Tradition vs. Traditionalism? (The Latin Mass isn't holy, it's just old?)

Anyone see this?


Anthony does a decent job articulating flaw of SSPX and sedevacanists. They lose sight of Christ's authority to the Apostles to bind and unbind teaching.

The brilliance of the delegation of authority to Apostles and their successors to bind and unbind Catholics to teaching escapes most.

There was and never will be a declaration of the Magisterium of Christ's Church that any of us ever have to worry is an error. So long as we submit ourselves to it, whether we understand it or we don't, whether we like it or we don't, we are pleasing Christ, have access to Sacramental Grace through the Sacraments and we're following the path to salvation and spending our eternity with our Beloved in Heaven, so long as we surrender to the authority of Magisterial substance.

I've watched the sedevacanist-minded folks and have observed two afflictions that blind them to the above: they have personalities that suffer from despair and pride. It can be a lethal combination.

Few who contemplate jumping off of the ship to SSPX and the like are ignorant of Church teaching.

Most, if not all, have encountered the see of priests and bishops who have abandoned their duties to become a fundraiser or celebrity. They have watched these men misinform and mislead their children, grandchildren, relatives, friends and community.

Most, like me, were probably misled themselves and trudged through years of the consequences of sin: the fruit wrong judgment. To the relief of their guardian angel, something or somebody woke them up. Upon their return to Christ's Church, found the barnum and bailey circus.

What was being taught and done was so absurd, they ran educate themselves on what went down. What happened. What the teachings were and are, what happened to their Sacred Liturgy.

I remember watching the bleep shows in nearly every parish and reaching a point where I simply could not tolerate it. Sedevacanists surrounded and flooded me with their assertions.

Against the beauty and simplicity of Christ's delegation of teaching authority to His Apostles, their theories fall apart.

I take great issue with Anthony's caricature of the TLM community. He has fallen into the trap of using the word 'traditionalist' to paint the entire TLM Community.

I also take great exception to his caricature that the evidence that the Catholic media covers up for the corruption of priests and bishops is flimsy.

Most importantly, I am offended by (disgusted might be a better word) Anthony's assertion that the Latin Mass isn't holy, it's just old.

The TLM community is just an unholy alliance with vernacular?

I am not feeling rational enough to articulate my disgust in the assault upon this Sacred Liturgy. My frustration with these folks needs the Sacraments.

My Jesus help me.

Nearly all of the people I know who attend the Latin Mass have done so because they want to hear the actual teachings of the Church in a homily - how Sacred Scripture tells us the story of how to apply Church teaching to our lives in personal temptation or through evangelizing against the demoralization of the government (Gog) and culture (Magog).

People who attend the Latin Mass are the refugees of Catholics who PRAY the Canon with the priest. They actually understand what is happening in front of them mystically and they mystically enter into the prayers. They have found the asinine liturgical innovations and the circus of clowns impossible to retain the concentration it takes to enter into the Mystical prayer of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

They are not going to Mass for religious entertainment.

They are not going to Mass to boost their self-esteem.

They are going to Mass to literally make physical and intimate contact with the Divinity of Christ because that intimate union feeds their intellect with the properties of Divinity contained in the Eucharist.

They don't want those moments challenged, interrupted, diluted by the post-menopausal women stampeding the Sanctuary for their hour of American Catholics Have Talent competitions in every parish across their diocese.

They are scandalized by the bishop who hand picks his staff from the lavender mafia and estrogen-free women and then pretends the execution of his own agenda by them has nothing to do with him.

They are tired of corruption, the lies, the bishops use of public relations people to cover up his own ineptitude and misfeasance, the bishop's use of blogs and Catholic publications to publish his lies and talking points. (That's the current dust up - Catholic journalists are involved by omission or commission. There is ten years of irrefutable evidence.)

Most Catholics in the TLM are just quietly seeking refuge and raising their family in a place where they are evangelized with tools of sanctification. With very little exception, the Novus Ordo completely deprives Catholics of these tools. Priests who are sanctifying souls are maliciously undermined and thwarted by the bishop and his lavender mafia staff.

There are many Catholics like myself, who stayed in the Novus Ordo community and we did so to speak out against the victims of spiritual misfeasance and malfeasance in the NO community.

We expose what is happening.

We make the phone calls to the Chancery.

We notify and appeal to the Nuncio and then onto the Holy See.

Through these actions over the last ten years, the Holy See was able to identify the corrupt within the Walls of St. Peter's Square.

We have overthrown it the highest levels.

You see the train wreck at the Vatican?

We are the people who hijacked the train and drove it into the brick wall.

It has been done before by Saints. Consequently, the assertions of the patheols and katholic answers crowd, the Sheas and Keatings and Longeneckers and Armstrongs, do not conflate with tradition.

Get it?

Knock it off.

Stop trying to paint the TLM community using words like 'tradition' or 'traditionists' to make them look like the lunatic fringe.

Stop trying to paint people who are sick and tired of the corruption in their parish and Chancery as people doing a disservice to the Church.

We are approaching a time in history wherein the ethics of making money in Catholic journalism is a treacherous path. There is omission and commission. One can admit it and continue to work in the field doing what they can to evangelize and change.

But there is an exchange of money for publishing the bishops talking points - or not publishing them.


Whether you like it or lump it, there are ethics involved and what the Longeneckers and Sheas and Armstrongs and Keatings are doing is reprehensible.

If you can't be a man, at least have the decency to sit down and shut up while other men step forward.

O glorious St. Joseph, you were chosen by God to be the foster father of Jesus, the most pure spouse of Mary ever Virgin, and the head of the holy family. You have been chosen by Christ's Vicar as the heavenly patron and protector of the Church founded by Christ. Therefore it is with great confidence that I implore your powerful assistance for the whole Church on earth. Protect in a special manner, with true fatherly love, the Pope and all bishops and priests in communion with the See of Peter. Be the protector of all who labor for souls amid the trials and tribulations of this life, and grant that all peoples of the world may follow Christ and the Church He founded.

Patron of the Universal Church, pray for us.

A Goodbye to the Knights of Columbus

Wow. Michael Voris has publicly expressed what many other faithful Catholic men have quietly been doing for some time now, left the Knights of Columbus.

Many, many years ago, I naively thought the capes, swords and feathers parading in Masses meant they were men who defended Church teaching. When the Deposit of Faith, our schools, our children and the culture was under attack, they were one of the first groups I reached out to. I won't bore you with the all the details but every time I now see them in their ridiculous costumes, it generates disgust.

The Knights does fundraise and uses its sources to do some good work but sadly, the feathers and swords protect corruption, abortion and the political and theological indoctrination of our people into the slavery of sin.

Several of you have written to alert me that Mark Shea stuck more pins into his Voris voodoo doll.

You have to love the irony of this citation in his Voriscreed:

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another.But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. 26 Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another. (Galatians 5:14-26)

Helllooowwwwwwwww. Check out your archives Mark!

Or, if you don't have time, CMR has the reader's digest of his most recent:

Mark drops a whole dumptruck of hyperbolic polemic on Voris. Some juicy excerpts.

Voris' sole message is "I am the measure of Real Catholicism and those who agree with me have the right to call themselves Catholic, while those who disagree are liars and lukewarm fake Catholics".
and
Dave Armstrong (who is, of course, not a real Catholic since he questions the infallible Voris) looks at Voris' tissue of prideful, biblically illiterate and theologically stupid assertions
and then Mark unloads on those who like Voris (like me, I suppose)
Why does this matter? Because I am constantly hearing from fans of Voris who think that his method of perpetually sneering at brother and sister Catholics, tearing down anything that he deems to be not "really" Catholic, and endlessly complaining about and sneering at others for their alleged "impurity" (such as singing "Amazing Grace") constitutes being a "bold voice of reform".
and
I don't understand what people see in this guy. You can get all the good things he has to say--without the sectarian self-righteousness and cloddish theological blunders and over-simplifications--from lots of other sources. So it would appear that precisely what people want is his distinctive contribution: sectarian self-righteousness and cloddish over-simplifications.

Good one. LOL.

We all have a job to do. Nobody this side of Colleseum has had the spinal fortitude to do what Michael Voris is doing. Putting Christ's Church above the need to be controlled by donors with cult mentality of protecting corrupt Bishops and Cardinals and priests.

That era is coming to an end. It will be painful for those who want to continue to protect it. Such is life.

National Catholic Reporter Paganizes the Crucifixion

But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.

I've read a lot of insanity from the National Catholic Reporter but this one written by "Jamie Mason", published on Good Friday, really takes the first prize blue ribbon.

I’ve had more than one Catholic who grew up either before or on the cusp of Vatican II tell me horror stories of how they were taught that Jesus died because of their sins.

This was a particularly heavy-handed way for priests and nuns to lay an even thicker coat of guilt on impressionable Catholic school children. Because they were sinners, Jesus had to suffer and die to redeem them. It was one rendering of the traditional theological interpretations of the crucifixion -- that Jesus had to die to fulfill the Scriptures and that his death atoned for the sins of the world...

Jesus’ passion and death is a result of deeply-human intolerance, jealousy, resentment, hatred, and, most of all, fear.

Jesus’ death may have been the will of God, but it was also the will of both powerful people and ordinary people who preferred unquestioning loyalty to rigid, oppressive political and religious regimes to the profound challenges of God incarnate...

Though some thought experiencing holiness meant being acceptable in the eyes of religious authorities, Jesus said it meant being constantly judged and ostracized by those in religious power. Though many were told that experiencing God meant obeying laws and practicing empty rituals, Jesus told them that encountering God happens when we feed those who hunger, welcome the estranged, shelter the vulnerable, and visit the lonely.

Get it?

Christ did not die to leave us the Institution of our Salvation, His One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and witness how far we go to be obedient to it, His Passion and Crucifixion is a story about the oppressive intolerance to sin by political and religious regimes. On Holy Thursday, we are not celebrating the institution of the Sacrament of Holy Communion and Holy Orders, these 'rituals' are 'empty'.

She goes on to make a fool out of those, earlier this week, who were disenfranchising the deep theological problems and spiritual abuse from turning Easter Sunday into a pagan earth day celebration:

It follows, then, that whenever God’s creation -- whether it be human lives or the ecosystems of the earth -- is unjustly harmed, God is harmed.
Whenever we harm ourselves or deny our own goodness, we wound God. Whenever we allow religious institutions to rob us of our dignity as unconditionally beloved children of God, God is put into a prison and degraded. Whenever we deny love or compassion to someone in need, or allow injustice to prosper, we deny God.
Whenever a creation of God suffers at the hands of greed, or the abuse of power, or hatred or fear, God is abused. Whenever a creation is killed, whether through our continued ravaging of the earth.... God is crucified.

An earth day "follows" the emptying of the worth of the Sacraments. An earth day celebration in place of our Triduum is bound to the school of thought that our 'rituals' and Sacraments are meaningless.

When Christ asked Simon whether he loved Him, and asked him to feed his sheep, all He meant was handing out gift certificates to Burger King.

This crap is real and it is out there. It isn't Catholic. It is a schism.

If you are in a parish that is celebrating the earth, encouraging the flock to take pride on your sins, you and your children are being robbed. The Catholics encouraging you to stay in these schismatic parishes and schools have fled from them themselves.

Sometimes, in fact most times, the devil is subtle.

You are hungry, what's the harm in eating this bread.

The apple is sweet, delicious.

He loves you and everyone is doing it, God was crucified so you could enjoy it without guilt.

It isn't a baby, you will not be provided the money to feed him, it's bad timing.

As a parent, anytime something harmful has been said or done in front of my children, I spoke up to correct it. Even if it was minor.

The misfeasance of the local Bishop who has jurisdiction over this schismatic rag is truly breathtaking. He has the canonical power to strip them of the right to use the word 'Catholic', but instead, he permits the flock get hoodwinked.

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.

The Voris Vortex

A few days ago,our friend Jasper linked to post written by Elizabeth Scalia cutting Fr. Pfleger and Cardinal George slack while denouncing Michael Voris.

The conclusion she wanted you to draw was that there isn't a distinction between the evangelization of an apostate priest misleading souls and the wimp of a Bishop who would assign him to pastor innocent children at a school - and those warning people about those errors and faithfully proclaiming Magisterium.

"The Church isn't a Democracy", she says.

That is exactly the point.

When somebody has a hold of a parish and is turning it from the recitation of teachings from the Catechism to the drivel of Al Gore and Joan Chittister, righteous people do not let other souls get led into an abyss.

It isn't a battle of opinions, it's The Institution that guides salvation.

If Elizabeth Scalia wants Catholics to support the appointment of Fr. Pfleger to a school where he will poison the minds of thousand of children while directing her complaints against people who want the Bishops to reign in dissenting 'opinions', she is the one trying to make the Church a democracy.

Picture your parish as a ship with a priest at the helm, and all the passengers trusting his guidance. As he is steering into an iceberg ahead, you warn him, expecting him to change course. But he doesn't and so you warn the passengers.

Have any thoughts about passengers who would object to the warnings and carry on about the ship "not being a democracy"?

You'd think daffy, try to convince him/her to get on with us as we run for the lifeboats, right?

The controversy started when Michael rejoiced in the fact that practicing Catholics are finally leaving parishes steering their parishioners into hell. We are leaving parishes that have turned the deposit of faith into a mission of Al Gore and Greenpeace and finding parishes teaching the Catechism.

This is precisely what St. Paul advised us to do. Moreover, it is what Christ Himself instructed when He said told us to shake the dust off of our sandals and hightail it out of town when Truth is not welcomed.

As usual, one of the Archbold brothers has a very sensible round up HERE.

(There is also a good dose of the histrionics going on around blogosphere in the comments section.)

Lisa Grass, who did not want to listen to the Vortex but rather made a judgment on 'the name', has been saying things like she didn't want to be part of "a schism" and she is discontinuing her support of Michael Voris and Real Catholic TV. She has posted this which seems to indicate she does not believe Michael 'instructed people to leave the Church' but in other places in blogosphere, her comments seem to take the opposite position:

I'm not interested in being a part of a schism. I haven't watched this video. The title is enough for me to stay away.

But what is going on here, Carol, is that Michael is sowing the 'seeds' of schism with things 'like' demanding people leave over things that are not heresy. That's the problem.

Is it heresy to sit in a parish listening to drivel about picking up litter and being nice to people in the parking lot on our way out of Church while avoiding teaching the Catechism year after year?

You bet it is. It is the worst assault upon the souls of Christ's people in our 2000 year history. They have erected a counterfeit church. (Boston is way ahead of the curve. Cardinal O'Malley has put the final pieces in place for the full blown schism.)

It is time to acknowledge what we have on our hands, what we have done to a generation of Catholics and to Christ. It's time to stop giving them the money to operate it and get to a parish where there is a priest who is in communion with Rome, teaching what the Church teaches and keeping you and your children and (everyone in the pews around us) in a state of Sanctifying Grace.

It certainly isn't 'schism' to find a solid priest and parish for our families. I'm sorry to see Lisa getting caught up in the estrogen storms and gross mis-characterizations in blogosphere.


Mark Shea chimed in to say blogging blowhards are not Bishops or the Magisterium.

This is true. But saying it in the context of inviting people to dismiss an apostolate that is serving the Magisterium with faithfulness and courage and truth U really wouldn't rank among the smartest things Mark has ever written.

We have been watching priests say invalid masses. We have sat among our peers week after week knowing they do not have the tools to receive the Blessed Sacrament in a State of Grace and their lives are spiraling in the spiritual chaos of unworthy reception of the Eucharist. Our children are confused. We have been giving them our money to operate the schism which persecutes and silences priests who teach the authentic faith. We are sitting in parishes run by schismatic and this generation is floundering. The world is drowning in the spiritual toxic waste.

Does that sound to you like "standing with Jesus"?

If that's all I can give Him (and my children), shame on me. There is a Messiah and we are not it. The idea that we are serving the Divinity of Christ or the Eucharist by supporting the farce is delusional. Our presence is giving their false teachings legitimacy.

It's time to pick up and go. Find an authentic Catholic parish. By their fruit you shall know them. Head for the bunker. The gates of hell shall not prevail but we have simply got to get off of the boats taking our families and friends there and tempting through the gate.

God Bless and protect Michael Voris and his team. Lift them up in prayer so that they keep their hand to the plow.

Rebelling against the lesser of two evils vote

There's a discussion going on at Mark Sheas discussion on the personal culpability and objective evils of voting for anybody in this election.

Okay: same with all moral decision-making, including politics. I think it is an objective evil to support a candidate who wishes to use his office to commit gravely immoral acts such as sign the Freedom of Choice Act or support stem cell research. I make no distinction between candidates who want to cannibalize babies who are big and candidates who want to cannibalize babies who are small. I think anybody voting for either candidate is committing an objective evil.

So, with this hypothesis if Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler were running against a John McCain or even Obama and were leading in the polls - responsible people who lobby to make sure Pol Pot doesn't win are committing an objective evil?

Not withstanding that fact that this allegation contradicts the the Pope's guidance, the idea that we should do nothing in the face of an Obama administration - is like standing by and doing nothing while a drunk driver gets behind the wheel of a car in our presence because he is a proabort.

Do check out the comments