by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 15, 2024 | New Blog
+Our Lady of Mt. Carmel+
It never fails to amaze me how LibTrads resort to the same fallacious arguments, over and over again, to try and convince people that valid priests and bishops still exist. They don’t care who or what is falsely characterized in the exercise of their mad obsession, and that would include St. Thomas Aquinas and his teaching. Certainly in this last foray they have once again proven their disregard even contempt for scholasticism, although of course they will insist that this is not the case and continue to promote error. But anyone who knows their true motives will understand their capacity for deception once the following is addressed.
One reader pointed out recently that some of those new to the pray-at-home position are suffering the excessive zeal that is common to new converts. They want to come into the fray and make their mark, make their point, render some sort of meaningful contribution. They think that they can make things better, fix things, rectify what has happened within the Church, unify the faithful and I understand that — I was there at one point myself. But when I was experiencing these things, I was in my 30s and that was several decades ago. This site may seem very daunting in the beginning but I want those new to betrayedCatholics to understand that it is really based on some pretty simple principles.
Those principles have been stated many times on this site, in many different places. First of all we do not owe obedience to anyone but lawful pastors and Canon Law and Church teaching insists that anyone claiming to be a lawful pastor must first prove that this is truly the case (Can. 200). Having said this we all know if we’re praying at home that the reason we’re doing it is because we cannot be certain that these men are valid and not only can we not be certain but those who wish to study and consider the matter can achieve total certitude regarding their invalidity if they would only accept and obey the teachings of the Roman Pontiffs, particularly that of Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, an infallible constitution written by Pope Pius XII in 1945. LibTrads cannot present proofs of their certain validity no matter how hard they try given the preamble and first three paragraphs of this constitution. To understand this more completely please see the explanation here and note that in presenting this explanation I am not interpreting anything; I am using other sources to interpret what this document says, sources that were imprimatured prior to the death of Pope Pius XII.
NO interpretation of papal documents on this site
What finally seasoned my over-zealousness and subdued my excessive zeal was dedication to study, meditation and prayer, also a heady and humiliating dose of experience with duplicitous LibTrads. Another reader contacted me recently, stating that those who accept sede vacante and pray at home are all basically interpreting papal documents, this author included, so all their (our) opinions could be more or less equally valid. I took issue with this immediately because as I have explained before on numerous occasions, I do not proceed in the same way these other individuals proceed in these matters but do my utmost to proceed only as the Church Herself has directed.
- Papal documents registered in the Acta Apostolica Sedis are considered binding on all the faithful. Numerous encyclicals and constitutions of the popes that pertain to both their liciety and their validity as well as their proper function are entered into the Acta. This teaching on binding documents was promulgated by Pope Pius XII in his infallible encyclical Humani generis, which itself is duly registered in the Acta Apostolica Sedis.
- VAS, an infallible, hence binding document entered into the Acta, clearly states that all acts which violate Canon Law during an interregnum are null and void. This would include Canons 18, 20, 104, 147, 1812 and others, all of which provide the basis for determining the meaning of the law, the mind of the lawgiver, the possession of offices to which jurisdiction is attached and when acts constitute fraud. (See HERE.)
- In determining the applicability of any law whenever there is doubt, Can. 18 must be followed. This law states one must have recourse to the meaning of the terms of the law considered in their context, parallel passages of the Code, the purpose of the law and the intention of the lawgiver.
- Any attempt to present one’s analysis, opinion or interpretation of any papal document regardless of the value it is assigned is presumptuous to say the least but cannot be admitted because it does not follow these rules. VAS declares such attempts to presume the mind of the Roman Pontiff as null and void and this is clearly stated. After all, everything that issues from the Roman Pontiff amounts to papal law or papal legislation.
- Even then, no personal opinion save those of the approved canonists and theologians can be admitted. And if the document is entered into the Acta, all that is left is for the faithful to obey.
And from this second reader also came a request that proof be provided to help refute
LibTrads who say, based on the commentary of one Spanish writer, a Fr. Scio, that the Holy Sacrifice will never cease because St. Thomas Aquinas indicates it will last till the Second Coming. No direct reference to the St. Thomas Aquinas text was given unfortunately, so exactly which of his writings — and these are voluminous as we well know — was a mystery. So a search had to be conducted and there was some indication that it might have referenced a particular scripture quote, so this was used as the basis for the search. An English commentary was found in the Super I Epistolam B. Pauli ad Corinthios lectura — Commentary On the First Epistle to the Corinthians by Saint Thomas Aquinas, translated by Fabian Larcher, O.P. There St. Thomas writes on 1 Cor. 11: 26:
“686. – Then when he says, As often as, he explains the Lord’s words, which said: “Do this in memory of me,” saying: For as often as you eat this bread. He says bread on account of the appearances that remain. He says this on account of the numerically same body signified and contained. And drink the cup, you will proclaim the Lord’s death, namely, by representing it through this sacrament. And this, until he comes, i.e., until His final coming. This gives us to understand that THIS RITE OF THE CHURCH will not cease until the end of the world: “I am with you always to the end of the world” (Matt 27:20); “This generation,” namely, of the Church, “will not pass away, till all has taken place” (Lk. 21:32).” This is St. Thomas’ own commentary, and no interpretation of what he is saying is offered by the translators of this text.
A rite of the Church and the Holy Sacrifice itself is not necessarily synonymous. If the rite is interpreted as the Holy Sacrifice itself, it would refer to only on rite when the Church recognizes several as valid. And in another place, St. Thomas states that the world will not end immediately on the death of Antichrist but will continue on for an indefinite time. So the end of the world could mean at any time during or even after Antichrist’s appearance, since the majority of the Fathers and Doctors teach the Final Judgment comes shortly after Antichrist’s death. Time, of course, is measured differently by God than by man. Notice that St. Thomas does not say until the consummation here, although he does in other places. And while he first says that the Lord will be proclaimed in the Sacrament “until the final coming,” he later says this sacramental rite itself will not actually cease until the end of the world.
Now saying that this rite of the Church will not cease until the end of the world cannot be interpreted as meaning or implying there will be those available to administer that rite. We have the St. John’s Mass and every time we recite the prayers of the Consecration we, as Catholics, commemorate Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Having said our Perfect Act of Contrition prior to reciting these Mass payers, we participate in Spiritual Communion as many of us have for decades and will do until we die. That the sacrament of the Eucharist is necessary for salvation was denied by Saint Thomas! So if he denies the sacrament of the Eucharist is necessary for salvation it would be difficult to understand how and why he would teach that there must be priests and bishops until the very end to administer them; this is a contradiction in terms, as St. Thomas shows in his Summa below, Pt. III, Q. 73, Art. 3.
Whether the Eucharist is necessary for salvation?
Objection 1: It seems that this sacrament is necessary for salvation. For our Lord said (Jn. 6:54): “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you.” But Christ’s flesh is eaten and His blood drunk in this sacrament. Therefore, without this sacrament man cannot have the health of spiritual life.
Objection 2: Further, this sacrament is a kind of spiritual food. But bodily food is requisite for bodily health. Therefore, also is this sacrament, for spiritual health.
Objection 3: Further, as Baptism is the sacrament of our Lord’s Passion, without which there is no salvation, so also is the Eucharist. For the Apostle says (1 Cor. 11:26): “For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord, until He come.” Consequently, as Baptism is necessary for salvation, so also is this sacrament.
On the contrary, Augustine writes (Ad Bonifac. contra Pelag. I): “Nor are you to suppose that children cannot possess life, who are deprived of the body and blood of Christ.”
I answer that, Two things have to be considered in this sacrament, namely, the sacrament itself, and what is contained in it. Now it was stated above (A[1], OBJ[2]) that the reality of the sacrament is the unity of the Mystical Body, without which there can be no salvation; for there is no entering into salvation outside the Church, just as in the time of the deluge there was none outside the Ark, which denotes the Church, according to 1 Pet. 3:20,21. And it has been said above (Q[68], A[2]), that before receiving a sacrament, the reality of the sacrament can be had through the very desire of receiving the sacrament. Accordingly, before actual reception of this sacrament, a man can obtain salvation through the desire of receiving it, just as he can before Baptism through the desire of Baptism, as stated above (Q[68], A[2]).
Yet there is a difference in two respects. First of all, because Baptism is the beginning of the spiritual life, and the door of the sacraments; whereas the Eucharist is, as it were, the consummation of the spiritual life, and the end of all the sacraments, as was observed above (Q[63], A[6]): for by the hallowings of all the sacraments preparation is made for receiving or consecrating the Eucharist. Consequently, the reception of Baptism is necessary for starting the spiritual life, while the receiving of the Eucharist is requisite for its consummation; by partaking not indeed actually, but in desire, as an end is possessed in desire and intention. Another difference is because by Baptism a man is ordained to the Eucharist, and therefore from the fact of children being baptized, they are destined by the Church to the Eucharist; and just as they believe through the Church’s faith, so they desire the Eucharist through the Church’s intention, and, as a result, receive its reality. But they are not disposed for Baptism by any previous sacrament, and consequently before receiving Baptism, in no way have they Baptism in desire; but adults alone have: consequently, they cannot have the reality of the sacrament without receiving the sacrament itself. Therefore this sacrament is not necessary for salvation in the same way as Baptism is.
Reply to Objection 1: As Augustine says, explaining Jn. 6:54, “This food and this drink,” namely, of His flesh and blood: “He would have us understand the fellowship of His body and members, which is the Church in His predestinated, and called, and justified, and glorified, His holy and believing ones.” Hence, as he says in his Epistle to Boniface (Pseudo-Beda, in 1 Cor. 10:17): “No one should entertain the slightest doubt, that then every one of the faithful becomes a partaker of the body and blood of Christ, when in Baptism he is made a member of Christ’s body; nor is he deprived of his share in that body and chalice even though he depart from this world in the unity of Christ’s body, before he eats that bread and drinks of that chalice.”
Reply to Objection 2: The difference between corporeal and spiritual food lies in this, that the former is changed into the substance of the person nourished, and consequently it cannot avail for supporting life except it be partaken of; but spiritual food changes man into itself, according to that saying of Augustine (Confess. vii), that he heard the voice of Christ as it were saying to him: “Nor shalt thou change Me into thyself, as food of thy flesh, but thou shalt be changed into Me.” But one can be changed into Christ, and be incorporated in Him by mental desire, even without receiving this sacrament. And consequently the comparison does not hold.
Reply to Objection 3: Baptism is the sacrament of Christ’s death and Passion, according as a man is born anew in Christ in virtue of His Passion; but the Eucharist is the sacrament of Christ’s Passion according as a man is made perfect in union with Christ Who suffered. Hence, as Baptism is called the sacrament of Faith, which is the foundation of the spiritual life, so the Eucharist is termed the sacrament of Charity, which is “the bond of perfection” (Col. 3:14). (End of Summa quote)
The importance of cross-referencing
The above underscores the necessity of further study or cross-referencing St. Thomas’ teaching to discover what else he may have taught on these topics. This is very important because it helps the student to better understand the specifics of what the author himself understands about the subject and other points that must be taken into consideration to completely comprehend what the author is saying. Failure of LibTrads to do this in the case of St. Robert Bellarmine was what initially led early traditionalists to think that he taught that an heretical Pope could be deposed, which was never the case. Bellarmine later clarified his views, stating that no, a Pope could never commit heresy in office and could not be deposed as explained in the article HERE. LibTrads’ failure to cross reference what they’re trying to prove has resulted in making it appear that St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that we will have Mass hence the Eucharist until the Second Coming and that Christ will remain with the hierarchy until the very end. It implies that Catholic standing themselves minus the hierarchy as is the actual reality cannot constitute the church and that the promise was given only to the hierarchy and not the faithful but that is not true.
As can be seen in the above, St. Thomas denies the statement of the author making the third objection, which is basically the position of LibTrads. And that third objection is based on the very scripture text in question here: 1 Corinthians 11: 26. So if St. Thomas really thought that that scripture quote meant that this sacrament had to be received from the hands of the hierarchy till the very end, he certainly would not have replied as he did above to this question regarding the necessity of the Eucharist for salvation. And if actual reception of the Eucharist is not required, how can LibTrads twist the meaning of 1 Cor. 11:26 to mandate the existence of the hierarchy to consecrate and administer it, a moot point, since Traditionalist pseudo-clergy never became members of the hierarchy in the first place! But of course Traditionalists are not going to refer you to that particular part of the Summa; they’re only going to quote St. Thomas’s commentary on the Vulgate regarding this text. For from what St. Thomas says on the Eucharist, this rite can also exist spiritually in the desire for receiving the Eucharist especially when we are reciting the words of the Consecration, having made a Perfect Act of Contrition and Spiritual Communion. And in the absence of the Eucharist all the theologians teach that such a desire suffices just as St. Thomas teaches it here. The same is true of confession regarding the Perfect Act of Contrition when there is no priest available.
We see the same problem with Feeney and his insistence that baptism by water only be received — it’s the same type of thing, just a different variation. And as stated before, I believe that Feeney was the prototype traditionalist. Another text not quoted here which directly addresses the problem is found in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Catena Aurea. There St. Thomas teaches Christ promised to be with ALL the faithful, not just the apostles and the disciples, just as stated in previous refutations of those who erroneously teach “there will always be bishops” (see HERE).
Catena Aurea (Matt. 28:20)
Chrys.: And because what He had laid upon them was great, therefore to exalt their spirits He adds, “And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” As much as to say, Tell Me not of the difficulty of these things, seeing I am with you, Who can make all things easy. A like promise He often made to the Prophets in the Old Testament, to Jeremiah who pleaded his youth, to Moses, and to Ezekiel, when they would have shunned the office imposed upon them. And not with them only does He say that He will be, but with all who shall believe after them. For the Apostles were not to continue till the end of the world, but He says this to the faithful as to one body.
Raban.: Hence we understand that to the end of the world shall not be wanting those who shall be worthy of the Divine indwelling.
Chrys.: He brings before them the end of the world, that He may the more draw them on, and that they may not look merely to present inconveniences, but to the infinite goods to come. As much as to say, The grievous things which you shall undergo, terminate with this present life, seeing that even this world shall come to an end, but the good things which ye shall enjoy endure forever.
Bede, Beda in Hom., non occ.: It is made a question how He says here, “I am with you,” when we read elsewhere that He said, “I go unto him that sent me.” [Jon 16:5] What is said of His human nature is distinct from what is said of His divine nature. He is going to His Father in His human nature, He abides With His disciples in that form in which He is equal with the Father. When He says, “to the end of the world,” He expresses the infinite by the finite; for He who remains in this present world with His elect, protecting them, the same will continue with them after the end, rewarding them.
Jerome: He then who promises that He will be with His disciples to the end of the world, shews both that they shall live forever, and that He will never depart from those that believe.
Leo, Serm., 72, 3: For by ascending into heaven He does not desert His adopted; but from above strengthens to endurance, those whom He invites upwards to glory. Of which glory may Christ make us partakers, Who is the King of glory, “God blessed forever,” AMEN. (End of Catena quote).
Truth matters here, and in order to prove that the Holy Sacrifice will NOT cease at the time of Antichrist, those misquoting St. Thomas need to ante up and present proofs that overcome the authoritative truth professed by approved authors — the unanimous opinion of the Fathers which both the councils of Trent and the Vatican state must be accepted as a rule of faith — that indeed the Mass will cease at the time of Antichrist. They try to cunningly wrest this interpretation from St. Thomas because they have no other proofs but even then, his opinion would be that of only one doctor regarding the Sacrament of the Eucharist. While even the opinion of one doctor as great as St. Thomas is enough to make an opinion truly probable, we are forbidden to follow a probable opinion regarding the valid reception of the Sacraments, which LibTrads try to infer as a necessity in interpreting this verse. What these pseudo-clergy teach on the cessation of the Sacrifice would never be accepted as proof of anything by the Catholic Church or even in classes of logic on secular campuses.
Fallacies in logic — again
Rev. Joseph B Walsh S.J., in his Fordham philosophy series on Logic, (imprimatured in 1940) lists several types of false arguments under the heading of ignoratio elenchi. And among these are “an appeal to the ignorance of the hearers, tricking them by statements they are unable to test.” Not everyone knows how to cross-reference the Summa, even online, to find out what else St. Thomas might have to say on this topic. And even if they do find it, not everybody is able to put together what it takes to disprove what these LibTrads are saying, and they trade on this. this can be easily seen as a deliberate attempt to take advantage and misinform. And there are other forms of ignoratio elenchi LibTrads use to make it appear that they are presenting proofs from a credible source when in fact they are assuming as proven that which they have yet to proven or assuming that a certain proposition is implicitly contained in the one to be proved.
LibTrads assume St. Thomas proves their case when in fact they have yet to prove (a) that the rite Saint Thomas refers to in his Vulgate commentary references the Holy Sacrifice, not the Eucharist; (b) that the unanimous opinion of the Fathers on the meaning of Holy Scripture, determined to be a rule of faith at Trent and the Vatican Council and hence a matter for belief by the faithful, is not binding in this case or can be overturned by other discoveries they have made; (c) that they are indeed validly able to confer the sacraments even if what Saint Thomas said was applicable in this case, for to do this they would need to overturn Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis which is impossible, because the Pope has the last word in all these things; (d) that Saint Thomas teaches Christ spoke only to the hierarchy in promising to be with dialect unto the consummation. This of course we have already shown above they will not be able to do.
LibTrads have managed to create yet another distraction, another perversion of the truth and that’s all that’s happened here. They wished to make themselves indispensable and to create fear in the faithful that unless they receive the sacraments from their hands, they cannot possibly acquire the graces necessary to attain eternal salvation. This very concept is contradicted by Saint Thomas Aquinas above so we know that they are not presenting all of the truth to their followers and to those that they may be discussing this was on the Internet. They would even go so far as to falsify the teachings of the Church on what Christ said about including the elect in the promise to be with them unto the consummation. And that is a truly sad thing to contemplate because it demonstrates that truth does matter to them, only retaining their power, position and followers. What St. Thomas says matters and what the Church teaches and has always taught must take precedence over any of this nonsense that is bandied about through e-mail, on the Internet, over the telephone, whatever.
The one thing that causes them to continually gnash their teeth is the fact that in the absence of the hierarchy Pope Pius XII taught that the laity must take up all their responsibilities and duties. And this is what we have tried to do. But until they admit the full implications of this statement, which is duly registered in the Acts of Apostolica Sedis, there will be no unity among those praying at home and there will be no admission of guilt or cooperation among traditionalists regarding what has happened since the death of Pope Pius XII.
Conclusion
We may be a rag-tag bunch, those brought to the marriage feast from the ditches and the highways, but WE are the Church. LibTrad pseudo-clergy, too, were called to obey the laws and teachings of the Church but they had better things to do; they had hidden agendas, they had dreams of creating a need for their services that would result in a tidy little income. They also are laity, but because of their disobedience and their refusal to accept the supreme jurisdiction of the papacy, they are laypersons who exist outside the Mystical Body. For they have not only refused to obey the Church they professed to love — they have betrayed Christ and his vicars every bit as much as the Novus Ordo church they love to hate.
by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 11, 2024 | New Blog
+St. Elizabeth of Portugal+
by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 5, 2024 | New Blog
+Sts. Peter and Paul+
+ Prayer Intention for the Month of July, dedicated to
the Most Precious Blood of Jesus+
“Eternal Father, by the most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, glorify His most holy Name according to the desires of his adorable Heart.” (Raccolta, 1936)
Please forgive the lateness of this post which can be attributed to technical difficulties with the website that have now been resolved. I still wish to honor Saints Peter and Paul with this post so I have retained the date of their feast day. I hope to be back at work soon and will then address some issues that have arisen recently overseas and here at home that have been called to my attention. I should be able to get to these things no later than the end of July if not sooner. Thank you for your patience and wishing you a blessed summer vacation season.
by T. Stanfill Benns | Jun 14, 2024 | New Blog
Saint Anthony of Padua religion faith holy illustration. St. Anthony. Patron Saint of Lost Items. With Child Jesus
What follows for the next several weeks are a series of meditations on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, since this is His month. They are taken from Rev. Peter J. Arnoudt, S.J., The Imitation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, (1904, Benziger Bros.), a lengthy book of meditations. These visits with the Sacred Heart are remarkable for the love they inculcate and the deeper understanding of Christ’s love for us which they offer the reader. These selections have been chosen to reflect the times in which we find ourselves, with the hope that they will help the reader better appreciate the value of suffering in the light of Our Lord’s own sufferings, and the joy sharing in these sufferings should bring to us, since they unite us with Christ on the Cross.
Wishing all a peaceful and spiritually productive summer!
by T. Stanfill Benns | Jun 1, 2024 | New Blog
Prayer Society Intention for the Month of June, Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
“Divine Heart of Jesus, convert sinners, save the dying, deliver the holy souls in Purgatory.” (Raccolta)
As Henry Cardinal Manning has explained in his Temporal Power of the Vicar of Christ: “Antichrist and the antichristian movement has these marks: first, schism from the Church of God; second, denial of its Divine and infallible voice;and thirdly, denial of the Incarnation.” On pgs. 85-86, Manning describes schism as “revolt from authority… the one and universal Church.” Denial of infallibility he characterizes as “the rejection of the office and presence of the Holy Ghost… This necessarily involves the heretical principle of human opinion as opposed to Divine faith; of the private spirit as opposed to the infallible voice of the Holy Spirit speaking through the Church of God” (p. 166). As for denial of the Incarnation, Manning notes on page 161: “The dethronement of the Vicar of Christ is the dethronement of the hierarchy of the universal Church and the public rejection of the Presence and Reign of Jesus…” And on page 91: “If heresy in the individual dissolves the unity of the Incarnation, heresy in the nation dissolves the unity of the Church, which is built on the Incarnation.”
This should be something quite obvious to the average Catholic as a logical consequence of Manning’s first two points, but unfortunately it is not. For “rejection of the office and presence of the Holy Ghost” is a denial of the necessary presence of the Third person of the Blessed Trinity, and the Trinity is one and undivided; deny one of its members and you deny all. Christ’s Vicars speak in His name; they are His living voice on earth. Ignore and demean that voice and every bit of the light of sanctifying grace disappears. There are now so many ways the Incarnation is being denied on earth it is difficult to evaluate them all. But as we have been examining in our last several blogs, the institution of the Novus Ordo Missae was one of the major contributors to this denial, falsifying the meaning of Christ’s very words in instituting the unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass on Catholic altars. For what it actually represented was the ability of man to dictate to God the meaning and wording of the Divine establishment of the Eucharist, recognizing only His humanity and changeable human nature, NOT HIS DIVINITY, just as they would later change all the other Sacraments.
All this, of course, emanated from Protestantism and its concept of Christ as a loving, merciful God — our friend, our brother — with no reference to the suffering Christ, the righteous judge, the exactor of Divine vengeance. True Catholics watch in sorrow when they see Protestants and Novus Ordo adherents alike swaying and dancing in scandalous attire to guitar-accompanied “Christian” and secular music, after the manner of pagans, and calling it “worship”; speaking in tongues and effecting “healings” at charismatic/ holy roller services and welcoming non-Catholics into what is commonly believed to be “Catholic” churches, in the spirit of ecumenism. That God would be pleased with the scurrilous amusements of man is a sacrilege and a travesty, a denial both of his Divinity and His Kingship. Traditionalism denies His divinity as well, for those attending the services of Traditionalist pseudo-clergy are just as pagan, offering worship to bread idols never consecrated by those who are not valid successors of the apostles.
When silence falls
One shudders to think what will happen to these non-believers on the day Christ comes as King to judge us all. For those who have not been converted by the many chastisements preceding Christ’s coming I envision, on beholding Him in all His Divine majesty, an all-pervading and electrified silence, electrified, that is, by the first inkling of fear inspired by this most awesome and Almighty Lord God of Hosts. For He will be nothing as they imagined. There will be no kindly smile on His anguished face, no open arms to embrace those who believe they can continue sinning without ever amending their lives and doing penance, because His blood covers them all. For standing there behind Him and at His side will be all the Saints they refused to believe in, including His Blessed Mother, who they never cease to defile, and her retinue of angels, who many dismiss as figments of the imagination. They will look frantically to find any among that faithful band appearing with Him who they hailed as ministers, prophets and “saints” among their ranks on this earth and will recognize no one. And then will confusion and dread overtake them, and the weeping and gnashing of teeth begin.
Listen to what St. Alphonsus de Liguori tells us about Judgment Day:
“The Redeemer has appointed a day of general judgment which is called in the Scriptures ‘the day of the Lord,’ on which Jesus Christ will make known the greatness of His Majesty. Hence that day is called not a day of mercy and pardon but ‘a day of wrath, a day of tribulation and distress, a day of calamity and misery.’ Yes, for then the Lord will come to repair the honor which sinners sought to take from Him on this earth. Let us examine how the judgment of that great day will take place…The just will stand on the right and the wicked will be driven to the left. How great would be the pain that you would feel at being driven away from the party of pleasure or at being expelled from the Church! But how much greater will be the pain of those who are banished from the society of the saints. What, think you, says the author of The Imperfect Work, must be the confusion of the wicked one after being separated from the just? They will be abandoned. This confusion alone would, according to Saint John Chrysostom, be sufficient to constitute a hell for the reprobate. The son will be separated from the father the husband from the wife and the master from the servant. One shall be taken and one shall be left as in Holy Scripture.
“’Tell me my brother, what place do you think will fall to you? Would you wish to be found at the right hand? If you do, abandon the life which leads to the left.’ The witnesses against the reprobate will first be the devils, who according to Saint Augustine will say: ‘Most just God declare, him to be mine who was unwilling to be yours.’ Secondly, they will be their own consciences, ‘Their own conscience bearing witness to them.’ The very walls of the house in which they have offended God with their testimony will cry for vengeance against them. ‘The stone shall cry out of the wall.’ Finally, the Judge himself, who has been present at all the insults offered to Him, will give evidence against the Sinner: ‘Depart from Me you cursed into everlasting fire’” (Preparation for Death).
But no one believes this could happen to them, that the end is so very near. And even those who admit it cannot be far off, are not worried they will be counted among the reprobate. And yet it seems that this event could be at our very doors.
Nearness of the Judgment
We read From Fr. E. Sylvester Berry’s The Apocalypse of St. John, (1921), Ch. 20:
“St. John now beholds our Lord seated upon His throne to judge the living and the dead. Heaven and earth fleeing before His face expresses the terror that shall seize upon the wicked: ‘Men withering away for fear and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world. For the powers of heaven shall be moved.’ Our Lord’s coming with power and majesty, and the signs that precede it were not revealed to St. John, probably because they had been sufficiently announced by Christ Himself in the Gospels. ‘Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together.’ In like manner at the coming of Christ the dead arise and come to judgment. The books are now opened and all are judged according to their works which are written either in the book of life or in the books of the dead.
“The books of the dead (wicked) are many while there is but one book of life because ‘many are called, but few are chosen.’ The sea represents the nations opposed to the Church in the last days. Its dead are the people of those nations whom Christ shall find living at His coming. They are dead in sin and their works are written in the books of the dead. Death and hell must give up their dead, the wicked who die before the second coming of Christ. Their souls, condemned to hell, are now united to their risen bodies to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Thus do death and hell give up their dead.
“The order of events immediately preceding the last judgment can be fairly well established from various passages of Scriptures. The revolt of Gog and Magog will be punished by a deluge of fire from heaven which will probably occasion the conversion of great numbers. At some time after this the signs foreboding the coming of Christ will strike terror into all hearts, and the day of judgment will be near at hand; ‘When these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand’; ‘But of the day and hour no one knoweth, no not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone.’ St. Paul says that ‘The day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night;’ men will be found in the midst of their occupations as happened at the deluge of the days of Noe.
“At length there ‘shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all tribes of earth mourn: and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds with much power and majesty. And He shall send His angels with a trumpet and a great voice, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds of heaven, from the farthest parts of the heaven to the utmost bounds of them.’ At the sound of the trumpet the dead shall arise. The just found living upon earth in that day and the just who arise from the dead shall be caught up into the air to meet Christ and be united with Him forever. ‘The dead who are with Christ shall arise first. Then we who are alive, who are left shall be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ into the air and so shall we be always with the Lord.’
“Shall those found living at the second coming of Christ undergo death before the judgment? The Church has decided nothing in the matter, but Sacred Scripture seems to indicate that they will not. St. Paul says: ‘We who are alive shall be taken up;’ Again he says: ‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet . . . the dead shall arise again incorruptible; and we shall be changed.’ He evidently makes a distinction between those who are dead and those who remain alive at the coming of Christ. In the preceding verse the Apostle writes: ‘We shall all indeed rise again; but we shall not all be changed.’ This indicates that all must undergo death but the Greek text reads: ‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.’ It must be admitted that this reading agrees better with the context than the one found in the Vulgate.
And from Fr. Charles-Marie Arminjon’s The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life, (1881), said to have been read and esteemed by St. Therese of Lisieux:
“As for the manner of this Second Coming, it will be like the first: it will be the same Christ and the same man and His features and appearance will be the same as during His mortal life. It will be enough for those who lived and spoke with Him to set eyes on His person in order to recognize Him. However this second manifestation will not come in weakness and humiliation but in majesty and glory. St. Matthew’s gospel says: ‘I say to you, hereafter you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God and coming in the clouds of heaven.’ In other words, Jesus Christ will appear surrounded by the pomp and apparel of divine kingship. The glorified elect and the multitude of angels will form a resplendent court around His throne such as no mind could portray. Those who fought with the greatest constancy, who have followed Him the most closely in the arena of his sufferings, will be the nearest to his person.
“’Then shall the just stand with great constancy,’ says the book of Wisdom, ‘against those that have afflicted them and taken away their labours.’ We can imagine the regrets and despair of the damned by virtue of the picture which the same inspired author draws of them.
- “These seeing it shall be troubled with terrible fear and shall be amazed at the suddenness of their unexpected salvation.
- “Saying within themselves, repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit. These are they whom we had some time in derision and for a parable of reproach.
- “We fools esteemed their life’s madness and their end without honor.
- “Behold how they are numbered among the children of God and their lot is among the Saints. • “Therefore we have erred from the way of truth and the light of justice hath not shined unto us and the sun of understanding hath not risen upon us.
“The apostles, martyrs, doctors and thousands of the just who have fought for the honor of God and for the interests of the faith will unite with their leader in proclaiming the truth of His sentences and the equity of His judgments. This judgment is rightly called universal because it will be exercised over all members of the human race, because it will cover every crime every misdemeanor and because it will be definitive and irrevocable.
All will be revealed
“Only then will human history begin. In the clarity of the light of God all the crimes, public and secret, which have been committed in every latitude and in every age will be seen clearly and in detail. The whole life of each human being will be laid bare. No circumstance will be omitted, no action, word or desire will remain unknown. We shall be reminded of the different periods we have gone through; the lustful man will have his disorderly living and libertine speeches set out before him the, ambitious man his devious, Machiavellian ways. The judgment will unravel and bring out all the strands and the duplicity of those intrigues so cleverly hatched. It will set out in their true light all those base repudiations of principles those Craven acts of complicity which men invested with public authority have sought to justify, whether by invoking the specious pretext of reasons of state or by covering them up with the mask of piety or disinterestedness.
“The Lord, says St. Bernard, will reveal all those abuses which people conceal from themselves; all those unknown dissipations, those planned crimes where the only thing lacking was the actual commission. Those pretended virtues and those forgotten secret sins blotted out from the memory will appear suddenly like enemies starting out from an ambush. Without doubt, there are men so hardened in evil that the thought of this terrible manifestation has little effect upon them. Being familiar with crime, they treat it as a subject of amusement and boasting. And without they fondly imagine that they will assume some effrontery at the Judge, the same effrontery at the judgment and by their cynical, arrogant attitude defy the majesty of God and the conscience of the human race.
“Vain hope! Sin will no longer be viewed from the opinion of carnal man, ready to excuse the most violent outbursts because they do not harm any neighbor, either in his goods or in his life. The foulness and disorder of sin will be revealed in the ineffable clarity of the light of God. Sin, says Saint Thomas, will be judged as God Himself judges it.”
And finally this, written by Rev. Herman Bernard Kramer, The Book of Destiny, 1956, Ch. 20:
“After the defeat of Gog and his armies, Satan is cast into the pool of fire and brimstone, hell proper, into which Antichrist and his prophet were cast alive with body and soul. They may not appear at the Last Judgment. Satan was confined to the bottomless abyss during the millennium and then released to seduce Gog and his followers, whose number is as the sands of the sea. Thereby he fills up his measure of iniquity and merits to be sunk into the deepest chasm of the pool of fire. The final judgment is pronounced and executed upon him as on his two principal agents and with them he is locked up in the burning pool. Here we must understand that this is how Antichrist and the False Prophet re cast ALIVE into this pool: They are the first to be resurrected at the Final Judgment and then thrown into Hell, for “ALL shall rise”…
“This verse (10) suggests another epoch of peace between the destruction of Gog and the end of the world. Perhaps the signs of the approaching end foretold by our Lord will then gradually appear. There is no “day and night” in eternity after the Last Judgment. According to the Greek text, the “day and night” seems not to be identified with the “forever and ever” of eternity. Hence if Satan is tormented together with the Beast and False Prophet day and night, it must be while day and night still continue on earth. Those who shall have forgotten God’s judgments upon Antichrist or view them as doubtful legends and have drifted into indifference at the end of the THOUSAND YEARS shall in the destruction of Gog come face to face with the truth of the Church’s teachings and a manifest proof of the everlasting punishments on the wicked. As in the Old Testament, so at all times men discount and underestimate in the course of ages the value of God’s revelations and treat the Gospel today as fairy tales, deny the reality of the miracles of Christ and even doubt His existence. Many will estimate the history of Antichrist and the miraculous manifestation of Christ’s power in the Church and particularly in the Holy Eucharist as far distant fables and will imagine in their overweening pride that men were deceived in those days of ignorance.
“Verse 10 refutes with striking clearness all explanations that the Beast and the False Prophet are institutions or organizations, for they are not only cast into the same pool of fire with Satan, whose personal existence no one tries to torture into an institution but are also “tormented” together with him. No institution, organization, kingdom or empire is “tormented” in hell. But even brilliant minds after taking an impossible view will try to hold on to it. Verses 11-end: This verse follows the foregoing without any connecting particle and without any introduction to the succeeding vision. The One sitting upon the Great White Throne before whose face heaven and earth flee away is Christ coming in the clouds to judge the world. He comes for the Last Judgment. No place is found for heaven and earth anymore. The world and all its glory shall pass away, and the Church shall exist on earth no longer.
A time for penance
“Between this verse and the foregoing a period of time is obviously passed over, during which the wicked may repent and do penance. Verse eleven following the final judgment upon Satan without the insertion of a connecting word proves nothing about the proximity of the judgment to his condemnation.
“The ‘seven years’ of Ezechiel may be and probably are a symbolic number. Ezechiel indicates (39: 22-29) some lapse of time from Gog to the end of the world and likewise a speedy arrival of the end after the last war of Gog (38: 8). The prophets commonly write new prophecies verse after verse without any conjunctions and without any indication of long spaces of time between the verses. In one verse they promise the end of the Babylonian Captivity and in the next the glories of Christ’s reign, as if the coming of Christ were simultaneous with the return from Captivity. And they connect His Coming immediately with the glorious future days in terms of the millennium, although another couple of thousand years must pass away added to the five hundred from the end of the Captivity to His Coming.
“Christ steadfastly refused to reveal the nearness of the end of the world, although the apostles evinced the keenest desire to know this. He said to them that the Father had kept this knowledge in His control (Mt. 24: 36; Mach.13: 32). The time for the career of Antichrist shall be known when the signs appear and also that of the last enemy of the Church, Gog; there is nothing in the Apocalypse, however, to indicate the nearness or remoteness of the end of the world after these other prophecies have been past history. The wisdom of God withholds this knowledge from the human race.”
Battle of Armageddon
If we take Apoc. Ch. 16 literally, it would seem that it coincides with the beginning of a third world war, and the advent of a possible pole shift, and/or meteor strike — accompanied by the destruction of Babylon described at length in chapters 17 and 18-19. It also segues smoothly into Ch. 20, which aligns this battle with the last persecution of the Church — the battle of the forces of good with Gog and Magog. Chapter 20 of Apocalypse indicates Satan himself will descend on the “camp of the saints” and inspire what Rev. Leo Haydock describes as “the last persecution of Antichrist” by Gog and Magog, which some believe is Russia and its leader in league with China and other nations. If we live in the time after Antichrist described by St. Thomas Aquinas, which I believe that we do, Satan and his hordes will come quickly and the battle of Armageddon will be waged as described in Chap. 16 of Apocalypse.
The article here discusses the battle of Armageddon that seems to be instigated by those of the Orient — China, Russia, et al; “Gog and Magog” (Apoc. 20:7; Ezech. 38: 2-3) and coincides with the fall of Babylon. As Rev. P. Huchede explains in his book History of Antichrist (1884), Gog and Magog can be identified with the Scythians, who the Encyclopedia Brittanica identifies as “…members of a nomadic people, originally of Iranian stock, known from as early as the 9th century B.C., who migrated westward from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.” Clearly, this is now a distinct possibility. Some speculate on the web that these forces shall overcome us and enslave us, but if this is true, it may not be true everywhere or for all. We must remember what Fr. Hunolt says in his sermons, recently quoted here, that on the contrary: ““This shall be done at the end of the world, when all creatures are to be set at liberty and released from slavery, and then like a mighty army they will all rush in a body against the wicked to put them to shame, as we read in the Book of Wisdom…”
There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth
However brief it may be, there will be time to do penance before the Final Judgment as Fr. Hunolt agrees; won for mankind, I believe, by Christ’s Blessed Mother. As we noted in our last blog, how many have defamed and blasphemed Our Lady when they so desperately need her intercession. Will there not be a great silence among these blasphemers, when they stare with incredulity as Our Lady comes to crush the head of Satan? Is it not possible that the Miracle of the Sun was a portent of a future intervention on mankind’s behalf by Our Blessed Mother, to save her children from evil men who not only try to obliterate all belief in her Divine Son, but obscure the sun itself, created by God the Father, and rob us of its light that we may all the more quickly perish? Yes, that is when the great silence will fall, when they realize that all they have been taught was a lie, and they have no way to defend themselves before the throne of God.
Such a great mercy, sadly, will not be taken advantage of by all. That the Final Judgment is imminent is not a certainty, although it is definitely a serious probability. For as we have seen over the ages, many things anticipated in Apocalypse have either missed the mark or have been taken in the wrong direction entirely. We can see things more clearly now as the time grows nearer. But it is likely that we will never know, until the battle of Armageddon commences and Antichrist’s diabolical system is destroyed, exactly what God has planned for us. And this, as Rev. Kramer states above, is his express will. That is why Christ tells us He comes as a thief, for each of us when we end our earthly exile; and for all of us, when the days of this weary world are done.
by T. Stanfill Benns | May 26, 2024 | New Blog
+Most Holy Trinity Sunday+
Many readers grieve over the multiplication of blasphemies and insults against the Blessed Mother by those professing to be “Christians,” both on social media sites and Protestant websites. The intensity of these attacks appears to be increasing, and Catholics are hard-pressed at times to answer these false accusations themselves, dissecting the grounds for the attack and cutting to the core of the issue. What follows is the summary of a little book printed in the 1800s that explains the history, motives, misrepresentations and illogical basis for these allegations. This work proves, from the writings of notable Protestant preachers themselves, that the idol worship Catholics are accused of today is neither worship nor idolatry. It then exposes the true source of the hatred Protestants so vehemently spew against our beloved Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Rev. Henry G. Ganss, the rector of St. Patrick’s Church in Carlisle, Penn., wrote Mariolatry, New Phases of an Old Fallacy in 1897 (Notre Dame Press, Indiana). It first appeared as a series printed in the periodical Ave Maria. His work is based on a scathing address entitled Mariolatry, delivered by a Protestant minister in Pennsylvania and widely distributed to the public. In his work, Rev. Ganss refutes this minister’s sermon and notes the following important points.
Ignorance, name-calling, credulity and insinuations
Regarding the methods used to belittle and castigate Catholics at every possible turn he writes: “Such wholesale and extreme pugnacity may be very convenient as it calls for no discrimination; it requires neither learning nor thought but can be played off under all circumstances by almost any polemic with about the same effect. Its strength consists mainly in calling nicknames; in repeating outrageous charges without regard to any contradiction from the other side; in thrumming over threadbare commonplaces received by tradition from the easy credulity of times past; in huge exaggerations, vast distortions and bold, insulting insinuations thrown out at random in any and every direction. But however convenient all this may be, requiring little learning and less thought and no politeness or charity whatever, it is high time to see that it is a system of tactics which needs in truth only a slight change of circumstance at any time to work just the opposite way from that it is meant to work.
“There is an absence of a cool, dispassionate, judicial temperament; glittering generalities and unsupported assertions are uttered with a melancholy disregard for historic accuracy, conscientious scholarship, logical sequence, and, I regret to say, Christian truth. The covert design seems to be to cast discredit and odium on everything bearing a semblance to Catholicity even if charity the only badge of a true follower of a common Redeemer, and truth, the only criterion that regulates social and spiritual life, must be sacrificed. And when this is done with a mock-heroic air of theological erudition and with the avowed intention of bringing man near to his God, we hardly know whether to be convulsed at the picturesque drollery of the first attitude or filled with burning indignation at the seeming impiety of the second.”
T. Benns comment: What strikes me immediately here is the similarity of these Protestant attacks to those of the LibTrads against Catholics praying at home.
The Incarnation denied
Ganss continues, quoting Luther: “To be the mother of God is a prerogative so lofty, so tremendous, as to surpass all understanding. There is no honor no beatitude capable of approaching an elevation which consists in being of the whole human race the sole person superior to all others unequaled in the prerogative of having one common son with the heavenly Father. Calvin fully endorses this view. The imputation of sinfulness to the Blessed Virgin is confronted with the evidence of the ancient Church. St. Ambrose calls her ‘a Virgin free from every stain of sin;’ Saint Andrew of Crete says that she was ‘not at leavened with the universal leaven of sin.’ Saint Augustine, who is quoted later in the sermon, claims that she had ‘an immunity from all sin concerning whom when there is a question of sin. I wish no question would ever to be raised on account of the Lord, for thence we know that more grace to vanquish sin altogether was conferred on her who merited to conceive and bring forth Him in whom sin has no part.’ Disbelief was so strongly grafted on the ancient Church that at the ecumenical council of Ephesus it was made a standard of orthodoxy, so that all who denied that Mary was the Mother of God were excommunicated as heretics.”
T. Benns comment: And of course the Church later infallibly decreed Our Lady was conceived without original sin.
“The idea that the son of God assumed humanity in a sinful mother or in a woman ‘just as human as any other daughter of Eve,’ cannot be reconciled with a proper conception of the Incarnation. it is repugnant to reason, antagonistic to the consensus of the primitive Church and reprobated by modern orthodoxy. All agree ‘that she must not have stood in the same relation to sin,’ to use the words of the Lutheran divine Dietlien, ‘as other children of Eve, who from the beginning of her existence was to be the vehicle of grace in so preeminent a manner.’ The issue the sermon wishes to raise here is brushed away with theological skill and orthodox vigor by a learned Episcopalian churchman when he says: ‘We cannot doubt that He [Jesus] loved Mary to the fullness of His nature, which was divine. It would be a very idle refinement to say that He loved her as man only, for in Him the human and divine nature were united. That nature human and divine he bore with Him to heaven.’
And Ganss says: “It is hard to believe that she, who once covered with kisses the lips which shall pronounce the doom of men, did not have her maternal tenderness repaid and that she, like any other sinful woman, could possibly expect those divine lips to pronounce her doom.”
Countering false worship charges
Ganss then comments on the charges made in the sermon he is refuting that “devotion to Mary is a superstitious credulity; a sensual worship an idealized paganism.” He quotes the eulogist and historian Lecky a champion of rationalism as stating: “’There is, I think, little doubt that the Catholic reverence of the Virgin has done much to elevate and purify the ideal woman and to soften the manners of men. It has had an influence which the worship of the pagan goddesses could never possess, for these had been almost destitute of moral beauty and especially of that kind of moral beauty which is peculiarly feminine. It supplied in a great measure the redeeming and ennobling element in a strange amalgamation of licentious and military feeling which was formed around women in the age of chivalry and which no succeeding change of habit or belief has wholly destroyed.’
“Shlegel, the great German poet and critic, a staunch Lutheran, coincides with Lecky when he claims that ‘with the virtue of chivalry was associated a new and pure spirit of love and inspired homage for genuine female worth, which was now reared as the pinnacle of humanity and enjoined by religion itself under the image of the Virgin Mother, infused into all hearts a sentiment of alloyed goodness.’” Again we hear from a Protestant: “Ruskin, who as far as Catholicity is concerned has little in common with the above authors and displays an almost frenetic hatred of the Church is compelled all the same to confess: ‘I am persuaded that the worship of the Madonna has been one of the noblest and most vital graces of Catholicism and has never been otherwise than productive of true holiness of life and purity of character. There is probably not an innocent cottage house throughout the length and breadth of Europe in which the imagined presence of the Madonna has not given sanctity to the humblest duties and comfort to the sorest trials of the lives of women.” And he goes on to quote several more.
Countering charges of idolatry, he quotes one Protestant who visited Italy and confessed that, “He could discern no indications of idolatry but testifies that ‘in the six months that I have been in Dr. Schaff protests against the propagation of the calamity that ‘papists are idolaters is the colossal slander on the oldest and largest church in Christendom’ and stigmatize such methods as untrue, unjust, uncharitable and unchristian… Or when Dr. Arnold, while at Bourges, sees a mother in the crypt of the cathedral lift her little girl to kiss the pierced feet of a statue of our crucified Lord, touched by the pathetic spectacle ask himself the question: ‘Is this idolatry? Nay, barely it may be so but it need not be. Assuredly in itself it is right and natural. I confess I rather envied that child.”
Answering the ridiculous charge that the Bible teaches God forbids all “worship” of pictures, when such worship is directed only to what they represent, Ganss writes: “Albrecht Drurer, the greatest German painter of his age… put in a rational plea ‘that a Christian is as little led astray by a picture as a peace-abiding man is tempted to murder because he carries a sword by his side. That indeed must be a stupid man who would pray to pictures, wood or stone.’ And he denounces it as a calumny ‘that the art of painting leads to idolatry.’”
Meaning of the word worship
Rev. Ganss also proves that the meaning of worship is falsely understood, as Protestant preachers and teachers themselves have explained. After demonstrating that certain Protestants actually falsified the teaching of the catechisms to read that we worship Mary as equal to God, he then quotes several highly respected Protestants, Leibnitz, Voss, and others, who acknowledge that ‘the highest latria is to God alone, as the adoration of the Host in Mass, the lowest, dulia,is paid to the saints and angels, while the transcendent virtues of the Blessed Virgin are honored by hyperdulia.’” Protestants likewise testify as follows to the true meaning of worship: “A reference to any standard dictionary will elicit the proof that generically the word worship always means to pay honor or show deference and only specifically does it convey the sense ‘obtained divine honors.’ In Holy Scripture it is used in interchangeably, but following the precedent established we will let Protestant theologians and philologists vindicate the Catholic practice.
“The word worship,’ says Doctor Hodge, ‘means properly to respect or honor. It is used both to express the inward sentiment and its outward manifestation. The old sense of the word is still retained in courts of law in which the judge is addressed as your worship or as Worshipful. We are then to collect the intention of the act of worship for their designed as a token of profound civil respect or of real prostration from the circumstances of the instances on record. Such acts of prostration as are called worship were chiefly paid to civil governors.’” And another Protestant, Trench, “one of the greatest English philologists, from an etymological point, reasons it out as follows: ‘Worship, or worthship, meant honor; this meaning of worship still very harmlessly surviving in ‘Worshipful’ and in the title addressed to the magistrate on the bench. So little was it restrained of old to the honor which man is bound to pay to God that it is employed by Wycliffe to express the honor which God will render to his faithful servants and friends. Thus our Lord’s declaration, ‘If any man serve me him will my Father honor.’ And in Wycliffe’s translation reads thus: ‘If any man serve me, my father shall worship him.’”
T. Benns comment: So if it can be applied even to a civil servant without practicing idolatry, why not to Our Blessed Mother??!!
True origins of idolatry
From whence, then, did all this idolatry nonsense really originate and when and why?? Rev. Ganss tells us: “But may it not be urged that the charge of superstition and idolatry is not a new one, that the concurrent opinion of Protestantism during the last 400 years voices it? Only too true, because this opinion, like the Ptolemaic system was traditionally accepted but never critically examined; because from the nursery jingle to the pulpit thunder it was incessantly dinned into the ears as gospel truth; because from the monosyllabic school primer to the ponderous theological tome, it was taught as an accepted fact; because the majority then, as now, are guided by the convenient maxim: ‘To follow foolish precedent and wink, with both our eyes is easier than to think.’ and because every student knows that, ‘Fanatic faith once wedded fast, through some clear falsehood hugs it to the last.” Length of time may give a prescriptive claim to the possession of property but no number of years or centuries can give error and falsehood countenance much less a justifiable claim to existence.
“The charge of idolatry is not a new one but this ‘miserable pageant of untruth, feeble with three poor centuries of age’ in every case emanated from the most implacable enemies of holy Church. Celsius, the Epicurean, the literary protagonist of rationalism, and Julian the Apostate, the theological precursor of infidelity, fastened this charge on the infant Church. “Deadly superstition,” as Tacitus reports, “a new and magical superstition,” were some of the choice epithets by which the primitive Church was designated. Does not the cynical epigram of Julian the Apostate, ‘You do not cease to call Mary the Mother of God,’ most significantly recall the scornful sneer of modern heresy?”
T. Benns comment: Might we not date this charge back even further? Was it not the Jewish rabbis who set the stage for these horrific insults to Our Lady, teaching in their Talmud that she “committed adultery,” “played the harlot with carpenters” and “was known to be an adulteress… who bore Jesus illegitimately”? (Taken from the Jewish Encyclopedia and the books of the Sanhedrin).
And to continue with Rev. Ganss: “As for the concurrent opinion of Protestantism unprejudiced and impartial historians are gradually disclosing the methods by which it was fed and nourished. In the first place, by a system of ruthless and ruinous Iconoclasm; by the destruction of every image —carved or painted, engraved or embroidered — on which fiendish fanaticism could lay its sacrilegious hands. The accumulated art treasures of centuries, the masterpieces of carved statuary, the exquisitely jeweled windows, the glowingly beautiful canvases, the inimitably gorgeous tapestries, the priceless marvels of illuminated manuscripts — all gathered with princely munificence, guarded with loving care, treasured with tender devotion — were hacked to pieces by infuriated, devastating vandals pillaged by the savage horde of robber barons or laid in ashes by the firebrand of the evangelical incendiary.
“With an open Bible in one hand and a blazing torch in the other, a volley of blistering imprecations gushing from its frothing mouth, Carlostadt, in spite of Luther’s pleas, remonstrances and threats, swept over parts of Germany like a veritable satanic incarnation of destructive malignancy. Reason, justice, law were alike powerless to stay his blighting course. ‘It would be 1,000 times better,’ he shrieks, ‘if the pictures were in hell or in a fiery furnace than in the House of God! No matter if one does say ‘I do not worship the images, I pay no honor to them but to the Saints they represent,’ God answered summarily and in clear terms ‘Thou shalt not adore them, thou shalt not honor them.’ If one should come and say pictures instruct and edify the laity as much as books do the learned answer them: ‘God has forbidden pictures.”
“John Knox at the head of a pillaging mob, ‘who swept from Scotland in a flame of zeal shrine, altar, image and massy piles that harbored them,’ and who saw ‘in fire and sword and desolation a godly thorough Reformation,’ eclipsed the havoc wrought by Leo the Isaurian outside the very devastation of Attila, ‘the scourge of God.’ Wesley groaned over the manner in which the Reformation had been affected in Scotland and when he stood amid the ruins of Aberbrothock exclaimed: ‘God deliver us from reforming mobs! Nor, in his burning indignation, did he mince his words when he dismissed the Scottish reformation with the merciless excoriation that ‘the work of God does not, cannot need the work of the devil to forward it.’
“In England the empty niches, the leveled altars, the rifled sanctuaries, the desecrated tombs, give evidence that the name Rottengeist — to use a word of Luther’s coining — was not idle. Even the invaluable literary treasures of antiquity, the accumulated wisdom of centuries the vast collections of books and still more costly collections of manuscripts stored in the monastic libraries were ruthlessly mutilated, irretrievably ruined or wantonly burned in order that not a vestige of idolatry might survive.” (End of Rev. Ganss quotes). And here we must also add what Rev. Ganss later reports, that in place of those “idols” removed from the churches they stole from us, they placed pictures of their reigning monarchs to be reverenced instead! But that of course was not idolatry. Hypocrites! And so we bow our heads and weep.
History only repeats itself
What does this remind us of? We see the word Iconoclasm mentioned above, but what is an Iconoclast? An Iconoclast is: “A person who attacks settled beliefs or institutions.” We have seen what incendiaries who rile up the mobs can do; witness the destruction wrought by such groups as Black Lives Matter and Antifa, also white nationalist groups. This was the same destruction spurred on during the French Revolution and later by the Bolshevists and the Nazis. Whether they attack ancient culture, religion, or both, they are all the same. And they emanate from the same source, as the free book available on this site, Liberalism’s Shameful Legacy, explains. They feed on the anger and dissatisfaction, the prejudices of the mob; they breed class warfare, a favorite tool of Communism, and then they destroy all in their path.
Christian conservatives claim to be their enemies. And yet Christian conservatives also fan these same flames any time they defame our Blessed Mother. They do this because they are ignorant of their own history and the true history of Christianity. They simply repeat what they have been taught for centuries without examining the facts and searching for the truth. They believe the lies of those who hated Catholics in the past and those who today brand all Catholics as accessories to pedophilia and the “Jesuit conspiracy” to control the world. They mimic the Jews and the pagans in their hatred and do not even know the true meaning of the terms idolatry and worship, far less what the Bible really teaches regarding such things. But then of course they interpret the Bible for themselves, so what can one expect. In short, they are children of the world, and in reality, are little different than those tearing down what is left of our culture today.
The real problem here is that no one any longer understands or values Christ’s divinity. They have made him their friend and “brother,” in the human sense. They picture him laughing and smiling and make hideous caricatures of him for children’s books. They cannot handle the FACT that he was not like other men, He did not smile often but was often known to weep; He did not “mingle” easily but kept Himself apart from others except when teaching. He was like us yet not like us: in this world but not of it, as we are told to be. He was all-holy, and could anyone believe that God the Father would entrust his only begotten Son to anything or anyone less than holy? This is only common sense, that is, if we truly believe Christ was both God and man. Would you pour expensive aged liquor into a glass without thoroughly cleaning it, in order to truly enjoy its taste? And God in His wisdom, would He do any less with something infinitely more precious?
Tell the Protestants on the Internet the following: “If you accuse me of worshipping idols, then know this. I accuse you of denying Christ’s divinity. For if God the Father was truly Divine, and Christ was truly His Son, only the most precious vessel could have borne Him, and if we honor her, it is because God Himself perfected her as that vessel and she yet holds the vestiges of that sacred little Body that once dwelt in her womb.” And then, send them this prayer:
ACT OF REPARATION
(To be recited on the First Saturdays)
MOST HOLY VIRGIN and our beloved Mother/ we listen with grief/ to the complaints of thy Immaculate Heart/ surrounded with the thorns/ which ungrateful men place therein/ at every moment/ by their blasphemies and ingratitude./ Moved by the ardent desire/ of loving thee as our Mother/ and of promoting a true devotion/ to thy Immaculate Heart/ we prostrate ourselves at thy feet/ to prove the sorrow we feel/ for the grief that men cause thee/ and to atone by means of/ our prayers and sacrifices/ for the offenses which men/ return thy tender love.
Obtain for them/ and for us/ the pardon of so many sins./ A word from thee/ will obtain grace and forgiveness/ for us all./ Hasten, O Lady/ the conversion of sin-ners/ that they may love Jesus/ and cease to offend God/ already so much offended and thus avoid eternal punishment./
Turn thine eyes of mercy/ towards us/ so that henceforth/ we may love God with all our heart/ while on earth/ and enjoy Him forever in heaven./ Amen./
Imprimatur # Joseph E. Ritter, D.D., Archbishop of Indianapolis
THE GRAIL, ST. MEINRAD, INDIANA
