Acting With his Usual Arrogance Francis Changes the Face of the Congregation for Divine Worship

[Dawn Marie]

In a stunning move, Pope Francis has replaced all of the members of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, the body in charge of liturgical questions.

It is routine for the Roman Pontiff to appoint a few new members to each Vatican congregation, rotating out members who have served for several years. But on October 28 the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has appointed 27 new members to the Congregation for Divine Worship, completely transforming the membership of that body.

The new appointments give a distinctly more liberal character—as well as a more international complexion—to the congregation. The changes seem likely to curtail the work of Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation, who has been a leading proponent of more reverent liturgy and of “the reform of the reform.”

Among the prominent new members of the congregation will be Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, Cardinal Beniamino Stella, the prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Probably the most controversial new appointment is that of Archbishop Piero Marini, who clashed frequently with liturgical conservatives during the years when he served as master of ceremonies for papal liturgies under St. John Paul II. The only American prelate named to the congregation is Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson, New Jersey, who chairs the US bishops’ committee on liturgy.

The more conservative prelates who have been removed from the congregation include Cardinals Raymond Burke, Angelo Scola, George Pell, Marc Ouellet, Angelo Bagnasco, and Malcolm Ranjith.

[Michael]

Unfortunately, no surprise.  This step is necessary to ensure a further blossoming of the "fruits of Vatican II" and the furtherance of a new rite that can provide integration with the Lutherans and other protestant sects.

[Dawn Marie]

Ecumenism: More Important than the Holy Sacrifice?

Steve Skojec October 28, 2016 

The pope is scheduled to visit Lund, Sweden, on Monday, for the joint Luthern/Vatican “commemoration” of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant “Reformation”. In a newly-released interview with La Civiltà Cattolica (excerpts of which have been translated by Crux), Francis indicates that he originally did not want to offer Mass in Lund, because he saw it as an obstruction to the ecumenical symbolism of the event:

In the interview with Father Ulf Jonsson, a fellow Jesuit, the pope also discusses his relationships with Lutherans from his days as a Jesuit and later archbishop in Buenos Aires, and said Catholics could learn from the Lutheran tradition in the areas of church reform and Scripture.

Noting how the words “Catholic” and “sectarian” were in contradiction, he said: “This is why at the beginning I wasn’t planning to celebrate a Mass for the Catholics on this trip. I wanted to insist on an ecumenical witness.”

“Then I reflected well on my role as pastor of a flock of Catholics who will also come from other countries, like Norway and Denmark,” he said. “So, responding to the fervent request of the Catholic community, I decided to celebrate a Mass, lengthening the trip by a day.”

By celebrating the Mass on Tuesday, rather than Monday, “the ecumenical encounter is preserved in its profound significance according to a spirit of unity – that is my desire,” the pope said.

All I could think of while reading this was two famous quotes on the liturgical revolt after the Second Vatican council. The first is from Jean Guitton (close friend of Paul VI):

The intention of Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy – but what is curious is that Paul VI did that to get as close as possible to the Protestant Lord’s supper… there was with Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic, in the traditional sense, and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass.

The second is from then-Father Anibale Bugnini, principle author of the schema for Sacrosanctum Concilium and creator — as Secretary of the post-conciliar “Consilium” — of the Novus Ordo Missae (New Order of Mass). Bugnini said that his intention in the drafting of the new liturgy was to

“to strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants.” – L’Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965

For the most part, Francis has thus far left the liturgy alone. It has always been my theory that it is because it is of little consequence to him; he is neither strongly for nor against good liturgy. His program is about social justice, the “reformation” of doctrine, and the systematic deconstruction of the Church’s ancient theological paradigms.

But in separate reporting today, there is troubling news on the liturgical front:

 

Pope Francis today appointed a raft of new members to Cardinal Robert Sarah’s liturgy department, choosing a series of pastoral moderates to replace more conservative-minded figures.

The move will be read as the Pope’s attempt to rein in the cardinal who has consistently called for priests to celebrate Mass facing East, something the Pope reprimanded him for earlier this year.

Among the new members of the department – formally known as the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments – are Piero Marini, a long-serving master of papal ceremonies and a key proponent of the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Others named as members, who will effectively oversee Cardinal Sarah’s work and vote on decisions, include Cardinal Pietro Parolin (Vatican Secretary of State) and New Zealand Cardinal John Dew.

Tablet writer Christopher Lamb helpfully reminds us that “Cardinal Sarah, from Guinea, has consistently called for priests to turn their backs on the congregation while celebrating Mass and has struck a very different tone to the Pope’s merciful approach to families in difficult circumstances.”

Returning to the Civiltà Cattolica interview, we see again the most potent reminder of the papal agenda I outlined yesterday:

Asked what the Catholic Church could learn from the Lutheran tradition, Pope Francis said Martin Luther “wanted to remedy a complex situation” but his reform ended up splitting the Church because of the confusion of temporal and spiritual.

But he said reform in the Church was “fundamental, because the Church is semper reformanda (always to be reformed),” adding that prior to the 2013 conclave “the request for a reform was alive” in the cardinals’ discussions about the state of the Church.

Francis has done an excellent job making clear that his spiritual and ecclesiastical inspiration comes predominately from Martin Luther.

[Dawn Marie]

And pay attention here......THIS is the man Bp. Fellay is falling all over begging for HIS acceptance and entry into Rome, meeting with every month and handing over the SSPX to.

And what do people do about it?  NOTHING!  They just go along with it like mindless sheeple.  What has this world come to?

Lovely.

[Alley]

 It is time we face the facts .....

THE impostor pope is a LITURGICALTERRORIST! I know, I know it is not easy for me to swallow either.

But "francis the destroyer" has homogenized and euthanized and destroyized (I just made up) more of the

Catholic Faith than the last 4 Popes altogether.  

I realize that this is quite frightening but one must be brave,in these dire circumstances. We must accept

the fact that "WE" are ecumenically challenged and Novus Ordo intolerant fanatically traditional. 

And we may need to storm heaven yet again because conditions are ripening in the world arena for

total chaos to erupt.      Any day now. 

[Alley]

JUST SAYIN.....

 It is time we face the facts .....

THE impostor pope is a LITURGICALTERRORIST! I know, I know it is not easy for me to swallow either.

But "francis the destroyer" has homogenized and euthanized and destroyized (I just made up) more of the

Catholic Faith than the last 4 Popes altogether.  

I realize that this is quite frightening but one must be brave,in these dire circumstances. We must accept

the fact that "WE" are ecumenically challenged and Novus Ordo intolerant fanatically traditional. 

And we may need to storm heaven yet again because conditions are ripening in the world arena for

total chaos to erupt.      Any day now. 

[Mary Ellen]

As he said, Pope Francis is taking Vatican II to a new level. :(

[Dawn Marie]

Catholic Family News

Father Brian Harrison: Francis Purges
Conservatives from Divine Worship Congregation

Pope Francis, in one fell swoop has today carried out a stunning mass removal (see link below) of all conservative cardinals and bishops from the Vatican's Congregation for Sacraments and Divine Worship. On the hit list are Cardinals Burke, Scola, Pell, Ouellet, Ranjith and many others. The Pope has ousted all of the prelates who, together with the Prefect, make up the current membership of the Congregation, replacing them with 27 new and more 'progressive' members. 

The noble Cardinal Robert Sarah, who recently aroused the Holy Father's ire by daring to promote a return to the priest's versus orientem position at Mass, remains at the head of the congregation; but his days there are clearly numbered, and he will now be considerably hemmed in by all the new and more liberal prelates who are to advise him and vote on all important decisions.

These include Archbishop Piero Marini, papal Master of Ceremonies for some years under Pope John Paul II. As a young priest he was a disciple and admirer of the chief architect of the post-Vatican II liturgical reform, the late Archbishop Annibale Bugnini. Coming from that background, it is unsurprising that Marini has been a long-time outspoken foe of traditional trends in liturgy. In John Paul II's time he orchestrated such liturgical novelties as a bare-breasted lectoress at a papal Mass in Papua New Guinea, and various other dubious forms of "inculturation".

In the 1995 papal Mass at Sydney for Australia's first-ever beatification (for Blessed, now Saint, Mary McKillop), in collusion with the liberal, habit-free nuns who dominate the now-dwindling congregation founded by Mother Mary, Marini replaced the Creed by a made-up eco-friendly litany, replaced the penitential rite by a pagan dance by a near-naked, paint-daubed Aboriginal man in which he drove away evil spirits with the help of a smoking tin can, and had the multitudes of lay Eucharistic Ministers hold up ciboriums full of Hosts during the consecration, almost as if they were "concelebrating".

This almost total clean-out of an entire Congregation's voting members in a single hit - unprecedented in Vatican history, so it seems - is also in effect a sharp rebuff to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the centerpiece of whose pontifical legacy was a restoration of tradition, dignity, and Latin in the Sacred Liturgy. One is filled with a deep sense of foreboding as to what changes to the way we are expected to worship, and what possible undermining of Benedict's liberation of the Traditional Latin Rite, are portended by today's breathtaking papal purge.

BH

 

On line at:
http://www.cfnews.org/page88/files/22a89f85bceeed07846bd8db23a92171...

[Dawn Marie]

J.M.J.

SHOULD A CATHOLIC CELEBRATE MARTIN LUTHER?

As we prepare for Pope Francis' October 31 commemoration of the 5th
centenary of the Lutheran Revolt, we ask: Why would a Catholic celebrate
Martin Luther when his entire revolt was based on hatred of the Catholic
Faith?

LUTHER ATTACKS THE PAPACY

A central focus of Luther’s 1517 revolt was a full scale attack on the
papacy established by Christ. Luther did not object to the policies of this
or that Pope, which is something various saints have done. Instead, Luther
raves against the Holy See itself in his book Against the Roman Papacy: An
Institution of the Devil.

He also denounced the papacy when Pope Leo X condemned his doctrine in the
1520 Bull Exurge Domine. Luther responded:

“I maintain that the author of this Bull is Antichrist: I curse it as a
blasphemy against the Son of God… I trust that every person who accepts
this Bull will suffer the torments of hell … where are you emperors,
kings and princes of the earth that you tolerate the hellish voice of
Antichrist? Leo X and you, the Roman Cardinals, I tell you to your faces…
renounce your satanic blasphemy against Jesus Christ.”1

Luther went on to burn the Papal Bull and to boast of it the next day:

“Yesterday I burned the devilish work of the Pope, and I wish that it was
the Pope, that is, the Papal See that was consumed. If you do not separate
from Rome, there is no salvation for your souls.”2

LUTHER ATTACKS THE MASS

Upon the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the most sacred action of the Church,
Luther showered vulgar contempt.

He said that no sin of immorality, nay even of “manslaughter, theft,
murder and adultery is so harmful as this abomination of the Popish
Mass.” He further snarled that he would have “rather kept a bawdy house
or been a robber than to have blasphemed and traduced Christ for fifteen
years by saying the Masses.”3

In his pamphlet The Abrogation of the Mass, aimed at destroying the Mass,
Luther wrote:

“I am convinced that by these three arguments [that he had made
previously] every pious conscience will be persuaded that this priest of
the Mass and the papacy is nothing but a work of satan, and will be
sufficiently warned against imagining that by these priests anything pious
or good is effected. All will now know that these sacrificial Masses have
been proven injurious to Our Lord’s testament and that therefore nothing
in the whole world is to be hated and loathed so much as the hypocritical
shows of this priesthood, its Masses, its worship, its piety, its religion.
It is better to be a public pander or robber than one of these priests.”4

The great St. John Fisher, who lived at the time of Luther, expressed
horror at Luther’s impiety: “My God!” he wrote, “How can one be
calm when one hears such blasphemous lies uttered against the mysteries of
Christ? How can one without resentment listen to such outrageous insults
hurled against God’s priests? Who can read such blasphemies without
weeping from sheer grief if he still retains in his heart even the smallest
spark of Christian piety?”5

PERVERSION OF SCRIPTURE

A key tenet of Luther’s revolution is belief in the “Bible Alone”. In
Luther’s system, there is no Church commissioned with Divine authority to
teach in Christ’s name, but there is only the Bible as the single source
of Divine Revelation. Luther taught this despite the fact that the tenet of
“Bible Alone” is nowhere found in the Bible -- thus promoting a
principle that is non-Biblical.

At the same time, Luther manifested contempt for Scripture by altering
texts to fit his own ideas. Luther rejected good works as a means to
salvation. He had the audacity to change the 28th verse of Chapter III of
St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans to read, “We hold that man is justified
without works by the law of faith alone.” Luther added the word
‘alone’ to the sacred text to bolster his own heretical view. To any
follower who objected to his perversion of the text, Luther thundered,

“If any Papist annoys you with the word ["alone"] tell him straightway:
Dr. Martin Luther will have it so: Papist and ass are one and the same
thing.”6

As is obvious, pride was one of Luther’s chief faults. Boasting of the
infallibility and superiority of his own teaching, Luther barked,

“Whoever teaches differently than I, though it be an angel from Heaven,
let him be anathema.” And further, “I know I am more learned than all
the universities….”7

Luther went on to reject various books of the Bible he found
unsatisfactory. He denounced the Epistle of James as “an epistle of
straw.”

“I do not hold it,” he said, “to be his writings nor can I place it
among the capital books.” He rejected the Epistle of James because it
proclaims the necessity of good works, contrary to his heresy. Luther also
rejected the book of the Apocalypse:

“There are many things objectionable in this book; to my mind it bears
upon no marks of an apostolic or prophetic character . . . Everyone may
form his own judgement of this book; as for myself, I feel an aversion to
it, and to me this is sufficient reason for rejecting it.”8

Luther would go on to deny the binding force of moral law,

“We must remove the Decalogue out of sight and heart”9

And further,

“If Moses should attempt to intimidate you with his stupid Ten
Commandments, tell him right out: ‘Chase yourself to the Jews’.”10

LUTHER PERVERTS MORALITY

Luther, an ordained priest and consecrated Augustinian religious, broke his
vow of celibacy and married a nun, also under the vow of celibacy. Luther
encouraged many other priests and religious to break their vows and marry.

Luther’s approach was ultimately a surrender to sensuality and
worldliness at a time of moral laxity. As Professor Thomas Neil explained,
Luther’s appeal to the clergy of his day was successful: “He offered
them wives and they wanted wives. He withdrew them from the monasteries and
put them in the public square, and they wanted to live in worldly
society.”11

The eminent convert David Goldstein wrote: “Luther’s writings regarding
matters of sex are the opposite of things decent. Only in Socialist
free-love writings have we seen commendation of them. There Luther’s lewd
writings have won for him distinction as the ‘classic exponent’ of
‘healthful sensualism’.12 Too many times through the centuries,
immoralities have disgraced the Christian ministry, but Luther has the
unenviable distinction of having defended sex sins as ‘necessary’.”13

And because Luther taught that man is inherently corrupt, that his sins are
never really forgiven but are simply covered by the Blood of Christ
provided he make an act of “faith” in Christ’s salvation, he urged
his friend Melanchton,

“Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.”14

How contrary this is to the true Catholic doctrine that commands us not
only to avoid sin, but to avoid the occasions of sin.

LUTHER'S CRUELTY

Though Luther made use of the peasants of his time to popularize his
revolt, which inadvertently aroused the poor classes to a rebellion that
had long been cankering in their hearts, Luther then sided with the princes
against the peasants. In a display of his inhuman cruelty, Luther advised
the princes that because the peasants

“rob and rave like infuriated dogs . . . dash them to pieces, strangle
them and stab them, just as one is compelled to kill a mad dog.”15

SHATTERING OF CHRISTENDOM

Father Thomas Scott Preston, in his work The Protestant Reformation,
outlines the consequences of Luther’s contention that every man is free
to interpret the Scriptures as he sees fit.

“In theory,” writes Father Preston, “private judgment destroys both
the creed and the possibility of faith. There can be no creed where each
individual is the maker of his own faith. There can be no unity of faith
where all matters of belief are referred to the individual judgement. One
man is as good as another in finding out his own faith and in interpreting
Scripture, or tradition, or history; and more than that, this private
judgment is not simply his privilege but his duty. All are bound, even the
ignorant and unlettered, to decide for themselves when there is no divine
authority and divine witness, and thus you have as many creeds as there are
individuals.”16

Even the non-Catholic writer Friedrich Paulsen rightly observed,
“Revolution is the term by which the Reformation should be described . .
. Luther’s work was no Reformation, no ‘re-forming’ of the existing
Church by means of her own institutions, but the destruction of the old
shape, in fact, the fundamental negation of any Church at all.”17

The end result was the ripping away of millions of souls from the one true
Church established by Christ, and the shattering of the unity of
Christendom.

As Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, the eminent American theologian, observed,
Martin Luther’s alleged Reformation of the Church “consisted in an
effort to have people abandon the Catholic Faith, and relinquish their
membership in the one true Church militant of the New Testament, so as to
follow his teaching and enter into his organization.”18

Despite the sentimental ecumenical posturing of highly-placed churchmen,
there is no papering over Luther’s arrogance and his grave errors against
the Faith. In fact, the present ecumenical collaboration between Catholics
and Lutherans is, in the words of Pope Pius XI, a “counterfeit unity,
quite alien to the one Church of Christ.”19

NOTHING TO CELEBRATE

The errors of Martin Luther -- and of the Protestantism he spawned -- could
not be more contrary to the beautiful Catholic truths reiterated by Our
Lady of Fatima.

At Fatima, Our Lady reaffirmed key Catholic doctrines that Luther denied,
such as the Mass and the Eucharist, the reality of personal sin, the need
for Confession and to make reparation, the reality and centrality of the
papacy established by Christ, the humility of submission to the perennial
doctrine of the Catholic Church, and the charity one must show to others
rather than Luther’s cry to “strangle” and “stab” the peasants if
they get out of hand.

Our Lady of Fatima performed the astonishing Miracle of the Sun before
70,000 people on October 13, 1917, to prove the veracity of Her words.
There is no contest between the beautiful truths uttered by Our Lady and
the heretical venom spewed by Martin Luther.

It is thus impossible to concede that a Catholic should celebrate Luther in
any way whatsoever. Only those of a Protestant and Modernist mindset will
do so. Martin Luther must be neither admired nor imitated. As the Church
consistently taught for four centuries, his doctrine and the movement he
started is only worthy of condemnation.

The 500th Anniversary of Luther’s destructive revolt should be a time for
Catholics to mark the 1917 centenary of Our Lady of Fatima, and to pray and
work for the conversion of Protestants to the one true Church of Christ,
the Catholic Church.

Notes:

1 The Facts Against Luther, Msgr. Patrick O’Hare, p. 89.
2 Ibid., p. 90.
3  Luther, Hartman Grisar, S.J. (English translation, Herder), Vol. 2, p.
166; Vol 4. p. 525.
4 The Defense of the Priesthood, Saint John Fisher, translated by Msgr.
P.E. Hallet, p. 2.
5 Ibid, pp. 2-3.
6 Amic. Discussion, I, 127 -- taken from Campaigners for Christ Handbook,
David Goldstein, pp. 197-198.
7 Facts About Luther, p. 20.
8 Ibid, p. 203.
9 De Wette, IV, p. 188.
10 Works, Wittenberg, ed. V, 1573, taken from Goldstein, pp. 197-198.
11 Makers of the Modern Mind, Thomas P. Neil, Ph.D., p. 24.
12 Bebel, Woman, p. 78, New York, 1910 (from Goldstein).
13 Quoted from Goldstein, p. 198.
14 Facts About Luther, p. 119.
15 Makers of the Modern Mind, p. 25.
16 Facts About Luther, pp.167-168.
17 Ibid., pp. 168-169.
18 “The Council and Father Kung,” Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton,
American Ecclesiastical Review, September 1962.
19 Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, “On Fostering True Christian Unity”
(against ecumenism), January 6, 1928.

(written by JV, originally published as a pamphlet for the Fatima Center -
available online at http://www.cfnews.org/)

Visit http://www.olrl.org/apologetics/ for articles on Protestantism

--
Sincerely in Christ,
Our Lady of the Rosary Library
"Pray and work for souls"
http://olrl.org

[Dawn Marie]

Catholic and Lutheran Churches pledge to work for shared Eucharist

Pope Francis hugs Rev. Martin Junge, General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, as Lutheran Archbishop Ante Jackelen, Primate of the Church of Sweden, is seen in the background at right, during an ecumenical prayer at Lund's Lutheran Cathedral, in Sweden, Monday, Oct. 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

At the conclusion of a historic ecumenical celebration in Lund, Sweden, Pope Francis and the general-secretary of the world's Lutheran churches agreed to work together for a shared Eucharist.

Pope Francis and the global Lutheran leader have jointly pledged to remove the obstacles to full unity between their Churches, leading eventually to shared Eucharist.

They made the commitment in a joint statement signed before a congregation of Catholic and Lutheran leaders at the conclusion of a joint service in Lund, Sweden, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation.

The statement was signed by Pope Francis and Bishop Munib Younan, who is president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), which was founded in Lund in 1947. After they finished signing, the congregation stood for a long round of applause as the two leaders hugged each other.

The two leaders appeared to single out married couples where one partner is Catholic and the other Lutheran. “Many members of our communities yearn to receive the Eucharist at one table, as the concrete expression of full unity,” they noted.

“We experience the pain of those who share their whole lives, but cannot share God’s redeeming presence at the Eucharistic table,” they said, adding: “We acknowledge our joint pastoral responsibility to respond to the spiritual thirst and hunger of our people to be one in Christ.”

“We long for this wound in the Body of Christ to be healed,” they continued. “This is the goal of our ecumenical endeavors, which we wish to advance, also by renewing our commitment to theological dialogue.”

In their statement, the leaders acknowledged that “Lutherans and Catholics have wounded the visible unity of the Church.”

“Theological differences were accompanied by prejudice and conflicts, and religion was instrumentalized for political ends,” they said, adding later: “Today, we hear God’s command to set aside all conflict. We recognize that we are freed by grace to move towards the communion to which God continually calls us.”

As well as pledging to work towards intercommunion, the leaders prayed that Catholics and Lutherans will be able to witness together to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and work for justice and peace.

“We urge Lutherans and Catholics to work together to welcome the stranger, to come to the aid of those forced to flee because of war and persecution, and to defend the rights of refugees and those who seek asylum,” they said, adding that their “joint service” must also extend to God’s creation.

“We recognize the right of future generations to enjoy God’s world in all its potential and beauty,” they continued. “We pray for a change of hearts and minds that leads to a loving and responsible way to care for creation.”

The Pope and Lutheran leader ended by calling on their respective parishes and communities to be “bold and creative, joyful and hopeful in their commitment to continue the great journey ahead of us.”

They concluded: “Rooted in Christ and witnessing to him, we renew our determination to be faithful heralds of God’s boundless love for all humanity.”

[Michael]

The Pope and Lutheran leader ended by calling on their respective parishes and communities to be “bold and creative, joyful and hopeful in their commitment to continue the great journey ahead of us.”

Just a call for more "innovation" and the religion of man.  Next, Luther will be forgiven formally.  But why stop there, next John Hus, or Calvin.  It is all both insidious and insipid at the same time.

[Cathleen]

This is demonic.  May God forgive us.