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Question Box


Is Catholicism Really In Decline?
 
QUESTION:

Dear Fr. Michael:

I just finished watching a TV program on the subject of whether or not Catholicism is in decline.

I found it interesting how this TV program had only a few people on it and the consensus seemed to me to be best summarized by what one of those people said concerning the decline.

His opinion was that the decline has nothing to do with the Church but rather that the decline is caused by what is going on with the people which is why so many Roman Catholic Schools have been closed or consolidated.

Also of interest, there was no mention whatsoever about the Roman Catholics who today attend Mass and receive the Sacraments, just like before all of the endless changes of the changes of the changes since Vatican 2, which are offered/administered by Catholic Traditional Priests and Bishops in various places world-wide!

How is it that such people are so in the dark about these things which are so extremely obvious to those who love the Truth?

Thank you for your time and God Bless You.

A Catholic Faithful to the Unchangeable Catholic Faith, Mass, and Sacraments


ANSWER:

Dear Catholic Faithful to the Unchangeable Catholic Faith, Mass, and Sacraments:

Thank you for writing and also for your question.

This is a classical example of WHY it is necessary to pray to God for the Grace of Conversion for these poor, ignorant people.

Sad to say, they have been victimized by both misleading and false propaganda from the Vatican and from some of its various clergy.

Remember, it was the Infallible Roman Catholic Pope, His Holiness, Pope Saint Pius X, Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto [Tuesday, August 4, 1903 - Thursday, August 20, 1914], who warned all Roman Catholics about the infiltration of the Roman Catholic Church, including some of her Seminaries, by anti-Catholics whom His Holiness identified as Modernist Heretics, in his Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, On the Doctrine of the Modernists, Sunday, September 8, 1907, especially in paragraph # 43 (according to some printed editions).

It was against the Modernist heretics that this Holy Pope issued an automatic excommunication,  latae sententiae, in his Motu Proprio (On His Own Initiative) Præstantia Scripturæ Sacræ, Monday, November 18, 1907.  This is something which has been very conviently ignored.

In practical terms this means that the Modernist Heretics, a.k.a. the New Theology Theologians, who attended Synod Vatican 2, had no business being there because they were all automatically excommunicated in virtue of Præstantia Scripturæ Sacræ.

The bottom line is that Synod Vatican 2 [Thursday, October 11, 1962 - Wednesday, December 8, 1965], despite its attendance by an unknown number of loyal and faithful Roman Catholic Bishops, was nothing more than a Convention of the various anti-Catholic infiltrators who controlled the Synod.

Apparently most of the periti (experts), who were at the Synod likewise had no business being there because they also were all automatically excommunicated heretics in virtue of Præstantia Scripturæ Sacræ.

The anti-Catholic Infiltrators, in the name of Vatican 2, destroyed the Catholic Traditional Faith and her liturgical rites, especially for Offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and Administering the Sacraments.

As a courtesy to you, below please find a statistical analysis which indicates the tremendous decline in, and destruction of, the Roman Catholic Church.

This statistical data proves the "fruits" of the invalid, illegal, and anti-Catholic changes made by, and in the name of, Vatican 2, are ROTTEN fruits, mindful of the words of Wisdom by Jesus Christ Who taught us:

"By their fruits you shall know them"  (Matthew 7:16).
God Bless You!

Father Michael

 
 


Is Catholicism Really In Decline?

It is instructive to realize just how much the Catholic Faith has been gradually destroyed in the lives of average Catholics as proven by the following data:

An Index of Catholicism's Decline

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A Review by Pat Buchanan

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As the Watergate scandal of 1973-1974 diverted attention from the far greater tragedy unfolding in Southeast Asia, so, too, the scandal of predator-priests now afflicting the Catholic Church may be covering up a far greater calamity.
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Thirty-seven years after the end of the only church council of the 20th century, the jury has come in with its verdict:

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Vatican II appears to have been an unrelieved disaster for Roman Catholicism.MMMM
Liars may figure, but figures do not lie. Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis has pulled together a slim volume of statistics he has titled:
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Index of Leading Catholic Indicators:The Church Since Vatican I
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His findings make prophets of Catholic Traditionalists who warned that Vatican II would prove a blunder of historic dimensions, and those same findings expose as foolish and naive those who believed a council could reconcile Catholicism and modernity.
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When Pope John XXIII threw open the windows of the church, all the poisonous vapors of modernity entered, along with the Devil himself.
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Here are Jones's grim statistics of Catholicism's decline:
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Priests. While the number of priests in the United States more than doubled to 58,000, between 1930 and 1965; since then that number has fallen to 45,000. By 2020, there will be only 31,000 priests left, and more than half of these priests will be over 70.
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Ordinations. In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained in the United States. In 2002, the number was 450. In 1965, only 1 percent of U.S. parishes were without a priest. Today, there are 3,000 priestless parishes, 15 percent of all U.S. parishes.
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Seminarians. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. Two-thirds of the 600 seminaries that were operating in 1965 have now closed.
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Sisters. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns. By 2002, that had fallen to 75,000 and the average age of a Catholic nun is today 68. In 1965, there were 104,000 teaching nuns. Today, there are 8,200, a decline of 94 percent since the end of Vatican II.
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Religious Orders. For religious orders in America, the end is in sight.
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Jesuits:  In 1965, 3,559 young men were studying to become Jesuit priests. In 2000, the figure was 389.
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Christian Brothers: With the Christian Brothers, the situation is even more dire. Their number has shrunk by two-thirds, with the number of seminarians falling 99 percent.
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In 1965, there were 912 seminarians in the Christian Brothers. In 2000, there were only seven.
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Franciscans & Redemptorists:  The number of young men studying to become Franciscan and Redemptorist priests fell from 3,379 in 1965 to 84 in 2000.MMMM
Catholic schools. Almost half of all Catholic high schools in the United States have closed since 1965. The student population has fallen from 700,000 to 386,000. Parochial schools suffered an even greater decline. Some 4,000 have disappeared, and the number of pupils attending has fallen below 2 million -- from 4.5 million.
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Though the number of U.S. Catholics has risen by 20 million since 1965, Jones' statistics show that the power of Catholic belief and devotion to the Faith are not nearly what they were.MMMM
Catholic Marriage. Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one-third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments has soared from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002.
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Attendance at Mass. A 1958 Gallup Poll reported that three in four Catholics attended church on Sundays. A recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only one in four now attend.
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10%.  Only 10 percent of lay religious teachers now accept church teaching on contraception.
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53% Fifty-three percent believe a Catholic can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic.
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65%. Sixty-five percent believe that Catholics may divorce and remarry.
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77%. Seventy-seven percent believe one can be a good Catholic without going to mass on Sundays.
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70%.  By one New York Times poll, 70 percent of all Catholics in the age group 18 to 44 believe the Eucharist is merely a "symbolic reminder" of Jesus.
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At the opening of Vatican II, reformers were all the rage.
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They were going to lead us out of our Catholic ghettos by altering the liturgy, rewriting the Bible and missals, abandoning the old traditions, making us more ecumenical, and engaging the world.
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And their legacy?
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Four decades of devastation wrought upon the church, and the final disgrace of a hierarchy that lacked the moral courage of the Boy Scouts to keep the perverts out of the seminaries, and throw them out of the rectories and schools of Holy Mother Church.
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Through the papacy of Pius XII, the church resisted the clamor to accommodate itself to the world and remained a moral beaconMMMM
Jones' statistics tell us the price of appeasement.

“Corruption is in Holy Places....”
A NEW Theology Theologian Teaching HERESIES
To Catholics Who Are VERY Ignorant of Their Faith!!!





Prophecy Fulfilled:

Our Lady of LaSalette
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“Corruption is in holy places....”
“Rome will lose the faith
and become the seat of anti-Christ.”
(Our Lady of LaSalette to Frances Melanie Mathieu)
(Saturday, September 19, 1846)






The NEW mass is a different liturgy.
This needs to be said without ambiguity.
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The Roman Rite, as we knew it, no longer exists.
It has been destroyed!



Father Joseph Gelineau S.J.
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"The New Mass is a different liturgy. This needs to be said without ambiguity. The Roman Rite, as we knew it, no longer existsIt has been DESTROYED!"
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(Father Joseph Gelineau S.J. [b. at Champ-sur-Layon, Maine-et-Loire, West-Central France, on Sunday, October 31, 1920 - d. at Sallanches, a commune in the Haute-Savoie  department in the Rhône-Alps, South-Eastern France, on Friday, August 8, 2008].   He was a Synod Vatican 2 peritus - expert - who helped to make up the NOR (Novus Ordo Rite) along with other anti-Catholics and the 6 Protestants.  He was, of course, a professional apologist for the NOR.  This quotation is from his book - Demain La Liturgk, Paris, 1976, pp. 9-10; emphasis added).




This incredible statement by a peritus - expert - at Vatican 2, Father Joseph Gelineau S.J., who helped to make up the NOR (Novus Ordo Rite, a.k.a. the New Mass), so if anyone should know, he himself should definitely know what is what because of his own personal involvement in making up the New Mass, tells all Roman Catholics that:
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"The New Mass is a different liturgy. This needs to be said without ambiguity. The Roman Rite, as we knew it, no longer existsIt has been DESTROYED!"
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This incredible statement by this peritus - expert - at Vatican 2, Father Joseph Gelineau S.J., who helped to make up the NOR (Novus Ordo Rite, a.k.a. the New Mass), verifies the Prophecies of Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest, which were made way back in 1902 A.D.!
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Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest
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The Prophetic Warnings of Jesus Christ
In 1902 A.D. Jesus Christ Prophecized
A NEW "mass that contains words which are odious in My Sight"!
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On Saturday, November 27, 1902, the 72nd anniversary of the Miraculous Medal Apparition [Saturday, November 27, 1830], Our Lord warned of the conspiracy of evil people which was already inventing a NEW liturgy - this was in 1902!!! - to replace the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which He had PERFECTLY and DIVINELY Instituted:
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“I give you a warning. The disciples who are not of My Holy Gospel are now working hard to remake, according to their ideas, and under the influence of the enemy of souls [Satan], a mass that contains words which are odious in My Sight. When the fatal hour arrives where the faith of My Priests are put to the test, it will be these texts that will be celebrated, in this second period.”
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“The first period is the one of My Priesthood, existing since Me. The second period is the one of the persecution, when the enemies of the Faith and of Holy Religion will strongly enforce their formulas in the book of the second celebration. These infamous spirits are those who crucified Me and are awaiting the kingdom of the New Messias.  Some of My Holy Priests will refuse this book, sealed with the words of the abyss. Unfortunately, they will be the exception, it will be used.”
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This means that the UNCHANGEABLE Essence of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass Perfectly and Divinely Instituted by Jesus Christ, which are found in the Valid and Lawful Catholic Traditional Approved Ancient Mass Rites, most especially the Ancient Roman Rite, a.k.a. the Old Mass in Latin, was to be remade:
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"according to their ideas, and under the influence of the enemy of souls [Satan], a massMMMM
[The NOR - Novus Ordo Rite, a.k.a. NEW mass, Novus Ordo Missae]
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that contains words which are odious in My Sight”.
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This also means that there will in fact be Priests and Bishops who will use "these texts", i.e. the texts found in the various "missals" of the various versions (e.g. Latin, Spanish, French, German, English, Polish, Italian, etc.) of the NOR - Novus Ordo Rite, a.k.a. NEW mass, Novus Ordo Missae.
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“When the fatal hour arrives where the faith of My Priests are put to the test, it will be these texts that will be celebrated”.MMMM
Jesus Christ goes on to warn all Catholics that:
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“... the enemies of the [Catholic] Faith and of Holy Religion will strongly enforce their formulas [these texts] in the book of the second celebration.”
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Historically, there is only ONE situation to which this prophecy can be applied and considered to have been fulfilled - the texts found in the various "missals" of the various versions (e.g. Latin, Spanish, French, German, English, Polish, Italian, etc.) of the NOR - Novus Ordo Rite, a.k.a. NEW mass, Novus Ordo Missae.
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Jesus Christ prophecized that not all Priests would accept the NOR - Novus Ordo Rite, a.k.a. NEW mass, Novus Ordo Missae.  Catholic Priests and Bishops who are faithful to their Holy Vocation to the Holy Priesthood continue to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as it is found in Missals printed in 1943 and earlier in what is called "Catacombs III" which is to be found around the world!  They reject all other missals printed for use in the Roman Rite which were printed in 1944 and thereafter!
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Jesus Christ tells everyone that the various "missals" of the various versions (e.g. Latin, Spanish, French, German, English, Polish, Italian, etc.) of the NOR - Novus Ordo Rite, a.k.a. NEW mass, Novus Ordo Missae are "sealed with the words of" Hell, i.e. "of the abyss".
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Jesus Christ also prophecized that there would be Priests who would "accept" "this book, sealed with the words of the abyss", which automatically also includes all of those missals printed in 1944, 1950, 1955, 1956, 1960, 1962, 1969, etc., etc.!
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“Some of My Holy Priests will refuse this book, sealed with the words of the abyss. Unfortunately, they will be the exception, it will be used.”
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In summary, these prophecies of Jesus Christ fit the NOR - Novus Ordo Rite, a.k.a. NEW mass, Novus Ordo Missae like a glove!!!
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There is no other historical set of facts which perfectly and totally - 100% - fit these prophecies of Jesus Christ in 1902!



The Prophetic Warnings of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In 1904 A.D. The Blessed Virgin Mary Prophecized
NEW clergy, NEW liturgy, NEW sacraments, NEW...

Our Blessed Mother
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On Tuesday, May 10, 1904, Our Lady described the NEW Clergy and their NEW liturgy:
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“They will not stop on this hateful and sacrilegious road. They will go further to compromise all at once, and in one blow, the Holy Church, the Clergy, and the Faith of my children.”
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She announced the
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dispersion of the pastorsMMMM
by the church herself:
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true Pastors, who will be replaced by others formed by Hell:
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“...NEW preachers of NEW sacraments, NEW temples, NEW baptisms, NEW confraternities.”
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These prophecies refer to the wholesale "Spiritual slaughter" which happens to "the Holy Church, the Clergy, and the Faith of my children".

She announced that the "True Pastors" would "be replaced by others formed by Hell".

This seems to allude to the fact that Synod Vatican 2 was a CONVENTION of Communists, Freemasons, Modernists, Satanists, and Pedophiles who had INFILTRATED the Roman Catholic Church in the early part of the 1900's!

This also refers to the fact that those Priests and Bishops who refused to accept and/or to use all of the anti-Catholic Satanic changes to the Mass and the Sacraments were kicked out - with no place to go and, apparently in some cases, without getting their pensions?!

Some of these Priests and Prelates quickly became the nucleus of the Clergy in Catacombs III and their courage and fortitude to continue to Offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and to administer the Seven Sacraments, according to the Ancient Roman Rite, just as they had done before this CONVENTION of God-Haters and Catholic-Haters in Synod Vatican 2.

The prophecy about the "NEW sacraments... NEW baptisms" clearly refers to the many changes and ultimate destruction of the Ritual books used by Prelates (Pontificale Romanum) and by Priests (Rituale Romanum).
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In summary, these prophecies of the Blessed Virgin Mary fit the NOR - Novus - NEW - Ordo Rite, a.k.a. NEW mass, Novus Ordo Missae like a glove!!!
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There is no other historical set of facts which perfectly and totally - 100% - fit these prophecies of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1904!





Marie-Julie Jahenny
[b. at Blain, Brittany - West France - on Tuesday, February 12, 1850 -
d. at La Fraudais, a short distance Northeast of Blain, Brittany on Tuesday, March 4, 1941]

The above Prophecies of Our Lord and Our Blessed Mother were given to Marie-Julie Jahenny, the famous and very reputable Roman Catholic Mystic and Stigmatist of La Fraudais and perhaps the greatest mystic in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

She was the eldest of five children, she was brought up by her simple, good parents in that lively faith for which Bretons are renowned. Our Lord favored her with many Graces from the time of her First Holy Communion, Graces to which she corresponded with ever increasing devotion.

She joined the Franciscan Third Order when she was in her early twenties in order  to better help to Sanctify herself in the world.

In 1873 she received from Heaven that most remarkable Mystic Gift, the Stigmata. From the age of twenty-three until her death, some sixty years later, she bore in her body the Wounds of Our Lord to a more visible degree than had any other stigmatist in the Church's history.

In addition to the Five Wounds of the Sacred Hands, Feet and Side, Marie-Julie suffered the Wounds inflicted by the Crown of Thorns on Our Lord's Sacred Head and Shoulder respectively, the Wounds of His Scourging, those caused by the ropes with which He was bound, as well as other Wounds of a more mystical nature.

Henceforth, Marie-Julie lived her life of co-redemptive suffering (as a victim Soul) in a little cottage in the hamlet of La Fraudais, near Blain. She thus fulfilled Our Blessed Lord's desire for her to make reparation for the sins of France and the world.

She was favored with frequent visions of Jesus and Mary, as well as many prophecies. The Truth of the Heavenly warnings of which she was to be the humble messenger was vindicated by her characteristic simplicity and honesty, her exemplary obedience to her Spiritual Directors and her Bishop, and of course, by the fulfillment of all she prophecized during her long life.

For example, with unfailing accuracy she foretold the two World Wars, the election of the Infallible Roman Catholic Pope, Saint Pius X, Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto [Tuesday, August 4, 1903 - Thursday, August 20, 1914], the various persecutions of the Church, the chastisements and the fate of apostate France. Much remains to unfold.

Her warnings for the Last Times should be read by all “who have ears.” Marie-Julie was the wonder of the many scientists who examined her continually, the scorn of unbelievers and the proud, the admiration of her lifelong friend, Monsignor Fournier, Bishop of Nantes, and of the devoted circle of those who made the diffusion of her messages to an ungrateful and unheeding world their life's work. She went to her Heavenly reward on Tuesday, March 4, 1941.

Blind, deaf, dumb and crippled, she had subsisted miraculously on the Blessed Sacrament alone, for many of the last years of her life. Surely then, we will not pass over lightly what God has confided to her for the benefit of our own sad days.

A word to the Wise is sufficient, while oceans of words to the foolish is never enough.





Bishop Fournier
Bishop of Nantes
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Monsignor Fournier, the Bishop of Nantes, approved the Supernatural experiences of Marie-Julie Jahenny befor his death in 1877 by stating that all that had happened to Marie-Julie was of a Supernatural and Divine origin.  This gave the Mystic the mantle of credibility for the future as well as the past.




The graphic at the conclusion of
“The Song of Bernadette” reads:
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“For those who believe, no explanation is necessary.
For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.”






For the time is, that judgment should begin at the House of God.
(1 Peter 4:17)


Reading
If thou wilt receive profit, read with humility, simplicity and faith; and seek not at any time the fame of being learned.
(Thomas a'Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book I, Chapter 5:2;4.)

Important Catholic Quotes for Today!

 

Saint Paul
The Apostle
Stand fast... hold the Traditions.” (2 Thessalonians 2:14)
“But though We, or an Angel from Heaven, Preach a Gospel to you besides that which We have preached to you, let him be anathema.” (Galatians 1:8)
Am I then become your enemy, because I tell you the Truth?(Galatians 4:16)

Pope St Gregory I
“If people are scandalized at the Truth, it is better to allow the birth of scandal, than to abandon the Truth.”

(Infallible Roman Catholic Pope Saint Gregory I, the Great, [Friday, September 3, 590 - Monday, March 12, 604], Homily on Ezechiel, 7; cited by Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P., Summa Theologica, Part II-II, Question 43, Article 7.)


St Thomas Aquinas
Doxnotxheedxbyxwhomx
a thing is said, butxrather whatxis said.
 
(Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P., [b. 1225 A.D. in Rocca Secca, Naples, Italy - d. Wednesday, March 7, 1274 A.D., in Fossa Nuova, Italy], Doctor of the Church,Letter to Brother John.)

Patriarch
Saint Athanasius
“The Heretics may possess the buildings of the Church, but you possess the Faith of the Church... It is a fact that they have the premises - but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the True Faith.  You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you.  Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The True Faith, obviously.  Who has lost and who has won in this struggle - the one who keeps the premises, or the one who keeps the Faith?....  Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the True Church of Jesus Christ.”

(Patriarch Saint Athanasius [b. Alexandria, Egypt 296 A.D. - d. Alexandria, Egypt on Wednesday, May 2, 373A.D.], Patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt, Father of Orthodoxy in the Catholic Church, “Coll. Selecta SS. Eccl. Patrum.,” Caillu and Guillou, Volume 32, pp 411-412; emphasis added.)


Pope Pius VI
“In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every Century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements which disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic Truth is camouflaged.” (Infallible Roman Catholic Pope Pius VI, Giovanni Angelo Braschi [Wednesday, February 15, 1775 - Thursday, August 29, 1799], using his Infallible Ordinary Magisterium, Promulgated his Infallible Encyclical “Auctorem Fidei,” Thursday, August 28, 1794, ¶ 6; emphasis added).

Pope St Pius X
“These latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ. Wherefore, We may no longer keep silence, lest We should seem to fail in Our most Sacred Duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be set down to lack of diligence in the discharge of Our Office.” 

(Infallible Roman Catholic Pope Saint Pius X, Giuseppe Sarto [Tuesday, August 4, 1903 - Thursday, August 20, 1914], Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, On the Doctrine of the Modernists, Sunday, September 8, 1907.)


Father
St Vincent of Lerins
“In an Epistle sent at the time to Africa, he [Infallible Roman Catholic Pope Saint Stephen I [Friday, May 12, 254 - Sunday, August 2, 257] laid down this RULELet there be no innovation - nothing but what has been handed down. For that holy and prudent man well knew that true piety admits no other rule than that whatsoever things have been faithfully received from our Fathers the same are to be faithfully consigned to posterity.

It is our duty to follow Religion, not to make Religion follow us. The proper characteristic of Christians is not to impose their own beliefs or observances upon posterity, but to preserve and keep what we have received from those who went before us. What then was the issue of the whole matter? What but the usual and customary one?  Antiquity was retained, novelty [i.e. change] was rejected” 
(Father Saint Vincent of Lerins, [b. Toul, France, c. 400 A.D. - d. Island of Lerins, c. 450 A.D.], A Commonitory [an aid to memory] for the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith Against the Profane Novelties of All Heresies, Chapter VI, ¶ 16; emphasis added).


St Thomas Aquinas
“The Apostles and their successors are God’s vicars in governing the Church which is built on Faith and the Sacraments of Faith
Wherefore, just as they may not institute another church, so neither may they deliver another faith, nor institute other sacraments...” \
(Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P., Summa Theologica, Part III, Question 64, Article 2, Reply to Objection 3; emphasis added).

Patriarch
Saint Athanasius
“Let us note that the very Tradition, teaching, and Faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers. On this was the Church founded; and if anyone departs from this, he neither is, nor any longer ought to be called, a Christian.”

(Patriarch Saint Athanasius [b. Alexandria, Egypt 296 A.D. - d. Alexandria, Egypt on Wednesday, May 2, 373A.D.], Patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt, Father of Orthodoxy in the Catholic Church, Letter to Serapion of Thmuis, 359 A.D.).


Bishop St Isidore
“Therefore, heresy is so-called from the Greek word meaning choice, by which each chooses according to his own will what he pleases to teach or believe.  But we are not permitted to believe whatever we choose, nor to choose whatever someone else has believed.  We have the Apostles of God as authorities, who did not themselves of their own will choose what they would believe, but faithfully transmitted to the nations the teaching received from Christ.  So, even if ‘an Angel from Heaven’ should preach otherwise, he shall be called anathemaX(Saint Paul, Epistle to the Galatians 1:8.).” 
(Bishop Saint Isidore of Seville, Spain, [b. Cartagena, Spain 560 A.D. - d. Seville, Spain, 636 A.D.], Doctor of the Catholic Church, Etymologies, 8, 3; emphasis added.)

Bishop Saint Ivo
Priests & Bishops: “Do not be one of those timourous physicians who like their tranquility more than the saving of the sick...  Even though Salome should dance before Herod, should ask for John's head and should obtain it from the detestable King, John's duty is to cry out: NON LICET! [It is not permitted!].” 
(Bishop Saint Ivo of Chartres, a.k.a. Yves, I’ve, Yvo  [b. Beauvais, France or Auteuil, France, c. 1040 A.D. - d. Chartres, France, Tuesday, May 30, 1116 A.D.], Bishop of Chartres [1090 A.D. - Tuesday, May 30, 1116 A.D.], Letter # 24, To Bishop Hugh of Lyons, October, 1094 A.D.)

St Vincent of Lerins
Magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.

“Care must especially be had that that [Faith] be held, which was believed everywhere, always, and by all.”

(Father Saint Vincent of Lerins, A Commonitory [an aid to memory] for the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith Against the Profane Novelties of All Heresies, Chapter 3; emphasis added.)

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