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There Will Come A Day When Vincenzo Paglia Will Argue in Favor of "Accompanying" Women Right into the Hands of Baby Butchers
Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s ultra-progressive band of Jacobin/Bolshevik conciliar revolutionaries keep repeating various mantras about how they are not “changing” Catholic doctrine but simply “adapting” it to the “concrete” circumstances in which people live today so that they can be “accompanied” in the name of “mercy” and reaching out to the “peripheries.” No matter how many times they mindlessly repeat their mantras that became cliches in many conciliar circles as early as the early-1970s, however, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and cohorts of his such as Vincenzo Paglia, the president of the “Pontifical” Academy of Life, and “papal” confidante James Martin, S.J., among so many others believe both in doctrinal evolutionism and in moral relativism.
Moral truth does not “evolve” over time any more than theological truth “evolves” over time. As I have noted in my three-plus decades as a college professor of political science (1974-2007; 2014), in my various campaigns for public office on the Right to Life Party in the State of New York (1986, 1997, 1998) and the role I played as a volunteer surrogate speaker for the Patrick Joseph Buchanan presidential campaign in 1995-1996, the sixteen years or so when I gave lectures around the nation (1993-2009), and my thirty-one year- career as a Catholic writer, truth is, it exists. Truth does not depend upon human acceptance for its binding force or validity. Truth on the merely natural level exists in the nature of things and is knowable by reason alone unaided by Divine Revelation, and supernatural truth is revealed by Christ the King exclusively to His true Church. We accept supernatural truth because it is has been revealed by God, in Whose Holy Name it is taught by Holy Mother Church, who canst neither deceived nor be deceived.
The conciliar revolutionaries believe in none of this. They simply want to tickle the itching ears of those who refuse to reform their lives in cooperation with the graces won for them by the Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and that flow into their hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. Bergoglio’s brand of conciliar revolutionaries disparage the Ten Commandments just as much as Martin Luther by claiming variously that they are either “impossible” to be kept perfectly or that certain of them—especially the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth—place so many “restrictions” on the livers of the “imperfect” that it is neither opportune, advisable, nor morally necessary that they be obeyed. All that is needed are attitudes of “mercy” and “accompaniment.”
As has been noted around times before in various articles on this site, our last true pope thus far, Pope Pius XII, warned the Thirtieth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus in 1956 that some among their number wanted to base Catholic moral theology on what is done rather than what ought to be done:
The more serious cause, however, was the movement in high Jesuit circles to modernize the understanding of the magisterium by enlarging the freedom of Catholics, especially scholars, to dispute its claims and assertions. Jesuit scholars had already made up their minds that the Catholic creeds and moral norms needed nuance and correction. It was for this incipient dissent that the late Pius XII chastised the Jesuits’ 30th General Congregation one year before he died (1957). What concerned Pius XII most in that admonition was the doctrinal orthodoxy of Jesuits. Information had reached him that the Society’s academics (in France and Germany) were bootlegging heterodox ideas. He had long been aware of contemporary theologians who tried “to withdraw themselves from the Sacred Teaching authority and are accordingly in danger of gradually departing from revealed truth and of drawing others along with them in error” (Humani generis).
In view of what has gone on recently in Catholic higher education, Pius XII’s warnings to Jesuits have a prophetic ring to them. He spoke then of a “proud spirit of free inquiry more proper to a heterodox mentality than to a Catholic one”; he demanded that Jesuits not “tolerate complicity with people who would draw norms for action for eternal salvation from what is actually done, rather than from what should be done.” He continued, “It should be necessary to cut off as soon as possible from the body of your Society” such “unworthy and unfaithful sons.” Pius obviously was alarmed at the rise of heterodox thinking, worldly living, and just plain disobedience in Jesuit ranks, especially at attempts to place Jesuits on a par with their Superiors in those matters which pertained to Faith or Church order (The Pope Speaks, Spring 1958, pp. 447-453). (Monsignor George A. Kelly, Ph.D.,The Catholic College: Death, Judgment, Resurrection. See also the full Latin text of Pope Pius XII's address to the thirtieth general congregation of the Society of Jesus at page 806 of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis for 1957: AAS 49 [1957]. One will have to scroll down to page 806.)
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was trained by the very sort of revolutionaries whose false moral theology was condemned by Pope Pius XII in 1957, and it is this false moral theology, which is nothing other than Judeo-Masonic moral relativism, which itself is the product of the Protestant Revolution’s theological relativism. Modernism is, of course, the synthesis of all heresies. Bergoglio’s whole program, enunciated nearly five years ago in Evangelii Gaudium, November 26, 2013, and given concrete form in Amoris Latetia, March 19, 2016, is nothing other than a celebration of subjectivism, of basing a false moral teaching on what is "actually done, rather than from what should be done. Cupich was merely giving voice on October 3, 2017, to what Bergoglio has believed throughout the course of his long and fabled career of disparaging Catholic teaching and of committing serial blasphemous, apostate acts that serve the interests of Antichrist of the lowest reaches of hell itself.
All the “discernment” done by the likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Oscar Andres Maradiaga Rodriguez, Victor Fernandez, Robert McElroy, Blase Cupich, Joseph Tobin, John Stowe, Vincenzo Paglia, James Martin, Timothy Ratcliffe, and so many others within the ranks of the counterfeit church of conciliarism is simply a cover for justifying a predetermined “decision” to “keep” doctrine in place while ignoring as “unrealistic,” “robotic,” “mechanistic,” “archaic,” “rigid,” or “heartless” in the lives of those who choose to surrender to the devil’s various allures and then expect, if not demand, everyone around them reaffirm their decisions to live as “free” people even though, unbeknownst to themselves, they are actually slaves of the devil, who looks forward to mocking and torturing them for all eternity in hell for being so stupid as to have surrendered to him in the first place.
We have seen the pattern very clearly in the past ten years under the presidency of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the universal face of apostasy behind the walls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River. Bergoglio has used private letters, phone calls, and meetings that he knows will be leaked, either in full or in part, to initiate a “debate” on undebatable points of Catholic Faith and Morals. This has been done with respect to the ability of Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried without a conciliar decree of marital nullity, and those who are practicing and most unrepentant sodomites, deviants, and mutants to receive what purports to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical travesty in the name of “inclusion,” “accompaniment,” and “mercy.” Bergoglio used private communications and meetings to advance agendas inimical to the honor and glory of God and the good of souls to create the appearance of a “consensus” that would then be expressed by like-minded “bishops” in their own dioceses and within the context of “extraordinary” and “ordinary” synods at the Vatican.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio has also permitted men such as “Archbishop” Vincenzo Paglia, the president of the so-called “Pontifical” Academy for Life, to oversee the appointment of noted pro-abortion, pro-sodomite, pro-contraception/population control, and climate change fascists to change the academy’s direction away from opposition to the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn to a “defense” of the planet, which many “papal” appointees believe is threatened by those nasty little things called human beings whom God Himself made the earth’s stewards:
And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. 27 And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth [Genesis 1:28] 29 And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat: 30 And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon. And it was so done. (Genesis 1: 26-30.)
Here is a reminder about some of the anti-life, Marxist zealots who continue to enjoy the favor of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the sodomite-friendly Vincenzo Paglia:
Those who think that the conciliar revolutionaries are now saying anything “new” are deceiving themselves. The only thing that has happened is that the cloud of paradox and contradiction that surrounded Ratzinger and the mystique of personality that surrounded Wojytla have been stripped away, leaving Jorge free to show the revolution for what it has always been and was meant to do from its inception: an attack on the very nature of dogmatic truth that has opened the way for the coronation of “personal conscience” as the single determinant of the moral liceity of human choices. Those who are either steeped in sin themselves or have become accessories to the sins of others, if only by flattery, need to deny the objective nature of dogmatic and moral truth in order to open the path to the acceptance of all immorality, including deviancy and murder itself, in the name of “accompaniment.”
Interestingly, a man who is a kindred spirit of the recent appointees to Jorge’s “youth synod,” Theodore Edgar McCarrick, turns out to have played an important behind-the-scenes role in arranging the twisted sellout of faithful Catholics in Red China. Those who make war upon dogmatic and moral truth in general and those, in particular, whose own lives are witnesses to a rebellion against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, will not consider such evils as Communism as intrinsically wrong as what is “right” for one culture cannot be consider so for another.
Thus it is that Joachim von Braun does not have to have to a “paper trail” on contraception and abortion. He is but a paid stooge of George Soros, who is but one of the chief instruments the adversary is using at this time to prepare the way for the coming of Antichrist, and this truly egregious funder of organized riots and supporter of every manner of statism and moral evil under the sun. And it is no accident that two confederates of Soros who believe in “palliative care” have been appointed to the “Pontifical” Academy for Life:
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Academy, commented on the appointments, saying that "with these appointments Pope Francis has formed a College of academics of the highest professional standing that will offer to the Catholic Church and to the whole world a deep and wise vision in the service of human life, especially life that is weakest and most defenseless. The Academicians named by the Holy Father come from 27 countries around the world and are outstanding in diverse fields of human knowledge. Among them are a number of non-Catholics, either belonging to other religions and non-believers, a sign that the protection and promotion of human life knows no divisions and can be assured only through common endeavor.” With respect to the appointment of Honorary Members, Archbishop Paglia noted that, "They represent the history of the Academy and a passion for human life for which we must all be grateful; it is thanks to the earlier work of so many illustrious men and women that today, with the appointment of new Academicians, our institution continues its service to life with renewed energy."
The Governing Council of the Academy, which will be appointed by the Holy See pursuant to the Statutes and the Regulations of the Academy, will appoint Corresponding Members and Young Researchers (a new membership category created in the Statutes promulgated by Pope Francis in 2016), and thus fill out the membership of the Academy.
The Ordinary Assembly of the Academy, scheduled for October 5-7 in the Vatican, will be opened by Pope Francis, and will constitute the official launch of the renewed Academy.
The following is the list of Ordinary and Honorary Members appointed by Pope Francis.
The Holy Father has appointed as Ordinary Members for a five-year term [a partial listing follows]:
● Professor Nigel BIGGAR, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and Director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life, at the University of Oxford (Great Britain);
● Kathleen M. FOLEY, M.D., Neurologist, Director of the Department of Neurology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the New York Hospital (United States);
●Professor Daniel SULMASY, Professor of Bioethics at Georgetown University, Washington, DC (United States); (Bergoglio Nominates One Pro-Abort and Two Soros Cronies to Serve in the "Pontifical" Academy for Life.)
It is instructive to look at these “ordinary members” appointed four years ago as one, Nigel Biggar supports the direct intentional taking of innocent human life in the womb, and the other two, support the dispatching of human beings when “medical professionals” deem that it is necessary to put them on a “path” to “ease” them on a path to death according to a “plan” designed by the “team” assigned to their cases, which, of course “consults” (pressures) family members to agree to do what is “best.”
First, consider the case of Nigel Biggar:
ROME, Italy, June 16, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life defended Pope Francis' appointment of a new Academy member who is pro-abortion and has expressed qualified support for euthanasia. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia has, moreover, accused Catholic media of “sensationalism” for highlighting the pro-abortion pick.
When a Twitter user pointed out to Paglia that English Catholic media outlets were focusing on the pro-abortion appointee, he suggested Catholic media was falling victim to “sensationalism.”
“[W]e pray that Catholics and Catholic media not fall victim to sensationalism,” he tweeted. “Love for life must mean love for each other.”
University of Oxford Professor Nigel Biggar, who was appointed to the Academy for a five-year term, stated in a 2011 dialogue with pro-infanticide ethicist Peter Singer that a preborn baby is “not … the same kind of thing as an adult or a mature human being” and therefore does not deserve “quite the same treatment.”
I would be inclined to draw the line for abortion at 18 weeks after conception, which is roughly about the earliest time when there is some evidence of brain activity, and therefore of consciousness,” he said as reported by Standpoint magazine.
Then, one year later, when he was the keynote speaker for an event at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, he said "it is not true that all abortion is equivalent to murder."
When LifeSiteNews asked Biggar if his appointment to the Academy indicated that the Church under Francis is shifting gears on abortion, he said that as someone who is not Roman Catholic, he did not think it appropriate to comment on the Church's position.
"I am very sorry to disappoint you, but the issue of abortion is one on which I have views, but it is not one that I have thought about for a very long time," he said.
"I believe that the reason for my recent appointment lies in my sustained work on the issues of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide. On those issues, my conclusions are consonant with the Church's," he added.
But Biggar’s position on euthanasia is not, in fact, consonant with Catholic teaching.
In a review of Biggar's 2004 book titled Aiming to Kill: The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia, reviewer David Jones wrote for the periodical New Blackfriars that Biggar would allow some people to be euthanized who were so damaged that they could be excluded from being called “human.”
“If someone’s brain is irreparably damaged so that he or she cannot think, then according to Biggar we should conclude that he or she is no longer a human ‘person’ and no longer part of the human community. Biggar even describes such individuals as ‘irretrievably inaccessible to human care’ so that it means nothing to protect them from being killed nor therefore (and this is my deduction) to visit, clothe or feed them,” wrote Jones.
Christopher Ferrara, author and head of the American Catholic Lawyer’s Association, said an appointment of a pro-abortion member to the Vatican’s highest pro-life institution means that Pope Francis, “as incredible as it may seem, is programmatically committed to accommodating … the toleration of abortion in the life of the Church.”
“[He has] demolished John Paul II’s Pontifical Academy for Life by sacking every one of its members and having its new president, the ‘pro-gay’ Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia (of obscene mural fame), draw up new statutes for the Academy,” he wrote, adding: “Bear in mind that Pope [Francis] has abolished the pro-life oath formerly taken by members of the Academy.”
Former Academy member Judie Brown, president of American Life League, said the Academy under Pope Francis’ leadership has lost its way.
“Pope Francis has created a revised version of the sainted Pope John Paul II’s vision that is not only scary, but also in many ways ugly to behold,” she wrote.
While there are many positive appointments to the Academy, such as Cardinal Willem Eijk, Georgetown ethicist John Keown, and Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, there are many former members, high-caliber pro-lifers, who were not invited back. Many of these were specifically chosen by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI for their pro-life-and-family credentials as well as their fidelity to Catholic teaching.
Some of those not invited back include Australian philosopher John Finnis, German philosopher Robert Spaemann, Professor Luke Gormally of England, and Austrian Professor Josef Maria Seifert. Many of those not invited back had previously been openly critical of the direction the Academy was being pushed in recent years. (Pro-Abort to Head "Pontifical" Academy for Life.)
Want more proof about Jorge’s Theological Wrecking Crew’s efforts to normalize moral relativism and deviancy?
Sure.
Here is another fine trip down the conciliar memory lane:
LOS ANGELES, California, September 5, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) ― The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life has declared that the academy must broaden its scope and welcome non-Christian “experts.”
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, 74, presented the speech at Loyola Marymount, a private Jesuit university in Los Angeles, yesterday. After introducing the pontiff’s January 6 letter Humana Communitas, the prelate explained that Francis wishes both the Academy for Life and the John Paul II Institute, of which Paglia is grand chancellor, to work “more broadly.”
“The Academy in particular is to become more and more a place of competent and respectful meeting and dialogue among experts, including those from other religious traditions as well as proponents of world views the Academy needs to know better in order to widen its horizons,” he said.
Paglia promised that both foundations would “protect and promote” human life and assured “friends” and “enemies” that “our dialogue with others who do not share our understanding of God’s fruitful love and of the nature of the human family and its challenges, does not mean that we are abandoning Catholic orthodoxy.”
But Paglia also made it clear that the pope wants them to widen their horizons.
“We must also make it clear that the Pope wants the Academy, and the Institute, to (1) widen its scope of reflection, not limiting itself to addressing ‘specific situations of ethical, social or legal conflict,’ (2) articulate an anthropology that sets the practical and theoretical premises for ‘conduct consistent with the dignity of the human person,’ and (3) make sure it has the tools to critically examine ‘the theory and practice of science and technology as they interact with life, its meaning and its value,’” he said.
One widening Pope Francis and Paglia envision is a rejection of absolute norms regarding human life and a redefinition of what it means.
“[Francis] warns us that it is risky to look at human life in a way that detaches it from experience and reduces it to biology or to an abstract universal, separated from relationships and history,” Paglia said.
“Rather, the term ‘life’ must be redefined, moving from an abstract conception to a ‘personal’ dimension: life is people, men and women, both in the individuality of each person and in the unity of the human family.”
Notably, Paglia referred only to the “family” of the Blessed Trinity and to the “human family” — i.e the human race — but not once to the kinship groups most commonly known as “families.” He also decried a “schism” between the individual and the human community and warned that technology is “becoming” a threat to human life.
The archbishop briefly mentioned the controversies around the changes that have swept the pro-life institutions originally founded by John Paul II. In October 2016, Pope Francis promulgated new statutes for the academy, which included the dismissal of its life members and the inclusion of new members of dubious orthodoxy. Then, in September 2017, Pope Francis refounded and renamed the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.
Most recently, the students and faculty of the “John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences” were dismayed to discover that the entire teaching staff had been temporarily suspended, two of its tenured professors dismissed, and advertised courses eliminated.
Paglia’s response was that the “theological basis” of Humana Communitas will inevitably “overcome” concerns.
“In his letter, the Holy Father attempted to give us such a solid and loving theological basis for the work of the Academy that we will be able to address and overcome the concerns and the hesitancies that have greeted the renewed structure of the Academy (and I might add of its sister entity, the John Paul II Institute as well),” the archbishop said.
Paglia’s address closely resembles a speech he gave earlier this year at Sacred Heart Catholic University in Milan. (Vinny Paglia Says the the Term Life must be Redefined.)
In other words, as Bergoglio has told us in so many words and on so many different occasions, there is no “black and white,” there are no moral absolutes, there is nothing except their own projection onto Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ about what He would teach given the conditions in which we find ourselves at this time. It is with this feat of paganism that the conciliar revolutionaries can equate submerge the social and eternal good of individual human beings into a more “inclusive” system of “thought” that places animals, plants and even inanimate matter on a plane of equal plane with them. A community “consciousness” premised upon socialistic and pantheistic prescriptions of one kind or another thus replaces the need for the individual pursuit of sanctity and any thought of a Particular Judgment that will be rendered upon individual persons upon the moment of their deaths. The execution of the preborn by chemical and surgical means thus fades into insignificance when compared to the supposedly “larger” “ecological” questions that demanding a “social” response, and this is why, at least in part, that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has such an affinity for Communists, including the Chicom monsters of Beijing and their Chinese Patriotic “Catholic” Association. No thought is given to the effects of the sins of individual human beings upon the common good and even upon the physical state of the world for reasons that will be explored in the next section of this commentary.
In other words, the conciliar revolutionaries, adhering to textbook Modernism and its affinity with all forms of evolutionism, including Marxism-Leninism, believe in the annihilation of the individual in favor of a “community” that makes no place for immutable truths to which human beings must adhere to save their souls as members of the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order. Anyone within the structures of the false conciliar sect that is hideous in the sight of the Most Blessed Trinity who believes that they are getting this toothpaste back in the tomb is, to put it mildly, delusional, and those who ignore these developments in the very false belief that they do not concern them are both irresponsible and intellectually dishonest.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio is making it clear that the Sisyphuses to his “right” flank in the conciliar structures will never get another “pope” who will restore some semblance of Catholicism. You see, it is impossible for Catholicism to have any association with error, sacrilege, blasphemy, heresy and apostasy. The Argentine Apostate and his comrades, of course, believe that Holy Mother Church has erred for nearly two millennia and that it is their job to make sure that those “errors” can never be repeated, which is why he is stacking the deck and cooking the books in his conciliar “college of cardinals” with like-minded Judases, including a “Father” José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça, whose “critical theology” is a formal embrace of moral relativism as the foundation of what passes for “moral theology” in a false religious sect:
ROME, February 5, 2018 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pope Francis has selected a Portuguese “priest-poet” to preach at his 2018 Lenten retreat who is an open promoter of the “critical theology” of a Spanish nun who defends the legalization of abortion and government recognition of homosexual “marriage” and adoptions.
Father José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça, vice rector of the Catholic University of Lisbon, wrote the introduction to the Portuguese translation of “Feminist Theology in History,” by Teresa Forcades, whom the BBC calls “Europe’s most radical nun.”
n the introduction to Forcades’ work, Tolentino de Mendonça tells the reader that Jesus didn’t leave any rules or laws to mankind, an idea that he approvingly applies to Forcades’ “critical theology.”
“Teresa Forcades i Vila reminds of that which is essential: that Jesus of Nazareth did not codify, nor did he establish rules,” writes Tolentino de Mendonça. “Jesus lived. That is, he constructed an ethos of relation, somatized the poetry of his message in the visibility of his flesh, expressed his own body as a premise.”
When the Portuguese translation of the book was published in 2013 with Tolentino de Mendonça’s introduction, Forcades had well-established herself as an advocate for legalized abortion and the creation of homosexual “marriage.” In the same year she issued a video tribute to the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who was then dying of cancer.
Tolentino de Mendonça compares Forcades to Hildegard of Bingham, and says her theology is expressed in “a form that is symbolic, open, and sensitive about addressing the real” as opposed to the Church’s traditional way of speaking in clear, non-metaphorical terms, which he calls “the triumphal univocal grammars that we know.”
“It’s necessary that the doctrinal narrative understands itself to be more of a reading than a writing, more like a voyage than a place, because the memory that transports is not reducible to a legal code, a vision, something automatic,” the priest writes.
Such theology is given to us by Forcades, says Tolentino de Mendonça: “It is precisely here that the frightening [provoking] work of Teresa Forcades i Vila, Feminist Theology in History, which the reader has in his hands, comes to our aid.”
In a 2016 interview with the Lisbon radio station Renascença, Tolentino de Mendonça blasted Catholics and particularly cardinals who have raised their voices in criticism of Pope Francis, dismissing their views as “traditionalism,” which he contrasted with authentic “tradition.”
“Today, we see Pope Francis being contradicted by a more conservative wing of the Church and by some important names, even cardinals, which in a certain way are willing to place traditionalism above the tradition,” he said.
Regarding Pope Francis “welcoming” attitude towards those who are stubbornly living in gravely sinful situations of homosexuality and adultery, Tolentino de Mendonça told the interviewer, “No one can be excluded from the love and mercy of Christ. And that experience of mercy has to be taken to everyone, whether they be Christians who are remarried, wounded by disastrous matrimonial experiences, whether it be the reality of new families, whether it be homosexual persons, who in the Church must find a space to be heard, a place of welcome and mercy.”
Tolentino de Mendonca will preach and give spiritual guidance to Pope Francis and high curial officials during their retreat from February 18 to February 23 of this year. (Jorge Chooses Pro-Sodomite Presbyter to Give His Lenten Ideological "Retreat".)
What the well-intentioned, incredulous authors the two reports cited above failed to understand is that everything about the counterfeit church of conciliarism is ugly, and that includes Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II’s warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth and his incessant acts of obeisance to false religions, false places of worship and the idols and symbols of false religion. Those who do not see this are forever expressing “outrage” at what are simply the logical consequences of endorsing dogmatic evolutionism and of making a mockery of the First, Second, and Third Commandments.
It is really as simple as this: attacks the immutable nature of God and His Divine Revelation lead inevitably to attacks upon each of the Ten Commandments, including the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Commandment, which is why Signore Paglia feels free to express his support for a Italian law permitting “assisted suicide” even though he is “personally opposed” to the morally repugnant practice. I will make interjections at various points:
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The president of the regularly scandalous Pontifical Academy for Life has spoken in favor of assisted suicide as possibly being the “greatest common good concretely possible,” contrary to the Catholic Church’s teaching strenuously condemning the practice.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia’s remarks were made during a recent television panel as part of the Perugia journalism festival, for a debate on the end of life entitled “The last trip (towards the end of life).”
While he expressed his personal opposition to practicing assisted suicide, Paglia defended it in principle, citing Pope Francis’ assault on Catholic Tradition in doing so. “Personally, I would not practice suicide assistance,” he said “but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in.” (Abp. Paglia defends assisted suicide as 'greatest common good possible' for dying people.)
Interjection Number One:
No civil law that permits a direct attack on innocent human life has any credibility in the eyes of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, as to annihilate oneself, whether by oneself or with the “assistance” of others, is a Mortal Sin in the objective order of things against the Fifth Commandment and an open invitation to do away with human beings who are either ignorant about the theology of redemptive suffering and/or unwilling to embrace whatever crosses Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ sends to them until they die. For a supposed “archbishop” to suggest that laws permitting “assisted suicide” are advancing the common good is to make a mockery of the following words written by Pope Leo XIII in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890, that were quoted on this site just three days ago in "To Resist is a Duty, To Obey a Crime":
But, if the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime; a crime, moreover, combined with misdemeanor against the State itself, inasmuch as every offense leveled against religion is also a sin against the State. Here anew it becomes evident how unjust is the reproach of sedition; for the obedience due to rulers and legislators is not refused, but there is a deviation from their will in those precepts only which they have no power to enjoin. Commands that are issued adversely to the honor due to God, and hence are beyond the scope of justice, must be looked upon as anything rather than laws. You are fully aware, venerable brothers, that this is the very contention of the Apostle St. Paul, who, in writing to Titus, after reminding Christians that they are "to be subject to princes and powers, and to obey at a word," at once adds: "And to be ready to every good work."Thereby he openly declares that, if laws of men contain injunctions contrary to the eternal law of God, it is right not to obey them. In like manner, the Prince of the Apostles gave this courageous and sublime answer to those who would have deprived him of the liberty of preaching the Gospel: "If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)
But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.
The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)
There is no need for a “debate” about “end of life” moral issues and/or legislation as the Fifth Commandment is very clear: “Thou shalt not kill.” Period.
Nothing that we suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and that caused Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart to be thrust through with the Fourth through Seventh Swords of Sorrow. We must bear the cross until we die, recognizing that death is a punishment for Original Sin and that whatever pain Our Lord sends us to in our last agony is meant to purify us for the soul’s separation from the body and to minimize, if not entirely, eliminate any need for the departing soul to suffering in Purgatory after death.
Back to the first article dealing with Vincenzo Paglia’s apostasy:
From the very outset of his presentation, Paglia undermined the authority of the Catholic Church to pronounce of matters of truth and morals, stating: “First of all, I would like to clarify that the Catholic Church is not that it has a ready-made, prepackaged package of truths, as if it were a dispenser of truth pills.” (Abp. Paglia defends assisted suicide as 'greatest common good possible' for dying people.)
Interjection Number Two:
Yes, the Catholic Church is the sole repository and infallible explicator of Divine Revelation and she infallible and authoritative interpreter and teaching of the Natural Law. No one may dissent from what Holy Mother Church commands, and it is impossible her to command her children to adhere to error:
As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth. (Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834.)
In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)
For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)
Let, therefore, the separated children draw nigh to the Apostolic See, set up in the City which Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles, consecrated by their blood; to that See, We repeat, which is 'the root and womb whence the Church of God springs,' not with the intention and the hope that 'the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth' will cast aside the integrity of the faith and tolerate their errors, but, on the contrary, that they themselves submit to its teaching and government. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)
Supernatural truth belongs entirely to the Catholic Church. The Natural Law belongs wholly to her as its authoritative interpreter and infallible explicator.
Vincenzo Paglia is a heretic, but to his embrace one of condemned error after another we must return:
Theological thought evolves in history,” he said, “in dialogue with the Magisterium and the experience of the people of God (sensus fidei fidelium), in a dynamic of mutual enrichment.”
The Christian “contribution” to public debates, said Paglia, is “made within the different cultures, neither above – as if they possessed an a priori given truth – nor below, as if believers were the bearers of a respectable opinion, but disengaged from history, ‘dogmatic’ indeed, therefore unacceptable.”
“Between believers and non-believers there is a relationship of mutual learning,” he added. (Abp. Paglia defends assisted suicide as 'greatest common good possible' for dying people.)
Interjection Number Three:
Abject apostasy.
The concept of theological/dogmatic evolutionism is both philosophically absurd and stands as dogmatically condemned. The contention that theological “thought evolves in history” “in dialogue with the Magisterium and the experience of the people of God” is heretical, and was condemned as such by Pope Pius IX and the Council Fathers at the [First] Vatican Council, by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, Praestantia Scripturae, November 18, 1907, and The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910, as well as by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950. Although I know that longtime readers of this site might not need another reiteration of these documents, I am always cognizant of the fact that there might be some person who is either new to the site or who needs a “refresher” on these quotations below that prove Vincenzo Paglia a consummately bold heretic and a direct tool of the adversary:
For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence, but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.
Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.
God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be in opposition to truth.
The appearance of this kind of specious contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either: the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.
Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false. . . .
3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.
And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.
But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1870.)
Hence it is quite impossible to maintain that they absolutely contain the truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sense in its relation to man; and as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sense. But the object of the religious sense, as something contained in the absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.
Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and clearly flows from their principles. For among the chief points of their teaching is the following, which they deduce from the principle of vital immanence, namely, that religious formulas if they are to be really religious and not merely intellectual speculations, ought to be living and to live the life of the religious sense. This is not to be understood to mean that these formulas, especially if merely imaginative, were to be invented for the religious sense. Their origin matters nothing, any more than their number or quality. What is necessary is that the religious sense -- with some modification when needful -- should vitally assimilate them. In other words, it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted and sanctioned by the heart; and similarly the subsequent work from which are brought forth the secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of the heart.
Hence it comes that these formulas, in order to be living, should be, and should remain, adapted to the faith and to him who believes. Wherefore, if for any reason this adaptation should cease to exist, they lose their first meaning and accordingly need to be changed. In view of the fact that the character and lot of dogmatic formulas are so unstable, it is no wonder that Modernists should regard them so lightly and in such open disrespect, and have no consideration or praise for anything but the religious sense and for the religious life. In this way, with consummate audacity, they criticize the Church, as having strayed from the true path by failing to distinguish between the religious and moral sense of formulas and their surface meaning, and by clinging vainly and tenaciously to meaningless formulas, while religion itself is allowed to go to ruin. "Blind'- they are, and "leaders of the blind" puffed up with the proud name of science, they have reached that pitch of folly at which they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which "they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other and vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, unapproved by the Church, on which, in the height of their vanity, they think they can base and maintain truth itself." (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Domici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
After mature examination and the most diligent deliberations the Pontifical Biblical Commission has happily given certain decisions of a very useful kind for the proper promotion and direction on safe lines of Biblical studies. But we observe that some persons, unduly prone to opinions and methods tainted by pernicious novelties and excessively devoted to the principle of false liberty, which is really immoderate license and in sacred studies proves itself to be a most insidious and a fruitful source of the worst evils against the purity of the faith, have not received and do not receive these decisions with the proper obedience.
Wherefore we find it necessary to declare and to expressly prescribe, and by this our act we do declare and decree that all are bound in conscience to submit to the decisions of the Biblical Commission relating to doctrine, which have been given in the past and which shall be given in the future, in the same way as to the decrees of the Roman congregations approved by the Pontiff; nor can all those escape the note of disobedience or temerity, and consequently of grave sin, who in speech or writing contradict such decisions, and this besides the scandal they give and the other reasons for which they may be responsible before God for other temerities and errors which generally go with such contradictions.
Moreover, in order to check the daily increasing audacity of many modernists who are endeavoring by all kinds of sophistry and devices to detract from the force and efficacy not only of the decree "Lamentabili sane exitu" (the so-called Syllabus), issued by our order by the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition on July 3 of the present year, but also of our encyclical letters "Pascendi dominici gregis" given on September 8 of this same year, we do by our apostolic authority repeat and confirm both that decree of the Supreme Sacred Congregation and those encyclical letters of ours, adding the penalty of excommunication against their contradictors, and this we declare and decree that should anybody, which may God forbid, be so rash as to defend any one of the propositions, opinions or teachings condemned in these documents he falls, ipso facto, under the censure contained under the chapter "Docentes" of the constitution "Apostolicae Sedis," which is the first among the excommunications latae sententiae, simply reserved to the Roman Pontiff. This excommunication is to be understood as salvis poenis, which may be incurred by those who have violated in any way the said documents, as propagators and defenders of heresies, when their propositions, opinions and teachings are heretical, as has happened more than once in the case of the adversaries of both these documents, especially when they advocate the errors of the modernists that is, the synthesis of all heresies.
Wherefore we again and most earnestly exhort the ordinaries of the dioceses and the heads of religious congregations to use the utmost vigilance over teachers, and first of all in the seminaries; and should they find any of them imbued with the errors of the modernists and eager for what is new and noxious, or lacking in docility to the prescriptions of the Apostolic See, in whatsoever way published, let them absolutely forbid the teaching office to such; so, too, let them exclude from sacred orders those young men who give the very faintest reason for doubt that they favor condemned doctrines and pernicious novelties. We exhort them also to take diligent care to put an end to those books and other writings, now growing exceedingly numerous, which contain opinions or tendencies of the kind condemned in the encyclical letters and decree above mentioned; let them see to it that these publications are removed from Catholic publishing houses, and especially from the hands of students and the clergy. By doing this they will at the same time be promoting real and solid education, which should always be a subject of the greatest solicitude for those who exercise sacred authority.
All these things we will and order to be sanctioned and established by our apostolic authority, aught to the contrary notwithstanding. (Pope Saint Pius X, Praestantia Scripturae, November 18, 1907.)
I hold with certainty and I sincerely confess that faith is not a blind inclination of religion welling up from the depth of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the inclination of a morally conditioned will, but is the genuine assent of the intellect to a truth that is received from outside by hearing. In this assent, given on the authority of the all-truthful God, we hold to be true what has been said, attested to, and revealed, by the personal God, our creator and Lord.” (Pope Saint Pius X, The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910.)
“Some hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. […] It is evident from what We have already said, that such efforts not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it.” (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)
Vincenzo Paglia, it is clear that you have no shame, that you consider yourself above that “no church” that held truth infallibly and declared it with absolute certainty.
It gets worse as Vincenzo Paglia used the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s false teaching on the death penalty as an example of theological evolutionism:
Paglia cited Pope Francis’ well documented attack on the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty as an example of apparent change in the Church’s practice:
Think, for example, of what happened on the issue of the death penalty: because of the change in cultural and social conditions, because of the maturation of reflection on rights, the Pope modified the catechism. Whereas before we did not exclude that there were circumstances for which it could be legitimized, today we no longer consider it permissible, under any circumstances. (Abp. Paglia defends assisted suicide as 'greatest common good possible' for dying people.)
Interjection Number Four:
The right of the civil state to impose the death penalty upon those adjudged guilty of the commission of heinous crimes following the discharge of the due process of law (arrest, indictment, arraignment, trial by a jury of one’s peers, conviction, sentencing, appeals) is simply part of the Natural Law and can no sooner be changed than can the law of gravity. Although the imposition of the death penalty in a particular case can be debate, the fact of its inherent moral liceity is beyond debate. Yet it is that Vincenzo Paglia said that the conciliar sect’s opposition to death penalty can be used as a basis for reexamining legal approaches to euthanasia:
This rationale, said Paglia, should be used when looking at the issue of euthanasia:
As believers, therefore, we ask the same questions that affect everyone, knowing that we are in a pluralistic democratic society. In this case, about the end of (earthly) life, we find ourselves as everyone before a common question: how is it possible to reach (together) the best way to articulate the good (ethical plane) and the just (legal plane), for each person and for society? (Abp. Paglia defends assisted suicide as 'greatest common good possible' for dying people.)
Interjection Number Five:
The existence of a pluralistic democracy society does not negate the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law or the Natural Law. Quite indeed, Holy Mother Church has a positive obligation to speak out in opposition to all that is repugnant to Faith and Morals and to be absolutely unyielding in her refusal to act in any way other than the line traced out by Silvio Cardinal Antoniano in the latter part of the Sixteenth Century in a perfect expression of Holy Mother Church’s consistent teaching on the illicit nature of that which is repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity:
The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)
You see, the problem with Paglia is this: he does not believe that assisted suicide is opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. He believes that civil legislation permitting it is an actual “good” as it can be used to “regulate” the practice of self-annihilation, overlooking the fact that that human beings, whether acting individually or together with others in the institutions of civil governance to contravene the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.
Paglia even went so far as to say that “human freedom” is always relative to others” even though we are only morally free to act in accordance with God’s eternal laws, which are never relative to anything whatsoever;
‘Accompaniment’ could require assisted suicide
Highlighting “human freedom” in decision making as being “always relative (to others),” Paglia stated that “regarding decisions about dying, this does not mean returning to the old medical paternalism, but rather emphasizing an interpretation of relational and responsible autonomy.”
He warned that countries which have allowed assisted suicide demonstrate how the “pool of people” legally allowed to kill themselves “tends to expand.” “Cases of involuntary euthanasia and deep palliative sedation without consent have thus grown,” said Paglia.
However, despite acknowledging the documented results of euthanasia laws, Paglia defended the permissibility of such laws, by appealing to Pope Francis’ theme of “accompaniment.”
In the time when death is approaching, I believe that the main response is that of accompaniment. And the first step to accompaniment is to listen to the questions, often very uncomfortable, that arise at this most delicate stage.
The question of assisted suicide “is a question with many implications, in which several factors play regarding guilt, shame, pain, control, helplessness,” said the Vatican archbishop. “The interplay of projections between the sick person and the caregiver is very intricate: distinguishing between ‘he suffers too much’ and ‘I suffer too much to see him like this’ is not at all easy, just as it is very demanding to take seriously the demand for a relationship that helps to live with the radical loneliness of dying.”
As a result of this “accompaniment,” Paglia stated that legal euthanasia could be an option, in order to support people in the “limitation, separation and passage of death.” (Abp. Paglia defends assisted suicide as 'greatest common good possible' for dying people.)
Interjection Number Six:
A Catholic priest is supposed to help souls bear their suffering with courage, gratitude, and love for the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity and to make reparation for their own sins. Although it is certainly true that a patient may ask for and receive analgesics to alleviate excruciating pain, it is morally impermissible for a Catholic priest to give any kind of consent to that which robs a person of his consciousness and then his death by the of a series of drugs designed to expedite or, in the case of “assisted suicide,” kills the patient as its directly intended end. The morality of act is determined by its nature and its end and is never morally permissible to undertake any action that directly intends to end an innocent human life. No amount of sentimental pleas from a patient, his family nor any amount of pressure from physicians, nurses or anyone else can make that which is in se impermissible permissible, and, perhaps most importantly, no amount of public support can make that which is evil a matter of the “public good” to be enshrined as part of the civil law.
Our Lady stands with us in every moment of our lives, and she will stand with us at the end of our lives if we beg for her intercession now as well as to ask her to send us the graces to accept death as a punishment for Original Sin and our particular deaths as the means to expiate the debt that we owe for our forgiven Mortal Sins, our unforgiven Venial Sins, and our attachment to sin and to the things of this world. We need to have Our Lady accompany us now, and at the hour of our death, not subject ourselves to the conciliarists’ falsehood of “accompaniment which is nothing other than being accomplices in moral crimes against the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, and it also vital to remember that Saint Joseph is the Patron of the Dying. His own peaceful surrender to death in the company of His Most Chase Spouse, Our Lady, and His Foster Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, should give comfort to us all and inspire us always to invoke the intercession and patronage of Saint Joseph for a good, happy, and sacramentally provided for death.
Vincenzo Paglia intends to “accompany” human beings in the act of their self-annihilation and thus self as an accessory to the moral crimes of others. Or perhaps it is the case that Vincenzo Paglia believes that the nine ways by which one can an accessory to the sins of others have “evolved” themselves out of existence?
For the rest of us, though, we understand that Catholics can be accessories in the sins of others as follows:
- 1. By counsel.
- 2. By command.
- 3. By consent.
- 7. By connivance.
- 8. By partaking.
- 4. By provocation.
- 5. By praise or flattery of the evil done.
- 6. By silence.
- 9. By defense of the ill done.
There is nothing within the Sacred Deposit of Faith that is beyond the capacity of the conciliar revolutionaries to undermine, negate, or overthrow in the name of “accompaniment,” “mercy,” and a “return to the Gospel.” All truth, whether on the natural or supernatural levels, can be “finessed” or “nuanced” by having recourse to a subjectivism that is nothing other than moral relativism writ large, something that is very clear in the final part of the report I have been analyzing:
In this context, it is not to be ruled out that in our society a legal mediation is feasible that would allow assistance to suicide under the conditions specified by Constitutional Court Sentence 242/2019: the person must be ‘kept alive by life-support treatments and affected by an irreversible pathology, source of physical or psychological suffering that she considers intolerable, but fully capable of making free and conscious decisions.’ The bill passed by the House of Representatives (but not the Senate) basically went along these lines.
Personally, I would not practice suicide assistance, but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in. (Abp. Paglia defends assisted suicide as 'greatest common good possible' for dying people.)
In other words, Vincenzo Paglia believes that Italy’s “assisted suicide” can help to “regulate” an entirely illicit practice so as to prevent “abuses” even though the practice itself is offensive to God, injurious to a just social order, and deadly to the persons involved. This is sort of like saying that there needs to be a law permitted “assisted theft” so that people cannot steal as much as they would want to do if theft was not properly regulated. The whole “reasoning” is absurd as it is based on a concession that that which is illicit can be licit to pursue given the subjective circumstances in which people find themselves, and the attempt by the “Pontifical” Academy for Life to ”clarify” Paglia’s remarks did nothing but to leave the impression that the Italian law permitting assisted suicide is a legal “mediation” when it is nothing other than another assault on the inviolability of all innocent human life from conception thereafter. (See Appendices B and C, below, for a reminder of how Vincenzo Paglia found "nuance" in the tragic case of Charlie Gard six years ago and a reminder of how, in 2019, he justified the administration of vaccines derived from the stem cells of butchered babies. Paglia is an enemy of moral truth and thus of the souls redeemed by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood.)
Whatever conciliarism is, it is not Catholicism as it is based on a rejection of Holy Mother Church’s authentic magisterial teaching in favor of an “experiential-based” subjectivism that insists upon listening to the “community” rather than insisting upon obedience to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who has spoken to us through the infallible voice of His Holy Church, she who can more contradict herself than He can, God is immutable.
The father of Saints Gervase and Protase, Saint Vitalis, whose feast is commemorated today, Friday, April 28, 2023, the Feast of Saint Paul of the Cross (and in some places the Feast of Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort and the Feast of Saint Peter Chanel), urged a physician named Ursicinus on to martyrdom by reminding him that he had been used to healing men’s bodies should take heed to remain courageous lest he die eternally:
Vitalis was a soldier, and the father of the holy Martyrs Gervase and Protase. He went to Ravenna with Paulinus the judge, and there saw the physician Ursicinus led out to die, because he owned to being a believer in Christ. As the torments went on, Ursicinus seemed to waver a little, and Vitalis cried out to him, Ursicinus! as a physician thou hast been used to heal other men's bodies, take heed lest thou let thine own soul die eternally. These words encouraged Ursicinus, and he endured bravely in his testimony even unto the end but Paulinus was filled with fury, and caused Vitalis to be seized, tormented on the rack, and finally thrown into a pit and buried under an heap of stones. When it was over, a certain priest of Apollo, who had urged on Paulinus against Vitalis, was seized by the devil, and began to cry out, Vitalis, Vitalis, thou art Christ's Martyr, but thou makest me to burn, thou makest me to burn! Until in that frenzy, he threw himself into the river. (Matins, Feast of Saint Paul of the Cross and Commemoration of Saint Vitalis, April 28.)
Many physicians today kill innocent beings in the womb, and they kill them by means of direct euthanasia, by starving and dehydrating them to death, under the aegis of the medical industry’s manufactured money-making myth of “brain death” in engage in human organ vivisection, by “palliative care,” and by “assisted suicide,” and they are doing so with the full support of men such as Vincenzo Paglia, who cares not for the true good of human bodies or, much more importantly, the souls that have been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.
Vincenzo Paglia is a one man wrecking ball of Catholic Faith and Morals and he said last year that what is “dissent” one year can become “doctrine” the next:
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Pontifical Academy for Life has defended its recent book promoting contraception, writing on Twitter that theology requires “progress” as part of a natural process.
The Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) recently published a book, Theological Ethics of Life. Scripture, Tradition, Practical Challenges, which is a collection of essays taken from a three-day interdisciplinary seminar sponsored by the PAV. LifeSiteNews reported on the text, noting how the book advocates for contraception and artificial insemination as if the topics are open topics for discussion, instead of having already been condemned by the Church.
After LifeSite’s article was shared on Twitter, the PAV responded to the criticism which users of the social media site were making of the book, writing that there was “No deviation [from Church’s teaching] but debate and dialogue, as the Church always suggests – ‘quaestiones disputatae’ method!”
The PAV faced further criticism, however, with user Gary Paul Hermit writing that “to suggest that settled matters are up for ‘debate and dialogue’ IS deviation.” He urged the PAV to “condemn dissent,” saying that “the only dialogue” which the Church should have with a racist individual “would be to correct his error and invite conversation.”
In response the PAV wrote: “Be careful: what is dissent today, can change.”
“It is not relativism, it is the dynamics of the understanding of phenomena and science: the Sun does not rotate around the Earth,” continued the Academy. “Otherwise there would be no progress and everything would stand still. Even in theology. Think about it.”
The PAV’s message was swiftly ridiculed as a “word salad” online, with a senior editor for the National Catholic Register Jonathan Liedl writing: “A Vatican organ lazily comparing Humane Vitae to geocentricism in order to undermine decades of post-conciliar teaching on sexual ethics.”
Leila Marie Lawler, author of The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life, described the PAV’s response as a “mishmash.”
The PAV is no stranger to controversy regarding the Catholic Church’s moral teaching. Its president, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, issued a call in 2019 for the PAV to “widen its scope of reflection” and said that Pope Francis warned the PAV “that it is risky to look at human life in a way that detaches it from experience and reduces it to biology or to an abstract universal, separated from relationships and history.” (Pontifical Academy for Life defends new book supporting contraception: ‘What is dissent today, can change’.)
Despite all their gratuitous assertions to the contrary, men such as Vincenzo Paglia and his fellow Bergoglian hand-picked appointees to the so-called Pontifical Academy for Life are moral relativists and pantheists who believe in basing moral precepts not on what is objectively true in the nature of things and/or has been taught infallibly and immutably by Holy Mother Church, Who teaches only what she has received from her Divine Founder, Invisible Head, and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, but on the basis of the life “experiences” of people who have no intention of showing forth their love of God by obeying His Commandments. Paglia and his band of pantheists believe that moral precepts are established by community behavior and not “imposed” by ultimate authority other than what they believe is the “informed” consciences of individuals, who are said to be “mature” enough to decide for themselves what they can do after considering all other factors. This is a sure path to hell as it makes the individual conscience, which is easily misinformed by one’s own desires and habits of sins, paramount over God Himself, Who must be, perforce reduced into nothing other than a projection of one’s warped imagination to reaffirm oneself in one’s sins.
The Bergoglio-Paglia approach to what should be called a theology of immorality is not even the old proportionalism of the late Father Richard McCormick, S.J. (not to be confused with the late heretic Father Richard McBrien, a priest of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut) as McCormick presume that there were objective norms of morality but that they did not apply if a preponderance of “good motives” and supposedly mitigating circumstances could make an otherwise illicit act into a morally licit one to pursue. However much he negated the application of objective moral truth in the practical realm, Father Richard McCormick admitted, at least admitted in a broad theoretical sense, perhaps to avoid further censure for being a moral relativist, that that there were such truths.
Furthermore, the belief that “today’s dissent” is tomorrow’s orthodoxy is without any foundation in the history of the Catholic Church, something that even the conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith itself noted in a 1976 document concerning the immutable nature of sexual ethics that had come under attack by various theologians who were, as we know now, being used by the forces of hell to prepare the way for the coming of the likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and those who are likely to follow him in the conciliar seat apostasy barring a direct intervention from Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself
Hence, those many people are in error who today assert that one can find neither in human nature nor in the revealed law any absolute and immutable norm to serve for particular actions other than the one which expresses itself in the general law of charity and respect for human dignity. As a proof of their assertion they put forward the view that so-called norms of the natural law or precepts of Sacred Scripture are to be regarded only as given expressions of a form of particular culture at a certain moment of history.
But in fact, Divine Revelation and, in its own proper order, philosophical wisdom, emphasize the authentic exigencies of human nature. They thereby necessarily manifest the existence of immutable laws inscribed in the constitutive elements of human nature and which are revealed to be identical in all beings endowed with reason.
Furthermore, Christ instituted His Church as "the pillar and bulwark of truth."[6] With the Holy Spirit's assistance, she ceaselessly preserves and transmits without error the truths of the moral order, and she authentically interprets not only the revealed positive law but "also . . . those principles of the moral order which have their origin in human nature itself"[7] and which concern man's full development and sanctification. Now in fact the Church throughout her history has always considered a certain number of precepts of the natural law as having an absolute and immutable value, and in their transgression she has seen a contradiction of the teaching and spirit of the Gospel.
Since sexual ethics concern fundamental values of human and Christian life, this general teaching equally applies to sexual ethics. In this domain there exist principles and norms which the Church has always unhesitatingly transmitted as part of her teaching, however much the opinions and morals of the world may have been opposed to them. These principles and norms in no way owe their origin to a certain type of culture, but rather to knowledge of the Divine Law and of human nature. They therefore cannot be considered as having become out of date or doubtful under the pretext that a new cultural situation has arisen. (Persona Humana, December 29, 1975.)
To be sure, Persona Humana was a document of the conciliar church, which means that there were drops of error here and there, especially as concerns homosexuality, which it condemned while attempting to extend a palm branch to those engaged in “transitory” acts. Nonetheless, however, its text reaffirmed in the immutable nature of moral truths, something that has long been attacked by Modernists and has received “papal” currency during in the past nine years, four months, five days, since Jorge Mario Bergoglio appeared on the balcony of the Basilica of Saint Peter. Indeed, the new document produced by the so-called Pontifical Academy for Life states that a “plurality” of “diversity” of theological views can vitiate an adherence to norms which its authors do not believe are immutable of their very nature, which, of course, is to deny the immutability of God, Who is Himself immutable.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Vincenzo Paglia really do believe that “past teaching” on morality becomes “outdated” and thus must be conformed to the way in which the people live their lives even though the truth of the matter is that we must conform ourselves to the law of God and to the teaching of Holy Mother Church, who teaches us authoritatively and infallibly in His Holy Name.
No one, however, should be in the least bit surprised about the bold manner in which the Catholic moral teaching is under attack by Bergoglio’s handpicked members of the Pontifical Academy on Life as it is very easy to attack the immutability moral teaching once one admits that matter of Catholic doctrine, including the very Divine Constitution of Holy Mother Church, are subject to reevaluation according to the philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned principles that have gone by the titles of “living tradition” and/or the “hermeneutic of continuity.” Dogmatic evolutionism leads to moral evolutionism just as surely as it leads also to liturgical evolutionism and, ultimately, to the triumph of the pantheistic spirit of subjectivism, which will lead Vincenzo Paglia and/or those who succeed him to suggest “accompanying” women right through the doors of abortuaries to “comfort them as they murder their innocent preborn children. That is where this all leads. Mark my words here and now.
Thus, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Vincenzo Paglia do not believe that there any other moral truths that exist independently of human acceptance of them, contending that “abstract” truths that do not relate to the lived experience of human beings are irrelevant to the decisions undertaken by an “informed” conscience. This experiential, subjectivist mode of rationalizing grave sins, usually against the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Commandments, is pure Modernism.
The conciliar revolutionaries support the medical industry’s manufactured, profit-making myth of “brain death” for purposes of vital organ vivisection and they support “palliative care,” which is “euthanasia in fact if not in name. This ought to give those fully Catholic clergy who have long supported these evils and have encouraged their parishioners to act accordingly a bit of pause as it is generally not a good thing to be on the same side as those who are eager to use a variety of purely utilitarian reasons to negate the plain words of the Fifth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”
These antipapal agents of anti-Catholic teaching are in league with the adversary, who is using the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church, the conciliar sect, to mock Holy Mother Church, to discourage the faithful, and to drive as many as possible in the waiting arms of Protestant sects and of the ranks of complete disbelief. While we must pray to Our Lady for their conversion, we must always recognize that none of this can come from the Catholic Church, she who is the spotless mystical bride of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head, and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Our Lady will come to vanquish the conciliar revolutionaries, and to this end we must use the weapon of her Most Holy Rosary which Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort used so successfully to soften the hardened hearts of Jansenists and to spread True Devotion to Mary by means of total consecration to her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.
May we beg Our Lady through her Most Holy Rosary to vanquish the enemies of our own salvation within our lives so that we may be better able to witness to Divine truth in this life and then to enjoy the rewards for remaining faithful until the end by means of the graces she sends to us to follow her Divine Son at all times and in all things as He has entrusted Himself exclusively to His Catholic Church.
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
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.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Saint Paul of the Cross, pray for us.
Saint Vitalis, pray for us.
Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort, pray for us.
Saint Peter Chanel, pray for us.
Appendix A
From the Divine Office on the Feast of Saint Paul of the Cross
Paul of the Cross was sprung of a noble family of the Danei, at Castellazzo, hard by Alessandria, in the Province of Acqui, in the territory of the then Republic of Genoa, but was born at Ovada, in the same province. The holiness with which he was afterwards to shine was foreshown by a strange light which filled his mother's chamber while she was in labour, and by the remarkable help which was bestowed upon him by the great Queen of Heaven, who delivered him unhurt from certain destruction when he was fallen into a river as a lad. From the first use of reason he burnt with love for Jesus crucified, and began to spend long times in contemplating Him. He chastised his innocent flesh with watching, scourging, fasting, and all severe hardships, and on Friday he drank vinegar mingled with gall. He was seized with a desire for martyrdom, and enlisted in the army which was being raised at Venice to fight against the Turks but in consequence of the Will of God, made known to him while he was in prayer, he left the army in order to serve in a more exalted regiment whose duty it should be to defend the Church and to toil for the eternal salvation of men. When he returned home he refused a very honourable marriage, and also the inheritance which was bequeathed to him by his father's brother, and would fain enter upon a straiter way of the cross and be clad by his own Bishop with a rough tunic. By command of the Bishop, on account of his eminent holiness of life and knowledge of the things of God, he began, even before he became a clerk, to toil in the Lord's field with great profit of souls by preaching the Word.
He betook himself to Rome, and when he had there studied a regular course of theology he was ordained Priest in obedience to the command of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XIII., who also gave him permission to gather comrades around him. He withdrew to the solitude of Mount Argentaro, whither he had been already called by the Blessed Virgin, at which same time she also showed him in vision a black habit marked with the emblems of the sufferings of her Son. At Mount Argentaro, he laid the foundations of his new Congregation, which under the blessing of God grew quickly, through the labors of Paul, and attracted to it eminent men. It received the confirmation of the Apostolic See more than once, with the rules which Paul himself had received from God in prayer and the addition of a fourth vow, that, namely, to promote the blessed remembrance of the sufferings of the Lord. He founded a congregation of holy virgins also, who should dwell constantly upon the overflowing love of the Divine Bridegroom. Amid all these works his untiring love for souls caused him never to weary in the preaching of the Gospel, and he led into the path of salvation men almost countless, among whom were some of the most lost, or those who had fallen into heresy. The greatest and most wonderful power of his preaching was how he told of the sufferings of Christ, so that he himself and his hearers would alike burst into tears, and hardened hearts were cloven by repentance.
The fire of the love of God burnt so in his heart that the part of his under-garment which was next thereto often presented the appearance of having been scorched, and two of his ribs seemed to be raised. He could not withhold his tears, more especially when he was saying Mass, and when he was in a state of trance, as oftentimes befell, his body was sometimes seen to be raised into the air, and his face to shine as with light from heaven. Sometimes when he was preaching a heavenly voice was heard prompting him, or his words became audible at the distance of several miles. He was eminent for the gifts of prophecy, of speaking with tongues, of reading the heart, and of power over evil spirits, over diseases, and over the inanimate elements of nature. The Supreme Pontiffs themselves regarded him as dear and venerable, but he held himself to be but an unprofitable servant, and a sinful wretch upon whom devils might well trample. He held to the bitter hardships of his life, even unto a great age, and passed to heaven from Rome, (upon the 18th day of October,) being the day which he had himself foretold, in the year 1775, after he had addressed to his disciples noble exhortations which are as the heritage of his spirit, and had been comforted by the sacraments of the Church, and by an heavenly vision. The Supreme Pontiff Pius IX. numbered his name among those of the blessed, and then, after renewed signs and wonders, among those of the Saints. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Paul of the Cross, April 28.)
Appendix B
Vincenzo Paglia on Vaccines Derived from Aborted Babies [2019] and Charlie Gard [2017]
All that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing is to take full advantage of “Saint John Paul II’s” living tradition by fully embracing “brain death” and “palliative care” as positions of the “Pontifical” Academy for Life. After all, why should any conciliar “pope,” including Bergoglio, having any more respect for the teaching of Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II than the latter had, say for Pope Saint Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, or The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910, or for Pope Pius XI’s defense of the Social Reign of Christ the King in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, and his condemnation of false ecumenism in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928?
It should come as no surprise that parents of children who attend Assumption Academy in Walton, Kentucky, which is administered by the Society of Saint Pius X, are being undercut by Vincenzo Paglia’s Antipapal Academy for Death, which says that there is no moral objection to having their son vaccinated with a vaccine derived from the cells of butchered babies:
VATICAN CITY, March 26, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — In a stunning declaration, the Pontifical Academy for Life — now populated entirely with Pope Francis appointments — has urged parents to vaccinate their children, even if the vaccines are derived from aborted babies.
The issue made national headlines this month when a Catholic family sued a local health department after it placed severe restrictions on school attendance and extracurricular activities of students at Assumption Academy in Walton, Kentucky, following an outbreak of chickenpox at the school.
Many Catholic families choose not to vaccinate their children against certain childhood diseases such as measles and chickenpox because the only vaccines available are derived from the cells of babies aborted in the 1960s.
In the middle of the controversy, the Pontifical Academy of Life chimed in, siding not with the conscientious Catholic parents and students, but with the health department officials for whom the abortion-derived vaccines present no moral dilemma.
The newly constituted Pontifical Academy of Life (PAV) — from which Pope Francis ejected all members appointed by Pope St. John Paul II and inserted his own appointees, with controversial Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia serving as the body’s head — said that “the cell lines currently in use are very distant from the original abortions and no longer imply that bond of moral cooperation indispensable for an ethically negative evaluation of their use.”
here is a “moral obligation to guarantee the vaccination coverage necessary for the safety of others,” added the PAV in its 2017 statement.
“An appropriate and necessary response”
The Kunkel parents, upon discovering the truth about the origins of the vaccines, chose not to have the chickenpox vaccine administered to their son, Jerome.
Now an 18-year-old senior, Jerome plays center for the school’s basketball team but has been prevented from finishing out the season as result of the Northern Kentucky (NKY) Health Department’s directive.
The ban pits the religious liberty of the Kunkels and other Catholic families who conscientiously object against what the NKY Health Department says is the common good.
“Chickenpox, also known as varicella, can be a very serious illness that is especially dangerous for infants and pregnant women or anyone who has a weakened immune system,” declared the the NKY Health Department in an online statement. “The recent actions taken by the Northern Kentucky Health Department regarding the chickenpox outbreak at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart/Assumption Academy was in direct response to a public health threat and was an appropriate and necessary response to prevent further spread of this contagious illness.”
“The chickenpox vaccine is the best way to prevent becoming ill and spreading the varicella virus,” concludes the NKY Health Department, which advised Assumption Academy parents in a series of letters about the outbreak.
Parents were told, “All students without proof of vaccination or proof of immunity against chickenpox will not be allowed to attend school until 21 days after the onset of rash for the last ill student or staff member.”
Discrimination against Catholics living their faith
Despite the dangers inherent in rejecting the vaccine, its origin remains highly problematic — if not anathema — for Catholics who view abortion of unborn infants as murder. The fact that those murders occurred over fifty years ago does not ameliorate their violence and horror.
erome says the ban discriminates against him because of his religious beliefs.
“The fact that I can’t finish my senior year of basketball ... is pretty devastating,” said Jerome. “I mean, you go through four years of high school playing basketball, you look forward to your senior year.”
His father, Bill, went further and told The Washington Post, “This is tyranny against our religion, our faith, our country.”
“I don’t believe in that vaccine at all,” said the elder Kunkel in a WLWT5 TV interview, “and they’re trying to push it on us.”
“The chickenpox vaccine is derived from aborted fetuses,” continued Kunkel, adding, “as Christians, we’re against abortions.”
The new Pontifical Academy of Life delivers muddied message, defies Catholic consciences
The PAV’s newly stated position represents a subtle shift in support of aborted fetal vaccines.
In 2005, the PAV issued a statement that went to great lengths to describe the various levels of evil associated with the development, production, and marketing of such vaccines, while also addressing the culpability of doctors and parents.
The PAV said at that time that cooperation with the moral evil involved is “more intense on the part of the authorities and national health systems that accept the use of the vaccines” than it is on the part of doctors who administer the vaccines and the parents who choose to inoculate their children using the tainted vaccines because no other option exists.
While the PAV’s 2005 statement acknowledged the “moral coercion of the conscience of parents, who are forced to choose to act against their conscience or otherwise, to put the health of their children and of the population as a whole at risk,” the 2017 statement by the Academy essentially erases the role of conscience for parents, instead declaring a moral obligation to use the vaccines derived from aborted children.
As we have seen on many other questions, the reconstituted PAV backslides into positions that no longer reinforce the conscience protections Catholic parents, and Catholics in general seek in order to live their lives in faith and trust in Christ,” said Judie Brown, American Life League president, in a statement to LifeSiteNews. “The new PAV position on vaccinations for children is more of the same.”
So not only are the consciences of the Catholic families of Walton Kentucky’s Assumption Academy pitted against their local health department, but they find themselves in opposition to the relaxed attitudes and standards of Francis’s Pontifical Academy of Life.
Pope Francis’s Pontifical Academy of Life: Tacit approval of aborted fetal vaccines
Debi Vinnedge, the founder of Children of God for Life, recently told LifeSiteNews’s Rome Correspondent, Diane Montagna, “There is a huge market worth billions of dollars due to the creation of patents, sale of the cell lines by companies that actually store and resell aborted fetal material.”
Research and vaccine production is filling the pockets of “universities, biotech companies, the pharmaceutical industry and of course, Planned Parenthood who was caught in an undercover sting discussing how they ensure obtaining intact organs for sale.”
“The tacit approval of using the aborted fetal vaccines when there is no alternative is a major roadblock to making any progress to stop this injustice,” said Vinnedge. “Until our physicians and clergy leaders unite worldwide demanding the moral alternatives, the pharmaceutical industry is not going to change. In fact, as history and the current trends are proving, it’s only going to get worse.”
Christopher Ferrara, author and head of the American Catholic Lawyers’ Association, said in 2017 that Pope Francis “demolished John Paul II’s Pontifical Academy for Life by sacking every one of its members and having its new president, the ‘pro-gay’ Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, draw up new statutes for the Academy.”
“Bear in mind that Pope [Francis] has abolished the pro-life oath formerly taken by members of the Academy,” he added. (Parents Must Vaccinate Even if Vaccines Come From Aborted Babies.)
This is all about the money and control
Forget all the relativist, rationalist, subjectivist rhetoric of “women’s rights” and “reproductive freedom.”
Contraception and surgical abortion are all about the money, blood money to be accurate.
Planned Barrennhood is now and has always been about the money, a point that is made in a documentary, “Unplanned,” that is debuting this week in motion picture theaters. Although I do not go to movies—and have done only for three movies (Therese, which was disappointing, The Passion of the Christ and, of course, For Greater Glory) the past twenty years—and will not do so during Lent, it is my understanding that “Unplanned” is a powerful statement against Planned Barrennhood in very graphic terms, although I never underestimate the public’s ability to ignore truth even on the natural level and/or to be unmoved by it.
The pharmaceutical industry is not about “making us healthy.” It is about the money, which it makes in bundles and bundles by convincing physicians and hospitals to purchase their wares that are filled with poisons and are approved for marketing without proper safeguards and with built-in profit-margins that contain budget amounts for payouts as they expect a certain percentage of patients to die from their use.
Big Agriculture is not about supplying us with healthy food. It is about the money, which is why they have pushed most small farmers out of business and why they are so heavily invested in gene-editing, the manipulation of seeds and thus of the productive of genetically modified food products that their bought-and-paid-for agents in the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Food and Drug Administration and White House and Congressional staffers, congressmen, senators, governors, state legislators and the advertising industry. (This same relationship, of course, exists between Big Pharma and the same government bureaucrats, media conglomerates, elected officials and their appointees.)
The medical industry, working in conjunction with the insurance industry, is all about the money. Patients are milked for everything covered by their insurance policies, at which point most patients, many of whom are made more sick by the drugs they are administered by medical “professionals, are either consigned to burdensome debts that they pay never be able to pay off during their lifetimes or are said to be candidates for “palliative” care because of a what a team of “professionals” considers to be “quality of life” considerations that makes their being dispatched more “cost-effective” over time. (See Chronicling the Adversary's Global Takeover of the Healthcare Industry.) [As excerpted from: Antipapal Appointees Always Advance Antichrist’s Anti-Catholic Agenda.]
Dr. Paul Byrne summarized the matter very clearly in a statement he issued on Saturday, July 1, 2017, the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus and the Octave Day of the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, before the commendable intervention of President Donald John Trump in behalf of Charlie Gard and his parents:
Parents with doctors and clergy ought to protect and preserve his life. When treatment is not apparent, extraordinary means and experimental treatments are used by doctors with request from and in accord with parents.
The case of Charlie Gard is entirely without any kind of nuance. Leave it, therefore, to the likes of “Archbishop” Vincent Paglia, whose support for all manner of moral evils was explored most recently in Attack Dogmatic Truth, Open the Doors Wide for George Soros, to find nuance when none exists.
As is well-known by now, Paglia issued a statement about Charlie Gard on behalf of the “Pontifical” Academy for Life that has been eviscerated by many “conservative” and traditionally-minded Catholics who are attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of concilarism in the mistaken belief that they represent the Catholic Church, she who is the spotless, mystical spouse of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and who enjoys a perpetual immunity from error and heresy, that accepts the nonexistent authority of the European Union’s court to hold a sentence of death upon an innocent child:
The matter of the English baby Charlie Gard and his parents has meant both pain and hope for all of us. We feel close to him, to his mother, his father, and all those who have cared for him and struggled together with him until now. For them, and for those who are called to decide their future, we raise to the Lord of Life our prayers, knowing that “in the Lord our labor will not be in vain.” (1 Cor. 15:58) (Paglia Statement About Charlie Gard.)
Brief Interjection Number One:
“For them, and for those who are called to decide their future”?
Vincenzo Paglia thus accepts uncritically the right of physicians, hospital administrators and judges, among other potentates of the civil state, to “decide the future” for innocent children and their parents.
Decide their future?
To acknowledge the nonexistent “right” of mere mortals, whether acting on their own and/or under the cover of the civil law, to “decide the future” of innocent human beings who are simply in need of care and love as befits redeemed creatures who loved and cared for by the infinite love of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and who are close to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is draconian. There has been a complete surrender of the conciliar revolutionaries to the anti-life agenda of the civil state.
Remember, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he who waxes on and on and on so emphatically about the necessity of “protecting the environment” and doing more to “prevent climate change” and assuring “open borders” that deny the legitimate sovereignty of nations, has said not one word about the act passed by the Belgian Parliament on February 13, 2014, that permits child euthanasia up to the age of eighteen in certain cases:
BRUSSELS, February 13, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Belgium has become the first country in the world to approve euthanasia for children of all ages after the country’s parliamentarians passed the controversial bill today in a vote of 86 to 44, with 12 MPs abstaining.
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, called the move a “form of abandonment.”
“Belgium has abandoned the elderly, and now they are saying they will abandon their children,” he told LifeSiteNews.
Schadenberg said the new law is not about ending suffering for children with disabilities, but about expanding the “categories that are eligible for death.”
The bill was first introduced in December 2012.
The law extends to those under the age of 18 who request euthanasia with parental consent. It also applies to younger children requesting euthanasia after a doctor has certified that the child fully understands the implications of the decision.
“This is the horrific logic of euthanasia: Once killing is accepted as an answer to human difficulty and suffering, the power of sheer logic dictates that there is no bottom,” wrote Wesley J. Smith about the law.
The proposed law had been protested by a number of groups that said the existing 2002 euthanasia legislation has been an unmitigated disaster.
Schadenberg said he was not surprised to see the bill pass, since he said the entire euthanasia project in Belgium is being “pushed blindly” by a government that has ignored all the abuses currently taking place within existing euthanasia laws.
“Euthanasia has been really out of control in Belgium for quite some time. We know from studies that about 32 percent of euthanasia deaths go without requests. Over half of euthanasia deaths are not reported,” he said.
Schadenberg said the new law will only make it easier for doctors to indiscriminately and without repercussion end the lives of the most vulnerable deemed unfit to live. (Belgium Parliament passes law allowing children to be euthanized.)
Jorge Mario Bergoglio remains silent about these and other moral outrages as goes about his destructive business as a Modernist so very merrily, denouncing those who adhere to Catholic teaching while enabling those who live lives of unrepentant sin, waxing on and on about “the poor” and the need to “save the environment.” He is a pagan, not the Vicar of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Jorge has got lots to say about those things that concern him. He has nothing to say about the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance or for the Spiritual Works of Mercy.
The likes of Bergoglio and henchmen such as Vincenzo Paglia are all too willing to concede the legitimacy of the Judeo-Masonic European Union, which is Modernity’s answer to the Holy Roman Empire, and of national laws that require parents to surrender their Natural Law rights over the welfare of their children to the “experts” who know better. . . .
“Decide their future”?
There is nothing for human beings to “decide” in the case of Charlie Gard. There is only love to be given unto him as his parents attempt to seek experimental treatments that carry a ten percent chance of success. No one has the right to “decide” that Chris Gard and Connie Yates cannot do so. A mere mortal can never judge the “quality” of an innocent life and then consign a person to death according to his own subjective judgment, which favors the execution of those in conditions such as Charlie Gard’s.
To the next excerpt from Vincenzo Paglia’s statement:
The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales issued a statement today that recognizes above all the complexity of the situation, the heartrending pain of the parents, and the efforts of so many to determine what is best for Charlie. The Bishops’ statement also reaffirms that “we should never act with the deliberate intention to end a human life, including the removal of nutrition and hydration, so that death might be achieved” but that “we do, sometimes, however, have to recognize the limitations of what can be done, while always acting humanely in the service of the sick person until the time of natural death occurs.” (Paglia Statement About Charlie Gard.)
Brief Interjection Number Two:
A court-imposed death sentence that hovers over Charlie Gard and has caused his parents so much anguish will, if carried out, subject this innocent child to a very unnatural death.
Furthermore, the only “limitations” upon Charlie Gard’s care are being imposed by the authorities at Great Ormond Hospital, “Mister Justice Francis,” and the high court of the European Union.
Moreover, while there are times when the continuation of a particular course of treatment might be deemed extraordinary, the provision of life support to Charlie Gard is not extraordinary. It is what is demanded in the cases of children who are afflicted with mitochondrial depletion syndrome.
Then again, the haste to kill off Charlie Gard follows only too logically from a mentality that accepts the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn as a “right” and then masks its gruesomely bloody reality under the euphemism of “choice.”
While we are to understand that death, which is our passageway to eternal life or eternal damnation, will come for us all and thus must be prepared for it any moment, we can do nothing cause the death of one who is very much alive. Charlie Gard will suffer a terrible death by means of asphyxiation if “Mister Justice Francis” does not permit him to leave the United Kingdom for experimental treatment here in the United States of America. This is what is in his best interests?
The final part of Paglia’s letter seeks to defend the supposed complexity of the Charlie Gard case by making reference to paragraph sixty-five of Karol Joseph Wojtyla/John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995:
The proper question to be raised in this and in any other unfortunately similar case is this: what are the best interests of the patient? We must do what advances the health of the patient, but we must also accept the limits of medicine and, as stated in paragraph 65 of the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, avoid aggressive medical procedures that are disproportionate to any expected results or excessively burdensome to the patient or the family. Likewise, the wishes of parents must heard and respected, but they too must be helped to understand the unique difficulty of their situation and not be left to face their painful decisions alone. If the relationship between doctor and patient (or parents as in Charlie’s case) is interfered with, everything becomes more difficult and legal action becomes a last resort, with the accompanying risk of ideological or political manipulation, which is always to be avoided, or of media sensationalism, which can be sadly superficial. (Paglia Statement About Charlie Gard.)
Interjection Number Three:
As has been stated just above, it is not in Charlie Gard’s “best interests” to choke him to death.
Secondly, Charlie Gard is not burden to himself or to his parents, who have raised over $1.3 million to provide for his care, including the aforementioned experimental treatments here in the United States of America.
Thirdly, Paglia’s paternalistic, condescending attitude towards Chris Gard and Connie Yates is the typical sort of approach that is used by those immersed in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s and the “Soros Scholars” method of “preparing” relatives to accept a pathway that has only one end: the “expedited” deaths of their relatives according to a “schedule” that best fits their own psychological and emotional readiness. Paglia clearly believes that Charlie Gard’s parents are in denial about their son, making it necessary for the “experts” to talk down to them in a “loving” manner, of course, in order to convince them to “let go” of their son.
Fourthly, Paglia, who is a master of euphemism as befits all revolutionaries, used the terms “political manipulation” and “media sensationalism” to disparage anyone who would contend that there is no kind of nuance in Charlie Gard’s case.
This is the same cheap trick that he used to dismiss criticism of “Pope Francis’s” appointment of two pro-abortion “Soros Scholars” to the “Pontifical” Academy for Life that Paglia heads. Revolutionaries must always disparage “counter-revolutionaries,” which is why Bergoglio himself constantly mocks who see dogmatic and moral truth in clear terms of black-and-white.
Finally, it is nothing other than tragically laughable to find some well-meaning “conservative” and traditionally-minded Catholics within the confines of the conciliar structures seeking to correct Paglia’s misinterpretation and misapplication of paragraph sixty-five of Evangelium Vitae.
As I have noted in other circumstances, why should one conciliar “pope” and his appointees be bound by a fixed interpretation of a predecessor’s words when each of the conciliar “popes” and their appointees feel free dismiss almost everything taught by our true popes and twenty general councils prior to the dawning of the age of conciliarism on October 28, 1958, by having recourse the same kind of dogmatic evolutionism (“living tradition,” “hermeneutic of continuity”) discussed earlier in this commentary? Efforts to use one conciliar “pope” against an earlier conciliar “pope” are truly sad to behold, especially since each of these apostates and figures of Antichrist have contempt for the teachings of their true predecessors.
Vincenzo Paglia is simply a water-boy for the globalist state that is guided by the principles of Judeo-Masonic naturalism, including Marxism, itself.
Believe in dogmatic evolutionism, you see, and one will believe all too readily in moral evolutionism based on pure situation ethics no matter how disguised.
To be sure, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has expressed his “closeness” to Charlie Gard and his parents, and there have been efforts by Vatican authorities to bring Charlie Gard to a Vatican hospital for treatment there. Such efforts are very commendable.
Nonetheless, however, “Pope Francis” has done nothing to criticize a word of one Vincenzo Paglia issued, and it is simply not credible for anyone to contend that Paglia, who is a close ideological ally of the Argentine Apostate, did not clear his statemen with his “pope” in advance of its being released. Paglia’s statement reeks of deference to the anti-life forces at work with the world.
Such deference, though, comes all too naturally to Paglia, something that Mrs. Randy Engel noted in a recent e-mail she distributed by means of her extensive list:
Dear Friends – Is there no end to the anti-life scandals at Pontifical Academy for Life? Or is it Death?
Karolinska Institute is NOT a “Medical University.” It’s a Big Auschwitz for unborn children.
In the selection of its members, the Vatican must also consider the institution that the member represents. In the case of Katarina Le Blanc that institution is the Karolinska Institute – one of the world’s foremost promoters of abortion and abortifacients. The Institute also is involved in non-therapeutic fetal experimentation and the provision of fetal tissues from aborted babies. Its eugenic mind-set is illustrated by its pioneer promotion of human embryo preimplantation diagnosis and in-vitro Fertilization.
Either remove Le Blanc and all the other anti-life characters which infest the “academy” or just shut the growing hell-hole down! Enough is enough!
Randy Engel, U.S. Coalition for Life
http://ki.se/en/research/safe-abortion-saves-womens-lives
http://www.sida.se/English/press/current-topics-archive/2016/abortion/
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/medical-researchers-say-fetal-tissue-remains-essential/
https://openarchive.ki.se/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10616/44523/Thesis_Katarina_Haapaniemi_Kouru.pdf?sequence=7
Mrs. Engel provided a link that contained the following information about Katarina Le Blanc:
The Nuova Bussola Quotidiana writes, that Katarina Le Blanc from the Swedish Karolinska Institutet, who was named on June 13th as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, works with human stem cells derived from aborted children.
In 2013 she published with other authors an article in PLOS ONE on stem cell research based on cells harvested from killed human embryos. The Pontifical Academy for Life declared in 2000, that such research is immoral.
In July 2016 Le Blanc published in Scientific Reports with others a study based on cells taken from the lungs of aborted children, purchased from the abortion-network Planned Parenthood at the price of 45 Dollars a baby. (Katarina Le Blanc: Pro-Abort.)
What needs to be shut down, of course, is the counterfeit church of conciliarism as it is a pretty easy thing to mock the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment after one mocks and defies the binding precepts of the First through Fourth Commandments. Those who praise false religions and who blaspheme God by acts of omission and commission are killers of souls. It is only logical for them to be friends of those who kill bodies.
A false church with false doctrines, false and sacramentally barren liturgical rites and false pastoral practices has helped to devastate one formerly Catholic country after another. This devastation was long in the planning by the adversary, and it has taken over fifty years of careful propagation to prepare the way for what is only the logical public manifestation of what was intended all along: the overthrow of the Catholic Faith in favor of a naturalistic “religion of man” and its “nuanced” option in favor of death.
Jorge has made it impossible for believing Catholics who are still attached to the structures of their false church to "appeal to Rome" about such men as Paglia as the latter is doing precisely what his "pope" wants done. This is simply the convergence of the forces of Modernity in the world and of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. [As excerpted from: Finding Nuance Where There Is No Nuance to be Found.]
Appendix C
Bishop Clemons von Galen's Sermons Against the Nazi Eugenics Laws
We must expect, therefore, that the poor defenceless patients are, sooner or later, going to be killed. Why? Not because they have committed any offence justifying their death, not because, for example, they have attacked a nurse or attendant, who would be entitled in legitimate selfdefence to meet violence with violence. In such a case the use of violence leading to death is permitted and may be called for, as it is in the case of killing an armed enemy.
No: these unfortunate patients are to die, not for some such reason as this but because in the judgment of some official body, on the decision of some committee, they have become “unworthy to live,” because they are classed as “unproductive members of the national community”.
The judgment is that they can no longer produce any goods: they are like an old piece of machinery which no longer works, like an old horse which has become incurably lame, like a cow which no longer gives any milk. What happens to an old piece of machinery? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What happens to a lame horse, an unproductive cow?
I will not pursue the comparison to the end so fearful is its appropriateness and its illuminating power.
But we are not here concerned with pieces of machinery; we are not dealing with horses and cows, whose sole function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for mankind. They may be broken up; they may be slaughtered when they no longer perform this function.
No: We are concerned with men and women, our fellow creatures, our brothers and sisters! Poor human beings, ill human beings, they are unproductive, if you will. But does that mean that they have lost the right to live? Have you, have I, the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognised by others as productive?
If the principle that men is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man is established and applied, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process! If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities as cripples, as invalids! If it is once admitted that men have the right to kill “unproductive” fellow-men even though it is at present applied only to poor and defenceless mentally ill patients” then the way is open for the murder of all unproductive men and women: the incurably ill, the handicapped who are unable to work, those disabled in industry or war. The way is open, indeed, for the murder of all of us when we become old and infirm and therefore unproductive. Then it will require only a secret order to be issued that the procedure which has been tried and tested with the mentally ill should be extended to other “unproductive” persons, that it should also be applied to those suffering from incurable tuberculosis, the aged and infirm, persons disabled in industry, soldiers with disabling injuries!
Then no man will be safe: some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of “unproductive” persons, who in their judgment have become “unworthy to live”. And there will be no police to protect him, no court to avenge his murder and bring his murderers to justice.
Who could then have any confidence in a doctor? He might report a patient as unproductive and then be given instructions to kill him! It does not bear thinking of, the moral depravity, the universal mistrust which will spread even in the bosom of the family, if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, accepted and put into practice. Woe betide mankind, woe betide our German people, if the divine commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”, which the Lord proclaimed on Sinai amid thunder and lightning, which God our Creator wrote into man’s conscience from the beginning, if this commandment is not merely violated but the violation is tolerated and remains unpunished!
I will give you an example of what is happening. One of the patients in Marienthal was a man of 55, a farmer from a country parish in the Münster region – I could give you his name – who has suffered for some years from mental disturbance and was therefore admitted to Marienthal hospital. He was not mentally ill in the full sense: he could receive visits and was always happy, when his relatives came to see him. Only a fortnight ago he was visited by his wife and one of his sons, a soldier on home leave from the front. The son is much attached to his father, and the parting was a sad one:
No one can tell, whether the soldier will return and see his father again, since he may fall in battle for his country. The son, the soldier, will certainly never again see his father on earth, for he has since then been put on the list of the “unproductive“. A relative, who wanted to visit the father this week in Marienthal, was turned away with the information that the patient had been transferred elsewhere on the instructions of the Council of State for National Defence. No information could be given about where he had been sent, but the relatives would be informed within a few days. What information will they be given? The same as in other cases of the kind? That the man has died, that his body has been cremated, that the ashes will be handed over on payment of a fee? Then the soldier, risking his life in the field for his fellow-countrymen, will not see his father again on earth, because fellow- countrymen at home have killed him. The facts I have stated are firmly established. I can give the names of the patient, his wife and his son the soldier, and the place where they live.
“Thou shalt not kill!” God wrote this commandment in the conscience of man long before any penal code laid down the penalty for murder, long before there was any prosecutor or any court to investigate and avenge a murder. Cain, who killed his brother Abel, was a murderer long before there were any states or any courts of law. And he confessed his deed, driven by his accusing conscience: “My punishment is greater than I can bear … and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me the murderer shall slay me” (Genesis 4,13-14)
“Thou shalt not kill!” This commandment from God, who alone has power to decide on life or death, was written in the hearts of men from the beginning, long before God gave the children of Israel on Mount Sinai his moral code in those lapidary sentences inscribed on stone which are recorded for us in Holy Scripture and which as children we learned by heart in the catechism.
“I am the Lord thy God!“ Thus begins this immutable law. “Thou shalt have not other gods before me.” God – the only God, transcendent, almighty, omniscient, infinitely holy and just, our Creator and future Judge – has given us these commandments. Out of love for us he wrote these commandments in our heart and proclaimed them to us. For they meet the need of our God-created nature; they are the indispensable norms for all rational, godly, redeeming and holy individual and community life. With these commandments God, our Father, seeks to gather us, His children, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings. If we follow these commands, these invitations, this call from God, then we shall be guarded and protected and preserved from harm, defended against threatening death and destruction like the chickens under the hen’s wings.
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem … how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” Is this to come about again in our country of Germany, in our province of Westphalia, in our city of Münster? How far are the divine commandments now obeyed in Germany, how far are they obeyed here in our community?
The eighth commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not lie.” How often is it shamelessly and publicly broken! The seventh commandment: “Thou shalt not steal”. Whose possessions are now secure since the arbitrary and ruthless confiscation of the property of our brothers and sisters, members of Catholic orders? Whose property is protected, if this illegally confiscated property is not returned?
The sixth commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Think of the instructions and assurances on free sexual intercourse and unmarried motherhood in the notorious Open Letter by Rudolf Hess, who has disappeared since, which was published in all the newspapers. And how much shameless and disreputable conduct of this kind do we read about and observe and experience in our city of Münster! To what shamelessness in dress have our young people been forced to get accustomed to – the preparation for future adultery! For modesty, the bulwark of chastity, is about to be destroyed.
And now the fifth commandment: “Thou shalt not kill”, is set aside and broken under the eyes of the authorities whose function it should be to protect the rule of law and human life, when men presume to kill innocent fellow-men with intent merely because they are “unproductive”, because they can no longer produce any goods.
And how do matters stand with the observance of the fourth commandment, which enjoins us to honour and obey our parents and those in authority over us? The status and authority of parents is already much undermined and is increasingly shaken by all the obligations imposed on children against the will of their parents. Can anyone believe that sincere respect and conscientious obedience to the state authorities can be maintained when men continue to violate the commandments of the supreme authority, the Commandments of God, when they even combat and seek to stamp out faith in the only true transcendent God, the Lord of heaven and earth?
The observance of the first three commandments has in reality for many years been largely suspended among the public in Germany and in Münster. By how many people are Sundays and feast days profaned and withheld from the service of God! How the name of God is abused, dishonoured and blasphemed!
And the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In place of the only true eternal God men set up their own idols at will and worship them: Nature, or the state, or the people, or the race. And how many are there whose God, in Paul’s word, “is their belly” (Philippians 3,19) – their own well – being, to which they sacrifice all else, even honour and conscience – the pleasures of the senses, the lust for money, the lust for power! In accordance with all this men may indeed seek to arrogate to themselves divine attributes, to make themselves lords over the life and death of their fellow-men.
When Jesus came near to Jerusalem and beheld the city he wept over it, saying: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies … shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”
Looking with his bodily eyes, Jesus saw only the walls and towers of the city of Jerusalem, but the divine omniscience looked deeper and saw how matters stood within the city and its inhabitants: “O Jersualem, Jerusalem … how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings – and ye would not!“ That is the great sorrow hat oppresses Jesus’s heart, that brings tears to his eyes. I wanted to act for your good, but ye would not!
Jesus saw how sinful, how terrible, how criminal, how disastrous this unwillingness is. Little man, that frail creature, sets his created will against the will of God! Jerusalem and its inhabitants, His chosen and favoured people, set their will against God’s will! Foolishly and criminally, they defy the will of God! And so Jesus weeps over the heinous sin and the inevitable punishment. God is not mocked!
Christians of Münster! Did the Son of God in his omniscience in that day see only Jerusalem and its people? Did he weep only over Jerusalem? Is the people of Israel the only people whom God has encompassed and protected with a father’s care and mother’s love, has drawn to Himself? Is it the only people that would not ? The only one that rejected God’s truth, that threw off God’s law and so condemned itself to ruin?
Did Jesus, the omniscient God, also see in that day our German people, our land of Westphalia, our region of Münster, the Lower Rhineland? Did he also weep over us? Over Münster?
For a thousand years he has instructed our forefathers and us in his truth, guided us with his law, nourished us with his grace, gathered us together as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings. Did the omniscient Son of God see in that day that in our time he must also pronounce this judgment on us: “Ye would not: see, your house will be laid waste!” How terrible that would be!
My Christians! I hope there is still time; but then indeed it is high time: That we may realise, in this our day, the things that belong unto our peace! That we may realise what alone can save us, can preserve us from the divine judgment: that we should take, without reservation, the divine commandments as the guiding rule of our lives and act in sober earnest according to the words: “Rather die than sin”. That in prayer and sincere penitence we should beg that God’s forgiveness and mercy may descend upon us, upon our city, our country and our beloved German people.
But with those who continue to provoke God’s judgment, who blaspheme our faith, who scorn God’s commandments, who make common cause with those who alienate our young people from Christianity, who rob and banish our religious, who bring about the death of innocent men and women, our brothers and sisters – with all those we will avoid any confidential relationship, we will keep ourselves and our families out of reach of their influence, lest we become infected with their godless ways of thinking and acting, lest we become partakers in their guilt and thus liable to the judgment which a just God must and will inflict on all those who, like the ungrateful city of Jerusalem, do not will what God wills.
O God, make us all know, in this our day, before it is too late, the things which belong to our peace!
O most sacred heart of Jesus, grieved to tears at the blindness and iniquities of men, help us through Thy grace, that we may always strive after that which is pleasing to Thee and renounce that which displeases Thee, that we may remain in Thy love and find peace for our souls! Amen. (As found in The Bishop of Munster Versus the Nazis. Text also online at: Four Sermons in Defiance of the Nazis.)
Dr. Paul Byrne summarized the matter very clearly in a statement he issued on Saturday, July 1, 2017, the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus and the Octave Day of the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, before the commendable intervention of President Donald John Trump in behalf of Charlie Gard and his parents:
Parents with doctors and clergy ought to protect and preserve his life. When treatment is not apparent, extraordinary means and experimental treatments are used by doctors with request from and in accord with parents.
The case of Charlie Gard is entirely without any kind of nuance. Leave it, therefore, to the likes of “Archbishop” Vincent Paglia, whose support for all manner of moral evils was explored most recently in Attack Dogmatic Truth, Open the Doors Wide for George Soros, to find nuance when none exists. [As excerpted from: Finding Nuance Where There Is No Nuance to be Found.]