The Most Prolific Desecrators the World Has Ever Known

We are in the midst of revolutionary times. The world as it has appeared to be has come to an end. There is no getting this “toothpaste” in the tube as devils in human forms have been unleashed to torment and to chastise us all for our sins, tepidity, worldliness and utter indifference to the slow but steady descent into the abyss that began to manifest itself openly during certain phases of the Renaissance and then the first of the major revolutions that have rocked the world since Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and Ascension into Heaven: the Protestant Revolution.

Although many people, including many Catholics, are aghast at the daily riots, shootings, looting, vandalism, burning, pillaging, random blockages of highways and streets in many American cities and the desecration of Catholic churches in conciliar captivity and the statues of Our Lord, Our Lady, Fray Junipero Serra and Christopher Columbus, one of the problems with focusing on the “trees” of the given moment is that it is easy for forget the modern world was born in violence, bloodshed, looting, pillaging and desecration of Catholic statues in the Sixteenth Century once Father Martin Luther, an agent of hell and a dupe of his Talmudic advisers par excellence, unleashed his revolution against the Divine Plan to effect man’s return to Him through His Catholic Church.

The Protestant Revolution was a violent, bloody overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King as it had been exercised by many saintly civil potentates in full submission to Holy Mother Church’s full right to interpose herself as a last resort in matters pertaining to the good of souls, acknowledging that there were potentates during the history of Christendom that sought to make war upon the temporal and even the ecclesiastical authority of various popes. However, it was not until the Protestant Revolution that those civil potentates who were intent on ruling in a Machiavellian manner without regard to the good of souls, including their own, were able to untether themselves from what they believed to be “burden” of papal authority.

Alas, this untethering of civil rule from the necessity of seeking the common good in light of man’s last end, the possession of the Beatific Vision for all eternity in Heaven, was the direct, proximate cause of the tearing apart of Catholic churches and shrines and the killing of Catholic bishops, priests, religious and members of the laity.

The Protestant Revolution let loose such furious debauchery that even Erasmus, who had been a supporter of Martin Luther’s “restoration,” recoiled in horror, something that Father Edward Cahill pointed out in The Framework of a Christian State:

The assumption that Protestantism brought a higher and purer moral life to the nations that came under its influence does not need elaborate refutation. It is a fact of uncontroverted history that "public morality did at once deteriorate to an appalling degree wherever Protestantism was introduced. Not to mention robberies of church goods, brutal treatment meted out to the clergy, secular and regular, who remained faithful, and the horrors of so many wars of religion," we have the express testimony of [Martin] Luther himself and several other leaders of the revolt, such as [Martin] Bucer and [Philip] Melancthon, as to the evil effects of their teaching; and this testimony is confirmed by contemporaries. Luther's own avowals on this matter are numberless. Thus he writes:"There is not one of our Evangelicals, who is not seven times worse than before he belonged to us, stealing the goods of others, lying, deceiving, eating, getting drunk, and indulging in every vice, as if he had not received the Holy Word. If we have been delivered from one spirit of evil, seven others worse than the first have come to take its place."

And again:

Men who live under the Gospel are more uncharitable, more irascible, more greedy, more avaricious than they were before as Papists."

Even Erasmus, who had at first favoured Luther's movement, was soon disillusioned. Thus he writes:

"The New Gospel has at least the advantage of showing us a new race of men, haughty, impudent, cunning, blasphemous . . . quarrellers, seditious, furious, to whom I have, to say truth, so great an antipathy that if I knew a place in the world free of them, I would not hesitate to take refuge therein." 

That these evil effects of Protestantism were not merely temporary—the accidental the accidental results of the excitement and confusion which are peculiar to a stage of transition (although they were no doubt intensified thereby)—is shown from present-day [1932] statistics. The condition of domestic morality is usually best indicated by the statistics of divorce, and of illegitimate births, and by the proportion of legitimate children to the number of marriages; while statistics of general criminality, where they can be had, would convey a fair idea of the individual and public morality in any given place. According to these tests Protestant countries are at the present day much inferior to Catholic countries in domestic and public morality. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State, first published in 1932, republished by Roman Catholic Books, pp. 102-104.)

English and Irish Catholics began to realize the consequences of the Protestant Revolution when a reign of terror and bloodletting was rained down upon them by the lecherous, adulterous and bigamous drunkard King Henry VIII in 1534 when Parliament passed the Supremacy Act and began England’s break with the true Church. Henry Tudor, who could have obtained his decree of nullity from “Pope Francis” if he had not died on January 28, 1547, commenced a bloody campaign against Catholics who refused to recognize his completely illegitimate claim to be the supreme head of the Church in England that resulted in the deaths of over 72,000 Catholics, fully three percent of the English population at that time, including, of course, Saints John Fisher and Thomas More. The tyrant ordered persecutions in Ireland, of course, and engaged in grotesque acts of social engineering that were designed to make his revolution against Christ the King and the Catholic Church irreversible.

A Protestant historian and polemicist, William Cobbett, explained the destruction of Catholic churches and monasteries, which were the center of Catholic life throughout the course of Christendom, in his own native England:

183. If I look at the county of Surrey, in which I myself was born, and behold the devastation of that county, I am filled with indignation against the ruffian devastators. Surrey has very little of natural wealth in it. A very considerable part of it is mere heath-land. Yet this county was, from one end of it to the other, ornamented and benefited by the establishments which grew out of the Catholic Church. At Bermondsey there was an abbey; at St. Mary Overy there was a priory, and this convent founded that very St. Thomas’s Hospital which now exists in Southwark. This hospital also was seized by the ruffians, but the building was afterwards given to the City of London. At Newington there was a hospital, and after its revenues were seized the master obtained a licence to beg! At Merton there was a priory. Then, going across to the Sussex side, there was another priory at Reigate. Coming again near the Thames, and more to the west, there was a priory at Shene. Still more to the west there was an abbey at Chertsey. At Tandridge there was a priory. Near Guildford, at Sende, there was a priory; and at the lower end of the county, at Waverley, in the parish of Farnham, was an abbey. To these belonged cells and chapels at a distance from the convents themselves; so that it would have been a work of some difficulty for a man so to place himself, even in this poor heathy county, at six miles distance from a place where the door of hospitality was always open to the poor, to the aged, the orphan, the widow and the stranger. Can any man now place himself, in that whole county, within any number of miles of any such door? No, nor in any other county. All is wholly changed, and all is changed for the worse. There is now no hospitality in England. Words have changed their meaning. We now give entertainment to those who entertain us in return. We entertain people because we like them personally, and very seldom because they stand in need of entertainment. A hospital, in those days, meant a place of free entertainment, and not a place merely for the lame, the sick, and the blind; and the very sound of the words "Old English Hospitality" ought to raise a blush on every Protestant cheek. But besides this hospitality exercised invariably in the monasteries, the weight of their example was great with all the opulent classes of the community, and thus to be generous and kind was the character of the nation at large; a niggardly, a base, a money-loving disposition could not be in fashion, when those institutions to which all men looked with reverence set an example which condemned such a disposition.

184. And if I am asked why the thirteen monks of Waverley, for instance, should have had And I may go on and ask why anybody should have any property at all? Aye, but they never worked; they did nothing to increase the nation's store. Let us see how this is. They possessed the lands of Waverley, — a few hundred acres of very poor land, with a mill, and perhaps about twenty acres of very indifferent meadow land, on one part of which, sheltered by a semicircle of sand-hills, their abbey stood, the river Wey (about twenty feet wide) running close by the outer wall of the convent.

Besides this they possessed the impropriated tithes of the parish of Farnham, and a pond or two on the commons adjoining. This estate in land belongs to a Mr. Thompson, who lives on the spot, and the estate in tithes to a Mr. Halsey, who lives at a distance from the parish. Now, without any disparagement to these gentlemen, did not the monks work as much as they do? Did not their revenue go to augment the nation's store as much as the rents of Mr. Thompson or the tithes of Mr. Halsey? Aye, and which is of vast importance, the poor of the parish of Farnham, having this monastery to apply to and having for their neighbour a bishop of Winchester who did not sell small beer out of his palace, stood in no need of poor rates, and had never heard the horrid word pauper pronounced. Come, my townsmen of Farnham; you who as well as 1 have, when we were boys, climbed the ivy-covered ruins of this venerable abbey (the first of its order in England; you who as well as I have, when looking at those walls which have outlived the memory of the devastators, bat not the malice of those who still taste the sweets of the devastation; you who, as well as I, have many times wondered what an abbey was, and how and why this one came to be devastated; you shall be the judge in this matter. You know what poor-rates are, and you know what church-rates are. Very well then, there were no poor-rates and no church-rates as long as Waverley Abbey existed and as long as bishops had no wives. This is a fact wholly undeniable. There was no need of either. The Church shared its property with the poor and the stranger, and left the people at large to possess their own earnings; and as to matters of faith and worship, look at that immense heap of earth round the church where your parents and my parents and where our progenitors for twelve hundred years lie buried; then bear in mind that for nine hundred years out of the twelve they were all of the faith and worship of the monks of Waverley, and with that thought in your mind find, if you can, the heart to say that the monks of Waverley, by whose hospitality your fathers and my fathers were for so many ages preserved from bearing the hateful name of pauper, taught an idolatrous and damnable religion.

185. That which took place in Surrey took place in every other county, only to a greater extent in proportion to the greater wealth and resources of the spot. Defacing followed closely upon the heels of confiscation and plunder. If buildings could have been murdered, the tyrant and his plunderers would have made short work of it. As it was they did all they could; they knocked down, they blew up, they annihilated as far as they could. Nothing, indeed, short of diabolical malice was to be expected from such men; but there were two abbeys in England which one might have hoped that even these monsters would have spared, — that which contained the tomb of St. Austin, and that which had been founded by and contained the remains of Alfred. We have seen how they rifled the tomb of St. Austin at Canterbury. They tore down the church and the abbey, and with the materials built a menagerie for wild beasts and a palace for the tyrant himself. The tomb of Alfred was in an abbey at Winchester, founded by that king himself. The abbey and its estates were given by the tyrant to Wriothesley, who was afterwards made Earl of Southampton, and who got a pretty good share of the confiscations in Hampshire. One almost sickens at the thought of a man capable of a deed like the destruction of this abbey. Where is there one amongst us who has read any thing at all who has not read of the fame of Alfred? What book can we open, even for our boyish days, that does not sound his praise? Poets, moralists, divines, historians, philosophers, lawyers, legislators, not only of our own country but of all Europe, have cited him, and still cite him, as a model of virtue, piety, wisdom, valour and patriotism, as possessing every excellence without a single fault. He, in spite of difficulties such as no other human being on record ever encountered, cleared his harassed and half-barbarized country of horde after horde of cruel invaders, who at one time had wholly subdued it and compelled him, in order to escape destruction, to resort to the habit and the life of a herdsman. From this state of depression he, during a not long life, raised himself and his people to the highest point of happiness and of fame. He fought, with his armies and fleets, more than fifty battles against the enemies of England. He taught his people by his example as well as by his precepts, to be sober, industrious, brave and just. He promoted learning in all the sciences; he planted the University of Oxford; to him, and not to a late Scotch lawyer, belongs " Trial by Jury." Blackstone calls him the founder of the Common Law; the counties, the hundreds, the tithings, the courts of justice, were the work of Alfred. He, in fact, was the founder of all those rights, liberties and laws which made England to be what England has been, which gave her a character above that of other nations, which made her rich and great and happy beyond all her neighbours, and which still give her whatever she possesses of that pre-eminence. If there be a name under heaven to which Englishmen ought to bow with reverence approaching towards adoration it is the name of Alfred. And we are not unjust and ungrateful in this respect at any rate, for, whether Catholics or Protestants, where is there an Englishman to be found who would not gladly make a pilgrimage of a thousand miles to take off his hat at the tomb of this maker of the English name ? Alas! that tomb is nowhere to be found. The barbarians spared not even that. It was in the abbey before mentioned, called Hyde Abbey, which had been founded by Alfred himself and intended as the place of his burial. Besides the remains of Alfred this abbey contained those of St. Grimbald, the Benedictine monk, whom Alfred brought into England to begin the teaching at Oxford. But what cared the plunderers for remains of public benefactors? The abbey was knocked down or blown up, the tombs were demolished, the very lead of the coffins was sold," and, which fills one with more indignation than all the rest, the estates were so disposed of as to make the loan-makers, the Barings, at this day the successors of Alfred the Great! (William Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, written between 1824 and 1827 and published by Benziger Brothers, pp. 137-138.)

The same was true in Switzerland the Low Countries as disciples of John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli engaged in the sort of wholesale iconoclastic destruction of high altars, relics, statues, communion rails and entire church buildings that has taken place in the past fifty-one years since the Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI issued his motu proprio, Missale Romanum, on April 3, 1969, that formally promulgated the ab.ominable liturgical travesty that is known more commonly as the Novus Ordo.

Calvin and Zwingli’s destruction of Catholic churches, art, statues and shrines was chronicled in Tumultuous Times by Fathers Francisco and Dominic Radecki, CMRI:

Iconoclasm has been one of the chief means by which the liturgical and doctrinal revolutionaries of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have sought to devastate the Catholic Faith. The conciliar manifestation of iconoclasm has focused on destroying or defacing or “wreckovating” everything that is authentically Catholic in the art and architecture associated traditionally with worship in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. High altars have been demolished with abandon. Altar rails have been torn down. Tabernacles have been moved and/or replaced with monstrosities that sometimes resemble spaceships or globes. And, of course, statues and images of the saints have been taken down. Many of these statues and images were simply thrown out. Others were smashed up on the spot. Still others were put up for sale.

Iconoclasm has always been a chief means by which revolutionaries have sought to eradicate the authentic history of the past in order to “replace” true history with a “memory” that is false and serves their own ideological interests. John Calvin and his band of bloody butchers sought to eradicate all traces of Catholicism in churches and in society in the Sixteenth Century. . His followers in England did so with a merciless abandon a century later during the English Civil War as a means of trying to “purify” the Anglican “Church” of its Catholic vestiges, especially high altars and statues of Our Lady and the other saints. It is thus no accident at all that the new Puritans of conciliarism, which preaches a “simplified” liturgy that is in concert with their mythical constructs of antiquarianism (the projecting back into the past a revolutionary agenda for the present that has no actual foundations in the past), have sought to do in the past four decades exactly what many Protestant revolutionaries did in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. What is even sadder is the extent to which so many Catholics in the conciliar structures have gone along with this new iconoclasm with such docility, if not actual enthusiasm.

Consider this passage from Fathers Dominic and Francisco Radecki’s Tumultuous Times:

The heretical priest Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) of Zurich, Switzerland, with the blessing of the Archbishop of Constance, preached against indulgences, Zwingli then devised a new faith that revived iconoclasm.

“The Government of Canton seized the Church property and decreed the power of priests to marry. It was in 1522 that Zwingli laid down the principle that the Bible under private interpretation, was the sole authority for doctrine. He denied all mystery in the Eucharist. By 1525 the Mass had been stamped out in Zurich, and its departure had been preceded by violent iconoclasm by these mountaineers upon all the inheritance of beauty which their ancestors had left them for a guide. . . . This was the first of the barbaric destructions. A host of others were to follow, through more than a century, ruining the art of Scotland, horribly maiming that of France and the Rhine and the Netherlands: murdering our ancestral wealth in living stones.” (Hillaire Belloc, How the Reformation Happened, pp. 76-77.)

“Despite the opposition of the bishop of Constance and the Swiss diet [theological meeting], the canton of Zurich carried out religious reforms in a vigorous fashion. 

“During the year 1534 pictures, statues, crucifixes, candles and other ornaments were removed from the churches and destroyed, decorated walls were whitewashed, the bones of the local saints were buried, altars were placed by tables, organs were dismantled, and the singing by choirs was abolished. The congregational singing of hymns was not introduced until late in that century. Little remained but bare, cold edifices that would hardly distract the attention of the worshipers from the hearing of the simple, unadorned Word of God. Pilgrimages and processions naturally ceased, and the church year was reduced to four festivals: Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost. Monasteries were dissolved and their properties were taken over by the state to be used for the care of the unfortunates and the education of the young

“During Holy Week in April 1525, communion was celebrated according to the Zwinglian usage for the first time. . .  . Zwingli took his place at the head of simple table that was covered with a white linen cloth and on which were placed Communion cups and plates of wood. After praying and reading in German the words of institution and pertinent Scripture passages, Zwingli and his assistants partook of the break and wine and then distributed these sacred symbols among the people, going from pew to pew. Those parts of the liturgy that were retained in the Mass, that is, the Introit, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Creed, and a number of responses were read in the Swiss vernacular by the people, the mean alternating with the women. The same year, Zwingli provided his followers with a simplified baptismal service in the vernacular, from which he had deleted the formula of exorcism and other parts…” (Harold Grimm, The Reformation, 1500-1600, p. 153)  

The widespread destruction of altars, statues and crucifixes that took place after Vatican II parallels Zwingli’s iconoclasm which had occurred centuries earlier. (Fathers Dominic and Francisco Radecki, Tumultuous Times, pp. 205-206)

The destructive work of the Protestant Revolutionaries, apart from being symbolic of their hatred for the Catholic Faith, which is nothing other than hatred of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, made possible the openly anti-Theistic wave of iconoclasm ushered in by the Jacobins in the French Revolution, who desecrated Catholic churches by various means, up to and including that which took place on the high altar of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris as the “goddess of reason” was “worshiped” there.

Many relics of the saints were destroyed in France, repeating what had occurred in England and in Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries and other Lutheran or Calvinist strongholds a century earlier. Bishop Emile Bougaud documented how the French Revolutionaries desecrated the coffin in which the mortal remains of the Apostle of Charity, Saint Vincent de Paul, had been placed and how his relics were rescued from the hands of the marauders:

During the celebrations for the canonisation of Saint Vincent, the tomb was again opened, and the remains removed to be placed on the altar. Although in 1712, when it was opened for the first time, the air had entered and somewhat injured the body, and although God had not wished that His servant should enjoy the privilege of complete incorruption, yet this second opening was the occasion of no less consolation and enthusiasm. The sacred remains were enclosed in a beautifully wrought silver and gold coffin, and placed, with the greatest solemnity and rejoicing, above the high altar in the Chapel of Saint-Lazare. There they remained all during the eighteenth century, surrounded with suitable veneration, till the Revolution broke out. Who should have thought that the first outburst of fury would have been directed against that house of Saint-Lazare, from which had come forth so many inventions of charity and devotedness, and where still two hundred poor were daily fed? But it is precisely such charity that is attacked. Where so much was given to the poor, it was argued, much should be found. It was therefore noised abroad that the granaries of Saint-Lazare were filled with all kinds of provisions, and on July 12 and 13, 1789, the eve of the destruction of the Bastille, two hundred brigands broke into the house. At first they rushed to the valuts, and soon the whole building was inundated with half-drunken men, women and children, who respected nothing. The library was plundered, the archives thrown out of the windows, and the most precious objects broken and trampled upon. Then disappeared those priceless parchments the title-deeds and privileges of the Congregation of the Mission, together with thousands of the letters of Saint Vincent de Paul. Then, too, were lost his two portraits, the mattress on which he died, the candlesticks used at this death, his walking-stick, and a number of other objects which had belonged to him, and which were preserved as relics. Fortunately, the chapel escaped from the hands of the drunken mob. They either did not recognize it or they respected it, and thus it was that the sacred remains of our saint were left untouched in their gold and silver coffin resting over the high altar. But what even the people had respected, a greedy Government was not slow to carry off. Some years afterwards, 1792, agents of the Government came to Saint-Lazarre and demanded all the objects of gold and silver which the chapel contained. It was thus necessary to deliver up the beautiful coffin with its sacred deposit, and for the time it was feared that the precious remains would be profaned and cast to the winds. But either through contempt, deeming it of little value, or urged by the dying embers of faith even in the heart of a Revolutionist, the commissary of the Government, after taking the gold and silver, consented to leave with the Priests of the Mission the remains of their holy founder. Fearing lest another attack should be made they were immediately removed, and through the care of Father Daudet, Procurator-General of the Congregation, were place with M. Clairet, notary of Saint-Lazare, who kept them till 1795, when he returned them to the Priests of the Mission. About ten years later, July 18, 1806, Father Brunet, vicar-General of the Congregation, transferred them to the novitiate of the Sisters of Charity, at that time in the Rue du Vieux-Columbier, and when in 1815 the sisters took possession of their large house in the Rue du Bac, they placed the sacred remains under one of the altars of their chapel.  (Bishop Emile Bougaud, History of St. Vincent De Paul: Founder of The Congregation of the Mission and of The Sisters of Charity; Volume 2, Bishop of Laval, Longmans, Green, and Co., 39 Paternoster Row, London New York, and Bombay, 1899, pp. 217-219.)

The plundering described by Bishop Bougaud is what had happened previously in formerly Catholic countries on the European continent and in the British Isles, and the wholesale anti-Theistic destruction of churches during the French Revolution paved the way for the destructive work of the anti-Theistic Bolsheviks in what became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Maoists of Red China, who are still at work—and with Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s blessing and silence—destroying Catholic shrines and statues, rounding up faithful Catholic clergy and laity, and even going so far as to remove images of Our Lord and replace them with those of Xi Jinping.

Revolutionaries always seethe with hatred as they foment their work of violence and destruction. Moreover, as the counterfeit church of conciliarism has made its “official reconciliation” with the “new principles” that were “inaugurated” by the French Revolutionaries in 1789, we can see that the belief in Catholic teaching has decayed to the point of being unrecognizable because of the “Second” Vatican Council and its abominable aftermath.

High altars have been smashed in a manner that would have delighted the likes of John Calvin and Oliver Cromwell.

Tables have replaced altars in many conciliar churches, emphasizing the liturgy as a "comrcmunity meal," not as the unbloody re-presentation of Our Lord's one Sacrifice of Himself to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father in Spirit and in Truth in atonement for our sins.

The sacred music of the Catholic Church has been replaced with the profanity of songs composed to propagandize on behalf of the new religion.

The architecture of many of the newer conciliar churches reflects an ugliness and sterility evocative of Puritanism and rank paganism, conveying also a Calvinist-Americanist ethos of egalitarianism. This is especially the case with Roger "Cardinal" Mahony's two hundred million dollar monstrosity on the Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles, California, as I reported in The Remnant in its January 31, 2003, issue, I believe.

Typical of what happened to so many Catholic churches after Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonia Maria Montini/Paul VI’s Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination began on Sunday, November 30, 1969, is the story of the beautiful and very historic Vera Cruz Church in Dickinson, Texas, which was de-commissioned by the Diocese of Galveston-Houston in 1973 and moved to a Modernist monstrosity about a mile to the west near Interstate 45. This story exemplifies the conciliar fascination with all that was “new” and ugly as well as the absolute hatred of some of the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s most “progressive” revolutionaries for the Catholic Faith.

This story holds a particular interest for us as we knew Father Hector Bolduc, who was on the wrong side in the battle with “The Nine” in 1983 but was a zealous pastor of souls who worked tirelessly despite a heart condition that would take his life in 2012 at the of seventy-six, from our time at Saint Michael Church in De Pere, Wisconsin, from November of 2005 to May of 2006. The story is also of interest to us as we had spent a considerable amount of time visiting Queen of Angels Church (the original Vera Cruz Church) in Dickinson between the summer of 2003 and September of 2005 whenever we passed through the Houston, Texas, area:

Archbishop Lefebvre had during his visit expressed the wish to establish a house of the SSPX in the GalvestonHouston area to serve the needs of the faithful in southern and central States, so the search continued and Divine Providence… well, provided! The only Catholic church that was available was the old Shrine of the True Cross complex, which the Galveston-Houston diocese had been attempting without success for 3 years to rid itself and was willing to sell the property to anyone. Well, almost anyone: traditional Catholics need not apply. Hence, the “Gibraltar Motor Leasing Corporation” was formed to purchase it (meanwhile, a generous out of state benefactor donated $300,000), and the diocese was thrilled to learn that finally they had a buyer. for their “white elephant”. But somehow, the diocese became suspicious and so in an effort to determine if the purchaser was actually a group of Catholics, they began to make some demands. They called asking that the confessionals be removed: “Take them” was the reply. Then they wanted the bell and Fr. Bolduc replied: “Give it to them. We’ll get another.” But then they wanted to chisel the crucifix off of the front of the church! In a manner only the likes of Fr. Bolduc could manage he replied to the negotiator: “No, but when we begin to demolish the church, we’ll call you.” The call still has yet to made, and the diocese allowed the purchase to go through on November 18, 1976. To honor Our Lady, Fr. Bolduc named the church for its third time, “Queen of Angels.”

Having suffered 3 years of abandonment, all of the aged buildings were in need of repair and work began immediately since the planned church dedication was set for July 1977, less than 8 months away! The group rolled up their sleeves (Frs. Bolduc and Carl included!) and got busy. In early Spring 1977, the recently founded SSPX’s mission of St. Michael the Archangel in Grandview, MO, where Fr. Bolduc was offering Mass monthly, notified him of an impending diocesan auction of the chapel items from the former St. Joseph’s Hospital in Kansas City, MO. As a result, Queen of Angels providentially obtained simultaneously at reasonable price a set of 3 matching marble altars, Communion rail, Stations of the Cross and various statutes as well as religious paintings! Other items acquired were a marble bas-relief of Christ Enthroned originally from the high altar of St. Patrick’s Church in Galveston, TX via an antique store in Houston, while the pedestals for the “new” statues of Our Lady and St. Joseph were constructed from remained pieces of the high altar of Holy Rosary Church in Rosenburg, TX. The acquisition of the beautiful church and the accoutrements necessary for its outfitting was an incredible dream come true for the fledgling movement of Catholic Tradition in the United States that was accustomed to being satisfied with “chapels” in living rooms, basements, garages, storefronts and motels! The outpouring of gratitude was apparent, as the complete and comprehensive renovation of the church took only 6 months to complete (though other parts of the complex were being worked up until the arrival of the Archbishop), and almost entirely by volunteers. (A History of Queen of Angels Church, Dickinson, Texas, 2007.  A 1990 article in The Angelus airbrushed Father Bolduc, who had become a Society non-person, out of church’s history entirely: History of Queen of Angels Church, 1990. A contemporaneous story in The New York Times, of all places, reported on Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s consecration of Queen of Angels Church in 1977:  French Prelate Celebrates Latin Mass as He Defies Antipope Montini. One can see that Archbishop Lefebvre’s Gallicanist ecclesiology made it impossible for him to recognize that he was duty bound to obey the man, Montini/Paul VI, he considered to be a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter. As a side note, Father Bolduc, who was a shrewd negotiator and all-around genuine one-of-a-kind character, told us that he used to keep bullets in the tabernacle of Saint Jude Shrine in Stafford, Texas, when he offered Mass there before the Society of Saint Pius X, thankfully, failed to secure title to the property.)

There are three elements of the history of the former Vera Cruz Church and its transformation to Queen of Angels Church that I want to highlight for the purposes of this commentary:

First, officials of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston decided to abandon Vera Cruz Church because it was “unsuitable” for the new liturgy of a new religion.

Second, although it is unclear what the officials of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston would have done with the extraordinarily beautiful marble Crucifix affixed to the front wall of Vera Cruz Church on Texas Highway 3 in Dickinson, Texas, if they had secured it, they were suspicious that “reactionary” Catholics would have found a use for it, a thought was too much for the Jacobins to bear.

Third, although I have been careful not to claim that the officials of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston would have destroyed the Crucifix. However, the history of Queen of Angels Church and its predecessors in Dickinson Texas, provides yet another piece of documentation about the wreckage that has bee wrought by the conciliar revolution against the true Faith and thus upon high altars where the Immemorial Mass of Tradition was offered and the very Word Who was made Flesh in Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate Womb at the Annunciation by power of God the Holy Ghost had been enfleshed repeatedly by true priests during their unbloody re-presentations or perpetuations of the ineffable Sacrifice of the Cross.

To wit, pieces of the demolished high altar of Holy Rosary Church in Rosenburg, Texas, which is located to the southwest of Stafford by about fifteen miles, were used to construct the pedestals on which stand statues of Our Lady and Saint Joseph in Queen of Angels Church.

There is another aspect to the story at Queen of Angels Church for which I had hoped to find documentation in the history of the church for which I had search online: We heard identical accounts from two different sources, one being the late Father Bolduc, and the other being a priest stationed in Dickinson, concerning how the pastor of Vera Cruz Church sought to force his way into the Queen of Angels Church to do damage to it once he found out that it had been bought by the Society of Saint Pius X but, failing to gain entry with the ax he brought with him, managed to break into the convent chapel and laid his ax to destroy its high altar.

The pastor is also reported to have said that he would have burned the church down if he knew who was planning to purchase it, evoking the title of “Father X” article in Latin Mass Magazine around 1994 that was entitled, “They Have Burned What They Adored.”

Additionally, many of the conciliar revolutionaries rushed to remove altar rails as they symbolized a separation between eternity in the sanctuary and time in the nave and thus made a distinction between the hierarchical, sacerdotal priesthood of the one taking the place of the Chief Priest and Victim of every Mass, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, and the common priesthood of the lay faithful. Altar rails also represent the humble disposition communicants needed to have by kneeling to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion from the hands of a true priest.

Like stories abound everywhere in the world, of course, and there is such an universal stockpile of items that had been blessed for sacral purposes that that an industry of collecting and selling such items was created, acknowledging that many items that had been used for decades upon decades in this country and for centuries upon centuries in Europe were simply discarded and thrown into dumpsters or burned. (One such store is Fluminalis.)

Many of the churches built by the conciliar revolutionaries in conformity with the new liturgy for a new religion are pagan monstrosities, numerous examples of which can be found in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world. A Novus Ordo monstrosity in Austria that has been featured on Novus Ordo Watch is typical of the ugliness betting a false religion whose officials have destroyed all that is true, good, beautiful, orderly and timeless about the Catholic Faith, including all architecture and symbolism enshrining a religion they hate and seek to eliminate any trace of from the face of the earth.

Mind you, this is not to say that everyone member of the conciliar clergy, whether validly or invalidly ordained and/or consecrated, has lost the sensus Catholicus entirely or that they some of them, at the very least, can rise to the public defense of Catholic churches under their control and of sacred images, including those of Our Lord and Our Lady, but it is to say that most conciliar “bishops” have taken their cue from “Francis the Silent” and have said nothing about the following acts of desecration that have taken place in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world:

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A third statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been attacked. The statue, at a parish in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was the third reported incident against a statue of Mary over last weekend. 

What a strange time [we live in],” Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville tweeted on July 13. “Over the weekend, an outdoor statue of the Blessed Mother was beheaded at St. Stephen Parish in Chattanooga.” 

On the morning of Saturday, July 11, Fr. Manuel Perez, pastor of St. Stephen Catholic Church in Chattanooga, was walking the church grounds and preparing for Mass when he noticed that the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary had been knocked over. Upon further inspection, he noticed the head of the statue was nowhere to be found, although the body and pedestal of the statue remained. 

“Fr. Perez said that he looked around the church grounds to see if he could find a missing head and he couldn't locate it,” Jim Wogan, director of communications for the Diocese of Knoxville, told CNA. 

The statue is about five feet tall and estimated to be worth about $2,000. There was no other damage to the church, and Wogan said that the statute was partly shielded by shrubbery. 

Wogan said he could not think of any reason why St. Stephen Catholic church would be targeted by vandals. 

“Anytime something like this happens, it's disappointing and it's concerning,” said Wogan. 

He added that there no local controversy around the church and there was no known motivation for the attack, “and that can be almost more troubling than knowing, sometimes.” 

The decapitation of the Blessed Mother statue at St. Stephen occurred on the same weekend as several other high-profile acts of vandalism at Catholic churches across the country, including the desecration of statues of the Virgin Mary. In Boston, a statue of Mary was set on fire, and in Brooklyn, a statue was tagged with the word “IDOL” in black spray paint

Wogan described the national atmosphere as a “very chaotic time in our history,” and said that “anger seems to be sort of a default setting for people right now.” 

“And I think our Bishop and our pastors would hope that people would remember the sort of example that is set in the Gospels--that, we're to treat each other as we'd want to be treated,” he said. (Statue of the Blessed Mother Beheaded at Tennessee Parish.)

Unfortunately for officials of the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee, it is not hard to explain the attacks on statues of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and Our Lady and other saints as the violence that is awash in the world at this time, some of which are organized and carried out by “community organizations” that are funded by one of George Soros’s multiple channels for the fomenting of “protests” for “justice,” is but the result of paucity of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces caused by the sacramental barrenness of the conciliar liturgical  rites. As Actual Grace flows out of every true offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, the world must descend into abject criminality and barbarism, calling to mind yet again Pope Leo XIII’s simple explanation as to what happens when public administrators prefer secular regimes untethered to the Social Reign of Christ the King, which, of course, has been rejected by the conciliar revolutionaries entirety as “outdated” (see, for example, “Archbishop” Timothy Michael Dolan’s belief that “Catholics used” to speak about the Social Reign of Christ the King:  Memo To Timothy Michael Dolan: Catholics Never Say "We Used To Say"):

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of governmentAll traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established (by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

Almost no one today understands that the “growth of civilization” “grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as but the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue.” People who are concerned only about the here and now and who do not understand that all the problems in the world are caused by Original Sin and the Actual Sins of us all will descend to the point of marauders seeking to blame others for their problems, real or imagined, and even to make war upon a past they do not understand or truly know as the little that they think they know is false and/or a figment of their own uninformed imaginations. Societies must fall into the abyss of rank unbelief that mutates over time to as rabid a Christophia and anti-Theism as exhibited by the French Revolutionaries and their descendants, the Bolsheviks, and that recalls the insanity of the Roman caesars and their minions during Holy Mother church’s first three centuries.

Here are news reports of a few other episodes of the current wave of Christophobia and anti-Theism:

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 16, 2020 / 12:32 pm (CNA).- The recent series of attacks on church buildings and property continued Tuesday night, as a statue of Christ was toppled and beheaded at a Miami parish and a statue of Mary was daubed with red paint in Colorado Springs. 

Recent weeks have seen a rolling series of acts of vandalism and destruction at Catholic churches across the United States, including arsons, decapitations, and graffiti. But while some of the incidents have been caught on camera, in most cases the perpetrators, and their motivations have yet to be identified.

In response to the most recent attack, the Archbishop of Miami told police that the desecration of the statue of Christ should be treated as an act of hatred for the Church and faith. 

“Late Tuesday night, July 14th or early Wednesday morning, July 15th, the statue of Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd was desecrated; the head of Jesus was separated from its body,” Mary Ross Agosta, communications director for the Archdiocese of Miami, told CNA.  

“The statue was located outside its namesake church, the Archdiocese of Miami’s Good Shepherd Catholic Church, in Southwest Miami-Dade County. The police were notified and Archbishop Thomas Wenski is asking this investigation be treated as a hate crime,” she added. 

On Wednesday morning, the statue was discovered knocked over and missing his head. Fr. Edvaldo DaSilva, the parochial vicar at Good Shepherd Church, told local media that he did not believe the damage could be accidental, as the pedestal’s screws had been tampered with. 

“They had some powerful hands to remove it,” DaSilva told WSVN of Miami. “Seeing what is happening in our country, I presume [it was deliberate], but we don’t have 100% assurance.” 

DaSilva said that he is praying for whoever desecrated the statute. 

“As a Christian community, we pray for those that have done this, that the Lord may forgive them and grant them the gift of conversion,” he said. 

Surveillance cameras from the parish are being examined to see if they caught the vandalism on tape. 

The area around the statute’s former pedestal now features a sign put up by parishoners reading “GOD wins over evil.” 

Also overnight on Tuesday, a statue of the Blessed Virgin at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Colorado Springs was tagged with red paint in an act of vandalism. The vandal or vandals colored the statue’s cross, and also appeared to paint the statue’s toenails. 

Fr. David Price, rector at the cathedral, told local media that the damage “looks more like a graffiti tag than anything else,” and added that the vandal wrote the word “redrum” on the base of the statue.

“Redrum,” which is “murder” backwards, is a reference to the 1977 Stephen King novel “The Shining.” 

Price said that the statute had been vandalized before, and was cleaned off by the city. 

The incidents Tuesday follow a weekend of similar acts.

In Tennessee, a statue of the Blessed Mother was decapitated In the early hours of Saturday morning, while, in Boston, a statue of Mary was set on fire, and in Brooklyn, a statue of her was tagged with the word “IDOL” in black spray paint.

On the same weekend, a parish in Ocala, Florida and a 249-year-old California mission founded by St. Junipero Serra were burned in fires. A man has been charged with arson in the Florida fire, and the California fire is being investigated as a case of arson. 

In recent weeks, Catholic religious statues in California, Missouri, and other places have been toppled or vandalized by protestors including several of St. Juniperio Serra.

While some attacks on statues, most notably in California, have been committed in public by large groups with clear political affiliations, the perpetrators of other acts, including those against the images of the Virgin Mary and Christ, have not been identified. (Christ Statue Beheaded in New Catholic Statue Attacks.)

PARIS — A fire ravaged a 15th-century cathedral in the western French city of Nantes on Saturday, blowing out stained-glass windows and destroying a grand organ.

French officials said they suspected arson was behind the blaze at the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul de Nantes or Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul of Nantes.

Prosecutor Pierre Sennes told reporters three fires had been started at the ancient site and authorities were treating the incident as a criminal act. He gave no further details.

The blaze began early Saturday morning around 7.45 a.m. local time (2:45 a.m. ET), engulfing the inside of the church with massive flames.

More than 100 firefighters battled for several hours to bring it under control and smoke was still coming out of the Gothic structure on Saturday afternoon, local time.

Prime Minister Jean Castex is set to visit the scene along with France's culture and interior ministers.

"I want to know what happened even if it's very early," Castex told reporters.

The fire comes just over a year after a massive fire at the historic Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, which destroyed its roof and main spire.

"After Notre-Dame, the St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral is in flames," President Emmanuel Macron tweeted from Brussels, where he was attending a European Union summit. "Support to the firemen who are taking all the risks to save the Gothic jewel."

The fire broke out behind the grand organ, which was completely destroyed, local fire chief Laurent Ferlay told reporters in front of the cathedral. However, the damage was not as bad as initially feared.  (Arson ?Suspected as Fire Ravages Medieval Cathedral in the French City of Nantes.)

California protesters this week toppled several statues of Spanish priest Junipero Serra, spurred by the anti-racist movement sparked by the death of an African American man last month while in police custody in Minneapolis. 

Discussions about police brutality have ignited debate over historical symbols of colonialization, slavery and cultural genocide, such as statues of Confederate war heroes and Christopher Columbus.

On June 19, protesters toppled a statue of Serra in San Francisco; a day later, during demonstrations in Los Angeles, protesters brought down a second Serra statue that stood near Union Station.  https://www.voanews.com/usa/race-america/junipero-serra-statues-fall-protesters-question-california-missions.)

For the faithful, it was a grim Saturday as they arrived at San Gabriel Mission to survey the damage from a huge fire that destroyed the historic landmark’s roof and much of the church interior.

“My heart is full of sadness,” said San Gabriel resident Anita Chavez, 70, who calls herself a “lifetime parishioner.” “This church has been at the center of my family, my world and my faith.”

Chavez’s daughter called to tell her about the fire, and she arrived at the church’s parking lot to confirm what she feared.

Though she stood about 100 feet away, Chavez became emotional when she saw the damage and smelled the embers.

Chavez held funerals for her son Martin Jr., husband Martin Sr. and parents Virginia Quintanar and Jose Quintanar in 2011, 1992, 1999 and 1984, respectively, all at the mission.

Chavez was far from alone as parishioners, Catholic Church leaders and others came to survey the damage to the building, which is 249 years old.

Authorities received a call at 4:24 a.m. reporting that the mission’s fire alarm had gone off. When an engine arrived to investigate, firefighters saw flames and smoke coming from the corner of the mission. The cause was under investigation.

A baptismal font consisting of a hammered copper basin and silver pieces donated by Spanish King Charles III in the late 18th century also survived, according to San Gabriel Mission spokeswoman Terri Huerta.

The altar and wooden statues inside the mission also came through unscathed.

O’Connell said that despite Saturday’s fire, normal Sunday Mass will continue at the mission’s chapel, with social distancing and COVID-19 limits holding attendance to 100 people. One of the more visible groups to arrive was a branch of the Knights on Bikes, a motorcycle group affiliated with the Knights of Columbus, a self-described fraternity of “Catholic men of faith and charitable action.”

Paul Padilla, 50, came from Fontana with four other black-vested, blue-jeaned masked members.

They assessed the situation, took photos, spoke with relatives, then pulled out rosaries and prayed.

“We saw the reports on TV and had to stop by,” Padilla said. “I grew up closer to the San Fernando Mission, but I had to come out and stand with the mission today and support my Catholic faith. This place is a part of our history.”

Fellow member David Sanchez, 59, grew up in East Los Angeles and remembered field trips to the mission as a young student, while Enrique Bonilla, 39, a Pasadena resident, said he had attended many mission services.

“It’s sad this happened,” Sanchez said. “This was a place of peace for so many people.” (Faithul Stunned by the Destruction of San Gabriel Mission.)

This madness has even extended to the consideration of the renaming of cities named after saints, including the City of Saint Louis, Missouri, which is named after our beloved Saint Louis IX, King of France, whose feast occurs in twenty-two days. His crime? Well, being “intolerant” of Jews and Mohammedans (St. Louis Mayor Opposed to the Renaming of the City of Saint Louis). Fortunately, it does not appear that this movement is gaining any traction. However, one never knows what will happen in the future as those who seek to erase history and replace with it propaganda based only in ignorance and ideology become more and more numerous as those who do understand true history die off over time.

Many of these well-meaning Catholics who are mourning the desecration of their churches and/or statues have no memory of what their churches looked like before the conciliar iconoclasts “purified” them of authentic Catholic architecture and imagery in order to accustom them to the kind of “purified” form of doctrine that has no more to do with Catholicism than the heretical teachings of Martin, Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, John Wellesley or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

Without for a moment minimizing the abject horror of the current wave of unspeakable acts of diabolical hatred for the Catholic Faith and the statues of Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, saints and other venerable figures such as Fray Junipero Serra (who was discussed in Counterfeit Church, Counterfeit Sacraments, Counterfeit Everything, part one), the plain fact of the matter remains that nothing has been so openly destructive of Catholic teaching on matters of Faith and Morals, Catholic liturgy and the veneration due to sacred images and the very art and architecture of Catholic churches worldwide than the diabolical work of the conciliar revolutionaries who have reduced so many beautiful Catholic churches to being indistinguishable from one or another nondescript Protestant worship building, noting with great sadness that the conciliar revolutionaries have also reduced many beautiful Catholic churches to rubble and ashes in a furious display of hatred that has far exceeded the ignorance of those associated, no matter how loosely, or inspired by the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Most of those who have desecrated Catholic churches and images are steeped in a hatred born of ignorance. The conciliar revolutionaries have done their way of destruction and desecration because they are trying obliterate a religion they despise as it reminds them of the need to repent from one’s sins and of a God Who will judge them harshly if they do not.

One of the things that stands out during these attacks is that most of the conciliar “bishops” have been silent, perhaps, one can say, because they fear the backlash of the Marxist and sodomite propagandists, “Black Lives Matter,” and perhaps because they themselves want more Pachamama idols displayed instead of images from the Catholic “past” which they despise.

Even one of the only conciliar “bishops” who has spoken out about the attacks on Catholic churches and statues, Donald Hying, the conciliar “bishop” of Madison, Wisconsin, who is a complete child of the conciliar revolution as he was born in 1963 and was thus in the first generation of those catechized in the new religion with its new liturgy, used the sort of conciliar language of “reconciliation” and “healing” that, no matter how well intended, take no account of the simple fact that there can never be such “reconciliation” and “healing” until men stop offending God by means of their unrepented sins and by claiming to worship Him in liturgical ceremonies that are hideous and thus offensive to Him. Moreover, religious liberty” can never the foundation of anything other than chaos and destruction, which we are witnessing with our own eye at this time.

Here is an excerpt from the end of “Bishop” Hying’s statement:

In the face of Mr. King’s comments, as a shepherd of the Church, I cannot remain silent. I need to denounce such a call to violence and destruction. Our statues, pictures, stained-glass windows, churches, icons, and devotions are holy to us. They are sacramentals, blessed and sacred, visible expressions of the love of God, poured out in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and made manifest in the Saints. They remind us of God, His love for us in Christ, and the nearness of the divine. The secular iconoclasm of the current moment will not bring reconciliation, peace, and healing. Such violence will only perpetuate the prejudice and hatred it ostensibly seeks to end. Religious freedom, given to man by God Himself, and guaranteed by our Constitution, allows us as Catholics to practice our faith, build our churches, pray in public, put up statues and crucifixes on our property, and serve the common good through a remarkable network of health care, schools, and social services. We must not surrender our religious liberty to the voices that seek the destruction of our public presence, the diminishing of our sacramental worship, and the denial of our belief in Jesus Christ as the savior of the world. Only the love of Christ can heal a wounded heart, not a vandalized piece of metal. (Donald Hying Statement on Destruction of Statues.)

Here is a little memorandum to “Bishop” Hying: the destruction of Catholic statues does not entail vandalized “pieces of metal” but grave violations of the precepts of the Second Commandment.

Moreover, “Bishop” Hying’s June 23, 2020, statement, which included a very good denunciation of Marxist Shaun King’s call for the destruction of “white” depictions of Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother, made no mention of the necessity of seeking the unconditional conversion of all men to the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, as such a thought is anathema to those who were formed, nurtured and brought to maturity by the ethos of conciliarism’s mania for an illusory “reconciliation” that can never take place unless men see in each other the Divine impress and start to make reparation for their own sins and to storm Heaven for conversion of all men to the Catholic Faith.

This having been noted, “Bishop” Donald Hying said something about the current wave of secular iconoclasm, which is more than be said for most of his brother “bishops” and for his “pope,” who has had no time or, more accurately any desire to denounce, in general terms, the organized riots in the United States of America for the past two months that has been accompanied by the desecration of Catholic churches and images in particular. While Jorge Mario Bergoglio did refer to the firebombing of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Managua, Nicaragua, on July 31, 2020, by suspected agents of the elderly Communist dictator and mass murderer Daniel Ortega, who came back to power in 2007 after a seventeen year absence and has made it a point to be elected as long as his Sandinistas can manipulate the vote count and/or intimidate voters to stay away from the polls, when asking for prayers after his Angelus address on Sunday, August 2, 2020, he has said nothing—as in nothing—about the desecration of Catholic churches and states in the United States of America.

If you will recall, however, the Argentine Apostate did find plenty of time ten months ago to apologize for the theft of the Pachamama idols during the so-called Amazonian Synod:

Good afternoon, I would like to say a word about the pachamama statues that were removed from the Church at Traspontina, which were there without idolatrous intentions and were thrown into the Tiber.

First of all, this happened in Rome and, as bishop of the diocese, I ask pardon of the people who were offended by this act.

Then, I can inform you that the statues which created so much media clamor were found in the Tiber. The statues are not damaged.

The Commander of the Carabinieri [Italian police] wished to inform us of the retrieval before the news becomes public. At the moment the news is confidential, and the statues are being kept in the office of the Commander of the Italian Carabinieri.

The leadership of the Carabinieri will be very happy to follow any indication given on the method of making the news public, and regarding the other initiatives desired in its regard, for example, the commander said, “the display of the statues at the closing Mass of the Synod.” We’ll see.  

I delegate the Secretary of State to respond to this.

This is good news, thank you. (Jorge the Apostate Apologizes for What Saint Benedict Himself Had Done.)

So much for the following words that were inspired by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost:

[6] I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. [7] Thou shalt not have strange gods in my sight. [8] Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any things, that are in heaven above, or that are in the earth beneath, or that abide in the waters under the earth. [9] Thou shalt not adore them, and thou shalt not serve them. For I am the Lord thy God, a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon their children unto the third and fourth generation, to them that hate me, [10] And shewing mercy unto many thousands, to them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Deuteronomy 5: 6-10.)

For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils: but the Lord made the heavens. (Psalm 95: 5)

As Saint Alphonsus de Liguori noted in his reflection “On the General Judgment” in Preparation for Death, no one is more despised than Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and those who hate Catholic doctrine as being “rigid” and “caging” God the Holy Ghost hate Our Lord as He Himself gave His Sacred Deposit of the Faith exclusively to the Catholic Church to be taught infallibly and safeguarded until the end of time, which makes Jorge and his band of revolutionaries more hateful in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, than any of the well-funded ignoramuses and dupes who have been wreaking havoc in American cities, up to and including attacks on Catholic churches and images.

Here is what part of what Saint Alphonsus de Liguori wrote:

At present, if we consider it well, there is no one more despised than Jesus Christ. We make more account of a peasant than of God; because if we insult a peasant, we fear that, being offended beyond endurance, he may avenge himself; but as for God, we insult Him, and heap insults freely on Him, as if He could not avenge Himself when He would: “they looked upon the almighty as if He could do nothing? (Job xxii. 17). The Redeemer, therefore, has appointed a day, which will be the day of the general judgment (called emphatically in the Scriptures “the day of the Lord”), in which Jesus Christ will make Himself known as the all-powerful Lord which He is: “the Lord shall be known when He executeth judgments” (Ps. ix. 17). Hence that day is no more called the day of mercy and of pardon, but the “day of wrath, a day of tribulation and distress, a day of calamity and misery” (Soph. I. 15). Yes, because the Lord will then justly redeem the honour which sinners have endeavored to rob Him in this world. Let us consider how the judgment of that great day will take place.

Before the coming of the Judge “a fire shall go before Him” (Ps. Xcvi. 3). fire will come down from heaven which will burn the earth and all the things of this earth: “The Earth and the works that are in it shall be burnt up” (2 St. Peter iii. 10). So that churches, palaces, villages, cities, kingdoms, all will become a heap of ashes. This house, corrupted by sin, must be purged by fire. Behold the end to which all the riches, pomps, and pleasures of this earth must come. When all men are dead, the trumpet shall sound, and all will rise: “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise” (I Cor. xv. 52). St. Jerome exclaimed: “I tremble whenever I consider the day of judgment: I seem always to hear that trumpet sounding in my ears – “Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment.” At the sound of this trumpet the beauteous souls of the just will descend to unite themselves to the bodies with which they have served god in this life; and the unhappy souls of the damned will come up from hell to unite themselves to those accursed bodies with which they have offended God.

Oh what a difference will there then be between the bodies of the just and those of the damned ! The just will appear beautiful, fair, more resplendent than the sun: “Then shall the just shine as the sun” (St. Matt. Xiii. 43). Happy he who in this life knows how to mortify his flesh by refusing it forbidden pleasures; and who, to keep it more in check, denies it even the lawful pleasures of the senses, and ill-treats it as the saints have done. Oh, how will he then rejoice, like St, Peter of Alcantara, who after his death said to St. Teresa: “O happy penance, which has merited for me so much glory!” On the other hand, the bodies of the reprobate will appear deformed, black, and stinking. Oh, what torment will it then be to the damned to be united to their bodies! Accursed body, the should will say, to gratify thee I am lost. And the body will say: Accursed soul; and thou, who hadst the use of reason, why didst thou allow me those pleasures which have damned both thyself and me for all eternity?

AFFECTIONS AND PRAYERS

Ah, my Jesus, and my Redeemer, who who day wilt be my Judge, pardon me before that day arrives. “Turn not away Thy face from me.” Now Thou art a Father to me; and as a father  receive into Thy favour a child who returns repentant to Thy feet. My Father, I ask pardon of Thee. I have offended Thee unjustly, I have left Thee unjustly. Thou didst not deserve such treatment from me. I repent of it, I grieve with my whole heart; pardon me, do not turn away from me, do not banish me as I deserve. Remember the Blood which thou hast shed for me, and have pity on me. My Jesus, I wish for no other judge but Thee St. Thomas of Villanova said: 'I willingly submit to be judged by Him who died for me; and who, that I might not be condemned, chose to be Himself condemned to the cross.' And St. Paul had said the same before him: “who is He that shall condemn? Christ Jesus, that died for us” (Rom. Viii. 34). My Father, I love Thee; and in future I will never again leave Thy feet. Forget my offences against Thee, and give me a great love for Thy goodness. I desire to love Thee more than I have offended Thee; but without Thy aid I cannot love Thee. Assist me, my Jesus, make me live grateful to Thy love, that on the last day I may be found in the valley amongst the number of Thy lovers. O Mary, my Queen and my Advocate, assist me now; for if I am lost, in that day thou wilt be able no longer to assist me. Thou prayest for all; pray also for me, who glory in being thy devoted servant and confide so much in thee. (Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Preparation for Death, pp. 48-50.)

Yes, people today are just as afraid of the mob as they were in the Eighteenth Century when these words were written. Saint Alphonsus de Liguori saw full well what was happening in the world as a result of the Protestant Revolution and the subsequent rise of Judeo-Masonry (and all of its political ideologies and anti-Theistic “philosophies”) within his own lifetime (1696-1787). We are eyewitnesses to the mutation of Judeo-Masonry into rank nihilism and its accompanying anarchistic violence as but the prelude for a call for the restoration of “order” by Antichrist himself.

The iconoclasm at work in the world, of course, has been made more possible by the iconoclastic work of the conciliar revolutionaries, who, apart from exhibiting various characteristics of almost every heresy to afflicted Holy Mother Church since Pentecost Sunday, have gone about the wreckage of Catholic churches and images with the abandon of the iconoclasts who were opposed vigorously by Saint John Damascene:

The contemporary iconoclasm of the conciliarists that has so devastated the sensus Catholicus of so many Catholics harkens back not only to the iconoclasm of the Protestant revolutionaries but to the iconoclasm that was fought by the saint we commemorate today, Saint John Damascene. Fathers Dominic and Francisco Radecki provided the historical background in Tumultuous Times to the work of Saint John Damascene in defending the sacred images of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and Our Lady and the other saints:

Caliph Yezid II ruled the Islamic Empire of the East from 720-724 A.D. He prohibited and destroyed images in the mosques and churches within his domain. “To Muslims, any kind of picture, statue, or representation of the human form is an abominable idol.”

Emperor Leo III, inflamed with a misguided zeal, imitated the action of the Caliph and in 726 A.D. decreed that all statues, icons and images of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the saints be destroyed. He claimed that the people were worshipping images and committing idolatry by praying before them. This practice of destroying sacred images is called iconoclasm. The name is derived from the Greek words: eikon image and klao to break.

St. Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, firmly resisted these innovations and explained to the emperor what the Catholic Church taught regarding the proper use of images. “The images of the saints are incentives for virtue in the same way as edifying discourses are; a picture is a compressed history, which directs our thoughts towards our Heavenly Father.” he also wrote a letter to Pope St. Gregory II who confirmed the devotional use of images to remind the faithful of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. However, the hard-hearted emperor refused to accept the consistent practice and teaching of the Church concerning images and began a campaign of brutality and destruction.

Today, many non-Catholics have been misled into thinking that Catholics worship statues of Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints. When the occasion or topic arises, we should simply explain that these are reminders of people we honor as role models for our edification, just as athletes, political figures, presidents and generals, etc. are honored with statues, memorials and coins.

Paintings, statues and icons of the saints are no more objects of worship than are paintings of great national heroes, famous generals or even family photographs. Even memorabilia and decorative pieces in homes can be used to show non-Catholics that these items, even though much admired, are not worshipped.

“The use of images in the Church dates from very remote antiquity. This is sufficiently proved from the monuments of the Apostolic age, and from the numerous symbols and images of Christ, the [Blessed] Virgin, the Apostles, and biblical personages which adorn the Roman Catacombs; many of these symbols belong to the first and second centuries.” (Father J. Birkhaeuser, History of the Church, p. 313)

Nevertheless, Leo adamantly opposed the appeals of both St. Germanus and the pope. He held a council in Constantinople in 730 A.D. to condemn the veneration of sacred images. The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem did not attend the council and the reigning patriarch of Constantinople, St. Germans, who opposed the emperor’s plans, was banished. Iconoclasm caused an eruption of violence throughout the Byzantine Empire as Leo’s hatred for sacred images burned uncontrollably.

“The emperor replied in the manner of men who are accustomed to wield force more readily than argument. He burnt all the sacred images in one of the public places of the city, and in the churches he whitewashed the walls which were covered with precious paintings. He ordered that a large picture of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which has been erected by Constantine at the entrance of the palace, be smashed. Some women who happened to be on the spot implored the military officer to desist from his impious task, but their prayers were disregarded. The officer mounted a ladder, and with a hatchet hacked away the countenance of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The women, beside themselves with grief and indignation, pulled away the ladder; the officer fell down and was killed on the spot.” (Father Clement Raab, O.F.M., Twenty Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church, pp. 53-54.)

On January 17, 731 A.D., Leo III issued a decree which stated that anyone who did not destroy images in their possessions or who honored them in any way would be guilty of treason. Thus began a severe persecution of the Church that was to last for over 50 years.

“The icons were broken up; illustrations of Christ and the saints were torn out of manuscripts; relics were cast into the sea. And when people resisted these imperial moves, prison, exile, torture, and death followed. Much of the brutality and savagery associated with the Byzantine Emperors has resulted from their activity in this matter.” (Father John Murphy, General Councils of the Church, p. 85) (end of material quoted from and found in Tumultuous Times, pp. 68-70)

A particular note of interest is to be found in the fact that the Byzantine Emperor Leo III was interested in doing the bidding of a Mohammedan caliph, finding that the Caliph’s hatred of images had “merit” to it. In other words, Emperor Leo III wanted to assure the Mohammedan caliph that there was no need to kill the Christians in his domain. “True” Christians such as himself, Leo III, hated images such as much as he, the caliph, did. Oh, what was that some defenders of the now-retired Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI were saying about the fact that he just “had” to violate the First Commandment by going into the mosque in Turkey and taking off his shoes and then turning in the direction of Mecca so as to “save” the lives of Christians worldwide? Seems like a bit of history repeating itself. No Catholic ever puts the physical safety of himself or others above honoring the First Commandment, which is violated on a seemingly daily basis by Ratzinger/Benedict's successor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, otherwise known as the Argentine Apostate.

Saint John Damascene, who lived from around 679 to 754 A.D., fought the iconoclasts and defended the veneration of the images of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and Our Lady and the other saints. He is a saint to invoke in our day as those purporting to be Catholics have rekindled the spirit of Emperor Leo III and Ulrich Zwingli. Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., wrote the following about today’s saint in The Liturgical Year, taking the time to note how the various heresies that arose in the East would lead one day to the Greek Schism of 1054, placing the heretical and schismatic Orthodox well outside the pale of the one and only Church of Christ, that is, the Catholic Church founded by the God-Man Himself on the Rock of Peter, the Pope:

The faithful have not forgotten that on the first Sunday of Lent the Greeks keep one of their greatest solemnities, that of Orthodoxy. History proves that the Church of Constantinople, the new Rome, did not share the indefectibility of that of the old Rome, for it passed through a cycle of heresies on the dogma of the Incarnation. It rejected successively the consubstantiality of the Word, the unity of Person in Jesus Christ, and the integrity of His two natures. It seemed as though there were nothing left for heretical emperors and patriarchs to deny. Yet there was one more error to proclaim before the measure of false teaching was filled up.

Christ enthroned in heaven could not be belittled, but His images might be proscribed on earth. Heresy was powerless to touch the King even in these pictorial representations, but schism could at least shake off the yoke of His Vicar, and this last denial rolled the stone to the door of a tomb where the Crescent was one day to seal. 

The heresy of the Iconoclasts or Image-breakers represents the last phase of Oriental error with regard to the Incarnation of the Son of God. It was right that the feast which commemorates the restoration of the holy Images should receive the glorious name of the Feast of Orthodoxy. It celebrates the last blow struck at Byzantine dogma, and recalls all those delivered by the councils of the Church between the first and second of Nicea. A peculiar solemnity was given to this feast by the fact that all the anathemas formulated in previous times against the adversaries of revealed truth were renewed in the Church of St. Sophia, while the Cross and the holy Images were exalted in triumph and the emperor stood at his throne.

Satan, the sworn foe of the Word, showed clearly that he looked upon the doctrine of the Iconoclasts as his last resource. There is no more heresy which has caused more martyrdoms or destructions. Nero and Diocletian seemed to be reincarnate in the baptized Caesars who defended it;:Leo the Isaurian, Constantine Copronymus, Leo the Armenian, Michael the Stammerer and his son Theophilus. The edicts of persecution, published in defence of the idols of former times, were renewed for the destruction of the idolatry which was said to defile the Church. 

In the early days of the heresy, St. Germanus of Constantinople reminded the crowned theologian of Isauria that Christians do not adore images but given them a relative honour, which is due to the persons of the saints whom they represent. The imperial pontiff replied by sending the patriarch into exile. The soldiers, whom the emperor charged to carry out his will, gave themselves up to the pillage of churches and private homes. On all sides venerated statues fell under the hammer of the destroyer. Mural paintings were covered with chalk, vestments and sacred vessels mutilated and destroyed on account of images in embroidery or enamel. Masterpieces of art, which had nourished the devotion of the people, were publicly burnt, and the artist who dared to represent Christ, Our Lady, or the saints, was himself subjected to fire and torture together with those of the faithful who had not been able to restraint their sorrow at the sight of such destruction. The shepherds bowed beneath the storm and yielded to regrettable compromises, and the reign of terror was soon supreme over the deserted flock.   

But the noble family of St. Basil, both monks and consecrated virgins, rose en masse to withstand the tyrant. They passed through exile, imprisonment, starvation, scourging, death by drowning and the sword, but they saved the tradition of ancient art and the faith of their ancestors. The whole Order seems personified in the holy monk and painter Lazarus, who was at first tempted by flattery and threats, then tortured and put in chains. It was impossible to repress him. His hands were burned with red-hot plates, but he still continued to exercise his art for the love of the saints, for the sake of his brethren, and for God, and he outlived his persecutors. 

The heresy of the Iconoclasts helped, moreover to establish the temporal independence of the Roman pontiffs, for when the Isaurian threatened to enter Rome and destroy the statue of St. Peter, all Italy rose to repel the invasion of these new barbarians, defend the treasures of her basilicas and withdraw the Vicar of Christ from the yoke of Byzantium. 

It was a glorious period, a hundred and twenty years, comprising the reign of great popes, from St. Gregory II. to Paschal I. In the history of the Eastern Church it begins with John Damascene, who saw the opening of the conflict, and ends with Theodore the Studite, whose indomitable firmness secured the final triumph. For many centuries this period, which gave to many saints to the Greek Kalendar, was unrepresented in the Latin Liturgy. The feast of to-day was added by Pope Leo XIII. in 1892, and how John Damascene, the quondam vizier, the protege of Our Lady, the monk, whose excellent doctrine won for him the name of ‘Golden stream,’ commemorates in the Western cycle the heroic struggle in which the East rendered such glorious services to the Church and to the world. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)

A significant measure of the iconoclasm at work in the world today can be laid at the feet of the conciliar revolutionaries themselves, which is why so many Catholics who are attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the mistaken belief that they are in the Catholic Church and have a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter in the Vatican have been indifferent to the destruction taking place at this time. Those who have never known the truths of the Holy Faith nor the beauty of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition nor the inspiration to be found within the walls of Catholic churches that were redolent with architectural order, beauty to uplift souls and a host of images to inspire Catholics to devotion will never understand what has been lost and that the little that is left is being attacked by dark forces in the world that are but the ultimate consequence of a world who knows not its King and Queen, a world with which the conciliar revolutionaries have made their “official reconciliation.”

We should keep in mind the words of the Gospel that were read at Holy Mass on Sunday, August 2, 2020, the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost and the Commemoration of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori:

At that time, when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it, saying, If you had known, in this your day, even you, the things that are for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a rampart about you, and surround you and shut you in on every side, and will dash you to the ground and your children within you, and will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you have not known the time of your visitation. And He entered the temple, and began to cast out those who were selling and buying in it, saying to them, It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of thieves. And He was teaching daily in the temple. (Luke 19: 41-47.)

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was speaking about the Jews, who did not know that the time of their visitation was hand and had turned the Temple into a den of thieves.

Similarly, the conciliar revolutionaries have turned Catholic churches into a den of thieves and have gone over to the worship of idols as they have reaffirmed hardened sinners in their lives of perdition and even have gone so far in some places to design church buildings to suit the tastes of those steeped in sins of unspeakable moral perversity that is celebrated widely in the world and protected by the cover of the civil law.

This is the sort of destruction that brings down God’s wrath on men, and the fact that a commentary such as this even has to be written should be sufficient to demonstrate that we are living through a chastisement of epic proportions as there is no other word to describe the widespread loss of the Catholic Faith, the turning of Catholic churches into bizarre stages for the profane and idolatrous, and the public celebration of that which caused Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity, sin, as He repaid the debt owed to Him in His Sacred Divinity by it.

This is the month of August, the month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, whose feast was instituted by Pope Pius XII in 1944 and is celebrated on August 22 annually. It is another one of those telling commentaries about the conciliar revolution that the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was downgraded to an “optional memorial” on the Saturday after the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination.

Our devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which Our Lady told Francisco and Jacinto Marto and their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, was one of the two last remedies that her Divine Son was giving to sinners to save their souls and to make reparation for their own sins as well as those of the whole world. The other remedy, of course, is her own Most Holy Rosary. Nothing that happens today in the anti-Incarnational world of Modernity that has sunk into a madness caused, proximately speaking, by the Protestant Revolution and its aftermath nor in anti-Catholic, Modernist world of the counterfeit church of conciliarism should shake our faith whatsoever. We simply need to remember the necessity of being truly devoted to Our Lady and of using the two last remedies her Divine Son, Christ the King, to persevere in a state of Sanctifying Grace until we die.

Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri explained in The Glories of Mary that those who have true devotion to Our Lady will be granted to the gift of final perseverance:

It is said that "all her domestics are clothed with double garments." Cornelius a Lapide thus describes this double garment: It is a double garment, because she clothes her servants with the virtues of her Son, as well as with her own; and, thus clothed, they will preserve holy perseverance. For this reason, St. Philip Neri always admonished his penitents by saying to them: My children, if you desire perseverance, be devout to Mary. The venerable brother John Berchmans, of the Company of Jesus, also said: He who loves Mary, shall have perseverance. The reflection which Rupert the abbot makes upon the prodigal son is very beautiful. If the mother of this prodigal son had been living, he would either never have left his father's house or would have returned much sooner. And by this lie wished to say, that he who is a child of Mary, either never departs from God, or if for his misfortune he departs, by means of Mary he quickly returns.

Oh, if all men loved this most kind and loving Lady, and in temptations always and immediately had recourse to her, who would fall? Who would be lost ? He falls and is lost who does not flee to Mary. St. Lawrence Justinian applies to Mary these words of Ecclesiasticus : "I have walked in the waves of the sea;" and makes her to say: I walked with my servants in the midst of the tempests to which they are exposed, to assist them, and prevent them from falling into the precipice of sin.

Father Bernardine de Bustis relates that a hawk darted upon a bird which had been taught to say Ave Maria; the bird said Ave Maria, and the hawk fell dead. By this our Lord wished to show us, that if an irrational bird was saved from destruction by invoking Mary, how much more surely will he be prevented from falling into the power of evil spirits, who is mindful to invoke Mary in his temptations. Nothing remains to be done, says St. Thomas of Villanova, when the devil comes to tempt us, but, like the chickens when the kite appears, to run quickly under the shelter of the wings of our mother. Let us, then, at the approach of the temptations which assail us, without stopping to parley with them, place ourselves at once under the protection of Mary. And then, the saint goes on to say, our Lady and mother must defend us; for, after God, we have no refuge but thee, who art our only hope, and the only protectress in whom we may confide.

Let us, then, conclude with the words of St. Bernard; Oh man, whoever thou art, thou knowest that in this miserable life thou art rather tossing on the tempestuous waves, among dangers and tempests, than walking upon the earth; if thou wouldst not sink, keep thy eye fixed on this star, namely, Mary. Look at the star, invoke Mary. When in danger of sinning, when tormented by temptations, when doubts disturb thee, remember that Mary can aid thee, and instantly call upon her. May her powerful name never depart from the confidence of thy heart, nor from the invocation of thy lips. If thou wilt follow Mary, thou shalt never wander from the path of safety. Commend thyself always to her, and thou shalt not despair. If she upholds thee, thou shalt not fall. If she protects thee, thou need not fear ruin. If she guides thee, thou shalt be saved without difficulty. In a word, if Mary undertakes to defend thee, thou shalt certainly arrive at the kingdom of the blessed. Thus do, and thou shalt live. (Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, The Glories of Mary.)

Let us look at and run towards Our Lady at all times, yes, even during these times in which God has fashioned for us to live and to thus sanctify and to save our souls and, most especially, in times of temptation and the very hour of our death.

This time will pass, and it will be Our Lady, to call to mind what the late William C. Koneazny said shortly before he died on June 16, 2004, who will come “to throw the bums out.”

As we remain steadfast in our devotion to and confidence in Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary, may we plant a few seeds for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and for thus the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter and the burial of conciliarism and its abominations eternally.

Viva Cristo ReyVivat Christus Rex!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint Dominic de Guzman, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Dominic of Silos, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Ceslaus, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Albert the Great, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Raymond of Pennafort, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Siena, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Antoninus, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Peter Martyr, O.P., pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, O.P., pray for us.

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.

Blessed Martin de Porres, O.P., pray for us.

Blessed Jacobus de Voragine, O.P., pray for us.

Blessed Jane de Aza, pray for us.

Blessed Alan de la Roche, O.P., pray for us.

Blessed Reginald, O.P., pray for us.

Blessed Henry Suso, O.P., pray for us.

All ye Saints and Blesseds of the Order of Preachers, pray for us.