+St. Andrew, Apostle+

+Wishing All a Blessed Advent and Nativity of Our Lord+

Prayer Intention for the Month of December:

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” (Luke 2:14)

St. Andrew Novena

A question has been raised by one reader regarding the novena to St. Andrew which begins today, and which is popular among many calling themselves Catholic. Although it has long been promoted as a very old prayer, it is not in the Raccolta or any other novena books in my possession, and there seems to be no record of when it originated. The reader inquiring states he found one imprimatured prayerbook containing the prayer, but this is not the same as the prayer itself receiving an imprimatur. One Internet report states it came from Ireland and is over 100 years old; another that it surfaced in the 18^th century.  Both report its origins are not exactly known. The prayer is touted as a “miraculous prayer,” some stating one undoubtedly will receive whatever is requested.

While some many find themselves very attached to this particular devotion, it does not seem prudent to recommend its recitation. I would like to ask, however, that anyone who has any information on this prayer and whether or not the Church has approved it to please contact me.

What kind of Catholics are we?

Another  comment made recently by a reader has led to some interesting research regarding what title Catholics must use to designate themselves as faithful members of the Church. As we all know ad nauseum, there are a plethora of sects in the world now claiming to be Catholic,  and these include:

—  sede occupantists (recognizing the usurpers since Pope Pius XII’s death as true popes),

— sedevacantists (those believing the See has been vacant since the death of either Pope Pius XII, or the usurper John 23, also referred to by some as totalists),

— sedeprivationists (the material-formal crowd, believing the usurpers are materially but not formally pope, a contradiction in terms),

— “Latin Mass” Catholics, as some call them (with no distinction made between the Mass of St. Pius V or that of the bogus John 23 missal) and 

— conclavists (those who are currently calling for a papal election to unseat Francis, (when such an election is now an impossibility). See here:

There also are semi-Trads (the recognize and resist folks who are also sedeoccupantists) and now, rad-Trads, (those among Traditionalists with markedly anti-Semitc views who often embrace the British Israel heresy), also many who fall in between these designations, including “Liberal Catholics,” the “Old Catholics,” and “Old Roman Catholics,” those posing as “Anglo-Catholics,” the Orthodox, “Independent” catholics and others.

As Msgr. Joseph C. Fenton notes in his article on theological disputation, “The part of [Pope Benedict XV’s] Ad beatissimi  which has been perhaps most frequently mentioned in the years since its original appearance is that in which the Sovereign Pontiff asked his people to refrain from “using distinctive names by which Catholics are marked off from Catholics… From the context there can be hardly any room for doubt that the term to which the Pope objected was ‘integralist.’” Pope Benedict XV wrote on this topic:

“It is, moreover, Our will that Catholics should abstain from certain appellations which have recently been brought into use to distinguish one group of Catholics from another. They are to be avoided not only as ‘profane novelties of words,’ out of harmony with both truth and justice, but also because they give rise to great trouble and confusion among Catholics. Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: ‘This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly; he cannot be saved’ (Athanasian Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim, ‘Christian is my name and Catholic my surname,’ only let him endeavour to be in reality what he calls himself.”

In his encyclical Quartus Supra, addressed to Armenian schismatics, Pope Pius IX wrote: “The chief deceit used to conceal the new schism is the name of “Catholic.” The originators and adherents of the schism presumptuously lay claim to this name despite their condemnation by Our authority and judgment. It has always been the custom of heretics and schismatics to call themselves Catholics and to proclaim their many excellences in order to lead peoples and princes into error… But to prove that they are Catholics, the neo-schismatics appeal to what they call a declaration of faith, published by them on February 6, 1870, which they insist disagrees in no regard with the Catholic faith. However it has never been possible to prove oneself a Catholic by affirming those statements of the faith which one accepts and keeping silence on those doctrines which one decides not to profess. But without exception, all doctrines which the Church proposes must be accepted, as the history of the Church at all times bears witness… For any man to be able to prove his Catholic faith and affirm that he is truly a Catholic, he must be able to convince the Apostolic See of this.”

In his Freemasonry and the Vatican, Comte Leon de Poncins tells us the true origin of the introduction of these labels: “To put an end to religion,” the Communist Vladimir Lenin wrote, “it is much more important to introduce class war into the bosom of the Church than to attack religion directly.” And de Poncins goes on to quote a Communist sympathizer in Poland, who describes this technique as “…acting as a solvent to form cells of disunity among the faithful but especially in the ranks of the priests and religious; split the bishops into two blocks, the ‘integralists’ and the ‘progressives’; use 1,000 pretexts to align the priests against their bishops; drive a wedge into the masses by cleverly contrived distinctions between ‘reactionaries’ and ‘progressive…’

“’Never attack the Church directly, but ‘only for her own good’; attack ‘her antiquated structure’ and ‘the abuses which disfigure her.’ If necessary, appear to be more Catholic than the Pope; skillfully undermine the Church by attracting into ecclesiastical circles groups of ‘discontented’ Catholics so as to lure the former bit by bit ‘into the fertile climate of class struggle’: slowly and patiently work for this ‘adaptation’ by introducing new forms into traditional ideas. The ambiguity of certain terms such as ‘progressivism’ and ‘integralism,’ ‘open’ and ‘closed’ attitudes, democracy and socialism and so on, which have entirely different meanings in France and in Poland, help to create misunderstanding. In short it is not a question of liquidating the Church, but of putting the Church in step by enlisting her in the service of the Communist revolution.”

And so we have the blueprint for the dismantling of the Church perfectly outlined here. And it began by introducing the use of labels, creating confusion in Catholic terminology. (And the LibTrad sects have greatly added to that confusion by splintering continually into rival factions.) A much-respected Australian priest and student of Rev. Garrigou-Lagrange, Dr. Leslie Rumble — who most will remember for his co-authorship of the popular series entitled, Radio Replies — must have noted the resurgence of this tendency to apply labels. In 1961 he wrote an article on this topic for the June issue of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, addressing one term most frequently used to designate Catholics in the media and other publications: that of “Roman Catholic.” And the title of his article may surprise many Catholics, for he called it: “Roman Catholic, A Protestant Term.” How this came to be is well detailed in Dr. Rumble’s article which is excerpted below, followed by my comments.

Roman Catholic, a Protestant Term

Dr. Rumble begins by noting: “For the purposes of our present study, what has to be noted is that the term was definitely ‘the Catholic Church,’ never ‘the Roman Catholic Church.’ Nowhere in any documents, of either East or West, does the expression ‘Roman Catholic’ occur…” (See the quotes HERE for proof of this). “It is historically certain that the combination of the word ‘Roman’ with the word Catholic and the expression ‘Roman Catholic’ was originated by English Protestants.” Rumble then quotes one Anglo-Catholic bishop who explained: “The breach with Rome was renewed under Elizabeth. It became necessary to find some name for those who, finding that they could not by the popes direction be in communion both with Rome and with the English church, elected to adhere to the former. It was a new situation and a new nomenclature was required in practice. The contemporary name soon came to be ‘recusant,’ (where it was not a mere quarrelsome nickname such as papist); i.e., a person who refuses to attend the English services. It was in Elizabethan controversy that the term ‘Roman’ was adopted as the qualifying adjective suitable to recusant Catholics.’”

Comment: And this is why I have never warmed to the term “recusants,” either, as an alternative tag to replace “Traditionalists.” It was first assigned to us by Protestants, who scarcely have any right to designate who and what we are. Nor is it any more accurate to refer to those who hold as the Church always held as “the Catholic resistance,” something William Strojie once suggested but later rejected as a proper description of who we are. That might apply to the “recognize and resist” bunch but could not possibly apply to true Catholics. Below Dr. Rumble explains how it happened that in the 19^th century, certain Anglo-Catholics actually began to style themselves as Catholic.

He continues: “It was a definite shock to Anglicans in England when in the early 1830s the Oxford high church tractarians told them they should regard themselves as Catholics. These high churchmen had persuaded themselves that the Church of England was still part of the worldwide Catholic Church. They did their utmost to interpret Anglican formularies in a Catholic sense adopted much of the Catholic ritual and declare that the duty of all Anglicans to think as they did.” This resulted in “a new emphasis on the idea that Catholics were only Roman Catholics the suggestion being there were other kinds of Catholics not in union with Rome…

“The British government insisted on regarding ‘Roman Catholic’ as the official and legal title of the Catholic Church in England whatever Catholics themselves might say.” This idea would later expand to even more ridiculous lengths. “In 1950 a group of free churchmen representing Methodist Baptists and Congregationalists sent the Archbishop of Canterbury a report of their own entitled The Catholicity of Protestantism… This group argued that almost all western reformed communions used the word ‘Catholic ‘in their credal statements and would as strongly insist as the Anglicans that Christianity, as they know and practice it, is true Catholicism…”

“[So] it was among English-speaking Protestants that the expression ‘Roman Catholics’ arose and that not because they thought of themselves as Catholics, but in order to imply that ours was not the one, true Church… Protestants must not be surprised if the more insistent they become in their demands, the more determined Catholics show themselves to be in maintaining their exclusive right to the title Catholic and the more careful they are never to speak or write of themselves as ‘Roman Catholics’ but always as simply Catholics. The description of our religion as Roman Catholic… is both absurd and misleading. It is absurd, for the word ‘Catholic’ means universal and the use of the word ‘Roman,’ as a qualifying adjective with the idea of sectional limitation in mind, would be equivalent to speaking of the Not-Universal-Church! It would be misleading, implying that there can be other kinds of Catholics not in communion with the See of Rome.”

This controversy was concerning enough that it actually merited discussion at the Vatican Council. Dr. Rumble tells us that Bishop Ullathorne of England told the Vatican Council bishops: “’Protestants wish to claim for themselves the name of Catholic which occurs in the Apostles Creed and they dispute our exclusive right to it.’ He declared that every effort was being made in England to familiarize men’s minds with the name Roman Catholic. ‘They cannot bear that we call ourselves simply Catholic and that we call ourselves not a part of the Church but the entire Church,’ Ullathorne said… ‘If the Vatican Council names the Church not Catholic and Roman but Roman Catholic it will be spread abroad that overcome by the truth, we finally recognize our Church is only part of the true Church.’” An actual decision on the Church’s official title was voted in unanimously on April 24, 1870. That title reads: “Sancta, Catholica, Apostolica, Romana Ecclesia” — Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church.

Comment: Readers may be surprised that the mark of “one” (Una) is. not included in this definition. Rumble does not offer an explanation for this. But he does comment that because the word Catholic stands alone, “…it is meant to imply that no other Church is Catholic.”  And he states that the word Roman means, “the one, worldwide Catholic Church is centered in Rome and is presided over by the Bishop of that Apostolic See. Thus is excluded any idea that there may be Catholics not in union with Rome as Protestants wish to suggest by their invention of the term ‘Roman Catholics.’” So Catholic unity can only mean recognition of Rome as the head bishop, ruling over all those other apostolic bishops descending “in an unbroken line from the Apostles.” And this excludes any possibility that those pretending to be bishops without the successor of St. Peter as their head bishop have any claim to the name Catholic.

Dr. Rumble continues his comments: “Thus is excluded any idea that there may be Catholics not in union with Rome, as Protestants wish to suggest by their invention of the term Roman Catholics. In keeping with this Vatican Council decision, the popes have consistently refrained from using the designation ‘Roman Catholic’ in any official documents. Moreover, Pope Benedict XV deprecated the use of such an expression [see above]… [However], if some Catholics speak of themselves as Roman Catholics in ordinary and everyday conversation… they act inadvertently, adopting the prevailing custom in a non-Catholic environment, and unthinkingly speaking of themselves in the way in which Protestants speak of them, [since] they constantly read this of themselves in secular newspapers, periodicals, novels and other literature. Even so, they intend the one, Catholic Church whose head is the Bishop of Rome, with no thought that any other churches not in union with Rome can in any truly Christian sense of the word be called Catholic.”

And so we must not refer to ourselves as Roman Catholics, especially today when this could be taken to mean that we are loyal to the usurper in Rome. But how are we to obey Pope Benedict XV and still separate ourselves from those without any claim to the name Catholic?

The LibTrad label war

Shortly after founding my own website, I struggled to arrive at a name that would accurately describe Catholics keeping their faith at home without recourse to LibTrad pseudo-clergy. Betrayedcatholics described what had happened to us, but it failed to draw a line between our beliefs and the teachings of those only posing as Catholics. For a while, I simply used the word “homealone” because that is how Traditionalists referred  to us. But just as with the term Roman Catholic, why should we allow non-Catholics daily offending Our Lord to demean us with this pejorative label, first mockingly assigned to us by none other than the LibTrad Anthony Cekada? So at first I referred to us as catacomb Catholics, but some readers objected to this because pf Pope Benedict’s ruling, noting that even Catholics in the catacombs had access to a true pope. I then used the term stay-at-home Catholics for a while, but later pray-at-home Catholics or Catholics who pray at home seemed a better term.

And while I entirely accept the ruling of Pope Benedict XV that no labels be used at all, I find it very difficult, in a bewildering world filled with so many sects falsely calling themselves Catholic, not to set us apart somehow. It seems imperative to separate ourselves as members of the one, true Church from those who refuse to follow the teachings of the popes and the ecumenical councils as well as Canon Law in order to make the truth better known. Perhaps it would help to make a distinction here. We may not add a qualifier to our name, for the pope forbids it. But we can rightfully distinguish ourselves from the rest, for circumstances demand it. The Church Herself might call us “Catholics de jure,” meaning those “having a right or existence as stated by law;” versus those who claim to be “Catholic” only de facto — LibTrads “exercising power AS IF legally constituted” (definitions from Merriam-Webster), and therefore having no actualright to call themselves the Church.

As proven repeatedly on this site from thoroughly sound theological sources teaching prior to Pope Pius XII’s death, there is no longer any valid clergy remaining in the Catholic Church. And in their absence Pope Pius XII, in an address entered into the Acta Apostolica Sedis and hence  binding on the faithful, has appointed the laity to assume all their responsibilities. That constitutes a legal right, providing no Church teachings or Canon Laws are violated. And yet LibTrads appeal to Canon Law in an attempt to establish this same right, although they fail miserably in their attempt to prove they are even de facto “Catholics.”

Their appeal is based on the ridiculous moral/legal person principle, detailed in Canons 100, 101 — a false interpretation of these canons granting them power over their followers for at least the next 35 years. They claim, using a “legal fiction,” which falls in the same category, from a legal standpoint, as epikeia, that this principle perpetuates the Church indefinitely. A legal fiction is defined as: “…a rule of law which assumes as true, for a just cause, something which is false but is not impossible… ‘Where there is truth, fiction of law does not exist.’…Legal fiction is admissible only in cases explicitly mentioned by law. It must not be extended to similar cases…” (A Manual of Canon Law by Rev. Matthew Ramstein, S.T., Mag., J.U.D, OFM, 1947).

In further commentary on these canons Ramstein writes: “To be such, a moral person in the Church must have obtained a charter of incorporation either in virtue of the law or by decree of the competent ecclesiastical superior…” Paragraph three reads: “Where the law itself does not confer corporate personality, this must be obtained from thecompetent ecclesiastical superior.” This requirement also is found in Can. 147: “An ecclesiastic office cannot be validly obtained without canonical appointment. By canonical appointment is understood the conferring of an ecclesiastical office by the competent ecclesiastical authority in harmony with the sacred canons.” But both the incorporation charter according to Canon Law as well as any the decree of a competent superior is lacking.

LibTrads must point to specific a canon law applicable to their case; a civil law would not suffice. But they cannot point to such a law because it doesn’t exist. And they certainly can’t produce a decree issued by a competent ecclesiastical superior who existed before the death of Pope Pius XII. Therefore they cannot establish even a de facto or fictitious claim of any kind to anything in the Church, having separated themselves from Her communion by pretending to be able to operate independently in the absence of a Roman Pontiff. For Rev. Ramstein notes well that where there is truth, a fiction of law cannot exist. And the truth of the matter, as infallibly taught by Pope Pius XII in Vacantis Apostolicae Sedisis that any attempt to establish an alternative hierarchy in the Church during a sede vacante is null, void and invalid.

We have done our best to become Catholics de jure by attempting to follow ALL the teachings of the Roman Pontiffs and the laws of the Church in all respects, to the best of our ability. LibTrads can’t even lay claim to being Catholics de facto and that’s what separates the two of us. All of those involved in LibTrad sects — all Novus Ordo members and any others who claim to be ”Catholic” — fall under the guidelines laid down by Pope Pius IX, as mentioned in the first few paragraphs of this blog. I call them CINOS, Catholics In Name Only, because that’s all they are. They live in the same type of alternative reality that allows some people today to falsely  identify themselves not only as members of certain political parties, but also as historical figures, animals, insects and even as members of the opposite sex. It once was called insanity.

Conclusion

In carrying the faith to others and letting people know what true Catholicism is really all about, we must first focus on our family members and those placed in our path. Charity begins at home, as St. Augustine taught, and our near neighbors, those we meet in way of employment or those who somehow come within our sphere of influence God sends us for a reason. It is to these we are intended to convey the faith, providing that God grants them the necessary graces. LibTrad followers have had many years to see the light, and even though it has been shown to them consistently since 1990 and even before, they have refused to recognize the truth. We owe them our prayers for their conversion, but that is about all that is required of us. The effort must be theirs. We are only required to warn them twice before they are handed over to the Church for judgment, (Matt. 18: 15-17), so we have gone well above and beyond the call of duty, (but only because of the mind control element involved and our obligation to defend the faith).

We cannot place any defining adjective anterior to the word Catholic, but we can and should distinguish ourselves to others as true Catholics, or truly Catholic (separating the sheep from the goats), adhering to all the Church taught prior to Pope Pius XII’s death in 1958, adding that we now have no priests or bishops so simply pray at home. If this statement results in any interest expressed by inquirers, then we can simply explain that what has happened to this country in recent years first happened to the Church in the 1940s, 1950s, and is simply an atheistic Communist process that continues until all that is good is destroyed. I have other ideas about how this label business should be addressed but these will be saved until a later date.