The theology of Luther: “People of God”

http://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/bugninis-principle-novus-ordo-missae-people-godhttp://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/bugninis-principle-novus-ordo-missae-people-god

Archbishop Lefebvre expounds upon the theology that runs rampant in the Church today, that of the deification of the People of God, to the detriment of God who should rule and reign over all peoples of the earth. The true People of God should be led to heaven by the Church, instead of being coddled in comfort by the Church’s enemies hidden within.

Editor’s note:  The conference, entitled “The Church, The Priesthood, and the Tridentine Indult,” came on the heels of Pope John Paul II extending a limited indult for Catholic priests to say the traditional Latin Mass. In the portion of the conference contained below, the Archbishop critically examines the Novus Ordo Missae of Paul VI and the destructive theology which lies at the heart of it:

A Protestant Notion
Last year there appeared an enormous book of his [Archbishop Bugnini] on the liturgical reform, published posthumously, by one of his confreres. I recommend, if you ever come across this book, that you read the general principles. They are very instructive, and absolutely incredible—right in these general principles Archbishop Bugnini says, this liturgical reform is a profound one, aiming at restoring to its true place—for him, according to what he says—the People of God.

It is very curious to find here this notion of the People of God, which is in the new Code of Canon Law, published after the death of Archbishop Bugnini. He could not have gotten it from the new Code, so these ideas must have been around well before it. It is stupefying to read in the Documentation Catholique that the Lutheran-Catholic Commission of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, and thus an official Roman commission, said in effect that numerous points in the Council were drawn from the teachings of Luther, one of them being the notion of the People of God. They say it explicitly; so with this doctrine of the People of God, they are restoring the assembly to its true place, to give it an important role in the liturgy, implying that before the assembly did not exist, or that its role was minimal, that there was no participation; and that, now, thanks to the new liturgy, there is finally participation.

Practical Consequence: No Congregation, No Mass
There comes to mind an objection made by a certain Benedictine abbot at the conference which Archbishop Bugnini gave before 24 superiors of religious orders—I myself was present at this conference—at Rome, before the publication of the New Mass. When he introduced to us his “Normative Mass,” Archbishop Bugnini spoke to us precisely about this participation of the faithful, active participation, as if before Vatican II the faithful had never participated in the Mass. And so an abbot got up and said, “Father, if I understand correctly, we should not say private Masses any more, since there is no congregation, and thus no participation by the people in our Masses.” The response was, “Quite truthfully, we have not envisioned that.” Incredible! As he himself said, this idea has inspired the liturgical reform, an idea which reverses the roles, giving the greater role to the assembly, and no longer to the priest and the sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Our Lord.

Priestly Spirituality: Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
I have been asked to give you a few reflections on the spirituality of the priest. I cannot very well separate the spirituality of the priest from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

To my mind there are not two different kinds of priestly spirituality, there is only one: that of his Mass, that of the Sacrifice of Our Lord, because the priest is essentially the man of sacrifice. I would say there is a transcendental relation between the priest and the sacrifice, and between the sacrifice and the priest. One cannot imagine sacrifice without a priest, and the priesthood without sacrifice. And so there is a relation there that is more than essential, transcendental really, a relation that goes beyond even the essence of the priest. So, we must go back to the idea of the Sacrifice. One can say that our sacrifice, the sacrifice which Our Lord has put into our hands, the sacrifice which Our Lord has left us, is a thing without limit, inexpressible, so divine and mysterious is it, that it surpasses everything we can imagine.

 

 

Impossible to keep the 6th Commandment of God

https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=30472

The driving force behind allowing the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion is the belief that it is impossible to keep the Commandments of God, especially the 6th Commandment, that being “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” However, Our Lord said that all things are possible with God.  If we love Him, we keep His Commandments, even the most difficult.

To receive Holy Communion in the state of adultery is to explicitly force Our Lord to bless such a false union. No, Holy Communion is not a prize for the perfect. Rather, it is a nourishing bread, the Bread of Life, for the sinner who repents of his sins and desires heaven

If our feelings are the basis of our religion, then we worship ourselves. The Catholic Religion is a religion of the intellect, which assents to all the truths that must be believed for salvation. Faith, after all, is th belief in the unseen, because God has revealed, the On who can never deceive. According to the bishops, the malformed conscience is the authority that decides good and evil, not the Commandments of God and the Church. The unfaithful Maltese Bishops advocate heresy and sacrilege. The objective state of the soul is of no consequence to our salvation now? Feeding Our Lord to the devil is the new norm? This is blasphemy. Nobody can be at peace with God in the state of mortal sin, for God Himself does not live in such a soul.

Let’s read the condemnations of these heresies from the Council of Trent:

“If anyone says that the Commandments of God, even for one that is justified and constituted in grace, impossible to observe, let him be anathema.” ~Canon XVIII

“But no one, how much soever justified, ought to think himself exempt from the observance of the commandments; no one ought to make use of that rash saying, one prohibited by the Fathers under an anathema, – that the observance of the commandments of God is impossible for one that is justified. For God commands not impossibilities, but, by commanding, both admonishes thee to do what thou are able, and to pray for what thou art not able (to do), and aids thee that thou mayest be able; whose commandments are not heavy; whose yoke is sweet and whose burden light. For, whoso are the sons of God, love Christ; but they who love him, keep his commandments, as Himself testifies; which, assuredly, with the divine help, they can do.” ~Canon XX

“If any one saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be anathema.”  ~Canon XII

Receiving Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin makes us at peace with the devil, for his one desire is to destroy souls and the Church.

Sin boldly; we are saved and have no need of repentance, for God is pleased with us as long as we are at peace with our sins. Anathema. Luther’s teaching reigns supreme. Is that why a medal of Luther is being struck by Rome? May God have mercy on the prelates of the Church, continually crucifying Our Lord in His Church, most especially through the Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

~Damsel of the Faith

Did Luther commit suicide?

While many know of the great spiritual suicide Martin Luther committed in commencing the great Protestant Revolt, very few are aware that he may certainly have taken his physical life as well.  As the following article from catholicityblog.com explains, many witnesses, scholars, and prominent medical experts affirm exactly the opposite of the “official” account accepted by virtually the whole world.  What a refutation this would be to Protestantism, that its founder died such a terrible, diabolically-inspired death!

The Death of Luther

How did Luther Die?

The official Protestant version narrates that the greatest architect of the Christian rupture died of a natural death on February 15, 1546, after a trip to Eisleben and suffering from angina pectoris; Was it really like this?

A contemporary German scholar, Dietrich Emme, offers a very different version in a review of events. In his book “Martin Luther, Seine Jugend und Studienzeit 1483-1505. Eine dokumentarische Darstelleng “[1] (“Martin Luther: Youth and Years of Study from 1483 to 1505. Bonn 1983”) points out that Luther committed suicide, and he is not alone in pointing this out.

Likewise, a Freudian psychoanalyst, M. Roland Dalbiez, in his study Luther’s Anguish [2], attributes him “… a very serious neurosis of anguish, so grave that one may wonder whether it has not been due to a border-state between neurosis on the one hand and “suicide raptus” on the other, a teleological anti-suicidal automatism”[3].

Indeed, Luther had suicidal tendencies, as it can be corroborated in his own “Tischreden” (“Table Talk”), where one of his conversations with Pastor Güben Leonhard Beyer, in 1551 is documented:

“He told us that when he was a prisoner the devil had wickedly tormented him and that he had laughed heartily when he (Luther) took a knife in his hand, saying:” Go ahead! Kill yourself! “(…). This has happened to me very often, so much as to put a knife in my hand … and what evil thoughts came to mind in this way, so evil that I could no longer pray “[4].

In 1606, Franciscan Heinrich Sedulius in his “Preaescriptiones adversus haereses”, narrates something analogous bringing up the valuable testimony of Ambrosio Kudtfeld, a witness and man of confidence of the “reformer” who, far from accounting a death from angina , says:

“On the night before his death, Martin Luther let himself be overcome by his habitual intemperance and in such excess that we were obliged to take him, completely drunk, and place him in his bed. Then, we retired to our bedroom, without sensing anything unpleasant! The next morning, we went back to our lord to help him get dressed, as usual. Then – oh, what a pain! – we saw our master Martin hanging from the bed and strangled miserably! His mouth was crooked, th right part of his face was black, his neck was red and deformed.”[5]

Indeed, at that time raised beds supported by columns were used.

“In the face of this horrible spectacle, we felt great fear! We ran, without delay, to the princes, his guests of the day before, to announce to them the execrable end of Luther! They, full of terror like us, immediately promised us, with a thousand promises and the most solemn oaths, to observe, with respect to that event, an eternal silence. Then they ordered us to remove the rope from Luther’s hideous corpse, lay him on his bed, and then report to the people that “Master Luther” had suddenly abandoned this life!”[6]

Maritain himself points out that Dr. De Coster, who examined Luther, explained that the deceased’s mouth was crooked with the face black and the neck red and deformed [7].

Likewise, Oratorian priest Bozio, in his book “De Signis Ecclesiae”, published in 1592 [8], points out that one of the reformer’s household indicated that his lord was found hanged from the columns of his bed; Dr. Géorges Claudin says the same: [9].

As Villa points out, “Luther, then, did not die a natural death, as has been falsely written in all the history books of Protestantism, but died as a suicidal, hanged from his bed after a splendid dinner,  in which, as usual, he had drunk too much and was satisfied with food beyond all bounds!”[10].

Paradoxically, that February 15, 1546, feast of the Chair of St. Peter, he, who had railed against the Church, the Papacy, and the Catholic doctrine, voluntarily abandoned his mortal life at three in the morning, the anti-hour of Redemption that Our Lord Jesus Christ brought to us on Calvary.

It’s sad: but that’s the end of those who live in a bad way.

Don’t let them deceive you…

1. Javier Olivera Ravasi

SOURCE. Translated from Spanish by Catholicity blog.

1] It is worth saying that the two most competent historians in Germany on Luther’s life: Dr. Theobald Beer and Prof. Remigius Baumer, have corroborated both the material and the documents cited by Emme.

[2] Roland Dalbiez, L’angoisse de Luther, Tequi, Paris 1974.

[3] Luigi Villa, Martin Lutero, Homicidal and Suicidal, Civilta, Brescia s/f, 5(http://www.chiesaviva.com/lutero%20omicida%20e%20suicida/lutero%20homicida%20y%20suicida.pdf),

[4] Luigi Villa, op. cit., 12 13.

[5] Ibídem, 16. The text in Latin can be seen in Heinrici Seduli ex Ordine Minorum, Praescriptiones adversus haereses, Officina Plantiniana, Antwerp 1606, 257 pp. (online version here: http://bajarlibros.co/libro/f.-heinrici-seduli-ex-ordine-minorum-praescriptiones-adversus-haereses/bwjIJTfTtzjt2o2G/)

[6] Ibídem.  An interesting coincidence is that Maritain narrates in his book “Three Reformers” that several friends, companions and first disciples of Luther also committed suicide.

[7] Maritain’s information is contained in the French edition, not the Spanish one.

[8] Tomás Bozio, De signis Ecclesiae, Pedro Landry, Lyon 1593-1594, 3 vols.

[9] Géorges Claudin, La mort de Luther, Noisy-Le-Sec, Paris 1900, 99 ( http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9323938.r).

[10] Luigi Villa, op. Cit., 17.

Below the attached article is the most recent letter from Fr. Daniel Couture, SSPX, on “Fatima and Luther”.  Father additionally responds to the great tragedy of the present Pope going so far as to honor Luther in Sweden this October.  What a scandal indeed, honoring such a man!  Catholics should continue to offer reparation for this act.

How thankful we must be this Advent for awaiting the coming of our true Savior, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and not an antichrist figure such as Martin Luther!

Thanks to catholicityblog.com for allowing their readers to reproduce their posts. (http://www.catholicityblog.com/2016/11/the-death-of-luther.html)

~ Steven C., “The Knight of Tradition”

December 2016 – District Superior’s Letter

Fatima and Luther

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

The prophet  Jeremiah was right : “With desolation is all the land made desolate : because there is none that considereth in the heart.” (Jer 12:11) The tragic and scandalous events which continue to accelerate in the Church cannot leave us indifferent. One must react so as not to risk collaborating, at least through indifference, in the destruction of the Church.

A hundred years ago, the Angel of Fatima told the children to make acts of reparation for Eucharistic profanations. “Take and drink the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Make reparation for for their crimes and console your God.” Today, he would certainly ask us to make acts of reparation for the horrible outrages committed against Holy Mother the Church, the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In 1517, faced with the problems founds within the Church, Luther reacted in a proud and tempestuous way, and rebelled. Following the worldly humanism of the XIV and XV centuries, the fervour of many had cooled. One thinks of the newly converted Ignatius of Loyola who, at the same period, was teaching the basic catechism to those Spaniards he instructed – the Ten Commandments, sin, grace – and he urged the contemplative religious to return to their Rules and to the strict cloistered life. A general relaxation of discipline was indeed widespread.

In Germany, Luther, an Augustinian monk, reacted violently against this situation, under the appearance of good, in the name of Holy Scripture, Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), subjecting the country to blood and fire in approving divorce, in emptying monasteries, in encouraging the marriage of priests and of consecrated souls, in eliminating six of the seven sacraments, in leading a sizable part of the Church into schism. It was truly a revolution which continues to this day. It is therefore unimaginable, inconceivable, that no less than the head of the Church, wants to celebrate such a revolutionary. Parce nobis Domine – Spare us O Lord! “Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.”

Others had an entirely different reaction in the face of this state of tepidity which was found almost everywhere. Rather than revolt against and attack the Church, they gave themselves to the work of their sanctification and the salvation of souls, thereby bringing millions into the bosom of the Church of Rome. These were the numerous saints of the XVI century, several of whom were founders of religious order: Saints Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, John of God, Jerome Emiliani, Philip Neri, Peter of Alcantara, Pius V,  as well as St Teresa of Avila and so many others! Their program of reform could be summarized as : “Let us fight tepidity, heresy and vice by means of fervour, truth and holiness.”

In 1917, four-hundred years later, amid the varied aspects of the story of Fatima, the Most Blessed Virgin announced to the children another terrible crisis in the Church which would focus around the pope. He was named several times in the secret of 13th July, and among others were foretold “persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father” who “would have much to suffer.”

It is clear: when the papacy is shaken, it is truly the whole Church which is shaken. On one hand, one must regrettably deplore and condemn certain acts and words of Pope Francis, but on the other hand, one must not for all that condemn the papacy itself. This would be to do the work of the enemy who, for the past 2000 years, has sought to destroy it. The Church is founded on this rock. To destroy it is to destroy oneself. It would be to cut off the branch upon which one is sitting.

In her Memoirs, Sister Lucy informs us that little Jacinta, following the apparition of 13th July, having understood how much the Holy Father need prayers, said that “each time she offered her sacrifices to Jesus,” she added “and for the Holy Father.” “After the Rosary she would always recite three Hail Mary’s for the Holy Father.” The thought of the Holy Father came constantly to the mind of the three young seers. In addition to the concern for sinners, and the terrifying vision of the war to come, this was one of their major preoccupations.

In 1936, Our Lord said to Sister Lucy, regarding the pope and the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, this phrase full of meaning: “The Holy Father! Pray much for the Holy Father. He will do it, but it will be very late.”

And in a letter to Father Aparicio, on the 2nd March 1945, Sister Lucy clearly implied that the great sufferings of the Holy Father  foretold in the Secret and doubtless also in Jacintha’s visions again concerning the future: “Over there (in Brazil), she wrote, do they pray for the Holy Father? It is necessary to never cease praying for His Holiness. Great days of affliction and torment still await him.” (see The Whole Truth About Fatima, vol. 2. pp. 77-78)

Consequently, in reparation for the scandal of the pope’s visit to Sweden in honour of Luther last October 31st, there will be in all the chapels of the Canadian district a Holy Hour between now and the end of the year 2016.

May I make the most of this monthly letter to wish all our readers a holy season of Advent and a Holy Christmas.

(News from the District section omitted by myself to keep post to the point.-Steven C.)

Yours truly, in the service of Our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour,

Father Daniel Couture
District Superior