We have no pope, but Christ’s Church will last forever

by T. Stanfill Benns | May 11, 2025 | New Blog

+Third Sunday after Easter+

Happy Mother’s Day, Blessed Mother, and a blessed day to all Catholic mothers everywhere!

The seventh king of Rome, a Francis fan, has taken the name of Leo XIV. As a reader astutely observed last week, “Prevost took the name of Leo on the great feast of St. Michael, aping the Catholic Church’s Leo XIII and his great devotion to the Archangel Michael.” The name he chose suggests he intends to focus on social issues and since assuming his role as usurper, he singles out the regulation of AI as one of his primary goals. Committed to the Vatican 2 changes, he seems anxious to implement a larger “tent” for those identifying as Catholic, and this could possibly include Latin Mass devotees. But given his predecessor’s stand on Traditionalism, this seems unlikely. Time will tell. It will be an empty gesture anyway, if and when it does occur.

With the invalid election of Angelo Roncalli, the Church entered into the age of Antichrist, the end of the age of the Church that culminates in the consummation. As St. John of Damascus wrote in his An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV : “ It should be known that the Antichrist is bound to come. Every one, therefore, who confesses not that the Son of God came in the flesh and is perfect God and became perfect man, after being God, is Antichrist (1 John 2:22). But in a peculiar and special sense he who comes at the consummation of the age is called Antichrist.” And many other Fathers and Doctors of the Church have taught the same. As we have explained at length in previous blogs, the mantle of preserving the Church has fallen to those who recognize the signs of the times and keep the faith at home.

Leo 14 may reign from Rome as king of the Vatican 2 sect, but we continue to march to the fulfillment of prophesy outlined in the Apocalypse. A review of why this is the case seems appropriate and is presented below.

Christ’s promises to be with us till the end of time

The promises Christ made to His Church — that it would last until the end of time — have not been made void by the reign of the usurpers. But we must understand the word Church as the Church Herself understands it. Initially the one and only Vatican Council, held from 1869-1870, was scheduled to supply a definition of the Church, for as Henry Cardinal Manning explains, “In all theological treatises, it had been usual to treat of the Body of the Church before treating of its Head… But the Church in council when, for the first time it began to treat of its own constitution and authority, changed the method; and like the Divine Architect of the Church began in the historical order with the foundation and Head of the Church… The doctrine of the Church does not determine the doctrine of the primacy but the doctrine of the primacy does precisely determine the doctrine of the Church. In beginning therefore with the head, the council has followed our Lord’s example both in teaching and in fact.” (The Vatican Council Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, 1875).

The council ended early owing to threats of war in Italy, so while a preliminary draft of the Church’s definition had been drawn up, it was never voted on by the Council Fathers and therefore cannot be counted as the official teaching of the Church. This preliminary draft stated:

“Christ’s Church… the only Society of salvation, will last until the end of the world, ever unchangeable and unchanged in its constitution…It evolves in a variety of ways according to the changing times and circumstances in which it is constantly displaying activity. Nevertheless, it remains unchangeable in itself and in the constitution it received from Christ. Therefore Christ’s Church can never lose its properties and its qualities, its sacred teaching authority, priestly office, its governing body, so that through His visible Body Christ may always be the way, the truth and the life for all men.” (The Church Teaches, The Jesuit Fathers of St. Mary’s, Kansas, 1955). This unofficial draft version of the constitution on the Church, however, must be rightly reconciled with the infallible dogmatic constitutions which comprise the Vatican Council decrees. In the Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church of Christ, we read, regarding the constitution and foundation of the Church:

“As [Christ] sent the apostles whom He had selected from the world for Himself, as He, Himself had been sent by the Father, so in His Church He WISHED the pastors and the doctors to be even to the “consummation of the world” (Matt. 28: 20)… And since the gates of hell to overthrow the Church, if this were possible, arise from all sides with ever greater hatred against its divinely established foundation, we judge it to be necessary for the protection, safety and increase of the Catholic flock to set forth the doctrine on the institution in perpetuity and nature of the sacred Apostolic primacy in which the strength and solidarity of the whole Church consist, to be believed and held by all the faithful according to the ancient and continual faith of the universal Church…” Later Pope Leo XIII would also teach:

 “…Christ the Lord WISHED that by the strength and solidity of the foundation the gates of hell SHOULD BE PREVENTED from prevailing against the Church. All are agreed that the divine promise must be understood of the Church as a whole, and not of any certain portions of it. These can indeed be overcome by the assaults of the powers of hell, as in point of fact has befallen some of them.” (Satis cognitum, 1896). And from Henry Cardinal Manning’s translation of the Vatican Council documents found in the appendix to his work The Vatican Council Definitions: “If then, any should deny that it is by the institution of Christ the Lord, or by divine right, that Blessed Peter SHOULD have a perpetual line of successors in the Primacy over the Universal Church, or that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of Blessed Peter in this primacy; let him be anathema” (DZ 1821).

Free will and heresy

“Wished” and “should” certainly are not the equivalent of  “promised,” “will” and “would.” Man’s free will enters in here and it is men, evil bishops and cardinals, who betrayed Christ by electing Angelo Roncalli, an unworthy candidate on several counts as the first usurper in a long line of papal pretenders. God never deprives man of free will, and they freely conspired to betray the faithful just as Judas betrayed Our Lord. By so doing they became heretics incapable of electing anyone — for heresy means “to choose.” LibTrad pseudo-clergy accuse those praying at home of denying the Church can never fail because they maintain valid and licit bishops no longer exist and canonical election of a true pope is now impossible. But we have never said the Church has failed or no longer exists.

They, on the other hand, by operating without a canonically elected pope at their head, themselves deny that the Church will last as Christ constituted it. They also deny that the Mass has ceased and Antichrist has already come and gone, although his system remains. This they assert by their actions, pretending that invalidly consecrated bishops, without Peter’s canonically elected successor as head bishop, is the Church Christ founded on earth. To believe that Trad pseudo-clergy are valid is to deny the teaching of Pope Pius XII in Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, an infallible papal constitution, and this results in exclusion from the Church, the Mystical Body.

There must be allowance made for that dreadful time when Antichrist will finally come, wielding power “to make war with the saints and overcome them” (Apoc. 13:7). Antichrist is identified as the abomination of desolation, for not only does he usurp the Holy See — as anticipated by Pope Paul IV in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio — but as prophesied in the book of Daniel and unanimously taught by the early Fathers, he will cause the Continual Sacrifice to cease. The Vatican Council and the Council of Trent both teach that this is a truth of faith all Catholics are bound to believe. It is not the Mass that Catholics should have rushed to save, but apostolicity of doctrine. For as Henry Cardinal Manning states above, “the doctrine of the primacy does precisely determine the doctrine of the Church.”

The Four Gospels, Francis Patrick Kenrick, Archbishop of Philadelphia, 1849

“The perpetuity of the commission [to teach all nations] without any interruption is most fully expressed. The AUTHORITY  to teach and baptize with all the functions consequent thereon remains forever. The Apostolic ministry continues to the end of the Christian dispensation which is to last till time shall merge in eternity.”

Christ’s Church, Msgr. G. Van Noort, 1959

“’I am with you at all times as long as the world will last.’ The phrase “as long as the world will last “is a clear reference to the end of the world (Matt. 13: 40; 24:3). And so until that day comes, Christ will be at the side of the apostles as they teach, sanctify and rule. He will be at the side not only of the apostles personally for they were soon to die but at the side of those who will take up the work of the apostles throughout the centuries and will thus form with them one moral person… Therefore the VISIBLE CHURCH will last forever and in an incorrupt state. It will go on forever safeguarding the doctrine of Christ, administering His sacraments and instructing all peoples in His precepts.”

Commentary on the New Testament, Rev. Leo Haydock, 1859

“Behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the world, embraces two points necessary for the Church; viz. integrity of doctrine, and sanctity of life; for, if either of these should be wanting to the Church, it might then be justly said, that she had been left and abandoned by Christ, her Spouse. (Estius) — Jesus Christ will make good his promise: 1. by always dwelling in the hearts of the faithful; 2. by His sacramental presence in the Holy Eucharist; 3. by his providential care, and constant protection to his holy Catholic Church. These last six lines of St. Matthew’s gospel, says the bright luminary of France, Bossuet, most clearly demonstrate the infallibility and indefectibility of the one, holy, Catholic Church, which all are commanded to hear and obey.”

Catholic Scripture Manuals, Book of Matthew (commentary, Madame Cecilia, 1906)

(Commenting on Matt. 28-20): “Until the end of the world there must exist an authorized teaching body to carry on the work of the apostles… Unity of doctrine must therefore be a mark of the true Church. The doctrines taught by the successors of the apostles must be the same as those which the apostles themselves taught; hence the true faith must be Apostolic.”

A priesthood chosen by Pope Pius XII

Christ has always been the Head of the Mystical Body and we are the visible members of that body.  As we read in the New Testament: “…You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people God has purchased.” (I Peter 2:9.) “He has …made us a royal race of priests, to serve God, his Father.” (Apoc. 1:5-6.) “…they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” (Apoc. 20:6.) St. Augustine comments on the above as follows: “Now this is not meant only of those whom the Church specifically calls bishops and priests, but as we are all called Christians because of our mystical chrism, our unction, so are we all priests in being the members of one priest.” (I St. Peter 2:9, City of God, Book 20, Chapter 10.)

We are visible members of the Mystical Body, the Church. Pope Pius XII infallibly designated the Church on earth as Christ’s Mystical Body in His encyclical Mystici Corpus Christi, teaching that: “The cooperation of all its members must also be externally manifest through their profession of the same faith and their sharing the same sacred rites, through participation in the same Sacrifice… the practical observance of the same laws” and their obedience to Christ’s vicar on earth. Pope Pius XII continues:

“Peter in view of his primacy is only Christ’s Vicar; so that there is only one chief Head of this Body, namely Christ, who never ceases Himself to guide the Church invisibly, though at the same time He rules it visibly, through him who is His representative on earth… That Christ and His Vicar constitute one only Head is the solemn teaching of Our predecessor of immortal memory Boniface VIII in the Apostolic Letter Unam Sanctam; and his successors have never ceased to repeat the same.”  It was Pope Pius XII who provided the infallible definition of the Church as Christ’s Mystical Body in Mystici Corporis. In this encyclical he taught that bishops do not receive their jurisdiction directly from Christ, but only through the Roman Pontiff. Christ is now our only Head, and He keeps forever in existence the papacy and the Deposit of Faith, preserved and interpreted by His Vicars. In later works,  Pope Pius XII extended jurisdiction to the laity in general, shortly before his death.

“The Apostolic See does not simply tolerate your action, it enjoins you to exercise the apostolate, to devote your efforts to fulfilling the Christian’s great missionary duty, that all the lost sheep may be assembled in one fold and under one shepherd…This initiative of the lay apostolate is perfectly justified even without a prior explicit ‘mission’ from the hierarchy… Personal initiative plays a great role in protecting the faith and Catholic life, especially in countries where contacts with the hierarchy are difficult or practically impossible. In such circumstances, THE CHRISTIANS UPON WHOM THIS TASK FALLS MUST, WITH GOD’S GRACE, ASSUME ALL THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES. It is clear however that, even so, nothing can be undertaken against the explicit or implicit will of the Church or contrary in any way to the rules of faith or morals, or to ecclesiastical discipline” (The Mission of the Catholic Woman, 1957; entered into the AAS and therefore binding on Catholics. See more HERE).

So we have been given an actual canonical mission by Pope Pius XII, declaring us successors of the hierarchy in their absence. This provided we obey all the laws of the Church and adhere to ALL Her teachings. Pope Pius XII had previously outlined this mission in the following address: “The faithful and more precisely the laity are stationed in the front ranks of the life of the Church and through them the Church is the living principle of human society. Consequently they must have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church; that is being the community of the faithful on earth under the guidance of their common leader the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. THEY ARE THE CHURCH and therefore, even from the beginning, the faithful, with the consent of their bishops, have united in associations directed to the most diverse types of human activity. And the Holy See has never ceased to approve and praise them” (Feb. 20, 1946 address to the newly made cardinals).

The true and only test of faith is NOT the continuation of the Mass and Sacraments, which cannot exist without valid bishops approved by the Roman Pontiff. The true test of faith is adherence to all Christ did and taught. He founded all on St. Peter and his successors, the core of the Church’s unity, and predicted that once the shepherd is struck, the flock will scatter. The lack of unity we witness today is the fulfillment of that prophesy.

Summary

We may no longer have the visible elements of the Church — the papacy, the hierarchy, Mass and all but two of the Sacraments. But they have not ceased to exist, either. They will always exist in Heaven because Christ instituted them — we simply no longer have access to them. We do have their spiritual substitutes — Spiritual Communion and the Perfect Act of Contrition. Baptism, the most necessary sacrament, is still available to us. And as long as we have repented of our sins, made amends and asked God to lift any excommunications we may have incurred by participating in Novus Ordo or Traditional services, we can count ourselves as visible members of Christ’s Mystical Body, at least by desire. The meaning of the term Mystical Body is explained below.

“First [Christ’s Mystical Body] will be an empirical, concrete, visible, tangible thing… for it is a human institution, a human society. And it is a society quite visibly and tangibly. Its sociology and Canon Law can be written down, it has its clearly defined members and its definite seat. Secondly the Church will be an invisible reality; a life of thought, love and grace that is infused into souls… THE EXPRESSION ‘MYSTICAL BODY’ DESIGNATES THE MYSTERIOUS AND INTERIOR ELEMENT OF THE CHURCH… it does not designate the external [juridical] aspect of body except so far as it is the outward manifestation of the interior soul which consists in such a mystery… It is a union… primarily internal and supernatural. It is the supernatural union of the sanctified soul with Christ and with all other sanctified souls in Christ… The bonds that unite Christians to Christ and to one another are organic, physical, sacramental, although supernatural and invisible…

“The communion of saints is an invisible society, a “Church” or “ecclesia” in the broad sense, a moral body. Its invisible, moral, or juridical head is the glorified or exalted Christ. Besides the many or multiple external visible elements, clergy and laity, hierarchical structure, sacraments, sacramentals, etc., the Church must possess an inner element which, intimately united to the visible elements, must be the formal cause of the unity and identity of the organism, formal cause, too, of its own peculiar life which is supernatural and divine… The invisible elements… form together with the visible elements, its body, one, undivided and indivisible whole, informed and vivified by the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Ghost. This living, visible organism, of which the Holy Ghost is the soul in the real but mystical sense, is the Mystical Body of Christ, or the mystical Christ…” (end of Gruden/Mersch quotes).

In the absence of the hierarchy, we are all that is left of the Church, and Pope Pius XII has commanded us to carry on Her existence on earth. Christ will be with us until the very end, whether that be the end of our life on this planet or the Second Coming. He has promised to never leave us orphans, and is ever true to His promises.

Anticipating the “Conclave” for Rome’s 7th king

by T. Stanfill Benns | Apr 29, 2025 | New Blog

+St. Catherine of Siena+

Prayer Society Intention for May, Month of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“Most loving Mother, consider the cruel warfare waged by the world the flesh and the devil against our souls and see how many are perishing in the strife… Deign to pray for us without ceasing to the Blessed Trinity that we may have the grace to be ever victorious over the devil.” (The Raccolta)

Introduction

In the blog HERE, we wrote the following on who might become the next Roman usurper once Francis met his Maker.  Readers may wish to review what we said, but the gist of it is repeated below.

It is likely Francis’ “successor” will make it appear that the Novus Ordo church is rejecting the changes and returning to its previous pre-Vatican 2 position, similar to what Pres. Trump says he is doing with this country. It will be a seduction so convincing, so diabolically clever that many LibTrads will “return” to this church, believing — as they have been falsely led to believe through private revelation and their pseudo-clergy — that this is the promised restoration of the true Church. Those who refuse to buy into it will be persecuted at some point. The Latin Mass of St. Pius V may appear to return, and all the sacramental rites could be “restored” to their previous forms. After all, isn’t it said that appearances are everything?

But the Mass, the Sacraments, the sacramentals — NONE OF THESE COULD EVER BE VALID AGAIN WITHOUT A CANONICALLY ELECTED POPE, impossible to obtain since the death of Pope Pius XII.  So it will cost the usurpers nothing to appear to make such concessions. This is the only way the enemies of the Church can make it appear the Mass and a falsified “return to Tradition” could cease when political antichrist comes. This cessation will convince the world he is the true antichrist, not Paul 6, for the worldly do not take the spiritual nature of Scripture into account. Political antichrist, long anticipated by the Protestants,  will then be seen as the one who abolishes the mass and destroys Rome, when it was long ago destroyed dogmatically and spiritually. And this will be the greatest and final deception. In fact, preparation for this event has been underway for some time now.

For the past two years, articles have been circulating on the internet that the Novus Ordo is already preparing for such a shift. A January 2025 report claims the return is prompted by “a perceived dilution of doctrine,” noting that new NO clergy are suddenly more orthodox and desire a return to the Church’s ancient roots (see HERE). In another essay on why “the Latin Mass is returning” (March 2023 article HERE), one can find two-years-worth of articles covering how one is to make this shift, why, dress at mass, conduct, history, etc., a rather remarkable effort to facilitate such a “return.” An April 2024 Associated Press article HERE announces “an immense shift” toward the old ways.

Kingly candidates 

So it certainly seems that a brainwashing-style build-up has taken place already to justify such a reintroduction of the “old ways,” even though this may result in a loss of progressives. As always, the focus is on the liturgy, not the papacy. As long as the ritual trappings are properly replicated and the appearances of what once was are in place, (if a “conservative” is elected as the next usurper), LibTrads will be properly mollified and will happily go on about their simulated existence. While it cannot be stated with any certainty that the next imposter elected will take the “old school” route, several conservative “cardinals” are in the running and a few of them are mentioned below.

Raymond Burke, 76, United States — A well-known conservative, Burke has criticized Francis repeatedly for his stance on divorce and remarriage. Appointed “cardinal” by Benedict 16,  he is popular among the recognize and resist faction.

Peter Erdo, 72, Hungary —This man has criticized Francis for his teaching on divorce and immigration. He comes from Josef Cardinal Mindszenty’s Hungary, always a more conservative-minded country.

Robert Sarah, 79, Guinea — Some call Sarah a “conservatives’ fantasy candidate,” an all-out champion of doctrinal and liturgical issues and an outspoken Francis critic. Media speculators note that the election of a black pope would make it more difficult for liberals to object to such a “return to Tradition.”

Of course the false election could also produce a moderate or yet another progressive such as Francis just as easily. If this occurs, especially in the case of a progressive, then it is likely that a split might take place. This given the trending “return to Tradition” and the adamant opponents of Francis, who have been agitating against his policies for the past decade. What all believe to be the Catholic Church could then appear to sport two or even three “popes,” (sedevacantists might join in), creating a chaotic situation that would serve the enemy just as well. Watch for dramatic twists and turns, as portrayed in the offensive movie-doc Conclave, since such productions also “prepare” audiences for unexpected outcomes contrary to Catholic doctrine and practice. A terrorist attack could occur, but more likely this event will be saved for later in the game, when Rome is physically destroyed.

Mass deception

We have gone into great detail HERE to explain why the Mass cannot be considered valid outside the guardianship and protection of a canonically elected Roman Pontiff. In Mediator Dei, Pope Pius XII taught: “The entire liturgy has the Catholic Faith for its content…it bears public witness to the faith of the Church. For this reason whenever there was a question of defining a truth revealed by God, the Sovereign Pontiff and the Councils, in their recourse to ‘theological sources,’ as they are called, have not seldom drawn many an argument from this sacred science of the Liturgy…The rule for prayer determines the rule for belief.’ [However] the Sacred Liturgy does not decide or determine independently and of itself what is of Catholic Faith… If one desires to differentiate and described the relationship between faith and the Sacred Liturgy in absolute and general terms, it is perfectly correct to say… ‘let the rule of belief determine the rule of prayer…

“The Sacred Liturgy does include Divine as well as human elements. The former, instituted as they have been by God, cannot be changed in any way by men… The Sovereign Pontiff alone enjoys the right to recognize and establish any practice touching the worship of God, to introduce and approve new rites, as also to modify those he judges to require modification… No private person has any authority to regulate external practices of this kind, which are intimately bound up with Church discipline and with the order, unity and concord of the Mystical Body, and frequently even with the integrity of Catholic faith itself.’”  Here we see that Pope Pius XII deliberately reversed the “Lex orandi, lex credendi” touted by the liturgists to prove a point: Catholic doctrine stands outside and above the liturgy. The changing of “for many” to “for all” certainly was invalid, for those usurpers reigning after Pope Pius XII’s death were mere men, having been ipso facto excommunicated, disqualified for any office and invalidly elected according to the Sacred Canons.

The inexcusable and criminal refusal to abide by Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis and declare the “election” of Angelo Roncalli invalid as well as all subsequent “elections” was deliberate and pre-arranged. It was carefully orchestrated under the guise of the liturgical renewal movement as explained in previous blogs. It was the culmination of centuries of planning by secret societies to overthrow Catholic monarchies and finally the papacy. It was the Reformers who first discovered the perfect distraction — abolish the authority of the papacy, then introduce the slogan “It is the Mass that matters.” In other words, reduce the faith to its liturgical expression. That slogan was the hue and cry of what became the Anglican Church once Henry VIII became its head. Those who failed to study papal encyclicals and Catholic history were then doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Pro-Tridentine Mass literature condemning the liturgical innovations flooded what passed for Traditional Catholic media from the mid-1960s on and continues to this day. Likewise the obsession with what goes on in the apostate halls of the Vatican, with the day-to-day rundown of new blasphemies and sacrileges introduced by the usurpers, accompanied by mock horror and a wringing of hands. We expect evil to be any less terrifying?? And the controversy continues over “teachings” of the false Vatican 2 council as well, with trusted “experts” pointing out and debating its various errors and heresies. What has worked for the enemy in the secular press works just as well in what is passed off as the Catholic press. Keep those trying to figure things out embroiled in controversy, constantly arguing with each other, battling over scandalous “clergy,” perpetually splitting off into dissident sects. That way no one will ever know that the answer all along was very simple, if very sad; one that would resolve all questions and end all divisions. The great deception must continue, to serve and fund the deceivers.

The truth that sets us free

Following only the teachings of the Roman Pontiffs, we can breathe a sigh of relief and escape the cacophony created by “the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.” When we once accept the infallible truth that no man who is a heretic (or suspected heretic) pre-election could ever become pope (Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, Pope Paul IV), that no true pope could ever speak heresy on matters of faith, morals or discipline, (The Vatican Council, 1869-70), and that no one may usurp papal jurisdiction or change Canon Law in any way during an interregnum, then we have our answers.

1. Angelo Roncalli was a suspected heretic pre-election and a confirmed heretic post-election; he never became pope. None of his acts were valid or could ever become valid.
2. The 1958 college of cardinals was disqualified from ever electing another pope (Can. 2391§1).
3. Ergo:

• Vatican 2 never happened
• All following “popes” were usurpers
• No one ordained contrary to Canon Law or consecrated outside papal jurisdiction without the papal mandate ever became members of the clergy.
• We are forbidden to consider them validly ordained and consecrated under pain of excommunication (denying the authority of the Roman Pontiff to so declare them and assisting them in their crimes.)
• We cannot and must not attend their sacrilegious services.
• We must never allow ourselves to be contaminated with the false propaganda spread by those who, failing to consider the truths above, consistently attempt to draw us into debates and media hype; refuse to accept papal teaching; destroy our peace, obfuscate the facts and attempt to divide us or doubt our position.

We have stepped outside of the infernal Satanic circle surrounding the pentagram and they hate us for it. We have refused to join hands with them in their evil enterprises. We have aligned ourselves with Christ and His vicars alone, St. Peter to Pope Pius XII, and we will not be moved. We have fled to the desert of prayer and sacrifice, penance for our sins and any good works we can perform. We are not lonely or alone here, for Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, our Guardian Angels, are ever at our side. We await the coming of Our Lord, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Christ has risen, but the Passion of the Church continues

That early father of the Church, St. Cyprian wrote: “Most of the bishops… set over the Lord’s churches throughout the world, hold to the method of evangelical truth and of the Lord’s tradition, and depart not by any human and novel institution, from that which Christ our master both taught and did…The Will of God is what Christ has done and taught,”(Faith of Catholics, Vol. 1, Msgr. Capel, editor). Likewise the Asiatic bishops, commenting on the approbation of the canonical books of Scripture, stated that: “As, on this principle of what Christ had done and taught, the writings of which we are speaking were admitted as sacred and divine…” (Ibid). So what aspects of Christ’s Passion and death on the Cross have the faithful today been asked to mirror, to “…fill up what is wanting to the Passion of Christ”?

On Palm Sunday, Christ wept over Jerusalem, prior to casting the money changers from the Temple (Luke 19:41). This just after His disciples declared him a king. Today we weep over the abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place, the See of Rome desecrated in large part by the world’s money changers who became intimately involved in Vatican finances, thanks to Montini (Paul 6). This following an era where the dogma of Christ reigning as King had been widely proclaimed. And what Jesus predicted of Jerusalem in Luke Ch. 19 is a harbinger of what also will happen to Rome for this transgression:

“If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side,  And beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee: and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone: because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation” (Luke 19: 42-44). For the destruction of Rome likewise is foretold in Apoc. 18, v. 2, 21: “And he cried out with a strong voice, saying: Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen; and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every unclean spirit, and the hold of every unclean and hateful bird:  Because all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication; and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her; and the merchants of the earth have been made rich by the power of her delicacies… And a mighty angel took up a stone, as it were a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying: With such violence as this shall Babylon, that great city, be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.”

Christ was betrayed by Judas, holder of the common purse and nephew of Caiphas, just as Montini betrayed Pope Pius XII by introducing his friend Michele Sindona into the management of the Church’s funds. This allowed the Sicilian Mafiosa Sindona to eventually use the Church’s monies from charitable donations for money laundering purposes. Francis Cardinal Spellman and the Knights of Malta (SMOM) were reportedly involved in this affair. This mingling of the sacred with the profane began when Montini was appointed Bishop of Milan, after losing his position as Pope Pius XII’s pro-secretary and forfeiting Pope Pius XII’s endorsement as cardinal. Later Sindona played a major role in the Church’s finances under Montini as “pope,” beginning in the spring of 1969. In exiting the Novus Ordo following the introduction of the “new mass” that same year, the faithful were, in a sense, casting the money changers from the Temple. The Sindona/P2 scandal would not erupt, however, until the 1970s, after Sindona’s manipulation of finances left the Church nearly bankrupt.

The betrayal of the faithful by their own pastors began with the Modernist clergy electing Angelo Roncalli, just as the apostles fled from the scene at the beginning of the Passion. And as the most recent blog on the infiltration of Traditionalist ranks in Mexico and the U.S. explained earlier this month, Masonic forces were working to set up the Traditionalist movement even before Roncalli’s election. Christ was betrayed by them just as we have been betrayed. Jesus was tried before the Sanhedrin and those running the Novus Ordo and other non-Catholic organizations have tried us in the court of public opinion, branding us as “radical Traditionalists.” The same charges have been laid against us as were laid against Our Lord: we are uneducated, insane, liars, and cult members, this for championing the never-changing Catholic truths we hold and present.

We follow all the popes, Christ’s own appointed vicars, and everything they taught, as the expression of God’s will. Christ frequently acknowledged He who sent Him, God the Father, announcing: “I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John 6: 38). This was the same Father whom the Jews professed to reverence and obey, the God of Israel. But in reality, the Jews answered only to the Sanhedrin, God being left out of the equation. They did their own will, not God’s. They had long ago murdered their own prophets. They willfully ignored all the prophecies pointing to Jesus as the Messiah, for they wanted an earthly king, and He did not suit their needs. Nor do we suit the needs of LibTrads who wish only to belong to a visible, earthly church, one of their own making, not God’s. We point out inconvenient truths and demand they obey the popes and Canon Law, something they have no intention of doing.

Conclusion

We are considered an embarrassment and are treated as fools and outcasts, just as Our Lord was treated. And so we march to Calvary willingly bearing our crosses, and one day, when persecution reaches its heighth, some of us, at least, expect to die there. The rest of us will die as white martyrs if, God willing, we can keep the faith in these pagan times. We accept the loss of the papacy and the Mass as God’s will, prophesied in Holy Scripture and taught by the popes, and offer it up as a penance for our many sins. The theologian John-Pierre de Caussade warns about advising others to follow certain forms of spirituality, maintaining that self-abandonment to God’s will, to the present moment alone is suitable for all souls wishing to find their proper spiritual state. He emphasizes that, “The great and firm foundation of the spiritual life is the offering of ourselves to God and being subject to His will in all things” (Abandonment to Divine Providence).

Pope Pius XII wrote in Mediator Dei: “The people must offer themselves as victims…This offering is not in fact confined merely to the liturgical Sacrifice. For the Prince of the Apostles wishes us, as Living Stones built upon Christ the cornerstone, to be able ‘as a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ,’” (I Peter 2: 5). And so we offer ourselves as victims of the Father’s will, who sent Christ to save us; and to the will of Our Lord, eternal victim and true head of His Church. We have no Mass but God will accept pir spiritual sacrifices. We may often call out, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” but we know the answer: only prayer and the sacrifice of our own will can move God’s heart to have mercy on such an evil generation. In the words of Rev. Caussade:

“Since the world began, its history is nothing but the account of the campaign waged by the powers of the world and the Princes of hell against the humble souls who love God… Monster follows monster and the abyss engulfs them and spews them forth again amidst the incessant clouds of smoke… All these monsters come into the world only to stimulate the courage of the children of God and when they have finished their training, God allows them to slay the monster. A new monster appears and God summons fresh warriors into the arena. Our life here is a spectacle which makes heaven rejoice, rears up saints and confounds hell. And so all that opposes the rule of God only succeeds in making it more worthy to be adored. All the enemies of justice become its slaves and God builds the heavenly Jerusalem with the fragments of Babylon the destroyed.”

The seventh king may come; Babylon the Great will eventually fall. But God has reserved a place in Heaven for those who love Him enough to suffer, fight and die for Him.

He is risen, Alleluia! A Catholic poem on the Resurrection

by T. Stanfill Benns | Apr 18, 2025 | New Blog

 A Blessed Easter to all!

HE MADE US FREE

By Maurice Francis Egan

As flame streams upward, so my longing thought

Flies up with Thee,

Thou God and Saviour who hast truly wrought

Life out of death, and to us, loving, brought

A fresh, new world; and in Thy sweet chains caught.

And made us free!

As hyacinths make way from out the dark,

My soul awakes,

At thought of Thee, like sap beneath the bark;

As little violets in field and park

Rise to the trilling thrush and meadow-lark,

New hope it takes.

As thou goest upward through the nameless space

We call the sky,

Like jonquil perfume softly falls Thy grace;

It seems to touch and brighten every place;

Fresh flowers crown our wan and weary race,

O Thou on high.

Hadst Thou not risen, there would be no more joy

Upon earth’s sod;

Life would still be with us a wound or toy,

A cloud without the sun, — O Babe, O Boy,

A Man of Mother pure, with no alloy,

O risen God!

Thou, God and King, didst “mingle in the game,”

(Cease, all fears; cease!)

For love of us, — not to give Virgil’s fame

Or Croesus’ wealth, not to make well the lame,

Or save the sinner from deserved shame,

But for sweet Peace!

For peace, for joy, — not that the slave might lie in luxury,

Not that all woe from us should always fly,

Or golden crops with Syrian roses vie

In every field; but in Thy peace to die

And rise, — be free!

+Good Friday+

We all will be keeping Jesus company at the foot of the Cross this day, and so we end our quotes from Fr. Doyle below. May this day be for us one of solemn mourning and expressions of the most profound love for a man-God whose sacrifice on the Cross we can never repay.

Fr. Doyle’s Reflections on the Passion, Part 5

Gesthemani (cont’d):

As Christ ended His third prayer in the Garden of Gethsemani, He lay prostrate on the ground horribly shaken by the whole ordeal. The one thing He prayed for was not granted Him, but Holy Scripture relates that, “there appeared to him an angel from heaven to strengthen him” (Lk 22:43). It was an angel from heaven who announced to His mother Mary that she had been chosen to fulfill a creature’s greatest service to her God. When men refused the Son of God recognition on this earth, angels filled the skies to announce Him and sing His glories. When cruel men sought His life in infancy, an angel directed the Holy Family to the safety of Egypt. When He was tempted in the desert: “Behold angels came and ministered to him” (Mt. 4:11). Little wonder that when He was in agony in the Garden of Olives an angel should succor Him.

It is well to note that Christ’s prayer was not answered in the way he desired. He had prayed the first time that the chalice might pass from Him. It did not pass but His strength was increased. He prayed the second time for relief from His burden, but while the burden was increased His strength was augmented to match it. Christ prayed the third time, saying the selfsame words He had spoken on the two previous occasions. His agony did not cease but He found the courage “to pray the more earnestly” (Lk. 22:43). Learn from this that when God seems most deaf to our pleadings in prayer, He may prefer to make heroes of us. Be assured that in times of temptation, and trial, God’s angels will ever be at our side to comfort, encourage, and succor us.

Seize this occasion to bolster your devotion to the angels, and in a special way, to St. Michael. St. Alphonsus Liguori says: “Devotion to St. Michael is a sign of predestination.” In the year 1751, St. Michael appeared to an illustrious servant of God, Antonia d’Astonae, a Carmelite in Portugal. He expressed the wish that she should publish for his honor nine salutations corresponding to the nine choirs of angels. It was to consist of a Pater and three Aves in honor of each of the angelic hierarchies and then four Paters, the first in his honor, the second for the honor of St. Gabriel, the third for St. Raphael, and the last for the Guardian Angel. As a reward the glorious prince of the celestial court promised:

“Whoever would practice this devotion in his honor would have when approaching the Holy Table, an escort of nine angels chosen from each one of the nine choirs.” In addition, for the daily recital of these nine salutations he promised his “continual assistance and that of all the holy angels during life, and after death deliverance from purgatory for themselves and their relations.” In time of temptation call upon the holy angels and archangels to defend and protect you. Never let a day go by without a special petition to the heavenly choirs – especially your guardian angel.

In the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, our Blessed Lord’s body was bathed in light and His divinity burst through the frail human bonds that were united to it. In the Garden of Gethsemani, the human body of the Son of God was bathed in bloody sweat that rushed from every pore. Once the angel had strengthened our Lord, the transformation was amazing. From that moment on to the end of the Passion, we shall never see Him falter, for even one moment. He had strength for Himself and strength for all of those who came to Him or crossed His path.

Sleep now

The moment the third prayer was ended, Holy Scripture notes that Christ went to His disciples and said: “Sleep on now, and take your rest! It is enough; the hour has come” (Mk. 14:41). The time for watching was past. Christ had passed through His agony, and on his adorable face was the radiance of peace and the fire of zeal. No longer did He need the help or the sympathy which in vain He had sought in the darkness. He looked toward the city gate, and there was the traitor coming. There was neither need or use now for the disciples’ waking and watching, and they might as well sleep on. The lesson is plain. Whatever we do for our friends, we must do when they are in need of help. If one is sick, the time to show sympathy is while the illness continues. If we allow him to pass through this illness without showing him any attention, there is little use, when he is well again, for us to offer kindness.

When one of our friends is passing through some sore struggle with temptation, then is the time for us to come close to him and put the strength of our love under his weakness. Of what use is our help when the battle has been fought through to the end and won without us? Or suppose the friend was not victorious; that he failed – failed because no one came to help him, is there any use in our hurrying up to him then to offer assistance?

It was Ruskin who once wrote these words: “Such help as we can give to each other in this world is a debt we owe to each other; and the man who perceives superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses nor assists it, is not merely the withholder of kindness, but the committer of evil. If we are inclined to criticize the weakness of the Apostles in sleeping rather then comforting their Lord and their God in His hour of agony, do we not do a simulate deed when we withhold help and consolation from our neighbor. “As long as you did not do it for one of these least ones, you did not do it for me.” (Mt. 25:44). Let us always see Christ in our neighbor and this very day make a real effort to be a support, comfort, and defense of someone who needs our help – spiritual or temporal. Never let the sun set any day without having done one charitable act for a neighbor. Remember always these words of Holy Scripture: “that one’s neighbor should be loved as oneself is a greater thing than all the holocausts and sacrifices.

The ordeal of Gethsemani now over, our Blessed Lord walks with sort of a triumph toward His sleeping Apostles. Three times He had counseled them to pray, three times He had asked them to watch with Him and three times the Apostles had failed Him. Just anger had surged through Christ when He took a rope and drove the money-changers from the temple, because they dishonored His Father’s house. His closest friends who, a few short hours earlier, had received their first Holy Communion, had failed Him, and failed Him badly in His hour of need – surly He would have been justified had He upbraided them. But no. The gentle Christ walked over to where they took their rest, and simply said: “Rise, let us go” (Mk. 14:42). Oh, the hope springs up from those words!

Arise from sin

The disciples had failed sadly in one great duty – they had slept when the Master wanted them to watch with Him. They slept at their post. He had just told them that they might as well sleep on, so far as that service was concerned, for the time to render it was gone forever. Yet there were other duties before them, and Jesus calls them to arise and meet these. Because they had failed in one hour’s responsibility they must not sink down in despair. They must arouse themselves to meet the responsibilities that lay ahead of them.

What a consoling lesson for all of us. Because we have failed in one duty, or many duties, we must not give up in despair. Because a young man or woman has wasted youth, he or she must not therefore lose heart and think the loss of youth is irreparable. The golden years can never be recalled – the innocence, the beauty, the power may have slipped through our fingers – but why should we squander all because we squandered some? Because the morning has been thrown away, why should all the day be lost?

The lesson Christ taught at the end of His agony in Gethsemani is for all who have failed in any way. Christ ever calls to hope. He bids us rise again from the worst defeats. With Christ there is always margin enough to start again and build a noble life. Right down to the doorway of death there is time. Paul persecuted the Church, but died for it. The door of opportunity opened to the penitent thief on the cross in his dying hour. So it is always. In this world, blessed by divine love and grace, there is never the need to despair. The call after every defeat or failure still is, and always will be, “Rise, let us go.” Strive every day to make acts of faith, hope, and charity. Today let us beg for an increase of the virtue of hope.

When our Lord was saying to His Apostles: “Rise, let us go,” He added these painful words: ”He who will betray me is at hand” (Mk. 14:43). St. John gives us a few more details for he writes: “Now Judas, who betrayed Him, also knew the place, since Jesus had often met there together with his disciples, Judas, then, taking his cohort, and the attendants from the chief priests and Pharisees, came there with lanterns, and torches, and weapons” (Jn. 18: 2-4).

Judas the betrayer

The story of Judas is perhaps the saddest in all of the Bible. The Evangelists seem fascinated with that name Judas and when they have occasion to pen it, they call him either “Judas, one of the twelve” or “the traitor” or as we have seen St. John do, in the quote above, “Judas, who betrayed Him.” The thought that one of their number could stoop to such a villainous act inflicts them with a personal shame. Any way you look at it, the story of the betrayal shows new evil each time you read it. Going out from the supper table, Judas had hastened to the priests and was quickly on his way with a band of soldiers. He probably hurried back to the upper room, where he had left Jesus: not finding Him there, he knew well with the Master had gone, and hastened to the sacred place of prayer – Gethsemani – where Jesus had often retired for prayer.

Then in the manner in which he left the officers know which of the company was Jesus shows the deepest blackness of all. Under the guise of close friendship – Judas kissed Christ – with feigned warmth and affection. It would be salutary for each of us to remember always how the treason in the heart of Judas grew. In the beginning, it was greed and money, then followed theft and falseness of life, ending at last, in the blackest crime this world has ever seen. The fact that such a fall as that of Judas began with small infidelities which grew and grew into a heinous crime should teach us the danger of committing venial sins. The Holy Ghost warns us that “he that contemneth little things, shall fall by little and little” (Eccles. 19:1).

Betrayal begins with venial sins

A picture in the royal gallery of Brussels represents Judas wandering about in the night after the betrayal. He comes by chance upon the workmen who have been making the cross upon which Christ shall be crucified the next day. A fire nearby throws its full light on the faces of the workmen, who are sleeping peacefully, while resting from their labors. Judas’ face is somewhat in the shade, but it is wonderfully expressive of awful remorse and agony as he catches sight of the cross and the tools used to make it – the cross which his treachery made possible. Judas did not fall into one great sin, he began with lesser sins, and they paved the way to his great disaster.

St. John Chrysostom said this of venial sins: ”I maintain that the small sins require to be avoided with more care then the more grievous ones, for the grievous ones of their very nature stir up our attention against them; whereas, the lesser sins from the fact of their being insignificant in comparison, are not noticed.” The devil is so cunning. He knows he could not induce a virtuous person to fall onto great sin because of the horror it inspires. What does he do? He proposes a venial offense: now one, now another until he gets the soul into an evil habit, for he knows the end result. Satan knows Scripture too, and can prove it from what he has been able to accomplish by making persons desire at first, venially sinful things. Scripture says: “He that is unjust in that which is little will be unjust in that which is great” (Eccles. 19:1).

Pray earnestly today for grace to avoid venial sins. Examine your conscience daily on your commission of venial sins and resolve to do your earnest to avoid them. The kiss of Judas will ever remain the ultimate in base treachery. The name Judas has such a special odium that no one in his right mind would give that name to an infant. It is reserved for the foulest deed one can perform against a friend, a family, a nation, or a society. The act of kissing performed by Judas on the greatest Friend mankind ever had, beggars man’s power of description. Oh, horrible perfidy!

It is related in Holy Scripture that one of the general in David’s army named Joab perpetrated a foul deed, in that upon meeting Anasa, who also commanded an army, he stooped forward to kiss him and at that very moment thrust a dagger into his side and killed him. Solomon, David’s famous son, when he succeeded to the throne, had Joab slain for his treachery. Note how much more evil was Judas’ act of treachery than was Joab’s. Joab with a treacherous kiss murdered a fellow man; Judas by his kiss paved the way for the death of the Son of God. Joab on the other hand dispatched his victim in one quick thrust; Judas by his awful deed set the stage for the torture and painful death of his Lord and God.

It is related that when the assassins of Julius Caesar fell upon him with their daggers, the great conqueror of men and nations stood motionless, displaying not the slightest sign of emotion or fear. When Brutus, whom Caesar loved with the affection of a father, also approached and drew his dagger to strike his great benefactor, that blow caused Caesar more pain then all the other wounds, and he could not refrain from uttering the now famous words: “Thou too, Brutus, my son!” If Caesar was pained by the baneful treachery of his friend Brutus, how must the Son of God felt when one of His own disciples betrayed Him to His enemies by a kiss. Might the Master not have said: “You too, Judas, My son! Is this what I have merited for My kindness to you? Did I not choose you to be My follower, disciple, and apostles? Did I not wash your feet? Did I not give you My Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity as a food? Oh thankless, heartless Judas!”

Look into your heart today and see if you have even betrayed your Master by mortal sin. Each time you prefer creatures to Christ you betray Him.. Each time you choose sin to Christ’s law, you betray Him. Spend some time today quietly thinking over the picture of Judas pressing his lips to those of the sinless Christ. If you identify yourself in Judas, throw yourself quickly into the arms of your God and beg His pardon.

We noted in our last consideration that daggers were used to murder Julius Caesar. The effect was just as tragic as if the murders had used swords. The smallness of the instrument did not lessen the effects. In like manner, it must be said of Judas that he did not lay violent hands on Christ when he met Him in the Garden of Olives. No, he did not seize or strike the Sacred Redeemer – he simply kissed Him, but that kiss was more tragic than if he had thrust a sword into the Sacred Heart of Christ.

Christ had been kissed before, but my, how different were the circumstances and results! First, there were the kisses of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. Who can number the fond caresses that Mary must have showered on the Infant Jesus as she nurtured and fondled Him in her pure maternal arms? How often must not St. Joseph have covered the Infant Countenance with tender paternal affection? Second, may we not conjecture that the Magi embraced the tiny Infant as Mary formally presented the Infant God to the first of the Gentiles who came to pay Him homage? Certainly, the act would be normal if not imperative.

Third, it can hardly be imagined that the Holy Simeon and Anna present at the presentation in the temple, could have held the adorable Child of promise in their arms and not pressed their holy lips to the pink little hands of the long-sought Messias. Fourth, we are certain from the text of Holy Scripture itself that the public sinner Mary Magdalen imprinted the kiss of contrite sorrow on the sacred feet of Christ, and arose from the encounter holier and greater then when she stooped to embrace her God.

Fifth, we are told that the great St. John the beloved disciple rested his youthful head on the breast of the Master at the Last Supper. There is a Persian fable of a piece clay made fragrant by lying on a rose: the perfume of the rose passed into the clay. So it was with John. He crept unto the bosom of the Master and his Master’s spirit of love and gentleness passed into his life and transformed it. Last, we have the awful picture of Judas pressing his lips to those of the Son of God, feigning friendship.

The lesson here is powerful. Those who approached Christ in love and veneration, in true penance and firm resolve, left His embrace renewed and strengthened. Those like Judas, whose hearts are turned toward evil, may be very near Christ and not be holy in character. Judas was three years with Christ, heard His words, lived in the atmosphere of His love and remained unchanged. An empty bottle, hermetically sealed, may lie long in the ocean and continue to be dry within. A heart sealed to Christ’s love may rest on His bosom for years and not be blessed. Only when pure or contrite heart is opened to receive His grace, does closeness to Him sanctify.

Jews not guilty of ritual murder charge, popes teach

by T. Stanfill Benns | Apr 10, 2025 | New Blog

+Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary+

Fr. Doyle’s Reflections on the Passion, Part 5

Gesthemani (cont’d):

It is right for us to plead earnestly for what we want – earnestly, perseveringly, but never insubmissively. We should recognize that God will not give us what will do more harm than good. Many of us have lived long enough to thank God that He did not give us what we asked in prayer in every instance. The best thing possible for us is always what God wills for us. Sometimes it may be pain, worldly loss, or some bereavement; yet His will is always love, and in simple acquiescence to God’s will, we shall always find our highest good. No prayer, therefore, is pleasing to God which does not end with the refrain of Gethsemani: “Not my will but Thine be done.”

This is the way to peace, for as we yield with love and joy, and merge our will with God’s His peace will flow like a river into our souls. Resolve that each time today you hear a clock strike the hour, you will say reverently, “Not my will but Thine be done.” Christ prayed three times in the Garden of Olives. After each prayer was finished, and the words of those three prayers, by the way, were nearly identical, the Master went back to His Apostles, and in each instance He found them asleep. Between the first and second sessions of prayer our Lord uttered a powerful warning, for He said to the drowsy disciples: “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt. 26:41).

“Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation” is a powerful warning that no man should disregard. In wartime it is not unusual to find a soldier court-martialed and summarily executed for falling asleep at his post. Life is a constant warfare against the legions of hell, and we must be ever watchful against sudden attacks from the enemy. But to watch alone is not enough. A sentinel posted on the walls, when he perceives the enemy gathering for an attack, would be foolhardy indeed, to presume to engage the enemy singlehanded. The wise soldier would send word to his commanding officer of the enemy’s approach. Watchfulness lies in observing the imminent approach of the enemy and prayer is the telling of it to God. Watchfulness without prayer is presumption, and prayer without watchfulness is a mockery.

The great Abbot John remarked that a man who is asleep at the foot of a tree and sees a wild animal coming toward him, will most certainly climb up into the tree to save himself. “So we,” says the Abbot, “when we perceive ourselves beset with temptations, ought to climb up to heaven and by the help of prayer, retire safely into the bosom of God.”

The saints have taught that short prayers are more effective in time of temptation. St. Athanasius, for instance, taught that the opening phrase of the sixty-seventh psalm produced miraculous effects for those who used it in time of temptation. Here are the words: “Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered, and let those that hate Him fly before His face.” Note well, that our Lord did not tell His disciples to be relieved of temptation altogether, but rather that they “enter not into temptation.” God tempts no man, but He permits us to be tempted so to prove ourselves. “Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been tried, he will receive the crown of life” (James 1:12). St. Bernard, explaining these inspired words of St. James, says: “it is necessary that temptations should happen, for who shall be crowned but he that shall lawfully have fought, and how shall a man fight, if there be none to attack him?”

Be undeceived – position, piety, or experience will not spare you temptations. Adam fell when he was in the state of grace and Peter fell soon after his first Holy Communion. Resolve today to make use of the holy names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the very outset of temptation. Try to commit the first sentence of the Psalm 67 to heart and promise yourself to make use of it as soon as you discern the approach of any temptation. (End of Fr. Doyle quote)

Introduction

In response to the Anti-Semitism booklet posted in a previous blog, it appears that certain bloggers frequented by LibTrads have increased postings condemning the Jews this Lenten season. These postings insinuate that the Church actually accepted Jewish ritual murder charges as true, when such charges were long ago refuted and condemned by the popes. The 1944 Antisemitism booklet explains this in no uncertain terms, and it cannot be brushed off as an already existing tendency to make concessions to the Jews at the false Vatican 2 council. Rev. Riley wrote in his booklet:

“The Popes courageously and in face of general popular antagonism have defended the Jews against calumnious accusations, notably of ritual murder, of ritual profanation of consecrated hosts and of the poisoning of wells at the time of the Black Death. The two calumnies, ritual murder and ritual profanation, still reappear, occasionally under, the names of estimable men, despite their repeated designation as vicious calumnies by Popes. This protecting charity amid wise administrative procedures has been the official tradition of the Church.”

I wish to be clear on this: I do not absolve the Jews of Christ’s time and those applauding them today of guilt in Christ’s death. The Jewish leaders in Christ’s day were definitely responsible for His Crucifixion and death. They cursed their descendants by calling down Christ’s blood upon them. But who those actual descendants are today is the real question. Certainly it is not the Ashkenazi Jews who only converted to Judaism at a later date. The Jewish convert David Goldstein and secular historians conclude that Jewish blood has been so diluted over the centuries, that Jews no longer exist as a race. As will be seen below, most Jews consider themselves such only culturally, not from a religious or racial standpoint. Orthodox and Zionist Jews comprise only a small portion of that group.

That ritual murder is indeed a calumny condemned by the popes is proven by the extensive quotes from papal documents below. But first, a sampling of what is falsely being presented — without any mention of the Church’s position — on other sites.

Fisheaters site

“[Blood Passover is] a book written by Professor Ariel Toaff — son of the Chief Rabbi of Rome, and a professor of Jewish Renaissance and Medieval History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel — about the reality behind so-called “blood libel” allegations made against some Jews during the Middle Ages. This book was published in Hebrew, in Israel, but when translated into other languages, outrage ensued. Threats were made against the writer’s life, demands were made that he be fired from his teaching post, and all copies of the book disappeared from bookstores, deliveries of the book were disrupted, etc., and it’s virtually unavailable to read in print in any language but Hebrew. So here it is, in spite of the actions and threats of those who don’t want you to read it.”

The extensive book list regarding the Jews on this site includes numerous works by perennialist E. Michael Jones, four volumes by British Israel proponent Henry Ford, Saenz/Pinay’s The Plot Against the Church, Elizabeth Dilling’s The Jewish Religion, (an Aryan nation favorite), and other questionable works. Not one papal document regarding the Jews is mentioned on this list. A disclaimer to this list does state the following: “Before going further, I want it to be made very clear — radically clear, excruciatingly clear: racism has no place whatsoever in a Catholic’s heart or mind. The information here is about Jewish leadership and the Jewish religion; it is not about every single human being born of a Jewish mother, “the Jews” as an ethnic group, or “the Jews” as a “race.” Racism — any idea that one race is more beloved by God or is more deserving of respect and charity than another race — has no place in a Catholic’s heart. None whatsoever. Nazism, “white supremacy,” and other similar ideologies are evil and toxic and in no way compatible with Catholicism.” But the books listed as authoritative seem to call this disclaimer into doubt.

Tradition in Action

This site lists several articles on Judaism, including a lengthy review of Toaff’s work. In his Toaff review, Atila S. Guimarães concludes that the Jews were indeed guilty of ritual murder.

The Thinking Housewife

Numerous recent articles have been posted at this site on the topic of ritual murder (blood libel) with a quote from Toaff. There is no mention of papal teaching on this topic that I was able to discover. Some 22 pages are listed in the search function featuring articles on the Jews. From a 2015 post on this site we read from Laura Wood: “At the time, I didn’t think much of the comment by the Jewish lawyer. But my thinking on this issue has changed, especially over the last two years after a lot of hard, time-consuming study. I am grateful to the many authors, especially Dr. E. Michael Jones, Michael Hoffmann III, the Rev. Denis Fahey and Hugh Akins, who have written powerfully and persuasively on this topic.” Wood has since disassociated herself from the perennialist E. Michael Jones, as explained in a recent blog post comment. Study might ostensibly include secular sources, but it had better be rooted in theological sources. Fahey is one, but he certainly cannot rival what the popes teach.

Rev. Fahey mentions the matter of ritual murder in his The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganization of Society, (pgs. 191-192). He states in a footnote that, “There are official documents of the Catholic Church unfavorable to the Jews in this matter,” but fails to quote from the actual documents of the popes. He cites St. Simon of Trent’s feast as March 25, (celebrated with another child martyr attributed to ritual murder, St. Wiliam of Norwich), as entered into the Roman Martyrology. In commenting on these feasts and others, Rev. Alban Butler wrote: “It is a notorious slander of some authors who, from these singular and extraordinary instances, infer this to have been at any time the custom or maxim of that people.” Commenting on Butler’s statement, Rev. Herbert Thurston and his assistant wrote:

“Butler’s protest is certainly well founded. No scrap of serious evidence has ever been adduced which would show that the use of Christian blood formed any part of Jewish ritual. It is possible that such child murders may occasionally have been committed by Jewish maniacs or as an act of private vengeance or by necromancers who wished to use the blood for some magical rite. Moreover if we confine our attention to the two martyrs here in question, there is no conclusive evidence that — confessions under torture being worthless — the guilt was brought home to those who were really the culprits,” (The Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, March, Vol. III, Corrected, Amplified and Edited by Herbert Thurston, S.J. and Norah Leeson, Burnes, Oates and Washbourne, 1931).

Other sites; Quas Primas

Catholic Family News, in the Spirit of Chartres (ISOC), Tradition Family and Property, The Remnant, CultureWars, the Society of St. Pius X and its publications, (and in the past, the publication Veritas) — all at various times have indicated that the Jews were the primary coordinators of Vatican 2 and are responsible for the Church’s ultimate destruction. That the Jews played a role in this is a matter of history, certainly. That they also help direct Freemasonry at the top is not disputed here, but the key word is “help.” As pointed out many times, this emphasis on Jews as the cause of all the Church’s (and for that matter the world’s) woes is a classic case of projection to avoid addressing the real problem: We were betrayed by our own Modernist hierarchy, and those acting as clergy today are not validly ordained or consecrated. Antichrist has reigned and his system continues in the Novus Ordo usurpers.  We are enduring the Passion of the Church, the loss of the Mass and Sacraments, which can only end in Our Lord’s Second Coming.  This is the inconvenient and terrifying truth from which they wish to escape.

There are those who claim that in insisting on the proper attitude we as Catholics must take toward the Jews, we lose sight of the fact that we must also defend the rights of Christ as King. They cite Pope Pius XI’s 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, establishing the Feast of Christ the King for this, but forget the words of the encyclical: “When the populace thronged around Him in admiration and would have acclaimed him King, He shrank from the honor and sought safety in flight. Before the Roman magistrate He declared that his kingdom was not of this world… . “With God and Jesus Christ,” we said [in Urbi Arcano], “excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.”

And human society is no longer tottering; it has fallen. As St. Paul predicted, the final representation of Christ’s authority as King — the Roman Pontiff — was forcibly removed by those of His own house, the cardinals and bishops, and Christ was betrayed once again. How any of those presenting as “Catholic” can pretend that Christ’s reign as King can be accomplished now with His Church in ruins is beyond me. And yet Christ will establish His kingdom on earth, just as Holy Scripture foretells, for as Quas Primas also teaches, “He whom St. John calls the “prince of the kings of the earth” appears in the Apostle’s vision of the future as he who “hath on his garment and on his thigh written ‘King of kings and Lord of lords!’.” It is Christ whom the Father “hath appointed heir of all things”; “for he must reign until at the end of the world he hath put all his enemies under the feet of God and the Father.”  He WILL reign as the King of Zion, displacing the false Jewish messiah and vindicating those who still love and serve him.

What is totally lacking here is a correct understanding of the Church’s own teaching on this matter, which is presented below.

Ritual murder charges

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

[The death of St. William of Norwich]… has been well named “one of the most notable and disastrous lies of history”. The story is the foundation of the blood accusation or accusation of ritual murder against the Jews, which has found currency and gained popular credence from that date to the present day. In the “Jewish Encyclopedia”, III, 266, may be found a list of the cases of this ritual murder, beginning with William of Norwich. There are 5 other cases given for the twelfth century, 15 for the thirteenth, 10 for the fourteenth, 16 for the fifteenth, 13 for the sixteenth, 8 for the seventeenth, 15 for the eighteenth, and 39 for the nineteenth, going right up to the year 1900. There have been more recent cases still in Eastern Europe.

Ritual murder as a Jewish institution has been learnedly and conclusively disproved, e.g. by Strack, op. cit. below, and in the case of St. William the evidence is totally insufficient. It seems, however, quite possible that in some cases at least the deaths of these victims were due to rough usage or even deliberate murder on the part of Jews and that some may actually have been slain in odium fidei. In this connection we may notice the first case of all, and the only one before St. William, in which Jews are known to have been accused of murdering a Christian child. In 415 at Inmestar in Syria some Jews in a drunken frolic killed a Christian child in mockery of the death of Christ (Socrates, VII, xvi). Many popes have either directly or indirectly condemned the blood accusation, and NO POPE HAS EVER SANCTIONED IT (Strack, op. cit., 177 and v. Strack’s work, The Jew and Human Sacrifice, is available at www.archive.org).

Massimo Introvigne quoting Strack and various popes

What popes are referenced here? A work by Novus Ordo author and attorney Massimo Introvigne, sheds much light on the history of the blood libel accusation. The popes mentioned by this author begin with Innocent IV, who in 1247 issued a series of bulls and briefs condemning the execution of 34 Jews in Fulda Germany, who, it was said, “killed five boys and burned their blood in a magical ritual… The Pope forbade “to accuse any Jew of using human blood in their rites, since it is clear in the Old Testament that it is forbidden to them to consume any blood, let alone the blood of humans” (published in Strack 1909, 254). Twelve years after the first executions, Rome promptly declared the blood libel myth as illogical and false…

“Pope Gregory X (1210-1276, revered as Blessed Gregory X by Catholics after 1713) publish[ed] an even stronger bull on October 7, 1272. There, he threatened to excommunicate “those who very falsely (falsissime) insist that the Jews kidnap Christian children and make a ritual use of their hearts and blood, since their law in fact strictly forbids any Jew to drink blood, including from animals. We do order that any Jew jailed for this foolish accusation be freed immediately, and that in the future no Jew be incarcerated for such foolish accusation, except in the case, which we do not believe to be possible (quod non credimus), of being caught committing this very offence” (published in Strack 1909, 255-256)…

Pope Nicolas V (1397-1455) had published a bull dated November 2, 1447, where he “prohibited in the strictest way” spreading blood libel accusations and fulminated against “some who try to make Jews odious to Christians by daring to spread false rumours about the Jews, accusing them to celebrate their rites.” And Pope Martin V (1368-1431)… condemn[ed] anybody ‘claiming, with false pretexts and arguments (fictis occasionibus et coloribus) that Jews mix Christian blood to their bread for Easter…. Pope Paul III (1468-1549)… concluded that “those accusing the Jews of drinking the blood of children are blinded by avarice and only want to rob [them of] their money” (published in Strack 1909, 258).’”

Introvigne then relates that Pope Benedict XIV later commissioned a study by the Holy Office, which was conducted by the Franciscan bishop and cardinal, Lorenzo Ganganelli, (later to become Pope Clement XIV). Pope Clement XIII approved the investigation, which stated “that it is impossible, according to their history and theology, for Jews to even conceive of drinking human blood or mixing it with bread or other food.”

Rev. Denis Fahey quotes the following from Cardinal Ganganelli’s report: “Cardinal Ganganelli sets aside a number of accusations of ritual murder as not sufficiently supported by proofs but he accepts two cases. He writes in his report: “I admit as true the case of Blessed Simon, a child of three years, put to death by the Jews at Trent in 1475 out of hatred for the faith of Jesus Christ, though that murder has been denied by Basnage and Wagenseil. I admit also as true a second murder which took place in 1462 in the village of Rinn, in the Diocese of Brixen. Blessed Andrew a little child was there cruelly done to death by the Jews out of hatred for the faith of Jesus Christ.” But ritual murder is not specifically mentioned.

Merry Cardinal del Val was asked to submit documentation in a Kiev case in 1911, involving the Lithuanian priest, Iustinas Pranaitis (1861-1917),

The matter of Pope Benedict XIV beatifying Simon of Trent and Andrei of Fulda, and later popes confirming this, is constantly offered as proof that ritual murder charges were admitted to by the popes. But we find this explanation in the January 1914 edition of the Jesuit publication, The Month:

“We cannot refrain from entering a protest against the extraordinary perversity with which so many anti-Semitist journalists — not a few of them, we are sorry to say, Catholics — persist in thinking evil of their Jewish fellow-countrymen… The one argument which is appealed to by all the accusers, and which is supposed to settle the question, is the allegation that “the Church has canonized as a martyr the boy, holy Simon of Trent, murdered in that city on the occasion of the Jewish Easter in the year 1475.” Even supposing this were true, it proves nothing regarding the practices of the Jewish religion. No one denies that Jews may have killed a particular Christian boy out of hatred for the faith, and that such a  victim may lawfully be honoured as a martyr. But the unqualified statement that the Church has canonized little Simon of Trent illustrates nothing so much as the weakness of the cause it is adduced to support. It is simply untrue to say that the Church has canonized little Simon of Trent. A decree of beatification was issued by Sixtus V, which took the form simply of a confirmation of cultus and which allowed a Mass to be said locally in honour of the boy martyr. Everyone knows that beatification differs from canonization in this, that in the former case the infallibility of the Holy See is not involved, in the latter it is. Be this as it may, Pope Sixtus was careful not to say that little Simon had been put to  death with any ritual purpose, and he did not even emphasize the point that the child had been martyred by the Jews.”

Introvigne, commenting on this, explains that “In 1753 Pope Benedict XIV (1675-1758), ironically a Pope who did much to fight the blood libel, confirmed the local cult of ‘Blessed Andreas.’ For several centuries, cults practiced locally for many years were simply “confirmed” by Popes as a matter of routine. Denying confirmation would have hurt local sensitivities, and there was no beatification process complete with a historical investigation as it happens today.” So why are these things never investigated and explained?

As for the Toaff work listed at Fisheaters and elsewhere, Introvigne writes that Toaff withdrew his book after it was pointed out to him that he had based one of his major examples of blood libel on the testimony of “dozens“ of Jews who confessed under torture, proofs not considered as reliable by credible scholars. An interesting account in Toaff’s work, however, accredits ritual murder to a secret Ashkenazi cult, which certainly could not be laid at the door of Jews in general. Introvigne notes further: “…Some conservative clergymen befriended by Pius X, including Monsignor Umberto Benigni (1844-1932), did propagate the blood libel, although in a last incarnation of the myth they attributed the ritual sacrifice and blood-drinking to a secret Jewish Kabbalistic cult whose existence was unknown to the majority of common Jews.” This cult easily fits the description of radical Orthodox Jews guiding the Illuminati at the top of the Masonic pyramid, which is further suggested below. But it does not indict them of ritual murder.

Jews are such primarily by way of culture today

Research shows the majority of Jews consider themselves such in ethnicity, but not primarily in religion. Most Jews who consider themselves superior to the rest of mankind do so because they believe they are still “the Chosen People.” But this does not necessarily involve the hateful anti-Christian invective spewed by certain Orthodox Jews, who are guilty of forcefully teaching and believing the stringent application of Talmudic precepts. For as seen below, the Orthodox Jews constitute only a small but fervent and vocal minority. So it seems most unfair to lump the rest of those identifying as Jewish in with a small fanatical faction and represent them all as professing the same beliefs.

“Approximately 5.8 million adults (2.4% of all U.S. adults) [are] Jewish” according to a 2021 Pew Research report (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/the-size-of-the-u-s-jewish-population/The rest of this section is taken from a Pew report issued in 2020). “This includes 4.2 million (1.7%) who identify as Jewish by religion and 1.5 million Jews of no religion… Religion is not central to the lives of most U.S. Jews. Even Jews by religion are much less likely than Christian adults to consider religion to be very important in their lives (28% vs. 57%). And among Jews as a whole, far more report that they find meaning in spending time with their families or friends, engaging with arts and literature, being outdoors, and pursuing their education or careers than find meaning in their religious faith. Twice as many Jewish Americans say they derive a great deal of meaning and fulfillment from spending time with pets as say the same about their religion…” And only 9% of that 2.4% identify as Orthodox, those most likely to take their religion seriously and practice it.

“Compared either with U.S. Christians or with the adult public overall, U.S. Jews are far less likely to say that religion is important in their lives. However, Orthodox Jews rank among the most religiously devout subgroups in the country by this measure;… Among Jews who are neither synagogue members themselves nor live in a household where anyone else belongs to a synagogue, 47% do not identify with any institutional branch or stream of Judaism. More than half of U.S. Jews identify with the Reform (37%) or Conservative (17%) movements, while about one-in-ten (9%) identify with Orthodox Judaism. One-third of Jews (32%) do not identify with any particular Jewish denomination… Nearly half of U.S. Jews say religion is either “very” (21%) or “somewhat” (26%) important in their lives, while 53% say religion is “not too” or “not at all” important to them personally… Religion is more important to Jewish women, on average, than to Jewish men.” Most Jews are deeply worried about Anti-Semitism, the report states (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-identity-and-belief/).

Conclusion

If a secret cabal of Jews engineered the demise of the Church, they were scarcely alone in this endeavor. They had plenty of help from apostates and occult heretics within the Catholic hierarchy. Such a cabal certainly is not representative of most Jews, only a certain minority. So why stir readers up against the Jewish people as a whole when they don’t even seem particularly interested in practicing the Jewish religion? By way of comparison, 62 percent of the U.S. population identify as “Christian.” The Jews are therefore outnumbered many times over. Yet the more things change, the more they remain the same: “The extraordinary perversity with which so many anti-Semitist journalists — not a few of them, we are sorry to say, Catholics — persist in thinking evil of their Jewish fellow-countrymen…” (quoted from The Month article above).  And if they did this when there were still true popes reigning, popes sympathetic to the plight of the Jews before and during World War II, what would stop them today?

All we have left of our Church is the doctrines she taught prior to the hostile takeover by the usurpers following Pope Pius XII’s death. Even papal opinions, Pope Leo XIII teaches, must be adopted as our own: “If, in the difficult times in which our lot is cast, Catholics will give ear to Us, as it behooves them to do, they will readily see what are the duties of each one IN MATTERS OF OPINION AS WELL AS ACTION (quae sua cuiusque sint tam in opinionibus quam in factis officia). As regards opinion, whatever the Roman Pontiffs have hitherto taught, or shall hereafter teach, must be held with a firm grasp of mind, and so often as occasion requires, must be openly professed. Especially with reference to the so-called “liberties” which are so greatly coveted in these days, all must stand by the judgment of the Apostolic See and have the same mind” (oportet Apostolicae Sedis stare iudicio, et quod ipsa senserit, idem sentire singulos, Immortale Dei, DZ 1880).

We have presented papal teaching on ritual murder here because regardless of the loss of the papacy — regardless of the prejudice generated on this subject by men such as the professed Mason Saenz-Arriaga and his The Plot Against the Church, also others like him — we cannot adopt the opinion popular among Traditionalists today regarding the Jews. As Catholics, we can only adopt that opinion of the Vicar of Christ sent to rule in His stead as King, until He comes. This is the bounden duty we owe Christ as King.

Los TECOS reveal: proof Sede “clergy” were sworn Masons

by T. Stanfill Benns | Apr 3, 2025 | New Blog

+Fourth Thursday in Lent+

Prayer Society Intention for April, Month of the Holy Ghost

“O Holy Ghost, Creator, mercifully assist Thy Catholic Church, and by Thy heavenly power strengthen and establish her against the assaults of all Her enemies.” (Raccolta)

Fr. Doyle’s Reflections on the Passion, Part 4

Gesthemani (cont’d):

“…Our Lord goes back a second time to pray. This time He is even more alone than before. He prays to His heavenly Father, and His heavenly Father turns a deaf ear to His petition. His Apostles are sleeping again, and yet He prays alone. He is now in a state of supreme desolation and yet He prays. He is in a state of complete dereliction but He prays on. Learn from this lesson to pray even under the most adverse circumstances.

Consider the fact that Christ persevered in His prayer. Already He prayed to His Father saying: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from Me” (Mt. 26:30).The second prayer of our Lord was a repetition of the first, for He said: “My Father, if this cup cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done” (Mt.26:42).

The third prayer was couched in the same words – a prayer more fervent, more earnest then any uttered by any man who ever lived on this earth – yet His Father, it seemed, did not listen to His petition. Christ did not grow impatient, He calmly and resignedly adds: “Not My will but Thine be done” (Lk. 22:42).

What a great lesson in this for all of us! If the Son of God must plead three times for the fulfillment of His prayer, and does so without a trace of bitterness, why are we so depressed when our prayers are not immediately answered? St. Monica prayed for eighteen years for her son Augustine’s conversion, but how richly her perseverance was rewarded. “We wait a whole year,” says St. Francis de Sales, “before the seed we sow in the ground bears fruit; and are we more impatient in regard to the fruits of our prayers?”

There is great consolation for all of us in the refusal of the Father to hear the petition of His adorable son. God the Father refused the most perfect, the most precious prayer ever uttered on this earth – but he did so to prove His love for sinful man. For the sake of sinful man He will not answer the prayer of His own Son, because had God acted otherwise, we would have all been lost. See the reason behind God’s refusal to answer our prayers – He always has the greater good in view: From now on, never complain if your prayers are unanswered. Just keep right on praying. Say your rosary today for the grace of perseverance

Our consideration of the triple prayer of our Blessed Lord in the Garden of Olives should have convinced us of the merit and necessity of continued prayer when we are afraid, downcast, depressed, tempted, or forsaken.

There were numerous other occasions when Christ addressed His petitions to His eternal Father and the response was immediate. The raising of Lazarus is a case in point. In the Garden of Olives, however, the Master prayed three times and His prayer was unanswered. We have seen that had God the Father answered Christ’s prayer and “let the cup pass away” from Him, the world might not have been redeemed. When God does not answer prayer, it is for the greater good.

In the Old Testament we read that the prophet Elias, when he asked God to confound the pagan prophets of Baal by a miracle, hardly had spoken his prayer when a miraculous fire came down from heaven and consumed a holocaust set on the altar, and even burned water in the trench. When the same prophet Elias prayed for rain for God’s people, he had to repeat his prayer not once, twice, or three times, but seven times (Kings 18:44).When God refuses to answer prayer it is for a greater good. When He delays the answer, it is to put the endurance of the suppliant to a test.

The Jews in Bethulia prayed all night, desiring the help of the God of Israel when Holofernes besieged their city, but the more they prayed, the more desperate the situation appeared. Yet they persevered, and God sent them a deliverer in Judith. Another important lesson which we can learn from our Lord’s prayer in Gethsemani is this, that all our petitions to God should close with an acquiescence to the divine will. Hear our Lord say in the depths of His agony – “Not my will but thine be done” (Lk. 22:42)” — (end of Fr. Doyle quotes).

Introduction

“… His Apostles are sleeping again” (Fr. Doyle).  Even though it has been proven that LibTrad pseudo-clergy were never valid (see VAS article HERE) and that the entire Traditionalist movement was only the continuation of Masonic infiltration to seduce the remaining faithful, some continue to sleep and others stubbornly refuse to believe. A recent discovery below offers further proofs of the Masonic origins of ALL LIB-TRAD SECTS and explains why so many among these sects are anti-Semitic in their views, despite the condemnations of the Roman Pontiffs. Owing to the Nazi persecution, Popes Pius XI and Pius XII bound Catholics to refrain from hatred of the Jews for their part in Christ’s death, and by word and example taught us what our attitude toward them should be.

The CMRI pseudo-bishop Mark Pivarunas, (“consecrated” by the Mexican Thuc bishop Moises Carmona), received an official letter on March 1, 2024, confirming the Masonic origins of the priests serving Traditionalists in Mexico. This jaw-dropping revelation from one of Pivarunas own “priests” seems not to have been addressed by Pivarunas publicly, as a search of the CMRI site shows no mention of the organization, (Los TECOS), in question. While the letter does date the existence of Los TECOS to the early 1900s, it fails to mention that this sect was well known to Fr. Joaquin Saenz y Arriaga, the founder of sedevacantism, who served as chaplain for the group in the 1950s-60s. The translator of one of Arriaga’s works, The New Montinian Church, was quoted in the article HERE, describing Arriaga as a member of yet another secret society common to Traditionalists, this one better geared to the Caucasian population: the Sovereign Order of St. John, Knights of Jerusalem (OSJ).

Wikipedia says under sedevacantism: “The earliest example [of sedevacantism] is from a group of traditionalist Catholics in Mexico associated with the radical right secret society Los TECOS based in Guadalajara, in particular their spiritual director, Fr. Joaquín Sáenz y Arriaga, a Jesuit priest, the main figure associated with presenting this. In 1965, at a private meeting in the house of Anacleto González Guerrero (son of the Cristero martyr Anacleto González Flores), Los TECOS leaders proposed the motion that Paul VI (Giovanni Montini) was a crypto-Jew and an illegitimate Pope, that this line should be officially adopted as the position of Mexican traditionalists.” Arriaga also was the author of a widely quoted collaborative work enthusiastically endorsed and sold across the Internet by all manner of Traditionalist groups — The Plot Against the Church, by “Maurice Pinay.” (Anacleto González Guerrero, who corresponded with this author in the early 1980s as Anacleto Gonzalez Flores, later claimed to have written the bulk of the book for Saenz.)

This work blamed primarily the Jews as the masterminds behind the destruction of the Church, as well as the puppet-masters behind Freemasonry. Yet the extent of the influence of certain Jews and their predominance in the Masonic sect and other secret societies has not been determined by the Church. The Plot Against the Church makes no mention of the pleas by both Popes Pius XI and Pius XII to refrain from anything that would amount to the physical persecution of the Jews or lead to their persecution. In their The Hidden Encyclical of Pope Pius XI, (1998) Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky wrote about Pope Pius XI’s last encyclical that was never published, Humani Generis Unitas. This encyclical, written on the eve of WWII, is best summarized below:

1. The Church upholds and defends Her right to warn Her children against those actively hostile to the Christian religion, especially, “misguided souls, whether of the Jewish people or other origin, who ally themselves with or promote” revolutionary movements aimed at the destruction of society and the Catholic Church.
2. Alternating mildness and zeal on the part of the popes over the centuries in addressing this anti-Catholic attitude does not reflect “any interior change in the Church’s policy,” which is easily found confirmed in “the conduct of bishops…and Her ecumenical councils,” AND ESPECIALLY THE CONDUCT OF THE HOLY SEE.
3. Under the specific heading “Anti-Semitism,” Pope Pius XI states: “Such persecutory methods are totally at variance with the true spirit of the Catholic Church.” Quoting a decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office dated March 5, 1928, the pope points to the Church’s professed love for the Jews and desire for their salvation. The decree contains a resolution on the part of the papacy to continue to protect the Jews against unjust oppression and open anti-Semitism.

Pope Pius XII later demonstrated his solicitude for the Jews by his conduct during WWII, saving countless Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. With this and the above in mind, we present the following, which in and of itself should be enough to convince any rational human being that the Traditional movement was only a continuation of the penetration of secret societies into the very heart of the Church. In the late 1990s, letters written and signed by various Mexican authors were sent from Mexico to Traditionalist pseudo-clergy worldwide warning that Los TECOS pseudo-clergy were Masonic and had been form the beginning.

These letters were circulated in 2000 from the office of  Fr. Paul Schoonbroodt (1933–2012, a parish priest of Steffeshausen, Belgium), with a written introduction by his secretary Amelia Schmid. They were then forwarded to a friend who forwarded them to me. Although these letters only date back to 2000, the Masonic influence propelling the Traditionalist movement goes back to its very beginning as explained in the link in paragraph 2 above. That they were suppressed should in itself be enough to rouse the followers of LibTrad pseudo-clergy from their sinful sleep. But will it?

Please note that the letters below do not limit the Masonic contamination to the CMRI, or to the group referred to in the Los TECOS letters. In fact in the last two blogs we have seen how such individuals as the Gnostic Rama Coomeraswamy and indirectly, E. Michael Jones, have spread their heresies throughout LibTrad sects. Others, such as the former Protestant minister Gerry Matatics — in a series of interviews with ISOC founder Judith Sharpe, titled The Plot Against the Church, based partly on Saenz’s work — have played their own part in promoting the views of heretics and schismatics. Both Coomeraswamy and Matatics taught students in “Traditionalist seminaries.” One cannot help but wonder if they themselves were not affiliated with the OSJ and Los TECOS or some other unknown secret society, given their activities.

Introduction to the Secret Society, Tecos

“These four “open letters” are not bound by any law of copyright. In fact Bishop Jose F. Urbino Aznar from Merida, Yucatan, exhorts all to read these letters, to broadcast them, to send them to other countries or to translate them so that all concerned would be informed and warned!  He writes, at the end of his Letter IV, that, “IF TRADITIONALISTS DO NOTHING, THEY HELP THE TECOS TO INFILTRATE AND SABOTAGE.”

“The purpose of these pages is to war against the presence of “Marrano’s” in Traditionalist Sede-vacantists groups today. These “false brothers” are continuing the work of the Spanish Marrano’s in the 15^th Century, and 40 years after the Vatican II revolution in the Church, their aim is to infiltrate, subvert, and over-throw the last remaining bastions of Catholic Traditionalism. The “Tecos” and stemming from it… the “Trento” movements in Mexico, will be studied here but their subsidiaries in other countries have different names: i.e., “Una Voce” in Munich, Germany whose leader is Dr. Eberhard Heller, the editor of the subversive, pseudo-traditionalistic journal, “Einsicht”; and “Trident”, a Czechoslovakian “traditionalist” journal, edited by Dr. Klomineky; it is also affiliated with Tecos.

“Trento is a branch of Tecos. The rank-and-file members of Tecos would appear to be Catholics militating against Freemasonic influences; quite anti-Communist! But its leaders are very wealthy Jewish Freemasons who pretendthey’re Catholics and Mexican patriots. Since Vatican II, they even pretend to be sedevacantist Traditionalists, in order to be better accepted by the latter; alas, they are “MARRANOS”!

“Who are the Mexican Tecos leaders? They stem from two related families: Leano and Alvarez del Castillo. They rule this Secret Society but delegate their power to their subordinates, yet they exert tyrannical control. For example, Bishop Martin Davila Gandara (of the Trento Priests Union) is not free to act independently. Everything he does is controlled ‘down to the last detail’. This bishop and all Trento priests and seminarians are official members of the Tecos! This is a pre-requisite to be lavishly financed by the super-rich family — Leano Alvarex del Castillo. Unfortunately, the hundreds of millions of dollars they possess come from drug-smuggling operations, investments in very luxurious hotels and easiness, illegal confiscation of property (aided and abetted by corrupt police, easily bribed). They are also the main shareholders in the Mexican TELEVlSA TV enterprise, a springboard for Satanical programs. We unconditionally agree to the above.

Signed: Sergio Ruiz Vallejo, Rafael Lira, Jose de Jesus Beecara, R. Alvaro Reyes C.

(All emphasis in this quote and what follows below is added by the author. The four Los Tecos letters detailing the above accusations are available on request.)

Excerpts from Los TECOS letter to Pivarunas

https://archive.org/details/letter-to-bishop-pivarunas-in-english

La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico, on March 1, 2024

(Prepared by “Fr.” Hernán Arturo Vergara Monroy)

1. This document is prepared at the request of Bishop Mark Antony Pivarunas, as instructed by Father Carlos Borja.
2. Due to the gravity of the matter, I request that this issue be handled with absolute discretion, asking the Lord Bishop to safeguard the document to prevent it from being stolen and disseminated, causing serious harm to the spiritual well-being of souls.
3. In this document, only a small sample of the matter is discussed…The colloquial name for the sworn organization is “Los Tecos”, but its internal title is “Legion of Anti-Communist Youths of Mexico,” for God and for the homeland,” outwardly promoting values, Catholic faith, and a life centered around God. However, in practice, their actions align with the will of a faceless supreme power, which seems to disregard God’s law.
4. The man who appears as the founder of this organization is named Carlos Cuesta Gallardo. He was born in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, on August 22, 1911. His parents were Francisco Luis Cuesta Gallardo and Maria Elena Gallardo Rojas. The family was extremely wealthy, with close relatives holding high positions in the government. Interestingly, there are Hebrew customs within this family, but there remains an absolute silence regarding their genealogy.
5. Around 1934, an organization was founded, with one of its ideologues and leaders being Father Manuel Figueroa Luna S.J. The organization operated under catalogued and mandatory methods, including oaths, blind obedience, loyalty, and secrecy. Members swore an oath in the name of God to maintain absolute silence about the organization’s existence, names, agreements, addresses, structure, and programs. They also pledged obedience to the “Army of God.” whose leader remained unknown to almost everyone. According to its main proponents, the organization’s purpose was to counter the Judaeo-Masonic-Communist conspiracy. To avoid detection, members used pseudonyms, ensuring that if internal documents were confiscated by the police, their identities would remain hidden.
6. Regularly, young people from the age of twelve are recruited and trained to align their thinking with the Organization. Based on their proselytism efforts, they can ascend to become group leaders. These young people are recruited by seemingly harmless external groups that appear beneficial to initiates. They are then admitted to a preliminary group and after undergoing preparation and testing, they ascend to the base group.
7. The concept of “pureza de sangre” (purity of blood) is something that they claim involves separating Jewish, Masonic, or anti-Christian elements.
8. MY PROPOSAL IS THAT THE PRIESTLY SOCIETY OF TRENTO SHOULD DISAPPEAR FOR HAVING BEEN BORN IN AN ANTI-CHRISTIAN ORGANIZATION…
9. The banner or emblem of the organization has a double-headed eagle in the center, similar to the symbol of the 33rd degree of Freemasonry. Isn’t this enough evidence of what this organization is? Just like the two Masonic columns that are found in the presbytery of the church of San Agustin, in the little hill of Guadalajara, an emblematic church of the organization.
10. They have several oaths, I write only one consigned in the traditional liturgy: *I (name of the oath-taker) swear by God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, creator of the universe and everything that exists, swearing without mental reservations of any kind, to be loyal to God and to the Legion of Anti-Communist Youth of Mexico, never to betray or fight it and to keep absolute secrecy with strangers to said movement of its existence, of the names of the components and leaders, of the matters discussed in its meetings and of everything that relates to it. Just as I will never act within said order accepting slogans, orders or simple suggestions from people or organizations strange to this organization. I also swear by God, to consider the Legion of Anti- Communist Youth of Mexico, as the primary organization in the temporal order subordinating all my political or social activities to the supreme direction of this movement, whatever the place where I carry out my activities, if I do not do so, may the Legion of Anti-Communist Youth of Mexico punish me with the death of traitors.”
11. “KEEP ABSOLUTE SECRECY WITH STRANGERS TO THIS ASSOCIATION, OF ITS EXISTENCE, OF THE IDENTITY OF ITS LEADERS AND ITS MEMBERS. OF THE MATTERS DISCUSSED IN ITS MEETINGS AND IN GENERAL OF EVERYTHING RELATED TO IT. ONLY THOSE WHO RECEIVE ORDERS TO REVEAL IT, ISSUED BY THE SUPERIORITY THROUGH THE ORGANIZER-INSPECTOR, MAY REVEAL TO STRANGERS.” (Regulations of the organization, third title, second chapter, article 34, fraction I.)
12. “In order that there may be no room for error when it is to be determined which of these pernicious sects are subject to censures, and which are only prohibited, it is certain in the first place that they are punished with excommunication latae sententiae, the Masonic and other sects of the same kind…” Instruction of the Holy Office of May 10, 1884. DZ 1860.
13. “THOSE WHO GIVE THEIR NAME TO THE MASONIC SECT OR OTHER ASSOCIATIONS OF THE SAME KIND THAT PLOT AGAINST THE CHURCH OR AGAINST LEGITIMATE CIVIL POWERS, INCUR IPSO FACTO EXCOMMUNICATION SIMPLY RESERVED TO THE APOSTOLIC SEE.” Code of Canon Law, Canon 2335.
14. Commentary on Canon 2335: “According to an instruction from the Holy Office of May 10, 1884, all associations that require their affiliates to swear an oath of absolute secrecy and to blindly obey everything to leaders are prohibited.”
15. THEY EDUCATE AND SYSTEMATICALLY FORM A STANCE OF HATRED AGAINST JEWS FOR BEING JEWS, against Masons for being Masons; In this sense, the truth about the Jewish people must be preached, INSTRUCTING THE TRUTH THAT IS NOT TO INSTILL HATRED OR RESENTMENT, but the knowledge that prevents us from the influence of a people educated in the perversity of the Synagogue of Satan: the seriousness of this system of irrational hatred, is the following: Who can or defines who is a Jew? Well, the organization, which does not present evidence, only the definition in the manner of the Holy Office, in this way, the organization can enrage its addicts with just one order. Finally, it is one more means of manipulation… The organization that operates from the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, its leaders and owners, have not explained the legality of the wealth they have, in addition to the fact that, in 1962, the Rockefeller Foundation donated a large amount of money.

(Seminary of the Sacred Hearts)

50. …The aforementioned names (Davila Gandara and Perez Gomez) were “piously” subjected to a “brainwashing” in a short time and in a sui generis or Frankenstein preparation, taken to the sacred orders with the tranquility of having the support of the organization. (On Oct. 14, 1998, a two-thirds majority of priests elected Dávila for episcopal consecration. Dávila was consecrated a bishop May 11, 1999, byPivarunasand Dolan in the Temple of the Divine Providence.)
51. The missions and churches that were established with the fathers of Manuel Lopez or the Trento priestly society, are precisely places where the organization operates, having the other places, especially the south of the country, as a second level.
52. A priest wishes to testify, about how before ordaining him, you, Bishop Pivarunas, took him before Manuel López to perform a ceremony with an oath to obey God in the person of this gentleman, an indispensable requirement for ordination.
53. All the seminarians were sent for a month to preparation for the organization, which was actually brainwashing.
54. “Strength was confused with contempt, loyalty with servility, obedience to man with disobedience to God, humility with people without the ability to think contrary to the triple authority.
55. “Let no one thinks that it is permissible for any reason to give his name to the Masonic sect, if he professes to be a Catholic and values the salvation of his soul as he should.”, (Pope Leo XIII, encyclical Humanum genus, DZ 1859).
56. “Apart from these, there are other prohibited sects that must be avoided under penalty of serious guilt, among which we must mainly count all those that require their followers by oath not to reveal the secret to anyone… (Instruction of the Holy Office of May 10, 1884; DZ 1861).

Summary

Vergaro-Monroy and Borja took a great risk in making this information available to the public and for that they should be commended. But Vergaro/Borja do not connect the dots, which go back much further than they are willing to admit — all the way back to Saenz and the founding of Traditionalism. In 1965, Fr. Gommar DePauw founded the Catholic Traditionalist Movement in Long Island, New York. In that same year, Fr. Saenz and Anacleto Gonzalez Guerrero (Flores), already both members of the Los TECOS secret society, founded the sedevacantist movement. Both Saenz and DePauw were members of the OSJ, (Sovereign Order of St. John, Knights of Jerusalem — Shickshinny branch, not Malta branch). The OSJ organization then set up its own Trad mass centers across the U.S., referred to as priories.

Lefebvre, already tagged as ordained and consecrated by a Freemason, was reportedly a member and even the head of the OSJ, both in the U.S. and France. He also is most likely connected with the scandalous “Catholic” secret society The Priory of Sion, (supposedly defunct, but this is only a smokescreen) with his seminary headquartered in Sion, France and all his branch organizations named priories. DePauw, Schuckhardt (original founder of Pivarunas’ CMRI) and other LibTrad sects also designated their various “branches” as priories. This is no coincidence; the Masonic connection is clear.

Probably the most important part of Vergano’s letter is the admission that Los TECOS (and all those infected with its perverse philosophy) “…EDUCATE AND SYSTEMATICALLY FORM A STANCE OF HATRED AGAINST JEWS FOR BEING JEWS, against Masons for being Masons; In this sense, the truth about the Jewish people must be preached, instructing the truth that is not to instill hatred or resentment…”  This certainly explains the attitude of LibTrads towards the Jews today, but there is more. According to the Wikipedia article on Los TECOS: “…they built up connections with members of the Arab League, such as the Saudis, with whom they shared a mutual opposition to Zionism and an obsession with “Jewish conspiracies”… While condemning the United Nations in their own private works as part of the “Masonic conspiracy”, they, at the same time, used UNESCO’s World University Organization to build up relations with radical right, anti-communist, anti-masonic and antisemitic forces across the world throughout the 1950s…

“[They then] funneled some of these funds into their own political activities. The biggest windfall was secured in 1962, according to Stefan Thomas Possony, who said that “… Guadalajara UAC received money from the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie Foundations as well as from the Agency for International Development (AID)… Between 1964 and 1974, nearly $20,000,000 worth of grants were passed through these American institutions to the UAG, controlled by Los TECOS. According to a report in the Albuquerque Journal, “they believe they are using Jewish gold to combat the Jews” (end of Wiki quote). And we wonder why our campuses are filled with pro-Palestinian sympathizers and anti-Semitism is rife; why the FBI (rightly) suspects certain Traditionalists of neo-Nazi activities and of promoting anti-Semitism.

As explained in earlier blogs, all these LibTrad groups have common roots: “The Orthodox Roman Catholic Movement or ORCM is a group of priests founded by Fr. Francis E. Fenton acting on the suggestions of Fr. Joaquin Sáenz y Arriaga, S.J., and was the U.S. organization parallel to the Mexican organization Unión Catolica Trento, founded by Fr. Saenz along with Frs. Moises Carmona and Adolfo Zamora. Fr. Fenton was a founding member of the “conservative” John Birch Society, and was on its American Opinion Speakers Bureau” (https://www.liquisearch.com/orthodox_roman_catholic_movement). The John Birch Society itself has been linked to Freemasonry HERE and HERE.

It is important to note that publication of the above documents make such matters notorious according to the 1917 Code.  In a Bull issued on Dec. 25, 1925, Pope Pius XI declared: “Those who have notoriously belonged to Masonic sects or other forbidden societies of the like should not be absolved unless they shall have made an abjuration before the confessor, done all the law requires, withdrawn from the sect and repaired the scandal as far as they can” (AAS 17-611). There can now be no absolution but certainly all the other conditions must be fulfilled. Only public withdrawal from the entire Traditional movement itself and the renunciation of any claim to orders whatsoever could satisfy Pope Pius XI’s conditions.

For 26 years the Los TECOS situation has been known to at least some Traditionalist pseudo-clergy and shamefully hidden from view. Not only are the followers of these men aiding and abetting them by allowing them to simulate the sacraments, but they are also cooperating with Freemasons — apostates. It is way past time to do penance and make amends for such egregious crimes and Lent is the ideal time to make these amends to Our Lord, whose sufferings are already so greatly intensified by our sins. If LibTrad followers really want to know who they are dealing with and what the game of their pseudo-clergy is really all about, please watch this short YouTube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMg1Hk2DWHs

See if it doesn’t set off some alarms. What would happen if Traditionalist “priests” and “bishops” now deceiving so many were stripped of their collars and mitres, their churches, their power, their control, which in reality has never existed? Only YOU have the power to shatter the illusion.

Free Anti-Semitism book and charity toward our enemies

by T. Stanfill Benns | Mar 24, 2025 | New Blog

+The Annunciation+ (With a commemoration of St. Dismas)

Fr. Doyle’s Reflections on the Passion, Pt. 3

Gesthemani

OUR BLESSED LORD had designedly planned that Peter, James, and John should be afforded but a glimpse of His divinity when it burst forth on the occasion of His Transfiguration. Now in the Garden of Olives these same Apostles would see their Lord and their God bent and crushed under the weight of sin. The thought of the Transfiguration would have to strengthen them in this hour of disillusionment.

The apostles had always known our Lord to be composed in the face of attack or crisis. For instance, when the elements of nature tossed their fishing boats until they, hardened fishermen though they were, quaked with fear, Jesus was calm and unafraid; but in the Garden of Gethsemani they were to see this same Christ prostrate on the ground bathed in a sweat of blood. That which made up the very anguish of Gethsemani was the fact that Christ, at that moment, took upon Himself the sins of the world — past, present, and future. But why had Christ invited the Apostles to accompany Him in the Garden of Olives? Well, as He entered the darkness, He may have craved human companionship. It was not that the Apostles could do anything for Him, but that their very presence would support Him. Too, He wanted to teach them some important lessons.

The first lesson was this, that when one is oppressed, discouraged, heartbroken, and forsaken, he should pray. That is what our Lord did. He was afraid. He was overwhelmed by the sins of mankind, His Apostles, His closest friends, fell asleep – yet He prayed. Always remember what our Lord told His weak apostles when he awakened them the first time: “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt. 26:41).

The second lesson was equally apparent. While Christ’s closest friends were asleep as He went through the initial phases of the Passion, His enemies were very much awake. At that very moment Judas was briefing the soldiers on where to find Christ and how to apprehend Him. The soldiers were getting themselves ready to arrest the Son of God.

So it has always been and always will be — the enemies of your soul and mine, the enemies of Christ and His Church never sleep. They are always more vigilant, more energetic, more active then we are. Resolve today to make [a Holy Hour] and let the picture of Christ in the Garden of Olives come to your mind. Approach your prostrate King — promise Him to do some positive penance for the sins you have committed. Ask Him to teach you this important lesson — that when doubts, trials, sorrows, and temptations assail you, you, following His example, you will pray, pray, pray.

Our Lord had suffered a terrible ordeal in His initial phase of trial in the Garden of Olives. He had, some thirty-three years earlier, taken on the burden of human nature, Now in this fateful garden, Christ took on the awful burden of man’s sins, and He rightly looked to His closest friends to share His burden in return, if only by compassion. They failed Him. They slept. Oh how the words of the prophet were fulfilled: “I looked for one that would grieve together with me, and there was none; for one that would comfort me, and I found none” (Ps. 68:21).” (End of of Fr. Doyle quotes).

Introduction

Several readers have requested that I make available an excellent booklet written on anti-Semitism, which is now posted for all to read HERE. (Please wait for a moment to view it as it takes a while to load). This booklet was published by Radio Replies Press in 1944 and exposes the false information now circulating on the Internet about the Church’s true position on the Jews. Radio Replies was an approved publication praised by Church officials and Catholics worldwide for its comprehensive treatment of moral and dogmatic theology questions. This booklet presents the correct theological outlook on the problem of anti-Semitism and what the popes have taught throughout the ages on how we should regard the Jews. Yes, they are the enemies of Christ and henceforth our enemies as well. And during Lent this is most painfully apparent. But we must keep this in perspective and turn our own eyes inward during this time, for certainly the hierarchy we believed to be true Catholics are more guilty than they are, in many respects, for what has happened to the Church. And we must not be seduced by those who pretend to take their place.

Our Catholic faith teaches that, “…The worst [sinners] are those Christians who have died in mortal sin, without repentance and without regret; for these have despised the death of Christ and His sacraments, or else they have received them unworthily and in vain. And they have not practised the works of mercy, showing charity toward their neighbours, as God has commanded. And for this they are doomed to the depths of hell. The second kind are the unbelievers, Pagans and Jews. These must all appear before Christ, though they were damned already during their lives; for, in their time, they possessed neither Divine grace nor Divine love, and for this reason they have always dwelt in the eternal death of damnation. But these shall have less pain than the evil Christians; for, since they received fewer gifts of God, THEY OWED HIM LESS LOYALTY” (Bd. John of Ruysbroeck, The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, 14^th century.)

The faithless cardinals, the traitorous bishops, the false shepherds and wolves in sheep’s clothing, and their cooperators — all of those leading the people astray — they, not the Jews, are the ones who bear the brunt of the blame. And they are the ones who would be most severely punished, deposed and degraded if a canonically elected pope could be elected, which sadly is now an impossibility. The baptized Catholic who has abandoned his faith, and most especially those commissioned to care for the flock, are the ones who should tremble.

The charity we owe our enemies

In meditating on the Passion, as all are bound to do during Lent, the true enormity of sins committed and yet being committed by ourselves and others should become more truly heinous than ever they seemed before. We know that the Church has always prayed for the conversion of the Jews, pagans, infidels and the return of non-Catholics to the fold. In making our First Friday reparations, we ought to be praying for this as well. Yes, the Jews are our enemies, along with those of our own household and there has been much misunderstanding on what type of charity we owe our enemies and the limits of such charity. There should also be an order in our fight against the enemies of faith and how to best direct our energies to defend Christ and His Church. All this will be made clearer below. “He who can never love Christ enough, will never give up fighting against those who hate Him” — St. John Chrysostom.

From Rev. Felix Sarda y Salvany’s Liberalism is a Sin

LibTrad apologists continually “disagree” with those who point out their errors, accusing their critics of a lack of charity or unjust condemnation of their position. This when they themselves are the ones practicing liberal charity. Since they have no authority to teach, and Rev. Sarda was a theologian commended by Pope Leo XIII’s Holy Office, it is quite clear that their objections are specious and uncharitable in themselves. Rev Sarda explains below why this is true.

“It is often necessary to displease or offend one person, not for his own good but to deliver another from the evil he is inflicting. It is then an obligation of charity to repel the unjust violence of the aggressor; one may inflict as much injury on the aggressor as is necessary for the defense…The love due to a man inasmuch as he is our neighbor ought always to be subordinated to that which is due to our common Lord. For His love and in His service, we must not hesitate to offend men. The degree of our offense toward men can only be measured by the degree of our obligation to Him. Charity is primarily the love of God, secondarily the love of our neighbor for God’s sake. Therefore to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a true act of charity. Not to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a sin.

“Modern Liberalism reverses this order. It imposes a false notion of charity; our neighbor first and, if at all, God afterwards. By its reiterated and trite accusations of intolerance, it has succeeded in disconcerting even some staunch Catholics. But our rule is too plain and too concrete to admit of misconception. It is: sovereign Catholic inflexibility is sovereign Catholic charity. This charity is practiced in relation to our neighbor when in his own interests he is crossed, humiliated, and chastised. It is practiced in relation to a third party, when he is defended from the unjust aggression of another, as when he is protected from the contagion of error by unmasking its authors and abettors and showing them in their true light as iniquitous and pervert, BY HOLDING THEM UP TO THE CONTEMPT, HORROR AND EXECRATION OF ALL. It is practiced in relation to God when, FOR HIS GLORY AND IN HIS SERVICE, it becomes necessary to silence all human considerations, to trample underfoot all human respect, to sacrifice all human interests and even life itself to attain this highest of all ends…The saints are the type of this unswerving and sovereign fidelity to God, the heroes of charity and religion…”

Rev. Sarda tells us further: “The bond of union should never be neutrality or the conciliation of interests essentially opposed…This neutrality or conciliation has been condemned by the Syllabus and… is a false basis. Such union would be a betrayal, an abandonment of the Catholic [ideal]. Such union with any group, for any enterprise whatsoever, would [not only] be unfavorable to Catholics, but actually [would be] detrimental. Instead of augmenting our forces, it would paralyze and nullify the vigor of those who would be able, if alone, to do something for the defense of the truth…The kind of soldiers we need go into the deadly breach and never flinch. No compromising, no minimizing with them. They plant their banner on the topmost height and form a solid invincible phalanx around it. That not all the legions of earth and hell combined can budge a single inch. They make no alliance, no compromise with a foe whose single aim, disguised or open, is the destruction of the truth. They know the enemy by nature is implacable, and his flag of truce but a cunning device of treachery.” And this applies especially to organizations that try to unite all those with disparate “Catholic” beliefs.

On the “incurable,” and those in heresy or schism

St. Alphonsus Liguori writes, under the heading The Duty of Accusing or Denouncing Another: “Here it is asked whether fraternal correction must precede accusation. Several distinctions must be made…(1) If the crime is public, since for this reason infamy or notoriety is already present, (e.g., before a number of people in the street), then no correction ought to precede. Thus St. Thomas, Sanchez, Sotus, Paludanus and Salmant with the common opinion. In such a case, to quote St. Thomas, ‘The remedy must not be applied only to him who has sinned that he may improve, but also to those who notice the crime has come.’ And for this reason, a public crime ought to be punished. The truth is you do not sin either against charity or against justice if you accuse without warning (1) When the crime gives injury to the common weal as in…heresy…For with these crimes, scarcely, if ever, is it to be hoped that correction will be fruitful, and delay can be exceedingly harmful,” (Theologia Moralis).

“St. Paul commands Titus: “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition avoid, knowing that he, that is such a one, is subverted and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment,” (3:10,11) Cornelius a Lapide and St. Robert Bellarmine understand(s) this passage as meaning that the warnings are required when it is doubtful whether or not someone is truly pertinacious in heresy. In the case of manifest heresy, no warning would be necessary.

“Cardinal de Lugo, considered by St. Alphonsus to be the greatest theologian since St. Thomas, devoted the most detailed study we are aware of to the subject of the pertinacity required to make someone a heretic. He discusses whether a warning is needed in order to establish that someone is a heretic, and concludes, after considering the opinions of all the noted theologians and canonists, that such warnings are not always necessary – nor are they always required in practice by the Holy Office. The reason for this is that the warning serves only to establish that the individual is aware of the opposition existing between his opinion and the Church’s teaching. If that were already evident, the warning would be superfluous,” (Disputationes Scholasticae et Morales, Disp. XX, De Virtute Fidei Divinae, Sectio vi, n. 174 et seq.). It should be noted here that the very law used as the old law for the canons on heresy, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, which we are bound to consult should any questions arise concerning the law, states that where heresy is concerned no warning or declaratory sentence is required for the censure to take effect. This also was reiterated in a decision from the Holy Office in the 1930s.

To dismiss the claim that Church teaching and practice did not always clearly specify the matter of a man’s ordination and consecration without the proper qualifications, we quote the following: Pope Hadrian I condemns in DZ 301 “…those priests who without examination… are ordained that they may preside.” And in DZ 363 we find (Pope Callistus II, Laetaran Council I): “Let no one, unless canonically elected, extend his hand for consecration to the episcopacy. But if he should presume to do so let both the one consecrated and the one consecrating be deposed without hope of restoration.”  This is only a reiteration of what is found in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio and Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis. And it must be emphasized here that in teaching this, the popes were not NOT considering the fact that the ones seeking consecration were already public heretics and schismatics!

And from St. Thomas Aquinas: “As the Philosopher observes (Ethic. ix. 3), when our friends fall into sin, we ought not to deny them the amenities of friendship, so long as there is hope of their mending their ways, and we ought to help them more readily to regain virtue than to recover money, had they lost it, for as much as virtue is more akin than money to friend­ ship. When, however, they fall into very great wickedness, AND BECOME INCURABLE, we ought no longer to show them friendliness. It is for this reason that both Divine and human laws command such like sinners to be put to death, because there is greater likelihood of their harming others than of their mending their ways. Nevertheless the judge puts this into effect, not out of hatred for the sinners, but out of the love of charity, by reason of which he prefers the public good to the life of the individual. Moreover the death inflicted by the judge profits the sinner, if he be converted, unto the expiation of his crime; and, if he be not converted, it profits so as to put an end to the sin, because the sinner is thus deprived of the power to sin anymore. (Q. 25, Art. 7, Pt. II-II: Reply Obj. 2).

(Pt. II-II, Q.31, Art. 2, Reply Obj. 3): “The excommunicated and the enemies of the common weal are deprived of all beneficence, in so far as this prevents them from doing evil deeds. Yet if their nature be in urgent need of succor lest it fail, we are bound to help them. For instance, if they be in danger of death through hunger or thirst, or suffer some like distress, unless this be according to the order of justice.” And following St. Thomas, as they do, Revs. McHugh and Callan wrote: “An act is NOT contumely when given to those deserving of reproof, or when directed toward the IRRETRIEVABLY WICKED.”

Are LibTrad pseudo-clergy irretrievably wicked? For some 40 years, they have been warned that they are operating outside Canon Law, that their validity is in grave question, and finally that their “orders” are undeniably invalid according to the laws of the Church and the teachings of the Popes. Not one of them have reversed course, admitted their guilt, publicly abjured their errors, made reparation and restitution (all of this required by Canon Law) or asked for forgiveness. It is difficult to believe that they are anything but unrepentant and pertinacious. In any event they are notorious heretics, and we are bound to avoid them and condemn their attempts to pervert those who are searching for the truth. While what follows applies to those who are still Catholic, and those suffering from personal offenses only, it provides guidelines regarding our treatment of those who are our professed enemies.

From The Casuist,  Vol. 1, (p. 193-95)

“We must not wish our enemy evil; that is we must not repay evil with evil or cherish a spirit of revenge toward him. We must pardon the personal offense when requested, not always immediately. Sometimes there may be just cause for deferring pardon in order to manifest the pain we suffer by reason of the offense. Sometimes, even, we may be obliged to make the first advance towards a reconciliation to prevent scandal or to save our enemy from sin when we can do so without much trouble to ourselves. We must wish our enemy well; that is, we must include him in our prayers. We must succor him in his needs as we would anyone else. And if we exercise charity indiscriminately toward a large number, we must not exclude our enemy, for this would be a mark of revenge; and if special ties of blood etc. unite us, we are bound to give evidence of goodwill toward our enemy as we give to others who are bound to us by the same ties. But special marks of friendship that we owe to no one in particular, either by reason of their personal condition or the customs of the country, we are not obliged to show to our enemy.

“It is one thing to harbor a spirit of revenge and quite another thing to desire the reparation of outraged rights. It is perfectly legitimate to desire the restoration of our good name or the restitution of our stolen property and to take action at law to obtain them; yes, even to take criminal proceedings against the offender to have him punished. If this is done out of love for justice it is quite in keeping with the law of charity. If it is done from a spirit of revenge, it is of course sinful. ONCE SATISFACTION HAS BEEN MADE, WE MUST FORGIVE THE PERSONAL OFFENSE. UNTIL SATISFACTION HAS BEEN MADE, THIS IS NOT REQUIRED OF US. We are not obliged to salute those who have wrongly offended us unless they make the first advances, unless it be a question of the superior or unless, to refrain from soliciting our enemy for a long time could be interpreted as a mark of hatred. But if our enemy greets us first, we are bound to greet him in return except once or again we might be justified in refusing to recognize a greeting in order to show our feelings have been hurt. If therefore on account of circumstances the denial for a time of the ordinary salutations and greetings must be interpreted as a manifestation of wounded feelings and if in fact the denial proceeds from no spirit of hatred or ill will such denial is not sinful” (end of Casuist quotes).

It should be noted here that the above deals with personal offenses, but what we are dealing with today are public, notorious crimes regarding LibTrad pseudo-clergy and their defenders. These are a different species and require adjudication by the local Ordinary or the Roman Pontiff. Because we have no access to them today, the law still applies as far as it can be observed and these laws are detailed below.

Canon Law on reparation and amendment

Can. 672 §1: “[If] a dismissed religious… has for three years given signs of complete amendment, the religious organization is bound to receive him: however if either on the part of the organization or on the part of the religious there are serious objections against the return, the matter shall be submitted to the judgment of the Holy See.”

Canon 1933: “Offenses which are subject to criminal procedure are public offences… Penances, penal remedies, excommunication, suspension and interdict can be inflicted also by way of precept without judicial procedure providing the offense is certain.”

Canon 1935: “Any of the faithful may at all times denounce the offense of another for the purpose of demanding satisfaction… or to get damages for losses sustained through the criminal act of another or out of zeal for justice to repair some scandal or evil. Even an obligation to denounce an offender exists whenever one is obliged to do so,either by law or by special legitimate precept or by the natural law in view of the danger to faith or religion or other imminent public evil.”

Canon 2242: “A person is considered to have desisted from his obstinacy when he has truly repented of his offence and has at the same time made proper satisfaction for the damages and scandal caused or has at least earnestly promised to do so.” And, “Absolution cannot be denied whenever the offender ceases to be obstinate as declared in Canon 2242”(Can. 2248).

Canon 2313: “Penances are imposed when a person who has incurred a canonical penalty truly repents and asks for absolution from a censure or dispensation from a vindictive penalty. The principal penalties are: (1) the recital of specific prayers; (2) pious pilgrimages or other works of piety; (3) special fasts; (4) almsgiving for pious purposes; (5) retreats or spiritual exercises for some days in a pious religious house.”

From the canons above we can deduce the following.

If one has been excommunicated for some reason (and this could even include excommunication for material heresy or schism on the part of LibTrad followers in the present circumstances it seems), then they must be on their good behavior for three years after having satisfied the canons requiring amendment. This is true because of the element of fraud involved, even though their offences have been public and notorious. Under Canon 1325 we are bound to renounce anything that is said or done contrary to the faith. So such persons, if they have publicly sinned in writing or in actions, must make amendment and do reparation by publicly denouncing the actions or the writing. They also must  satisfy the financial obligations regarding the damages done insofar as possible and perform the penances described in Canon 2313. This in order to demonstrate their sincerity and their desire to be absolved from any sin or excommunication. Any amendment must be complete; there can be no recidivism or return to heresy, schism or previous errors.

Needless to say, very few exiting the LibTrad sects have obeyed these canons. Certainly none of their pseudo-clergy have renounced their errors, publicly abjured them, made their amends and done penance. And how could they possibly recompense their followers financially? Yet this is what the laws of the Church command them to do.

Conclusion

It is contrary to the teachings of the Roman Pontiffs to continue to castigate the Jews for their sins even though they are enemies of the Church. This because such castigation has the appearance of desiring revenge and is against the virtue of prudence. LibTrads cannot blame others for errors they are not willing to correct themselves. The Orthodox Jews call us idolaters because we worship Christ and they don’t believe that he was the Son of God. Well, all members of the LibTrad sects are idolaters because their clergy are invalid and they’re worshipping a piece of bread! How can they point fingers at others when they are guilty of these grave sins? Christ prohibited this behavior in condemning the Pharisees and pointing out the humility of the publican in the parable. He forgave His enemies from the Cross, and in inviting St. Dismas to heaven, He demonstrated that repentance is worthy of forgiveness and reward. He also forgave those Jews who, following the Crucifixion, renounced their sect and converted to Christianity.

Prudence dictates that those among the LibTrad sects blaming the Jews for destroying the Church should not be further encouraged, lest they possibly take revenge and commit a sinful act against them. Christ died for His own people as well as for us. We need not be friendly to the Jews because they have not asked our forgiveness or made amends by converting, but neither should we be actively persecuting them. They are not the ones pretending to be Catholic and misleading those who should be true Catholics — individuals who profess to love Our Lord and wish to be saved. The popes didn’t spend their time and energy continually berating the Jews, but they most certainly routinely condemned those wolves in sheep’s clothing misleading the faithful, along with their false doctrines.

In the end, the Church will triumph, and the Jews will be converted. “Behold, I will bring of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie. Behold, I will make them to come and adore before thy feet. And they shall know that I have loved thee.  Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of the temptation, which shall come upon the whole world to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Apoc. 3: 9-10). This may not happen until the very end, the time given for penance and reparation prior to the Final Judgment. But Christ has promised it, and He is ever true to His promises. The faith and the patience of the saints alone, excluding all thoughts of revenge, will save us.  If we drink the cup of His adorable Passion to the very dregs, there is redemption and victory over eternal death awaiting us at the end.