In Catholic discourse today, one notices two extremes when the question of Freemasonry and its (past or present) penetration into the Church hierarchy is raised.
Showing posts with label Church history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church history. Show all posts
New Book Tells the Dramatic Story of Traditionalist Movement in the USA
In many conversations online and in person about the situation in which we traditional Catholics find ourselves in 2022, one thing I have seen again and again is a temptation to discouragement or despair on account of the threat—or the reality—of that which we love being torn out of our churches, our towns, our families.
Ultramontanism: Its Life and Death
We cannot understand the crisis in the Catholic Church today or how to escape from it unless we understand how the ecclesiological distortion popularly known as ultramontanism originated, how it functions as a kind of hyperclericalism, and finally how it has consumed itself like the ouroboros. Stuart Chessman published the following very insightful historical analysis in four installments (December 20, 23, 27, and 31) at the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny’s blog. With his permission they are published here as a single essay.—PAK
Ultramontanism: Its Life and Death
Stuart Chessman
The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny
The actions of present Pope have put incredible stress on the Church’s constitution—the papal absolute monarchy. I’d like to offer some reflections on this system of government: ultramontanism. To understand it, though, we have to go back in history, starting with the reign of Pius IX when the ultramontanist regime received its “classic” form. I will focus on history—what actually happened—as opposed to theological considerations.
MAJOR EXPOSÉ: Rooms broken into, dossiers stolen, death threats, armed guards, assassinations... Fr. Charles Murr on Vatican intrigues surrounding Cardinals Baggio, Benelli, Villot, and Gagnon
Rorate readers will be aware of the groundbreaking interview Kevin J.
Symonds conducted with Fr. Murr for the October 2020 issue of Inside the Vatican, which was also
published at Rorate
on October 10. Interested readers may want to read that interview first in
order to gain more understanding of context for the present one, which was done once again for Inside the Vatican.
In the previous interview, Fr. Murr told us about his friendship with
Mother Pascalina Lehnert, the “right hand” of Pope Pius XII for several
decades. In addition to this discussion, Fr. Murr made some notable
revelations about what was going on at the Vatican in the 1960s, and 1970s.
The interview below follows up on these revelations with the theme of “where
do we go from here?”
|
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| Cardinal Baggi (L) and Cardinal Benelli (R) |
“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”:
KEVIN SYMONDS’ SECOND INTERVIEW WITH FR. CHARLES MURR
ITV: Thank you, Fr. Murr, for sitting down again with Inside the Vatican. In our previous interview, you spoke of your association with Cardinal
Edouard Gagnon and Msgr. Mario Marini. These two men worked closely with the Sostituto
of the Secretariat of State, Cardinal Benelli. You yourself, however, did
not enjoy the same association with Cardinal Benelli...
I was twenty-four years-old when I met and became friends with the newly
appointed minutante in the Vatican Secretariat of State, Monsignor
Mario Marini. Soon after, Marini introduced me to another extraordinary man
who would play a major role in my life, his good friend, Archbishop Edouard
Gagnon (1918–2007). Gagnon and Marini were respected friends and confidants of
Archbishop Giovanni Benelli (Sostituto of the Secretary of State); I
was not part of that inner circle. I knew Benelli, of course, and spoke with
him many times, but I knew my place. Once, on Lago di Bracciano I was at table
with him and Monsignors [Guillermo] Zanoni and Marini. I remember talking as
little as possible. With Benelli, I knew my place and kept it.
Why did you think of your relationship with Benelli in this way?
To begin with, Giovanni Benelli was Giovanni Benelli! He was one of the most
powerful men on earth; brilliant, a strategizer and deal-maker
par excellence, the #1 Vatican diplomat, a man on familiar terms with
popes and princes, patriarchs and presidents, world leaders of all sorts. I,
on the other hand, was a greenhorn American student of philosophy; absolutely
no one of consequence. Those special times that I was privileged to be in
Benelli’s company were times I knew I was in the presence of greatness.
New Edition of Davies’s Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre
The first volume, published in 1979, recounts the years from 1905-1976, providing a comprehensive collection of source materials essential for serious research on the Archbishop. The words of Davies in his introduction have lost nothing of their timeliness:
De Mattei: Fake news? No, historical truth
Roberto de Mattei
Duc in Altum
Aldo Maria Valli Blog
July 14, 2020
The Council of Constance (1414-1418)
On his blog Settimo Cielo of July 13, the Vatican
reporter Sandro Magister was highly critical of Bishops Carlo Maria Viganò and Athanasius Schneider, hurling an accusation at
them for spreading “fake news”. *
The term “fake news” was used also
in reference to Monsignor Schneider’s theses, whereby the Church, in Her
history, has corrected doctrinal errors committed by precedent ecumenical
councils, without, in this manner, “undermining the foundations of the Catholic
faith.” Magister accuses Schneider of historical incompetence, citing, as
evidence, a brief intervention by Cardinal Walter
Brandmüller on the Council of Constance, which in reality refutes nothing of
what was affirmed by Monsignor Schneider.
The facts
are these. On April 6, 1415, the Council of Constance issued a decree known as Haec Sancta 1, wherein it was stated solemnly that the Council,
assisted by the Holy Spirit, received its power directly from God: hence every
Christian, including the Pope, was required to obey it. Haec Sancta is a revolutionary document which raised many questions
as it was first interpreted in continuity with Tradition and, subsequently,
reprobated by the Pontifical Magisterium.
It had its coherent application in the decree Frequens, of October 9, 1417, which called for a Council five years
later, after seven years another one and then one every ten years, de facto attributing to the Council the
function of a permanent collegial body, alongside the Pope and de facto superior to him.
De Mattei: “Columbus noster est!”
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
June 17, 2020
“Columbus noster est!”
“Christopher Columbus is ours!” These words of Leo XIII, in his encyclical Quarto Abeunte Saeculo, issued July 16, 1892, on the IV Centenary of the
discovery of America, are like a distant echo to us, at a time when
iconoclastic fury in the United States of America is destroying the figure of
the Italian navigator.
Leo
XIII states in this encyclical that Christopher Columbus’s venture: «is in itself the
highest and grandest which any age has ever seen accomplished by man; and he
who achieved it, for the greatness of his mind and heart, can be compared to
but few in the history of humanity. By his toil another world emerged from the
unsearched bosom of the ocean: hundreds of thousands of mortals have, from a
state of blindness, been raised to the common level of the human race, reclaimed
from savagery to gentleness and humanity; and, greatest of all, by the
acquisition of those blessings of which Jesus Christ is the author, they have
been recalled from destruction to eternal life. (…) For Columbus is ours; since if a little consideration be given to
the particular reason of his design in exploring the mare tenebrosum,
and also the manner in which he endeavored to execute the design, it is
indubitable that the Catholic faith was the strongest motive for the inception
and prosecution of the design; so that for this reason also the whole human
race owes not a little to the Church. (…)
This view and aim is known to have possessed his mind
above all; namely, to open a way for the Gospel over new lands and seas. (…)
Columbus certainly had joined to the study of nature the study of religion, and
had trained his mind on the teachings that well up from the most intimate
depths of the Catholic faith. For this reason, when he learned from the lessons
of astronomy and the record of the ancients, that there were great tracts of
land lying towards the West, beyond the limits of the known world, lands
hitherto explored by no man, he saw in spirit a mighty multitude, cloaked in
miserable darkness, given over to evil rites, and the superstitious worship of vain
gods. Miserable it is to live in a barbarous state and with savage manners: but
more miserable to lack the knowledge of that which is highest, and to dwell in
ignorance of the one true God. Considering these things, therefore, in his
mind, he sought first of all to extend the Christian name and the benefits of
Christian charity to the West, as is abundantly proved by the history of the
whole undertaking”».
Hence, Christopher
Columbus belongs to the Church, and any affront to him is directed at the
Church, which has the duty to defend his memory. This spirit inspired Count Antoine-François-Félix Roselly de Lorgues (1805-1898)
who dedicated his life to promoting the cause for Christopher Columbus’s
canonization. Encouraged by Pius IX, in 1856, in Paris, Roselly de Lorgues published a two-volume work entitled: Cristophe Colomb. Histoire de sa vie et de
ses voyages; d’après des documents
authentiques tirés d’Espagne et d’Italie, which achieved world-wide success.
In this work, Roselly de Lorgues, for the first time, offers his thesis for the
canonization of the “Admiral of the Ocean”. He writes in a subsequent work: “…he was the
ambassador of God to unknown nations that the ancient world were unaware of” and “ the natural legate of the Holy See in
those new regions”. (Della vita di Cristoforo Colombo e delle
ragioni per chiederne la beatificazione, tr. it., per Ranieri Guasti, Prato
1876, p. 83)
De Mattei: Gregory XVI and the epidemic of his time
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Ronana
June 3, 2020
The
cholera that flagellated Europe in the 1800s, started off on the shores of the
Ganges, India, in 1817. The passage of the disease was slow but
relentless. The pandemic made its way
into China and Japan, then Russia and thus spread to the Scandinavian
countries, England and Ireland. From there, during the 1830s, it reached
America with the immigrant-ships, striking Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Peru and
Chile. In 1832 it arrived in Paris, then Spain and finally in July 1835, it
passed through the northern Italian borders at Nice, Genoa and Turin.
The
historian, Gaetano Moroni (1802-1883), in his famous Dictionary of Erudition, when addressing the “destructive and desolating scourge of the Indian or Asian Cholera
morbus ” calls it “pestilence”
and presents it in these terms: “pestilence
signifies every sort of scourge, a divine chastisement which incites salutary
dread and fright in everyone, by jolting obstinate sinners into true
repentance, effecting wonderful results, sins being the perennial cause of all
kinds of adversity.” (Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica, Tipografia Emiliana, Venezia
1840-1861, vol. 52, p. 219).
De Mattei: Gregory and the Coronavirus of his time
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
February 19, 2020
An aura of mystery surrounds the
Coronavirus, or Covid-19, as we don’t know either its origins or the real data
of its diffusion, nor of its possible consequences. What we do know however, is that pandemics have
always been considered as Divine chastisements in history and the sole remedy the
Church took against them was prayer and penance.
This happened in Rome in the
year 590, when Gregory of the Anicia (gens) senatorial family, was elected Pope
taking the name Gregory I(540-604).
Italy was
devastated by diseases, famines, social disorders and the destructive wave of
the Lombards. Between 589 and 590, a violent outbreak of plague, the terrible lues inguinaria, after devastating the Byzantine territory in the
East and the Frankish land in the West, had sown death and terror in the
peninsula and had struck the city of Rome. The Roman citizens saw this epidemic
as a Divine punishment for the corruption in the city.
The
first victim the plague claimed in Rome was Pope Pelagius II, who died on
February 5th, 590 and buried in St. Peter’s. The clergy and
the Roman Senate elected Gregory as his successor, who, after being praefectus urbis lived in his monk’s cell on
Montecelio. After his consecration on October 3rd
590, the new Pope tackled the plight of the plague immediately. Gregory of
Tours (538-594), who was a contemporary and chronicler of those events,
recounts that in a memorable sermon delivered in the Church of Santa Sabina,
Gregory invited the Romans to follow -
contrite and penitent - the example of the inhabitants of Nineveh: “ Look
around you: behold God’s sword of wrath brandished over the entire population.
Sudden death snatches us from the world, scarcely giving us a second of time. At
this precise moment, oh – how many are taken up by evil - here all around us – unable
even to think about penitence.”
De Mattei: In Memoriam: The French Historian and the Italian Philosopher
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
January 8, 2020
Roberto de Mattei, Augusto Del Noce, Jean de Viguerie
The
French historian, Jean de Viguerie departed this life on December 15th
2019. Two weeks later, on December 30th , there was the 30th
anniversary of the death of the Italian philosopher Augusto del Noce. What did
these two figures of 20th century Catholic culture have in common?
Jean de Viguerie, born in Rome
in 1935, followed a brilliant academic career, becoming Professor emeritus at
the University of Lille-III, without ever making compromises to the dominant
culture. «La foi irriguait
toute la vie de Jean de Viguerie et nourrissait sa vie de professeur» wrote his disciple, Philippe Pichot Bravard.
Viguerie had a thorough, deep knowledge of the
20th century. In my opinion, his fundamental work is Christianisme et Révolution. Cinq leçons d’Histoire de la Révolution française (Nouvelles
Editions Latines, 1986). The reading of this book, alongside La Révolution française by Pierre Gaxotte (Edition by Jean
Tulard, Complexe, 1988) offers us a synthetic, but illuminating picture of what
happened in France between 1789 and 1795. His most original work though, is Les deux patries. Essai historique sur
l’idée de patrie en France (Dominique Martin Morin, 1998). The French
historian demonstrates how in the 19th century, a new concept of
« patria » superimposed itself on the traditional one, rooted in a
concrete place and a precise historical memory. It was in the name of this
ideology that France went into the First World War. The Union Sacrée of 1914, between nationalists of the left and the
right, was a continuation of the call to arms launched in 1792, when the
National Assembly declared “La Patrie en
danger!” [The Homeland is in danger!].
De Mattei: The ‘Mestizo’ Theology of Pope Francis
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
December 18, 2019
One of the oft repeated words in Pope Francis' vocabulary is “mestizo”. Francis gives a political,
cultural and even a theological interpretation to this term, not only an ethnic meaning, He did this on December 12, when affirming Our Lady “wanted to be “”mestizo’. She became mestizo for us, not
only for Juan Diego. She became mestizo
to show that she is everyone’s mother. She became mestizo with all of humanity. Why?
Because God became “mestizo”.
And this is the great mystery: Mary, Mother “mestizo” God, true God and true Man, in His Son” (’Osservatore Romano,
13 December 2019.
Whether Pope Francis is aware
of it or not, the origin of this “mestizo” vision regarding the Mystery of the Incarnation is in
the heresy of Eutyches (378-454, Archimandrite,
of a monastery in Constantinople,); according to Eutyches, after the hypostatic union, the humanity and Divinity
of Christ, was fused to form a tertium
quid, a hybrid coalescence that would
actually be neither God nor man. ‘Eutycheanism’ is a rough form of Monophysitism
because it admits in the Son of God Incarnate, one single nature, resulting
from this confused union of divinity with humanity.
Following Eusebius of
Dorylaeum’s denunciation (he had also accused Nestorius twenty years before
that), Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople, in 448 A.D. summoned a synod in which
Eutchyes was condemned as a heretic and excommunicated. Eutchyes, however, with
the support of Dioscoros, the Patriarch of Alessandria, succeeded in having another
synod called in Ephesus, at which he was rehabilitated, while Flavian, Eusebius
and other bishops were attacked and subsequently deposed. The Pope at that time was Leo The Great, who
rejected the Synod of Ephesus, calling it Latrocinium
Ephesinum; in fact, it was called the
Robber Council of Ephesus and went down in history with that name.
De Mattei: Who was the worst Pope in the history of the Church?
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
December 4, 2019
Who was the worst Pope in the history of the
Church? Many maintain that it was Alexander VI, a Pope excessively criticized.
According to St. Robert Bellarmine it was John XII (937-964), whom he defines “omnium pontificum fere deterrimus”,
“practically the worst of all pontiffs” (De
Romano Pontifice, l. II, cap. XIX, in De controversiis christianae fidei, Apud Societatem Minimam,
Venetii 1599, p. 689).
Alberic II of the Counts of
Tusculum (the Roman princeps from 932
to 954) some days before dying, asked to be taken to St. Peter’s and on the
Apostle’s tomb, in the presence of Pope Agapetus, had the Roman nobles swear,
that at the death of the Pope in office, they would elect to the Papal Throne, his
son, to whom he had given the auspicious name of Octavian. When the Pope died,
in December 955, Octavian was elected under the name of John XII, even if he
hadn’t reached the canonical age to become pope, being only eighteen years old.
According to an unanimous description of the sources, the young Pope was a dissolute
pontiff, who didn’t interrupt his life of reckless abandon in unbridled
pleasures, even with his election to the Papal Throne.
De Mattei: Martyrs of the Reform of the Church
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
January 23, 2019
The Mutilation and the Murder of the Deacon Arialdo
Also the reform of the Church has its martyrs. Among them are Saints Arialdo
(+1066) and Erlembald (+1075), leaders of the “Pataria”, a lay movement in the
XI century which aimed at the restoration of morality in the diocese of Milan,
one of the most corrupt in Italy.
Simony
and Nicolaism were the two plagues afflicting the Church at that time. Simony was the pretense of buying and selling
clerical offices; Nicolaism, was the practice of taking wives and mistresses by
bishops and priests. However, the most shameful expression of moral
dissoluteness was sodomy, which, as St. Peter Damian writes, raged “like a
bloodthirsty beast inside the sheepfold of Christ” (Liber Gomorrhianus, tr. it. Fiducia, Roma 2015, p. 41). These vices were so deeply-rooted in northern
Italy as to constitute general praxis.
Newly Published: Two Historical Novels by Benson, Two Classic Liturgical Commentaries, and a Great Vocations Pamphlet
I am pleased to announce new reprints of five works that should never have gone out of print in the first place. All are available from Amazon sites; the titles below give the hyperlinks.
Church history and Catholic Social Doctrine on Soundcloud
| Dr. John Rao (Photo: The Remnant) |
There is a great deal of good Catholic audio to be found on the internet nowadays. We want to alert our readers to things in particular.
First, our friends at the Roman Forum have put a large number of lectures on Church History by John Rao up on Soundcloud. Included are the completed lectures of the current year (2016-2017), which is about the years 1794-1846, and all the lectures of last year (2015-2016), which was about the years 1748-1794. We encourage our readers to take a break from current events, and recall the Church’s struggles in previous centuries. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were periods in the Church’s life with many parallels to our own. The temptation to water down the faith, and try to make it palatable to modernity can be found then as now. And Rao masterfully shows how all attempts do so were counter-productive and disastrous, whereas attempts to recover the fullness of the Church's Tradition bore great fruit.
First, our friends at the Roman Forum have put a large number of lectures on Church History by John Rao up on Soundcloud. Included are the completed lectures of the current year (2016-2017), which is about the years 1794-1846, and all the lectures of last year (2015-2016), which was about the years 1748-1794. We encourage our readers to take a break from current events, and recall the Church’s struggles in previous centuries. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were periods in the Church’s life with many parallels to our own. The temptation to water down the faith, and try to make it palatable to modernity can be found then as now. And Rao masterfully shows how all attempts do so were counter-productive and disastrous, whereas attempts to recover the fullness of the Church's Tradition bore great fruit.
Intervention against a disastrous Pope: When Emperor Otto the Great saved the Church
A guest post by James Bogle. I've put a comment on my own blog.
| Later representation of the Emperor Otto I “the Great”. |
To most Americans, heavily influenced by Hollywood film productions, anything calling itself an “Empire” is seen to be bad, and good governments are obliged to style themselves by names such as “the Federation”.
However, for Catholic Christians, “Empire” was never a dirty word but referred to the Christianised Roman Empire that was the political bedrock of Christendom, not only in Europe but throughout the whole world.
Its leading figure, the Holy Roman Emperor, was, like the Roman Pontiff, elected.
The Holy Roman Emperor was not a dictator, still less a despot, but a focus of loyalty and Christian symbolism, the first among the Christian sovereigns.
Few states were ruled directly by the Emperor and those that were so ruled regarded it as a high honour to be unmittelbar - “unmediated” - answering directly to the Emperor and not to some intermediate ruler.
The Emperor also had the right – and duty – to call, and to preside over, all Ecumenical General Councils of the Church. He, in fact, did so for the first 1100 years of Christian history.
A Long-Awaited Publishing Event: The Full English Translation of Bouyer's Memoirs Now Available
From the publisher:
261 pages
$19.95 / £13.00
978-1-62138-142-6 (paper)
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