Month: August 2022

https://fatimasouls.com/index.html

“Dr. Ed Mazza will return for our August meeting. The meeting will take place August 25th at 6 PM Central Time. He will take questions and expand on the Barnhart column about B16 giving his papal blessing (therefore admitting to the entire world that he is still legitimate Holy Father).” 

The meeting will take place via Zoom and in person at 4525 Lake Shore Dr in Waco, TX.
You must click here and register for the Zoom meeting to attend, even if you are coming in person.

Please click here to sign up for our newsletter.

You may view the previous meeting here.

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About Dr. Mazza

EDMUND J. MAZZA is former Full Professor of History at Azusa Pacific University in Los Angeles. For 14 years he taught Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance and Reformation History. Mazza is the author of The Scholastics and the Jews: Coexistence, Conversion and the Medieval Origins of Tolerance by Angelico Press and host of “The Bar of History” at VirginMostPowerful.org. He has produced teaching videos shot on location in Athens, Ephesus, Istanbul, Palermo, Naples, Venice, and Rome. Mazza was an invited scholar at Liberty Fund’s 2015 San Diego seminar “Convivencia and Reconquista: Freedom and Responsibility in Medieval Spain.” That same year he organized at New York University the conference “Conversing Conversion,” celebrating the 750th anniversary of the birth of Dante. Dr. Mazza was also the organizer of “Christ Among the Medieval Mendicants,” a 2013 conference commemorating the 750th anniversary of the Barcelona Debate and the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi, co-sponsored by The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the Morgan Library and Museum.

Today is the feast of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That we are living through Fatima, there can be little doubt. Make First Fridays and First Saturdays. Why wouldn’t you? Happy feast.

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Five First Saturdays Devotion of Reparation to The Immaculate Heart of The Blessed Virgin Mary

Originally posted DECEMBER 4, 2021

https://holycross-olog.vermontcatholic.org/five-first-saturdays-devotion

• The following is an explanation of the conditions contained in Our Lady’s request at Fatima, Portugal regarding the Communion of reparation on the on the first Saturday of the month for five consecutive months.
• The promise made by Our Lady to Lucia on July 13th, 1917, that there would be a future manifestation concerning the practice of the Five First Saturdays, was fulfilled on December 10th, 1925. Lucia was then a Postulant Sister in the Dorothean Convent at Tuy, Spain. On this occasion Our Lady appeared together with the Child Jesus, Who spoke first to Lucia:“Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns which ungrateful men place therein at every moment, while there is no one who does an act of reparation to withdraw them for her.”
• Our Lady then addressed Lucia as follows:“Behold, my daughter, my Heart encircled with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. Give me consolation, you, at least; and make known on my behalf that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all who on the First Saturday of five consecutive months confess their sins, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the purpose of making reparation to my Immaculate Heart.”
• WHY FIVE SATURDAYS?It is sometimes asked why Our Lady asked for Communions of reparation on five first Saturdays, instead of some other number. Our Blessed Lord answered that question when He appeared to Sr. Lucia May 29, 1930. He explained that it was because of five kinds of offenses and blasphemies against the Immaculate Heart of Mary, namely: blasphemies against her Immaculate Conception, against her perpetual virginity, against the divine and spiritual maternity of Mary, blasphemies involving the rejection and dishonoring of her images, and the neglect of implanting in the hearts of children a knowledge and love of this Immaculate Mother.
• The spirit of reparation is a loving desire to make reparation to and console the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Our Mother. It considers the offenses which the Immaculate Heart of Mary now receives from those who reject her maternal intervention and despise her prerogatives. One should make this intention before carrying out Our Lady’s requests. A renewal of the actual intention at the time is best. 
• 1. ConfessionOn February 15, 1926 the Child Jesus alone came to visit Sr. Lucia and asked if the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was being propagated. Sr. Lucia spoke of a difficulty some people have in confessing on the first Saturday, and asked if they might be allowed eight days in order to fulfill Our Lady’s requests. Jesus answered: “Yes, even more time still, as long as they receive Me in the state of grace and have the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
  Confession: Repentance and Conversion: In order to fulfill this requirement in a truly worthy manner, we must look beyond the mere formality of going to confession at the appointed time, to a heartfelt spirit of repentance and lasting sorrow for our sins. This spirit of penance should pervade our entire life, in such a manner that it compels us to walk always in the path of that amendment of life for which Our Lady asked. In all true devotion to Our Lady — and devotion to her Immaculate Heart is the perfect expression of this true devotion — there must always be an effective repentance, that is, the returning of our hearts to Christ Our Savior. For all of us (sinners all), it is a call to conversion to the path of grace and submission to God’s holy Will. Even for those souls who already habitually live in the grace of God, true devotion to Our Lady impels them more and more to travel the pathway to holiness, by striving to purge themselves daily of all that is not of God. And it is this true devotion, based as it is on heartfelt repentance and conversion, that creates in them a truly authentic spirit of the Christian apostolate — the desire to lead others along the same path to the Heart of God.
  If one cannot go to confession the first Saturday of the month, one can go within eight days. Even one’s monthly confession would be sufficient, which would need the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
• 2.Receive Holy Communion
• 3.Devout Recitation of the Rosary with Meditation“Keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary.”
• The question is often asked: Does the meditation while reciting the Rosary fulfill this condition, or is there required an additional fifteen minutes of meditation? That an additional 15 minutes of meditation is required was recently confirmed by Sr. Lucia of Fatima. It is clear too from a statement by the first Bishop of Fatima.The last entry in the chronology of Fatima, published in the official Calendar of the Sanctuary for the year of 1940, and signed by Dom Jose Correia da Silva, the first Bishop of Fatima, gave a summary of Our Lady’s requests concerning the Five First Saturdays. From that official statement in the Calendar of the Sanctuary, we read the Bishop’s enumeration of the various items that pertain to the devotion of the five Saturdays:It consists in going to Confession, receiving Communion, reciting five decades of the Rosary and meditating for a quarter of an hour on the mysteries of the Rosary on the first Saturday of five consecutive months. The Confession may be made during the eight days preceding or following the first Saturday of each month, provided that Holy Communion be received in the state of grace. Should one forget to form the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it may be formed at the next Confession, occasion to go to confession being taken at the first opportunity.The meditation embraces one or more mysteries; it may even include all, taken together or separately, according to individual attraction or devotion; but it is preferable to meditate on one mystery each month.Speaking of the requirement of “keeping me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary,” Bishop da Silva’s comment that “it is preferable to meditate on one mystery each month” could apply only to an extra fifteen minutes, for each decade of the Rosary must have its own particular meditation.
  Like the Rosary, this meditation may be made any time or place during the first Saturday. Yet again, like the Rosary, a very fitting time and place would be in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament before or after Mass. The question has been asked: “Would an extra Rosary, which would require about fifteen minutes, fulfill this request? It would seem, if fruitfully meditated, that it would. Or again, the time could be spent reading meditatively on one of the fifteen mysteries, which is a form of mental prayer that involves reading with frequent pauses to reflect on the matter read.
• 4.With the intention of making reparation.All of the conditions mentioned above – in numbers 1 to 3 – should be fulfilled with the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On the occasion of the visit of the Child Jesus to Sr. Lucia (Feb. 16, 1926), she asked: “My Jesus, what about those who forget to make the intention?” Jesus answered: “They can do so at their next confession, taking advantage of their first opportunity to go to Confession.”The above are the minimum requirements for fulfilling the conditions of Our Lady’s promise to obtain for us “at the hour of death the graces necessary for salvation.” Yet, thes e Communions of reparation, as has been pointed out, are only a portion of the devotion of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These few pages are meant to help bring about a frame of mind and heart that will make us aware of the need of reparation all through the month, and not just on the first Saturday. 
• The Promises attached to the Five First Saturdays Devotion.
• 1. Salvation of our own soulTo all those who, on the First Saturday of five consecutive months … fulfill all the conditions requested, I promise to assist them at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for the salvation of their soul. This little devotion practised with a good heart, is then enough to procure infallibly for us – ex opere operato so to speak – as with the sacraments – the grace of final perseverance, of eternal salvation! And this promise is without any exclusion, limitation, restriction. To all who ….. I promise. Heaven for eternity for five Holy Communions!
• 2. Salvation of sinnersSo numerous are the souls which the justice of God condemns for sins committed against Me that I come to ask for reparation. Sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray. (Our Lady to Sister Lucy at Tuy, June 13,1929.) In consideration of this little devotion, They (Jesus and Mary) wish to give the grace of pardon to souls who have had the misfortune of offending the Immaculate Heart of Mary, wrote Sister Lucy in a letter of May, 1930.
• 3. Peace in the worldWhether the world has war or peace depends on the practice of this devotion, along with the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is why I desire its propagation so ardently, especially because this is also the will of our dear Mother in Heaven. Sister Lucy, March 19,1939.

BY ROBERT SPENCER

It would have been charitable to think that The Atlantic’s appalling recent piece likening the rosary, the popular Catholic devotional, to an AR-15 rifle and painting a dark picture of armed, rosary-praying Catholics ready to unleash papal mayhem on the peaceful citizenry was the product of a writer with no ideas and a looming deadline. As it turns out, however, the author of the piece, Daniel Panneton, wasn’t just throwing something at the wall and hoping it would stick long enough for him to collect a paycheck. On the contrary, he does this sort of thing for a living.

Mia Cathell over at Townhall revealed Tuesday that when he isn’t cowering in fear over praying Catholics, Panneton is Manager of the Online Hate Research & Education Project, which is, notes Cathell, “an 18-month venture funded by a generous $340,000 grant from the Canadian government’s Anti-Racism Action Program.” When you’ve got that kind of government funding, you’ve got to come up with the goods. Can’t find enough actual hate? Well, any old thing will do. Even rosaries.

Panneton’s OHREP “explores how memes and other digital practices are being used to spread hatred in Canadian contexts, and will use original research to produce Hatepedia, which will contain Canada’s Hate Meme Database and Hate Symbol List, along with lesson plans and educational resources designed to help educators mediate between hateful content and conduct, and their student’s online experiences.” Hatepedia bills itself as “an online database and resource centre built with original research to provide educators, parents, lawmakers, and researchers with tools to identify and counter the proliferation of online hate.”

The Hatepedia database is slick and professional looking, showing how well funded it is. It’s also skillfully constructed to lead people to think that questioning the globalist, socialist political elites constitutes “hate.” The “Explicit Hate Symbols” section contains indisputably abhorrent symbols such as the emblems of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party and the Waffen SS, along with Holocaust-denying memes and the like. But in the “Meme Characters with Hateful Uses” section, we get a collection of Internet ephemera that has been used in myriad contexts, but with Panneton and co. darkly warn us “are sometimes used to spread hatred online, and often have origins in hateful spaces.”

These include Gigachad, “a meme character” that “often personifies a extreme [sic] perception of traditional masculinity. For example, within incel communities Gigachad can be used to represent genetic superiority and desirability. White supremacists sometimes use Gigachad as an avatar for themselves, their movement, or white men more generally.” An image of The Joker from the 2019 movie starring Joaquin Phoenix was “used as a hateful meme character was when it was coopted by Gamers Rise Up, a movement that started as a satirization of Gamergate that relied on using alt-right tropes and aesthetics, and which openly spread hate speech.” 

There is more. Read the rest here.

Rules for thee but not for me. Sing through masks, you grandma killers. And hilarity ensued.

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The Edinburgh Festival Chorus were due to perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony alongside the Philadelphia Orchestra

By Aden-Jay Wood

A performance of Beethoven has been axed after a British orchestra refused to back down to a US orchestra’s Covid mask demands.

The Edinburgh Festival Chorus were due to perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony alongside the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival.

But the choir rejected the US orchestra’s calls to wear face masks while singing, meaning the event has been cancelled…

https://www.gbnews.uk/news/beethoven-performance-axed-as-british-singers-refuse-to-back-down-to-us-orchestras-covid-mask-demands/354905

“Hell is full of good wishes and desires.”

“Many of those who are humiliated are not humble. Some react to humiliation with anger, others with patience, and others with freedom. The first are culpable, the next harmless, the last just.”

“If you concentrate hard on the state you are in, it would be suprising if you have time for anything else. ”

“What we love we shall grow to resemble.”

“A saint is not someone who never sins, but one who sins less and less frequently and gets up more and more quickly.”

“There is no greater misery than false joys.”

“The more I contemplate God, the more God looks on me. The more I pray to him, the more he thinks of me too.”

“Rest is in Him alone. Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no disturbance when he is with God.”

“To have a restful or peaceful life in God is good; to bear a life of pain in patience is better; but to have peace in the midst of pain is the best of all.”

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2734978.Bernard_of_Clairvaux

(WPVI) — It’s a virus that hasn’t made many headlines in years, but polio is now the subject of viral chatter after a confirmed case in New York state.

Health officials say we should all be worried about this news.

“Even one case of paralytic polio is a public health emergency,” says Dr. Adam Ratner from NYU Langone Health. “It’s conceivable that if you see one case that’s it’s one very unlucky person and there’s not community spread, but it’s much more likely there are hundreds and thousands of cases that gave us that one case of paralytic polio.”

Severe impacts of polio include meningitis and paralysis.

To date, there is no cure for the virus.

“Even in places where polio has been under control, we are still at risk if we don’t continue to vaccinate the population,” Dr. Ratner says.

“What we’re seeing now is evidence that we are still at risk, even though there hasn’t been polio in this country for many years.”

People who aren’t vaccinated against polio are being urged to do so immediately.

That’s leaving many people scrambling to find out if they’re protected…

From Louie Verrecchio:

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QUESTION: How many long held non-infallible Catholic doctrines do you consider subject to rejection as possibly erroneous and perhaps even dangerous?

A) I believe that only those teachings that are obviously incorrect, insufficiently nuanced, or otherwise untenable in light of present-day circumstances are subject to rejection.

B) Technically, all of them are potentially suspect and subject to rejection since they’re not infallible.

C) None.    

If you answered C, you gave a solid Catholic answer. You also happen to be in the overwhelming minority.  

When push comes to shove, most so-called “traditionalists” (better known as tradservatives) will admit to holding position A, even if only reluctantly. For instance, following are three prime examples of long held non-infallible Catholic doctrines that tradition-minded Catholics frequently twist, gloss over, or reject altogether as they attempt to make sense of the current ecclesial crisis…

…

In each case one has a choice to make, to either apply what the Church has always taught to explain the present situation, or to redefine (that is, to twist or reject) what the Church has always taught to fit the present situation.

• The organization presently in Rome claiming to be the Holy Catholic Church authoritatively teaches false doctrines. 

TRADITIONAL EXPLANATION: Based on what the Church has always taught about herself, the organization presently in Rome, since its doctrines endanger the faithful, cannot be the one true Church.

TRADSERVATIVE NOVELTY: The organization presently in Rome is the one true Church, despite what the Church has always taught about herself. Yes, it teaches false doctrines, but not infallibly, and so we are called to resist.

• Jorge Bergoglio fails to manifest the true faith; he actively opposes it.  

TRADITIONAL EXPLANATION: Based on what the Church has always taught about membership in the Church, Jorge Bergoglio is not a Catholic of any rank. 

TRADSERVATIVE NOVELTY: Jorge Bergoglio is a member of the Holy Catholic Church, despite what the Church has always taught about visible membership in her. What’s more, given that most everyone considers him pope, we have no right say otherwise.

• “Francis” attacks the true faith but claims to be the Holy Roman Pontiff. 

TRADITIONAL EXPLANATION: Based on what the Church has always taught about the pope being our rule of faith, the Divine protection afforded to the pope by Our Lord, and the witness of the past nearly 2,000 years, Francis is obviously an anti-pope.  

TRADSERVATIVE NOVELTY: Francis is the Holy Roman Pontiff and Vicar of Christ, despite what the Church has always taught about the papacy, the Divine protection afforded to it by Our Lord, and the witness of the past nearly 2,000 years. Even though he is the pope, we cannot treat him as our rule of faith, rather, we must defend ourselves against his false doctrines!

Having considered these three fairly common examples, one must further consider:

What’s to prevent these same tradservatives from one day calling into question the validity of other non-infallible doctrines. For example:

Public revelation ended with Christ and the Apostles.

Some readers may be surprised to discover that this doctrine has never been infallibly defined, it is, in other words, a non-infallible teaching. 

If the anti-Christ arrived on the scene tomorrow, proclaiming to be God, his words no less than “divine revelation,” where will the tradservatives of today line up? One wonders, will they apply what the Church has always taught to the situation and conclude that the man is a diabolical liar, or will they accept his claims despite what the Church has always taught?

Based upon their behavior today, all indications are that many will follow the latter course of action…

Read the rest, there is much more: https://akacatholic.com/non-infallible-doctrines-trustworthy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=non-infallible-doctrines-trustworthy 

Ouch.

“Immediately following her loss to Harriet Hageman in Wyoming’s Republican primary, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., unveiled her next move, launching a new organization with the primary goal of keeping former President Trump from regaining the presidency.

“The group, called The Great Task, gets its name from a phrase in the Gettysburg Address, and Cheney invoked President Lincoln in calling for the Republican Party to go back to its roots.

“We’ve to get this party back to the principles and values on which it was founded,” Cheney said in an interview with NBC’s “Today Show” Wednesday morning, claiming that it has lost its way in focusing too much on Trump…

“Cheney is the final Republican who voted to impeach former President Trump to face a primary election. Among the other nine GOP representatives to vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment, only two will be on the ballot in November.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/after-landslide-primary-defeat-liz-cheney-announces-new-anti-trump-group-says-shes-thinking-about-wh-bid

…”Epikeia (again, a virtue according to St. Thomas Aquinas) requires we put common sense ahead of legalism.  St. Thomas is obviously not saying “the greater good” can be used to say that the end justifies the means.  Rather, when applied correctly, epikeia leads to extremely clear conclusions on Church and State today:  No prelate can obliterate the ancient Mass. No bishop can say you can’t receive Holy Communion on the tongue in fear of a flu with a 99.92% survival rate.  No priest can be suspended for preaching orthodoxy even under the pretext that such orthodoxy is “disobedient” (as happened to a priest friend of mine in Texas.) No government can say you must take an experimental drug. No Cardinal-in-white can say it’s okay to worship a pagan demon-god like a Pachamama. Nobody can be arrested and placed in solitary confinement for walking into an open Capital building on January 6th. No diocesan tribunal can end a valid marriage.

“Of course, the neo-con non-trad would reply to all of this:  “Well, who is to determine what is a just command if not your superiors in Church and State?”  The answer is quite simple:  St. Thomas Aquinas and all saints believed every person to have access to common-sense, and if any order were to go against common-sense, it is probably to be ignored.

“In fact, all of those controversies two paragraphs up go against both common sense and the Catholic Magisterium or the US Constitution.  Therefore, there is no law against them. Common-sense is indeed a part of our discernment of obedience, for we Catholics have always believed in the marriage of faith and reason, not an arbitrary and capricious obedience as found in Islam.  We priests must be obedient to God and—at a distant second—to our bishops’ just commands.  But when there is a rub between the two, we must obey God rather than man, for there’s a hierarchy of obedience.  

“And when an infiltration of the Church and State has taken place at such a deep level as of today, the ones making the unjust commands will ironically label as “outlaws” those holding to St. Thomas and the classic Magisterium of the Catholic Church.  But we know at the end of the day, as the Apostle said, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.“

https://padreperegrino.org/2022/08/epikeia/