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Święty Papież Jan Paweł II

P ope Saint John Paul II

Sanctus Ioannes Paulus PP. II

 

 

  Basilica Sancti Petri  5 V 2011  
 

Basilica Sancti Petri, 5 V 2011 at the Beatification of John Paul II

 

 

  This is not a Sedevacantist Page or Site. Are you sensing a but coming?  

 

 

Though indeed one might and probably should point out that we find here recorded in the Holy Scriptures, not any old bloke arrogating to himself the authority to criticize the divinely appointed Prince of the Apostles. Rather it is a saint, personnally set apart by God for apostleship, and the author (strictly or broadly) of thirteen or fourteen books of the Bible, who was later martyred for the faith, who presumes place to do so.

And in the XXI century orthodox-catholic Christians — the only actual Christians — are all now in a terrible position with regards all this, place there by our Popes and Patriarchs.

And No, it is not truthful to put forward inapposite analogies to the deeds of Martin Luther or John Calvin or the like, men whose crimes against the only true faith which is orthodox-catholic Christianity and the only true Church, the Orthodox-Catholic Church, consisted not in their heated disputes with popes but in their propagation of heretical doctrines, arrogating to themselves the ability and authority to alter the content of the Faith from that which the Church has always taught.

And Yes, our times present critically different circumstances than those in which the Church was headed, for example by bad popes, bad by virtue of personnal perversions. Some of the Renaissance popes are frequently cited. If such men are headed to Hell, that is in no small part their own problem for each such, and though obviously luxury lovers and licentious lechers in high Church offices are not good for the Church, such is a different kind and order of problem for the Church in its human aspect than the circumstances when high Church office is occupied by men who, again and again, put in evidence, and introduce into the Communion of the Christian faithful confusion as to the content of the Faith, heresy and apostasy by actions and an apparant embrace of Indifferentism, Syncretism, False Ecumenism and the pan-heresy which is Modernism.

—Which is not to say that the heavy diet of Nationalism and Ethnophyletism which the big-O Orthodox Church leaders feed their flocks supplies some kind of alternative which is holy Orthodoxy—

But No, it is not an adequate response, it is no holy answer at all, to say that such heresies and apostasy are mixed in with a large corpus of work and utterances which are/were orthodox, for such is nearly always the case with heresy. This, partial truth telling, is the chief hallmark of heresy. It almost always seeks to camouflage the introduction of confusion and falsehood within the fields and forests of Orthodoxy.

And in such circumstances, there is an alternative more holy for the faithful Christian than that of in fact being more Catholic than the Pope?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
But when Cephas [Apostle Saint Peter] came to Antioch I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned [other translations, such as that New American Bible, substitute for "he stood condemned" the phrase "he was clearly wrong", although, referring to Saint Peter, " he stood condemned" as presented here from the Revised Standard Version is the literal translation]. For before certain men came from James, he ate with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And with him the rest of the Jews acted insincerely, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their insincerity. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" (emphasis added)
  Galatians 2:11-14

 

         

 

 

   
  And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  
    Mark 15:37-38  

 

       
 

Exodus 25

Offerings for the Tabernacle

25 The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel, that they take for me an offering; from every man whose heart makes him willing you shall receive the offering for me. 3 And this is the offering which you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze, 4 blue and purple and scarlet stuff and fine twined linen, goats’ hair, 5 tanned rams’ skins, goatskins, acacia wood, 6 oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, 7 onyx stones, and stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece. 8 And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. 9 According to all that I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.

 
     
 

The Ark of the Covenant

10 “They shall make an ark of acacia wood; two cubits and a half shall be its length, a cubit and a half its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height. 11 And you shall overlay it with pure gold, within and without shall you overlay it, and you shall make upon it a molding of gold round about. 12 And you shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it, and two rings on the other side of it. 13 You shall make poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold. 14 And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, to carry the ark by them. 15 The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark; they shall not be taken from it. 16 And you shall put into the ark the testimony which I shall give you. 17 Then you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold; two cubits and a half shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth. 18 And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. 19 Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end; of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. 20 The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. 21 And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark; and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. 22 There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you of all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.

 
       
 

The Table for the Bread of the Presence

23 “And you shall make a table of acacia wood; two cubits shall be its length, a cubit its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height. 24 You shall overlay it with pure gold, and make a molding of gold around it. 25 And you shall make around it a frame a handbreadth wide, and a molding of gold around the frame. 26 And you shall make for it four rings of gold, and fasten the rings to the four corners at its four legs. 27 Close to the frame the rings shall lie, as holders for the poles to carry the table. 28 You shall make the poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold, and the table shall be carried with these. 29 And you shall make its plates and dishes for incense, and its flagons and bowls with which to pour libations; of pure gold you shall make them. 30 And you shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me always.

The Lampstand

31 “And you shall make a lampstand of pure gold. The base and the shaft of the lampstand shall be made of hammered work; its cups, its capitals, and its flowers shall be of one piece with it; 32 and there shall be six branches going out of its sides, three branches of the lampstand out of one side of it and three branches of the lampstand out of the other side of it; 33 three cups made like almonds, each with capital and flower, on one branch, and three cups made like almonds, each with capital and flower, on the other branch—so for the six branches going out of the lampstand; 34 and on the lampstand itself four cups made like almonds, with their capitals and flowers, 35 and a capital of one piece with it under each pair of the six branches going out from the lampstand. 36 Their capitals and their branches shall be of one piece with it, the whole of it one piece of hammered work of pure gold. 37 And you shall make the seven lamps for it; and the lamps shall be set up so as to give light upon the space in front of it. 38 Its snuffers and their trays shall be of pure gold. 39 Of a talent of pure gold shall it be made, with all these utensils. 40 And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.

 
       
 

Exodus 26

The Tabernacle

“Moreover you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet stuff; with cherubim skilfully worked shall you make them. 2 The length of each curtain shall be twenty-eight cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits; all the curtains shall have one measure. 3 Five curtains shall be coupled to one another; and the other five curtains shall be coupled to one another. 4 And you shall make loops of blue on the edge of the outmost curtain in the first set; and likewise you shall make loops on the edge of the outmost curtain in the second set. 5 Fifty loops you shall make on the one curtain, and fifty loops you shall make on the edge of the curtain that is in the second set; the loops shall be opposite one another. 6 And you shall make fifty clasps of gold, and couple the curtains one to the other with the clasps, that the tabernacle may be one whole.

7 “You shall also make curtains of goats’ hair for a tent over the tabernacle; eleven curtains shall you make. 8 The length of each curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits; the eleven curtains shall have the same measure. 9 And you shall couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and the sixth curtain you shall double over at the front of the tent. 10 And you shall make fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is outmost in one set, and fifty loops on the edge of the curtain which is outmost in the second set.

11 “And you shall make fifty clasps of bronze, and put the clasps into the loops, and couple the tent together that it may be one whole. 12 And the part that remains of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remains, shall hang over the back of the tabernacle. 13 And the cubit on the one side, and the cubit on the other side, of what remains in the length of the curtains of the tent shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle, on this side and that side, to cover it. 14 And you shall make for the tent a covering of tanned rams’ skins and goatskins.

The Framework

15 “And you shall make upright frames for the tabernacle of acacia wood. 16 Ten cubits shall be the length of a frame, and a cubit and a half the breadth of each frame. 17 There shall be two tenons in each frame, for fitting together; so shall you do for all the frames of the tabernacle. 18 You shall make the frames for the tabernacle: twenty frames for the south side; 19 and forty bases of silver you shall make under the twenty frames, two bases under one frame for its two tenons, and two bases under another frame for its two tenons; 20 and for the second side of the tabernacle, on the north side twenty frames, 21 and their forty bases of silver, two bases under one frame, and two bases under another frame; 22 and for the rear of the tabernacle westward you shall make six frames. 23 And you shall make two frames for corners of the tabernacle in the rear; 24 they shall be separate beneath, but joined at the top, at the first ring; thus shall it be with both of them; they shall form the two corners. 25 And there shall be eight frames, with their bases of silver, sixteen bases; two bases under one frame, and two bases under another frame.

26 “And you shall make bars of acacia wood, five for the frames of the one side of the tabernacle, 27 and five bars for the frames of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the frames of the side of the tabernacle at the rear westward. 28 The middle bar, halfway up the frames, shall pass through from end to end. 29 You shall overlay the frames with gold, and shall make their rings of gold for holders for the bars; and you shall overlay the bars with gold. 30 And you shall erect the tabernacle according to the plan for it which has been shown you on the mountain.

 
     
 

The Curtain

31 “And you shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet stuff and fine twined linen; in skilled work shall it be made, with cherubim; 32 and you shall hang it upon four pillars of acacia overlaid with gold, with hooks of gold, upon four bases of silver. 33 And you shall hang the veil from the clasps, and bring the ark of the testimony in thither within the veil; and the veil shall separate for you the holy place from the most holy. 34 You shall put the mercy seat upon the ark of the testimony in the most holy place. 35 And you shall set the table outside the veil, and the lampstand on the south side of the tabernacle opposite the table; and you shall put the table on the north side.

36 “And you shall make a screen for the door of the tent, of blue and purple and scarlet stuff and fine twined linen, embroidered with needlework. 37 And you shall make for the screen five pillars of acacia, and overlay them with gold; their hooks shall be of gold, and you shall cast five bases of bronze for them.

 
       
 

The Book of Exodus Chapters 25 and 26

   
       

 

       
 

Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly sanctuary. 2 For a tent was prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence; it is called the Holy Place. 3 Behind the second curtain stood a tent called the Holy of Holies, 4 having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, which contained a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant; 5 above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail.

6 These preparations having thus been made, the priests go continually into the outer tent, performing their ritual duties; 7 but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people. 8 By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the sanctuary is not yet opened as long as the outer tent is still standing 9 (which is symbolic for the present age). According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, 10 but deal only with food and drink and various ablutions, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.

11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant. 16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18 Hence even the first covenant was not ratified without blood. 19 For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded you.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.


23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own; 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

 
       
 
Chapter 9 of the Book of Hebrews
   
       

 

 

  ...[A]ll have sinned and fall short of the glory of God ...  
    Romans 3:23  

 

  By meditating on this eternal truth as we consider the twenty-six year and one-hundred-and-sixty-eight day pontificate of John Paul II, the second longest pontificate after that of Pius IX, we can take this priceless lesson: All bishops, even the most learned and intelligent and prayerful and energetic and charismatic and brave need the Christian fellowship, the shared wisdom and sometimes the correction of their co-equal brother bishops, co-equal brother bishops that is, not sycophants fully schooled in the understanding that deigning to offer any such correction means loss of position.  

 

  The Apostles, without Peter, are weak, and Peter, without the other Apostles, is also weak.  

 

 

     
 

Pope John Paul II's 1980 Speech to Jews in Mainz in Germany

Papst Johannes Paul II 1980 Rede an die Juden in Mainz in Deutschland

 
     
       

 

Abstracts and our Commentary

 

Pray tell, what is the purpose of this? And what is more, what is the purpose of all this coming from popes, from men, we are invited to believe, maybe required to believe, are each some kind of suped-up professor-geniuse, ployglots and polymaths, in addition to being the successors to the Throne of the Fisherman, with John Paul II in the most celebrated rank of all. After all, one speaks here not of holy Christian ascetic mystics living astride a pole for thirty years. And yet faithful Orthodox-Catholic Christians are stricken dumb with incredulity that Supreme Pontiffs present themselves again and again as missing what must be obviously to any smart fifteen year old:

If someone is separated from God through a mortal sin, any mortal sin — though heresy and rejection of God have been held for two millennia to be among the very worst and most damaging of sins, and perhaps the very worst — then any Christian does such person no good service by in any way enabling or facilitating or supporting the person in continuation of the mortally sinful state. To do so is no kindness. It is not love. It is the opposite of love. It is the worst thing to do to the sinner. It means helping them into Hell. Again, this is the case with any Christian. But when popes are doing it ?!?!

"The Old Testament Covenants — Abrahamic and Mosaic — have never been revoked."

Well yes, that is true, they have never been revoked, they have been fulfilled, by God Himself, in Christ Jesus, eternally the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity and also the seed (singular) of Abraham, the Root of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1) and of his son, King David. (This being the case, it is perhaps superfluous to add that, from the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 Anno Domini, together with all Temple records concerning the Aaronic Priesthood, the Old Covenant, with its ritual and ceremonial aspects, has been impossible to fulfill outside of Christ.)

And yet the writers of such words, and the popes who give such words utterance, know that their words to the effect that "the Old Covenant has never been revoked," will be interpreted to mean that the Old Covenant is an alternative that can be selected instead of Christianity, at least for genetic descendants of Abraham. Thus, the popes can have no purpose in making such statements but to deceive the readers and hearers of these words, to deceive them into believing that

  • Repentance;
  • Acceptance of Jesus as Christ and Lord and Savior and God; and
  • Baptism

are not necessary for salvation, for admittance to the Beatific Vision, to God's Heaven. All this unless, that is, the popes, together with their legions of "post-doc"– style assistant professor-theologians, are all themselves deceived, and so also heretics and damned. But assuming that this latter can not be the case (Matthew 16:18), what is meant by the promotion of the "Christ is Optional"– Deception through obfuscation?

One theory might hold that the popes and other seniormost prelates believe that the Jews will not convert anyway, so why not just placate them to shut them up. Of course this could not be further from the actual state of affairs which has emerged. Jews have hardly held silence. In fact men of their number control mass information flow throughout European Christendom, to our civilizational destruction and the damnation of souls en masse. But even if this had not materialized, some "they are all a lost cause anyway"– approach would be an obviously damnable assumption for any pastor, much less the Supreme Pastor of the Church, utterly unacceptable, but also most obviously inaccurate. For the entirety of these last two thousand years, Jews without number have come to Christ. (Which of course also means that, even if the atheist-cum-Talmudic Jew misconception of the meaning of Seed of Abraham is to be considered as valid for the purposes of the arguement, after seventy-eight some odd generation, it is a simply mathematical proof that all "Gentiles" at this juncture are also the Seed of Abraham, and this even without considering the two millennia of intermarriages and intermating from Abraham to Christ.) In any case, the popes of course have never maintained or hinted at some "Jewish souls do not matter"– justification.

Yet, however obvious to reasonable minds must be the fact that mush language in papal statements and documents regarding the central salvific requirement of acceptance of Christ Jesus (mush language or rather the "compromise formula," see Walter Cardinal Kasper's admissions to this effect regarding the documents of Vatican II ) will surely place at least some downward pressure on the number of Jews who will turn to Christ — in other words, that such confusion sowing must condemn at least some people to Hell who otherwise would have turned to God — is the alternative proposition even most minimally tenable, the proposition that some soft touch pastoral approach vis-à-vis the Jews will bring more of them to Christ and His Church?

Do not tell this group that the Good News of the Gospel means that, without Jesus, we all would have remained separated from God, have been consigned to Hell?

Even without the information gained from a half-century and more of lived experience with this pastoral experiement, it was always patently absurd.

 
       

 

 

 

Apse area of exterior of Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore ... ? ... Bernard Cardinal Law

Apse area of exterior of Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore – the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, viewed from the Piazza dell'Esquilino. The large number of Northern and Sub-Saharan Africans, many of both groups Muslim, milling about, together with the smell of urine, is now a seemingly permanently fixture of this 1600-year-old jewel of the Church. This photo was taken on 3 May 2011. During an earlier trip to Rome, I saw a group of them pissing in broad daylight on the side of the Archbasilica of Saint John in the Lateran, all this a quite predictable consequence of the popes, including John Paul II, throwing the full weight of their moral authority behind demographic-replacement-level, mass immigration, much of it through Lampedusa. Of course if it were simply well publicized world-wide that the multiple daily boat loads of migrants would not be allowed to remain, in very short order – months not years – the immigrants would stop making the trip. There would be no fatal accidents and sinkings of the immigrant ships in the Mediterranean Sea, and these people could concentrate their lives' energies on the dignified work of building communities, societies and civilizations from which their own people do not want to flee at the first opportunity. Such basic good sense and goodness was and is apparantly beyond the grasp of the senior prelates, the polyglots and polymaths of the papacy, or so they are described to us. As European Christendom is descending into chaos, look no further than the actions of the popes for an explanation of why it is happening. Thank them. The atheist and Talmudic Jews may have supplied the initial impetus and intellectual justification framework ... well, such was the case, but they did not and could not have done it alone. Yes, the popes are each in turn the first pastor of the universal Church, charged with the care of souls of all people from all civilizations, but have they done this effectively? The coup de grâce for Christendom was supplied by the bishops of the Catholic Church themselves, with the popes in the vanguard and with Pope John Paul II the most prominent and important of them all. But are the Sub-Saharan Africans better off in trade?

 

"Sharing our experience in carrying that cross, to expel the illness within our hearts, which embitters our life: it is important that you do this in your meetings. Those that are Christian, with the Bible, and those that are Muslim, with the Quran. The faith that your parents instilled in you will always help you move on.”
  Pope Francis to a group of refugees at Sacred Heart parish on 19 January 2014, reported approvingly the next day in Rome Reports.

 

 

... and Bernard Cardinal Law, Archpriest in charge of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore from May 2004 through November 2011, picutred here on 3 May 2011. This was Essentially one of the four highest honors it was in the gift of John Paul II to give to him, accompanied by a palatial apartment and domestic staff, of course. Really though, it was the highest honour the now canonized John Paul could have given to Bernard Law, Bernard Law of pederast-promoting infamy! There are only four of such Basilicae maiores – Major Basilica in the Catholic Church, all in Rome. Few would dispute that all four are among the most grand and magnificent Churches in all of Christendom. Though also "governed" by an archpriest, the Pope personnally has the highest station in two of the four:

  1. The Mother and Head of all Churches in Rome and in the World, Archibasilica Sanctissimi Salvatoris et Sanctorum Ioannis Baptistae et Ioannis Evangelistae in Laterano – the Archbasilica of Saint John in the Lateran (inside the church bookstore in the midst of which, at the time of these photos, one was treated to the strains of rappo-techno-disco-hiphoppo "music", thanks to the culture which John Paul II bequeathed to Rome and to the Church); and
  2. Saint Peter's Basilica, of course.

Of the other two, due to a massive fire in the first half of the XIX century, though once the oldest structure of the four, now the main structure of Basilica Sancti Pauli extra mœnia – the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls dates only to the mid-XIX century, while the extant structure of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major dates to the early V century; added to which fact there was an Abbot, and not an archpriest, in charge of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls before the Pontificate of Benedict XVI; and of course there is the preeminence of Saint Mary within the Communion of Saints and within the Church and the Universe.

Having received this honor from Pope (now Saint) John Paul II, Bernard Cardinal Law, far from having been laicized, defrocked, tried, publicly humiliated and imprisoned, was sustained in this highest of honours by Pope Benedict XVI ... and for another six and a half years!

Hardly grist for those wanting to believe that some dramatic, negative change in the Church first occurred with the elevation to the Pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio.

 

 

  “It is no sin to expose the grave sins of the clergy and monks ... How else will they be lead to repent and do penance?”
    Petrus Damianus – Peter Damian, Saint and Doctor of the Church (* c. 1006/7 in Ravenna to 21/22/23 February 1072 †)

 

  “Listen, you do-nothing superiors of clerics and priests. Listen, and even though you feel sure of yourselves, tremble at the thought that you are partners in the guilt of others; those, I mean, who wink at the sins of their subjects that need correction and who by ill-considered silence allow them license to sin. Listen, I say, and be shrewd enough to understand that all of you alike are deserving of death, that is, not only those who do such things, but also they who approve those who practice them (Romans 1:32).”  
    Saint Peter Damian in his seminal and necessary work on this horrid subject, the Book of Gomorrah  

 

  “If people are scandalized at the truth, it is better to allow the birth of scandal, than to abandon the truth.”
    Pope Saint Gregory I, the Great (* c. 540 to 12 March 604 †), Hom. Super Ezech. vii

 

 

 

  According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they [the Christian faithful] have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.  
    Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church, Canon 212 §3  

 

  The sensus fidei fidelis is a sort of spiritual instinct that enables the believer to judge spontaneously whether a particular teaching or practice is or is not in conformity with the Gospel and with apostolic faith. It is intrinsically linked to the virtue of faith itself; it flows from, and is a property of, faith. It is compared to an instinct because it is not primarily the result of rational deliberation, but is rather a form of spontaneous and natural knowledge, a sort of perception (aisthesis).  
    Sensus Fidei, In the Life of the Church § 49, (International Theological Commission, 2014); But Note, only real Orthodox-Catholic Christians get, so to speak, to vote, and the opinions of all others are of no weight or value.  

 

 

     
 

Abstracted from Bull Cantate Domino, Council of Florence, 1441

Pope Eugene IV (* 1383 in Venice; r. 3 March 1431 to 23 February 1447 †):

“The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.”

 

       
 

"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." [4] 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." (Paragraph 7, emphasis added)

"To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. ... Christians are born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: Have confidence; I have overcome the world." (from Paragraph 14, emphasis added)

For the enemies of the Church ... are fully conscious that the more faint-hearted those who withstand them become, the more easy will it be to work out their wicked will. Therefore, they who cherish the "prudence of the flesh" and who pretend to be unaware that every Christian ought to be a valiant soldier of Christ; they who would fain obtain the rewards owing to conquerors, while they are leading the lives of cowards, untouched in the fight, are so far from thwarting the onward march of the evil-disposed that, on the contrary, they even help it forward.

 

Abstracted from the 1890 Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae

Pope Leo XIII (r. 20 February 1878 to 20 July 1903 †)

       

 

   
  Dialogue  
     
  tête-à-tête  
  tête-à-tête  
  Finding the right balance was or is really so difficult?  
     
 

How about this:

I. Dialogue within The Orthodox-Catholic Church, among the Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox (Non-Chalcedonians) and Catholics or between any two within them, is very good and holy and indeed Divinely required, as Canonically recorded. We within, trying to live and to be within, the Church, the one, holy, apostolic and catholic Church, the Orthodox-Catholic Church, will solve the theological problem, will come to reconcile canonically Papal Primacy with conciliarity, or there will be only flawed and disfunctional intra Orthodox-Catholic Church unity, except of course in the ontological sense in which the Church is always and eternally One.

II. Dialogue with Christians — validily baptized and sincerely trying to accept Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior and Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity — but who have become separated from The Orthodox-Catholic Church, from accepting Salvation on the Terms God dictates, usually through following one or another heresiarch and his teachings, is also acceptable, and maybe a very good thing, but here the relationship between Orthodox-Catholic priest or prelate and his interlocutor — regardless of how exalted in the temporal realm — certainly becomes altered and probably also much abbreviated. In such dialogue the relationship is that of Divinely constituted authority of the General Magisterium confronting adherents of error. (And this is the charitable view.) Of course there are better and worse ways of seeing through this teaching function of The Church. Doctors of the Church are few. (Three Great Hierarchs are fewer.) At times the very greatest skill and personal holiness might be required if the outcome is to be successful. No one forgets that those exalted in the temporal realm sometimes command large numbers of men without abundant wisdom or holiness but with guns. Still, the relationship within this category of dialogue in essence involves teacher, however soft-spoken, lecturing to student. There can be no compromise whatsoever on any single point of orthodox doctrine. The student will very like have a great deal to share with regards his personal story and more so still the story of his people, of his nation. The student will have absolutely nothing to share regarding "improvement" to the Doctrine of the Church.

III. Dialogue with rejectors of Christ Jesus — with Jews and Marxists and Modernists and Homosexualists and Mohammedans and Mormons and Freemasons — should be bound by parameters at once similar to those with regard to dialogue with Christian heretics and yet also most fundamentally different. Trying to accept Christ, as best as one has been equipt by life to do so, is different from trying not to. Of course, even within the just preceeding list of potential interlocutors within this third category of "dialogue parameters," strong distinctions must be drawn. Libraries are filled with works compiled over centuries attempting to work out such distinctions. A billion Muslims born into their error, into their false religion and its civilizations, is quite a different matter from a Freemason or a Revolutionary Jew or a militant Homosexualist deliberately seeking out error, culpably choosing the embrace of structured or random conflict with Logos. Still, there is a common strand running through all of these, the Jew, the Marxist, the Modernist, the Homosexualist, the Muslim, the Mormon, the Freemason. Yes, they are all our fellow creatures, Made in the Image and Likeness of God, and we are called upon to love them, but they need to convert to Christianity or they are our enemies, often enough quite imminently and militantly so, always potentially so. Of course this reality impacts matters other than religious dialogue. Mass Immigration into Christendom springs to mind. And face facts. During these times in which our lives are playing out this means nearly exclusively European Christendom. Peru and the Philippines are not facing this kind of pressure. But regarding dialogue — and basically we speak here, especially on this page, about dialogue involving the most senior metropolitan archbishops and the popes themselves — what dialogue can there be? "Please don't kill us for a while;" absurd calls for peace which only serve to lull European Christendom into complacency so that we welcome additional millions of Muslim immigrants, leading in short order to demographic replacement of us by them in our civilization? And all this against a Muslim "theological" backdrop which holds that strategic or tactical deception of non Muslims is god ordained! We are not in First century Palestine or elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Jew and Muslim leaders already always know in a general way, and usually with quite a lot of detail, Christian teaching, the Gospel message, and they have rejected it. They remain incorporated into religious communities and civilizations which reject the Logos. There can be no compromise with the Devil.

And there is another factor, and of the greatest moment.

Catholic and especially Papal "Dialogue" with those within Category III has damaged that most holy and urgent need for fruitful dialogue with those within Category I.

But atmospherics, no problem, the popes and the ecumenical patriarchs have this perfected.

True, there are those within the Traditionalist Catholic movement, and especially among those who push the thinking through to Sedevacantism, who maintain there is no distinction. For these, both Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox are in the Out-Group, schismatics and heretics, basically to be treated no differently than those in Categories II (Protestants) and III (Muslims and Jews and other assorted Militant Atheists, etc.), supra. They maintain their untenable position essentially through (i) a distorted extreme legalism — this ex cathedra / this not — among papal pronoucements which in common are published to the world (not merely private musings or free flowing thoughts still in the deliberative stage) and intended to set forth the content of the faith on doctrine and morals, or (ii) by simply concluding, in the face of the irreconcilable, that the pronouncing popes — John XXIII through Francis — are not popes at all but anit-popes. For the Sedevacantists the Gates of Hell very much seem to have prevailed against their church (Matthew 16:18 notwithstanding). A great tragedy, including for the reason that some, not all, Trad Cats and even Sedevacantists have much about them to admire. And they know a lot. They take Christianity seriously. Who could compare them to a Zombie Catholic in the pews, to the Neo-Con -cum- Neo-Catholic embracing the absurdly false "The Jews are our Spiritual Elder Brothers–" line, or to Heterodox and Homosexualist Father Flabdoodle disgracing his calling? Marcel Lefebvre is in many ways a hero.

But back to the core issue in this section, a very great deal in what these Traditionalist Catholics find objectionable about the Vatican II and post- Vatican II popes, actions and pronoucements which are sometimes held by them to descend into heresy and apostasy, goes directly to questions of ill-conceived and ill-executed dialogue between popes and those fitting into Categories II and III, and mostly with those in Category III, chiefly Jews and Muslims. Indeed, one might conclude that the Traditionalist Catholic movement is at least as much about legitimate objection to "dialogue" with the Jews tending toward Syncretism, Indifferentism and False Ecumenism (or False Irenicism / Eirenism) as it is about legitimate objection to the Novus Ordo Missae. If not all the rank-in-file, surely at least the Traditionalist Catholic intellectual leadership know both of the Pre-Tridentine Latin Rites and of the non Latin liturgical traditions and rites within the Catholic Church.

And in this key area the Traditionalist Catholics are joined by a very great preponderance of the weight and authority of the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches.

And are the Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox wrong in this? Vatican II and post- Vatican II Popes, whatever the underlying truth, can not seem to keep clear in their minds the most basic Gospel message in connection with the people among whom Christ's earthly ministry was carried out and those who are or who imagine themselves to be the genetic descendants of Biblical Jews: ! that acceptance of Christ is not Optional; that Dual-Covenant Theology is heretical ! Yet these men can be trusted to deal with — and to pronounce infallibly on — and by themselves and utterly without regard to all other orthodox-catholic bishops of the world, or all of them drawn together in Ecumenical Council — any necessary clarifications on the finest points of the highest theology touching on the nature of Original Sin or on the innermost relationships within the Most Holy Trinity ?!?

Traditionalist Catholics and Orthodox Christians, strangely in agreement in an anomalous situation or the most natural brothers in Christ within His Orthodox-Catholic Church, One Holy and Apostolic?

Catholic, and worst of all, papal dialogue with the so-called Jews has been used for a half-century and more as a vehicle for the Jews to undermine Orthodox-Catholic catechesis, integrity and civilization. Pope John Paul II played a greater role in the continuation and continuity of this destructive path than did any of the other Vatican II and post-concilaire popes. Pope John Paul II, canonized on 27 April 2014 by Pope Francis — under the changed, and frankly diminished, rules for canonization which Pope John Paul II himself promulgated — did not get the dialogue balance right.

 

 

 

   
   
     
  Chrześcijanie muszą umrzeć, zostać męczennikiem, przed robienie rzeczy takie jak to, prawda?  
     
 
Wiem, że cierpisz i że jesteś biedny. Tak naprawdę jednak jesteś bogaty! Znam pomówienia twoich przeciwników, którzy podają się za pobożnych Żydów, ale wcale nimi nie są, należą bowiem do szatana. Nie bój się prześladowań! Szatan zamierza wtrącić niektórych z was do więzienia. Będzie to próba waszej wiary, przez dziesięć dni będziecie bowiem prześladowani. Ty jednak bądź wierny aż do śmierci – a dam ci wieniec życia!
  Objawienie św. Jana 2:9-10
 
     
  Are not Christians required to die, to be martyred, before doing things such as this?  

 

Carolus, the Canonized Kuran Kisser

 

W dniu 14 maja 1999 roku Jan Paweł II przyjął w Watykanie delegację islamskich duchownych z Iraku, którzy w prezencie podarowali mu egzemplarz Koranu. Papież Jan Paweł II ukłonił się przed Koranu oraz pocałował ją.

14 May 1999 Pope John Paul II kissing and bowing to the Qur'an while within the protection of the Vatican, where he ruled as an absolute monarch.

the Pièce de Résistance

... of his troubles.

 

in haeresi, dictis vel factis

Politically idiotic, nearly fatal poison to all efforts to achieve the paramount goal of reuniting the Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Catholics, enormously effective fodder for the enemies of orthodox Christian unity, obviously yes, it was all of these things par excellence, but beyond these most weighty of considerations,

this monstrous act of Pope John Paul II was blasphemy and heresy, apostasy through action, period-full stop.

Absurd explanations of spin doctors are inefficacious, e.g., he was acknowledging, kissing, that within the Qur'an which is good, that is, that which Muhammad copied from Christianity; or just that he really wanted to ingratiate himself with the Iraqis so he could take a trip, a pilgrimage, to Abraham's old stomping ground. And it was this coming from the man who was legitimately the leader of the successors to the Apostles, that is, the leader of the Standing Apostolic Synod and who illegitimately continued in a non-canonical tradition of holding himself to be infallible speaking ex cathedra on Christian doctrine and morals.

Can we possibly have before our eyes more poignant and conclusive evidence that all bishops — including the Bishop and Patriarch of Rome, the Successor of Saint Peter, the Supreme Pontiff — need the fellowship and guidance, and on hopefully rare occassions the correction of their brother bishops and the whole community of the Christian faithful?

 

Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.

  1 John 2:22-23
   
That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:-
  Qur'an 4:157
   
The unbelievers of the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] and the idolaters shall be in the Fire of Gehenna, therein dwelling forever; those are the worst of creatures.
  Qur'an 98:6
 
Papież Jan Paweł II ukłonił się przed Koranu oraz pocałował ją. — 14 May 1999 Pope John Paul II kissing and bowing to the Qur'an while within the protection of the Vatican, where he ruled as an absolute monarch

 

 

"great respect for Islam" ?!?

... great respect for antichrist ???

  "It is known that Pope John Paul II has often voiced a desire to make a pilgrimage in the footsteps of Abraham, the Common Father of Jews, Christians and Muslims. For the Pope, Abraham is a figure who helps the unity of believers to overcome divisions. On May 14th I was received by the Pope, together with a delegation composed of the Shiite Imam of Khadum mosque and the Sunni president of the council of administration of Iraqi Islamic Bank. There was also a representative of the Iraqi ministry of religion. I renewed our invitation to the Pope, because his visit would be for us a grace from heaven. It would confirm the faith of Christians and prove the Pope's love for the whole of humanity in a mainly Muslin country. At the end of the audience the Pope bowed to the Muslim holy book, the Koran, presented to him by the delegation, and he kissed it as a sign of respect. The photo of that gesture has been shown repeatedly on Iraqi television, and it demonstrates that the Pope is not only aware of the suffering of Iraqi people, he has also great respect for Islam."  
    Patriarch Mar Raphael I Bidawid, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon (r. 1989-2003), quoted by Fides News Service from their interviews with Patriarch Bidawid, though no longer available on Fides website.  

 

 

Some isolated incident, in the final quarter of the long pontificate of an old man?

Would that we could with integrity reach such a conclusion. We can not. It is but one incident in a lamentable long list of similar such throughout the pontificate of John Paul II from its beginning to its end. No attempt will be made here to reproduce such list or to produce description and analysis of each such apostasy-by-action event, much as a thorough, scholarly and objective work along these lines would be highly useful for Church and Christendom. It is true that John Paul II's actions and statements more often than impacting Islam and Muslims took the form of flirtations among "Jews." Never, it is true, did these venture to rise to an ex cathedra statement, heretically attempting to establish Dual-Covenant "theology" as Church doctrine. Always they were very wrong. They damaged the Church and her faithful, and they also damaged the Jews, leaving them with the impression that Repentance, Baptism and Belief in Jesus as Christ and God were not necessary.

 

 

 

  ...La Civiltà Cattolica 1890.  

 

 

  Unfortunate neighbors in Tver on Soviet Street: Catholic Church, Muslim mosque and Jew-Bolshevism's star and hypocritical wheat ears.  
  Polish Catholicism in Tver in Russia and the "coincidence" of the Mosque next door.  

 

 

 

 
Ιωάννης ο Δαμασκηνός – John Damascene or John of Damascus – Иоанн Дамаскин (* c. 676 – 4 December 749 †), Saint and Doctor of the Church
     
  Excerpts from The Heresy of the Ishmaelites, Chapter 101 from  
  Περί Αιρέσεων – Concerning Heresies the Second Part of Saint John's Πηγή Γνώσεως – The Fount of Knowledge  
  ( The Third Part of this same Magnum Opus, Έκδοσις ακριβής της ορθοδόξου πίστεως – Ékdosis akribès tēs Orthodóxou Písteōs – An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith – De fide orthodoxa, the first attempt at a summa theologica, is held to made Saint John Damascene, in addition to being the final Greek Church Father, the first Scholastic. )  
     
     
 

There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist.

...

From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration.

 
     

 

 

 

   
     
  John Paul II, from the first to the last, the Pope of the Second Vatican Council, perhaps indeed more so than either Pope John XXIII or Pope Paul VI  
  Jan Paweł II, od pierwszego do ostatniego, papież Soboru Watykańskiego II, a może nawet w większym stopniu niż każdy papież Jan XXIII i Paweł VI  

 

  Arrestare il Consiglio! Arrestare il Consiglio! — Stop the Council! Stop the Council!  
    Attributed to report of Council peritus (theological adviser), layman Jean Guitton of death bed (though not final) words of the the 260º successor of Peter,
Ioannes PP. XXIII – Papa Giovanni XXIII – Pope John XXIII (* 25 November 1881 Giuseppe Angelo Roncalli, r. 28 October 1958 – 3 June 1963 †)
 

 

  “Truly, if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy, he could not have done it better.”  
    Dietrich von Hildebrand (* 12 October 1889 – 26 January 1977 †), in The Devastated Vineyard (1973), speaking on the destruction of the Roman Rite by Pope Paul VI's Novus Ordo Mass.  

 

         
estratti del Redemptor Hominis, la prima Lettera Enciclica di Giovanni Paolo II dal 4 marzo 1979
excerpts from Redemptor Hominis, the first Encyclical Letter of John Paul II
from 4 March 1979
fragmenty Redemptor Hominis, pierwszej encykliki Jana Pawła II
z 4 marca 1979 r
         
         
         

 

 

         
estratti del Testamento Spirituale di Giovanni Paolo II dal 17 marzo 2000
excerpts from the Spiritual Testament of John Paul II
from 17 March 2000
fragmenty Duchowy Testament Jana Pawła II
z 17 marca 2000 r

4. As I stand on the threshold of the Third Millennium "in medio Ecclesiae", I would like once again to express my gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of the Second Vatican Council, to which, together with the whole Church - and especially with the whole Episcopate - I feel indebted. I am convinced that it will long be granted to the new generations to draw from the treasures that this 20th-century Council has lavished upon us. As a Bishop who took part in the Council from the first to the last day, I desire to entrust this great patrimony to all who are and will be called in the future to put it into practice. For my part, I thank the eternal Pastor who has enabled me to serve this very great cause in the course of all the years of my Pontificate.

"In medio Ecclesiae"... from the very first years of my service as a Bishop - precisely, thanks to the Council - I was granted to experience the fraternal communion of the Episcopate. As a priest of the Archdiocese of Krakow, I was granted to experience the fraternal communion of the presbyterate - the Council had opened a new dimension of this experience.

 

God's Church was Oh so lavished with spiritual treasures from the Second Vatican, writes John Paul II two months and a day before his 80th birthday and also in his last definitive word, his Spiritual Testament.

(entire document at www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/testamento-jp-ii_20050407_en.html and www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/testamento-jp-ii_20050407_pl.html and
zenit.org/articles/john-paul-ii-s-last-will-and-testament/

 

4. Stojąc na progu trzeciego tysiąclecia «in medio Ecclesiae», pragnę raz jeszcze wyrazić wdzięczność Duchowi Świętemu za wielki dar Soboru Watykańskiego II, którego wraz z całym Kościołem – a w szczególności z całym Episkopatem – czuję się dłużnikiem. Jestem przekonany, że długo jeszcze dane będzie nowym pokoleniom czerpać z tych bogactw, jakimi ten Sobór XX wieku nas obdarował. Jako Biskup, który uczestniczył w soborowym wydarzeniu od pierwszego do ostatniego dnia, pragnę powierzyć to wielkie dziedzictwo wszystkim, którzy do jego realizacji są i będą w przyszłości powołani. Sam zaś dziękuję Wiecznemu Pasterzowi za to, że pozwolił mi tej wielkiej sprawie służyć w ciągu wszystkich lat mego pontyfikatu.

«In medio Ecclesiae» ... od najmłodszych lat biskupiego powołania – właśnie dzięki Soborowi – dane mi było doświadczyć braterskiej wspólnoty Episkopatu. Jako kapłan Archidiecezji Krakowskiej doświadczyłem, czym jest braterska wspólnota prezbyterium – Sobór zaś otworzył nowy wymiar tego doświadczenia.

         

5. How many people I would have to list! The Lord God has probably called the majority of them to Himself - as for those who are still here, may the words of this Testament recall them, everyone and everywhere, wherever they may happen to be.

In the course of the more than 20 years since I have been carrying out the Petrine service "in medio Ecclesiae", I have experienced the benevolent and most especially the fruitful collaboration of so many Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, so many priests and so many consecrated persons - Brothers and Sisters - finally, of a great many lay people, in the Curial environment and in the Vicariate of the Diocese of Rome as well as outside these contexts.

How could I not embrace with grateful memories all the Episcopal Conferences in the world, which I met in the course of their visits ad limina Apostolorum! Besides, how could I fail to remember all the Christian Brothers and Sisters - non-Catholics! And the Rabbi of Rome and likewise all the representatives of non-Christian religions, not to mention all the representatives of the worlds of culture, science, politics and the media!

 

In John Paul II's entire Spiritual Testament in all its installments going back to 6 March 1979, there are only four individuals singled out for mention, in addition to the Blessed Virgin and God:

  1. Pope Paul VI;
  2. Ks. Stanisław (later Cardinal Dziwisz);
  3. Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński;
  4. August Cardinal Hlond; and
  5. the Rabbi of Rome, Elio Toaff (30 April 1915 – 19 April 2015; Chief Rabbi of Rome from 1951 to 2002).

To avoid confusion, though at the risk of being trite, there might be very good reasons for notes to or comments about a Jew or Rabbi in one's spiritual last testament, and the chief such reason is to bring the person in question and others to Eternal Salvation, only available with and through Christ Jesus. As throughout his entire, more than 26-year, pontificate, John Paul II had no intention of converting Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff, nor did he. What a contrast with holy popes and patriarchs and with the community of the faithful, men and women of God. Rabbi Elio Toaff survived John Paul II by ten years, getting a hundred years of life in this world, as very few people do. No conversion, at least none of which we are aware! By the starkest imaginable contrast, another Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli (born Israel Anton Zoller 27 September 1881, and died 2 March 1956 Eugenio Maria Zolli), and Rabbi Toaff's immediate predecessor in the office of Chief Rabbi, serving as such from 1940 to 1945, converted to Catholicism, together with his wife and daughter, on 13 February 1945, taking the Baptismal name Eugenio in honor of Pope Pius XII.

Woe to you, when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.
  Luke 6:26

 

I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.
  Revelation 2:9-10

Visitor to the "Great Synagogue of Rome" on 13 April 1986; Hero of Major Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), John Paul II brought his embrace of the heresy of Dual Covenant "theology" right up to the end of his life.

As with the other two groups of the Orthodox-Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, so too the Catholic Church has for 2000 years taught that Salvation, being with God, going to Heaven, require absolutely:

  • Repentance of sins;
  • Belief in, that is, acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior and God; and
  • Baptism in the Name of the most Holy Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.

The Catholic Church has never taught that Christ is optional.

N.B., There is also ample reason to believe that, for those who have the chance, Salvation also requires worthy reception of the Eucharist:

Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.

  John 6:47-58

Denying the teaching of The Church to atheist or Talmudic Jews, to those who, like John Paul II's "friend," Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff, self identify as being Jews, is not love but love's opposite. This is the worst thing anyone could do to them.

Pointing people toward Hell ! Even if this did not involve a pastor and indeed The Pastor of the Universal Church, all this would not meet my minimum definition of friendship.

How 'bout yours?

 

5. Ileż osób winien bym tutaj wymienić? Chyba już większość z nich Pan Bóg powołał do Siebie – Tych, którzy jeszcze znajdują się po tej stronie, niech słowa tego testamentu przypomną, wszystkich i wszędzie, gdziekolwiek się znajdują.

W ciągu dwudziestu z górą lat spełniania Piotrowej posługi «in medio Ecclesiae» doznałem życzliwej i jakże owocnej współpracy wielu Księży Kardynałów, Arcybiskupów i Biskupów, wielu kapłanów, wielu osób zakonnych – Braci i Sióstr – wreszcie bardzo wielu osób świeckich, ze środowiska kurialnego, ze strony wikariatu Diecezji Rzymskiej oraz spoza tych środowisk.

Jakże nie ogarnąć wdzięczną pamięcią wszystkich na świecie Episkopatów, z którymi spotykałem się w rytmie odwiedzin «ad limina Apostolorum»? Jakże nie pamiętać tylu Braci chrześcijan – nie katolików? A rabina Rzymu? i tylu innych przedstawicieli religii pozachrześcijańskich? A ilu przedstawicieli świata kultury, nauki, polityki, środków przekazu?

 

 

 

     
  Maybe John Paul was right. He hurt Christians, but maybe we can take it.  

 

 

         
  Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation. It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about Himself, first in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son. In Islam all the richness of God's self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside. Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the World, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection.   < Enough correction? Even the "perfect balance"?
    Pope John Paul II in Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994).    

 

 

  [U]nbelief is the greatest of sins. ... Every sin consists formally in aversion from God, as stated above (I-II, 71, 6; I-II, 73, 3). Hence the more a sin severs man from God, the graver it is. Now man is more than ever separated from God by unbelief, because he has not even true knowledge of God: and by false knowledge of God, man does not approach Him, but is severed from Him. Nor is it possible for one who has a false opinion of God, to know Him in any way at all, because the object of his opinion is not God. Therefore it is clear that the sin of unbelief is greater than any sin that occurs in the perversion of morals.  
    Saint Thomas Aquinas – Tommaso d'Aquino, OP (* 1225 Kingdom of Sicily – 7 March 1274 †) , from Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundæ Partis, Question 10. Unbelief in general, Article 3. Is it the greatest of sins?  

 

   
  Pope Francis and Cardinal Dolan being very brazen in their mortal sins, but hey, Harvard and Hollywood, the New York Times and Time magazine sure are pleased.  
     
 
We testified to every one of you, that you would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory. Therefore, we also give thanks to God without ceasing: because, that when you had received of us the word of the hearing of God, you received it not as the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the word of God, who worketh in you that have believed. For you, brethren, are become followers of the churches of God which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus: for you also have suffered the same things from your own coutrymen, even as they have from the Jews, Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men; Prohibiting us to speak to the Gentiles, that they may be saved, to fill up their sins always: for the wrath of God is come upon them to the end [or to the end or completely or for ever or до конца or εἰς τέλος or usque in finem].
  1 Thessalonians 2:12-16 [emphasis added]
 
     
 
Could anything possibly be more clear, more authoritative, more despositive, more binding?
 
     
  Serious Christians, real Christians can just search through the materials compiled by the Sedevacantists.
The examples of the recent popes, through their apostasy by action, denying the Fulfillment by Christ Jesus of the Old Testament
ceremonial requirements, set forth by God to prepare the way for the coming Messiah, arelegion.
And legion also are the authoritative pronouncements of earlier popes
condemning exactly this type of behaviour by any Christian
to say nothing of such apostasy by a priest, bishop, metropolitan archbishop, patriarch or pope!

This is to say nothing of the additional layer of crimes against God presented in and flowing from the Talmud and
"Judaism" as it has been practiced since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.
 
  Pope Francis and Cardinal Dolan and Jews and Muslims and Apostasy through Action  
 

And how can any thinking Christian imagine that this helps the Jews?
This only helps lead them to Hell.
When any person is, objectively, in a state of mortal sin,
Being "supportive" of them, encouraging by word and deed and what is left undone,
the person to remain in that state, this is not love but love's opposite.
It is the worst thing one can do to the person in that state of mortal sin.
It is an abomination.

 

 
 
“It firmly believes, professes, and teaches that the matter pertaining to the law of the Old Testament, of the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, sacred rites, sacrifices, and sacraments, because they were established to signify something in the future, although they were suited to the divine worship at that time, after our Lord’s coming had been signified by them, ceased, and the sacraments of the New Testament began; and that whoever, even after the passion, placed hope in these matters of the law and submitted himself to them as necessary for salvation, as if faith in Christ could not save without them, sinned mortally. Yet it does not deny that after the passion of Christ up to the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been observed until they were believed to be in no way necessary for salvation; but after the promulgation of the Gospel it asserts that they cannot be observed without the loss of eternal salvation. All, therefore, who after that time observe circumcision and the Sabbath and the other requirements of the law, it declares alien to the Christian faith and not in the least fit to participate in eternal salvation, unless someday they recover from these errors.”
  Abstracted from Bull Cantate Domino, Council of Florence, 1441 [emphasis added]
 
     

 

  ...La Civiltà Cattolica 1890.  

 

Enough indeed! This is a Pope?
 
‟Do you need to convince the other to become Catholic? No, no, no! Go out and meet him. He is your brother. This is enough.”
  Pope Francis in speech of 7 August 2013 at the shrine of Saint Cajetan (The video footage is all over the Internet.)

 

 

  Evangelii Gaudium          
        Meet the work of Pope John Paul's spiritual son, Pope Francis  
           
        Created a cardinal at the consistory of 21 February 2001 by Pope John Paul II. Violating their oaths not to do so, cardinals revealed that at the Papal Conclave of 2005 which elected and elevated John Paul II's successor, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, to be Pope Benedict XVI, Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio received the second highest number of votes.  
           
           
        From the 24 November 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium of Pope Francis  
             
        Relations with Judaism  
           
  Dual Covenant "Theology" is a Heresy.   247. We hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked, for “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29). The Church, which shares with Jews an important part of the sacred Scriptures, looks upon the people of the covenant and their faith as one of the sacred roots of her own Christian identity (cf. Rom 11:16-18). As Christians, we cannot consider Judaism as a foreign religion; nor do we include the Jews among those called to turn from idols and to serve the true God (cf. 1 Thes 1:9). With them, we believe in the one God who acts in history, and with them we accept his revealed word.  
           
        248. Dialogue and friendship with the children of Israel are part of the life of Jesus’ disciples. The friendship which has grown between us makes us bitterly and sincerely regret the terrible persecutions which they have endured, and continue to endure, especially those that have involved Christians.  
           
        249. God continues to work among the people of the Old Covenant and to bring forth treasures of wisdom which flow from their encounter with his word. For this reason, the Church also is enriched when she receives the values of Judaism. While it is true that certain Christian beliefs are unacceptable to Judaism, and that the Church cannot refrain from proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Messiah, there exists as well a rich complementarity which allows us to read the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures together and to help one another to mine the riches of God’s word. We can also share many ethical convictions and a common concern for justice and the development of peoples.  
           
        Interreligious dialogue  
           
 

Embrace Muslim (mass immigration) into the constituent countries of Christendom?!

Support, not Muslim conversions to Christianity, but Muslims being "joyfully grounded in their own identity"?!

"[a]uthentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence."

    250. An attitude of openness in truth and in love must characterize the dialogue with the followers of non-Christian religions, in spite of various obstacles and difficulties, especially forms of fundamentalism on both sides. Interreligious dialogue is a necessary condition for peace in the world, and so it is a duty for Christians as well as other religious communities. This dialogue is in first place a conversation about human existence or simply, as the bishops of India have put it, a matter of “being open to them, sharing their joys and sorrows”.[194] In this way we learn to accept others and their different ways of living, thinking and speaking. We can then join one another in taking up the duty of serving justice and peace, which should become a basic principle of all our exchanges. A dialogue which seeks social peace and justice is in itself, beyond all merely practical considerations, an ethical commitment which brings about a new social situation. Efforts made in dealing with a specific theme can become a process in which, by mutual listening, both parts can be purified and enriched. These efforts, therefore, can also express love for truth.  
           
        251. In this dialogue, ever friendly and sincere, attention must always be paid to the essential bond between dialogue and proclamation, which leads the Church to maintain and intensify her relationship with non-Christians.[195] A facile syncretism would ultimately be a totalitarian gesture on the part of those who would ignore greater values of which they are not the masters. True openness involves remaining steadfast in one’s deepest convictions, clear and joyful in one’s own identity, while at the same time being “open to understanding those of the other party” and “knowing that dialogue can enrich each side”.[196] What is not helpful is a diplomatic openness which says “yes” to everything in order to avoid problems, for this would be a way of deceiving others and denying them the good which we have been given to share generously with others. Evangelization and interreligious dialogue, far from being opposed, mutually support and nourish one another.[197]  
           
 

Could any Christian leader possibly be more ill-informed and ignorant on this critical issue?

Informed people know that the popes do not actually write these documents. Like the professor in the laboratory with a dozen post-docs, these are joint efforts. But were these paragraphs written by a 25-year-old intern, right out of Brown University and a comparative religion class taught by an atheist Jew? Was it signed by the pope, thinking he was signing something else?

Violence against non-Muslims — violence against Christians, Holy Father, is the essence and epicenter of Islam. Time to actually read the Qur'an.

 

    252. Our relationship with the followers of Islam has taken on great importance, since they are now significantly present in many traditionally Christian countries, where they can freely worship and become fully a part of society. We must never forget that they “profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, who will judge humanity on the last day”.[198] The sacred writings of Islam have retained some Christian teachings; Jesus and Mary receive profound veneration and it is admirable to see how Muslims both young and old, men and women, make time for daily prayer and faithfully take part in religious services. Many of them also have a deep conviction that their life, in its entirety, is from God and for God. They also acknowledge the need to respond to God with an ethical commitment and with mercy towards those most in need.  
         
      253. In order to sustain dialogue with Islam, suitable training is essential for all involved, not only so that they can be solidly and joyfully grounded in their own identity, but so that they can also acknowledge the values of others, appreciate the concerns underlying their demands and shed light on shared beliefs. We Christians should embrace with affection and respect Muslim immigrants to our countries in the same way that we hope and ask to be received and respected in countries of Islamic tradition. I ask and I humbly entreat those countries to grant Christians freedom to worship and to practice their faith, in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in Western countries! Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence. [emphasis added]  
           
  Or maybe — as the Good Tsar - Bad Boyar crowd would insist — we are looking at translation errors and deliberate distortions, the sinister nefarious schemes of treacherous underlings? Nope. See to the right the Italian, German and Polish renditions of the key heretical paragraph.    

[Translation errors? Nope. Here are the German, Italian (original?) and the Polish, for example:

253. Um den Dialog mit dem Islam zu führen, ist eine entsprechende Bildung der Gesprächspartner unerlässlich, nicht nur damit sie fest und froh in ihrer eigenen Identität verwurzelt sind, sondern auch um fähig zu sein, die Werte der anderen anzuerkennen, die Sorgen zu verstehen, die ihren Forderungen zugrunde liegen, und die gemeinsamen Überzeugungen ans Licht zu bringen. Wir Christen müssten die islamischen Einwanderer, die in unsere Länder kommen, mit Zuneigung und Achtung aufnehmen, so wie wir hoffen und bitten, in den Ländern islamischer Tradition aufgenommen und geachtet zu werden. Bitte! Ich ersuche diese Länder demütig darum, in Anbetracht der Freiheit, welche die Angehörigen des Islam in den westlichen Ländern genießen, den Christen Freiheit zu gewährleisten, damit sie ihren Gottesdienst feiern und ihren Glauben leben können. Angesichts der Zwischenfälle eines gewalttätigen Fundamentalismus muss die Zuneigung zu den authentischen Anhängern des Islam uns dazu führen, gehässige Verallgemeinerungen zu vermeiden, denn der wahre Islam und eine angemessene Interpretation des Korans stehen jeder Gewalt entgegen.

253. Per sostenere il dialogo con l’Islam è indispensabile la formazione adeguata degli interlocutori, non solo perché siano solidamente e gioiosamente radicati nella loro identità, ma perché siano capaci di riconoscere i valori degli altri, di comprendere le preoccupazioni soggiacenti alle loro richieste e di fare emergere le convinzioni comuni. Noi cristiani dovremmo accogliere con affetto e rispetto gli immigrati dell’Islam che arrivano nei nostri Paesi, così come speriamo e preghiamo di essere accolti e rispettati nei Paesi di tradizione islamica. Prego, imploro umilmente tali Paesi affinché assicurino libertà ai cristiani affinché possano celebrare il loro culto e vivere la loro fede, tenendo conto della libertà che i credenti dell’Islam godono nei paesi occidentali! Di fronte ad episodi di fondamentalismo violento che ci preoccupano, l’affetto verso gli autentici credenti dell’Islam deve portarci ad evitare odiose generalizzazioni, perché il vero Islam e un’adeguata interpretazione del Corano si oppongono ad ogni violenza.

253. Dla podtrzymania dialogu z islamem konieczna jest odpowiednia formacja rozmówców, nie tylko, aby byli solidnie i radośnie zakorzenieni w swojej tożsamości, ale także, aby byli zdolni uznać wartości innych, zrozumieć obawy leżące u podstaw ich żądań i sprawić, by ujawniły się wspólne przekonania. My, chrześcijanie, powinniśmy przyjąć serdecznie i z szacunkiem islamskich migrantów przybywających do naszych krajów, podobnie jak mamy nadzieję i prosimy, byśmy byli przyjmowani z szacunkiem w krajach o tradycji islamskiej. Proszę, pokornie błagam te kraje, aby zapewniły wolność chrześcijanom, by mogli sprawować swój kult i żyć swoją wiarą, uwzględniając wolność, jaką wyznawcy islamu cieszą się w krajach zachodnich! Wobec niepokojących nas epizodów naznaczonego przemocą fundamentalizmu, serdeczne uczucie wobec autentycznych muzułmanów powinno nas prowadzić do unikania wrogich uogólnień, ponieważ prawdziwy islam i poprawna interpretacja Koranu sprzeciwiają się wszelkiej przemocy.]

 
             
        254. Non-Christians, by God’s gracious initiative, when they are faithful to their own consciences, can live “justified by the grace of God”,[199] and thus be “associated to the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ”.[200] But due to the sacramental dimension of sanctifying grace, God’s working in them tends to produce signs and rites, sacred expressions which in turn bring others to a communitarian experience of journeying towards God.[201] While these lack the meaning and efficacy of the sacraments instituted by Christ, they can be channels which the Holy Spirit raises up in order to liberate non-Christians from atheistic immanentism or from purely individual religious experiences. The same Spirit everywhere brings forth various forms of practical wisdom which help people to bear suffering and to live in greater peace and harmony. As Christians, we can also benefit from these treasures built up over many centuries, which can help us better to live our own beliefs.  
             
        [194] Indian Bishops’ Conference, Final Declaration of the XXX Assembly: The Role of the Church for a Better India (8 March 2013), 8.9.
[195] Cf. Propositio 53.
[196] John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Missio (7 December 1990), 56: AAS 83 (1991), 304.
[197] Cf. Benedict XVI, Address to the Roman Curia (21 December 2012): AAS 105 (2006), 51; Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church Ad Gentes, 9; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 856.
[198] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 16.
[199] International Theological Commission, Christianity and the World Religions (1996), 72: Enchiridion Vaticanum 15, No. 1061.
[200] Ibid.
[201] Cf. ibid., 81-87: Enchiridion Vaticanum 15, Nos. 1070-1076.
 
             
 

And faithful Catholics should be reproaching themselves, not the popes, for questioning whether such men are suddenly going to wax infallible when speaking ex cathedra on questions of faith and morals?

"The Papal Magisterium can rise to the level of infallibility only on matters of faith and morals..." -Bishop Robert C. Morlino-

      And statements of popes in Encyclical Letters, in Apostolic Exhortations, in Apostolic Constitutions, are not solemn ex cathedra statements if dealing with matters of faith and morals? Do not such documents always deal with faith and morals? Programmatic significance not doctrinal significance?  
             

 

  If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.  
    John 15:18-19  

 

 

There are too many of these. Reader, do your own research on this. Forget finding Truth with George Weigel and EWTN. This is not a question of mischaracterization by the "liberal media," though they, and "the worldly" certainly love Pope Francis.

The jury is no longer out. This is a terrible pope.

And Karol Józef Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, inflicted the Church with this man.

  "Fundamentalism is a sickness that we find in all religions. We Catholics have some, not some, many who believe in the absolute truth ..."  
      Jorge Mario Bergoglio, from 13 III 2013, Pope Francis, the 265 Successor of Saint Peter  
        Elevated to the Cardinalate by John Paul II on 21 February 2001  

 

  "Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good."
 
    Pope Francis to interviewer, La Repubblica founder Eugenio Scalfari, in late September of 2013  

 

 

 

  And folks, this bears repeating a thousand times: Heresy will always be hidden, be camouflaged, within sound orthodox doctrine and reasonable sounding arguments. Partial truth is the very hallmark of the heretic ... and the demoniac.  

 

  So wake up and brace yourselves folks, because Pope Francis is giving us, buried in lots of sound doctrine, a new and systematic helping of:  
     
 
  • Tolerance of Adultery;
  • A mish mush softening on the Church's teaching on Mortal Sin;
  • Opening the way to desecration of the Holy Eucharist;
  • Distorted overemphasis on the importance and priority of individual conscience;
  • Overbroad pastoral discretion for individual clergymen;
  • Attempt at denying the Church's undeniable teaching regarding eternal consequences for unrepented of and unabsolved mortal sin.
 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 

  Amoris Lætitia  
     
  19 March 2016 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis  
  "The Joy of Love"  
  To Bishops, Priests and Deacons  
  Consecrated Persons  
  Christian Married Couples  
  And All the Lay Faithful  
  On Love in the Family  
     
  ¶ 291 to 312.  
     

Every divorced and re-"married"
person's situation will
be understood by such person
as exceptional.

Can any Christian think
that the probability of God
showing mercy in Judgment
is somehow increased
through obfuscation and mush?

¶ 302. The Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly mentions these factors: “imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors”. [FN 343] In another paragraph, the Catechism refers once again to circumstances which mitigate moral responsibility, and mentions at length “affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen
or even extenuate moral culpability”. [FN 344] For this reason, a negative judgment about an objective situation does not imply a judgment about the imputability or culpability of the person involved. [FN345] On the basis of these convictions, I consider very fitting what many Synod Fathers wanted to affirm: “Under certain circumstances people find it very difficult to act differently. Therefore, while upholding a general rule, it is necessary to recognize that responsibility with respect to certain actions or decisions is not the same in all cases. Pastoral discernment, while taking into account a person’s properly formed conscience, must take responsibility for these situations. Even the consequences of actions taken are not necessarily the same in all cases”. [FN 346]

Note to Pope Francis:

The Moral Law of God
is not a suggetion.
It is a Commandment.

     
     
  ¶ 303. Recognizing the influence of such concrete factors, we can add that individual conscience needs to be better incorporated into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage. Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and to encourage an ever greater trust in God’s grace. Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal. In any event, let us recall that this discernment is dynamic; it must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized.

To Pope Francis:

You should have stopped
before continuing with the
sentence beginning with "Yet"


Marriage is not only
the ideal option.
It is the only option, and
from the very words
of the Word, the
Logos of God,
Christ Jesus.

     
     

Every person is concrete,
so what is this mush about?

If God
wants to make exceptions
to the enforcement of His Laws
in Judging a person,
God will do that.
You, every
priest, bishop, patriarch and pope,
teach Orthodoxy!

Mish mush Indifferentism
from Church leaders
can only increase the
chances of Hell,
not reduce them.

¶ 304. It is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual’s actions correspond to a general law or rule, because that is not enough to discern and ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete life of a human being. I earnestly ask that we always recall a teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas and learn to incorporate it in our pastoral discernment: “Although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects… In matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not
the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles; and where there is the same rectitude in matters of detail, it is not equally known to all… The principle will be found to fail, according as we descend further into detail”. [FN 347] It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations. At the same time, it must be said that, precisely for that reason, what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances
cannot be elevated to the level of a rule. That would not only lead to an intolerable casuistry, but would endanger the very values which must be preserved with special care.

Thou shalt not tempt
the Lord thy God.

     
     
     
Those in the mortal sin of
perpetual and public adultery,
without a firm purpose of amendment,
are to receive the
Most Holy Eucharist ?!?!?
¶ 305. For this reason, a pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in “irregular” situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives. This would bespeak the closed heart of one used to hiding behind the Church’s teachings, “sitting on the chair of Moses and judging at times with superiority and superficiality difficult cases and wounded families”. [FN 349] Along these same lines, the International Theological Commission has noted that “natural law could not be presented as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather, it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions”. [FN 350] Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to thisend. [FN 351] Discernment must help to find possible ways of responding to God and growing in the midst of limits. By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God. Let us remember that “a small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order, but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties”. [FN 352] The practical pastoral care of ministers and of communities must not fail to embrace this reality.

In his explanatory letter to the
Bishops of Buenos Aires
Pope Francis has answered,
Yes, that is exactly his
meaning and intent.

How, faithful Christians, to be
hyper- polite and differential
to the Pope
without falling into dishonesty
and hypocrisy?

     

Pope Francis quoting as authority

... himself:

FN 351 In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, “I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” (ibid., 47: 1039).  
     
  FN 352 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), 44: AAS 105 (2013), 1038-1039.  
     

 

     
     
  de.catholicnewsagency.com/story/exklusiv-ein-bruch-mit-der-lehrtradition-robert-spaemann-uber-amoris-laetitia-0730  
     
    Robert Spaemann, a foremost living Catholic philosopher, adviser to JPII, friend of Benedict, 28 April 2016 reaction in Interview with CNA Deutsch to Pope Francis' Amoris Laetitia.  

 

 

Casting careless, erroneous, and foolhardy doubt on nearly 2000 years of invariable orthodox-catholic Orthodox Catholic Church teaching,
on a major point of the Faith, regarding the meaning of Matthew Chapter 11 and the Faithfulness to Christ Jesus of John the Baptist,
Pope Francis again does all he can to injure the one and only true Faith and the Christians who are true to that Faith.
(Neither when awaiting death in prison nor at any other point in his life did John the Baptist doubt in Jesus.
Matthew 11 is about John the Baptist wanting to both strengthen the faith of his own followers in Jesus
by having them hear the words directly from Jesus and, so to speak, to transfer these followers to Jesus,
so the Fathers of the Church have taught down through the centuries, and so was unmistakably foreshadowed in Luke 1:11-17 and in Luke 1:41.)

But now we have Pope Francis, sowing
error and confusion at every turn:
     
 

"The great can afford to doubt, and this is beautiful. They are certain of their vocation but each time the Lord makes them see a new street of the journey, they enter into doubt. ‘But this is not orthodox, this is heretical, this is not the Messiah I expected.’ The devil does this work, and some friend also helps, no? This is the greatness of John, a great one, the last of that band of believers that began with Abraham, that one that preaches conversion, that one that does not use half-words to condemn the proud, that one that at the end of his life is allowed to doubt. And this is a good program of Christian life.

"Let us ask from John the grace of apostolic courage to always say things with truth, from pastoral love, to receive the people with the little that they can give, the first step. God will do the rest. And also the grace of doubting. Often times, maybe at the end of life, one can ask, “But is all that I believed true or are they fantasies?” the temptation against the faith, against the Lord. May the great John, who is the least in the kingdom of Heaven, and for this reason is great, help us along this path in the footsteps of the Lord.”

 
    From homily of Pope Francis of 15 December 2016 to seminarians at Casa Santa Marta in Rome,
immediately jumped upon by the legions of enemies of Church and Christendom resident within
European Christendom, always eager to cast doubt on The Faith.
 

 

 

 

  The Apostles, without Peter, are weak, and Peter, without the other Apostles, is also weak.  

 

 

  Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne: Just one more case study, essentially chosen at random. (Marx and Kasper are worse.)  
           
    "The Church is not a moral institution that goes around pointing its finger at people ... The Church is for me a community of seekers and believers and the Church would like to help people find their hapiness in life.”  

And who inflicted this weak and confused prelate on the Church, on the Icon of the Holy Trinity, the Body of Christ, the Perpetual Pentecost?

Elevated to the Episcopacy on 30 March 2003 by command of Pope John Paul II.

Elevated to the Cardinalate 18 February 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI, though to be fair, by this point out of which pool of holy bishops could Benedict have chosen?!?

 
      — Quoted by Reuters on 5 July 2009 re dialogue between Bishop Woelki and the homosexual community in Berlin —  
         
      so of course in April of 2016, we get such things from this Syncretist in Cardinal's garb:  
         
    "Anyone who denigrates Muslims as the AfD leadership [he refers to the heroic Beatrix von Storch], does should realize that prayer rooms and mosques are equally protected by our constitution as our churches and chapels ... whoever says ‘yes’ to church towers must also say ‘yes’ to minarets.”  
           

 

 

 

   
 

... And changing the subject only slightly, how are we doing? Measuring the tree by its fruit, as we, with the benefit of at least some, at least fifteen years' remove from the 1999 Pontifical Koran Kissing to faciliate a trip to Iraq, as we are able to reflect on these matters, on this aspect of the life and the pontificate of John Paul II, on the gestures toward the non-Christians — toward leaders and adherents of the traditional religions of Native Americans, Africans and Asians; and of the Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Bahai, Confucians, Taoists, Shintos, but of course above all toward the Muslims and the Jews — which he spearheaded, what has the fruit been of:

  • the 27 October 1986 interfaith prayer day at Assisi;
  • the 14 May 1999 Koran kissing;
  • the 24 January 2002 repetition of the 1986 interfaith prayer day at Assisi;
  • Pope Benedict's deferential nod, 27 October 2011 follow up — Day of reflection, dialogue, and prayer for peace and justice in the world "Pilgrims of Truth, Pilgrims of Peace" ("[F]ocused more on common pilgrimage than on prayer ... Unlike Blessed John Paul's first Assisi meeting in 1986, there is no moment planned in Assisi when participants will pray in each other's presence. 'The emphasis is on pilgrimage rather than on praying together,' Cardinal Turkson said."; Catholic News Service, 2011).
  • And please consider having a look at Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos from 1928, what he and other pre- Vatican II popes thought of such meetings, of the "holiness" of such efforts.

Has Kreeft's Chrislam carried the day and the millennium yet? How has the Christian-Jew-Muslim trialogue been going? As at this August 2014 writing, Christians are being crucified literally and in numbers in Iraq by Muslims, this time under the banner of ISIS or ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a.k.a, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Iraq is a constituent part of the Holy Lands because of Abraham certainly, but Iraq was also evangelized by two of the Twelve Apostles, by Thomas and by Thaddaeus. The Muslim invasions were a long time ago, but as recently as 1950, probably more than 10 percent of the Iraqi population were Christians. Even in 1999 when Patriarch Mar Raphael I Bidawid made the comments reproduced above, there were perhaps one million Christians in Iraq, most of them directly his spiritual children (Chaldean Catholics 600K; Latin-rite Catholics 200K and others also about 200K), about 5 percent of the total population. As of August of 2014 the Christian population of Iraq may be down to numbering only 200,000 persons, and those remaining hold-out heroes are in desperate straights. And if the idiocy of the neo-Con, Bush-Blair invasion is — quite rightly — put forward as the chief cause of the latest calamity for Christians, which thinking person can fail to see the contribution which John Paul II made to the intellectual climate underlying these geo-religio-political developments? Focus on protecting Christians, and their security might just follow. If you do all in your power to take the wind out of the sails of those who would rally to the defense of Christians and Christendom, then you can express no wonder that they are left undefended. Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq may not be constituent parts of European Christendom. How can they be deemed to be, understood to be so when the vast majority of their populations are Muslim? But the Christians in those countries would be in an entirely different and better position if United European Christendom were closer to being a reality than a fantasy. Instead those Christians — as a group perhaps the best in the world — are left to the protection of the cowards and the clueless and syncretists and the silly who populate and lead dis-United half-European post-Christendom. One can be very sorry for the traumas which Karol Józef Wojtyła suffered as a boy and as a young man, his loss of Jewish friends during the unnumbered World War II era atrocities and the rest. The decisions of the Pope very briefly outlined above were not an effective way to set things right. His record as Pope was mixed. Sorry George, it was a rush-job. (Post Script, I love Pope John Paul II, and I am grateful for his work and for his Pontificate.) And for the social conservative Catholics, like the present writer, who want orthodox Christian values to prevail and carry the day and the age in the cultural wars of our times and of all times, but who, very much unlike the present writer and Gilbert Keith Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc and all sensible defenders of Christendom, assert by implication that embracing and defending the orthodox doctrines of Church in this life do not really matter much, the response must come: you damage the Church and her Gospel message. The Bible and the rest of the Tradition of The Church have held through two millennia any error in the content of the faith separates the person in error from the Grace and Salvation of God.

 
 
 
 
  And friends, and please I beg you Holy Fathers, consider, the headlines, your headlinesgreat respect for Islam — and the like are digested by hundreds of millions, the detailed explanations of Church spin docters by perhaps tens of thousands.  

 

And what could the results of all intellectual currents in the direction of Ecumenical Jihad possibly have been? Flawed in theology and theory, yes certainly, but we also have twenty centuries, or fourteen as the case may be, of actual experience. Any religion is better than no religion and better still if it claims to be monotheistic, and the Muslims are our allies, or can be, in the fight against sin and secularism, but this is the exact opposite of all lessons from historical experience. Pagan tribes and nations, in Europe, in Africa and in south-western and central Asia, then later further afield, were evangelized, were taught and converted to Christianity one after another and en masse,

But the Mohammedan never becomes a Catholic

And even if Belloc exaggerates his point, he does so only slightly. Orthodox-catholic Christianity's success rate in winning over Muslims is abysmal, worse by far even than has been our success in the conversion of Jews. And all this is even without regard to current suicidal mass immigration policies throughout European Christendom, in which work Catholic Church hierarchs at high levels and at the highest level vie with atheist Jews for the right to claim the leadership baton. One perhaps does not have to strain much to understand how a George Bush could fall into all this, but a man who received from God the intellectual gifts which Karol Józef Wojtyła did?

 

 

         

And there is another point of the first moment which must be raised and thoroughly internalized by Catholics.

The Doctrines of

from the second half of the Nineteenth Century, from the pontificate of Pope Pius IX, have come to lie near the epicenter of Catholic religious identity.

Lourdes is not simply about the Blessed Virgin, the Theotokos, the Queen of Heaven, but about the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. How many parish Churches and schools are named after the Immaculate Conception?

The Dogma of Papal Infallibility is the most serious and greatest obstacle to the re-unification of the Orthodox-Catholic Church, but for present purposes let us consider this doctrine only with respect to its impact on the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Pope Pius IX, that is, Papal Infallibility makes the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception an announced component of the Dogma of the Church, of the content of the faith. This Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was not just left to the realm of theological opinion — of theologumen — as it should have been, to be accepted by the faithful individual if useful to him or her. Rather, it was made part of the Dogma of the Church. All faithful had to believe it, have to believe it, or they are not faithful, are not Catholic. Elsewhere the Catholic Church has defined, also ex cathedra, that if one is not Catholic, one is not saved, one is outside of and has culpably rejected God's free gift of salvation.

For the avoidance of doubt on this point, we reproduce as immediately follows the text of the Definition itself from Ineffabilis Deus:

 

 

THE DEFINITION

Wherefore, in humility and fasting, we unceasingly offered our private prayers as well as the public prayers of the Church to God the Father through his Son, that he would deign to direct and strengthen our mind by the power of the Holy Spirit. In like manner did we implore the help of the entire heavenly host as we ardently invoked the Paraclete. Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith, and for the furtherance of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own:

We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

[Declaramus, pronuntiamus et definimus doctrinam quae tenet beatissimam Virginem Mariam in primo instanti suae conceptionis fuisse singulari Omnipotentis Dei gratia et privilegio, intuitu meritorum Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis, ab omni originalis culpae labe praeservatam immunem, esse a Deo revelatam, atque idcirco ab omnibus fidelibus firmiter constanterque credendam.]

Hence, if anyone shall dare -- which God forbid! -- to think otherwise than as has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church; and that, furthermore, by his own action he incurs the penalties established by law if he should dare to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the errors he thinks in his heart.

 

 
         

But how is one, how can the faithful orthodox-catholic Christian possibly reconcile the two strands, that of the necessity of embracing wholeheartedly a Dogma on a detail of theology in fact even understood by only a tiny minority of the faithful — original sin and its consequences and how Mary was kept free from this stain — on the one hand, and on the other hand the seeming un-necessity of embracing the most fundamental Christian beliefs of the Trinity and the Incarnation, flowing from Nostra Aetate and its theological progeny and antecedents?

One is, you are, outside of the Church and Grace and Salvation and Heaven if you reject, if you just fail to embrace, a questionable, highly intellectualized point of high theology concerning Original Sin and the relationship (that is, the non-relationship) of the Blessed Theotokos, the Mother of God, to Original Sin, but one is, you are, not outside of Grace and Salvation and Heaven if you reject God?

it bears repeating here and often, that the Big "O" Orthodox doctrine is that Mary – Παναγία – Панагия – Panagia – All Holy – higher and holier than all the saints never sinned. The faithful Orthodox-Catholic Christian, cognizant of her/his own hourly sins, might do well to reflect on this often. Indeed, could one fill an entire lifetime in gaping jaw wonder at this most singular of achievements? Now reflect also, is it with the same wonder that one reflects on Mary having never sinnned when she — most unlike all the rest of created humanity — was exempted by God from the moment of her conception from concupiscence and all tendency toward any sin?

For the avoidance of any doubt, the present writer is neither expressing nor meaning to encourage any doubt regarding the validity of the content of the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. These comments go to (i) the wisdom of any pope defining as Dogma this or any doctrine outside of an Ecumenical Council and (ii) the seeming utter incongruity between, on the one hand defining as Dogma that every Christian must, with an open and willing acceptance, embrace this Marian Dogma touching on a complicated point of high theology or that person is, in effect, separated from the Church and the True Faith; not a Christian at all; and condemned to Hell, and on the other hand and by the starkest imaginable contrast, entering into the corpus of Catholic Church teaching documents and pronouncements in the vein of Nostra Aetate and many subsequent papal statements and actions which, though never actually so stating, were so obviously designed to deliberately create in the minds of listeners and readers and observers the impression that, well maybe, belief in, acceptance of Christ Jesus Himself as Lord, Savior and God is optional.

 

 

 

Catechism of the Catholic Church ¶ 841: "The Church's relationship with the Muslims. 'The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.'"

"But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohammedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind." - from Lumen Gentium.

 

 

Can these seeming incongruities be explained away by Catholic canon lawyers to Orthodox canon lawyers? And why pin all this on John Paul II when, for example, Lumen Gentium was promulgated after a vote of 2151 bishops to 5 dissenters?

Of course they can be explained away by such lawyers or by anyone likely to be reading the present paragraphs or by the writer of the present paragraphs. Luckily they are sufficiently vague they do not actually mean much. "But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohammedans ..." Of course that is the case. The plan of salvation includes the Muslims: that they should and must accept and follow Christ as the Messiah of God, the Second Person of the Holy and Eternal Trinity, the only begotten Son of God and therefore also that they, the Muslims abandon the patently erroneous notion that Muhammad is a man of God, much less His supreme, final and definitive prophet. A companion statement might be made about the Jews. And as for John Paul II's responsibility, if there is a divorce, some dicotomy between the Second Vatican Council decisions, the documents and decrees, and their later interpretation and implementation, then who bears the chief responsibility for the latter?

From 1854 to 1964, this is the same Church?

What intervened?

  • The August 1914 to May 1945 Civil War of European Christendom?
  • Shoah-Holocaust assumed guilt?
  • Americanism?
  • A cabal of the American Central Intelligence Agency, the Jew lobby, including, without limitation, the Jewish French historian, Jules Isaac (1877–1963), John Courtney Murray, SJ (1904–1967) and Augustin Cardina Bea, SJ (1881–1968) and the deliberate confusion-sowing, faith-undermining "compromise formulas" they managed to get worked into Nostra Aetate and other Vatican II documents?

Yes of course it was all of the above, but perhaps at a deeper level the problem is found in the divisions within, the absence of the actually unity of the Orthodox-Catholic Church?

 

 

  ...[A]ll have sinned and fall short of the glory of God ...  
    Romans 3:23  

 

 

         

Quid?

Co?

What?

The Orthodox-Catholic Church, in each of its three destructively divided Communities — Catholic, Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox — holds that every human soul in Heaven with God is a saint. Yet we all hope that only a tiny proportion of those actually with God in Heaven are those who have been canonized by the Church on Earth. The present writer is horrified by the contemplation of the conclusion that his present remarks represent the assertion that John Paul II is not in Heaven with God. But formal canonization by The Church is something set apart, and the senior most Catholic bishops in charge of that process want to assert that John Paul II's canonization is unrelated to his pontificate. Rather it is happening because of his personal virtues of faith, hope and love? Or maybe because of the vox populi, to wit, some kids carried posters at his funeral with the words Santo Subito, like in the rock concerts after World Youth Day and the other carnaval-atmosphere, mass rallies which Pope John Paul II introduced as regular events in the life of the Church? Or maybe masses of Catholic youth, with trousers intentionally pulled half-way down their asses, meandering past his funeral bier in Saint Peter's Basilica in order to catch a smart-phone photo? Have another look brothers. And tell us that an absolute monarch with the second longest run in history is not responsible for what happened during his reign? You can not have it both ways, absolute monarchy, but responsibility lies elsewhere. And what happened to the Catholic Church during those 27 years is horrible. The emperor isn't wearing any clothes.   ROME (CNS) -- Pope John Paul II is being beatified not because of his impact on history or on the Catholic Church, but because of the way he lived the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love, said Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes. "Clearly his cause was put on the fast track, but the process was done carefully and meticulously, following the rules Pope John Paul himself issued in 1983," the cardinal said April 1, during a conference at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. The cardinal said the church wanted to respond positively to many Catholics' hopes to have Pope John Paul beatified quickly, but it also wanted to be certain that the pope, who died in 2005, is in heaven. Cardinal Amato said the sainthood process is one of the areas of church life where the consensus of church members, technically the "sensus fidelium" ("sense of the faithful"), really counts. "From the day of his death on April 2, 2005, the people of God began proclaiming his holiness," and hundreds, if not thousands, visit his tomb each day, the cardinal said. A further sign is the number of biographies published about him and the number of his writings that are translated and re-published. In the course of a beatification cause, there is the vox populi," he said, which must be "accompanied by the vox dei (voice of God) -- the miracles -- and the vox ecclesiae (voice of the church)," which is the official judgment issued after interviewing eyewitnesses and consulting with historians, physicians, theologians and church leaders to verify the candidate's holiness. Beatification and canonization are not recognitions of someone's superior understanding of theology, nor of the great works he or she accomplished, he said. Declaring someone a saint, the church attests to the fact that he or she lived the Christian virtues in a truly extraordinary way and is a model to be imitated by others, the cardinal said. The candidate, he said, must be perceived "as an image of Christ." Cardinal Amato said, "the pressure of the public and of the media did not disturb the process, but helped it" because it was a further sign of Pope John Paul's widespread reputation for holiness, which is something the church requires proof of before it moves to beatify someone. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who served as Vatican spokesman under Pope John Paul, told the conference that the late pope's voice, his pronunciation, his use of gestures and his presence at the altar or on a stage all contributed to his success as a communicator. But the key to his effectiveness was that he firmly believed that each person was created in God's image and likeness, Navarro-Valls said. "I think this was what attracted people even more than the way he spoke." People felt he was sincere in his recognition of their dignity and of their destiny to be with God, he said. "He was a man profoundly convinced of the truth of those words in Genesis -- 'God made man and woman in his image and likeness.' This gave him optimism even when he could no longer walk, and then even when he could no longer speak," Navarro-Valls said. The Spaniard, a member of Opus Dei, said he had the blessing of personally knowing three saints: Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, founder of Opus Dei; Blessed Teresa of Kolkata; and Pope John Paul. What all three have in common, he said, was a good sense of humor, a ready smile and an ability to laugh. As for those who question beatifying Pope John Paul only six years after his death and those who say the explosion of the clerical sex abuse scandal during his pontificate casts a dark shadow on his reign, Navarro-Valls said people must remember that beatification is not a judgment on a pontificate, but on the personal holiness of the candidate. The key question, he said, is: "Can we be certain he lived the Christian virtues in a heroic way?" END (1 April 2011 Catholic News Service)  
 

 

Totua Tuus   roma not really   JPII beatification 1 May 2011
    ... and back to business on 2 May 2011   Beatyfikacja najsłynniejszego Syna Polski, 1 Maja 2011 roku w Rzymie

 

   

 

... another side, the good side, of the story:

 

   

Documents of John Paul II

Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, On the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, 22 November 1981
(But an unfortunate silence from JPII that mixed marriage with a non-Christian is not a good idea; conspicuous absence of the word clear and unconfusing word adultery in sections dealing with Trial Marriages, De Facto Free Unions and Divorced Persons Who Have Remarried.)

Apostolic Letter, Orientale Lumen, to mark the Centenary of the Orientalium Dignitas of Pope Leo XIII, 2 May 1995

Apostolic Letter for the Fourth Centenary of the Union of Brest, 12 November 1995

Apostolic Letter for the 350th Anniversary of the Union of Uzhorod, 18 April 1996

Apostolic Letter for the Third Centenary of the Union of the Greek-Catholic Church of Romania with the Church of Rome, 2 May 2000

Apostolic Letter for the 1700th Anniversary of the Baptism of the Armenian People, 2 February 2001

Encyclical, Ut Unum Sint, on Commitment to Ecumenism, 25 May 1995]

   

 

Hesychasm  
  Pope John Paul II, Homily at Ephesus, 30 November 1979, General Audience, 14 November 1990, General Audience, 12 November 1997, General Audience, 19 November 1997, Jubilee of Scientists  

 

 

 

painting by Matejko in Vatican Museums of Jan III Sobieski sending Message of Victory to the Pope at the Battle of Kahlenberg-Vienna

Antemurale Christianitatis – Bulwark of Christianity

 
     
  Jan III Sobieski sending Message of Victory at Vienna to the Pope, painting by Jan Matejko, in Vatican Museums  

 

 

Kahlenberg Kirche

Kahlenberg Kirche

 

 

Sobieski plaque on outside wall of Kahlenberg Kirche

 

 

plaque at Kahlenberg Kirche from Stadt Wien

 

 

 

JPII plaque at Kahlenberg Kirche

 

 

   

copper plaque commemorating visit of jpii

 

prayer bench in Kahlenberg Cathedral

And this is striking, is it not, a reigning pope visiting a tiny, out of the way Church in a foreign country,
such visit to country, city, rural district and Church timed to correspond to a battle? The pope seems to have been quite invested, intellectually and emotionally in the event — European Christendom saved from murderous Muslim onslaught and not
by prayer alone but by force of military arms, Polish military arms — and yet 13 September 1983 to 27 October 1986 ???

Kniebank

 

 

 

 

... and in a similar vein in Albania, at the foot of
Kalaja e Rozafës – Rozafa Castle near Shkodër, in the
modest Santuario Madonna del buon Consiglio,
this time nearly ten years later, on 25 IV 1993:
   
  Santuario Madonna del buon Consiglio  
     

 

 

  Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature ‘incapable of being ordered’ to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed ‘intrinsically evil’: they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances.  
    Pope John Paul II in his 1993 Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor  

 

 

Perhaps this is the chief gift, the chief lesson we all receive from the life of Pope John Paul II, that God is God, there is no other God but God.
... and all men fall short of the Glory of God.

 

 

Apologies for a piece of self-reference. In fairness there are not many such contained in these pages, but how many people — neither Poles nor particularly of Polish background — are known to the reader who went off to live for seven months (at least in the sense of making it their base camp) in Wadowice and indeed in the Carmelite Monastery of Wadowice?    
    Well folks, it is not me you have to convince.