The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us

A Lost Cause: Could the Last Catholic King of England Become a Saint? | uCatholic

https://ucatholic.com/blog/a-lost-cause-could-the-last-catholic-king-of-england-become-a-saint/

Hat tip: Lizann “why I’m staying”

Why I'm staying

Ever since the Boston Globe broke wide open the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in 2002, it is been difficult for Catholics to defend why we remain in the Church. Who would want to be part of an organization that supports and hides such horrific crimes against children? Millions of Catholics left the Church – millions stayed. Those who stayed were not supporters of criminals. They were being faithful to the Church that holds the fullness of Truth, as much as they possibly could. In spite of name calling and harassment by family and friends, co-workers and even strangers. They held on, things died down, and we thought the worst was over.

Fast forward to 2018. Now we are seeing the true breadth and depth of the sexual sins that have infiltrated the Church. Now we know that it's not just priests with altar boys, it's Monsignors with seminarians, it's Bishops with new young priests…..it's Cardinals with their own family. Truly enough to make you physically sick to consider that THESE are the men who have been entrusted with the one and only Church given to us by Almighty God – the Bride of Christ. This is how they treat her, this is how we have been betrayed, and used, and lied to. For generations.

So why am I staying? Why would I have in the deepest parts of my soul and heart to want nothing more than TO stay?

Because this is where Truth lives. In spite of the slime, the depravity, the criminality, the sin, the demonic, the lies, the deception, the abuse — all done by sinful men who don't believe in God or His Church (for if they did, they surely would not be doing what they have done) TRUTH prevails. Truth always prevails.

Satan wants nothing more than to see the Bride of Christ sullied and pushed in the mud. He laughs when souls leave her behind because of the sins of men. He rejoices when headlines and comboxes fill with vile and hateful commentary about her. He lives to see as many souls flee from Truth as he can possibly influence.

But I'm not going to let that happen — not on my watch. I REFUSE to be bullied by those who no longer believe, or who never believed in the first place. I refuse to be angered by criminals to the point of turning my back on the most incredible gift ever given to mankind – the gift of the Holy Catholic Church. I refuse to play along with Satan's games and become so distracted by the sins of others that I lose sight of my own.

Those who have pushed Our Bride into the dirt — THEY can leave Our Father's House.

As for me, I stay because Catholic is what I am. Not something I do. I stay because this is where Truth lives. And I don't ever want to live anywhere else.

ASK FATHER: “I utterly reject Bergoglio, so how can I remain a Catholic?” Fr. Z’s rant and beatdown. | Fr. Z's Blog

https://wdtprs.com/2019/11/ask-father-i-utterly-reject-bergoglio-so-how-can-i-remain-a-catholic-fr-zs-rant-and-beatdown/

toxic?

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/

The Wedding: How to Be a Catholic Music Patron, at Least Once - OnePeterFive

https://onepeterfive.com/wedding-catholic-music-patron/

New Liturgical Movement: A New Online Resource for Researching and Preparing a Latin Mass Wedding

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/11/a-new-online-resource-for-researching.html

RORATE CÆLI: “Hyperpapalism and Liturgical Mutation: The Case Against the Novus Ordo” — Full Text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s Lepanto Lecture

https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2019/07/hyperpapalism-and-liturgical-mutation.html

If a Thing’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Extravagantly - OnePeterFive

https://onepeterfive.com/worth-doing-extravagantly/

If a Thing's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Extravagantly

Peter Kwasniewski June 5, 2019 One Comment

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We all know the old saying: "If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly." We take comfort in the sentiment, since far too often in this life we are compelled, either by circumstances beyond our control, or by our own inherent weaknesses and limitations, to settle for results less than ideal. We did what we could; we, and others, are still better for it.

But in our society, there is also a temptation to do less than we actually could do; to think that people will walk away from what is too grand or too demanding; to insist that we should keep things modest, manageable, and non-invasive. It seems to me that this attitude has pretty much taken over in the Catholic Church. Parishes go to enormous lengths to make liturgy comfortable; inoffensive; undemanding; and, above all, not too time-consuming. Rare is the liturgy that surpasses an hour on the clock.

In this way, the adage "don't let the best be enemy of the good" turns into "don't aim for the best; aim for good enough."

I have been thinking about this problem a great deal recently, in light of my experience with the pre-1955 Holy Week. On Palm Sunday and during the Triduum, each liturgy was far longer than any I had ever attended before (whether of the 1962 missal or the 1969), and yet each seemed just the right length for what "had" to happen. I've subsequently talked or corresponded with others who attended the same rites elsewhere, and we all had the same impression: these liturgies unfolded on such a grand scale, and had such a power of capturing one's attention, that duration stopped mattering. Instead of being prey to the hegemony of the clock, the rites dominated time, took generously of it, helped themselves to as much as they needed. Those who experienced them wouldn't have wanted them any shorter.

We also agreed that the rites accomplished this minor miracle (at least for modern Western souls) by a stubborn method: excess. There was always a great deal of material to be sung, whether it was two lessons and two tracts on Good Friday or twelve readings on Holy Saturday. Usually the old Mass displays a certain terseness or compactness as compared with the sprawling verbosity of the Novus Ordo, but in these days of Holy Week, it was different: superabundance was the rule, and it was absolutely appropriate.

I was thinking about these things again when I had the privilege of attending the Mass with First Holy Communions at the local oratory of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. The Institute's unofficial motto could be "There's no success like excess." Instead of making the liturgy kiddy-friendly and bite-sized, with artsy-crafty banners and Hallmark sentiments, the liturgy was solemn to the hilt, replete with lofty sacred music, majestic in ceremony, with more "going on" than at any such occasion I had ever seen — not only the First Communion Mass, which started with a procession in which the communicants themselves took part, but also a Marian procession with a triple May crowning (that is, three statues of Our Lady crowned with flowers) and an investiture with the Brown Scapular. It was a liturgy that, from its fullness and leisurely pace, had a "punch" similar to that of the Holy Week rites. In short, it exemplified the maximalist maxim: "If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing extravagantly."

I could only think back to my own First Communion, which was a low-key affair involving wafers placed into hands, accompanied by sappy music. Liturgically, it was a wash-out, and it left no impression on me of the awesomeness of this moment. I realize that little children, at least most of them, will not yet be in a position to fathom the awesomeness of the gift of Our Lord, but it seems to me past all reasonable doubt that the children in the Oratory would have felt, by the splendor surrounding them, that something profoundly important, momentous, glorious, was taking place in their lives — and that they would carry in their hearts a radiant memory of that day.

Put simply, if we want Catholics to take their faith seriously, they need to be provided with serious experiences of that faith — experiences saturated with reverence and beauty. Nothing less is worthy of the God of glory whom all creation adores, especially the heavenly hierarchies of angelic beings; nothing less is appropriate to our dignity as sons alive in the Son; nothing less will succeed in carving a permanent groove in the hardness of our fallen human nature. What we need is not less liturgy, less time in church, a less demanding religion, but the contrary: more liturgy, more time in church, more demands from our religion. By taking our time, lavishing it on God, lingering in worship, cutting no corners, seizing hold of the means of sanctification, we learn the proper hierarchy of goods and values. We take on the yoke of Christ and get used to it, instead of easing it off as quickly as we can.

This is what I saw in the First Holy Communion Mass and its attendant ceremonies, and I consider it exemplary. May more and more churches in the United States and around the world come soon to the realization that Catholicism will flourish again only when it is not afraid to put itself in first place, asking everything from us, and claiming to give us in return the All that is God.

Free Traditional Catholic Books II - Catholic Tradition - Traditional Catholic Reading | Traditional Catholic

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What is at stake after the European election

De Mattei: What is at stake after the European elections of May 26 

Roberto de Mattei 

Corrispondenza Romana

May 29, 2019

The elections of May 26th were an important episode in a conflict that goes way beyond the destiny of the European Parliament or any national government. In fact, a lobby exists that has as its aim, the destruction of Christian identity and the construction of cosmopolitan organisms that are assuming sovereign power of life and death over its European citizens. An example of this plan is what has just happened in France, where the Paris Court of Appeals handed over to the United Nations Organization, the ultimate decision on the life of Vincent Lambert, the French paraplegic condemned to death by his wife and the doctors at Rheims Hospital, where he is a patient.      

It is clear that power of legislation on the life of Lambert does not pertain to the French judges, nor those of Europe or the United Nations. Positive laws, both national and international, do not have their source in the entities that emanate or apply them, but in a divine law that is preexistent to the laws of men and by the laws of men cannot be changed.   Now, the natural and divine law prohibits the killing of the innocent and any human law claiming to establish the contrary must be considered a non-law, invalid and iniquitous. Further, inasmuch as the only guardian of the divine and natural law is the Catholic Church, it is first of all up to the men of the Church to proclaim the inalienable right to life.  But today the voice of the men of the Church is gone.  The only problem  the leaders of the Church seem to be interested in is that of hospitality to migrants from outside of Europe. An absolute, unconditional, total hospitality. We are not dealing here with the ancient virtue, whether Christian or secular, of hospitality, but of an ideological choice, wherein the philosophy of hospitality is presented, in reality, as a theory of renouncing European identity, or rather, its replacement.

The concept of "the great replacement" introduced by Renaud Camus (Le Grand Remplacement, David Reinharc, Neuilly-sur-Seine 2011) was developed by Professor Renato Cristin in his book I padroni del caos [The Lords of Chaos] (Liberlibri, Macerata 2017).  By way of a rigorous analysis, the author, who teaches philosophy at the University of Trieste, explains how this theory aims at substituting European populations with other populations (Africans, Arabians, Asians, for the most part Muslim) [thus] producing chaos as a concrete historical prospect. Cristin refers to the existence of a 2001 United Nations project in which "replacement migration" is explicitly addressed, in order to deal with the European demographic decline. 

The flows of populations are not only an ethnic transplanting, but a toppling of civilization, a "counter-colonization", in which migrants are seen as bringers of a hybrid civilization or mixed race,  opposed to the Christian one which built Europe. The destruction of the national States passes thereby through a policy of replacement, whether it be ethnic or cultural. The cultural replacement consists in the negation of any identity rooted in European Christian tradition; the ethnic replacement occurs with the entry of a human mass of immigrants that substitute the European population, decimated by abortion and contraception. The anti-birth mentality is the biological expression of the cultural and moral suicide of the West. 

The results of the European Elections rewarded the political parties that most openly invoke national identities. Of particular importance is the sweeping victory of Matteo Salvini's Lega, which attained 34.3% of the votes in Italy. But Italy, however, has been the country where the push for immigration has been the strongest, with not only the Episcopal Conference entering the field, but even Pope Francis who has been presenting himself as the leader of the leftwing political spectrum. The front-cover of the weekly L'Espresso, May 26th, portrays Pope Francis with the mask of Zorro, the vigilante, and defines him as the voice of "the people's protest" against Salvini. On May 27th,in his Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees", Pope Francis affirmed that "the motto of the true Christian is 'the last' first', reiterating: " this is not only about migrants: it is about putting the 'last' first". That same morning, the Pope met with the Chief of the Kayapo Indios of the Amazon, Raoni Metukire, to re-launch revolutionary indigenism, in view of the Synod on the Amazon in October. 

 The Bergoglian theology of the "last" represents open encouragement for the "replacement migration" strategy.  It is not clear who 'the last' are, but it is clear who those that must be replaced are, in the new "preferential option." The Gospel exhorts us to love our neighbor as ourselves: "there is no greater commandment than this" (Mark 12, 29-31). St Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica (question 26, part II-II), explains however, that love for our neighbor is not a generic and indiscriminate sentiment, but has a precise gradation, which he calls the 'order of charity', whereby love must progressively extend itself from those closest to those farthest away. God must be loved more than our neighbor (a.2) and more than ourselves (a.3). Man must love himself more than his neighbor (a.4) and among our neighbors, some are to be loved more than others (a.6). The closest to us are those who gave us life and those we gave it to: our parents and our children. It is from them that love for our neighbor begins. 

It would make no sense, for example, to throw our parents out in the street in order to bring a couple of immigrants into their room. Further, the love that we owe our neighbor is primarily of a spiritual nature. What we must desire more than anything else, is the salvation of those we love. And loving means desiring their salvation. In the case of immigrants this consists in desiring their conversion to the true faith.  But today there is no pastoral care of evangelization for immigrants underway, in Italy or in Europe. Multiculturalism is presented as a much higher value than the monocultural Christian identity. 

The dogma of hospitality is being proclaimed furthermore, by a society that takes the life of innocent human beings, unborn babies and old people; the former condemned to death by abortion, the latter, by euthanasia, without any real opposition to these crimes by the men of the Church. In reality, those who are scandalized by the display of a crucifix in schools or by a rosary kissed by a political leader, not only want to extirpate every public expression of Christianity, but also expect to snuff out the light of the divine and natural law still existent in our consciences, compelling us to defend innocent human life. And those who still have a Christian conscience, cannot but reclaim the vivid presence of the Crucifix, not only in private life, but also in public life and in the collective identity of European nations.  

Hence, we call upon the political parties in Italy, Hungary, France and many other countries that won the elections, thereby defeating "immigrationism", not to limit themselves to a generic or superficial call to Christian roots, but to express this identity concretely in the institutions and laws of Europe, starting with the uncompromising defense of life and the family. The "Lambert case", after that of Eluana Englaro and Alfie Evans, is the example of a battle that must be conducted in the upcoming months. This will perhaps raise the level of the conflict, but today we are battling for the life or death of our civilization. This battle, prior to being in parliament, is to be conducted in [our] culture and mentality. Yet, the electoral results have the function of revealing the deep tendencies of public opinion and in the case of May 26th, the electoral test demonstrates a European population that is not about to capitulate