As Christmas draws to a close, may all have a Blessed Candlemas Day

February 2nd, Candlemas Day, marks the liturgical end of the Christmas season. In celebration of the day I include an upload to a rigorous modern Christmas carol.

Religious Indifferentism and the failure of the Clergy: a reflection by Michael Voris

Religious indifferentism is a half-way house to theoretical and/or practical atheism. Its manifestation by clergy is extremely dangerous; the faithful reflecting in their lives the approach of the clergy to separated brethren. Michael Voris articulates a number of serious concerns about recent manifestations of, de facto, expressions of religious indifferentism by leading churchmen. 

I may add that even here in Canada, in Montreal, newly appointed "conservative" Archbishop Lepine at an ecumenical gathering last week, in his homily avoided scrupulously any mention of the one, true Church, or a need for the separated brethren to return to Her. Sad, so sad. 

Perhaps the strongest part of Voris' video are the words he quotes from St. John Eudes on worldly and wayward clergy not actually preaching and teaching the Word of God. And remember, the saint is not saying these men do not believe: but that they fail to transmit, to teach, to warn, to reproach: for they are too caught up in their personal, worldly pursuits. 

Perhaps even more dangerous is the "conservative" churchman who completely misreads the signs of the times and pursues worldly pleasures. Whereas the "liberal" may be a wolf by commission, he is a wolf by omission. Do you want to know if a priest is good: look at his fruits, look at the faithful under his watch. There, is your answer. Please pray for your priests.

Susan Fox: An American Poet and her poem,"Corpus Christi"

I am delighted to once again present to our readers another beautiful poem, Corpus Christi, by our dear friend, Susan Fox. You may read the entire poem at her blog, Christ's Faithful Witness. 

“Lord, here are two swords,”

we cried, as youth will cry

in pity and in ignorance;

Peter draws his sword at the arrest of Jesus

But we divided,

you, weeping with intellectual fervor

for the very stones He tread upon;

And I

in smiling sorrow

dancing to my death

at a bright intersection...

Happy Birthday Mozart!!!

Today, January 27th, marks the birthday of the great man. Please say a prayer for the repose of his noble soul. 

Fascist Boris Johnson strikes against Christian charity by suppressing an advert on London buses

"...everything in the State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State". 

Mussolini

When evil is weak, it demands "tolerance", when strong it cannot itself tolerate opposition; in fact, it strives might and main to suppress any opposition, as evil hates and fears truth. So it is with the homosexualist movement. 

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, (who  masquerades as a "conservative") is, in reality, a hankerer after fascism. How so? Consider his homosexualist reaction to an advert placed on London buses by the Christian organization, The Core Issues Trust (funding also received from a group named, Anglican Mainstream). The advert was a response to the militant homosexualist organization, "Stonewall". 

Johnson imposed - what amounts to - his fascist censorship upon the Christian charity with the usual nonesensical claim that it was "offensive", banning the advert. Core Issues Trust has sought court action to overturn the ruling. 

The immediate spiritual tragedy of this is that there is a strong movement afoot that seeks to block outreach to persons suffering from same-sex attraction. The banning of this advert bodes badly for Christians who seek to spread the Gospel message of repentance and reconciliation with God; who seek to reach out to persons suffering from homosexual attraction with the truth of the Gospels. 

But it goes deeper than just the inability of Christians bringing the Gospel to those persons who practice homosexuality. It goes to the State's motivation and involvement in dictating and imposing forms of morality inimical to the Gospels. The motivation is fascist. Consider the words of the Italian jackel (in the words of Churchill), Mussolini: 

The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people.

Thus it was inevitable that the Catholic Church crossed swords with the Jackel. In our day, the British jackel, Johnson, is seeking to impose a totalitarian conception of State "values", outside of which opposition cannot exist, nor have any value. In the United States, not to be outdone, the American Jackel, Obama, persecutes nuns and others who dissent from his totalitarian will to impose morally unacceptable practices via his "Obamacare". And so on. Who would have thought that the once great fighters against totalitarianism are gradually, under the seductive lure of moral relativism, giving rise to a thinly disguised form of totalitarianism, which will, unless stopped, metamorphosis into open fascism. Be prepared. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI warned us. In fact, Pope Benedict addressed prophetic words to the US bishops, warning of totalitarianism and a grave crisis. Be prepared for persecution.

True Ecumenism is the return to Unity within the Catholic Church: Has the encyclical "Lumen Fidei" already been forgotten?

As the week for Christian unity draws to a close - over the hubbub of  insipid niceties and empty words - let us recall the doctrinal lessons on true unity in the Catholic Church. Pope Francis, drawing on the nearly complete text of what would have been the third encyclical by the venerable Pope Benedict XVI, promulgated in Lumen Fidei the following:

The unity and integrity of faith

47. The unity of the Church in time and space is linked to the unity of the faith: "there is one body and one Spirit… one faith" (Eph 4:4-5). These days we can imagine a group of people being united in a common cause, in mutual affection, in sharing the same destiny and a single purpose. But we find it hard to conceive of a unity in one truth. We tend to think that a unity of this sort is incompatible with freedom of thought and personal autonomy. Yet the experience of love shows us that a common vision is possible, for through love we learn how to see reality through the eyes of others, not as something which impoverishes but instead enriches our vision. Genuine love, after the fashion of God’s love, ultimately requires truth, and the shared contemplation of the truth which is Jesus Christ enables love to become deep and enduring. This is also the great joy of faith: a unity of vision in one body and one spirit. Saint Leo the Great could say: "If faith is not one, then it is not faith".[40]

What is the secret of this unity? Faith is "one", in the first place, because of the oneness of the God who is known and confessed. All the articles of faith speak of God; they are ways to know him and his works. Consequently, their unity is far superior to any possible construct of human reason. They possess a unity which enriches us because it is given to us and makes us one.

Faith is also one because it is directed to the one Lord, to the life of Jesus, to the concrete history which he shares with us. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons made this clear in his struggle against Gnosticism. 

The Gnostics held that there are two kinds of faith: a crude, imperfect faith suited to the masses, which remained at the level of Jesus’ flesh and the contemplation of his mysteries; and a deeper, perfect faith reserved to a small circle of initiates who were intellectually capable of rising above the flesh of Jesus towards the mysteries of the unknown divinity. In opposition to this claim, which even today exerts a certain attraction and has its followers, Saint Irenaeus insisted that there is but one faith, for it is grounded in the concrete event of the incarnation and can never transcend the flesh and history of Christ, inasmuch as God willed to reveal himself fully in that flesh. For this reason, he says, there is no difference in the faith of "those able to discourse of it at length" and "those who speak but little", between the greater and the less: the first cannot increase the faith, nor the second diminish it.[41]

Finally, faith is one because it is shared by the whole Church, which is one body and one Spirit. In the communion of the one subject which is the Church, we receive a common gaze. By professing the same faith, we stand firm on the same rock, we are transformed by the same Spirit of love, we radiate one light and we have a single insight into reality.

48. Since faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity and integrity. Precisely because all the articles of faith are interconnected, to deny one of them, even of those that seem least important, is tantamount to distorting the whole. Each period of history can find this or that point of faith easier or harder to accept: hence the need for vigilance in ensuring that the deposit of faith is passed on in its entirety (cf. 1 Tim 6:20) and that all aspects of the profession of faith are duly emphasized. Indeed, inasmuch as the unity of faith is the unity of the Church, to subtract something from the faith is to subtract something from the veracity of communion. The Fathers described faith as a body, the body of truth composed of various members, by analogy with the body of Christ and its prolongation in the Church.[42] The integrity of the faith was also tied to the image of the Church as a virgin and her fidelity in love for Christ her spouse; harming the faith means harming communion with the Lord.[43] The unity of faith, then, is the unity of a living body; this was clearly brought out by Blessed John Henry Newman when he listed among the characteristic notes for distinguishing the continuity of doctrine over time its power to assimilate everything that it meets in the various settings in which it becomes present and in the diverse cultures which it encounters,[44] purifying all things and bringing them to their finest expression. Faith is thus shown to be universal, catholic, because its light expands in order to illumine the entire cosmos and all of history.

49. As a service to the unity of faith and its integral transmission, the Lord gave his Church the gift of apostolic succession. Through this means, the continuity of the Church’s memory is ensured and certain access can be had to the wellspring from which faith flows. The assurance of continuity with the origins is thus given by living persons, in a way consonant with the living faith which the Church is called to transmit. She depends on the fidelity of witnesses chosen by the Lord for this task. For this reason, the magisterium always speaks in obedience to the prior word on which faith is based; it is reliable because of its trust in the word which it hears, preserves and expounds.[45] In Saint Paul’s farewell discourse to the elders of Ephesus at Miletus, which Saint Luke recounts for us in the Acts of the Apostles, he testifies that he had carried out the task which the Lord had entrusted to him of "declaring the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). Thanks to the Church’s magisterium, this counsel can come to us in its integrity, and with it the joy of being able to follow it fully.

Ecumenism requires the Church of England to return to the one source of Unity: the Catholic Church

We should stop deceiving our separated brethren from the Church of England: they must return to unity abandoning their schism and heresies. The recent introduction of women as "priestesses" and "bishopesses" renders any future return impossible without the Church of England abandoning its false view of sacramental power. The Russian Orthodox have recently, clearly informed the Church of England of this reality. Metropolitan Hilarion wrote the following to Justin Welby: 

Regrettably, the late 20^th century and the beginning of the third millennium have brought tangible difficulties in relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Churches of the Anglican Communion. The introduction female priesthood and now episcopate, the blessing of same-sex ‘unions’ and ‘marriages’, the ordination of homosexuals as pastors and bishops – all these innovations are seen by the Orthodox as deviations from the tradition of the Early Church, which increasingly estrange Anglicanism from the Orthodox Church and contribute to a further division of Christendom as a whole.

For Catholics, not to inform these separated brethren of this, charitably, but clearly (as Orthodoxy has done) is to continue to offer false hope. We must not lie to these people; delusional discussions  on ecumenism is a long walk down a never ending road.... the Church of England is but a broken cistern, from which the waters of life have long since disappeared. 

Please pray for England's conversion. 

"Rev" Mary Styles following her "ordination" to the "priesthood"
at All Saints church, Rome, Italy. Recently interviewed by Vatican Radio

Toronto Traditional Mass Society-Una Voce Toronto: Sung Latin Mass for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

Tomorrow, January 25th, at the parish of the Holy Martyrs of Japan, Mass will be offered according to the usus antiquior of the Roman Rite. It is being organized by the Toronto Traditional Mass Society- Una Voce Toronto.

A map to get to the church may be viewed here.