April 2009 Archives

From the American Papist blog, which has had the most reliable coverage, when most of the rest of the internet was tying itself up in knots about Bishop Williamson, this blog has continued to cover this story and in spite of denunciations by those whose pockets are lined with the funds of the Legion.

The Legion posted the press release on their website yesterday. The information was received by them from Rome on March 10th- so they waited three weeks to reveal it.

From the blog post:

The press release consists of three things:
1) a letter from Director General Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, LC
2) a letter from Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone, saying that the Vatican will undertake a visitation of the Legion
3) a short Q&A of four questions written by the Legion
Here is the introduction posted on the Legion website:

"Rome, March 31, 2009. We wish to share with Regnum Christi members and friends two letters announcing an Apostolic Visitation to the institutions of the Legionaries of Christ. We also have included some questions/answers. This is the beginning of a process in which the Legion will fully and gratefully cooperate. We invite our readers to accompany us with prayers that this special help from the Holy Father will assist the Legion and Regnum Christi to love Christ and serve His Church."

The Legion website that contains the press release is here.

With the Legion's usual spin on how everything is just great and we're still Rome's favorite: this quote is highlighted:

Father Álvaro Corcuera: “With deep gratitude we have experienced the closeness of the Holy See at this phase in the life of our congregation."

It's just remarkable.

A one minute video from Priests for Life.

Juarez, Mexico is caught in the crossfire of a war between competing drug cartels. The murder rate for last year was 1600 in the city of Juarez alone with the total number killed as a result of drug wars in the whole country of Mexico was 6000.

His Excellency Renato Ascencio Leon has asked for 1 Million Rosaries to be said with the intention of the return of peace to Juarez. The Bishop has already distributed 30,000 rosaries- a very good start but short of 1 million.

If you would like to donate Rosaries for this essential project please send them to:

Diocesis de Ciudad Juarez
Monsenor Renato Ascencio Leon
P.O. Box 26824
El Paso, TX 79926

For more information about this crusade you can visit the website devoted to it here. There is a place to enter the number of Rosaries that you have said for this cause.

The Radio Guadalupana is also informing people about the crusade.

Oh come and mourn with me awhile!
See, Mary calls us to her side;
Oh come and let us mourn with her;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified!

Have we no tears to shed for Him,
While soldiers scoff and Jews deride?
Ah! look how patiently He hangs;
Jesus! our Love, is crucified!

How fast His Hands and Feet are nailed;
His blessed Tongue with thirst is tied;
His failing Eyes are blind with blood;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified!

His Mother cannot reach His Face;
She stands in helplessness beside;
Her heart is martyred with her Son’s;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified!

Click here for Oklahoma Family Policy Council article, "Leftist 'Community Organizing' Infiltrates Oklahoma Churches."

Dear Latin Mass friends,

Resurrexit sicut dixit!
He is risen as He said!

At St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, the Latin Mass Church, will have Holy week

April 5th Palm Sunday 8am and 10:30am High mass with procession

April 9th Maundy Thursday mass at 6pm
plus adoration until midnight.

April 10th Good Friday Solemn Liturgy 3pm

April 11th Paschal Vigil and Mass 10pm

April 12th Solemn High Mass Sunday at 11am
(8am) low mass.

Also, we have restored the great 1912 Wicks organ, come hear this organ as you pray the Holy Mass.

Also, rosary is said before each mass. Daily mass at 12:10pm

The church is located at 1009 North 8th street In Quincy, Ill. 62301

Father Devillers, Chaplain
217-222-2511

Remnant Press Release

Starting this coming Wednesday, March 4th, there will be a traditional Low Mass at the Church of the Holy Innocents at 5:15pm every Wednesday.

The Celebrant will be the Pastor, Fr. Thomas Kallumady.

The church is located at 128 W. 37th Street, New York, NY 10018. Phone: (212) 279-5861.

Inform all those in the NYC area who sincerely would like to support this traditional Mass by attending It or by serving It.

Lest we forget that the Jews, as well as all men, must come to Jesus Christ in order to be saved, we should recall the traditional prayer of Holy Mother Church for their conversion. The following is taken from the St. Joseph Daily Missal (1950, Cardinal Spellman).

Let us pray also for the unfaithful Jews, that our God and Lord would remove the veil from their hearts; that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ.

[The genuflection is omitted, and the Celebrant continues:]

Almighty and everlasting God, Who drivest not even the faithless Jews away from Thy mercy, hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people, that, acknowledging the light of Thy truth, which is Christ, they may be rescued from their darkness. Through the same Lord, etc.

But why is the genuflection omitted? Because of the Jews' mockery of Our Lord, recounted in the Passion we heard on Palm Sunday:

And platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand. And bowing the knee before Him, they mocked Him, saying: Hail, king of the Jews. (Matt. 27: 29)

Many of our readers, I hope, will have the opportunity to attend the traditional Easter Vigil this Saturday. The beautiful ceremonies and symbolism, the readings and prayers and chants are filled with the riches of our Faith and are worthy of our meditation.

One part of the Vigil I await with joy every year is the reading of the Creation account in the Book of Genesis. For in this Scripture, the good God took care to provide us some very important details about our nature and the nature of things around us. It serves to lay aside the speculative errors of men, especially those of modern atheistic science. And further, it serves as a sword to divide men according to their will to believe or disbelieve the Genesis account.

[Update from Cyprian] This sounded too good to be true, and as it turns out, it isn't. It's just the Daily Mail trying to stir the pot. They have even modified their story today, changing the original title
(article).

The "offending" line is taken from meditations on the "Way of the Cross" by Archbishop Menamparampil of Guwahati, India, delivered on Good Friday at the Colosseum with Pope Benedict presiding. At the Seventh Station, the bishop prayed, "Allow us not to drift into the desert of godlessness."

Thanks to Tom on angelqueen.org, I just learned about a newer new logo employed by Boston's Caritas Christi Health Care to emphasize its new slogan "Quality to the People." The new logo and new slogan have arrived just in time for Caritas' new abortion referral business. The logo, below, is copied from the left-hand side of the Caritas home page.

Notice the rays and the fist which are borrowed from "power to the people" emblems. Tom found a great poster to that effect.

Not to be outdone, I hunted around for some artwork, and found the following poster entitled Power to the People. It speaks for itself.

The Good Friday story about the desert of godlessness is getting more bizarre. We now have Hindus praising Pope Benedict for including Hindu scriptures in the meditations (here). They're also pleased with the mention of Gandhi.

Here is how Archbishop Menamparampil, in commemoration of the greatest act in all of history, framed Our Lord as a social justice activist:

Third Station: Jesus is held guilty by the Sanhedrin

MEDITATION

In every land, there have been innocent persons who suffered, people who died fighting for freedom, equality or justice. Those who struggle on behalf of God’s little ones are promoting God’s own work. For he presses for the rights of the weak and the oppressed.[1] Whoever collaborates in this work, in the spirit of Jesus, brings hope to the oppressed and offers a corrective message to the evildoer himself.

Jesus’ manner of struggling for justice is not to rouse the collective anger of people against the opponent, so that they are led into forms of greater injustice. On the contrary, it is to challenge the foe with the rightness of one’s cause and evoke the good will of the opponent in such a way that injustice is renounced through persuasion and a change of heart. Mahatma Gandhi brought this teaching of Jesus on non-violence into public life with amazing success.

Is anyone still worried that the Church is turning back the clock? Pray for Pope Benedict.

Pro-Life Irish Shut Down Euthanasia Lecture in Cork, from Catholic Family News. Great news.

Pope Gregory XVI would be pleased. Likewise Ven. Pius IX. Should there be "free speech" to advocate murder?

(Introit) Quasi modo geniti infantes, alleluia, rationabiles, sine dolo lac concupiscite, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, [that thereby you may grow unto salvation] (1 Peter 2, 2)

Quasimodo is also the name of the main character in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I didn't understand the name when I first saw the movie decades ago. (Notre Dame refers to the cathedral in Paris, not the apostate school in Indiana.)

More from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Low Sunday

The first Sunday after Easter. The origin of the name is uncertain, but it is apparently intended to indicate the contrast between it and the great Easter festival immediately preceding, and also, perhaps, to signify that, being the Octave Day of Easter, it was considered part of that feast, though in a lower degree. Its liturgical name is Dominica in albis depositis, derived from the fact that on it the neophytes, who had been baptized on Easter Eve, then for the first time laid aside their white baptismal robes. St. Augustine mentions this custom in a sermon for the day, and it is also alluded to in the Eastertide Vesper hymn, "Ad regias Agni dapes" (or, in its older form, "Ad cœnam Agni providi"), written by an ancient imitator of St. Ambrose. Low Sunday is also called by some liturgical writers Pascha clausum, signifying the close of the Easter Octave, and "Quasimodo Sunday", from the Introit at Mass — "Quasi modo geniti infantes, rationabile, sine dolo lac concupiscite", — which words are used by the Church with special reference to the newly baptized neophytes, as well as in general allusion to man's renovation through the Resurrection. The latter name is still common in parts of France and Germany.

Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam, A.D. 1302 (1927 translation, emphasis added)

Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, as the Spouse in the Canticles [Sgs 6:8] proclaims: 'One is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only one, the chosen of her who bore her,' and she represents one sole mystical body whose Head is Christ and the head of Christ is God [1 Cor 11:3]. In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism [Eph 4:5]. There had been at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, which ark, having been finished to a single cubit, had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed.

We venerate this Church as one, the Lord having said by the mouth of the prophet: 'Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword and my only one from the hand of the dog.' [Ps 21:20] He has prayed for his soul, that is for himself, heart and body; and this body, that is to say, the Church, He has called one because of the unity of the Spouse, of the faith, of the sacraments, and of the charity of the Church. This is the tunic of the Lord, the seamless tunic, which was not rent but which was cast by lot [Jn 19:23-24]. Therefore, of the one and only Church there is one body and one head, not two heads like a monster; that is, Christ and the Vicar of Christ, Peter and the successor of Peter, since the Lord speaking to Peter Himself said: 'Feed my sheep' [Jn 21:17], meaning, my sheep in general, not these, nor those in particular, whence we understand that He entrusted all to him [Peter]. Therefore, if the Greeks or others should say that they are not confided to Peter and to his successors, they must confess not being the sheep of Christ, since Our Lord says in John 'there is one sheepfold and one shepherd.'

This is Catholic action at its best, folks! How many millions of murdered children, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops et al are now organizing for—you got it—climate change! (Stories here and here, covenant web site here) They're even claiming that Pope Benedict XVI is leading these efforts: “Our earth speaks to us, and we must listen if we want to survive.”

No salvation without lowering the carbon footprint! So tell me, what distinguishes us from the gaia worshippers? Happy earth day, by the way!

Thanks to BELLATOR, we got the news that a US Senate bill to push mental health screening on mothers (S. 324) has reared its ugly head again.

“The Mothers Act has the net affect of reclassifying the natural process of pregnancy and birth as a mental disorder that requires the use of unproven and extremely dangerous psychotropic medications (which can also easily harm the child). The bill was obviously written by the Big Pharma lobby and its passage into law would be considered laughable except that it is actually happening,” writes Byron Richards for NewsWithViews.

An action page, with charts on the increase in adverse reactions of mothers to antidepressants, can be found here. A study showing increased risk of sudden cardiac death among women using antidepressants can be found here.

This is just more socialist intervention into families and a lead-in to population control Nazi-style, that is, following on the regime that turned the "mental hygiene" movement into mass murder.

Sean Cardinal O'Malley, who will shuttle babies to their abortion deaths from his Caritas Health Care facilities (here), lamented the "greatest crime in human history" in Boston last Sunday (story here).

"We gather as Christians and as Jews to acknowledge and lament what was undoubtedly the greatest crime in human history - the slaughter of millions of innocent Jews and others in the Holocaust," O'Malley said. "Remembrance of what took place is a solemn obligation and the best antidote against the spiritual poison that leads to the shameless slaughter of the innocents."

This is big. This is as if the the Secretary of the Treasury admitted that capitalism is OK. But this is better.

On April 21, Cardinal Cañizares Llovera, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, offered the Traditional Mass at the Basilica of St. John, Lateran. Read more here, and follow the link for a slide show.