so as to be useful for souls while Lucy is out of school for the summer and we have the freedom to travel, well, at least travel some limited distances from Connecticut. Recordings for the not-so-best-sellng lecture series will resume in this coming week once our current motor home engine problems are resolved.
All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!
June 21 Articles
F.O.B. (Friends of Baal)
Time is short. We have much to do on this Feast of Saint Aloysius (about whom a republished article is hereby brought to your attention,
Our Dear Saint Aloysius, Pray for Us to be as Pure as Thee).
This article is yet another commentary on the counterfeit church of conciliarism's endless efforts, despite all protestations to the contrary, of showcasing one syncretist outrage after another. No one who is so bereft of the Catholic Faith so as to justify these outrages is a friend of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or of His true Church. Indeed, those who promote or even attempt to justify such outrages are enemies of Our Lord and the true Faith. And while we must pray for the conversion of such people as we seek to make reparation for our own sins, we must nevertheless flee from conciliarism and its false shepherds without delay.
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us. Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, pray for us.
Mr. Berry, who had a pacemaker installed on Wednesday, June 18, 2008, was back at Holy Mass this morning at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel! Please keep praying for him--as well as for Sister Mary Olive Rowley. Thank you.
Finally, I don't know what can be done to prompt more of the readers who support the work of this site and have spare two or five dollars to actually make a non-tax-deductible gift to us. We are in great need of your help right now. Great need. Will you help us? I pray that you will. Thank you. Sincerely yours in Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, Thomas A. Droleskey.
June 19 Article
A Trap Goes Snap
This article wound up taking much more time than I had anticipated, also winding up a little longer than I had expected. There is no really "new" material in this piece, which discusses Dario Castrillon "Cardinal" Hoyos's recent address to the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. "Cardinal" Hoyos reaffirmed the fact, expressed by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI in his accompanying letter to Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, that those attached to the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition must be open to a few adaptations being made now and again. Where have we heard this before? Isn't this one of the standard liturgical "hits" from the 1960s, which saw the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, er, Conciliarism, in full liturgical bloom? The liturgical clock in the Motu world is ticking again. It will be stopped once enough "changes" are introduced into the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition to produce a "reform of the reform." The trap that is and will ever remain the "Motu Mass" has been snapped.
As this is happening, however, and people are celebrating the "return" of ever more modernized versions of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, the wonderful officials in the office of the Synod of "Bishops" in the Vatican curia, now under conciliar captivity, have produced an Instrumentum Laboris for the upcoming synod of conciliar "bishops" in which one of the fundamental Modernist precepts concerning Sacred Scripture (that only those passages said to relate to salvation are inspired) is repeated yet again. While the participants in the actual synod in four months may not accept this language and might subject it to considerable debate, the mere fact that such a passage (which is a variation on a theme developed in the "Second" Vatican Council's Dei Verbum, Number Eleven) is yet another sign of how bereft those who work in the Vatican are of the Catholic Faith and how contemptuous they are of past papal and conciliar denunciations of the very precepts which serve as the foundational building blocks of their life's work. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
His Excellency Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., informed me today that Mr. Berry, the father of Father Eugene Berry, is doing well. Mr. Berry had a pacemaker installed yesterday. Two of his sons, Father Eugene Berry and Joseph Berry, report via e-mails to their lists that their father is doing very well and should be released from the hospital in a few days. Bishop McKenna said that Mr. is expected back at daily Mass on Saturday. Mr. and Mrs. Berry are at the daily offering of Holy Mass at Bishop McKenna's priestly hands every day at 7:00 a.m. (or 10:45 a.m. on Fridays for the school Mass when Saint Dominic's Academy is in session). They never miss daily Mass. That's a good example for us all, wouldn't you say? Please continue to pray for Mr. Berry.
We went to our post office box yesterday for the first time since last Saturday, June 14, 2008. Nada. Zero. Zilch. A big cipher. To quote Jethro Bodine, "Naught from naught equals naught, Uncle Jed." Nothing. No donations at all. None. A planned trip to Ohio to do some speaking in the coming weeks is on hold until this situation improves. I have no intention of getting on the road without sufficient funds to pay for gasoline and to pay our bills. We will just wait and see if such a trip is at all within the Providence of God for us to make. All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Imamculate Heart. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!
As time must be spent writing up our experiences with the Ford Motor Company, the next article on this site will appear on Saturday, June 21, 2008, the Feast of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. A republished article about the patron of the parish where I received my First Holy Communion and was Confirmed (and of the school where I learned the Catholic Faith starting on September 10, 1956) also will be posted at that time.
Late June 16 Update
Dispossessed from our motor home for the better part of two full days because of repairs to its V-10 Triton engine, the completion of the next article on this site has been delayed. Work has begun on the next article. It is just not possible to complete it at this time. The geniuses at Ford decided to install a new engine head only on the right side of the engine. We are supposed to wait, it appears, for spark plugs to be ejected from the left side before a new engine head is installed there, which might be after our warranty expires! To paraphrase Bush 41, "This will not stand."
Look for the next article tomorrow night or Thursday morning. My apologies for the delay.
We are still in need of many more of you who support the work of this site and have the means to make a non-tax-deductible gift to us to do so sooner rather than later. Thank you.
Finally, word has just reached me via Mrs. Kathleen Plumb of The Four Marks that Father Eugene Berry's father, who we just saw at Holy Mass this morning at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel in Monroe, Connecticut, has been hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat. Please pray for a wonderful Catholic gentleman, Mr. Berry, who turns eighty-nine in November of this year (which means that he was born in 1919, the same year as my own late father).
June 16 Article
Missing a Millennium
One of the contributions that I believe that this site has made in the past two years is to focus on conciliarism's Modernist warfare against the immutable nature of dogmatic truth, which is nothing other than an attack upon the very nature of God Himself. This warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth is necessary for the conciliarists to wage in order to justify their defections from the defined teaching of the Catholic Church, especially to enable them to remove "obstacles," as they see the matter, to the realization of the goals of the false ecumenism that is so near and dear to their Modernist selves.
Pope Saint Pius X, writing in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, explained this Modernist strategy very cogently:
Would that they had but displayed less zeal and energy in propagating it! But such is their activity and such their unwearying labor on behalf of their cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such energy in endeavoring to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to her had their efforts been better directed. Their artifices to delude men's minds are of two kinds, the first to remove obstacles from their path, the second to devise and apply actively and patiently every resource that can serve their purpose. They recognize that the three chief difficulties which stand in their way are the scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war. Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method. Let the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: "The method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science." They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those "who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church"; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: "We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by everyone of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church." Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: "I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.''
Walter "Cardinal" Kasper, the President of the "Pontifical" Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has "challenged" the Anglicans, who are about to assemble next month for their decennial Lambeth Committee, to "decide" whether they belong to the "Catholic and Orthodox churches of the First Millennium" or to the spirit of the Protestantism of the Sixteenth Century. There are multiple problems in this "challenge," not the least of which is the simple fact that there was no Orthodox "church" until the Greek Schism in 1054 in the first century of the Second Millennium. And Kasper's "challenge" to the Anglicans suffers from, shall we say, a problem of absurdity: wasn't the Anglican sect founded and then expanded over the course of time as part and parcel of the Protestant Revolution (even though, yes, King Henry VIII did not see it that way as let shed the blood of over 72,000 Catholics who remained faithful to the Catholic Church between 1534 and the time of his death in 1547)? The way for Protestants to reject Protestantism is for them to convert to the Catholic Faith unconditionally. Ah, what a novel idea.
If the upcoming Lambeth Committee concludes with results that are considered unsatisfactory to "High Anglicans," it is possible that they will be accepted en masse into the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Walter Kasper said in 2003 that it is possible that Pope Leo XIII's Apostolicae Curae, which declared Anglican orders null and void, could be "re-evaluated," removing an obstacle for the conversion of Anglicans to the conciliar church, and for the non-bishops and non-priests among them to be accepted on a par with the non-bishops and non-priests of conciliarism without continuing the current conciliar policy (which is in accord with Catholic teaching) of requiring said Anglican non-clergymen to undergo what purports to be a Catholic "ordination rite." The curious thing about all of this is that conciliarism's "pontiffs" have treated the non-"archbishops" of Canterbury as though they are in fact true bishops. Contradiction and paradox are at the heart of conciliarism.
Any effort to "re-evaluate" Apostolicae Curae, should such a thing actually occur, as it most possible, would be but another effort to make it appear as though the decrees and documents of the past are "historically-conditioned" products of a particular age which are not be taken in a later age to mean what they did at the time they were issued. There is a word for this: apostasy.
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Look for the next article in a day or so. We will be dispossessed from the motor home for at least one day as the relatively new engine is being repaired. It is never fun to be out of the motor home. All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!
Please continue to pray for Sister Mary Olive Rowley. The latest update from Miss Cecilia Omlor, who speaks daily with Father Martin Stepanich and the young ladies (Samantha and Suzanne Current) who provide care for Sister, is that Sister has gone home to recover from her hospital stay. Her condition remains what it was before. She is agreeing to no extraordinary medical treatment to prolong her life. Sister Mary Olive Rowley is prepared to suffer more on this earth if this God's Holy Will for her. She is also ready to go home to Him if this is the time from all eternity that He has chosen for her death. Please keep praying for Sister Mary Olive and Father Stepanich and Samantha and Suzanne Current. Thank you.
Finally, I do thank the few of you who have responded to my recent reiteration of the need to support this work with your non-tax-deductible donations. We are indeed of more of you who support my work and who have the means to make such a gift to us to do so. Thank you.
June 14 Articles
Revised: "Perhaps You Have Not Met a Catholic Bishop Before"
Saint Basil the Great, whose feast we commemorate today, made no concessions to error of any kind. That is, Saint Basil the Great, whose feat we commemorate today, made no concessions to error of any kind. Got that? Why should we? Does it matter that Catholics who make no concessions to conciliarism or the nonexistent legitimacy of its false "shepherds" are few in number? Not according to Saint Basil, a valiant defender of the Catholic Faith, who put matters rather bluntly:
Peace is just what Basil desired as much as anybody; but the peace for which he would give his life could be only that true peace left to the Church by our Lord. What he so vigorously exacted on the grounds of faith proceeded solely from his very love of peace. And therefore, as he himself tells us, he absolutely refused to enter into communion with those narrow-minded men who dread nothing so much as a clear, precise expression of dogma; in his eyes their captious formulas and ungraspable shiftings were but the action of hypocrites, in whose company he would scorn to approach God's altar. As to those miserably misled, "Let the faith of our fathers be proposed to them with all tenderness and charity; if they will assent thereunto, let us receive them into our midst; in other cases, let us dwell with ourselves alone, regardless of numbers; and let us keep aloof from equivocating souls, who are not possessed of that simplicity without guile, indispensably required in the early days of the Gospel from all who would approach to the the faith. The believers, so it is written, had but one heard and one soul. Let those, therefore, who would reproach us for not desiring pacification, mark well who are the real authors of the disturbance and so not point the question of reconciliation on our side any more. . . ."
In another place he thus continues: "To every specious argument that would seem to counsel silence on our part, we oppose this other--namely, that charity counts as nothing either her own proper interests or the difficulties of the times. Even though no man is willing to follow our example, what then? Are we ourselves, just for that, to let duty alone? In the fiery furnace the children of the Babylonian captivity chanted their canticle to the Lord, without making any reckoning of the multitude who set truth aside: they were quite sufficient for one another, merely three as they were!"
Pretty good advice, wouldn't you say? Saint Basil the Great, pray for us! (This is a substantially revised article that was written originally three years ago.)
Aborting Christ the King
How many times can I write about the hold that the naturalism of Americanism has on Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide? A lot. Even if I thought that there would be interest in publishing Volume II of Restoring Christ as the King of All Nations, which a volume would constitute over one thousand pages of articles about the Social Reign of Christ the King posted on this site in just the past eighteen months. This article is simply another effort to hammer away at familiar themes, responding to a recent column by Father Andrew Greeley which implied that it might be "racist" to vote against Senator Barack Obama, D-Illinois. Father Greeley: it wouldn't matter if Obama was white or yellow or red or turquoise. Barack Obama supports baby-killing. This alone disqualifies him from holding any office of public trust, whether elected or appointed. John McCain supports baby-killing in some instances, disqualifying himself from holding any office of public trust. It is thus quite a trap that the devil has constructed: "vote" for the naturalist of your choice in the belief that (a) the world will be improved by statism or (b) that "less evil" will be done by the lesser statist than by the greater. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us. Saint Basil the Great, pray for us!
Miss Cecilia Omlor reports that Sister Mary Olive Rowley has a hole in her heart. She is not a candidate for an angiogram as was reported in a posting earlier today. She has ruled out coronary bypass surgery, and may be released to go home this Monday, June 16, 2008. Please continue to pray for her.
The motor home? I will try to give you news on that front next week. Suffice it to say that there will be more to write about in the next installment of the travelogue, that is, for those people who are interested in said travelogue.
Finally, I do need to ask readers who have the means to make a non-tax-deductible financial gift to us--and who support the work of this site--to do so. Such gifts have not been forthcoming on a regular basis in the past few weeks. We need your help. Thank you.
June 13 Republished Article
A Reprise: Saint Anthony, Help Us to Find Our Way to Heaven
Who is not devoted to Saint Anthony of Padua, the "hammer of heretics" who was ordained to the priesthood as a member of the Order of Saint Augustine and died as a member of the Order of Friars Minor? Saint Anthony's short life teaches us how to spend ourselves in defense of the Holy Faith as we attempt to climb to the heights of sanctity in cooperation with the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces.
Saint Anthony is a model of humility. Although an ordained priest who joined the Franciscans in order to be a martyr in the cause of converting the Mohammedans in northwest Africa, he wound up working as a cook in a Franciscan friary in Italy before his superiors recognized the jewel of the Faith that was in their midst. These superiors were very surprised to hear him preach so eloquently on such little notice when he was pressed into service one day. This great defender of the Faith--and of the poor, whom he defended against usury, the very foundation of the world's financial system today--worked miracles in his lifetime and countless thousands more after his death. An abiding devotion to this great saint, a true son of Saint Francis of Assisi and a credit to his native land, Portugal, and his adopted land, Italy, can help us find not only the things that we lose absent-mindedly each day, but, much more importantly, can help us find our way home to Heaven! Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us!
Miss Cecilia Omlor, who has been sending out updates on Sister Mary Olive Rowley, reports that she has been moved out of the intensive care unit and into a private room. She has congestive heart failure in addition to her bout of pneumonia. Sister Olive has been a fighter for the Faith throughout her life. She is fighting valiantly to give honor and glory to God through the Immaculate Heart of Mary in her sufferings at this time. Please continue to pray for her--and for Father Martin Stepanich, another true son of Saint Francis and of Saint Anthony.
An original article should appear tomorrow, Saturday, June 14, 2008, in addition to a republished article on Saint Basil the Great.
The post office box and PayPal account have been rather empty as of late, save for a few online donations in the past week. We are totally dependent on your help, which we need at this time to compensate for monthly bills that have had to be paid thus far in June and the rather large ones that are coming due soon. Thank you.
Recordings for the video lecture program will resume soon, not that there is a groundswell of interest in the ones recorded already!
June 12 Article
Mainstreaming the Oldies
There are some who would us to believe that the "troubling" books that Joseph Ratzinger wrote in the past do not really matter. "All" that matters, we are assured, is what he does as "Pope" Benedict XVI. Well, "Pope" Benedict XVI is still the same disciple of the New Theology that he was as Father Joseph Ratzinger. "Pope" Benedict XVI has just referred to that epic work of his, Introduction to Christianity, which contains a roadmap to his thinking (or lack thereof) about Scholasticism, the official philosophy of the Catholic Church and a bulwark against heresies and self-contradictory "thinking." "Pope" Benedict XVI is indeed trying to "mainstream" his oldies as Father Joseph Ratzinger. Catholics can have nothing to do with this as it is not possible for a Catholic to profess things contrary to the Faith in an "unofficial" capacity without having them influence his "official" work. It's all or nothing for a Catholic. There is no such thing as a "minimum" number of truths in which a Catholic must believe in order to remain a member of the Catholic Church. It is all or nothing.
A republished article should be posted tomorrow on the feast of our beloved Saint Anthony of Padua.
June 11 Photo Essay and Update on Sister Mary Olive Rowley
More Photos From Droleskeyland
Here is the photographic essay to accompany It's Still Better This Than Purgatory (or Worse!) in 2008, part 3 (and which anticipates part four of the travelogue). A short substantive article will be published at some point tomorrow, Thursday, June 12, 2008.
Sister Mary Olive Rowley will be moved from the intensive care unit to a private room as soon as one is available. She is weakened by her pneumonia. I spoke with Father Martin Stepanich today, June 11, 2008, and he is visiting Sister twice a day, maintaining his Franciscan equanimity as he does so. I would urge those of you who have not asked this superb theologian questions about the state of the Church to do so. He will respond to you in writing. Indeed, he has a front page article in the current edition of The Four Marks to set people straight on the doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus. He will set you straight on any points of confusion you might have about the state of the Church if you write to him.
Please continue to pray for Sister Olive.
June 10 Article and Update on Sister Mary Olive Rowley
It's Still Better This Than Purgatory (or Worse!) in 2008, part 3
I did promise to have an article for you today. I simply did not say what time of today, Tuesday, June 10, 2008, that I would be posted it. Truth be told, you see, I had no idea as I spent almost every single bit of this today after Holy Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel in Monroe, Connecticut (and with a brief run to the post office, a run that yielded no mail of significance, a situation that has been the same for several dry days now) when I would be finished with this installment in the travelogue series. As the hour is late and we have to get up very early tomorrow morning to go to Mass and then get a temporary "fix" to our motor home's engine's problem at a Ford dealership (that temporary "fix" is not the end of this matter, I can assure you), all I will say is that this travelogue is not chock full of yuk-yuk lines. However, it is being posted for those who have enjoyed them in the past. (Lucy sure was enjoying sitting over my shoulder and watching me write today for long stretches of time now that she is out of school for the summer.) Those who don't enjoy these travelogues should simply move on along to await the next posting, which will be, most likely, on Thursday, June 12, 2008, or on Friday, June 13, 2008, the Feast of Saint Anthony. (Photographs to accompany this travelogue will be posted tomorrow, the Feast of Saint Barnabas, at some point late in the day.)
There is word from different correspondents, including Mrs. Kathleen Plumb of The Four Marks, who has spoken to Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., that Sister Mary Olive Rowley is suffering from pneumonia. And Miss Cecilia Omlor of Australia has just sent out an e-mail to her list to state that Sister did not have a good day today, that she may have taken a turn for the worse after showing some signs of improvement. The situation is "touch and go," as well it would be for an eighty-six year old woman who wants to go down fighting the good fight that she has fought her entire life. It is evidently the case that the nurses called Sister Olive "feisty." Indeed, she is, which is why she was able to resist the conciliarists without recognizing their legitimacy. Please continue to pray for Sister Mary Olive Rowley
Today, in addition to being the Feast of Saint Margaret of Hungary (and of Blessed John Dominici in the Dominican calendar) is the feast of Saint Olivia, whom the Mohammedans tried to roast to death before they beheaded her in the Ninth Century. His Excellency Bishop Daniel Dolan, who reminded me of Saint Olivia's martyrdom, offered Mass for Sister Olive today. Thank you for your continued prayers for Sister Olive.
June 9 Article and Urgent Prayer Request
Catholics Care About Offending God
Although I have written a number of articles in the past two months on the astounding sacrilege committed by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI when he accepted with equanimity and joy the symbols of five false religions in Washington, District of Columbia, on Thursday, April 17, 2008, I am still nevertheless astounded by the lack of outrage for the honor and majesty of God that has been shown both before and after this public violation of the First Commandment. Millions upon millions of Catholics gave up their lives rather than even give the appearance of such apostasy. Why the silence? Why no outrage for the honor and glory and majesty of the Most Holy Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe that he is offending God, of course, and therein lies one of the essential keys to understanding this era of apostasy and betrayal. Anyone who does not understand that to accord false religions and their symbols any kind of respect or esteem is to offend God does not know Who God is as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. And such a lack of understanding as to Who God is is at the heart of Modernism and each of its progenies, including the New Theology, which is so near and dear to heart of Ratzinger/Benedict, who is undertaking a true "quiet revolution" to replace the surety of Scholasticism with the condemned principles of the likes of Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Catholics care about offending God. Then again, Catholics understand Who God is. Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
The next installment of the travelogue will be posted tomorrow, June 10, 2008, the Feast of Saint Margaret of Scotland. We are still in a "holding pattern" concerning the repair of our motor home's relatively new engine. Continue to pray for us.
I have just learned, at 6:49 a.m., Eastern time, that Sister Olive, who was requested by the School Sisters of Saint Francis to leave her order in the 1970s because of her refusal to accept the Novus Ordo and the changes in the order's habit, was rushed to a hospital in the Chicago area on Saturday night. Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., has administered the Sacrament of Extreme Unction to her. Although she was weak upon her admission, Sister Olive was sedated against her will, something that is, sadly, rather typical medical protocol for dealing with the elderly (she is eighty-seven years of age) as a means of showing "compassion." It never occurs to these naturalists who are trained to accept the killing of the innocent in the womb that an elderly person would want to be fully conscious and alert as she dies in order to offer up her final agonies to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Please pray for Sister Olive in what could be her final agony. She has suffered so long for the cause of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen. Along with her late sister, Sister Yvonne, also a School Sister of Saint Francis in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sister Olive assisted at countless Gregorian Masses offered over the decades by Father Stepanich. She is a valiant witness to the truths of the Catholic Faith without one iota of concession to anything to do with conciliarism whatsoever. (We were scheduled to visit Father Martin and Sister Olive this coming Friday, the Feast of Saint Anthony.)
June 7 Article
Cause and Effect
Yes, yes, yes, another Americanism article. Do I ever get tired about writing about Americanism? Yes! I am very tired as this is being posted. However, I am also sick and tired of Americanists quoting quite selectively from Pope Leo XIII's Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, making it appear as though the pope who condemned Americanism in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, was an uncritical enthusiast of the American founding principles. The American founding principles are premised upon the belief that there is no imperative for men and for their nations to subordinate themselves at all times and in all things to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His true Church. Those founding principles assert that it is possible for men to maintain social order without belief in, access to and cooperation with the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces. Those founding principles are the recipe for personal and social disorder, demonstrating the perfection of their inherent degeneracy with the passing of time. And those founding principles are one of the chief causes of conciliarism itself. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!
We continue to await word about our motor home's fate. Ford Motor Company has not seen fit thus far to return my phone calls. We offer all to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary in the midst of this latest cross, which has been perfectly fashioned for us from all eternity by the very hand of God Himself.
Viva Cristo Rey!
June 6 Article
One Devil Goes, Another One Enters
Just another Social Reign of Christ the King "reality check" for those of you wont to get all worked up about elections and other such naturalist fairy-tales and fables. Glad that Hillary Clinton is "gone," although she might, however unlikely, emerge as the successor to the man who runs the United States of America, Vice President Richard N. Cheney? Guess again. The devil who has defeated her is worse yet. Mothra has defeated Godzilla this time around, although it's possible that the two could join forces. Please understand that a monster is a a monster, and that no naturalist of the false opposites of the "right" and the "left" can make a nation secure that makes war upon the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as it puts the innocent preborn (and those after birth) to death under cover of civil law each day. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
A separate article will be written on the horrific injustice that the Ford Motor Company is doing to owners of their vehicles equipped with the Triton engine, the one that is prone to spit out spark plugs and subject drivers and passengers to gasoline fumes and horrific noise. Here are two articles from Consumer Affairs, however, that might give you some insight as to the extent of the problem that we have encountered in the past twenty-eight months:
Ford Engines "Dropping Like Flies" with Spark Plug Blow-Outs Ford's Spit-Out Spark Plugs Hit Mechanics in their Wallets. What has the Bush administration done about this? Nothing. The corporate executives at the Ford Motor Company do not even admit that there is a problem with the Triton engine, although their company makes a tool kit to repair the spark plug hole once the Triton engine spits out a spark plug. While our own considerable expenses, which our warranty may not cover as it turns out, will be offered to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, an effort will be made to seek justice of some sort from the executives who live in a world of corporate positivism and greed, mindless of the risk to which human beings dumb enough to buy their vehicles are being subjected in the process. Viva Cristo Rey!
Another article should be posted tomorrow, the First Saturday of the month of June.
Finally, Lucy is almost entirely better. Thank you for your prayers. Please keep them up!
June 5 Update
Yes, I had planned to have an another article posted today. And even though Lucy is not completely better yet (she's about seventy percent better than she was), I had intended to complete another article yesterday for posting on the feast of Saint Boniface today, June 5. In God's Holy Providence, however, our motor home's thirteen month, seven day old second Ford V-10 Triton engine spit out its first spark plug yesterday afternoon. The new engine has just 19,000 miles on it. Gasoline fumes and ear-splitting noise once again made their presence felt in the motor home. All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we love you. Save souls. We now how to make arrangements for the repairs. I will find time for completing an article tomorrow, June 5, 2008, in between dealing with this unexpected problem, which God knew from all eternity would occur.
His Excellency Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., celebrates his fiftieth anniversary of priestly ordination today, June 5, 2008. There will be a celebration of His Excellency's anniversary, held against his own protestations, this evening at Roberto's Ristorante in Monroe, Connecticut. As children under twelve years of age are not welcomed to attend, we will not be there ourselves (we go to no social functions without our daughter). However, we will be there in spirit, as I am sure that many of you will be as well. We have been most blessed to know His Excellency and to profit from his priestly care. He is a true son of Our Lady and Saint Dominic.
Could you offer a Rosary for His Excellency today? Thank you.
June 3 Article
No Cure for Polonium-210
The radioactive substance that killed former Russian intelligence officer Alexander
Litvinenko in 2006, Polonium-210, has no known cure. An outspoken critic of of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was President of Russia from late-1999 to May 7, 2008, Litvinenko was poisoned by a Russian agent. He died three weeks to the day after he was poisoned with a tiny, minute amount of the substance.
Any amount of poison can be deadly to a human being. The poisons of conciliarism have destroyed the sensus Catholicus of several generations of Catholics. Even conciliar "bishops" who want to act as Catholics now and again have an understanding of what passes for the Faith that is not Catholic, thoroughly immersed in the poisons of conciliarism that have blinded them to the reality that it is not possible to reconcile the synthetic faith in which they believe with the true Faith. Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
Lucy is getting better. She is still suffering from some of the after-effects of the allergic reaction to a treatment prescribed for a persistent cough. However, thanks be to God and by the intercession of His Most Blessed Mother, she is on the mend, offering up her remaining itching and discomfort and fatigue to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. We are very proud of our brave little girl!
Thank you for your prayers. Keep praying! Another article should appear tomorrow at some point.
Late June 2 Update
Well, it's been quite a day. Lucy's allergic reaction to treatment prescribed for a cough has given her an opportunity to make some real reparation for her own sins and those of the whole world as a consecrated slave of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. She's been real brave throughout quite an ordeal, which is not quite over yet. Physicians have examined her and prescribed a course of treatment that has seen some improvement in her condition. We thank one and all for your prayers. Keep them up!
An article should appear tomorrow, Tuesday, June 3, 2008, at some point. It is nearly completed. As I need to be up in about four hours from this posting (11:20 p.m., Eastern time) for Lucy's next dose of medicine, prudence dictates completing the article in the morning. Thanks for your patience. And our thanks to His Excellency Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., for giving Lucy the blessing for a sick child earlier today.
All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we love you. Save souls. Thank you for your prayers
May 31 Articles
Revised: Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May
Today, the last day in Our Lady's month of May, is the Feast of her Queenship. The Blessed Virgin Mary is Queen of Heaven and Earth. She is the Queen of Angels, the Queen of All Saints, the Queen of Patriarchs, the Queen of Prophets, the Queen of Apostles, the Queen of Martyrs, the Queen of Confessors, the Queen of Virgins, the Queen of Peace, the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary. Her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is offended when men and when their nations do not honor her as their Queen with public Rosary processions. What would the world look like if men and their nations took the Queen of the Rosary's Fatima Message seriously? What would our own families look like if we did so more earnestly? The devil knows what the world would look like if more and more men and their nations honored the woman who has crushed his head with her heel. We must endeavor with greater fervor and devotion to honor our Queen, especially by means of praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, renewing our total consecration to her Divine Son through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, enfolding ourselves in the mantle of the Brown Scapular and shielding ourselves with her Miraculous Medal, being assiduous also about handing out "Heaven's subpoena," the Green Scapular, to those whom God's Holy Providence places in our paths each day. O Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us.
Advancing by Leaps and Bounds
Evil advances by leaps and bounds in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world as a result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen. We must keep this ever in mind when faced with new and seemingly rapid advance of evil in our midst. A world founded in the delusion that is naturalism has no bulwark against the advance of evil. Indeed, such a world must produce astounding advances of evil as it rejects the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His true Church, the Catholic Church, for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication, rejecting also the necessity of belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace as the foundation for personal sanctity and thus of all social order. The scions of Modernity have been able to be as successful as they have been in recent decades in their promotion of one abject evil after another in very large measure because the scions of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism have seen fit to make an accommodation with the naturalistic, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles of the modern civil state. Indeed, the scions of conciliarism have offended God by esteeming the symbols of various false religions, thereby making it easier for men who reject Him entirely to subject innocent human life, both before and after birth, to a process of dehumanization by the use of linguistics designed to convince us that "useless" or "burdensome" life may be dispatched as physicians and family members see fit.
There is nothing really new in this article, which is the prelude to another article on this subject in a few weeks after a thorough process of vetting and consultation. In light of recent developments in the States of New York, California, and Texas, however, the subjects explored in the article being posted today are in need of reiteration as it is so very easy to be caught up in the web of naturalism and to view innocent human life in something approach utilitarian terms that makes short work of the Fifth Commandment and winds up putting one's trust uncritically in physicians who believe in the killing of the preborn and who think nothing about lying about the state of the disabled and the chronically or terminally ill after birth. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
As the hour is very late (actually, very early on the Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary), there is not likely to be an original article tomorrow, Sunday, June 1, 2008, the Third Sunday after Pentecost. There should be one on Monday, June 2, 2008.
Finally, I want to thank those of you have thus far responded to the recent donations appeal. Although the numbers are typically small, around thirty individuals, we are very appreciative of the generosity of those who continue to make this work possible, praying that more of you who support the work of this site and have the financial wherewithal to make a non-tax-deductible gift will do so sooner rather than later. Thank you.
May 30 Articles and Video Lecture Posting
Republished: Enthroning the Heart of Love in Our Homes
Today is the great Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, that fount of Mercy that was formed out of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother. Those of us who are sinners, which might just include each and every one of us, have been given a great feast day as a result of the private revelations given about the secrets of the Sacred Heart to Saint Gertrude the Great in the Thirteenth Century and to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in the Seventeenth Century.
Our sins loaded down the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus with opprobrium. It did not return evil for evil. It beat with matchless love for us until It was pierced with a lance by Saint Longinus's spear on Good Friday. It beats with matchless love for us each day in the Most Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacles of Catholic churches and chapels served by true bishops and true priests. How can we not return love for love? How we can continue in our coldness, our indifference, our lukewarmness to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus? How can we not live more penitentially to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world by offering unto this Heart of hearts all of our prayers and sufferings and penances and humiliations through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother? How can we not extend to others the Mercy that has been poured out so freely upon us by means of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus that was pumped through His Holy Body by His Most Sacred Heart? How can we cling to the world and its naturalism when the love of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus impels us to plant the seeds for the Social Reign of Christ the King and for that of Mary our Immaculate Queen? How indeed can we not make time to spend with Our Beloved in His Real Presence, where His Most Sacred Heart beats for us with bright, burning love?
Can we not spend some time with Our Beloved today? Can we not pray with our families the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus? Can we not renew our home enthronement to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, those Twin Hearts that beat as but one? Can we not show forth the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to all whom God's Holy Providence places in our paths on a daily basis? Can we not plead for the Mercy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance?
What a glorious feast day. Let us spend it well in prayer and adoration and thanksgiving, offering as many Rosaries as we can in reparation for our sins and thanksgiving that Our Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, was made Flesh in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb, taking for Himself a human Heart with which to love us unto eternity. Cor Jesu Sacratissimum, miserere nobis!
One World Plus One Church Equals Novus Ordo Seclorum
Another day in the life of counterfeit church of conciliarism, another dose of upcoming apostasies and sacrileges. Although it gets wearying to have to repeat the same old themes over and over again, nothing other than the honor and majesty of the Most Holy Trinity demands that some efforts be made to denounce false ecumenism and its efforts to appease adherents of false religions, as will be done in the hootenanny and hoedown known as World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!
There should be one original article tomorrow and a republished article on the Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Do not fret, the travelogue is coming your way soon. I have posted for purchase (for a measly $1.25!) at Christ or Chaos Store a lecture on the electoral college that I have recorded for purposes of "selling my wares" to committees evaluating applications that I am making to try to return to college teaching. This might be a futile process. However, I do have the obligation to continue to try to secure employment in my chosen field. More recordings in the "Living in the Shadow of the Cross" lecture program will be made next week.
A blessed Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus to you all!
May 29 Article
Monkey See, Monkey Do
Big yawn! Yes, I am tired, not entirely over the recent illness that I am endeavoring to offer up to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother. I am also yawning because the conciliar Vatican, one press report says, is going to host a conference next year on the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species. This is only logical. After all, those who believe in the evolution of dogmatic truth and the evolution of the liturgy and even the evolution of "churches" according to the paradigms of the "new ecclesiology" must want to celebrate the man, Charles Darwin, who helped to further the evolutionary work in the realm of philosophy that had been undertaken by Georg Hegel. And make no mistake about it: the conciliarists' embrace of the ideology of evolutionism has accustomed Catholics yet attached to their counterfeit structures to constant change and novelty and innovation and outrage and blasphemy and sacrilege as "normal" in the lives of dioceses and parishes. Monkey see, monkey do. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Although most of Tuesday and yesterday was spent in working on a project that may never see the light of day, I should have another original article and a republished article on the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus posted tomorrow, May 30, 2008, which is the forty-ninth anniversary of my First Holy Communion at Saint Aloysius Church in Great Neck, New York. There should also be a new video lecture posted by tomorrow as well.
Yesterday, May 28, 2008, was His Excellency Bishop Daniel Dolan's fifty-seventh birthday. Although it is more proper to celebrate the anniversaries of our Baptism, signifying the birth of our souls in the true Faith, we do want to extend our best wishes to His Excellency as he at least approaches his baptismal anniversary and as he commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of his own First Holy Communion in Michigan.
Finally, I note with sadness the death of Miss Rita Sullivan, the feisty sister of the late and equally feisty Father John Joseph
"Jackie Boy" Sullivan, that legendary pastor of souls in Connecticut (1916-2000) who taught me at Holy Apostles Seminary and was a valued mentor and friend until he died. I received word from Miss Sullivan's niece that she had died on April 14, 2008. We express our condolences to her nieces and nephews and their children and grandchildren. Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul and all of the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
May 27 Article
When Told To Do So
Although I have had but three hours of sleep in the past two days and am only slightly less sick now than I was during the Easter Octave, I have attended to this unexpected article, written as a result of an e-mail I received upon returning to Connecticut from Maine just before Midnight yesterday (Monday) morning. A longtime nemesis, for whom I pray and against whom I harbor no grudges, has taken to writing to a considerable group of influential conservative and traditionally Catholics to ask them to lobby me to "shut down" this website. Apart from his criticism of my embrace of the canonical and doctrinal truth of sedevacantism and that it applies in this era of apostasy and betrayal, the critic misrepresented the positions that I have taken with respect to exhorting readers to withdraw voluntarily from those aspects of popular culture that are truly the near occasions of sin, calling such exhortations "rigorist" in nature. Oh, really, huh?
My work is open for criticism and comment. Fine. The dwindling numbers of people who access this site are free to accept or reject what is contained thereon. I lose sleep only because of my travels and when I have to stay up late to write articles, not because I am worried about whether readers agree with my articles. I do, however, want critics to recognize that efforts are made to offer proper Catholic distinctions when dealing with matters of prudential judgment in the practical order of things. The caricature of my work on popular culture that was drawn by the critic in his note to an august assembly of luminaries is simply unjust. Reject my defense of my writing if you desire. Fine. Just present it accurately.
Obviously, none of this really matters. The more that we are calumniated and misunderstood is the better that it will go for us at the moment of our Particular Judgments if we die in states of Sanctifying Grace. As the "world" does have quite a hold on Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide, I did want to reiterate past points and to illustrate them with quotations from Father Frederick Faber and Saint Alphonsus de Liguori. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!
Our thanks to Father Benedict Hughes, CMRI, and the wonderful people of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in Lewiston, Maine, for their kindness to us during our brief visit there on Sunday, May 25, 2008. It was a long drive to and from Maine. I am in need of sleep before arising to take my family to 7:00 a.m. Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel in Monroe, Connecticut.
Check back in a day or so for the next article. Thanks. God bless, Mary keep, Thomas A. Droleskey
Opposing Sin Can Be the Near Occasion of Sin
We live in such a world of naturalism that it is easy for Catholics to get "all worked up" about this or that issue, losing sight of the fact that it is naturalism that is responsible for the outrages of the present time and that there is no secular, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist, interdenominational or nondenominational way to "solve" whatever problem arises and is the one making headlines at any given point in time. This is, of course, a consistent theme of my writing. Forget about all of my own copious verbiage! Father Frederick Faber summed up it all up quite well in just one sentence:
It [devotion to the Most Precious Blood of Jesus] shows that the true significance of every thing is to be found in the scheme of redemption, apart from which it is useless to discuss the problems of creation. (The Precious Blood, p. 259.)
Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and civil order. And in our battle to restore Catholicism as that one and only foundation of personal and civil order, we must, as consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother, follow the lead of our true shepherds, not go running off after events sponsored by various lay organizations. We are sheep. Sheep must follow their shepherds lest they be lost. We do not want to be lost, do we? Well, then, let us follow our shepherds, who will teach us that many well-meaning efforts to oppose sin can be in fact the near occasions of sin. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
There may be a gap of several days before the next article, which will be the next installment in the travelogue. We have had some big expenses in the last few days with continued repairs to the Trail Blazer, which also required four new tires. A new fund-raising letter, itemizing recent expenses, has been posted. Please consider helping us at this time. (Donations) Although in the throes of another bout of illness, we must drive the motor home to Maine later on today. Please pray for us!
New lectures in the not-so-very-great-in-demand video lecture series have been recorded. They will be posted after several more recordings next week.
Pray for us!
May 23 Article
Not Such a Triumph After All
Things are never quite what they appear to be at first glance when it comes to "news" emanating from the precincts of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. What appears to be "good news" usually comes with some kind of "catch." Such is the story of the reception of a Bishop Mar Bawai Soro, formerly of the Assyrian Apostolic Church of the East (the Nestorians), by the Chaldean Eparchy of Saint James the Apostle, based in El Cajon, California. An "ecumenical triumph," the reception has been called by some. Was it such a triumph after all?
Well, the facts indicate that the reality is more complex than the headlines. There is no evidence that Bishop Mar Bawai Soro bases his acceptance of the doctrine of Papal Primacy on the teaching authority of the Catholic Church (which bases it on the very words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Chapter 16 of The Gospel According to Saint Matthew). And Bishop Soro and his priests are being permitted, at least for the "time being," according to what Father Michael Bazzi, the pastor of Saint James Catholic Cathedral told me in a telephone conversion one week ago today, Friday, May 16, 2008, to use the Anaphora of Addai and Mari that does not contain any words of consecration. This is a triumph? Well, yes, I guess it is considered a triumph in conciliar circles to accept an invalid Eucharistic prayer (please spare me Joseph Ratzinger's and Karol Wojtyla's positivistic "approval' of the invalid Anaphora) used in the liturgies offered by true priests, at least for the "time being," in order to wave the flag of false ecumenism.
There are other questions raised by the news of Bishop Soro's reception into the Chaldean Rite based in El Cajon, California. These questions were posed to the Chaldean Bishop, His Excellency Bishop Yawsip Jammo, in writing. His Excellency explained to me in a telephone conversation on Monday, May 19, 2008, that he might not be able to answer my questions given the "sensitive" nature of the issues involved. With all due respect to a true bishop, albeit one associated with the conciliar church, what's "sensitive" about accepting the fullness of the Catholic Faith without compromise and without any precondition, finessing or "nuancing"? What's "sensitive" unless there have been compromises or preconditions and nuances that permitted Bishop Soro to "convert" on negotiated terms? (And I was told by Father Bazzi on Monday, May 19, 2008 that "negotiations" took place, at which point he advised me to contact Bishop Jammo directly.)
This is a long article. The purpose of this article is not to "cause trouble." It is to seek the truth. Words matter. Truth matters. There may very well be answers to the questions that I posed. Perhaps Bishop Jammo will consider answering them if they are posed by someone whose "thinking" he "is in line with" poses them to him. The fact, however, that the counterfeit church of conciliarism permits some high-profile converts to "convert" more or less on their own terms makes the facts of this particular case very important to ascertain.
A brief article should appear tomorrow, May 24, 2008, before we drive to Maine for my lecture after Father Benedict Hughes's Mass in Lewiston on Sunday afternoon. Work will be done on the travelogue as time permits during our travels of the next few days. That updated fund-raising letter that most of you will ignore (smile!) will be posted by Saturday morning.
Feast of Corpus Christi Reflection (Revised)
Revised: Marching With Our King
O Sacrament most holy, O Sacrament Divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine!
What sublime privilege is ours to be able to receive in Holy Communion the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the very Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation. Each offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass incarnates Our Lord under the appearances of bread and wine as a priest, acting in persona Christi, utters mere words over the mere elements of this passing earth, which is why the Preface of the Nativity is used for the Masses of Corpus Christi. What is denied to angels, the power to make incarnate and then to be fed by the God-Man in Holy Communion, is given to mere men.
Our Lord not only feeds us with Himself in Holy Communion. He permits us to spend time with Him in fervent prayer before His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, keeping company with Our Lady and Saint Joseph and all of the angels and the saints in a veritable foretaste of Heaven itself. It's not a bad idea, therefore, to spend a little time with Our Eucharistic King each day (that is, of course, for those blessed to live in areas served by true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism or to its false shepherds) if we want to spend all eternity with Him in Heaven. Rather than being concerned with getting a "sun tan" to appear bronzed for the summer, we should be concerned with letting the rays of the bright burning love of the Co-Eternal Son made Man permeate our souls by spending time before His Real Presence, Wherein beats the matchless love of His Most Sacred Heart that was formed out of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
O Sacrament most holy, O Sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine!
There was no time yesterday to write an original article. The piece involving some bit of investigative journalism will be posted tomorrow, May 23, 2008, now that I have spoken to the Eastern rite bishop upon whom I was waiting for a response to specific questions. "My thinking is not in line with yours," said this bishop when I spoke with him yesterday afternoon. With a few revisions to be made today, therefore, the article, which has been vetted by His Excellency Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., will be published tomorrow. A briefer article (the one to be posted runs about thirty-seven pages) will be posted on Saturday, May 24, 2008.
The travelogue. Just be patient. Just be patient. It will be forthcoming soon.
A blessed Feast of Corpus Christi to you all!
May 21 Article and Novena to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Time to Prepare
