Thursday, January 28, 2016

A BATTLE PLAN

As we have oft-noted, the liturgical aberrations of the Neocatechumenal Way did not just suddenly appear. Decades of disobedience and self-authorized liturgical improvisations made it easy for Arguello to sneak his heresies into the Catholic Church via the already much-abused Mass.




Several years ago, a priest-friend justified his own liberties with the liturgy to me, saying: "there is no progress in the church without first disobedience," and this was long before the neo-cult showed its deformed head.

Sadly, he was right. Vatican II never called for communion in the hand, the elimination of Latin and Gregorian Chant, the abrogation of the traditional Mass, the removal of the tabernacle from the apex of the sanctuary, the destruction of the "communion rail" altar girls, rock, folk, jazz music, etc. Yet, all of these exist today and with permission.

Almost all of those things were practices originated by progressive clergy who believed Vatican II did not go far enough to modernize the church and took it upon themselves to do so. I personally watched all of this happen while growing up in a post-Vatican II leftist Los Angeles. And with the destruction of all that was sacred in the sanctuary of the church came the destruction of all that was sacred in the sanctuary of the home, in marriage, and in the family. But that is another story.

Over time, these disobedient clerics were rewarded by Rome with so-called limited permissions - like the one we find in MEMORIALE DOMINI which gave permission for communion in the hand despite the fact that the majority of the world's bishops were against it. So there is no reason for Kiko Arguello to also think that his persistent disobedience will not also be similarly rewarded.

This is hard for many Catholics to accept. Most of us have an unquestioning faith in Church leadership. But then most of us don't know our history. Satan has always attacked the Church at its heart: Rome...and those who run it.

That Satan is alive and well in the halls of the Vatican is not speculation. Pope Benedict himself abdicated the chair of Peter in 2013 because, as he publicly stated: he did not have the strength to fight the "wolves" - the very wolves he feared when he ascended to the chair in 2005.

Certainly Christ promised us that the "gates of hell would not prevail" against our Church, but he did not promise that those gates would not be broken open and our Church infested with demons and choked with the "smoke of Satan" - as Paul VI famously termed it. Read the Gospels and see how many times Christ himself warns of this war with Satan which all of us must fight - and fight to the end.

I can't remember when it actually happened, but at some point in the last thirty years of my life I decided to fight back against the evil eating out the heart of my Church. Most of that evil was let in by well-meaning people who were not conscious of the atrocities they were participating in. But much of it was let in by people, often clerics, who knew exactly what they were doing.

That Satan has been winning over the last several decades is no more apparent than in the long exodus from the sacraments by our own family members and friends, a sad exodus most of us have witnessed, and often helplessly. Spiritually starved by the lack of sacramental grace, Satan has had an easy time picking us off: destroying marriages, destroying families, destroying souls, destroying vocations...

I share this reflection to let you know that the Battle of Agana is part of a much larger battle. It is more than just a cult's takeover of our resources. It is more than just the trafficking in "vocations" (even now Apuron is in the Philippines offering "free scholarships" to our "seminary" in Guam). It is more than just your being bumped out of your parishes and your positions. It is the same age old battle between heaven and hell that was been raging since Michael threw Lucifer to the earth.

It is a Spiritual Battle, the old Warfare the saints so often spoke of. So join them. Gird your loins. Put on buckler and shield. And let your daily prayer be: "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in BATTLE..."

In case you didn't know, the "St. Michael Prayer" was  composed by Pope Leo XIII after he had a vision on October 13, 1884 of an argument between God and Satan in which Satan boasted that he could destroy the Church within the next century if he had "greater power over those who will give themselves over to my service" - meaning, the clergy.

Shaken by this vision, Pope Leo composed the prayer to St. Michael and ordered it said at the end of every Low Mass (a Mass which is not sung) throughout the Universal Church. Despite the hell on earth of two world wars, the Church continued to prosper and grow, especially in America where it was bursting at the seams with schools and vocations.

In fact, in his book Iota Unum, Vatican historian and "peritus" Romano Amerio, noted that Pope John XXIII felt confident in calling a council to "update" the Church because at the time the Church was unquestionably strong.

And then came Inter Oecumenici, a Vatican II Instruction which came into effect on March 7, 1965. The instruction "suppressed" (forbid) the public recitation of this prayer after Mass. And so with St. Michael out of the way, it would be only a few short years (1972) before the Paul VI would lament: “From some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.”

To be continued. 

16 comments:

  1. Church Miltant reports that Pope Benedict's "Summorum Pontificum."
    was an apostolic letter published in 2007 that allowed priests to celebrate the usus antiquior without permission from the local ordinary or bishop. Without the influence of anti-tradition clerics, the Latin Mass has quickly taken off.
    This being true, why aren't the Guam priests who are not Neo celebrating the Latin Mass in their parishes? Can we also stop receiving communion in the hand?

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  2. Mary Lou Garcia-PeredaJanuary 28, 2016 at 5:07 PM

    Anonymous (January 28, 2016 at 3:31PM, YES, we can absolutely, positively STOP receiving Holy Communion in the hand. We can — if we are physically able to do so — even KNEEL to receive Our Lord's Precious Body, even without a Communion Rail or a prie-dieu.
    Fr. Mike Crisostomo has already made it easier for his parishioners (and visitors) to kneel and receive Holy Communion on the tongue at IHOM. He provides a prie-dieu for those who can kneel. Although I cannot kneel, I receive on the tongue regardless of where I attend Mass. My granddaughter recently received her First Holy Communion. She requested — and eventually received — permission to receive her FHC on her tongue. As far as we could tell, she was the only one to do so. She then requested that we attend Mass at IHOM so she could receive her Second Holy Communion KNEELING and on her tongue.

    While the Church Militant report is correct, in that priests no longer need the bishop's permission to offer the TLM, I believe the main reason why the Guam priests who are not NCW presbyters do not offer the Traditional Latin Mass is that most of them don't know how to. The older priests — Msgrs David I.A. Quitugua and Brigido Arroyo — used to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass when they were first ordained in the early 1960s. It has been decades since either of them offered the TLM.
    While the younger priests were trained to "celebrate" the Novus Ordo, there are 3 currently on-island, who are able to offer the Traditional Latin Mass — two Capuchins, Fathers Eric Forbes (ordained in 1990) and Andre Eduvala (ordained in 2004), and one diocesan Father Richard Kidd (ordained in 2013).

    God willing, more people will decide to forego reception of Holy Communion in the hand and start receiving on the tongue — which is STILL the norm, since Communion in the hand is by insult (permission). I know some folks are also interested in the TLM; maybe they can find like-minded parishioners and approach their parish priest to have a TLM added to their parish schedule.

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  3. I think Jesus meant that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church as a whole, meaning parts of it may be sorely compromised or burdened by their own sinful aberrations, while other parts would be able to stay the course despite Satan's machinations. During WWII, for instance, many German Catholics were Nazis. And even Pope Pius XII himself was not a good witness against Nazism. He was not the moral leader that we like to think popes to be, even refusing to call out German Catholic soldiers to be Christian first and not a German soldier supporting the destructive, murderous Nazi state. In this case, clearly Satan was prevailing against part of the Church, but not all of it, only the more rotted part of it in Europe, not world wide.



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    1. The idea that Pius XII didn’t do enough to counter the Nazi’s has been increasingly discredited over the last few years. This Wikipedia article does a good job of detailing this:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII_and_the_Holocaust

      And I would recommend reading Hitler, the War, and the Pope by Ronald J. Rychlak.
      https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=3120

      I always found the criticism of Pius rather ironic since the papacy is constantly being told to stay out of government. Yet, here we are nearly 80 years later condemning the papacy for “staying out of government.”

      But actually Pius XII did not “stay out of government.” As Vatican Secretary of State to his predecessor, the man who was to become Pius XII was the chief architect of the most vicious papal condemnation of a government ever penned, the 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Anger). And in 1939, after becoming Pius XII his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, condemned the Nazi invasion of Poland, Nazi racism, Nazi, antisemitism, and endorsed resistance against them.

      In fact, it was the Nazi response to these two encyclicals that forced Pius XII mostly underground for the rest of his pontificate. As you might imagine, Hitler responded to these Vatican condemnations with a violent persecution of the clergy, imprisoning more than two thousand and killing more than a thousand.

      Obviously Pius, having nothing more than a token army of swiss guards dressed in bad pajamas and armed with medieval toys, knew that to continue to publicly condemn Hitler would provoke even more violence that he could do nothing to stop.

      Going underground, it is now documented that Pius personally oversaw the rescue of over 800,000 Jews, prompting Dr. Raphael Cantoni, a leader in Italy's Jewish Assistance Committee to say: "The Church and the papacy have saved Jews as much and insofar as they could Christians. Six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis... but there would have been many more victims had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII."

      https://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/piusjews.htm

      Given this fact, it is Pius XII who should have been canonized before John 23 and JP2. But today we live in a politically correct Church which has little courage and has identified “climate change” as man’s greatest enemy. And Satan laughs.

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    2. Dear Timothy,
      I am simply appalled that you would take for gospel, the gossips and evil manipulations that were hurled at Pius XII after WWII by certain lobbies, whose only goal was the continued destruction of the Catholic Church. Almost all what you wrote is non factual (to remain polite)
      I do understand the point you are trying to make, but you are taking the wrong example.
      The Nazis were declared enemies of the Church.
      Not only Himmler, Hitler and Heydrich, created their own religious order, but they went to great length to discredit and destroy the Catholic Church in Germany first, but also in Hungary, Czechoslovaquia and Poland. Basically in every occupied territory. The endless list of religious leaders, priests and lay people that died in concentration camps, and at the hand of the Geststat Polizei is revealing.
      While certain groups have made a lot of hay at having been the victims of the Nazis' horrors, the Church kept a low profile. It was not the first time, we had martyrs, and it would not be the last. (look at what is going on right now)
      I am deeply offended that you would disseminate such slanderous and erroneous statements.
      We already have more than enough issues, without adding made up ones.





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    3. Dear Frenchie and Tim,

      Here is an example of Catholic courage and leadership I expect of a pope. I have found such in the person of the archbishop of Munich, “Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, who led the Catholic opposition in Germany against the Nazis. In an Advent 1933 sermon, he preached: ‘Let us not forget that we were saved not by German blood but by the blood of Christ!’ in response to Nazi racism. In 1934 the Cardinal ‘narrowly missed a Nazi bullet’, while in 1938 a Nazi mob broke the windows in his residence. Even though he was over seventy and in poor health, he still led the Catholic German resistance against Hitler” (P. Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews, 1967).
      However, as for Pius XII, it is not gossip as you put it, Frenchie, but a matter of public record, that he sometimes failed to act, acted slowly, or delivered messages, not in the language of moral outrage, but in very guarded, diplomatic or even obscure language, failing to name names or concepts (like “Hitler,” “Germany,” “Nazi,” “Nazism,” or “anti-Semitism”).
      Here is a documented instance of the pope’s moral reserve evident in 1940: “Cardinal Tisserant, a senior member of the Roman Curia wrote to Cardinal Suhard, the Archbishop of Paris, as Nazi forces were overrunning France in June 1940. Tisserant expressed his concern at the racism of the Nazis, the systematic destruction of their victims and the moral reserve of Pope Pius XII: ‘I'm afraid that history may be obliged in time to come to blame the Holy See for a policy accommodated to its own advantage and little more. And that is extremely sad--above all when one has lived under Pius XI.’” ("A Tale of Two Popes: Pius XI, Pius XII and the Rome-Berlin Axis," Peter C. Kent, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 23, No. 4 [Oct., 1988], pp. 589–608).
      Here is another example of his perceived reserve from 1941, two years into the war: “President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent Myron C. Taylor as his special representative to the Vatican in September 1941. His assistant, Harold Tittman, repeatedly pointed out to Pius the dangers to his moral leadership by his failure to speak out against the violations of the natural law carried out by the Nazis ("Controversial concordats", Frank J. Coppa, p.175, CUA Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8132-0920-X ). Pius XII responded that he could not name the Nazis without at the same time mentioning the Bolsheviks” (Hilberg, Raul (2003). The Destruction of the European Jews (3rd ed.). pp. 1204-5).
      To his credit though, by Christmas of that same year, and again at Christmas, 1942 Pope Pius finally did speak up, but unfortunately in obscure language, not even referring to Nazism, Jews or anti-Semitism by name. These Christmas messages are available, translated and published by The New York Times (Dec. 25, 1941, p. 20 & Dec. 25, 1942, p. 10).



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    4. Dear Frenchie and Tim,

      Continuing my response:
      So, for instance, although “Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address measured 26 pages and over 45 minutes, the majority of the speech spoke generally about human rights and civil society, focusing on principles rather than particular facts. (Phayer, Michael. 2008. Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34930-9, p. 53; and Ritner, Carol and Roth, John K. (eds.). 2002. Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. New York: Leicester University Press. ISBN 0-7185-0275-2, p. 3). The ‘pivotal words that remain one of the key flashpoints in the Holocaust-related controversy that continues to swirl around him’ came near the end of the speech (Ritner and Roth, p. 3). Pius XII stated: ‘Humanity owes this vow to those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline’ (Phayer, p. 53). After the speech, Pius XII … assured his German ambassador, Diego von Bergen, by pulling him aside and reassuring him that his remarks were intended for the Soviets and Stalin rather than the Germans” (Phayer, p. 63).
      The 1942 Christmas message is probably what nineteen Catholic scholars of theology and history had in mind in February 2010 when they asked “Pope Benedict XVI to slow the process of the sainthood cause of Pope Pius XII. The scholars said existing research ‘leads us to the view that Pope Pius XII did not issue a clearly worded statement, unconditionally condemning the wholesale slaughter and murder of European Jews’" ("Scholars ask pope to slow Pius XII's canonization," National Catholic Reporter, 18 February 2010).
      Sánchez, an historian much praised for his balance, summarizes his view as follows: "Popes have seldom spoken in direct simple sentences. Pius, a trained diplomat, was even less direct than most. Reading encyclicals and other papal statements often requires interpretive skills to determine just exactly what is said. As a result, people can read into some papal words what they want to hear. And looked at in hindsight, Pius' words of protest fall short when measured against the horror of Nazi machinery of destruction" (Sánchez, José M. 2002. Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. ISBN 0-8132-1081-X, p. 66).
      The above passages are critical of Pope Pius XII, but this is not to say that Pius did nothing. Of course, he did do some good things. According to The 1996 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (V8.01) under Pius XII, "Pius ... acted on an individual basis to save many Jews and others with church ransoms, documents, and asylum." Historian James Kurth, in his essay The Defamation of Pope Pius XII, concurs, writing “…[there was a] much greater number of Roman Jews that the Church, with the approval of the Pope, hid within a wide network of monasteries, convents, schools, and hospitals, 'under the very windows' of the Gestapo and the collaborating Fascist police" (Kurth, James, The Defamation of Pope Pius XII, First Principles, ISI Web Journal, 11/17/08).
      In summation, I would say, based on the record and not gossip, that Pius XII gets a mixed review. He helped, but also disappointed, and there have been better, more conspicuous public witnesses, such as Cardinal von Faulhaber of Munich who I introduced at the outset of this comment, who spoke out at great risk to his own person against Nazi-perpetrated horrors.

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    5. Pope Pius XII employed tact and diplomacy as head statesperson of the Vatican State. Had he faced the wrath of a madman Hitler head-on, persecution of more religious people would have proliferated in a very upside-down world, not to mention the looting and destruction of the Vatican City State. It is so easy to make judgments and critique after the fact, but it was entirely different world then. The social order was messed up due to the blitzkrieg advance and propaganda might of the Nazi party. Everyone was fearful, walking on eggshells and did not want to make the first blunder such as the failed appeasement brouhaha. One can truly appreciate the passionate resolve of Sir Winston Churchill to defy Herr Adolf, the brave pockets of French resistance and later the will of the Allied Forces to galvanize the fight against a fast-creeping loss of will and fatalistic surrender. We know the rest of the story.

      Point is, dear Timothy, one cannot make judgements against an empty canvas. One has to imagine the psyche of the prevailing time and circumstances. A simplistic black and white reading of history without reflection on context can be an utterly amateurish way to draw conclusions and, need I say, foolhardy and irresponsible scholarship..

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    6. I approved the comments by Mr. Guile after first privately addressing him and letting him know that I did not wish to bash Pope Pius XII on my blog. Mr. Guile politely replied that it was my blog and that no bashing was intended. In the interest of perhaps furthering the truth about Pius XII but also perhaps at some risk due to the fact that probably few know what this discussion is about, I have decided to approve Mr. Guile's comments after sending him my response to him which I am copying below:

      I will approve them for now. Just know that history has long since turned towards Pius XII's favor and most of the negative has been exposed as papal baiting by people who had other axes to grind. In addition, you and I do not know what Pius may have been told by our Lord himself in prayer. It could have been that he would have rather died a martyr than take the course that has continued to crucify him 80 years past his death. Jesus himself avoided death several times until it was his appointed time. We do not know what the vicar of Christ knew. But what we do know is that simply standing up to Hitler meant the retaliatory torture and murder of many others.

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  4. Thank you, Tim and company, for educating us on the fine print of kiko arguello's evil designs on the Catholic Church. As individuals we come to find solace and salvation in the institutional church through its ministers. A big fraction of this relationship is the very integrity of the ministers we approach for help.

    For a long time now, Jungle Watch has provided damning evidence for reasons that ought to make us distrust and even loathe the Church we have always loved. It is so unfortunate that the Agana Archdiocese's leadership has prostituted itself and became open-legged harlots to the wiles of ncw. Apuron and his cohorts have exposed the faithful of this Archdiocese to very grave dangers that ordinary folks in the pews need to be cautioned against and protected from. We as a church cannot allow these abuses to continue. Many people have already been hurt, damaged and many have gone to their graves hoping and praying that church leadership gets revamped to make way for a saner and healthier Church. Readers of JW, please spread the word that NCW is out to advance its own agenda as a cult of darkness, rather than as a legitimate positive pathway to life. We have gone too far to give up the fight to rid ourselves of ncw and its inept leadership.

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  5. This Dungbat fails to realize that communion is a two way street. How can anyone be in communion with a local Vicar that is malicious and devious....

    DianaJanuary 28, 2016 at 11:46 PM
    Dear Anonymous at 11:17 pm,

    The NCW remained in communion with the Archbishop just as Pope Francis said. I believe the question is what happened to YOUR communion with the local Vicar of Christ?

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    1. Why do you think that the dungbat has the capacity to "realize" anything?

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    2. Ha! The dungbat admits the NCW is in cahoots with the archbishop. Her misuse of the word "communion" is another Neo tactic to make them look legitimate.

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  6. Anon 10:32 Right on point thank you. NCW has to be ejected from our parishes and build their own churches. The destruction to our Church and people will continue unless we end their intrusion.

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  7. I seem to recall Mr. Guile making similar anti-Pope Pius XII posts in response to Catholic World Report articles.

    It is really off topic. Perhaps move to a separate thread? Or delete all posts on the subject?

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