FOR
PRIESTS WHO ARE PERSECUTED
EXCERPTS FROM THE DIGNITY AND DUTIES OF THE PRIEST BY ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI
PRAYERS AND COUNSELS: CHRIST
PRAYERS AND COUNSELS: THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
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INTRODUCTION
by Pauly Fongemie
The third, eighth, and thirteenth decades of the Rosary: the Nativity of Our Lord, the grace or fruit of which is----love of poverty and detachment from the things of this world; the Crowning with Thorns----the mortification of pride and a willingness to undergo humiliation for the sake of Jesus Christ; and the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon Mary and the Apostles----zeal for the salvation of souls----can be thought of as three of the Mysteries of Our Lady's Rosary that particularly apply to the sacerdotal priesthood, although each of the Fifteen Mysteries as given to Saint Dominic by Our Lady is for everyone to meditate on and request its special grace, and for priests most necessarily as she is their Mother, the Mother of those who are other Christs, which is what priests are, and the Queen of the Clergy. There can be no authentic priest who is not Marian in his devotion and predisposition, just as there can be no living plant without water and air.
Before the official Rosary as we now know it to be was promulgated through Saint Dominic, it was there from the very beginning, with the Apostles, who had a very real and personal knowledge of the Mother of God, to whom they clung, each in their own way and circumstances after the Ascension. After her Assumption, the Christian [Catholic] people and the Apostles prayed for her intercession. Religious orders began to use Our Lady's "Psalter"----based on the 150 Psalms----and there are 150 Hail Marys on the Fifteen Decades. Our Lady was closely associated with the Passion and Death of her Divine Son, and His life upon earth, and after the Resurrection, and now in Heaven. And she alone knew Him as she did as soon as He was conceived through the Holy Ghost in her womb. It was she who laid Him in the manger after giving Him His first clothing and searched in agony for Him for three days. It was from her that He took his Sacred Humanity. When you have lost the Person you love most, whom do you go to? His most trusted and intimate relative. At the Foot of the Cross, Christ bequeathed His Holy Mother and Saint John to each other, not for each alone, but for us, His Mystical Body. The sacrifice was almost done, save for the "It is finished." He was installing her as the Mother of the Church and the Mother of Priests through the virtuous, pure Saint John, virginal as was she. While he was not immaculately conceived, he was the purest of heart and purest of soul of the Twelve, thus it was fitting that Jesus' preference was for him as it is for the purest of souls, and that he should be given the privilege of seeing to Mary's needs as she did his----he understood he was to care for her as she was for him and them. Priests are to care for Mary, first by loving her more than their own mothers, for the sake of their own mothers, actually----as Mary wrapped Jesus in the winding sheet of His burial and received His lifeless Body into her arms, so the mother of the priest receives a small replica of that winding sheet, called the winding cloth, which is safeguarded like precious jewels in its own container, linen once again, which is placed inside her coffin before she is buried----explaining Our Lady, defending her, preaching and teaching her. To accomplish this sacred task entrusted to him by Christ on the Cross he must be her intimate, he must know her in prayer and meditate on her life with Christ. These are the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary; there might have been more mysteries, I suppose, that could have been added, why not hundreds? as there are so many aspects to the mission of Our Savior recorded in Scripture. But she did not tell Saint Dominic to pick and choose, she selected the Fifteen and that is and should be good enough for us. Lest anyone think he has plumbed the depths of even one of the Fifteen, let him think again! It takes a lifetime to traverse the fertile county of Our Lady's Rosary as preached by Saint Dominic, so Fifteen decades of 150 Hail Mary's is most wise, one Hail Mary for each of the 150 Psalms. Once I began to pour over them I found either a direct link or a meaning embedded in each, to each Hail Mary meditation of each Mystery. It was as if Heaven Itself had opened before my eyes! I am still praying on it and if God permits the grace, then and only then, will I write of this in exacting detail. To sum it all up, a priest, a good and holy priest who never dissented from the Magisterium and who always conducted himself in the most sacerdotal manner, told me, "The priest who stops saying the Rosary or thinks it is not of importance, who downplays Our Lady, soon becomes a worldly priest, a bad priest." He also told me the adage about priests, which I put in my own words briefly:
If the priest is a Saint, the people will be holy; if he is a good man, they will be lukewarm; if he is lukewarm, the people will be worse; and if he is a bad, the people will go to Hell.
Any priest who wants to give a sermon to touch his parishioners in the Catholic sense ought never neglect saying a Hail Mary before Mass. A priest who has never failed to instruct his people in the tenets and ordinances of Almighty God and His Holy Church, once told me that he always says a Hail Mary. He did not tell me this to brag, for he was not conscious that I was impressed, and being as humble as he was I don't think he would have heard me if I had tried to tell him----he is not the sort to boast at all as he is self-effacing always. He told me this because he was full of love for His Mother, the Mother of priests, and he could not hide it. I never forgot his telling me and I do not think I ever could.
Jesus let His Mother minister to Him and He is God! Ought not His special ministers, His priests, who are indispensable for the sanctification of men, not ask her day and night to minister to them?! The priest who rejects Marian piety insults Christ Who finds the priest shunning her or finding shame in devotion to her to be as He did the buyers and sellers in the Temple, and such a priest risks the loss of his own soul as he is called to be holier than his people, for his tasks are utterly sacred and not of this world.
He enters the Holiest of Holies, the Sanctuary. Her womb was the first Tabernacle or Sanctuary. Her maternal Heart is that first Sanctuary now. She leans forward to offer it to her priests, if only they will reach out and take it as their own, make it their home and let their hearts be her abode.
The priests who are most truly humble-----not merely modest or outwardly humble----are always Marian in their approach; I have never met an exception, if it could be possible that one could exist. And it is the most humble of humble priests who are best sanctified through long trials and persecution, for only they actually "merit" it and can long endure. If they are in prison, they may not have the essentials for Mass, they may never be able to receive the Sacrament of Confession themselves, but they always have the Rosary----ten fingers for each decade suffices, and barring that, one will do, over and over. The last two words of any saintly priest seem to be so often, "Jesus and Mary."
For those of us who have personal knowledge and or are acquainted with at least one priest and or bishop who is persecuted, the third decade of each group of Mysteries take on more poignancy and significance. Priests are generally singled out for torment in three ways: by repressive governments that despise the Catholic Church, such as that of Red China and Russia; by their own bishops who punish them severely because they obey Christ rather than modern men with little or no faith, in other words, keep to Tradition; and by their fellow priests with the same mindset as the worldly bishop.
According to the web site that monitors the persecution of priests in the U.S., WOMEN OF TRUTH, "Fr. John Hardon predicted that entire dioceses would disappear in the U.S. He also said only a handful of bishops were entirely faithful (six) and only about 60 others were 'mostly' faithful.' "
I recall a diocesan priest recounting his experience at a priest's forum where priests who had a devotion to Our Lady were shunned and otherwise made known that they were unworthy of common courtesy. This latter is of course not a persecution per se, merely a momentary trial. The oppression or harassment comes into play when these ignorant priests taunt good priests behind their back, in front of parishioners, who learn to do the same, or at least reject Tradition by cultivating a disdain for the first source of our holy faith, and the Body of Christ is thus scarred and diminished.
In one of the parishes I used to belong to, we had one of those Tradition-bashing newly ordained priests; he thought himself quite clever to mock the Immemorial Roman Mass in little impromptu skits that he had learned in his seminary socialization process. Some of the laity would laugh, as if our patrimony, the sacred rites, were a joke. Some were scandalized. That was the beginning of the end of that parish, which had been the most thriving among the town parishes, with sodalities, novenas, two daily Masses, a Catholic school with a waiting list, and so forth. From that very moment that the laity laughed with the priest, a change was perceptive, that things would never be the same again, could never be the same again and not for the better. Balloons at Mass became acceptable, and the entire panoply of buffoonery that ran riot in those days, and still does, although slightly moderated as even excess has its limits. Those parishioners who stayed on gave every evidence of being material heretics for the most part----I duly noted the prominent exceptions----and lax on morality. The vice of sodomy was not as rigorously resisted and on and on. Now there is not even weekly confession in that parish. Eventually this would have happened because of the so-called "priest shortage". There is an aura of forever fading twilight as the light of faith dims. I had to go there for the funeral of a young mother and I found myself weeping, less for her family than more for all of them. The decrepitude of the New Age, lay-centered "Church" was palpable, draped over the nave and apse like a funereal pall and I wanted to bolt, but knew I had to remain out of respect for her family. That family had retained the Rosary and was pure of heart, and with more woes than one could imagine. A son had entered the seminary only to be so scandalized by the rampant, open homosexuality, that he left for another vocation altogether. It was heart-breaking for the parents who could not understand how or why. And that mocking, jeering, heretical priest? He was later defrocked, along with another pastor who served there later, along with two other priests who served there even later and who left the practice of the priesthood, gone, who knows where. And another curate left to join the homosexual "collective" and was in the sorriest state I had ever seen a man to be. I had met up with him quite accidentally in another city and could not believe how far he had fallen. Take pity on him and pray for his immortal soul. God knows who he is, I shall not give his name. For this priest, and those like him, implore the graces of the Second Sorrowful Mystery, The Scourging at the Pillar. They persecute themselves.
And the people at large? They did not seem to care very much----these priests were local celebrities of sorts. Always a part of the social scene. The tepid exchanged their God-given patrimony for a plague, preferring contempt for the sacred. If they had gone en masse or at least in a large committee to the bishop, a weak man, but a pragmatic one also, and beseeched him for redress and made public atonement, I wonder, would they be in such a mortifying state as a parish? Only one parishioner went to the bishop, to no avail. She left for another parish where the priest was holy but the nuns that gave seminars were not, judging on their open dissent. She, went once more to the bishop, asking for fellow parishioners to join her, only one had the courage to do so, but, he, too, backed out in the end, leaving her to be "the only one." The only one appears to such bishops as an inconvenient anomaly, easily dismissed with no army arrayed for strength. The holy pastor did not need the bishops' approval to tell the nun she could not come back unless she upheld Church teaching, which he promptly did, although she was then free to tamper with souls elsewhere; which is why the parishioner went to the bishop; the good pastor told the "lone" parishioner that it took him over a year to gain permission from the Chancery to evict the dissident parishioners who wanted to confect the Eucharist for themselves, as if such a thing were possible! The nun was part of a gaggle of barb-toothed wolverines who had shed their habits, and were stirring up trouble in the diocese, arousing the laity to revolution in the Sacraments and moral doctrine. The dissident group in the parish was just one such lay center of agitation whose unholy passions had been unleashed by such indoctrination through a series of workshops and conferences. They had stormed the rectory with bold, blasphemous demands! Not so with the next priest, it was the other way around as you will soon see. And that parish? They have their problems, too numerous to list, but I am sure you get the idea. After that holy priest retired, changes were rapid and all downhill, where Tradition is concerned. And that single parishioner? she was booted out by the incoming pastor who exclaimed with vehemence, and I quote precisely: "I hate that Mass!" He was referring to the Immemorial Roman Mass, the Latin Mass, saying that he would never [in an almost a screaming tone] say it. Pray for his immortal soul, too. He is old and ill, pray for him! She was booted out because she defended Tradition and had requested Forty Hours Adoration, a no-no, apparently! She had also publicly defended the Seven Sacraments as given by Christ and dogmatically codified in the Council of Trent, which caused resentment among the dissenting laity. The request for the Forty Hours was either the pretext or simply the last straw. He did her a favor, for which I hope he is liberally awarded with the grace of repentance for his blasphemy!
Often a loathing of the ancient Roman Mass is part and parcel of an impure life, for the holiness of the Tridentine Mass serves to underscore the so lapsing priest who knows what it is that he does so unworthily of his state in life. The New Mass draws no such prick of conscience. The buzz words are two of course, "I will never turn my back on the people", and "Who knows Latin?" So now the priest turns his back on God and the gibberish that is the new translation is a language indecipherable to anyone with reason still operating. Political correctness in spiritual dress is hard to comprehend because it changes with the winds of modern fickleness. It most assuredly does not preserve the faith whole and entire and pass it on! Priests who want to say the Mass of Tradition are treated like pariahs. Occasionally a priest of the "collective" is taken with the old Mass because it is a good cover, who would suspect him? and it is an opportunity for "dress up". But they are in the minority, thanks be to God! A very wise older priest once told me that "whenever you see dissent from Traditional teaching and rejection of the sacred, the problem is usually below the belt." He left it at that. Was he ever prescient! Pray very much for this priest who hates the Ancient Mass, please. I never forget to, I do not dare to. Love of the sinner, love of the feckless priest, compassion for them is so Catholic an enterprise, it is a way of life. After a while, you relish praying for such priests, and all priests who suffer because of other priests. Mourn for our own dead souls if we do not.
Whenever I cannot say the entire Rosary for priests, I always set aside the third decade of each set of Mysteries for them alone without fail.
The Nativity----detachment from the world and a love of poverty:
As Our Savior consented to be born in a lowly manger because there was no room for him anywhere else, so the priest consents to lay his head wherever and whenever God wills it for him, because He wills it. As the Infant King lay on a bed of straw, so the priest must be prepared to lay on a hard cold prison cell floor, if need be; as Jesus consented to be born in obscurity with but a few of the nearby shepherds and three Magi brought from afar by the Star in the East to pay Him homage along with His Mother and foster father and countless Angels, so the priest must be "born" anew by grace and mortification in relative obscurity, known by only a few perhaps, if that hiddeness is a part of monastic life or persecution; as Jesus, Sovereign King, became littleness itself, rejected by many of those who were His Own people, the priest becomes littleness by his humility and obedience to unjust authority, accepting rejection----provided that he does not sin in so doing-----by long-suffering patience and even love for the revilement and petty recriminations hurled against him because of his fidelity to Christ. Christ is once more in the cold stable at Bethlehem. The priest is another Christ.
Whenever I read about the priests [bishops] who do [did] not join the Communist Chinese "Patriotic Church", some of whom have disappeared, to be wasting away in prison or buried in some unmarked grave, I cannot stop crying, while the world pays little if any attention, preferring "most favorite nation status" for Red China. Yet, the Saints and Angels rejoice if these "little ones" are faithful to the end, for they earn a great crown in Heaven; I am neither, so I weep.
Their visit by wise men from afar comes in the form of other unknown Catholics the world over who know their plight and pray, night and day.
The Crowning with Thorns----mortification of pride and preference for humiliation:
Christ was asked by Pontius Pilate if it was true that he claimed to be a King. And our Lord answered by acknowledging indirectly when He asked the Roman governor, [I am paraphrasing], "Dost thou say this of thyself or has another told you this?" Now Pilate knew Jesus to be innocent of the charges but before he gave into human respect and permitted the Jews to choose the life of a convicted murderer over that of the pure Lamb of God, without spot or wrinkle, to sacrifice to their vainglory and perfidy to the ancient Scriptures in which the truth of what Christ preached was enshrined, and which they should have preferred to their own pride, Pilate sent Him to be scourged, hoping to deter them from going further, but he did not order the Crowning with Thorns.
The coarse soldiers devised this "anointment" of Christ's kingship of their own accord. It was particularly cruel. Christ had already been scourged so badly at the pillar, by three pairs of twos that the ground was aswim in His Sacred Blood: there was scarcely a place on His back and shoulders that was not a gaping sore. He could barely walk. Human reason tells us that barbarity itself was shocked and that the punishment should have ceased then and permanently. Not even the blood-lust of the Roman orgies of murder in the Coliseum matched the enormity of that done at the scourging with such relentless, vicious savagery. Now comes the "coronation of spiny thorns".
The soldiers put on Him a red robe, that must have caused excruciating pain to His open wounds with shards of torn skin burnished together with flesh and weave to render the cloak Blood-Wine, not just red; then they put in His hand the scepter, sign of reigning power, as further mockery, and the Crown of Thorns that burrowed into His Sacred Head like burning pincers all the while jeering at Him in His Kingship. One can only begin to imagine the hatred in the souls of these blasphemous, venomous men! But then our sins caused this suffering and so we have a glimpse, just a glimpse, but a long-lasting penetrating one, of the evil that the smallest venial sin is!
And our sins cause the persecution of good and holy priests, too, in a very real way. For we grow lax and fall away from the ardor of our faith when we prefer the respect of our neighbors to that of doing what is good and right and defending Jesus and Mary and all our patrimony, which includes the special sacred dignity of the priest, his duty to us and ours to him. We are afraid to stand out and have fingers pointed at us. We sin by pride as the Jewish Sanhedrin did. Priests take on that sin of pride for our salvation by living lives of abject poverty [in comparison to the poorest among us], certainly poverty of spirit, the denunciation of pride, the willingness to be humiliated for the sake of the Kingdom of God. And who suffers more humiliation today? No one than the humble, holy, Traditional priest. An object of scorn of his fellow non-Traditional priests, who should be his succor, as Jesus was scorned and defiled by the soldiers! An object of curiosity to the public at large, if it has even heard of such priests, he is soon reviled as being anti-modern, although he may drive a car, and if at all possible in his circumstances, use a computer, and believe in much of modern medicine and so forth. It is the "crime" or "sin" of standing for and with Sacred Tradition that rankles the worldly, modern priest and/or bishop, and those that seek his favor, for he takes it as a personal rebuke of his "lifestyle" and gnostic dabbling. That is his own fault, but like those who seek to kill the messenger because the message is too hard to bear, the faithless prelate daily kills by degrees the faithful priest.
The good priest exposes the rot in the seminaries and elsewhere and instead of the bishop taking swift action to clean out the invasive vice, he punishes the priest and rewards those who have debased their sacerdotal calling. The priest is silenced, mocked, given a false rod with which to practice his priestly office, forbidden to preach or speak publicly, denied the faculties of the priest in general, while open sodomites and the predators of innocence are given one sinecure after another. And there are other scenarios involving the planned death of whole dioceses because of treasonous bishops that bring good priests to the same unjust punishment. We do not need to go through them one at a time, it is enough to acknowledge the injustice.
Randy Engel, the author of The Rite of Sodomy: Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church wrote recently of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops:
"Bishop Arthur Serratelli of the Diocese of Paterson, N.J., is the new USCCB Chairman of the Committee on Doctrine. A champion of consensus in the Bernardin-mode, instead of confrontation, he was consecrated Auxiliary Bishop of Newark, N.J., by "gay"-friendly Theodore Cardinal McCarrick in July 2000. He served under Archbishop John Myers of Newark until McCarrick secured the Diocese of Paterson for him."
In other words, despite the scandals, it is business as usual and Heaven help the priest who is a thorn in the side of the overwhelming "gay-friendly" bishops. That priest of courage and duty wears the thorn as many in a crown, as one noted priest has been. [See FR. HALEY, WHISTLEBLOWER, STILL IN "LIMBO".] And there are others, many others.
One good priest in the confessional and pulpit can do more good than an entire diocese of weak and cowardly men of the cloth who look the other way while depravity and dissent runs wickedly amok. Sometimes the "sin" is only that the priest will not say the fiendish New Mass of Pope Paul VI, which would force him to daily promote heresy and blasphemy. Any good priest with a solid seminary formation and the faith to match cannot but be stalwart in rejecting this abomination: His conscience cannot permit this for the good of souls, as well as his own. Saint Alphonsus Liguori tells us that it is better to have one good priest in a diocese, than many who are not. One Holy Mass said with the holiness of a Padre Pio, who had a brief celebret [he died soon after the Novus Ordo promulgation] to say the ancient Roman Mass is of infinitely more salutary value than a New Mass said with the rubrics observed. Bishops who deny even this single Mass said by this singular man of God, ordained to do expressly this, offer worthy sacrifice for the remission of sin, bring down upon themselves such a hideous place in Hell if they do not repent, that words fail to describe it. St. Alphonsus says that the sinning priest sins more grievously than that of the lay man. Bishops are priests with special offices and powers, and when they sin in such manner, even Hell is aghast!
Think of the loneliness and helplessness of such a priest who cannot say Mass for the people or hear their Confessions, simply because he would not be perfidious to the precepts of Almighty God! Who will hear his plight and make the plea on his behalf in this modern "prison"? He truly wears a crown of thorns upon his head, the piercing, stabbing pain that denies him his public priesthood as if he were less than a man, an object of shame! Sometimes, even his close relatives shun him. They can be forgiven their ignorance, for surely they know not what it is they reject! I am thinking of one such priest, whom I will not name, and I know with certainty that there are others.
Whenever I read about such suffering priests, amidst the trumped up "priest shortage", I cannot stop crying, while the world pays little if any attention, preferring Father toastmaster of ceremonies who only talks of sin in the way the world talks of it, not Jesus Christ. Yet, the Saints and Angels rejoice if these "little ones" are faithful to the end, for they earn a great crown in Heaven; I am neither, so I weep.
Their earthly comfort, along the Via Dolorosa comes in the form of other unknown Catholics the world over who know their agony and pray, night and day.
The Descent of the Holy Ghost----zeal for the salvation of souls:
In the Gospel of John, Douay-Rheims Bible, Chapter 2, verses 12-17, we read:
"After this He went down to Capharnaum, and He and His Mother, and His brethren, and His disciples: and they remained there not many days.
"And the pasch of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
"And He found in the temple them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting.
"And when He had made, as it were, a scourge of little cords, He drove them all out of the temple, the sheep also and the oxen, and the money of the changers he poured out, and the tables He overthrew.
"And to them that sold doves He said: Take these things hence, and make not the house of My Father a house of traffic.
"And His disciples remembered, that it was written: 'The zeal of Thy house hath eaten Me up.' "
Priests must be consumed with zeal for the house of God, for all its just and saving decrees, to the point if need be, they give up their lives. Surely they surrender themselves in daily mortification, a martyrdom by way of life.
So holy is our God that He cannot be worshipped in any other way than He commands; whenever the Israelites veered from the path of Tradition in this regard or had an express command from Him otherwise, they were severely punished by death and captivity and confusion. The priest must guard the Sanctuary and all its august appointments with his very being. Normal changes are permitted of course, those that are incidental, because they are necessary. This is how we always know. If they are arbitrary or not absolutely required, then the change that occurs violates Sacred Tradition. This is why is it is called Sacred----it must not be touched or violated. Pope Saint Pius V, in Quo Primum set in stone, as it were, for all time the holy precepts of the Mass and the Tridentine or Roman Rite, telling the priest he cannot be denied the right to the rite. He has a celebret in perpetuity. St. Pius gave anathemas to anyone that said or did otherwise, just as the dogmatic Council of Trent did as to the Mass entirely in the vernacular. An anathema is a condemnation that includes mortal sin, objectively stated. Popes put them in their encyclicals only out of utter necessity. God knew what diabolical disorientation in the Sanctuary was coming so he was preparing us. The English Martyrs died on the gallows because they refused to say the Mass of Cranmer, almost word for word the Novus Ordo, complete with Communion in the hand. Priests persecuted by their bishops for doing the same are not on the gallows, but are still drawn and quartered by being marginalized and silenced, etc. Any priest who is willing to permit the defilement of the Altar by others, or participate in it soils himself and renders himself unworthy. Now when I say this, I do not include those honest and true good men who do not have the traditional faith in all its dimensions, who went to a modern seminary and do not know that they do not know. They went into the priesthood for the right reasons and not to subvert the Church from within. This is not their fault. And there are some older priests who were not taught in what obedience consists, that it can be sinful. I am speaking of priests who know. They cannot follow into the new order of Cranmer II. They suffer persecution willingly as lambs to the slaughter.
Whenever I read about such unjustly punished priests, amidst the closing of parishes, I cannot stop crying, while the world pays little if any attention, preferring less opportunity for Mass and Confession, so if the only scheduled Mass interferes with a scheduled ball game, the game wins out. So prevalent is this that just a few weeks ago a little girl, a sweet handicapped girl, who was receiving her First Holy Communion, was accompanied by her grandmother and mother. Why, because the ball game was more important to father and son who did not attend Mass. Imagine a game more important than Mass and a sister and daughter's First Holy Communion! Sadly this is what the Novus Ordo teaches in so many ways, in so many words. Of course, we all could say, better not to go to such a Mass. Yes, certainly, but most of these people do not know all this and have no other Masses. From their point of view it is okay to miss Mass, not because it is harmful to the faith and blasphemes, but because "I prefer the ball game." Context is very subtle sometimes, but all-important. A priest told me that when a parish had to stop the Saturday afternoon Mass of Anticipation, one of his own friends stopped going because she preferred that Mass. Others the same, they want to be able to pip pop into Mass in their hip hop Saturday clothes as a necessary "get it out of the way thing", so Sunday belongs to them, not God. How do I know, because they have told me in so many words. They do not even bother to change their sports clothes, actions speak loudest of all. The woman friend of the priest is not an exception or soon will not be. It is because the Saturday "Sunday" Mass is an altogether different species of liturgy, even more suitable for a wordly people, than the same Mass on Sunday. Ironically it is the very same people who state openly their preference for a particular parish Mass who object to or look puzzled at those Catholics who want to go to the Latin Mass. They do not realize their hypocrisy.
Yet, the Saints and Angels rejoice if these calumnied, despised priests who are forbidden to say Mass because it is the Latin Mass they say, persevere unto the end, for the Holy Ghost anoints them from Heaven; I am neither, so I weep.
Their earthly comfort, if any can be taken, comes in the form of tongues of other unknown despised Traditional Catholics the world over who know their torment and pray, night and day.
Holy priests of Tradition are irreplaceable. Where there is mockery or willful disregard of Sacred Tradition, the people soon grow tepid at the very least, for it is Tradition that is the bedrock of Christ's teaching and the expression of that faith in its cultural and liturgical dimensions. Before the Sacred Scriptures were codified there was the nascent Sacred Magisterium through the Apostles who were commanded by Christ to go out and preach----"whoever hears you . . ."----not "reads the Gospels", and before these two, there was Sacred Tradition, the oral handing down [later in written form] of all that Christ did and taught, how we were to worship, how to live, what to believe, and even how to die worthily, the death of a Saint. The New Testament tells us that Christ taught other things to His disciples that were not recorded therein. Since Jesus did not waste time, nor was or is He banal, those things He taught and did that are not recorded are of significance! And Saint Paul admonishes us not to forsake all the traditions taught by the Apostles. Hence we say in the Nicene Creed, One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Essentially Divine Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle. All doctrine is based on this, and is a formal declaration of that which has always been believed and taught since the beginning. For instance, it was universally held that Our Lady never underwent bodily corruption after death. In a rudimentary way the Church believed in her Assumption, body and and soul into Heaven immediately after death. This is called an inherent belief. When Pope Pius XII formally declared the Dogma of the Assumption, he was stating that the belief which had always been held was being given formal expression. He was not giving us a new dogma, since there is no such thing. All dogmas [revealed doctrine ----not concocted by men] and the doctrines that make up the orbit around them have always been believed in some rudimentary form from the very beginning. The precision of a formal definition is just that. Those who want to change the Church into something they devise because they are not men of true and vigorous faith need to disparage Tradition in order to make us compliant and receptive to their heresies and blasphemies. This takes time. But look what has been accomplished in just forty years! So when a priest places himself in the camp that holds to Tradition he is marked and put into his place so as not be a threat to the hegemony of heresy and sacrilege, audacity and deceit.
Like their Queen, they will receive from Christ and from her their Crowns. Let us pray for them all that they will accept their Martyrdom, dry or of blood with the noble bearing and dignity of the priest, and let us rejoice that there are such men at all!
Mary, Queen of the Clergy, Succor them in their trial.
Click the forward scroll for the discourse by St. Alphonsus. written for priests.
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EXTERNAL LINK 1: THE UNDERGROUND CHURCH IN CHINA
EXTERNAL LINK 2: THE CARDINAL KUNG FOUNDATION
EXTERNAL LINK 3: CHINESE PRIESTS ARRESTED
EXTERNAL LINK 4: WOMEN OF TRUTH: THE PERSECUTION OF PRIESTS IN THE U.S.
EXTERNAL LINK 5: RUSSIAN REPRESSION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
EXTERNAL LINK 6: RUSSIAN GROWS EXTREMELY ANTI-CATHOLIC
EXTERNAL LINK 7: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH'S STATUS IN RUSSIA
EXTERNAL LINK 8: THE CONVERSION OF RUSSIA TO ISLAM!
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