Pope Alexander VI: Setting the Record Straight!!

It seems like, with all the bad news coming out today about the Church over the last 100 years, a scape goat is needed by modernity to make them feel better.  One might expect honest talks about clergy that have abused their authority to be put forth, but it seems like we now use some that had authority and seemingly abused it to justify modern madness.  Take for instance the curious case of Michelle Arnold of Catholic Answers who in an attempt to side step the real issues associated with St. John Paul II’s papacy attacks the perennial  scape goat Pope Alexander VI.

Pope Alexander's Portrait

Yes, that Alexander VI.  The Borgia Pope with a TV show on HBO supposedly based on his life and times. All the accusations from the Banquet of Chestnuts, to the fornication allegations, are a curious case of perpetual gossip and assumption that were made in his day by the likes of Savonarola to today’s mainstream apologists like Tim Staples and Michelle Arnold.  The problem is that these accusations are more problematic then those that propose them realize.  Ask the accusers to produce the evidence needed and they can only point to lists of bad Popes to justify their slanders.

That is why I am glad to bring to your attention a series of articles written by Matthew Olson of Answering Protestants and Catholic Analysis which attempt to shed some light on the real Pope Alexander VI, and dispel rumors that have so harmed the character of this renaissance pontiff.

Here is a tidbit from the first part of the series on “The Personality of Pope Alexander VI”

“…Rodrigo also had an overpowering charitable bent. He was a patron of more than one hospital, and he gave alms regularly (weekly, sometimes bi-weekly).

One man said publicly to Rodrigo, “During the many years that thou hast been a cardinal and vice-chancellor, no one has requested help from thee, which thou didst not grant at once; to no one didst thou ever refuse legitimate protection; no one, struck by misfortune or provoked by injustice, has implored thy aid in vain. It was not unusual for thee, not only to come to the assistance of one to one [sic] who did not request it.” The man elaborated for a while.And not only was Rodrigo charitable toward the poor, but he was charitable with his time, too, in that he frequently assisted his fellow cardinals with their administrative duties. He slept little. [5]… Continue HERE)” 

You can read the whole series HERE, and please do spread this information to stop the slanders that have so belittled a Pope that as you will learn was a reformer before it became cool to be so.

+JMJ+

Roberto deMattei: How Vatican II had a real and lasting effect on religious sisters

The Following is an excerpt from the fantastic work "The Second Vatican Council - An Unwritten Story" by Professor Robert deMattei:

The “Updating” of religious life

“… Cardinal Spellman, as he opened the debate on November 10, asserted that, with the introduction of some modifications, the text could be accepted. Spellman denounced the risks of the so called modernization or “updating” of religious life, in an implicit polemic against Cardinal Suenens who in a book devoted to the Apostolic Development of the Religious Women (published in English as the Nun in the world), had proposed a radical reform of women’s religious life and saw in Vatican Council II the opportunity to carry it out. This reform, for the primate of Belgium, would have to redefine the role of women religious, by giving them an adequate “social training” and by making them spiritual directors of lay women. To this end it would be necessary to eliminate mercilessly certain “out of date” and “redundant” devotions that tended to “make the life of prayer mechanical and to atrophy it,” and to transform the “spiritual exercises of women religious so as “to amend and simplify them, to give their piety a a more biblical, liturgical, ecclesiastical and apostolic basis.”

Cardinal Suenens invited nuns to be more sincere and open in their mutual relations and to engage in “constructive self-criticism” of their religious practices.” He added that women religious must avoid giving the impression of “living outside the world they are trying to save,” as though isolated in a ghetto; the religious habit will have to be completely adapted to relations with the world and dispense with forms and rituals that no longer are part of our era. The concept of “obedience” also will have to be revise: the renunciation of one’s own will must not be placed before the service of the common good. The common good sometimes requires that subjects assert their point of view before superiors make a decision…

Bishop Guilly found it “truly surprising” that the schema on religious contained “so little about the other orders and congregations that are dedicated strictly to contemplative life.” It is precisely ‘these men and these women who with their prayers and their austeritites, their silence and their sacrifices, contribute more than all the others to the advancement of the Church’s apostolate.”

Bi-Polar News Friday

Two interesting articles:

Bill Murray Misses the Old Latin Mass

"One new saint he does approve of is Pope John XXIII (who died in 1963). “I’ll buy that one, he’s my guy; an extraordinary joyous Florentine who changed the order. I’m not sure all those changes were right. I tend to disagree with what they call the new mass. I think we lost something by losing the Latin. Now if you go to a Catholic mass even just in Harlem it can be in Spanish, it can be in Ethiopian, it can be in any number of languages. The shape of it, the pictures, are the same but the words aren’t the same.” 

Isn’t it good for people to understand it? “I guess,” he says, shaking his head. “But there’s a vibration to those words. If you’ve been in the business long enough you know what they mean anyway. And I really miss the music – the power of it, y’know? Yikes! Sacred music has an affect on your brain.” Instead, he says, we get “folk songs … top 40 stuff … oh, brother….”

Read the rest HERE

Memories of Madness gone by.. or has it? 

"In March 1981, Lucker was the first bishop in the United States to appoint pastoral administrators (who are often radical nuns) as leaders of parishes. He created an international sensation when he placed one of his rural parishes under interdict until every member received psychological counseling. The parishioners' crime: They objected to a nun-catechist trained in New Age spirituality by Matthew Fox catechizing their children, and her decision to replace the crucifix in the church's sanctuary with a 'cosmic pillow.'"

Read the rest HERE

+JMJ+ 

The time is short MSW...

And the hour approaches for your agenda to be fulfilled.

Can you taste the victory?

Your hand is on the table, a high flush.

Grasp it now the voice says.

The world is your puppet.

The end is within your sight.

Your shadow grows, pronouncements become crisp.

Rumors of your reign are gossiped within the Holy of Holies.

Your thrown set, the pawns willing.

Right is the distinction, but not to the end.

Universality a mere political sham.

Reporters and wheels break the barriers without constraint.

This is indeed your time take joy for it will end.

That not being eternal burns in the flames of justice.

Including your petty facade.

Headline: Is Pope Francis Backpedaling on Gays?

From the mindless chatterbox arena comes the following:

Is Pope Francis Backpedaling on Gays?  

The Vatican’s cheery-sounding ‘complementarity’ symposium’ is really an attack on sex outside of marriage—gay sex, single sex, divorced sex, and all 50 shades of grey in between. Pope Francis is not Jesus Christ. Or even Martin Luther. He may well transform the Catholic Church, and has already gained unprecedented popularity as the reformer we’ve all been waiting for. But as events this week confirm, he is not omnipotent, and does not intend to change fundamental Catholic doctrine—if he even could. The event in question is “The Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Colloquium,” an interreligious symposium presented by some of the Vatican’s most conservative voices. To understand the significance of Pope Francis’s remarks at this bizarre event, it’s necessary to back up a bit. You may have noticed that roughly 100 percent of higher animals reproduce sexually, requiring a male and female partner to do so. This is the core of “complementarity,” and it would not seem to require an international colloquium to explain. Complementarity as conservative Catholics use the term, however, is more than biology. It stands for the proposition that the biological basis of procreation should also be the sole organizing principle of society. Only mating pairs constitute a family, and any configuration that is not a mating pair—divorced people, gay people, single people—are not to be legitimized. Otherwise, society will collapse. I am not exaggerating this position. Complementarity also means, of course, than men and women are fundamentally different. In an earlier era, this was obvious. Men rule, women serve; men fight, women nurture. Today’s complementarians have to be more subtle—Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus—but the basic principle remains. Just like you need a sperm and an egg to make a baby, so you need a boy and a girl to create a harmonious pair. The idea of complementarity is an essential part of Natural Law, the Catholic Church’s quasi-secular-but-not-really philosophy that everything in the world has its “natural” role, which is good, and its “unnatural” perversions, which are bad. “Complementarity,” like “family values,” “religious liberty,” and “traditional marriage” is a term defined by what it opposes—non-procreative sex. Sex is not for fun; sex is for procreation. Food is not for fun; food is for nourishment. In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas, the most important Catholic Natural Law thinker, called any “misuse” of sensual pleasures luxuria—not just luxury in the contemporary sense, but decadent luxury, pleasure beyond purpose. Evil. All of this matters, of course, because the Catholic Church is a multi-billion dollar international organization with 1.2 billion adherents (40 percent from Latin America, like Pope Francis). The Economist has calculated that it spends $170 billion annually in the United States alone. A great deal of that money goes to imposing its view of Natural Law on the rest of us, spending billions to restrict abortion and contraception, and fight any recognition of same-sex (“unnatural”) couples. Now, wasn’t Pope Francis going to change all that? No. Never. It was revolutionary when Pope Francis said “Who am I to judge?” when asked about gay people. But it was revolutionary in a specific, limited way. What he meant was that he personally, and by extension all Christians, should not be judgmental. The Church should welcome everyone— gays, divorcees, criminals—because that is what Christ did. And, who knows, eventually they will straighten out. I’m being a bit dismissive here, but this really is a significant evolution. I know many gay people who were thrown out of their churches, and those of us who were around in the 1980s remember how Cardinal John O’Connor and others blamed gays for AIDS and refused to help New Yorkers dying from the plague. But an evolution in tone is not a change in doctrine. Essentially, Pope Francis is urging Christians to “love the sinner, but hate the sin.” Which brings us back to this week’s colloquium, presented by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—originally known (until 1908) as the “Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition.” Yes, that Inquisition. The CDF has, for five centuries, been a bastion of Catholic conservatism, and today is no exception. It was headed for 20 years by Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), who produced such gems as labeling gay people “intrinsically disordered.” Now its prefect is Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who led the opposition to any softening of the church’s stance against divorcees at last month’s synod of bishops, and who has gone after American nuns for being too feminist and spending too much time fighting poverty instead of opposing gay marriage. And let’s not even talk about gay people. So, while the Colloquium is presented as a neutral, and interreligious, conference on the beauty of traditional marriage, its significance is anything but anodyne. Beyond the snappy website and mission to “examine and propose anew the beauty of the relationship between the man and the woman, in order to support and reinvigorate marriage and family life for the flourishing of human society,” its real-world impact would be to deny secular legal status to anyone who does not fit is conception of “complementarity.” Just look at the list of speakers, a who’s who of theological conservatives from a breadth of Western religious traditions. There’s Russell D. Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, which recently decided that transgender people don’t exist, and which expelled a church whose minister said he no longer believes homosexuality to be a sin—after his own son came out as gay. There’s Nigerian Anglican Primate Nicholas Okoh, who called the ‘homosexual agenda’ an “evil wind blowing across the Western world,” and who supports Nigeria’s vicious new anti-gay laws. And of course there’s megachurch pastor Rick Warren, who has strenuously denied helping to bring about Uganda’s anti-gay law, but whose fingerprints are all over it. As in Jerusalem, where opposition to a gay pride march united Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim conservatives, “complementarity” has the power to bring people together. But don’t be misled. “Complementarity,” like “family values,” “religious liberty,” and “traditional marriage” is a term defined by what it opposes—non-procreative sex, same-sex unions, contraception, and usually (though not always) feminism. Where is Pope Francis in all of this? First, in his opening remarks yesterday, the pontiff towed a much more conservative line than his legion of new fans might expect. “The complementarity of man and woman,” he said: is a root of marriage and family… We now live in a culture of the temporary, in which more and more people are simply giving up on marriage as a public commitment. This revolution in manners and morals has often flown the flag of freedom, but in fact it has brought spiritual and material devastation to countless human beings, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.” That is not exactly a message of liberation, and it confirms the speculation of some Vatican-watchers that the whole colloquium is a way for the pope to placate the conservative base that has begun (unthinkably) to rebel against him. But at the same time, the pope didn’t quite go all the way either. Notice he said that complementarity is “a root” of family, not “the root.” And he also said things like In these days, as you embark on a reflection on the beauty of complementarity between man and woman in marriage, I urge you to lift up yet another truth about marriage: that permanent commitment to solidarity, fidelity and fruitful love responds to the deepest longings of the human heart. I urge you to bear in mind especially the young people, who represent our future So when the pope says to a room of conservatives: Do not fall into the trap of being swayed by political notion. Family is an anthropological fact—a socially and culturally related fact. We cannot qualify it based on ideological notions or concepts important only at one time in history. We can’t think of conservative or progressive notions. Family is a family. What does he mean, exactly? Does he mean that the non-hetero-dyad family is a “political notion”? Or is he saying that family is an “anthropological fact,” i.e., one determined not by outdated “ideological notions” but by the lived realities of people as they are? Are conservative ideologues, as one of the Pope’s close advisors said earlier this year, “people who don’t understand reality”? Given the audience—a room full of conservatives—what does it mean to say “We can’t think of conservative or progressive notions”? We can only speculate as to the intentions behind these ambiguous words. Perhaps the Pope is telling his conservative base what they don’t want to hear, in the guise of telling them what they do. Perhaps, as one cardinal recently complained, the chaos is the plan. Or perhaps Pope Francis is not the pope of progressives’ fantasies after all. Even if he is, though, the pope may be infallible, but he is not omnipotent. As this week’s gathering shows, there are powerful conservative forces within the Catholic Church and beyond it. And for every encomium to the harmonious, procreative union of male and female, there is a trampling of everyone else.

It was on the daily beast and i am not linking to it... but it is a question that Fr. Z keeps putting out... when will they go after Francis for being Catholic?  Answer is never, they are delusional.

Pray for them!

I just dont understand Cardinal O'Malley

"In an interview with “60 Minutes” on CBS that producers said took more than a year for them to persuade him to do, O’Malley seemed troubled by reporter Norah O’Donnell’s question as to whether the exclusion of women from the Church hierarchy was “immoral.” O’Malley paused, then said, “Christ would never ask us to do something immoral. It’s a matter of vocation and what God has given to us.” “Not everyone needs to be ordained to have an important role in the life of the Church,” he said. “Women run Catholic charities, Catholic schools …. They have other very important roles. A priest can’t be a mother. The tradition in the Church is that we ordain men. “If I were founding a church, I’d love to have women priests,” O’Malley said. “But Christ founded it, and what he has given us is something different."

Read the whole thing HERE

+JMJ+

A Special Threat: ISIS declairs war against Roman Christians

Just when you thought the religion of peace couldn't get much better...

O soldiers of the Islam- ic State, be ready for the final campaign of the crusaders. Yes, by Allah’s will, it will be the final one. Thereafter, we will raid them by Allah’s per- mission and they will not raid us… And so we promise you (crusaders) by Allah’s permission that this campaign will be your final campaign. It will be broken and defeated, just as all your previous campaigns were broken and defeated, except that this time we will raid you thereafter, and you will never raid us.We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His prom- ise to us; He is glorified and He does not fail in His promise. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market

You can read the rest HERE

... I would remind the reader of the third secret but I wear a tin foil hat and am obsessed with black helicopters outside my office right now.  This is the area of peace promised... dont worry its de fide that the consecration occured spiritually... or... lets leave it at that... lol

The Real Issue Today, with a little help from Chesterton

Source

“Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless." 
- GK Chesterton The Everlasting Man

St. Peter's Daughter? Ora Pro Nobis?

Until about a month ago I had never heard this story.  Apparently there is a tradition within the Church which recounts the sanctity of St. Peter's family, specifically St. Petronilla who is said to be his daughter.

"In The Roman Martyrology the Church seems to officially acknowledge Saint Peter's paternity:  "St. Petronilla, Virgin [and Martyr], daughter of the blessed apostle Peter, who refused to marry the nobleman Flaccus. Given three days for consideration, she spent them in fasting and prayer. On the third day, having received Christ sacramentally, she gave up her spirit." 

    But the less official sources are not all so sure. Some place her death in the first century, where it would have to be if she were Peter's daughter, but others date it as late as the third century. Some, noting that her body was found in the catacomb of Flavian Domitilla, suggest that she was a member of the Roman senatorial family of the Flavii. The inscription on her tomb reads "Aure‘ Petronill‘ Fili‘ Dulcissim‘," possibly indicating relationship to an earlier branch of the Flavii, known as the Aurelii. She is not mentioned in fourth century calendars, but this absence may actually place her death in the first century, before the Church began to venerate the martyrs liturgically.¹ A fourth century fresco in the cemetery of Domitilla depicts her about to be put to death.²    But there is some evidence that the Martyrology is accurate in naming Petronilla as St. Peter's daughter. Another painting, made around 356, presents Petronilla "receiving a deceased person (named Veneranda) into heaven."³ This strongly suggests that she was venerated as a saint before this time -- and it is interesting to see her performing the duties normally associated with Saint Peter (perhaps, filling in for her father?). 

    We know from the Synoptic Gospels and from patristic sources that St. Peter was married, so children are not beyond possibility. Clement of Alexandria related that Peter's wife died a martyr on the same day as Peter (i.e. not after an abnormally brief marriage), and that Peter had children who (in contrast to the daughters of Philip) apparently did not marry. A daughter of St. Peter is mentioned but not named in the apocryphal gnostic Acts of St. Peter. Obviously, the name 'Petronilla" could be a diminutive of "Peter.'"

Continue HERE

How Archbishop Karol Wojityla and Archbishop Lefebvre were silenced at the council on Religious Liberty

Most people think that Archbishop Lefebvre was stubborn and unwilling to work with the Vatican at any expense, but this is a grave mis-characterization.  For instance, when the first document exploring “Religious Liberty” was provided to the council fathers, the English and Italian speaking fathers sided with the document, while Spanish, Polish speaking fathers and those from the mission field stood strong in favor of Cardinal Ottoviani’s stance against the Cardinal Bea document.   It is interesting to note that even a young Archbishop Karol Wojtyla (later to be JPII) stood against the revolutionaries proclaiming that only the truth will set men free!

Below you will find an excerpt from Roberto de Mattei’s book on the council explaining how the attempt to reign in the revolution was thwarted by the French and Pope Paul Vi himself:

“On October 9, Cardinal Bea received a letter from Bishop Felici informing him of the Holy Father’s wish that the text on religious liberty be rewritten and telling him that for this purpose a Joint Commission would be set up, comprised of members of the Secretariat for Christian Unity and the Theological Commission, along with Cardinal Michael Browne, the master general of the Dominicans Aniceto Fernandez, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop Carlo Colombo. Apart from the last-mentioned, a man on whom the Pope relied, the other three were staunch opponents of the declaration on religious liberty. 

The progressives immediately mobilized, alarmed especially by the name of Archbishop Lefebvre. On Sunday, October 11, there was an afternoon meeting at the residence of Cardinal Frings, attended by Cardinals Leger, Joseph-Charles Lefebvre, Meyer, Ritter, Silva Henriquez, Dopfner and Alfrink attended. That same evening a dramatically phrased letter, signed by thirteen cardinals, arrived on the pope’s desk. It read: “Not without great sorrow have we learned that the declaration on religious liberty (…) is to be sent to a certain Joint Commission, of which, it is said, four members have already been designated, three of whom seem to stand in contradiction to the orientation of the council on this question.” 

On October 12 a note by the Secretary of State referred to the fact that the French episcopate was not disposed to accept the possible nomination of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as a member of the commission for the revision of the schema. The note, passed on by Cardinal Cicognani to the pope, was expressed in these words: “1) His Excellency Bishop Marcello Lefebvre (sic) would be considered as a sort of lack  of confidence in the episcopacy, among whom such a nomination would not be favorably received (sic, given the more than ‘extremist’ positions that Archbishop Lefebvre has taken in various circumstances. I thought it advisable to authorize Bishop Martin to announce that no nomination had been made and that Archbishop Lefebvre will not be among those chose beforehand.” 

Two days later, the notice was made public by the daily Il Messagero and caused quite a stir. On October 16, in the new instructions conveyed by the Secretary of State to Bishop Felici, the names of Archbishop Lefebvre and of Father Fernandez had disappeared and the role of the commission was reappraised. The two principal “theorists” of religious liberty, John Courtney Murray and Pietro Pavan, would assume the task of working on the revision of the text, favoring an “Anglo-Italian” approach of a political-juridical type rather than the theological and moral one, as the French-speaking theologians were requesting with these words: “You shall see, our document will be approved.” In an interview with Daniel Pezeril, the pope asserted: “perhaps I am slow. But I know what I want. After all, it is my right to give careful consideration. Bishop Pavan described Paul VI’s intervention on the conciliar document as “decisive.”