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This is supposed to be a Christmas Mass in the Novus Ordo. The ‘table altar’ does not have a crucifix – or at least the ChristChild in a crib- and look at all the people coming and going behind the priest.
Not to mention the black-clad ‘acolyte’. A great advertisement for the liturgical abuses that the Novus Ordo has encouraged.
Marco Tosatti took a Christmas Octave break and is back with a new blog logo, and a new hair-raising tale from the 'sidelines'... Tosatti does a unique service by reporting, via his follower-correspondents, sundry events in Catholic life in Italy, the only country whose Primate is the pope, events which for the most part depict how much Catholicism has degenerated even in the land which has hosted the heart of Christendom for over 2000 years. A degeneracy which only mirrors the degeneracy of the man who is now pope... BTW, among Anglophone bloggers, it is Father Z who is able,
also through his follower-correspondents, to share the minutiae of how Catholicism is lived at the 'sidelines' (as opposed to usual reporting and commentary about the 'main events' with the pope, teh Vatican and the hierarchy.
‘Don Fredo non credo…’
Father Fredo does not believe,
omits the Credo at Midnight Mass
But the YouTube video of the event has now
been ‘cleansed’ of his shocking statements
Translated from
January 3, 2018
If you have not read about it, do so now at La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana about the parish priest of San Rocco in Turin, don Fredo Olivero, icon of progressivist Catholicism, who at Midnight Mass last Christmas, chose not to recite the Credo after his homily.
“The surprise came shortly after a homily that called on parents to transmit the fiath to their children but to “stop talking to them about hell because it helps no one and instead does harm”. [If he had been at Fatima in 1917, he would have admonished the Mother of God accordingly! Imagine showing a vision of Hell to children!]
The music director had announced the singing of the Credo “Page 39 of your hymnal”. But Don Fredo said instead: “Do you know why I do not recite the Credo? Because I do not believe in it”. [Well, that’s honest, but why still call himself a Catholic, and function as a priest? Besides, how much simpler can the Credo be? I don’t think children being catechized to prepare them from First Communion have any problem understanding what it says – not theologically, of course, but as a simple recitation of the ‘essentials of the faith’ every Catholic ought to know and which one accepts ‘on faith’.] Laughter from his congregation. He went on: “If anyone understands it… But I, after so many years, realized it was one thing I did not understand and could not accept. Let us sing something else which says something about the essentials of the faith”. [Is there no canonical punishment for outright apostasy like this? How can a priest who says that and does, in fact, not recite the Credo at Mass, be allowed to continue being a priest? Committing this apostasy so openly while supposedly celebrating the birth of Christ!]
A priest who does not believe in the Credo? It’s not unlike the Superior-General of the Jesuits who doubts the words of Jesus reported in the Gospels because there were no tape recorders at the time. Why would this priest have wanted to become a Roman Catholic priest if he does not believe what is the summary of the Catholic faith, that for which one ought to live by and die for, if need be?
But we have been informed by a Twitter correspondent that “The original video of the Mass has been edited. What can be seen on YouTube now no longer contains the statements “Do you know why I do not recite the Credo?... something else which says something about the essentials of the faith”.
[Tosatti posts the links to both the original video – downloaded earlier by some who had noticed the aberration’ - and the edited video.]
Perhaps the video was edited for fear that the Archbishop of Turin, the Congregation for the Clergy, and perhaps the CDF woud summon don Fredo-non-credo to ask him, “If you don’t believe, what ar e you doing here? To teach others not to believe?” [So everything he did at this Mass – and in all his other Masses – has been by rote and for show, which perhaps one can say of many who go to Sunday Mass out of mere obligation or social habit.]
Another Italian Church watcher reports from a larger perspective... Thanks to Beatrice and her website (www.benoit-et-moi.fr/2018) for the tip.
The pope extends himself
(in secular affairs)
while Catholicism declines
by Marcello Veneziani
Translated from
December 23, 2017
Instead of preoccupying himself with the mediatic effect of his appearances, with persecuted Muslim Rohingya (persecuted Christians interest him less) or unleashing anathemas against conspiracies, gossip and malfeasances in the Curia, this pope should show concrete concern for something which is chilling for most Catholics but lethal for a pope: Italians who call themselves Catholics today are only 60.1% of the population, compared to 79.2% in 2000.
The figure has decreased by one-fourth in less than 20 years – a rate of de-Christianization tha is unprecedented. [Perhaps the more accurate term instead of ‘de-Christianization’ is ‘decline of Catholicism’, because who knows how many of the one-fourth who fell away ended up being Protestant Christians].
Meanwhile, one out of 3 Italians claim they do not believe in any religion. Those who attend liturgies have been cut in half – 25.6% today compared to 2000. Just one-fourth of Italians – a number similar to football fans in the country, or followers of a TV news show. The new data is reported by Giorgio dell’Arti in Anteprima, and confirm the failure of the current papal course, or at least, its absolute inability to reverse the trend.
Is it too much to ask Bergoglio to at least interrogate himself about this and come up with an honest answer, without seeking alibis or conspiracies to blame for the situation? Because the figures in Italy also reflect what is happening to Western Christianity, even if it may not be as obvious in the ‘peripheries’ as it is in the most important sites of Christian civilization.
But the trend is clear, and if we combine it with the demographic decline in Christian countries, the picture if disconsolate and points towards further decline, if not extinction. I dedicated many pages to the decadence of Christianity in the book Tramonti (Sunsets) published late last year. It is striking to note how general reflections reflect actual statistics, how a line of thought is confirmed as a phenomenon supported by data.
Sure, this falling away from Catholicism can also be explained by many if unchronicled episodes involving parish priests, bishops and cardinals in sordid financial and sexual misconduct. But more importantly, rapid de-Christianization in our time is due to the replacement of God by one’s own ‘I' [In Italian, it is memorably stated as ‘io, non Dio’ (I, not God)], or by other fleeting idols; obsession with high-tech instead of devotion; consumerism in place of religion; drugs like ‘ecstasy’ instead of mysticism; political correctness instead of moral values.
This has been a long and profound process which certainly did not start with this pontificate. [Yet the entire mindset just described encapsulates the spirit of the 1968 Cultural Revolution which has largely dictated the culture that has emerged in the West in the past five decades, the same culture that took over the interpretation and implementation of Vatican-II as ‘laissez-faire’ in the Church, which Bergoglio has brought to almost full fruition.]
But this upsurge, this acceleration in recent years, this progressive and unstoppable emptying out of churches, vocations and the faith itself is obviously not stemmed by the presence of a pope so acclaimed by the media and the manufacturers of consensus, but aggravated by his replacing of the Church’s bimillennial tradition – with its rites, its liturgies, its worldview of man – with his own personal preferences for conforming to ‘the spirit of the times’.
Being in step with the times is not a virtue when the times happen to call for mindless and desperate denial of any sense of the sacred, of God and of human limitations, in favor of radical practical atheism which is unprecedented.
God may have seemed to abandon Christianity, but the pope monopolizes media attention. [Because the media, in the control of ultra-liberal seculars who hire only ultra-liberal seculars to work for them, have always been rabidly anti-Catholic, and for the first time, they have a pope who thinks like them, “So, hey, he’s doing our work for us and has achieved so far what we failed to do for centuries since the ‘Enlightenment’!”]
Confirming the papal predilection for all things secular...
And more of the same...
Even lay commentators are 'perplexed' by this pope
Bergoglio has been criticized by traditionalists for his Christmas homily,
but over the years some prominent laymen have questioned many of his actions
by Francesco Boezi
Translated from
IL GIORNALE
December 29, 2017
Pope Francis's Christmas homily was controversial because he drew an analogy with immigrants today to Mary and Joseph's trip to Bethlehem at the time she was to deliver her Son.
As Antonio Socci pointed out, Joseph went to Bethlehem, native city of his ancestor David, to register in the census ordered by Augustus Caesar, not for economic reasons [and certainly, not to find a new place of residence]. In other words, the pope 'forced' a message out of the Gospel in order to talk about the reception and welcome of immigrants today.
[I actually had translated Socci's Facebook post on Christmas morning - and here it is:
I can't believe it! He is really obsessed! Even in his Christmas homily last night, the Peronist-Obamian spouter pope spoke of migrants instead of Jesus. Only and always politics! He has been ordered [No, he has himself decided it!] to hammer home this message, and for close to five years now, he has bombarded us almost daily with it…
However, above all, one is struck by his seeming ignorance. Can someone explain to him that Joseph was bringing his pregnant wife and therefore her unborn child, as well, not to a foreign land for economic reasons, but to the native city of his ancestor David in his own land, the Palestine of that time which was a province of the Roman empire, for the census ordered by Caesar? The Holy Family was very much 'at home' in Judea. And the line "…there was no room for them at the inn" only referred to the fact that in the caravanserai [inn with a central courtyard meant for travelers], there was no separate quarters for women in labor. How can anyone [least of all, the pope who is the nominal head of all Christendom] destroy the Christmas message with such banal populist demagoguery?
My first thought, reading the reports on Bergoglio's midnight Mass homily was that he was conflating the travel to Bethlehem for the census with the later, longer travel the Holy Family undertook to escape the murderous rage of Herod – when they travelled to nearby Egypt over a route commonly used at the time connecting Palestine and Egypt. Muddled addled thinking has no place in a papal homily - but alas, we do have a pope who is not right in the head this way! P.S. I just read the Vatican's English translation of the homily
http://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/12/25/read-in-full-pope-franciss-homily-at-midnight-mass/
and am appalled by so many wrong and misleading statements just to 'force' an analogy between the Holy Family and migrants/refugees!
In L'Osservatore Romano, Lucetta Scarrafia writes that the Church has fallen into a 'spiral of falsification'. [And who might the falsificator-in-chief be???]
"To say it simply, [the pope's critics] choose to say nothing about anything he says that appears consistent with Christian tradition, but choose instead to magnify statements, often taken out of context, that are in keeping with the image of a progressivist pope that they have of him and which they wish to prove at all costs, even by stretching reality...[
Their [the critics'] effect must not be under-estimated. Even if today, it is easy for anyone to recover the original words said by the pope, few do so if only to check out facts, because most of them trust blindly in the media, and above all, in screaming headlines".
[I have two significant objections to Scaraffia's 'Bergoglio right or wrong, but he is always right' generalizations:
1) Responsible critics of this pope always make sure to refer to his original statements and do not just rely on what the media says he said. (Sometimes, surprisingly, he says things that are even worse than what the media reports but which they do not report because they are pleased with the first handy 'sound bite' or headline material they come across) and
2) One cannot always trust what Bergoglio says even if he is apparently saying something Christian - because he habitually misrepresents Christ's words themselves by omission or deliberate distortion (and these can be documented countless time over). As he has misrepresented the Holy Family's trip to Bethlehem as well as their trip to Egypt to flee Herod's persecution to claim they were refugees! They fled to Egypt because an angel told Joseph to do so - obviously God would not allow the Baby who was to be the Redeemer on the Cross to be eliminated before he could fulfill his mission! It is intellectually dishonest for anyone to defend Bergoglio's habitual lying which is a sin against the Eighth Commandment (Thou shalt not bear false witness - and here is the Vicar of Christ habitually bearing false witness against God , no less!)]
It would seem that the pope's critics have made an art of distorting the image of the pope and of feeding this distortion. Yet the 'perplexity' over how this pope works does not come only from so-called 'ultra-Catholic' circles.
The philosopher Diego Fusaro went as far as to say that the Christmas homily seemed to be inspired “by Soros more than Christ”.
Over the years, other secularists have raised criticism regarding this pontificate.
Giuliano Ferrara, former editor of this newspaper [and one of Benedict XVI’s famous ‘devout atheist’ admirers] , said in an interview with Luigi Mascheroni:
“But now, one is not supposed to criticize a pope who allies himself with the world, who seduces the world, who gives interviews to Eugenio Scalfari – the truly devout atheist – in order to assuage the latter’s conscience. A pope to whom, when he says, ‘I don’t believe, and I suffer for not believing, but bless me anyway’. [Excuse me, but I don't think Scalfari has ever said he 'suffers' for not believing. He always professes his atheism as a matter of intellectual pride] And he apparently does so, “’Very well, my son, do as you please…’. Well, see, if you criticize a pope for such behavior, you become a minority who is not liked either by the Vatican nor by laymen”.
In 2014, Ferrara wrote a book with Alessandro Gnocchi and the late Mario Palmaro, entitled Questo papa piace troppo (This pope pleases too much), a book that says Bergoglio’s words and actions represent ‘a compendium of moral relativism’. [And this was two years before Amoris Laetitia!]
Vittorio Sgarbi [born 1952,Italian art critic, cultural commentator, politician, TV personality], commenting on a photo of Bergoglio with the imam of Al Azhar mosque in Cairo, wrote on Facebook: “Why did the pope not ask him for the reasons of so many massacres of Christians in the past few months in Iraq, Syria or Pakistan? Why did he not ask the imam in the name of what God they were killed?... What would we have said if Pius XII had embraced Hitler?” Strong words, which cannot be attributed to the ‘ultra-conservatives’.
Franco Battiato [born 1945, one of Italy most popular singer-songwriters, known as Il Maestro for the philosophical and spritiaul themes of his songs, also a film-maker and painter] said in 2014: “I am sorry for Papa Bergoglio, who is even a likable man, but I don’t think he has any idea what God really is... He is a populist but I would prefer him to speak of God in a serious way”. He thinks that the Argentine pope’s magisterium is spiritually deficient.
Gian Enrico Rusconi, who teaches political science at the Univerity of Turin, wrote the book “La teologia narrativa di Papa Francesco”, which questions three aspects of Bergoglianism, namely, “A narrative that sows doubt”, “The myth of the people against the oligarchy”, and “A mercy that forgets all about sin”. Rusconi is eminently progressivist.
Marcello Pera, an ex-President of the Italian Senate and thus, a senator for life, answered a question about Bergoglio’s approach towards migrants: “I frankly do not understand this pope – what he says is beyond any rational understanding. It is obvious to everyone that indiscriminate acceptance of migrants is not possible – there is a critical point that cannot be crossed, and yet…”
When even the gulls appear to protest...
‘Eerie and ominous’ sign appears
as Pope Francis visits the 'Gaytivity'
by Anthony Wagner
ROME, January 2, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Would Pope Francis say anything about this year’s Vatican 'Nativity scene' — which was so clearly meant as a nod to the LGBT lobby — when he paid it a visit on New Year’s Eve?
He spoke not a word of course, but instead blessed it and chuckled as a few dignitaries, responsible for what some have called a “hideous” and “sacrilegious” crèche, gave him a guided tour.
And yet something very eerie and ominous happened that evening.
At exactly the same time as the Pope left St. Peter’s Basilica and walked to the crèche in St. Peter’s Square, a squabble of about 500 seagulls suddenly flew up from behind the basilica and circled around the crèche.
They swarmed above it, squawking and squealing for about the exact time it took for the Pope to walk from the basilica to the crèche. They then disappeared into a night sky lit up by an almost full moon.
Facebook had banned users posting the figure of a naked man in the crèche, and when LifeSite revealed its creators came from Montevergine, a town with close links to Italy’s LGBT community, its sordid nature became clear.
The naked, athletic figure was ostensibly meant to be a poor man, showing one of the seven corporal works of mercy (clothing the naked) while other disturbing figures, in what is normally a scene of holy innocence and purity, showed a dead man covered in a blanket (burying the dead) and what looked like a decapitated head behind iron bars (visiting prisoners).
That the Pope should remain silent about the crèche, which even the Italian police in the square disliked and thought “strange,” is not surprising as he had seen the plans for the crèche weeks ago and had given it his approval.
Also the timely appearance of the seagulls, who scavenge on any filth they can find, is actually not new to St. Peter’s Square during this pontificate.
In the adjoining piazza and around the colonnade, passers-by have been shocked at the degradation and squalor that emerges there at night. The seagulls descend on the headquarters of the Church and pick at rubbish bins, leaving debris strewn across the sidewalks and roads.
The homeless are allowed to bed down under main thoroughfares and archways, on the outskirts of the colonnade and in front of the Holy See press office. Often they are drunk and disorderly, sometimes threatening passing tourists hoping to get a shot of the basilica.
For all of the Pope’s worthy outreach to the poor and the homeless, he hasn’t lifted them up and off the streets, but instead created a culture of homelessness around the Vatican.
Some have called the miserable scene “apocalyptic.”
And yet the general waste and degeneration, the screaming, scavenging birds circling over the Vatican like a dead carcass, is perhaps highly symbolic of this pontificate, one that many see leading the Church in the direction of a kind of death.
And all the time that the degradation and squalor continue in the Church — both physically and morally — no one is really speaking up and coming to her rescue.
Even allowing for the melodrama of the report and the reporter's biases, the accounts of the screaming gulls and of homeless men shown 'mercy' by allowing them to consider open Vatican premises a dormitory do sound plausible. Not that I would expect a Catholic reporter to lie.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/01/2018 02:28] |