Standard of Jesus Christ

On Fighting Under the Standard of Jesus Christ
by Richard Challoner, 1807

http://catholicharboroffaithandmorals.com/Challoner_Fighting_for_Standard_of_Christ.html
Consider first, that there are upon earth, and have been all along, two opposite kingdoms, two opposite interests, two opposite cities; Jerusalem and Babylon, the city of God and the city of the devil–two opposite standards, that of Jesus Christ, and that of Satan. From the time that man unhappily fell from God by sin, Satan set up his tyrannical usurpation; which he has, by all kinds of tricks and lies, endeavoured to maintain ever since, by alluring poor deluded mortals with the glittering show of worldly pomps, riches, and pleasures, to become his slaves, and to fight under his standard, and by establishing among them his law and maxims, calculated for nothing else but to make them miserable both for time and eternity. And ah! how unhappily has he prevailed over millions! what multitudes everywhere join with him against their God! how is this wretched Babylon spread over all the earth!

Consider 2ndly, that Jesus Christ came into this world to set up His standard, in opposition to the standard of Satan, and to invite all men to follow Him, promising to deliver His followers from all their evils, and to impart to them all His good. They that duly correspond with His call, and join His royal standard, make up the city of God, the blessed Jerusalem, the Church of the Saints. But see now the immense difference between these two opposite cities and their inhabitants; how happy the one, and how miserable the other. The children of Babylon are miserable indeed; they are slaves to passions that can never be satisfied; to a world that can never be contented; to infernal tyrants that are continually dragging them along with them towards hell: they are slaves to empty vanities, childish toys, and lying follies; labouring under a variety of fears, cares, sorrows, uneasinesses, and innumerable other evils, without enjoying so much as any one, solid or lasting satisfaction. But O, how happy are the children of Jerusalem! what content, what peace, what pure pleasure in the soul, are commonly their portion, even in this life, and immortal joys in the next! and shalt thou, my soul, stand one moment to deliberate which of the two thou wilt choose; the standard of Christ, or that of Satan; Jerusalem or Babylon; all good or all evil; verity or vanity; happiness or misery; heaven or hell?

Consider 3rdly, that all manner of motives, from time and eternity, from our origin and last end, from duty and interest, honour and pleasure, fear and love, all here concur to determine the soul in her choice, and to fix her in the happy resolution of following the standard of Jesus Christ. Turn then, my soul, turn away from this Babel of confusion, noise and disorder; break her chains from off thy neck, O captive daughter of Sion. Renounce, for good and all, the king of pride; the tyrant that has usurped to himself the dominion over this world and its deluded admirers; renounce his works and pomps, together with all his associates, the princes of darkness, and all their slaves, and turn thyself to the blessed Jerusalem, the city of peace; embrace the King of Peace, and His glorious standard, with all thy heart; choose Him for thy King for ever; pay Him irrevocable homage, and promise Him inviolable fidelity and obedience.

Conclude, since thou hast now chosen Jesus Christ to be thy king, to fight manfully unto death under His royal standard of the cross; against His and thy enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. In order to this, learn well the exercise of prayer, and the rules of the Gospel, which are the military discipline which He has fixed for His soldiers.

Catholic Doctrine: The Sense of the Church (3)

https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/catholic-doctrine-sense-church-3-50874

The Supernatural Mission of the Church

Until the end of time, the Church works to give new children to God and to edify the Body of Christ until its completion. United to the successors of the Apostles so as to continue the mission of Christ, her priests are privileged instruments spreading the Light and Life of Christ to souls.

It is through the Church that fallen nature is able to return to its Creator. It is she who returns people to God, uproots sin from them, and sanctifies them.

Her beneficent actions also extend to the things that she consecrates to divine worship, or orders to the wise use of man. To recapitulate in Christ all of creation redeemed by His Blood, the priests of the Church are the chosen instruments, called and consecrated, to plant and water, to offer and bless—oporet sacerdotem offere et benedicere.

And so, the holy Church in which we believe is an essentially supernatural society, visible, holy, and universal, that Jesus Christ instituted during His life on this earth.

Apart from her founder, it is the Holy Ghost, source and donor of this sanctity, from whom she receives her own holiness. The Church continues the work of Christ on earth so that the fruits of the Redemption accomplished on the Cross may be applied to men until the end of time.

Through the paroxysms and sometimes heartbreaking crises, the bloody persecutions, to the seemingly irrevocable schisms of Arianism in the 4th century to today’s modernism, God does not abandon His Church and asks each generation to militate in favor of her, to carry on the good fight for the faith, each one according to his grace of state and his place, far from any seditious spirit and any shameful compromise.

From: Le Sens de l’Eglise (The Sense of the Church) by Fr. Gaston Courtois, Fleuris, Paris, 1950

Catholic Doctrine: Sense of the Church (2)

It Is Necessary to Believe in the Church

The Church, into which we are incorporated through baptism as member of the body of Christ, is an object of faith that cannot be reduced to a superficial, statistical, or sociological analysis. The quantitative element cannot explain the profound reality of the Church. Similarly, a too legal approach of a society ruled by laws and rites cannot account for its spiritual nature, since the Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, rests on this mysterious bond which personally unites every soul to Christ and brings them together in Him, as members of the same body, all the sons of God.

A Visible Society

The Church is essentially a spiritual reality. Undoubtedly, it materializes before our eyes by means of visible realities. The ecclesiastical hierarchy, the sacraments, the dogmatic formulas, the ecclesiastical laws and institutions, all this ensemble of visible realities are an integral part of the constitution of the Church of Christ. Where these realities are, there is the Church of Christ, identical to the Catholic Church. Through her is spread the action of God and of Christ, herleader, her invisible head.

Let us refrain from dreaming of a purely spiritual, disembodied Church that disregards these physical realities. Dehumanized, it will evaporate. Because Christ founded his Church on Peter and his successors. He put at her head the Twelve [Apostles] who continue in the current hierarchy. It was Christ who gave the Twelve and their successors the power to teach and to govern His church. It is He who instituted the sacraments through which He sanctifies the members of His Church and unites them.

Jesuit Fr. Yves de Montcheuil explains how only the faith enables us to grasp the invisible and spiritual realities that pass through the visible realities to which they are linked:

“The unbelieving Jews saw Christ, they heard Him, that is, they saw the existence of what was visible in Him. One cannot, however, say that they believed in Christ, that they knew Christ, that they really knew who was the One they were seeing, for they saw in Him only one man among other men. Only the faithful disciples who believe that Christ is the Word made flesh, that He is the Son of God incarnate, truly know Him; only they have the right to say that they know who He is.”

“Similarly, unbelievers can observe the existence of this society called the Catholic Church: seeing it only as a human society, they do not know it. Because they do not take it for a supernatural reality which, while having a body, is not reduced to this body. For us who have thefaith, it is necessary for us to get used to always considering the Church as a spiritual, supernatural reality that manifests itself through a body. This body, this visible element is part of itself: it is indispensable to its existence and its action, just as the Body of Christ was essential and indispensable to Him. But it is not just that. Moreover, just as what gives the meaning of humanity to Christ is His union with the Word, so that one cannot say of the one who knows Christ only as a man that he knows Him, even in part, but it must be said that he completely misunderstands it,—thus the one who only sees the Church in what may be called its sociological or juridical reality, the external organization by which it more or less resembles other human societies—this person does not know half of it, but misunderstands it” (Fr. Yves de Montcheuil, Aspects of the Church, (Aspects de l’Eglise),Cerf 1949, pp. 17-18).

So, just as the skeptical Jews missed out on the reality of Christ, true God and true man, and have misunderstood the Son of God, even though they recognize his existence, so it is a total misunderstanding of the Church to reduce it to its purely visible aspects and to its human elements.

To be ignorant of the spiritual and invisible aspect of the Church is to make it a corpse, a body without a soul, to disfigure it, and to put aside the remedy and the antidote to discouragement or to the too human reactions in the face of man’s deficiencies and the betrayal of clerics.

From: Le Sens de l’Eglise (The Sense of the Church) by Fr. Gaston Courtois, Fleurus, Paris, 1950.

Next : The Supernatural Mission of the Church

The Apostles’ Mission

 

“And, since it was necessary that His divine mission should be perpetuated to the end of time, He took to Himself disciples, trained by himself, and made them partakers of His own authority. And, when He had invoked upon them from Heaven the Spirit of Truth, He bade them go through the whole world and faithfully preach to all nations what He had taught and what He had commanded, so that by the profession of His doctrine and the observance of His laws, the human race might attain to holiness on earth and never-ending happiness in Heaven. In this wise, and on this principle, the Church was begotten. If we consider the chief end of His Church and the proximate efficient causes of salvation, it is undoubtedly spiritual; but in regard to those who constitute it, and to the things which lead to these spiritual gifts, it is external and necessarily visible. The Apostles received a mission to teach by visible and audible signs, and they discharged their mission only by words and acts which certainly appealed to the senses. So that their voices falling upon the ears of those who heard them begot faith in souls – ‘Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the words of Christ’ (Rom. x., 17). And faith itself – that is assent given to the first and supreme truth – though residing essentially in the intellect, must be manifested by outward profession – ‘For with the heart we believe unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation’ (Rom. x., 10). In the same way in man, nothing is more internal than heavenly grace which begets sanctity, but the ordinary and chief means of obtaining grace are external: that is to say, the sacraments which are administered by men specially chosen for that purpose, by means of certain ordinances. Jesus Christ commanded His Apostles and their successors to the end of time to teach and rule the nations. He ordered the nations to accept their teaching and obey their authority. But his correlation of rights and duties in the Christian commonwealth not only could not have been made permanent, but could not even have been initiated except through the senses, which are of all things the messengers and interpreters. For this reason the Church is so often called in Holy Writ a body, and even the body of Christ – ‘Now you are the body of Christ’ (I Cor. xii., 27) – and precisely because it is a body is the Church visible: and because it is the body of Christ is it living and energizing, because by the infusion of His power Christ guards and sustains it, just as the vine gives nourishment and renders fruitful the branches united to it.”   ~Pope Leo XIII, “Satis Cognitum”

The Divine Church

 

“God indeed even made the Church a society far more perfect than any other. For the end for which the Church exists is as much higher than the end of other societies as divine grace is above nature, as immortal blessings are above the transitory things on the earth. Therefore the Church is a society divine in its origin, supernatural in its end and in means proximately adapted to the attainment of that end; but it is a human community inasmuch as it is composed of men. For this reason we find it called in Holy Writ by names indicating a perfect society. It is spoken of as the House of God, the city placed upon the mountain to which all nations must come. But it is also the fold presided over by one Shepherd, and into which all Christ’s sheep must betake themselves. Yea, it is called the kingdom which God has raised up and which will stand forever. Finally it is the body of Christ – that is, of course, His mystical body, but a body living and duly organized and composed of many members; members indeed which have not all the same functions, but which, united one to the other, are kept bound together by the guidance and authority of the head. Indeed no true and perfect human society can be conceived which is not governed by some supreme authority. Christ therefore must have given to His Church a supreme authority to which all Christians must render obedience. For this reason, as the unity of the faith is of necessity required for the unity of the Church, inasmuch as it is the body of the faithful, so also for this same unity, inasmuch as the Church is a divinely constituted society, unity of government, which effects and involves unity of communion, is necessary jure divino.”   ~Pope Leo XIII

Lousiana & the Sons of St. Yves

https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/st-pius-x%E2%80%99s-prayer-st-joseph-46592

An interesting story pertaining to my home, Lousiana. God bless those brave & heroic priests who sacrificed their lives to assure the salvation of souls.

Louisiana Is Proud of the Sons of St. Yves

The Catholic community of Shreveport in Louisiana is reviving the memory of five priests from Brittany who sacrificed their lives for their flock during a yellow fever outbreak in 1873.

An entire ocean lies between Louisiana and the diocese of Saint-Brieuc-et-Tréguier. In February 2019, a delegation led by Fr. Peter Mangum, administrator of the diocese of Shreveport, traveled to Brittany with the mission to trace back the history of five Breton priests.

Late in the summer of 1873, Louisiana was hit by the third largest yellow fever epidemic in its history: nearly a quarter of the population perished. Among the 1200 victims were five priests as well as two Sisters and a young novice of the Congregation of the Daughters of the Cross.

The five priests, François Le Vezouët, Isidore Quémerais, Louis Gergaud, Narcisse Le Biler and Jean Pierre, had been sent to the diocese of Natchitoches, that had been created in 1853 and would later become Shreveport. In a mostly Protestant city with a large Jewish community, they sacrificed their lives to care for the sick.

“When the epidemic struck, the Protestant pastors and the rabbis left the city. The Catholic priests stayed to take care of the sick, even though they knew they would be contaminated too,” explained Fr. Magnum to the newspaper La Croix on March 20, 2019.

“We did not know this surprising and beautiful story,” admitted Bishop Denis Moutel, bishop of Saint-Brieuc. But in Shreveport, that has become Louisiana’s third-largest city with a population of 200,000, the sacrifice of these five priests has not been forgotten: “There are magnificent stained-glass windows depicting them in one of our churches, but there are also paintings and blessed holy cards,” explained Fr. Mangum.

He hopes that for the 150th anniversary of the yellow fever outbreak in Shreveport, in 2023, the Vatican will recognize the heroic virtues of these five Breton priests, worthy sons of their patron, in whose honor a song from Tréguier recalls that “for the poor and those who suffer, there is no one kinder than St. Yves.”

Great St. Joseph

 

I love this beautiful hymn to St. Joseph; it’s one of my favorites.

 

Great Saint Joseph, son of David,
Fosterfather of our Lord,
Spouse of Mary, ever virgin,
Keeping o’er them watch and ward:
In the stable thou didst guard them
With a father’s loving care;
Thou by God’s command didst save them
From the cruel Herod’s snare.

 

Three long days, in grief, in anguish,
With that mother sweet and mild,
Mary Virgin, didst thou wander,
Seeking her beloved Child.
In the temple thou didst find Him:
Oh, what joy then filled thy heart!
In thy sorrows, in thy gladness,
Grant us, Joseph, to have part.

 

Clasped in Jesus’ arms and Mary’s,
When death gently came at last,
Thy pure spirit, sweetly sighing,
From its earthly dwelling passed.
Dear Saint Joseph, by that passing
May our death be like to thine,
And with Jesus, Mary, Joseph,
May our souls forever shine.

The Confessional Seal under attack in California

 

A very alarming development that we are seeing more & more of nowadays. Check it out below.

https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/confessional-seal-under-attack-california-45661

The seal of the confessional, an inviolable doctrine that directs priests to disclose nothing they learn from penitents in the Sacrament of Confession, is under attack in California. A proposed piece of legislation, known as SB 360, was introduced by state senator Jerry Hill of San Mateo:

 

While clergy are among the 46 professions designated in California as mandatory reporters of suspected child abuse and neglect, the state recognizes a special exemption for a cleric “who acquires knowledge or a reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect during a penitential communication.”SB 360, if passed, would do away with this exemption, leaving Catholic priests and other Christian clergy who recognize the seal of the confessional in a precarious position. A priest who learns of potential abuse during Confession would be forced to choose between following the precepts of the Church or the dictates of secular law. A spokesman for the California Catholic Conference, responded to the bill by stating, “Getting the government in the confessional has nothing to do with protecting children and has everything to do with eroding the basic rights and liberties we have as Americans.”

The Church’s Law

While the seal of the confessional dates back to the early Church, Canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 codified the doctrine as follows:

Let the priest absolutely beware that he does not by word or sign or by any manner whatever in any way betray the sinner: but if he should happen to need wiser counsel let him cautiously seek the same without any mention of person. For whoever shall dare to reveal a sin disclosed to him in the tribunal of penance we decree that he shall be not only deposed from the priestly office but that he shall also be sent into the confinement of a monastery to do perpetual penance.

Canon 6 of the Council of Trent reaffirmed this precept as follows:

If any one…saith, that the manner of confessing secretly to a priest alone, which the Church hath ever observed from the beginning, and doth observe, is alien from the institution and command of Christ, and is a human invention; let him be anathema.

Although the separated Eastern communions, such as the Orthodox Church, have not delineated the doctrine as precisely as the Catholic Church, they hold the seal of the confessional in principle as no less sacred. Indeed, an authoritative collection of Eastern canons, known as the Pedalion (or “Rudder”), states that a priest who disobeys the secrecy of the confessional is to be deposed.

Protecting the Seal

In times past there would be no question that a choice between ecclesiastical law and a contrary secular law is no choice at all. Catholics, either clerical or lay, cannot in “good conscience” turn their backs on the Church’s teachings and canons. As difficult as it may be, priests must uphold the confessional seal in order to protect the integrity of the Sacrament. If this means incurring civil penalties, be they fines or imprisonment, then so be it. To hold otherwise is tantamount to subordinating the Church’s teachings to the shifting whims of the secular state.

All hope is not lost, however. Catholics everywhere – not just in California – should make their voices heard by contacting members of the California state senate to voice their opposition to SB 360. While it is important, particularly at this time, for the Church to do everything in its power to the protection of children from abuse and neglect, undermining the seal of confession is out of the question. Unless this is made clear to California lawmakers, the rights of the Church will be compromised to the detriment of all the Faithful.

Ite ad Joseph

“Ite ad Joseph.”  I’m sure we have all heard this line, given to us by St. Theresa of Avila who attests by her own life that anything we asked of St. Joseph we would receive, by virtue of His Fatherhood to Jesus Christ. Often we underestimate him; let’s ask his intercession more often.

https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/month-st-joseph-triple-treasure-divine-providence-45632

I find in the Gospels three treasures entrusted by Divine Providence to the just man Joseph.

 

The first treasure entrusted to his care (in chronological order) was Mary’s holy virginity, that he was to preserve intact under the sacred veil of marriage, and that he always guarded as a sacred treasure that he was not allowed to touch.The second and most august was the person of Jesus Christ, whom the heavenly Father placed in his hands, that he might be as a father to this holy Child who could not have an earthly father.I also see a third treasure: Joseph is the custodian of the Eternal Father, for He told him His secret, the incarnation of His Son. St. Joseph was chosen, not only to guard Him, but also to hide Him.

How beloved you are of God, O incomparable Joseph, for Him to entrust these three great treasures to you, the virginity of Mary, the Person of His only-begotten Son, and the secret of His mystery!

– Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, First Panegyric of St. Joseph.

 

Doctrinal “development”

The Society’s response to the Pope’s doctrinal “development”:

https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/no-death-doctrinal-crisis-40132

Earlier this month, on August 2, 2018, an amendment to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) was published. The text, which purports to represent a “development” of the Church’s doctrine on the death penalty (capital punishment), was approved by Pope Francis on May 18, 2018.

Although liberal and some conservative Catholic commentators, theologians, and clerics have leapt at the opportunity to defend this “clarification” or “development,” the hard truth is that this new catechetical text appears to represent another in a series of ruptures with Tradition that has been a hallmark of Francis’s pontificate.

The New Text

The English-language translation of CCC No. 2267 now reads as follows:

The Death Penalty

2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.

Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,1 and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.

A Closer Look

The first thing that will strike any reader of CCC No. 2267 is its apodictic decree “that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’” and that the only support for this statement is from an address given by Pope Francis himself. This is not surprising since neither Francis nor the theologians housed at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would be able to find firm magisterial support for this bold new position anywhere else. Even Francis’s near-immediate predecessor, John Paul II, who was an outspoken critic of the death penalty, never altered the CCC to teach that this form of punishment is “inadmissible.”

Second, the integration of the contestable concept of the “dignity of the person” (human dignity) is once again being used as an excuse to change doctrinal course. Less than a century ago, Pius XII declared that, “Even in the case of the death penalty the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to life. Rather public authority limits itself to depriving the offender of the good of life in expiation for his guilt, after he, through his crime, deprived himself of his own right to life” (Address to the First International Congress of Histopathology of the Nervous System (September 12, 1952). It is the individual who committed the crime, not the State, who has forfeited his “right to life”; now, under the guise of “human dignity,” apparently no man may do so, even of his own free volition.

Last, the next of CCC No. 2267 disrupts the continuity of the Church’s magisterium, as can be seen from two startling examples. Take first, for instance, the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, pt. III, 5, n. 4:

Far from being guilty of breaking this commandment [Thou shall not kill], such an execution of justice is precisely an act of obedience to it. For the purpose of the law is to protect and foster human life. This purpose is fulfilled when the legitimate authority of the State is exercised by taking the guilty lives of those who have taken innocent lives.

Next, look to the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, for his well-reasoned teaching on the admissibility of the death penalty in Summa Thelogiae, II, II, q. 64, art. 2:

Now every individual person is related to the entire society as a part to the whole. Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and healthful that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since ‘a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump’ (1 Cor. 5:6).

Indeed, the death penalty may ultimately be for the good of the criminal’s soul (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III, ch. 146):

They…have at that critical point of death the opportunity to be converted to God through repentance. And if they are so obstinate that even at the point of death their heart does not draw back from malice, it is possible to make a quite probable judgment that they would never come away from evil.

Implications beyond the Death Penalty Debate

Without ignoring the fact that there exists in the United States and throughout the world serious concerns over how the death penalty is administered and under which circumstances, the next text of CCC No. 2267 has larger implications. If the authorities in Rome can so boldly reverse what, for nearly two millennia, was a settled teaching, what else is subject to “development”? Is there a single statement contained in the CCC that cannot be revised in the “light of the Gospel,” a light now refracted through the prism of Modernism?

Equally crucial is the sense now given to the People of God that little which the Church teaches can be considered indefectible. Rather than being the “pillar and ground of the Truth,” the Church now appears for many to be a social organ whose promulgations and positions shift with the political winds. Not wishing to be out of step with the world, Catholicism comes across as increasingly mutable and her doctrines time-bound. Prior to the last century, did any Catholic prelate ever teach such a thing? Did anyone except the Church’s most virulent critics ever presume to hold that she is a historically contingent institution that self-consciously pronounces doctrines that can be gutted and revised so carelessly?

The doctrinal crisis in the Church continues and once again Pope Francis recklessly perpetuates it.

FSSPX.News / sspx.org – 08/26/2018