On the morality of taking the Covid vaccines

 

From Lifesite News:

In a LifeSiteNews essay which was overlooked by many, a thoughtful priest-theologian offers a decisive explanation of several reasons why it is mortally sinful for a person with sufficient knowledge to receive one of the current abortion-tainted experimental COVID-19 gene-therapy vaccines.

“All Catholics and men of good will must abhor abortion,” wrote “Father Elias,” a pen name used by the priest-author for “the sake of prudence” and to maintain “the focus upon the content of the article.”

Equally repugnant is the fact that all of the current experimental COVID-19 vaccines, which are given emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are abortion-tainted, “having been tested or developed through the abuse of stolen aborted fetal cells.”

In a document released by the Vatican last December, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) articulated principles of remote material cooperation which may permit the use of such abortion-tainted vaccines in grave situations.

Based on his critical analysis of the CDF document, Fr. Elias presented his understanding of the Catholic principles of moral theology which apply to the question of whether it is acceptable to receive an abortion-tainted vaccine:

There is no available morally untainted therapeutic intervention that neutralizes the proposed health threat.

There must exist a proportionate cause for using an abortion tainted therapeutic intervention based on the risks involved.

There must exist an actual grave threat to your health or that of others if you were to refrain from taking the proposed abortion-tainted therapeutic intervention.

One must oppose the fact that the therapeutic intervention is abortion-tainted.

In order for such an abortion-tainted vaccine to be morally acceptable, all four conditions must be met, and if even one of these criteria is missing, Fr. Elias confirms that use of such an abortion-tainted experimental biological agent is gravely sinful. Yet, he goes on to illustrate how not just one, but the first three criteria have not been met for the use of these gene-based vaccines.

In illustrating the gravity of the sin, Fr. Elias offers an analogy: “If your friend steals someone else’s car and then offers to sell it to you cheaply, it would be a mortal sin to buy the car, even if you were personally opposed to the fact that it was stolen. The morally tainted condition of the car being stolen makes it objectively mortally sinful for you to buy it. And likewise, being personally opposed to the evil of abortion does not of itself exempt a person from mortal sin through accepting the use of a baby murder-tainted vaccine.”

Beginning with the first criterion above to prove the mortal sinfulness of using one of these vaccines, Fr. Elias summarizes that “when a safe and effective health intervention that is not tainted by abortion is available to neutralize the health threat, it is sinful to use an abortion-tainted health intervention for the health threat.”

Highly safe, effective, inexpensive, and ethically produced treatments are available, thus an abortion-tainted experimental vaccine cannot be morally used

“Thanks be to God,” the priest exclaims, there are “several morally clean, safe, and effective health intervention protocols available which have been proven to be highly effective against COVID-19 in thousands of cases worldwide. And yet, only one available, safe, effective, and morally clean health intervention is necessary to make morally tainted vaccines morally illicit (unlawful) to use.”

Though it has been aggressively suppressed in the western media, hundreds of doctors and scientists from around the world attest to the availability of safe, very effective, inexpensive and ethically produced health interventions for COVID-19. Early treatment with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), zinc, an anti-biotic, and vitamins is one such option with a phenomenal track record.

Another treatment which is hailed as nothing less than “miraculous” is the use of ivermectin, which, as described by Dr. Pierre Kory in an impassioned testimony before a U.S. Senate committee last December, “basically obliterates transmission of this virus.”

Putting it very simply, Kory testified, “If you take it [ivermectin], you will not get sick.”

Related reading here

And the rising Antichristic Magisterium here.

The physical dangers resulting from the vaccine here.

Pope Francis: "It is a mortal sin to discard the elderly..."

"The eclipse of the sense of God and of

man inevitably leads to a practical materialism, which breeds individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism. Here too we see the permanent validity of the words of the Apostle: "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct" (Rom 1:28). The values of being are replaced by those of having. The only goal which counts is the pursuit of one's own material well-being. The so-called "quality of life" is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions-interpersonal, spiritual and religious-of existence.

In such a context suffering, an inescapable burden of human existence but also a factor of possible personal growth, is "censored", rejected as useless, indeed opposed as an evil, always and in every way to be avoided. When it cannot be avoided and the prospect of even some future well-being vanishes, then life appears to have lost all meaning and the temptation grows in man to claim the right to suppress it.

Within this same cultural climate, the body is no longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of relations with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency. Consequently, sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another, in all the other's richness as a person, it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated: in this way the marriage union is betrayed and its fruitfulness is subjected to the caprice of the couple. Procreation then becomes the "enemy" to be avoided in sexual activity: if it is welcomed, this is only because it expresses a desire, or indeed the intention, to have a child "at all costs", and not because it signifies the complete acceptance of the other and therefore an openness to the richness of life which the child represents.

In the materialistic perspective described so far, interpersonal relations are seriously impoverished. The first to be harmed are women, children, the sick or suffering, and the elderly. The criterion of personal dignity-which demands respect, generosity and service-is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness: others are considered not for what they "are", but for what they "have, do and produce". This is the supremacy of the strong over the weak." (Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, No. 23).

Supremacy of the strong over the weak. This is the Molochian Gospel. It is a "gospel" advanced by President Barack Obama who has said that, "We are God's partners in matters of life and death" - see here.

During his weekly General Audience, Pope Francis said that: “It is a mortal sin to discard our elderly. The elderly are not aliens, we are them, in a short or in a long while; we are inevitably them, even although we choose not to think about it...

If we do not learn to look after and to respect our elderly, we will be treated in the same way. A society where the elderly are discarded carries within it the virus of death...

The quality of a society can be judged by the way it includes its older members. This is a particular challenge for our Western societies, marked on the one hand by ageing populations and on the other by a cult of youth, efficiency and profit which tends to discard everything not considered productive or useful… In showing concern for our elderly, we strengthen the social fabric and ensure the future of our young.”

I have spent time visiting the elderly in nursing homes.  And there is nothing more sad than witnessing those who long for a visit from their loved ones and who often spend their days in tears waiting for family who cannot or will not find the time to spend with them.

Our culture has become selfish and self-absorbed.  The elderly and the disabled are made to feel that they are a burden.

But as Henri Nouwen has said, "The elderly are our prophets, they remind us that what we see so clearly in them is a process in which we all share. . . . Their lives are full of warnings but also of hopes."

The way we respond to the elderly will determine our own future.

On Jimmy Akin and mortal sin

In my previous post, I noted how Jimmy Akin believes that "quite a number" of those Americans who are, "committing abortion and contraception...sleeping together outside of marriage, using porn, and doing a host of other things that can endanger their souls," will not end up in hell.  He writes, "It can be tempting to conclude that most Catholics in America today are going to go to hell.
Is the situation that bleak?...Although Catholics sometimes say things like “contraception is a mortal sin” or “sleeping together outside of marriage is a mortal sin,” this is a form of shorthand.
For a person to truly commit a mortal sin, more than a mere act of contraception or a mere act of fornication is needed.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: “Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.”

 

Let’s look at those three conditions

Grave Matter

If a married couple contracepts or if an unmarried couple has sexual relations, this fulfills the first of the three conditions: They have committed a “sin whose object is grave matter.”
But the other two conditions must also be fulfilled for the sin to be a mortal one.
In our shorthand way of speaking, we’re warning people against doing these things, because if the additional two conditions are fulfilled, it will be a mortal sin, but if they are not fulfilled then it won’t be.

Full Knowledge

The second condition involves having “full knowledge,” and here is where the reader’s remarks about society come into play.
The reader acknowledges that society makes it difficult for people to do what the Church teaches.
One of the ways it does that is by feeding them a constant narrative—through the media, through social interactions—that contradicts the Church’s teaching.
Even within the Church, there have been many people (priests, nuns, catechists) who have undermined the Church’s teaching in recent years.
We’ve had really bad catechesis for the last 40 years, as well as an assault on Church teaching by society and the media in general.
The result, as the reader notes, is that many people committing acts that are objectively gravely sinful do not believe that this is what they are doing.
As a result, for many of these people, the second condition needed for mortal sin may simply be lacking. On this point, the Catechism notes:

1859 Mortal sin . . . presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law.

1860 Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense.

This is likely the case with a large number of people who have been the victims of bad catechesis and the constant subversion of the Church’s teaching by society and the media.
On the other hand, if someone has a kind of willful blindness, that won’t let them off the hook:

1859 Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.

How many people fall into this latter category? See below.

Deliberate Consent

The third condition is that of deliberate consent. According to the Catechism:

1859 Mortal sin . . . implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice.

1860 The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest.

This means that the brief thoughts that flit through your mind and that you try to get rid of swiftly are not mortally sinful. You are not deliberately consenting to them.
You’re only doing that if you purposefully dwell on and foster them.
In the same way, “the prompting of feelings and passions”—to which young people in particular are subject—“can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense.”
So can “external pressures” and “pathological disorders.”
So even when people have committed a sin with grave matter and done so with full knowledge of its sinfulness, there are a number of things that could keep the third condition from being fulfilled and thus keep it from being a mortal sin.

The State of American Catholics

Given the factors mentioned above, the situation for American Catholics does not look quite as bleak.
While it is true that many of them are committing sins that have grave matter, between poor catechesis in Church, society’s constant assault on Church teaching, and the various factors that diminish the voluntary and free character of a sin, quite a number of them likely do not have all three conditions fulfilled." (See here for full post).

The problem with Mr. Akin's thinking was addressed by Dr. Germain Grisez during a talk he gave entitled Legalism, Moral Truth and Pastoral Practice which was given at a 1990 symposium on moral theology and the Catholic priesthood which was held at St. Charles Seminary in Overbrook, Philadelphia in 1990.

Dr. Grisez correctly noted that, "Even before the current moral crisis in the Church, legalism affected pastoral practice in many ways.  Very often God's sovereignty and the Church's teaching authority tended to overshadow the inherent reasonableness of moral requirements and their intrinsic relationship to the kingdom.  Obedience rather than charity seemd to be the basic Christian virtue.  Hell was a punishment that God would impose rather than the inevitable outcome of unrepented mortal sin...

Many pastors stressed the minimum required to avoid mortal sin...Because invincible ignorance frees one from guilt, pastors were more concerned about the sincerity of penitents than about the correctness of their consciences.  Considering morality a matter of laws rather than of truths, pastors assumed that people could easily be in good faith while doing what is objectively wrong. And ignoring the phenomena of rationalization and self-deception, pastors confidently thought that they could discern when penitents were and were not in good faith.

During the twentieth century, pastoral treatment of repetitious sins through weakness - especially masturbation, homosexual behavior, premarital sex play and contraception within marriage - grew increasingly mild.  Pastors correctly recognized that weakness and immaturity can lessen such sins' malice.  Thinking legalistically, they did not pay enough attention to the sins' inherent badness and harmfulness, and they developed the idea that people can freely choose to do something that they regard as a grave matter without committing a mortal sin.  This idea presupposes that in making choices people are not responsible precisely for choosing what they choose.  That presupposition makes sense within a legalistic framework, because lawgivers can take into account mitigating factors and limit legal culpability.  But it makes no sense for morality correctly understood, because moral responsibility in itself is not something attached to moral acts but simply is moral agents' self-determination in making free choices."

Our Lady of Fatima told the children that if people would do what she told them, many souls would be saved.  The road to salvation is narrow as Our Lord said.  That road will not be found by freely choosing to commit sins which are grave while engaging in rationalization and self-deception and convincing oneself that such acts really do not constitute a grave sin.

Who to believe about mortal sin: Our Lady or Jimmy Akin?

Father Joseph Pelletier, A.A., was a native of Winchendon, Massachusetts.  And he served the Church at a time when most priests were still reminding the souls entrusted to their care about the reality of hell and that mortal sins, unrepented of, render a soul incapable of eternal life.

Back then, most Catholics knew and accepted God's Holy Word: "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God." (1 Corinthians 6: 9, 10).

Although the Catechism of the Catholic Church assures us that, "Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the 'eternal punishment' of sin," (CCC, 1472), many today - priests, religious and laity - would have us believe that mortal sin is rare.  For example, James Akin makes that case here.  But if all, or most souls, are saved, how do we explain the Scriptures?  When the Son of Man began His public ministry, He did so with the word "repent" (Matthew 4:17). And He advised the woman caught in adultery to "sin no more" (John 8:11). Likewise, in the case of the man cured at the Pool of Bethesda, Jesus advised him to "sin no more lest something worse befall thee" (John 5:14). When queried on the subject of how many would be saved, Jesus replied "few" because the "gate" to Heaven is "narrow" (Matthew 7:13-14). And while no one can pinpoint the precise meaning of the word "few," still, it is sobering that Jesus chose the image of a narrow gate.


Jesus is likened in the gospel to a stern master who has lazy servants flogged and murderous ones put to death (Matthew 21:41; Luke 12:47). And while it is true that Jesus is Mercy, He is also Justice. And for every parable illustrative of His mercy, there are three or four threatening divine retribution. Someone just accused me of being "too negative" for reminding others of this fact. But I didn't start a Blog to be popular. I prefer the friendship of Christ to that of the world.

The Judgment Day is always described as a day of wrath and never as a day of rejoicing (Proverbs 11:4; Zephaniah 1:15; Sirach 5:10; Romans 2:5; Revelation 6:17). Why is this? If everyone (or even a large segment of mankind) is headed for Heaven, why does Sacred Scripture refer to the Judgment Day as a day of wrath?

The smug, self-satisfied "we-are-all-saved-already" attitude found in so many Catholic parishes is the result of the sin of presumption. Because there are priests who are betraying Jesus by refusing to preach on the reality of sin and the reality of Hell, a spiritual dry-rot has infected much of the Church. This is why nearly everyone receives Holy Communion at Mass but nearly no one goes to Confession.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about presumption: "There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God's almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit)." (CCC, 2092).

The words of Sacred Scripture remind us that such an attitude is very, very wrong: "Of forgiveness be not overconfident, adding sin upon sin. Say not:' Great is his mercy; my many sins he will forgive.' For mercy and anger alike are with him; upon the wicked alights his wrath." (Sirach 5:5-7).

Back to Fr. Joseph Pelletier, the Assumptionist priest who remained faithful to God's Holy Word.  In his book entitled The Sun Danced at Fatima, he vividly describes one of the visits of Our Lady to the three children when she said, "Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and repeat often, especially whenever you make a sacrifice for them: O Jesus, it is for  love of You, for the conversion of sinners and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."  Fr. Pelletier continues, "Then, as she utters these last words, she opens her graceful hands in that same gesture that recalls the Dominus vobiscum of the Mass.  Almost immediately Lucia utters a cry of horror...For, as the Lady parts her hands, beams of reflected light  radiate from them and seem to penetrate the earth.  And the abyss of hell is unveiled before the children's horrified eyes.  They observe an immense sea of fire which appears to be under the earth.  Immersed in the fire are the devils or fallen angels and the souls of damned human beings.  The two categories of individuals are easily distinguishable.  The souls have a human form whereas the demons appear in the terrifying and loathsome forms of horrible, unknown animals.  But both the devils and the souls are transparent and black or bronze-colored, like live embers.  Floating and tossed about in the conflagration by the flames which issue from them with clouds of smoke, they fall about on all sides without weight or balance, as sparks do in a great fire.  All the while they emit shrieks and groans of pain and despair which horrify the children and cause them to tremble with fear....It is fortunate that this vision lasts but a moment and that the Lady has prepared the children for it by her promise to take them to heaven, for otherwise Lucia believes they would have died of fright....The Lady reads their silent question and there is much tenderness and sorrow in her voice as she replies: 'You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go.  To save them God wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.  If people will do what I shall tell you, many souls will be saved and there will be peace..'"     Our Lady promised the Fatima seers that, if people did what she would tell them, many souls would be saved.  But, if mortal sin is as rare as Jimmy Akin and others would have us believe, what would these souls be saved from?  Venial sin does not merit hell.  Only mortal sin.   There is an effort today to contradict the Fatima message and even to suppress it altogether.  And this too is a preparation for the Reign of Antichrist - when sin will be celebrated.  

The gravity of liturgical abuse and the Diocese of Worcester

Many Catholics today, priests and laity as well as consecrated religious, possess a lust for innovation which they use to assault the stability of sacred rites.  Referring to these liturgical terrorists who seek to violently replace divine forms with their own reckless innovations, John Henry Cardinal Newman warned that, "No one can really respect religion and insult its forms.  Granted that forms are not immediately from God, still long use has made them divine to us; for the spirit of religion has so penetrated and quickened them, that to destroy them is, in respect to the multitude of men, to unsettle and dislodge the religious principle itself.  In most minds usage has so identified them with the notion of religion, that one cannot be extirpated without the other.  Their faith will not bear transplanting...Precious doctrines are strung like jewels upon slender threads." (John Henry Cardinal Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. II, Christian Classics Inc, pp. 75-76).

Those who are bent on making their own unauthorized changes to the liturgy often fail to appreciate how such an endeavor can constitute grave sin.  I know this because some have accused me of making a mountain out of a molehill for my opposition to various liturgical abuses.  Dr. Germain Grisez explains: "There are many reasons why it is wrong for priests intentionally to make unauthorized liturgical changes.  Two are especially important.  First, such changes sometimes embody or imply deviations from Catholic faith; even when they do not, they often omit (see here for example) or obscure something of the liturgy's expression of faith.  Thus, the Church teaches: 'The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays.  Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition' (cf. DV 8).  For this reason no sacramental rite may be modified or manipulated at the will of the minister or the community.  Even the supreme authority in the Church may not change the liturgy arbitrarily, but only in the obedience of faith and with religious respect for the mystery of the liturgy.' (CCC, 1124-1125).

Dr. Grisez continues, "..in the Eucharist, a priest acts in the person of Christ, who joins humankind to the Father; but in making unauthorized changes, a priest obscures Jesus' action, focuses attention on himself, and becomes an obstacle to the relationship between God and His People that priests are ordained to serve...Priests are agents ordained to deliver God's gifts to His People.  If they deliver some substitute for what Jesus has entrusted to them, they interpose themselves between - and defraud - both God and His People...

There are five additional reasons why unauthorized changes should not be made in the liturgy.  First, the liturgy is the worship of the Church as a body, and those who are ordained act as Church officials in performing liturgical roles.  So, insofar as a priest makes unauthorized changes, he misrepresents as the Church's what is in fact only his or some limited group's.  Even if this misrepresentation deceives no one and is intended for some good end, it is at odds with the reverence necessary for true worship.  Second, this essential irreverence and the obvious arbitrariness of intentional unauthorized changes strongly suggest that the Eucharist is not sacred, and this suggestion tends to undermine not only faith in Jesus' bodily presence in the consecrated elements, but faith that the Eucharist is Jesus' sacrifice made present for the faithful to share in.  Third, a priest who makes intentional, unauthorized changes acts with deplorable clericalism by imposing his personal preferences on the laity and violating the rights of those who quite reasonably wish only to participate in the Church's worship.  Fourth, intentionally making unauthorized changes sets a bad example of serious disobedience to the Church's norms, and this bad example is likely to encourage some people to think and do as they please not only in liturgical and canonical matters, but in matters of faith and morals.  Fifth...unauthorized liturgical changes often become a needless, divisive issue for the faithful, thus impeding the charity that the Eucharist should express and foster."

Still think that liturgical abuse is a small matter of little significance?  If so, this reflects on your own immaturity and not the objective truth that liturgical abuse constitutes grave matter.  How grave?  Again, Dr. Grisez:

"The reasons why priests should not make unauthorized liturgical changes also make it clear..that a priest's intentionally doing so is of itself matter of grave sin.  Of course, many changes are in themselves very minor, and a few perhaps even are real improvements.  But though this kind of sin admits  parvity, such small changes also are scandalous, not only because they give the faithful a bad example of disobedience but because they contribute to a clerical culture in which liturgical abuse is widely tolerated and sometimes even expected, so that some are encouraged to engage in far graver abuses.  Now, even a sin venial in itself becomes grave scandal when one foresees that it is likely to lead others to commit grave sin; thus, the element of scandal makes grave matter of even minor liturgical abuses likely to encourage more serious abuses by other priests.  Due to widespread confusion and negligence of some bishops, many priests undoubtedly lack sufficient reflection regarding this sin."

Serious matter this.  But how many priests within our own Diocese of Worcester routinely make unauthorized liturgical changes and think nothing of it?  Only recently I had to address the fact that several area priests were omitting the Creed from the liturgy.  At one parish where I often attend Holy Mass, a woman who serves as an Office Manager for the parish called me an idiot and indicated that if I don't care for the liturgical abuses, I should stay away.

But is this really the answer?  Insulting Catholics who want to participate in a faithful liturgy? 

Liturgical abuse is most serious.  But thus far, Bishop Robert McManus has not dealt in any meaningful way with this ongoing problem.  Read Michael Poulin's comment at my post dealing with our new Pope Francis.

Melinda Gates: I'm rich so listen to me!

"The most important men in town would come to fawn on me!

They would ask me to advise them,
Like a Solomon the Wise.
"If you please, Reb Tevye..."
"Pardon me, Reb Tevye..."
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes!
And it won't make one bit of difference if i answer right or wrong.
When you're rich, they think you really know!"

C-FAM is reporting that Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a Catholic, is telling governments to dismiss the controversial link between contraception and population control and explicitly rejects Catholic social teaching along the way...Speaking at a TedxChange conference in Berlin, Germany, Gates argued that contraception has been mistakenly associated with population control, abortion, forced sterilization, and mortal sin and insisted they are 'side issues.'"  See here.

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), No. 51, says that, "..God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the surpassing ministry of safeguarding life in a manner which is worthy of man.  Therefore, from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care, while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes."  Abortion is not a "side issue."  It is an unspeakable crime.

The same document teaches that, "...sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law." (No. 51).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, citing Humanae Vitae, the Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI, teaches that, "...'every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible' is intrinsically evil.." (2370).

But Melinda Gates believes that she knows better than the Pastors of the Church.  Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) teaches that the Church's more-than-human authority "is apparent from the living Tradition" and then confirms this by citing a key passage from Dei Verbum, Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, which reminds us that, "the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether in its written form or in that of Tradition, has been entrusted only to those charged with the Church's living Magisterium, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ" (Veritatis Splendor, No. 27, with internal citation from Dei Verbum, No. 10).

Faith demands a renunciation of the sinful self.  Pride must give way in every Catholic's life to humility, which is but a readiness to accept everything good as God's gift and to than Him for it (see Aquinas, S.t., 2-2, q. 161, aa.2-3).  When we allow ourselves to succumb to pride, humility is viewed as a threat to the self.  As a result, sinners who lack faith and believers whose faith has been weakened through habit to sinning will be the more tempted to reject faith in order to avoid self-renunciation - the renunciation of their sinful selves (John 3: 16-21).

Melinda Gates is chained by abundance.  Her material wealth has contributed to a pathological pride.  And this pride has led her to embrace self-assertion.  Dr. Germain Grisez explains that, "Removed from its evangelical context, the Christian insight into each individual's worth is perverted to rationalize sin.  Thus, post-Christian humankind is susceptible to a distinctive moral pathology: egoistic individualism, which exalts the well-being and satisfaction of individuals above every community, even the family.  When colored by this pathology, pride is not expressed exclusively by the quest for positions of social superiority; also, and even more arrogantly, it is seen in every individual's effort to be his or her own sovereign.  Thus, the contemporary attachment to liberty to do as one pleases: 'No one can tell me what to do.'  This attitude leads to rejection of authority generally as well as an unwillingness to accept any social responsibility toward people for whom one has no personal feelings.  Other people are to be ignored except to the extent that they are relevant to one's own purposes or can be made so.  Then they are to be dominated and manipulated, so that at least they will allow one to gain one's ends and at best will serve one's purposes."


The real tragedy is that many will no doubt be confused or led astray by Melinda Gates because, as Topol expressed in song, "When you're rich, they think you really know!"

"...But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

According to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute, only 2 percent of Catholic women, even those who regularly attend Holy Mass, rely on natural family planning.  Some 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used contraceptive methods condemned by the Church.  See here.  This is a moral disaster.  And it is a disaster which has largely been brought about by the failure of Roman Catholic priests to preach the Word of God as interpreted by the Church's Magisterium.

Contraception is gravely sinful because it contradicts the divinely intended purpose of marital intercourse, which is to foster procreative love.  Many priests do not preach the Church's teaching on contraception because they believe this grave moral issue is open to change.  But Pope Pius XI has answered these dissidents once and for all:

"Openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition, some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine on this question....The Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the marital union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of divine Ambassadorship and through Our mouth proclaims anew: Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin." (Casti Conubii, December 31, 1930).

By "grave sin," Pius XI is referring to mortal sin.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, "Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him." (CCC, 1855).  And further, "To choose deliberately - that is, both knowing it and willing it - something gravely contrary to the divine law and to the ultimate end of man is to commit a mortal sin.  This destroys in us the charity without which eternal beatitude is impossible.  Unrepented, it brings eternal death." (CCC, 1874).

Our Lady told Father Gobbi that many priests have become mute dogs.  They are silent when they should be upholding the faith and striving to save souls.  And because of this, a strong judgment is coming upon them.  Don Bosco was given a prophecy for our time:

"Now Heaven's voice is addressed to the Shepherd of shepherds. You are now in conference with your advisors. The enemy of the good does not stand idle one moment. He studies and practices all his arts against you. He will sow discord among your consultors; he will raise up enemies amongst my children. The powers of the world will belch forth fire, and they would that the words be suffocated in the throats of the custodians of my law. That will not happen, they will do no harm but to themselves. You must hurry. If you cannot untie the knots, cut them. If you find yourself hard pressed, do not give up but continue until the head of the hydra of error is cut off. This stroke will make the world and Hell beneath it tremble, but the world will be safe and all the good will rejoice. Keep your consultors always with you, even if only two. Wherever you go, continue and bring to an end the work entrusted to you. The days fly by, your years will reach the destined number; but the great Queen will ever be your help, as in times past, so in the future She will always be the exceeding great fortress of the Church.

Ah, but you, Italy, land of blessings! Who has steeped you in desolation! Blame not your enemies, but rather your friends. Can you not hear your children asking for the bread of faith and finding only those who smash it to pieces? What shall I do? I shall strike the shepherds, I shall disperse the flock, until those sitting on the throne of Moses search for good pastures and the flock listens attentively and is fed.

Of the flock and over the shepherds My hand will weigh heavy. Famine, pestilence, and war will be such that mothers will have to cry on account of the blood of their sons and of their martyrs dead in a hostile country.

And to you, Rome, what will happen! Ungrateful Rome, effeminate Rome, proud Rome! You have reached such a height that you search no further. You admire nothing else in your Sovereign except luxury, forgetting that you and your glory stands upon Golgotha. Now he is old, defenseless, and despoiled; and yet at his word, the word of one who was in bondage, the whole world trembles.

Rome! To you I will come four times.

The first time, I shall strike your lands and the inhabitants thereof.

The second time, I shall bring the massacre and the slaughter even to your very walls. And will you not yet open your eyes?

I shall come a third time and I shall beat down to the ground your defenses and the defenders, and at the command of the Father, the reign of terror, of dreadful fear, and of desolation shall enter into your city.

But My wise men have now fled and My law is even now trampled underfoot. Therefore I will make a fourth visit. Woe to you if My law shall still be considered as empty words. There will be deceit and falsehood among both the learned and the ignorant. Your blood and that of your children will wash away your stains upon God's law. War, pestilence and famine are the rods to scourge men's pride and wickedness. O wealthy men, where is your glory now, your estates, your palaces? They are the rubble on the highways and byways.

And your priests, why have you not run to "cry between the vestibule and the Altar," begging God to end these scourges? Why have you not, with the shield of faith, gone upon the housetops, into the homes, along the highways and byways, into every accessible corner to carry the seed of My word? Know you that this is the terrible two-edged sword that cuts down My enemies and breaks the Anger of God and of men?"

In our own time, the germ ideas of a one-world religion are already being sowed. And this false humanitarian religion will burst into poisonous flower when enough hearts have grown cold and have abandoned the true religion. As Jane Le Royer explained in prophecy: "When the time of the Antichrist is near, a false religion will appear which will be opposed to the unity of God and His Church. This will cause the greatest schism the world has ever known."  That false religion is even now falling into place.  A false religion where sin will be celebrated.

Related reading here.

"There are evils of a physical order..."

On June 7, 1986, Our Lady told Father Gobbi of the Marian Movement of Priests, "In these times, you all need to hasten to take shelter in the refuge of my Immaculate Heart, because grave threats of evil are hanging over you. There are first of all evils of a spiritual order, which can harm the supernatural life of your souls. Sin is spreading as the worst and most pernicious of epidemics, which is bringing sickness and death everywhere to many souls. If you live habitually in mortal sin, you are spiritually dead, and if you come to the end of life in this state, eternal death in hell awaits you. Hell exists; it is eternal, and today many are running the danger of going there, because they are being contaminated by this mortal disease. There are evils of a physical order, such as infirmity, disasters, accidents, droughts, earthquakes, and incurable diseases which are spreading about. Even in that which happens to you in the natural order, see a warning sign for yourselves. You should see a sign of divine justice, which cannot allow the innumerable crimes which are committed every day to go unpunished. There are evils of a social order, such as divisions and hatred, famine and poverty, exploitation and slavery, violence, terrorism and war. To be protected from all these evils, I invite you to place yourselves under shelter in the safe refuge of my Immaculate Heart...

But, in these times, you have need above all of being defended from the terrible snares of my Adversary, who has succeeded in establishing his reign in the world. It is the reign which is opposed to Christ; it is the reign of Antichrist....The hour is in preparation when the man of iniquity, who wants to put himself in the place of God to have himself adored as God, is about to manifest himself in all his power. Under the bloody scourge of this terrible trial, how are you to avoid being scattered and discouraged and to remain strong in the faith and faithful only to Jesus and to his Gospel? My Immaculate Heart will become your strongest defense, the shield of protection which will safeguard you from every attack of my Adversary."

And this is precisely what St. Louis de Montfort prophesied in True Devotion to Mary, "..Mary must become as terrible as an army in battle array to the devil and his followers, especially in these latter times. For Satan, knowing that he has little time - even less now than ever - to destroy souls, intensifies his efforts and his onslaughts every day. He will not hesitate to stir up savage persecutions and set treacherous snares for Mary's faithful servants and children whom he finds more difficult to overcome than others. It is chiefly in reference to these last wicked persecutions of the devil, daily increasing until the advent of the reign of anti-Christ, that we should understand that first and well-known prophesy and curse of God uttered against the serpent in the garden of paradise..." (True Devotion to Mary, 50, 51).

As the world economy continues to spiral out of control, as disasters multiply in the natural order, and as the darkness continues to advance, we - the faithful remnant - must take refuge in the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

There are all too many people today - including Catholics - who have become puffed up with pride and who seek to justify their sins. Such people scoff at the notion of the natural order manifesting as a "sign of divine justice." But such people are really arguing with God Himself. For we read in Leviticus 18: 26-28: "You, however, whether natives or resident aliens, must keep my statutes and decrees forbidding all such abominations by which the previous inhabitants defiled the land; otherwise the land will vomit you out also for having defiled it, just as it vomited out the nations before you."

Related reading here.

Father John Catoir: Only half the truth

In his Catholic News Service column Spirituality For Today, in a piece entitled "Free from needless guilt," Fr. John Catoir laments that, "The church was poisoned by heresies over the centuries. The better you understand these errors, the better you will be able to cope with the problem of needless guilt." Fr. Catoir then cites various heresies [all of which were condemned by the Church, so it is inaccurate to suggest that "the Church was poisoned" by them; Rather, some Catholics were influenced by them] including Manichaeism, Albigensianism and Jansenism.

To be sure, the "needless guilt" Fr. Catoir refers to has been a problem for some members of the Church past and present. Pope John Paul II, in his Letter to all the Bishops of the Church on the Mystery and Worship of the Eucharist (Dominicae Cenae) says that: "..our Catholic communities certainly do not lack people who could participate in Eucharistic Communion and do not, even though they have no serious sin on their conscience as an obstacle. To tell the truth, this attitude, which in some people is linked with an exaggerated severity, has changed in the present century, though it is still to be found here and there. In fact what one finds most often is not so much a feeling of unworthiness as a certain lack of interior willingness, if one may use this expression, a lack of Eucharistic 'hunger' and 'thirst,' which is also a sign of lack of adequate sensitivity towards the great sacrament of love and a lack of understanding of its nature." (No. 11). But His Holiness then addresses a more serious problem and one which is much more prevalent today:

"However, we also find in recent years another phenomenon. Sometimes, indeed quite frequently, everybody participating in the eucharistic assembly goes to Communion; and on some such occasions, as experienced pastors confirm, there has not been due care to approach the sacrament of Penance so as to purify one's conscience. This can of course mean that those approaching the Lord's table find nothing on their conscience, according to the objective law of God, to keep them from this sublime and joyful act of being sacramentally united with Christ. But there can also be, at least at times, another idea behind this: the life of our communities to lose the good quality of sensitiveness of Christian conscience, guided solely by respect for Christ, who, when He is received in the Eucharist, should find in the heart of each of us a worthy abode. This question is closely linked not only with the practice of the sacrament of Penance but also with a correct sense of responsibility for the whole deposit of moral teaching and for the precise distinction between good and evil, a distinction which then becomes for each person sharing in the Eucharist the basis for a correct judgment of self to be made in the depths of the personal conscience. St. Paul's words, 'Let a man examine himself,' are well known; this judgment is an indispensable condition for a personal decision whether to approach Eucharistic Communion or to abstain." (No. 11).

The worthy reception of Holy Communion requires a clear conscience. Because of this, someone in the state of mortal sin is not eligible to receive: "Anyone who desires to receive Christ in Eucharistic communion must be in the state of grace. Anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not receive communion without having received absolution in the sacrament of penance." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1415).

Fr. Catoir writes, "For centuries, the fear of eternal damnation, even for petty offenses, was taught in the name of religion. George Carlin, the late comedian, abandoned his faith because he saw the absurdity of believing in a God who would send you to hell for all eternity for eating meat on Friday. Many Catholics left the Church for the same reason. Winning them back will take a massive re-education process."

But as Dr. Germain Grisez explains, "Traditionally, the eucharistic fast,required by the Church for the sake of reverence, was considered a grave responsibility which did not admit of parvity. Now, since the requirement is more easily fulfilled, its violation is even harder to excuse...someone who deliberately disregards the eucharistic fast out of irreverence for Jesus or contempt for the Church's law plainly is guilty of grave sin. And, knowing that the fast has been broken , whether by accident or on purpose, in a significant way, anyone as reverent and obedient as he or she should be, will not receive Holy Communion except for a reason sufficient to justify an exception to the Church's law (see CMP. 11.G. 6-7)."

Did George Carlin really leave the Church because he had a problem with the Church's traditional teaching regarding the Eucharistic fast or might not there have been other factors involved in his decision to abandon the Church of Christ? I seem to recall a troubled man who had serious personal problems and who celebrated the use of profanity with a levity which was just disturbing.

Pope John Paul II, in the same Dominicae Cenae, No. 7 writes, "I have already drawn attention to the close link between the sacrament of Penance and the sacrament of the Eucharist. It is not only that Penance leads to the Eucharist, but that the Eucharist also leads to Penance. For when we realize who it is that we receive in Eucharistic communion, there springs up in us almost spontaneously a sense of unworthiness, together with sorrow for our sins and an interior need for purification.."

This is not the result of "needless guilt." It is the result of reverence before Our Eucharistic Lord. Fr. Catoir needs to present the full truth to his readers.