Sunday, May 7, 2017
LOST OF CULTURE, LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY PRODUCING POLARIZING REACTIONARIES--IT'S NOT JUST FRANCE!
Modernism that has caused a once strong Church, although with warts here and there, turned the Church from a rock of truth in the midst of cultural falsehoods into a marshmallow of softness where no foundation could be laid. Now that marshmallow has become stale and crusty as stale and crusty as the 1960's and 70's when it was manufactured. It has become rigid and on the verge of crumbling because of it.
The marshmallow Church has produced polarization after polarization since it was manufactured and today that marshmallow is on its last journey where not even a smore can save it. It is like cotton candy, sweet and appearing to be of substance but soon melting away like a iceberg in climate warming.
France's election today is about the French having had enough of the political liberalism that has led to its loss of language, culture and identity (not to mention its Catholic Faith!).
The Church has suffered as much too since the 1960's liberalism/modernism engulfed it only to find a sort of pre-death rally in the current day. But I predict it is only a rally, a presage to its death.
The post-modern Praytell has a post on the glories of 1975 when Pope Paul celebrated Mass for Catholics turned Protestant Pentecostals but maintaining a spirit of Vatican II Catholic veneer. Yes, the 1970's is again in good favor, but it is a rally, a fad and certainly on its way out as are the political ideologies that fomented a President Trump and the two candidates in France and the political situation in Great Britain.
Let us long for a true renewal of the Church in continuity with our culture, language and identity something that Pope Pius XII made triumphantly clear in his prophetic speech in 1949 copied from Rorate Caeli:
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS PIUS XII TO THE FAITHFUL
Sunday, February 20, 1949
Romans! Beloved sons and daughters!
Once again, in a grave and dolorous hour, the faithful people of the Eternal City has rushed to its Bishop and Father.
Once again, this superb colonnade seems barely able to embrace with its gigantic arms the crowds, which like waves driven by an irresistible force, have flowed to the threshold of the Vatican Basilica, in order to attend the Mass of Atonement in the central point of the whole Catholic world and to pour out the sentiments with which their souls are overflowing.
Among the unanimous condemnations of the civilized world, the sentence imposed upon an eminent Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church on the banks of the Danube has raised on the banks of the Tiber a cry of indignation worthy of the City.
But the fact that a regime opposed to religion has this time attacked a Prince of the Church, revered by the vast majority of his people, is not an isolated case; it is one of the links in the long chain of persecutions which some dictatorial States have waged against Christian doctrine and life.
A well-known characteristic common to persecutors of all times is that, not content with physically crushing their victims, they want also to make them appear despicable and hateful to their country and to society.
Who does not remember the Roman martyrs, of whom Tacitus speaks (Annals 15:44), immolated under Nero and made to appear as arsonists, abominable criminals, enemies of mankind?
Modern persecutors show themselves to be the docile disciples of that inglorious school. They copy, so to speak, their masters and models, if, indeed, they do not surpass them in cruelty, clever as they are in the art of employing the most recent progress in the technical sciences for the purpose of a domination and enslavement of the people which in the past would not have been conceivable.
Romans! The Church of Christ is following the road traced out for her by the divine Redeemer. She feels herself eternal; she knows that she cannot perish, that the most violent storms will not succeed in submerging her. She begs no favours; the threats and disfavor of earthly authorities do not intimidate her. She does not interfere in problems purely economic or political, nor does she occupy herself with debates on the usefulness or banefulness of one form of government or another. Always eager, in so far as she is able, to be at peace with all (cf. Rom 12:8), she renders unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, but she cannot betray or abandon that which belongs to God.
Now, it is well known what the totalitarian and anti-religious State requires and expects from her [the Church] as the price for her tolerance and her problematic recognition. That is, it would desire:
a Church which remains silent, when she should speak out;
a Church which weakens the law of God, adapting it to the taste of human desires, when she should loudly proclaim and defend it;
a Church which detaches herself from the unwavering foundation upon which Christ built her, in order to repose comfortably on the shifting sands of the opinions of the day or to give herself up to the passing current;
a Church which does not withstand the oppression of conscience and does not protect the legitimate rights and the just liberties of the people;
a Church which, with indecorous servility, remains enclosed within the four walls of the temple, which forgets the divine mandate received from Christ: Go forth to the street corners (Matt 22:9), teach all peoples (Matt 28:19).
Beloved sons and daughters! Spiritual heirs of an innumerable legion of confessors and martyrs!
Is this the Church whom you venerate and love? Would you recognize in such a Church the features of your Mother’s face? Can you imagine a Successor of the first Peter, who would bow to similar demands?
The Pope has the divine promises; even in his human weaknesses, he is invincible and unshakable; he is the messenger of truth and justice, the principle of the unity of the Church; his voice denounces errors, idolatries, superstitions; he condemns iniquities; he makes charity and virtue loved.
Can he [the Pope] then remain silent when in a nation the churches which are united to the center of Christendom, to Rome, are snatched away through violence or cunning; when all the Greek-Catholic bishops are imprisoned because they refuse to apostatize from their faith; when priests and the faithful are persecuted and arrested because they refuse to leave their true Mother Church?
Can the Pope remain silent, when the right to educate their own children is taken away from parents by a minority regime which wants to alienate them from Christ?
Can the Pope remain silent when a State, surpassing the limits of its authority, arrogates to itself the power to abolish dioceses, to depose Bishops, to overturn the ecclesiastical organization, and to reduce it below the minimum requirements for the effectual care of souls?
Can the Pope remain silent when the point is reached of punishing a priest with imprisonment, guilty of refusing to violate the most sacred and inviolable of secrets, the secret of sacramental confession?
Is all this perhaps illegitimate interference in the political powers of the State? Who could honestly affirm anything of the kind? Your exclamations have already given the answer to these and many other similar questions.
May the Lord God reward your fidelity, beloved sons and daughters. May He give you strength in the present and future struggles. May He make you vigilant against the attacks of His and your enemies. May He illumine with His light the minds of those whose eyes are still closed to the truth. May he grant to those hearts, which today are far from him, the grace to sincerely return to that faith and to those fraternal sentiments whose denial threatens the peace of humanity.
And now may Our lavish, paternal, and affectionate Apostolic Blessing descend upon you, the City and the World.
Source: Speeches and Radio Messages of Pope Pius XII , X, Tenth year of his pontificate, March 2, 1948 to March 1, 1949, pp. 389-391, Vatican Polyglot Press, https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/it/speeches/1949/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19490220_popolo-roma.html.
English translation adapted and edited from excerpts provided on the official website of Pope Pius XII’s cause for canonization. - See more at: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/05/prophetic-speech-of-pope-ven-pius-xii.html#more
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2 comments:
"a once strong Church, although with warts here and there"
Evidently, a lack of active participation by the laity was NOT one of these alleged warts. Witness a memory of Card. Bartolucci of his youth in the 1920s in a tiny Italian village, as quoted in the NLM article today entitled Remembering Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci:
“When I was a boy I remember that the people used to sing in church. They sang at Vespers (all from memory: the antiphons, psalms and hymns); they sang at devotional functions (Way of the Cross, Marian devotions, etc.); they sang in processions (the Magnificat, Te Deum, Lauda Sion, and other hymns); they sang even at Solemn Mass sometimes. (When I was a boy, each Sunday at my little church there was a Solemn Mass, and on normal Sundays the people sang by themselves.) I used to sing too, either behind the altar with my father, who was the parish cantor, or with the people in the pews whenever there weren’t cantors behind the altar. The people sang: they sang in a loud voice, a song that centuries and centuries had handed down to them, a lusty song, severe and strong, that the children had learned from their elders, not at school desks or examination rooms but by constant habit, in the continuous practice of the Church. How can I recall without a still-living emotion the participation of all of people at the Liturgy of the Dead, and especially in the Obsequies? Everyone, I mean everyone, belted out the Libera me Domine and then the In Paradisum and then the De Profundis...! Everyone! And the music, that gorgeous music, attained an unmatchable power; the last, deep, hearty farewell to the dead as he left the church where countless times he had sung full-throatedly the praises of God! The people sang!”
The people sang: they sang in a loud voice. "Everyone, I mean everyone!" Ever seen or heard anything like this at a typical Sunday Novus Ordo today?
Mindszenty should have been beatified.. of course, he definitely was not in favor of liberation theology..the term LT derives from Marxist argumentation, ostensibly as Marxist thought leads to political salvation so leads LT to spiritual salvation. Even today, high raking churchmen believe and support these lies.
Anon-1
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