Address by Bishop Fellay: A Summary of Recent Events, Given on Dec. 28, 2012

The Youtube video that was posted here has been removed from Youtube.

Here is a link to an mp3 of the same: http://www.sspxaudio.com/20121228-Bishop-Fellay-Conference.mp3

The Pope's Christmas Homily and His Failed Project

Pope Benedict XVI at Christmas Midnight Mass, 2012. As pews continue to empty and the western world spirals into a demographic and financial abyss, the pope still embraces liberalism in his Christmas homily.

In Pope Benedict’s Midnight Mass sermon we find this rather curious paragraph:

Linked to God’s glory on high is peace on earth among men. Where God is not glorified, where he is forgotten or even denied, there is no peace either. Nowadays, though, widespread currents of thought assert the exact opposite: they say that religions, especially monotheism, are the cause of the violence and the wars in the world. If there is to be peace, humanity must first be liberated from them. Monotheism, belief in one God, is said to be arrogance, a cause of intolerance, because by its nature, with its claim to possess the sole truth, it seeks to impose itself on everyone. Now it is true that in the course of history, monotheism has served as a pretext for intolerance and violence. It is true that religion can become corrupted and hence opposed to its deepest essence, when people think they have to take God’s cause into their own hands, making God into their private property. We must be on the lookout for these distortions of the sacred. While there is no denying a certain misuse of religion in history, yet it is not true that denial of God would lead to peace. If God’s light is extinguished, man’s divine dignity is also extinguished. Then the human creature would cease to be God’s image, to which we must pay honour in every person, in the weak, in the stranger, in the poor. Then we would no longer all be brothers and sisters, children of the one Father, who belong to one another on account of that one Father. The kind of arrogant violence that then arises, the way man then despises and tramples upon man: we saw this in all its cruelty in the last century.

The defense of religion in the face of secularism’s lies about religion as the cause of violence and inhumanity throughout history is a common theme of the Ratzinger papacy. However, it has been ineffectual. After eight years of Pope Benedict’s project to re-establish the Christian identity of Europe and the western world, secularism has grown and its arguments have become louder and ever more heeded, even though they certainly haven’t become more logical or historically factual. In the great open social debate, in the "free market of ideas", which Pope John Paul II assured us could not be lost by the Catholic Church because truth always prevails when given a fair hearing, the arguments coming from the leaders of Catholic Church are losing.

Cultural disaster threatens the Church outside the Vatican’s walls. The western world is every day approaching closer and closer to a financial disaster that could topple western civilization once and for all. Islam continues to grow and spread unabated, while population growth in the former Christian west is well below the necessary replacement rate. Western man is contracepting himself into oblivion, and despite the modern Church’s stand against contraception, this trend remains steady. The legalization of abortion is making inroads in what just a year ago seemed like nations that were “Pro-Life” bastions, such as Ireland and the Philippians. France is now squarely in the hands of the Socialists, who’s first priority has been social change in the form of gay “marriage”, and not the financial change they were elected to enact. Germany’s banks every day continue to tighten the grip on the Euro-zone’s struggling Socialist countries, which will topple without usury. The United States failed to rid itself of the most pro-abortion and Socialist president it has ever had, and instead a majority of Americans accepted a campaign based on free-contraception and hedonism, and embraced his pro-abortion, pro-gay “marriage” and Welfare State policies. The western world has in this past year resolutely decided for Socialism, hedonism, materialism, secularism, etc., all of which can be summed up by the expression, godlessness.

A disaster of faith threatens the Church from inside. Parish and school closings in every diocese and archdiocese worldwide is such a common occurrence that it is hardly news even for critical, traditional news sources. As the pews continue to empty, the “vocation crisis” is worse than ever despite multi-million dollar marketing campaigns and hundreds of other failed strategies. Many dioceses must face a near future wherein the majority of their parishes will not have a priest. The Jesuit order is poised for extinction as the majority of its priests and brothers will be at retirement age within the next few years. Religious houses close or are converted for other purposes. Unused retreat houses are sold and converted into nursing homes to warehouse an ever growing elderly clerical class that no longer have young members in their religious orders to care for them. A majority of church-going laity have a woefully inadequate understanding of their faith, most no longer believing in the Real Presence, the Perpetual Virginity of Our Lady, or what is required for the salvation of their souls. Liturgical abuses render many, if not most, novus ordo Masses illicit and/or invalid. Dissent and discord are common place at Catholic colleges and universities that have long ago thrown away any obligation they had to propagate the faith. Most Catholic colleges and universities are Catholic in name only, and most of their faculties are made up of publicly avowed Socialists, materialists, liberals and hedonists who pass on the filth of secularism to their students with license. In nearly every corner of the Church are the marks of Satan, evidenced by a lack of faith, liturgical abuse, the open preaching of heresy and error, and sex scandals.

The Catholic Church is losing the debate in the free market of ideas, despite the fact that it possesses the truth. Pope John Paul II and modern thinkers like George Weigel were wrong. In the great open debate of our modern world merely possessing the truth isn't enough. Why? The reason is to be found in a form of grand naivety on the part of the post-Conciliar, Neo-Catholic conservatives. While not outright rejecting the notion of original sin, they at least are guilty of ignoring its reality in our fallen world.

The great debate in the free market of ideas isn't being won because it’s fixed. The world’s great open debate, the world’s free market of ideas has been fixed in favor of Satan because, quite simply, Satan is the lord of this world (Apocalypse 12:9), and by extension the lord of the “free” market of ideas. The evil one actually acts to blind the unbelievers from the truth, as St. Paul teaches us: “And if our gospel be also hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them” (2 Cor 4:4). St. Paul would be confused by this modern rhetoric from Church leaders and Catholic thinkers like Weigel who speak of a “fair hearing” when it comes to the truth. There is no fair hearing of the truth in this world marred as it is by the effects of original sin.

Divine Revelation, let it not be forgotten, is necessary because of original sin. One of the primary consequences of original sin is that man can never come to a correct knowledge of God and His Will on man’s own volition. To claim otherwise would be to adopt a semi-Pelagian position. One would have to completely ignore the reality of original sin and the state of this present world to posit, as do many Catholic thinkers and church leaders these days, that the truth can gain any kind of fair hearing in this present world, no matter how “free” any kind of market is considered.

Yet, the Holy Father returns time after time to this same naivety, and it is present in this paragraph from his Christmas homily that sticks out as another example of Benedict’s liberalism.

The Holy Father defends a nebulous reality he labels “religion” and “monotheism”, avoiding carefully any specific mention of Christianity or the Catholic Church. Once again, Catholicism is lumped into the category of “monotheism” and all monotheistic religions are given equal treatment and equal defense. In doing so, the Holy Father takes the feet out from under his own argument, because, indeed, a tremendous amount of violence and inhumanity has been caused by “monotheism”, specifically Islam. Islam is a monotheistic religion that was born in violence and bloodshed, and it doesn't take much common sense to realize which parts of the world are still bathed in violence and bloodshed. Once again Catholicism is lumped with Talmudic Judaism, which was responsible for the first persecutions of the Catholic Church. Once again Catholicism is lumped with Protestantism, a sectarian concoction of heresy and error that originated from anti-Catholicism. The Holy Father admits that “it is true that religion can become corrupted and hence opposed to its deepest essence”. Fair enough, but he is woefully unspecific, and ultimately disingenuous, when he says that religion departs from its deepest essence “when people think they have to take God’s cause into their own hands, making God into their private property.” People who take religion into their own hands, and ignore the revealed Will of God that is safeguarded without error by the Holy Catholic Church, used to be called certain things, like "heretic" and "apostate" and "infidel". Not anymore, especially not by the liberals now in control of the Church Militant. What the Holy Father isn't telling us in his Christmas homily, what he apparently is too frightened to say, or too ideologically conditioned not to say, is that true religion is corrupted when Catholicism is rejected or abandoned, and this is because Catholicism is the true religion!

The Holy Father speaks of the dangers of extinguishing God’s light in the world (and thereby extinguishing man’s “divine dignity” as well). However, it is the Holy Father, himself, who refuses to let the light of Jesus Christ shine because he refuses, in his liberalism, to separate the true religion of our Jesus from the false and dangerous religions that stand opposed to Him, be they monotheistic or not.

As reasonable and historically factual as it is to point out that religion was not responsible, not even Islam, for the worst acts of inhumanity in the history of mankind, those acts that occurred in the 20^th Century  due to humanistic philosophy and Socialism manifested in Nazism and Soviet Communism, that argument is never going to get a “fair hearing” in a world sinking ever more into the abyss of godlessness and sin. Man no longer wants to hear logical arguments pointing him away from the distractions he loves. The light of Jesus Christ is the only thing that can burst through the hardened and deadened hearts of modern people. Woe to those who know this light and refuse to let it be known!

The only remedy at this point will be a courageous return to Tradition by a bold proclamation of the Truth, and that starts with pointing a wayward and suffering world to the true religion that is the only earthly source that possesses the Truth as a great and precious gift from the most merciful and generous Triune God: the Holy Catholic Church.

However, for that to happen our prelates have to abandon the liberalism they embraced in the post-Conciliar age, the liberalism born out of the errors of neo-Modernism that have wrecked such disaster in the Church Militant. If they are to turn around the disaster that has occurred outside and inside the Church, if the year of faith is to be more than a year of blind adherence to the failures of the post-conciliar era, the pope and his bishops will have to finally embrace what they apparently are too frightened to say, and to say what not a few of them hate the most about Jesus and His Church: Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.

Recovering from the New Theology: Identifying the New Theologians

Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

"Where is the New Theology leading us to? It is taking us in a straight line right back to modernism by way of whims, errors and heresy." - Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

I’m in the process of researching what very well could become a book length treatise on the influence of World War II on the Catholic Church and the role it played in bringing about the current Modernist crisis. In that process I've come across the work of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. For many traditionalists the name hardly needs explanation, but this theologian, quite possibly the most important theological voice of the 20^th century, was a great mystery to me for most of my life; he was a personage that didn’t even register a blip on my seminary professors’ syllabi. A significant portion of his academic work was intended to counter the re-emergence of Modernism in what was styled the “New Theology”. The New Theology was the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin propagated in the post-war years by theologians such as Henri De Lubac, Karl Rahner, Hans Von Balthasar, Edward Schillebeeckx, and, yes, Joseph Ratzinger. Of course, I was taught Von Balthasar and Ratzinger (though not with as much enthusiasm) during my seminary days, but I was never once introduced to the name Garrigou-Lagrange.

What I’ve uncovered in this research was really no great surprise. The roots of the current Modernist crisis can be found in the early 20^th century, in the pre-war years, in the misguided notions of Teilhard, who had accepted without question the Hegelian dialectic merged with a rather ridiculous pseudo-biological rhetoric inspired by the secular myth of evolution. This way of thinking was accelerated in the post-war years by Jesuits such as De Lubac, Rahner and Pedro Arrupe, all of whom were reacting to their experiences of the horrors of World War II. Those horrors crystalized their desire to bring about the evolutionary perfection of the human race, so that such horrors could never occur again. Their philosophy and theology was a philosophy and theology of becoming, becoming that would take man beyond the horrors of Hitler and the guilt of that generation.

The problem inherent in their thinking, from the very beginning, is an error regarding the supernatural. For Hegel, the supernatural reveals itself in the material and rational world through a historical process of becoming. Divination is a process of evolution by which man becomes god. The theologians of the New Theology, to summarize, accepted this concept and applied it to Catholic doctrine, retaining the terminology, but redefining the terms according to this notion of becoming. For these theologians, Christ was the epitome of this becoming, He was perfect Man, and on account of being perfect Man, He was necessarily God.

This is a far cry from the Church’s Christological definitions of Ephesus, Chalcedon and Constantinople V. The Church has always defined that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity became man by taking on a human nature while at the same time retaining intact His divine nature, in one Person: the hypostatic union. Most Catholics who are serious about their faith, both traditionalists and novus ordo conservatives, still cling to this truth of the faith. However, for the new theologians it is completely the opposite. Man becomes God by becoming, to borrow the term from Nietzche, uberman; Christ is divine because He is the uberman in history. When the new theologians rejected the Thomistic theology of being for the Hegelian theology of becoming and the pseudo-science of evolution, monistic and pantheistic conclusions emerged (Humani generis, 5). Most Catholics who are serious about their faith, both traditionalists and novus ordo conservatives, are repulsed by this kind of thinking.

Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger. They were close
collaborators during Vatican II. 

The problem is, just like in the fourth century in regards to Arianism, a majority of powerful prelates are not repulsed by this error, and, in fact, many of them have embraced it and vehemently defended it. One such example is the current pope, Benedict XVI, who’s Christology as explained in his The Christian Faith, exuberantly embraces this theology of becoming. He claimed that by man becoming “completely and authentically man” he is God, and that God is, “simply, authentic man” (130, 140). Ratzinger’s thought completely does away with the total transcendence of God, which had been so carefully preserved in the Church’s definitions regarding the hypostatic union. This embrace of the theology of becoming, which was always at the heart of the New Theology, is still very much at the center of Ratzinger's thinking, which was made evident in his recent Christmas address to the Roman Curia. Because Ratzinger understands Christ as the epitome of man's "becoming", the Truth, which is Christ, is not something found by believing what the Church teaches and practicing what the Church has always stipulated (both liturgically and morally), as Catholics have always believed, but the Truth is something sought after in a process of becoming, which requires the guidance of not only what the Catholic Church teaches, but what others outside the Church can offer us, to include Talmudic Judaism, Islam, Paganism and Protestantism. This theological liberalism flows logically from the pope's flawed Christology.

In the post-Vatican II Church a virtual army of prelates who ascribed to the same notions were placed, one after another, into positions of authority: Karl Lehmann, Christoph von Schonborn, Walter Kasper, and now Gerhard Müller. What’s more, these were often styled as “conservatives” by mainstream Catholics. Indeed, to some extent they weren't as radical as some who emerged from the Second Vatican Council. However, to consider theologians who hold such notions about the Person of Christ and the supernatural as “conservative”, and that they have ascended to the highest offices of the Church, only demonstrates how grave the current crisis is.

But, to return to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange: toward the end of his illustrious academic career he became more and more concerned with the new theology in the post-war years. He perceived, I think, that Modernism was becoming resurgent in the Church, especially from corners close to home, from former students such as Yves Congar. We can be sure he was at odds with a certain group of prelates in the Vatican of Pius XII, and the situation probably became such that Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange became one of the few voices of reason close to Pope Pius XII. The errors of the new theology were easy enough to identify, as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange had done as early as 1946. These errors were spelled out in Humani generis in 1950 (of which Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange was the primary contributor). Many of the new theologians were silenced. Why then was the influence of the new theologians growing rather than subsiding? How then did they manage to usurp an Ecumenical Council and apparently become triumphant in the post-Vatican II Church?

Pope Benedict XVI seems obsessed, not just with "ecumenism",
but especially with Catholic-Jewish "relations". 

What was underestimated, I think, by the older prelates during the pontificate of Pius XII was the impetus provided by the holocaust. There was an unholy drive, instigated by the direct influence of Satan in the 20^th century, which drove, first the Jesuits, and then the rest of the Church’s academics to pursue the “perfect man”. Hitler could never happen again. Everything that came before him, that caused him, even Christianity, had failed and needed to be jettisoned. Hegelianism (ironically that which constituted the most significant contribution to the socialism of Adolf Hitler) had to be given its day in the sun to correct all that had gone wrong before. Tradition, dogma, the Catholic Church, they all needed to be sacrificed on the altar of the “perfect man”.

Indeed, the New Theology did triumph, but straightaway many supporters of the New Theology perceived something was terribly wrong. One such person was Pope Paul VI, whose entire ecclesiastical career was driven by sacrificing traditional Catholicism on the altar of the uberman. When the triumph came, simple-minded, useful idiots, like Paul VI really did expect a flowering of the visible Church, a new grand era of growth and revitalization. What happened, in the immediate aftermath of the New Theology’s triumph was an incredible falling off. The pews emptied, priests and religious in the thousands left the priesthood and the monasteries and the convents. Discord followed. The Jesuits abandoned the pope, and no longer took orders from Rome. Instead they took up arms with the Communists in Central America and spouted the most scandalous and scurrilous things from their pulpits. Catholic education at all levels failed to pass on the faith. Perhaps this is not the Great Apostasy that will herald the End Times (though prudent men shouldn't rule it out), but most certainly this has been a disaster of faith of epic proportion.

The "Benedictine Altar Arrangement".
Putting lipstick on a pig?

This great disaster hasn't inspired the disciples of the New Theology to abandon their errors. It is hard to teach old dogs new tricks. Instead during these decades following the great disaster they have been endeavoring to save their sinking ship by attempting to enmesh their Modernism even deeper into the trappings of Catholicism. There seems to be a lot of concern in mainstream “conservative” Catholic circles about rediscovering a “Catholic identity”. What doesn't seem to dawn on these "conservative" Catholics, is that never before in the history of the Church has a rediscovering a “Catholic identity” been proffered as a means of overcoming error or a crisis.

What is this Catholic identity? If one were to look beyond the rhetoric, what one discovers are the trappings of Catholicism, such as vestments, altar arrangements, quaint practices, and political positions, but not authentic Catholicism that comes from faith. What is missing is a serious consideration of the faith! At no time in history has a rediscovery of Catholic identity been the answer to a crisis; rather, what has always been the remedy to heresy and the confusion it causes is the rediscovery of the faith. Anything else would be to simply wrap error up in Catholic vestments. Thus, a new translation, or a new altar arrangement, or embroidered vestments will never make the New Theology anything other than what it is: whims, errors, and heresy, as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange put it. Such an effort, which has become one of the core objectives of the Ratzinger papacy, is just putting lipstick on a pig, as the saying goes.

Despite being placed in a position of great authority,
Archbishop Müller hasn't been able to effectively
thwart criticism of his out and out Modernistic opinions
regarding the Eucharist or the Perpetual Virginity of Our Lady.

It is a futile task to make the New Theology into something Catholic, as this current pontificate is proving. Despite all its initial promise, the pontificate of Benedict XVI is proving to be just as ineffective in turning the tide of the great disaster as was the long and meandering pontificate of John Paul II, the pop-star. The Modernism of the New Theology is an unholy edifice, and God will not be mocked. The prelates of the New Theology are still in their seats of power, but they are increasingly pressured by a voice of protest and criticism from a growing community of traditionalists. Even now, Tradition is re-emerging as the errors of the New Theology are revealed for what they are. Tradition is buttressed by an ever growing number of faithful who still hold fast to the ancient teachings and liturgy of the Church. The travesty that has wrecked the Church militant since the “triumph” of the New Theology belies the fact that there is no growth or vitality, but only rot and death, in the wake of error and heresy. It is only a matter of time before this is realized by sincere Catholics of all stripes. Thus, there is hope.

A future will come, no doubt, wherein there will be leveled a devastating condemnation of the prelates of the New Theology, and we can be sure that even the popes will not escape that condemnation, even though it is not our generation’s place to do so. The solution may be a long time in coming, but it must and it will come from Rome. However, in the meantime there are still happy pockets made up of traditional Catholic homes and communities, and while the tide is turning, we can rejoice in this at least.

A dramatic restoration, a true restoration, is occurring in traditional Catholic communities and families that
have rejected the New Theology.

TradNews Roundup

*The liturgical reformation of the Trappist Abbey of Mariawald.

*Pat Buchanan: Christmas in an Anti-Christian Age.

*The SSPX wins libel suit against Bavarian newspaper, court affirms that the Society is not anti-Semitic.

*Ban public schools.

*Sue the public schools.

*Putin tells Americans to look elsewhere to adopt children. Will those "human rights activists" allow a multi-million dollar business go down the tubes?

*The "Reform of the Reform" is in full bloom in Austria. Thank you, Pope Benedict XVI! All sarcasm aside for the moment, the Neo-Cat, novus ordo, conservatives don't even ask the question, why things still haven't changed almost eight years after the election of the "Reform of the Reform Pope". Churches are still desecrated under the approving eye of priests, liturgical abuses still rife throughout the novus ordo Church, and all the while pews continue to empty, the vocation crisis continues without any remedy, and Catholic families are still breaking up and contracepting the future of Catholicism away. By all objective standards THE PONTIFICATE OF BENEDICT XVI IS A FAILURE, except in one regard: traditional Catholic communities are growing and spreading due to the Holy Father's freeing up of their liturgical life. Summorum Pontificum is the only act of this pontificate that has lead to growth and a resurgence of Catholic spirituality and piety. Just think what would have happened if ALL of this pontificate's acts had been directed toward re-establishing traditional Catholicism!

*Will there be a canonization of John Paul II? The novus ordo Church approaches ever closer to that cliff from which the wrath of God will be unavoidable. God will not be mocked.

*The effects of the pervert revolution of the 60s and 70s: the absent father, the destruction of the family. The home is either a place wherein the family fosters religion and virtue, or it is a place wherein the absence of a family breeds materialism, hedonism, and demonic influence. A society will only reflect what is found in the homes of the people.

*The "fiscal cliff" is a distraction from the unavoidable disaster that is right around the corner.

*CBS continues to take aim at humiliating and belittling the Catholic faith.

*Big shocker! So-called "Catholic" U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor refuses to block the enforcement of the HHS "Contraception Mandate" in the case of Hobby Lobby (that objects, not to contraception funding, but to the funding of abortion causing drugs). To Sotomayor, stop calling yourself Catholic. To the owners of Hobby Lobby, ultimately this whole thing was caused by the Protestant principles you uphold; you are reaping the whirlwind of consequences thereof.

Midnight Mass at Christ the King Parish (FSSP)

Check out all the images over at Catholic Champion.

Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas!

I would like to thank all of you who have left Christmas greetings, and also for your very kind and encouraging compliments regarding the weblog. Thank you, especially, for your friendship in spirit over this past year.

Our Blessed Lord’s first advent was into the very dark night of paganism, and now in our modern world, his advent this Christmas is into the very dark night of error and grave crisis, especially within His Church. The extent and severity of this crisis can, at times, be overwhelming as we see daily the ruin that has been wrecked by the apparent triumph of Modernism.

However, no dark night, no matter how frightful, can overcome the Light of the Christ. There is a remedy to this dark night of error and crisis, and it is Tradition. I’m often asked, “What now? What are we to think? What are we to do?” The answer is for us to continue to embrace Tradition, to continue to live our Catholicism in its most traditional manner, to be authentically and fully Catholic. God will work through us for His greater Glory and ultimate victory, if only we remain faithful.

And this is just what you, dear reader, have been doing, and will continue to do by the grace of God. It is a great honor for me to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in this fight, especially on this day when our King has come to reign and to set us free!

To you and yours, may this Christmas Season bring you peace, love and joy in Jesus Christ our Sovereign King.

Guéranger: The Mystery of Christmas

From

The Liturgical Year

by Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.

THE MYSTERY OF CHRISTMAS

Everything is Mystery in this holy season. The Word of God, whose generation is before the day-star, is born in time—a Child is God—a Virgin becomes a Mother, and remains a Virgin—things divine are commingled with those that are human—and the sublime, the ineffable antithesis, expressed by the Beloved Disciple in those words of his Gospel, THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, is repeated in a thousand different ways in all the prayers of the Church—and rightly, for it admirably embodies the whole of the great portent which unites in one Person the nature of Man and the nature of God.

The splendour of this Mystery dazzles the understanding, but it inundates the heart with joy. It is the consummation of the designs of God in time. It is the endless subject of admiration and wonder to the Angels and Saints; nay, is the source and cause of their beatitude. Let us see how the Church offers this Mystery to her children, veiled under the symbolism of her Liturgy.

The four weeks of our preparation are over—they were the image of the four thousand years which preceded the great coming—and we have reached the twenty-fifth day of the month of December, as a long-desired place of sweetest rest. But why is it that the celebration of our Saviour’s Birth should be the perpetual privilege of this one fixed day; whilst the whole liturgical Cycle has, every year, to be changed and remodeled, in order to yield that ever-varying day which is to be the feast of his Resurrection—Easter Sunday?

The question is a very natural one, and we find it proposed and answered, even so far back as the fourth century; and that, too, by St. Augustine, in his celebrated Epistle to Januarius. The holy Doctor offers this explanation: We solemnize the day of our Saviour’s Birth, in order that we may honour that Birth, which was for our salvation; but the precise day of the week, on which he was born, is void of any mystical signification. Sunday, on the contrary, the day of our Lord’s Resurrection, is the day marked, in the Creator’s designs, to express a mystery which was to be commemorated for all ages. St. Isidore of Seville, and the ancient Interpreter of Sacred Rites who, for a long time, was supposed to be the learned Alcuin, have also adopted this explanation of the Bishop of Hippo; and our readers may see their words interpreted by Durandus, in his Rationale.

These writers, then, observe that as, according to a sacred tradition, the creation of man took place on a Friday, and our Saviour suffered death also on a Friday for the redemption of man; that as, moreover, the Resurrection of our Lord was on the third day after his death, that is, on a Sunday, which is the day on which the Light was created, as we learn from the Book of Genesis. “The two Solemnities of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection,” says St. Augustine, “do not only remind us of those divine facts; but they moreover represent and signify some other mysterious and holy thing.”

And yet we are not to suppose that because the Feast of Jesus’ Birth is not fixed to any particular day of the week, there is no mystery expressed by its being always on the twenty-fifth of December. For firstly we may observe, with the old Liturgists, that the Feast of Christmas is kept by turns on each of the days of the week, that thus its holiness may cleanse and rid them of the curse which Adam’s sin had put upon them. But secondly, the great mystery of the twenty-fifth of December, being the Feast of our Saviour’s Birth, has reference, not to the division of time marked out by God himself, which is called the Week; but to the course of that great Luminary which gives life to the world, because it gives it light and warmth. Jesus, our Saviour, the Light of the World, was born when the night of idolatry and crime was at its darkest; and the day of his Birth, the twenty-fifth of December, is that on which the material Sun begins to gain his ascendency over the reign of gloomy night, and show to the world his triumph of brightness.

In our “Advent” we showed, after the Holy Fathers, that the diminution of the physical light may be considered as emblematic of those dismal times which preceded the Incarnation. We joined our prayers with those of the people of the Old Testament; and, with our holy Mother the Church, we cried out to the Divine Orient, the Sun of Justice, that he would deign to come and deliver us from the twofold death of body and soul. God has heard our prayers; and it is on the day of the Winter Solstice—which the Pagans of old made so much of by their fears and rejoicings—that he gives us both the increase of the natural light, and him who is the Light of our souls.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ambrose, St. Maximus of Turin, St. Leo, St. Bernard, and the principal Liturgists, dwell with complacency on this profound mystery, which the Creator of the universe has willed should mark both the natural and the supernatural world. We shall find the Church also making continual allusion to it during this season of Christmas, as she did in that of Advent.

“On this the Day which the Lord hath made,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa, “darkness decreases, light increases, and Night is driven back again. No, brethren, it is not by chance, nor by any created will, that this natural change begins on the day when he shows himself in the brightness of his coming, which is the spiritual Life of the world. It is Nature revealing, under this symbol, a secret to them whose eye is quick enough to see it; to them, I mean, who are able to appreciate this circumstance of our Saviour’s coming. Nature seems to me to say: Know, O Man, that under the things which I show thee Mysteries lie concealed. Hast thou not seen the night, that had grown so long, suddenly checked? Learn hence, that the black night of Sin, which had reached its height by the accumulation of every guilty device, is this day stopped in its course. Yes, from this day forward its duration shall be shortened, until at length there shall be naught but Light. Look, I pray thee, on the Sun; and see how his rays are stronger, and his position higher in the heavens: learn from that how the other Light, the Light of the Gospel, is now shedding itself over the whole earth.”

“Let us, my Brethren, rejoice,” cries out St. Augustine: “this day is sacred, not because of the visible sun, but because of the Birth of him who is the invisible Creator of the sun… He chose this day whereon to be born, as he chose the Mother of whom to be born, and he made both the day and the Mother. The day he chose was that on which the light begins to increase, and it typifies the work of Christ, who renews our interior man day by day. For the eternal Creator having willed to be born in time, his Birthday would necessarily be in harmony with the rest of his creation.”

The same holy Father, in another sermon for the same Feast, gives us the interpretation of the mysterious expression of St. John Baptist, which admirably confirms the tradition of the Church. The great Precursor said on one occasion, when speaking of Christ: He must increase, but I must decrease. These prophetic words signify, in their literal sense, that the Baptist’s mission was at its close, because Jesus was entering upon his. But they convey, as St. Augustine assures us, a second meaning: “John came into this world at the season of the year when the length of the day decreases; Jesus was born in the season when the length of the day increases.” Thus, there is mystery both in the rising of that glorious Star, the Baptist, at the summer solstice; and in the rising of our Divine Sun in the dark season of winter.

There have been men who dared to scoff at Christianity as a superstition, because they discovered that the ancient Pagans used to keep a feast of the sun on the winter solstice! In their shallow erudition they concluded that a Religion could not be divinely instituted, which had certain rites or customs originating in an analogy to certain phenomena of this world: in other words, these writers denied what Revelation asserts, namely, that God only created this world for the sake of his Christ and his Church. The very facts which these enemies of our holy Religion brought forward as objections to the true Faith, are to us Catholics, additional proof of its being worthy of our devoted love.

Thus, then, have we explained the fundamental Mystery of these Forty Days of Christmas, by having shown the grand secret hidden in the choice made by God’s eternal decree, that the twenty-fifth day of December should be the Birthday of God upon this earth. Let us now respectfully study another mystery; that which is involved in the place where this Birth happened.

This place is Bethlehem. Out of Bethlehem, says the Prophet, shall he come forth that is to be the Ruler in Israel. The Jewish Priests are well aware of the prophecy, and a few days hence will tell it to Herod (St. Matt. II. 5). But why was this insignificant town chose in preference to every other to be the birth-place of Jesus? Be attentive, Christians, to the mystery! The name of this City of David signifies the House of Bread; therefore did he, who is the living Bread come down from heaven (St. John VI. 41), choose it for his first visible home. Our Fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead (St. John VI. 49), but lo, here is the Saviour of the world, come to give life to his creature Man by means of his own divine Flesh, which is meat indeed (St. John VI. 56). Up to this time the Creator and the creature had been separated from each other; henceforth they shall abide together in closet union. The Ark of the Covenant, containing the manna which fed but the body, is now replaced by the Ark of a New Covenant, purer and more incorruptible than the other: the incomparable Virgin Mary, who gives us Jesus, the Bread of Angels, the nourishment which will give us a divine transformation; for this Jesus himself has said: He that eateth my flesh abideth in me, and I in him (St. John, VI. 57).

It is for this divine transformation that the world was in expectation for four thousand years, and for which the Church prepared herself by the four weeks of Advent. It has come at last, and Jesus is about to enter within us, if we will but receive him. He asks to be united to each one of us in particular, just as he is united by his Incarnation to the whole human race; and for this end he wishes to become our Bread, our spiritual nourishment. His coming into the souls of men at this mystic season has no other aim than this union. He comes not to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him, and that all may have life, and may have it more abundantly (St. John X. 10). This divine Lover of our souls will not be satisfied, therefore, until he have substituted himself in our place, so that we may live not we ourselves, but he in us; and in order that this mystery may be effected in a sweeter way, it is under the form of an Infant that this Beautiful Fruit of Bethlehem wishes first to enter into us, there to grow afterwards in wisdom and age before God and men (St. Luke II. 40, 52).

And when, having thus visited us by his grace and nourished us in his love, he shall have changed us into himself, there shall be accomplished in us a still further mystery. Having become one in spirit and heart with Jesus, the Son of the heavenly Father, we shall also become sons of this same God our Father. The Beloved Disciple, speaking of this our dignity, cries out: Behold! What manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the Sons of God! We will not now stay to consider this immense happiness of the Christian soul, as we shall have a more fitting occasion, further on, to speak of it, and show by what means it is to be maintained and increased.

There is another subject, too, which we regret being obliged to notice only in a passing way. It is, that, from the day itself of our Saviour’s Birth even to the day of our Lady’s Purification, there is, in the Calendar, an extraordinary richness of the Saints’ Feasts, doing homage to the master feast of Bethlehem, and clustering in adoring love round the Crib of the Infant-God. To say nothing of the four great Stars which shine so brightly near our Divine Sun, from whom they borrow all their own grand beauty—St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, and our own St. Thomas of Canterbury: what other portion of the Liturgical Year is there that can show with in the same number of days so brilliant a constellation? The Apostolic College contributes it stow grand luminaries, St. Peter and St. Paul: the first in his Chari of Rome; the second in the miracle of his Conversion. The Martyr-host sends us the splendid champions of Christ, Timothy, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Vincent, and Sebastian. The radiant line of the Roman Pontiffs lends us four of its glorious links, named Sylvester, Telephorus, Hyginus and Marcellus. The sublime school of the holy Doctors offers us Hilary, John Chrysostom, and Ildephonsus; and in their company stands a fourth Bishop—the amiable France de Sales. The Confessor-kingdom is represented by Paul the Hermit, Anthony the conqueror of Satan, Maurus the Apostle of the Cloister, Peter Nolasco the deliverer of captives, and Raymond of Pennafort, the oracle of Canon Law and guide of the consciences of men. The army of defenders of the Church deputes the pious King Canute, who died in defense of our Holy Mother, and Charlemagne, who loved to sing himself “the humble champion of the Church.” The choir of holy Virgins gives us the sweet Agnes, the generous Emerentiana, the invincible Martina. And lastly, from the saintly ranks which stand below the Virgins—the holy Widows—we have Paula, the enthusiastic lover of Jesus’ Crib. Truly, our Christmastide is a glorious festive season! What magnificence in its Calendar! What a banquet for us in its Liturgy!

St. Josaphat, Detroit

A word upon the symbolism of the colours used by the Church during this season. White is her Christmas Vestment; and she employs this colour at every service from Christmas Day to the Octave of the Epiphany. To honour her two Martyrs, Stephen and Thomas of Canterbury, she vests in red; and ton condole with Rachel wailing her murdered Innocents, she puts on purple: but these are the only exceptions. On every other day of the twenty she expresses, by her white Robes, the gladness of which the Angels invited the world, the beauty of our Divine Sun that has risen in Bethlehem, the spotless purity of the Virgin-Mother, and the clean-heartedness which they should have who come to worship at the mystic Crib.

During the remaining twenty days, the Church vests in accordance with the Feast she keeps; she varies the colour so as to harmonize either with the red Roses which wreathe a Martyr, or with the white Amaranths which grace her Bishops and her Confessors, or again, with the spotless Lilies which crown her Virgins. On the Sundays which come during this time—unless there occur a Feast requiring red or white or, unless Septuagesima has begun its three mournful weeks of preparation for Lent—the colour of the Vestments is green. This, say the interpreters of the Liturgy, is to teach us that in the Birth of Jesus, who is the flower of the fields, we first received the hope of salvation, and that after the bleak winter of heathendom and the Synagogue there opened the verdant spring-time of grace.

With this we must close our mystical interpretation of those rites which belong to Christmas in general. Our readers will have observed that there are many other sacred and symbolical usages, to which we have not even alluded; but as the mysteries to which they belong are peculiar to certain days, and are not, so to speak, common to this portion of the Liturgical Year, we intend to treat fully of them all, as we meet with them on their proper Feasts.

Lady Lucy Herbert's Method of Hearing the Mass During Christmas Time

At this link:

A Manner of Hearing Mass,In Honour of the Incarnation and Nativity of our Saviour; to be used on the 25th of each Month, that being the Day of the Month that Jesus Christ was incarnate, and born for Love us.

There is now a printable for this Method:

Lady Lucy Herbert_In Honour of the Incarnation and Nativity of Our Saviour

Why does the pope sound like a liberal?

I'm bumping this up in consideration of the Holy Father's recent Christmas address that contains the same troubling elements that prompted this post last year.

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Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Germany is not playing out like his UK trip last year. He has reached out to just about everyone, except German Catholics. The lack of enthusiasm among German Catholics certainly hasn't been improved by the pope's actions or words. As one Catholic German remarked, "has he even said one word to us?" Is the reason why the pope has spent so much time "reaching out" to Jews, Muslims, Protestants, and atheists in Germany because he's finding it hard to locate German Catholics to dialogue with? Perhaps. German culture is as non-Christian today as it was in the days of St. Boniface. Germany is by all appearances "a desert of faith".

However, I think there is a different motive.

Pope Benedict XVI is, at least from all appearances, a liberal when comes to religious tolerance. His words belie a man who believes that Catholicism is just one of many valid voices. He gives equal credit to Talmudic Judaism, Islam and Protestantism, even suggesting that Catholics need to turn to these various other religions to gain a full understanding of Divine Revelation. He uses the word "pluralism" with a positive connotation. Never once, to my knowledge, has the Holy Father ever called any politician, atheist or secularist to conversion while in Germany, this time or the two previous times. His words to the German government assure politicians that they can govern without regard to God or Christ the King. What a startling departure from everything the Church had always taught previous to the Second Vatican Council. I don't have the authority to call the pope a heretic, but if my son came to me and expressed these positions, I would sit him down and show him where he was wrong, and why his soul would be in mortal jeopardy, pointing out the specific heresies that he would be espousing.

The Holy Father, who seems so open to Tradition and traditionalists on the one hand, on the other does more than flirt with liberalism and indifferentism. He presents a enigma for many, but there is an explanation. One popular internet priest calls Benedict XVI the "pope of Christian unity", however, what would be more accurate is the label, "the pope of social reconstruction". The difference in practice can be very subtle.

The Holy Father has embarked on the dangerous path of liberalism because this liberalism has been engrained into the psyche of those of his generation, and its cause is nothing other than the fear and guilt generated by the remembrance of World War II and the Holocaust. This has been the driving force of this pontificate, always lurking just under the surface of Benedict's dealings with non-Catholics and world governments. This is a particular flaw of the Holy Father's generation. Those of this generation have lived their entire lives under the shadow of, and guilt for, the atrocities of World War II. Never far from their decision making and ideological principles is the contemplation of Hitler, Nazism, the brutality of WWII and the images of the liberated concentration camps. It is particularly pronounced among Germans from this generation, and it tells us much about this pope's apparent inconsistencies and ideological liberalism when it comes to religious tolerance.

The pope has mentioned this remembrance more than once on this current trip to Germany. He was careful to keep the memory of WWII vivid in order to preface his vision. It is a premise that is never isolated from his thinking. It is attached like a cancer.

Catholics have always been careful to view the world's events from a supernatural perspective as well as from a practical perspective. In many cases one can not perceive the practical implications of an event without seeing the same event from the supernatural perspective. The greatest deficiency of atheism is that it renders man incapable of perceiving reality. When the events of WWII are viewed from this supernatural perspective, we are able to understand the root causes and their practical implications. Our supernatural perspective perceives in the events of WWII the struggle between Satan and God, between virtue and vice, between good and evil. We are able to ascertain in those years the presence of a demonic will bent on thwarting God's design by, first, annihilating the Jewish people so there could be no conversation of the Jews, and thus no consummation of God's design as recorded in Scripture, and then, second, upon the failure of that immediate purpose, the scarring of modern man's psyche so he would be unwilling to accept the Gospel, and to even hate the Gospel.

This mediate purpose of the demonic will in regards to the events of WWII have been devastating. It is like a worm eating away at what is left of the Western World's foundations. The atrocities of WWII are viewed now by moderns as a result of the failures of those systems and ideologies that prevailed in Europe prior to the Second World War. In reality, the western world had already been moving at a very quick pace from it Christian roots, but the same demonic will has inspired in the minds of modern man the notion that the chief culprit in this great failure of the Twentieth Century was Christianity, and specifically the one institution in Europe that had done so much to shape the thinking of Christians in Europe: the Catholic Church.

It has become accepted dogma that WWII was the result of the failure of religion. Hatred of the Jew was pinned on the Catholic Church. All religious wars were turned into just so many precursors to Nazism and imperialism. Lies about Pope Pius XII spread quickly from their origins in the KGB because Westerners were already predisposed to believe that the Church was to blame in large measure for the evolution of fascism and Nazism. Never mind that such conclusions were not in the least based on any real evidence at all. It was enough that it was the zeitgeist in which Europeans lived and breathed. Satan had made the tail wag the dog.

This thinking was adopted even by the church leaders of this generation. Ideas of changes that were relegated before the war to a minority of Modernists and liberals living in the underworld of the Liturgical Movement gained a new impetus from churchmen convinced that they and their Church were, at least in part, to blame for the atrocities of the Second World War. Was not the demise of the Jesuit order already sealed when Pedro Arrupe walked, stunned and horrified, through the rubble of Hiroshima? That "permanent experience outside of history, engraved on my memory" was the opening the devil used to destroy the Jesuits at the hands of Arrupe the vandal. When that generation stared in disgust at the images of Dachau and Auschwitz, the devil plied his trade with deceitful temptations in the minds of those churchmen. "Change her... change the church that failed humanity," Satan whispered to those churchmen.

And so they did.

Pope Benedict XVI was no different than any other churchmen of his generation. He had much to do with shaping the Second Vatican Council and enacting those changes that have so wrecked the Church, and as a consequence the Western World. While it is true that Joseph Ratzinger realized, sometime in the mid-seventies as we know from the book, Milestones, that the project of dismembering the Church and her traditional expressions of faith was sending the Church into extinction, it is still true that the scarred remembrance of WWII had a crucial influence even on this realization in Benedict's thinking and policy making.

While it is obvious that Benedict cherishes traditional Catholic expressions, they are to him just mere expressions among so many other expressions, some that are not even Catholic, that are not necessarily equal, but all valid, nonetheless. The difference is of aesthetic quality, like the difference between Bach and Schubert or Reni and Caravaggio. Personal preference ought to be respected, but it doesn't necessarily make any one artist or composer superior to the other. For Benedict the crucial factor for the church-esthete, which he seems to have appropriated to himself, is judging the appropriateness of the various expressions within given circumstances, much the same way someone chooses a venue for a concert. Sometimes traditionalism is more appropriate, and sometimes Communion and Liberation is more appropriate. There is more of phenomenology to Benedict's thinking than the moderate realism of St. Thomas Aquinas in his evaluation of the intrinsic value of Christian expression.

Some have called this "a big tent mentality", insinuating that Benedict believes there is room in the Church for all these many valid expressions. While on the surface this appears to be the case, however, it's not as simplistic as that. The driving force of the "pope of Christian unity" isn't a big tent mentality, but a drive to overcome the specter of 20th century atrocity by turning the Church into a kind of institutional hub of culture, over and above those societal institutions and religions that, like Nazism, could bring Europe back to the brink of atrocity. This notion of the Church was fully adopted by Pope John Paul II, and fully endorsed by Cardinal Ratzinger at the time. It was this notion that drove John Paul in his struggle against communism. It is a project that is merely being continued now into this pontificate. The project is to make the Church into a force to shape culture and society in such a way that Europe and the world will never fall victim to Hitler again.

Perhaps on the surface this sounds perfectly acceptable. The problem, however, is that this is not the mission of the Church militant. The mission of the Church militant is that given to her by Christ: "Go and make disciples of the nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." The mission of the Church is the salvation of souls. Whatever the Church does to alleviate human suffering, it ought to be done as a means to the end of proclaiming the Gospel and eliminating the greatest human suffering of all, which is the real possibility of damnation.

The Church has always been the primary catalyst of cultural change. She formed Western civilization. However, she did this not as the immediate purpose of her actions, but always as a happy byproduct of her primary activity, which is the salvation of souls. We see today the last remnants of a generation of churchmen who have this backward. Pope Benedict XVI has placed shaping culture and guiding the society as the primary activity of his pontificate and the modern Church, even to the point of espousing liberalism and indifference in order to convince non-Catholics of his humanitarian vision of worldly peace.

However, as the precipitous decline of the Western World's economy, society and social mores continues unabated, can we point to souls being saved? Only one observation needs suffice in order to answer this question: western man has given himself easier access to pornography than he has grace. This, and any other observation of the moral condition of individual men and women, makes it obvious that the salvation of souls has not been a happy byproduct of the new mission of the Church.

In fact, I surmise more souls were saved on the battlefields of the Crusades than in this drive for a worldly peace that is an impossible dream inspired by the devil.

TradNews Roundup

*Bishop Brandt of Greensburg brings the Traditional Latin Mass to Latrobe, PA.

*SSPX American District's response to Archbishop Müller's uncharitable and false accusation that traditionalists are heretics: fourth and last part.

*Pat Buchanan: A dead soul.

*Abortion and Newtown.

*SSPX statistics for 2012 released.

*The Holy Father's Christmas Address... Hmm. If Pope St. Pius X were to have read this a hundred years ago, would he have condemned it as Modernism (for implying that that the truth does not reside in the Catholic Church, but outside of the Catholic Church)? Demonstrating the depth of the crisis, one of those commenting in defense of the Holy Father at RC actually wrote that at least the Holy Father didn't forget about truth. Hurrah! The Catholic Pope didn't forget truth! Thank goodness! Have we sunken so low that we should now be grateful for what ought to be taken for granted? Good grief, Charley Brown!

*Part I of Ryan Grant's review of Dr. Christopher Ferrara's book, Liberty: The God That Failed.

*SSPX rebuttal of Bishop Williamson's Eleison Comments (CCLXXXI of December 1, 2012, concerning Various Churches.

Guéranger: The History of Christmas

From

The Liturgical Year

by Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.

THE HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS

We apply the name of Christmas to the forty days which begin with the Nativity of our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, February 2. It is a period which forms a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year, as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter, or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated and kept in view during the whole forty days. Neither the Feasts of the Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima, with its mournful Purple, which often begins before Christmastide is over, seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense joy of which she received the good tidings from the Angels on that glorious Night for which the world had been longing four thousand years. The Faithful will remember that the Liturgy commemorates this long expectation by the four penitential weeks of Advent.

The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of our Saviour’s Nativity by a feast or commemoration of forty days’ duration is founded on the holy Gospel itself; for it tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after spending forty days in the contemplation of the Divine Fruit of her glorious Maternity, went to the Temple, there to fulfill, in most perfect humility, the ceremonies which the Law demanded of the daughters of Israel, when they became mothers.

The Feast of Mary’s Purification is, therefore, part of that of Jesus’ Birth; and the custom of keeping this holy and glorious period of forty days as one continued Festival has every appearance of being a very ancient one, at least in the Roman Church. And firstly, with regard to our Saviour’s Birth on December 25, we have St. John Chrysostom telling us, in his Homily for this Feast, that the Western Churches had, from the very commencement of Christianity, kept it on this day. He is not satisfied with merely mentioning the tradition; he undertakes to show that it is well founded, inasmuch as the Church of Rome had every means of knowing the true day of our Saviour’s Birth, since the acts of the Enrolment, taken in Judea by command of Augustus, were kept in the public archives of Rome. The holy doctor adduces a second argument, which he founds upon the Gospel of St. Luke, and he reasons thus: we know from the sacred Scriptures, that it must have been in the fast of the seventh month that the Priest Zachary had the vision in the Temple; after which Elizabeth, his wife, conceived St. Jon the Baptist: hence if follows that the Blessed Virgin Mary having, as the Evangelist St. Luke relates, received the Angel Gabriel’s visit, and conceived the Saviour of the world in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, that is to say, in March, the Birth of Jesus must have taken place in the month of December.

But it was not till the fourth century that the Churches of the East began to keep the Feast of our Saviour’s Birth in the month of December. Up to that period they had kept it at one time on the sixth of January, thus uniting it, under the generic term of Epiphany, with the Manifestation of our Saviour made to the Magi, and in them to the Gentiles; at another time, as Clement of Alexandria tells us, they kept it on the 25^th of the month Pachon (May 15), or on the 25^th of the month Pharmuth (April 20). St. John Chrysostom, in the Homily we have just cited, which he gave in 386, tells us that the Roman custom of celebrating the Birth of our Saviour on December 25 had then only been observed ten years in the Church of Antioch. It is probably that this change had been introduced in obedience to the wishes of the Apostolic See, wishes which received additional weight by the edict of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian, which appeared towards the close of the fourth century, and decreed that the Nativity and Epiphany of our Lord should be made two distinct Festivals. The only Church that has maintained the custom of celebrating the two mysteries on January 6 is that of Armenia; owing, no doubt, to the circumstance of that country not being under the authority of the Emperors; as also because it was withdrawn at an early period from the influence of Rome by schism and heresy.

The Feast of our Lady’s Purification, with which the forty days of Christmas close, is, in the Latin Church, of very great antiquity; so ancient, indeed, as to preclude the possibility of our fixing the date of its institution. According to the unanimous opinion of Liturgists, it is the most ancient of all the Feasts of the Holy Mother of God; and as her Purification is related in the Gospel itself, they rightly infer that its anniversary was solemnized at the very commencement of Christianity. Of course, this is only to be understood of the Roman Church; for as regards the Oriental Church, we find that this Feast was not definitely fixed to February 2 until the reign of the Emperor Justinian, in the sixth century. It is true that Eastern Christians had previously to that time a sort of commemoration of this Mystery, but it was far from being a universal custom, and it was kept a few days after the Feast of our Lord’s Nativity, and not on the day itself of Mary’s going up to the Temple.

But what is the characteristic of Christmas in the Latin Liturgy? It is twofold: it is joy, which the whole Church feels at the coming of the divine Word in the Flesh; and it is admiration of that glorious Virgin, who was made the Mother of God. There is scarcely a prayer, or a rite, in the Liturgy of this gad Season, which does not imply these two grand Mysteries: an Infant-God, and a Virgin-Mother.

For example, on all Sundays and Feasts which are not Doubles, the Church, throughout these forty days, makes a commemoration of the fruitful virginity of the Mother of God, by three special Prayers in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She begs the suffrage of Mary by proclaiming her quality of Mother of God and her inviolate purity, which remained in her even after she had given birth to her Son. And again in the magnificent Anthem, Alma Redemptoris, composed by the Monk Herman Contractus, continues, up to the very day of the Purification, to the termination of each Canonical Hour. It is by such manifestations of her love and veneration that the Church, honouring the Son of the Mother, testifies her holy joy during this season of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas.

Our readers are aware that, when Easter Sunday falls at its latest—that is, in April—the Ecclesiastical Calendar counts as many as six Sundays after the Epiphany. Christmastide (that is, the forty days between Christmas Day the Purification) includes sometimes four out of these six Sundays; frequently only two; and sometimes only one, as in the case when Easter comes so early as to necessitate keeping Septuagesima, and even Sexagesima Sunday, in January. Still, nothing is changed, as we have already said, in the ritual observances of this joyous season, excepting only that on those two Sundays, the fore-runners of Lent, the Vestments are purple, and the Gloria in excelsis is omitted.

Although our holy Mother the Church honours with especial devotion the Mystery of the Divine Infancy during the whole season of Christmas; yet, she is obliged to introduce into the Liturgy of this same season passages from the holy Gospels which seem premature, inasmuch as they relate to the active life of Jesus. This is owing to there being less than six months allotted by the Calendar for the celebration of the entire work of our Redemption: in other words, Christmas and Easter are so near each other, even when Easter is as late as it can be, that Mysteries must of necessity be crowded into the interval; and this entails anticipation. And yet the Liturgy never loses sight of the Divine Babe and his incomparable Mother, and never tires in their praises, during the whole period from the Nativity to the day when Mary comes to the Temple to present her Jesus.

The Greeks, too, make frequent commemorations of the Maternity of Mary in their Offices of this Season: but they have a special veneration for the twelve days between Christmas Day and the Epiphany, which, in their Liturgy, are called the Dodecameron. During this time they observe no days of abstinence from flesh-meat; and the Emperors of the East had, out of respect of the great Mystery, decreed that no servile work should be done, and that the Courts of Law should be closed, until after January 6.

From this outline of the history of the holy season, we can understand what is the characteristic of this second portion of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas, and which has ever been a season most dear to the Christian world. What are the Mysteries embodied in its Liturgy will be shown in the following chapter.

Ember Days in the Days of Indulgence and Godlessness

Today most traditional Catholics begin the observance of the four yearly fasts, Quatuor Tempora, that are intended to consecrate, to make holy, the four seasons of the year. Fasting and abstinence, like all mortifications exercised by traditional Catholics, are things increasingly alien in our modern world, steeped as it is in entitlement and indulgence. However, in this time of year, when post-Christian society is indulging in the secularized version of Christmas, it is particularly counter-cultural.

This secular world marred by effeminacy, indulgence and godlessness, is at this moment struggling to understand yet another manifestation of the unrestrained violence that has emerged from its rejection of faith. Yet another young man has acted upon the world's logic built on the premise of no God and no eternal consequence. We traditionalists are particularly struck by one of the psalms from this day's matins, that speaks so directly to our world, which no longer listens to the hard sayings of the Scriptures. Too often modern people, who live every day of their lives as though there were no God, who satiate their bodies and minds with one hedonistic pleasure after another, who fail to render the sacrifice of praise in even a few words directed toward God, in times of trouble and calamity turn to passages of the Scriptures which comfort them, but utterly ignore those harder words that stand convicting them, giving them an answer as to why they suffer (Ps 49. 16-22):

But to the sinner God hath said: Why dost thou declare my justices, and take my covenant in thy mouth?
Seeing thou hast hated discipline: and hast cast my words behind thee.
If thou didst see a thief thou didst run with him: and with adulterers thou hast been a partaker.
Thy mouth hath abounded with evil, and thy tongue framed deceits.
Sitting thou didst speak against thy brother, and didst lay a scandal against thy mother's son: these things hast thou done, and I was silent.
Thou thoughtest unjustly that I should be like to thee: but I will reprove thee, and set before thy face.
Understand these things, you that forget God; lest he snatch you away, and there be none to deliver you.

A reader reminded me last night of the prayer of the angel at Fatima, and that prayer is particularly poignant for our Ember days’ meditation in this Advent season, wherein an indulgent world has manifested again the folly of its ways:

My God I believe I adore I trust and I love Thee. I beg pardon for those who do not believe do not adore do not trust and do not love Thee.

The angel said this three times with head to the ground. As we fast and abstain, what a great prayer to offer, in reparation, in penance. If the world is to ever wake-up from the lethargy of luxury and hedonism and godlessness, it will be by the expression of God’s people who have separated themselves from that bitter worldliness and who have the courage to do penance and make reparation. Observing these Ember days of Advent with zeal has great significance now more than ever.

"How Could This Happen?"

I’m increasingly frustrated with these pretentious sentiments: “How could this happen?” Or worse: “There’s no logical explanation for this tragedy.”

What are these people talking about? Is there not ample evidence that demonstrates, that screams, the reason? Quite to the contrary, it's perfectly logical, and I think Patrick Buchanan put it very well when he wrote:

Not long ago, there existed in our hearts 'a fear of God.' How, we would ask ourselves, if we commit an evil act like murder, will we answer at God’s judgment seat? For He will decide if we enter what the president called in Newtown, God’s ‘eternal house in heaven.’ But if God is dead, not to worry. Just put the gun to your head and pull the trigger, and it’s over. No trial. No disgrace. No prison. Nothing to worry about anymore. No voice of conscience told Adam: Do not do this evil thing! Now he is no longer a nobody, a nerd, a recluse. He is famous. Everybody is talking about him, and ruminating on what might have motivated him. Adam wanted to be somebody. And now he is. And out there others like him are thinking: That could be me.

If you deny that people like this aren't acting according to the logic of our modern world, then all you are doing is sitting around waiting for the next tragedy, all the while playing into the media hype and phony crocodile tears. Is not the tragic death of these children enough of a burden for the families they left behind without your hysteria? Do those of you leaving ridiculously inane and silly posts on Facebook, Twitter, and everywhere else really think you are doing any good? Does such impotent sentimentality assuage a single anguished tear from those closest to the victims in this newest admission of all that is nauseating and perverse in our modern western society? Tenacious sentimentality serves only to excuse the guilt of the bearer, and why are so many people feeling guilty?

The painful logic that directed these actions is one that surfaces in the absence of the fear of God. Without thought to the eternal implications of one’s actions, there is no such thing as a meaningful morality, no standards for social behavior beyond fear of legal repercussions, and, finally, no limit to the barbarity of those who adore death dealing and suicide as a means to notoriety because suicide contravenes all repercussions. Our culture is replete with a love for death (look at the fashions, decked out in skulls!), a hatred of humanity (look at popular movies like Avatar!), and if not out-and-out atheism, a practical atheism, which is marked by irreligion, an embarrassment and hatred for religion. Heinous and Satanic acts of violence such as these are the fruits of atheism and a hatred for religion (specifically the true religion of Jesus Christ).

Therefore, we are called to do something, something far more practical and courageous than the expressions of inane and childish sentimentalism on social networking sites. We have to pray! We have to live as though there is a God. We have to tell the truth that there is a God Who gave us a Law, and a God Who gives us the grace necessary to fulfill the dictates of that Law, IF only we cooperate. Courageously pray! Courageously proclaim the truth! Courageously be Catholic! And leave the sentimentality for the effeminate.

The Glory of Catholic Spain: The Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

From
The Liturgical Year
by Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.

Most just indeed is it, O holy Mother of God, that we should unite in that ardent desire thou hadst to see Him, who had been concealed for nine months in thy chaste womb; to know the features of this Son of the heavenly Father, who is also thine; to come to that blissful hour of His birth, which will give glory to God in the highest, and, on earth, peace to men of good-will. Yes, dear Mother, the time is fast approaching, thought not fast enough to satisfy thy desires and ours. Make us redouble our attention to the great mystery; complete our preparation by they powerful prayers for us, that when the solemn hour has come, our Jesus may find no obstacle to His entrance into our hearts.

The Great Antiphon to Our Lady

O Virgo virginum, quomodo fiet istud? quia nec habere sequentem. Filiæ Jerusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis.

O Virgin of virgins! how shall this be? for never was there one like thee, nor will there ever be. Ye daughters of Jerusalem, why look ye wondering at me? What ye behold, is a divine mystery.

Our Lady of Expectation, Cathedral of Évora, Portugal

Highlights of Cardinal Raymond Burke at Clear Creek Monastery

TradNews Roundup

*The real face of Socialism is revealing itself in France. The Socialists in France take aim at the SSPX, claim that traditionalists are suffering from a "religious pathology". Of course, they lump traditional Catholics with radical Islamists, but curiously the Socialists are becoming so bold as to include "utra-Orthodox" Jews. What's next, Brown Shirts? I've been told that one of Hollande's primary concerns is silencing traditional Catholics in France, and its a many pronged attack. There are many forces in Europe, even from inside the Church, itching to re-open the concentration camps for the traditionalists.

*Is the SSPX heretical? Part III.

*The Economist: It is Trendy to be a Traditionalist?

*Bishop Athanasius Schneider to New York and Connecticut.

*The Mass defined the Church and her mission.

*American District Superior of the SSPX decries "cyber-gossiping" (that means you CathInfo).

*This is just a fun graph, demonstrating the New Pentecost in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.

*Perhaps the worst pope in the modern era to be beatified. There is no end to the idiocy of the Modernists in the Vatican.

*Tradition rising in Sweden.

*Catholic U does what Notre Dame dared not... pass on gay money.

*Putin sounds religious, because his ilk is religious.

*The United States of America... bringing hell to earth? What are the connections that intertwine our present culture of death with these horrors? Is it hard wired to evolve from the Revolutionary madness that gave birth to the United States?

God help us all.