Fifty years of Novus Ordo garbage

Two week ago, I attended my first Novus Ordo Mass in over two years. A friend was being ordained to the transitional diaconate. I could have done without the serviettes in the sanctuary and the Cardinal's jokes, but other than that, it was tolerable.

When I think back to my childhood and my memories of Mass, I can recall in my mind's eye, six candles lit on the altar at the principal Mass which we always attended (there were maybe five in total) and maybe the Kyrie and Sanctus were sung, but that was it. It was a essentially a Read, or Low Mass with some music sprinkled here and there. Everyone knelt all the time and some had hand missals, my parents certainly did. One Sunday, there was a plywood table covered in one cloth and two stubby candles in the sanctuary and poor Father Michael Carroll, a good and saintly man, looked totally flummoxed. I can remember my mother saying, "Well, this is Vatican II." She didn't like it. That was 1965 and I was nine years old. Two years later, at the first class for the new crop of Altar Boys, we were told, "Congratulations Boys, you're the first class that does not need to learn Latin!"

This was the interim 1965 Missal which was the already slimmed down 1962 but in the vernacular up to the Offertory from then on, it was still Latin. The Prayers at the Foot of the Altar were shortened as in the Requiem, without the Judica Me and could be eliminated if one did the Asperges. The Epistle could be read by a layman (man!), there were fewer genuflections and crosses by the priest, the priest now said, "The Body of Christ" and we responded, "Amen" and the Last Gospel was gone. From there it was downhill. By 1967, Latin was gone, the music was atrocious and every week there was something new. We were told this was the New Mass. We did not know we were yet to get a New, New Mass.

By the time November 30, 1969 came, nobody really noticed. There were so many innovations from 1967 on that it was brought in my stealth. The only difference were the readings and some new "Eucharistic Prayers." The chaos blinded us all.

Nobody asked for this - the laity did not demand it.

If there was a problem, it was the ever-present Sunday and Feast Day Read or Low Mass, but that is for a different post and maybe a series.

The Novus Ordo liturgy of Montini has been a disaster for the faith. There is not one thing good which can be said about it but if you can try, please do, in the combox. 

Please dear reader, abandon it, if you can. Find the traditional Mass, diocesan, FSSP. ICRSS, SSPX, drive as far as you must.

And read this and note the quotes from the alleged Saint, Montini, and tell me you don't here Bergoglio!


http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/11/paul-vis-contempt-for-catholics-who-did.html

Bergoglio has his own hand in the Vatican's financial corruption

http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2019/11/25/money-wars-at-the-vatican-with-the-pope-among-the-belligerents/

"Sometimes the combox is better than the blogger."

In my morning perusal of my favourite blogs (all are on the left column), I read this on Non Veni Pacem. It struck me because the of what my fellow blogger, Mark, wrote:

"Sometimes the combox is better than the blogger."

As a blogger, I could not agree more. It is one reason why the combox is open and free and while moderated, generally uncensored with 99.9% of comments being published. 

There was a reason why on March 13, 2013 I wanted to vomit. It was because I was looking into the face of evil. Not a shepherd, not a vicar, not a pastor, but the face of a man who gave himself over to Satan. I knew it, deep in my bones.

People are awakening. Others think as I; and furthermore, I consider that Ann Barnhardt has been on to all of this for quite a while. 

Read this and please, read every comment.

“The throne of Peter has a demonic spawn squatting on it, orchestrating Hell’s circus”

https://nonvenipacem.com/2019/11/22/the-throne-of-peter-has-a-demonic-spawn-squatting-on-it-orchestrating-hells-circus/

Letter of Saint Athanasius to His Flock (4th Century A.D.)

“May God console you! … What saddens you … is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises — but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle — the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith?

True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way …

You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis.

No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day.

Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray.

Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.”

(Coll. selecta SS. Eccl. Patrum, Caillau and Guillou, Vol. 32, pp. 411-412)

Viganò, Pope is subjecting Church to ‘powerful forces’ that want world government

Archbishop Carlo Viganò calls out Bergoglio as the Globalist dupe that he is. 

A monster. A man who hates Christ, faithful Catholics and the Nation-State.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/abp-vigano-pope-is-subjecting-church-to-powerful-forces-that-want-world-government

CHURCH in CRISIS: World's Catholics Resist Pope to His Face

Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Pachamama was worshiped at Vatican and it wasn’t harmless

Bishop Athanasius Schneider has written an article for Kath.net and has authorised an approved English translation at LifeSiteNews. 

His Excellency lays out the idolatry and blasphemy committed by Bergoglio and the others over the worship of pagan deities in Rome. It reads as a lawyer's opening statement in a devastating trial. He has convicted Jorge Mario Bergoglio and others of being the false prophets that they are and even worse. They are devils. 

"For all of the gods of the gentiles are devils; and the LORD made the heavens."

"Blessed be the name of the LORD."

Read all of this at:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/bishop-athanasius-schneider-pachamama-was-worshiped-at-vatican-and-it-wasnt-harmless

BERGOLIO DECLARES FAITHFUL CATHOLICS TO BE "NAZIS" - INVENTS NEW "SIN"

In a stunning statement, Jorge Bergoglio has labelled faithful Catholics who speak out against sodomitical behaviour and the political agenda of homosexualism as "NAZIS"

“It is no coincidence that in these times, emblems and actions typical of Nazism reappear, which, with its persecutions against Jews, gypsies and people of homosexual orientation, represents the negative model par excellence of a culture of waste and hatred, and I must confess to you that when I hear a speech [by] someone responsible for order or for a government, I think of speeches by Hitler in 1934, 1936. In the last century we saw so many brutalities against the Jewish people, and we were all convinced that this was over. But today the habit of persecuting the Jews, brothers and sisters, is here reborn. This is neither human nor Christian."

More can be read here.

Who is this pontificating pervert protector speaking of? Is it this writer? Is it you, dear reader? 

The man is a sociopath, he never names his target but only makes innuendo. This is of Christ? This is a pastor?

He continued on to declare the "sin" against the environment in keeping with his recent pagan worship of "mother-earth"

If that is not enough, he reiterated his rejection of a life sentence in prison which he has done numerous times before.

This man is not of Christ. He is evil. That is plain to see. He hates Our Lord Jesus Christ, he refused to genuflect or kneel before the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar but he sanctioned and attended the literal worship of a pagan idol.

It is without a doubt in the mind of this writer that Jorge Bergoglio is most perfectly possessed. He is a megalomaniac. A nasty, brutish, pompous dictator.

He is playing us, he is psychologically projecting.

It is Bergoglio that is the NAZI.

It is Bergoglio that is the coprophiliac.

And nobody confronts this evil monster to his face.

And Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself

Protest against Pope Francis's sacrilegious acts

I add my name.

https://www.contrarecentiasacrilegia.org/

We the undersigned Catholic clergy and lay scholars protest against and condemn the sacrilegious and superstitious acts committed by Pope Francis, the Successor of Peter, in connection with the recent Amazon Synod held in Rome.

These sacrilegious acts are the following:

On October 4, Pope Francis attended an act of idolatrous worship of the pagan goddess Pachamama.

He allowed this worship to take place in the Vatican Gardens, thus desecrating the vicinity of the graves of the martyrs and of the church of the Apostle Peter.

He participated in this act of idolatrous worship by blessing a wooden image of Pachamama.

On October 7, the idol of Pachamama was placed in front of the main altar at St. Peter’s and then carried in procession to the Synod Hall. Pope Francis said prayers in a ceremony involving this image and then joined in this procession.

When wooden images of this pagan deity were removed from the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, where they had been sacrilegiously placed, and thrown into the Tiber by Catholics outraged by this profanation of the church, Pope Francis, on October 25, apologized for their removal and another wooden image of Pachamama was returned to the church.  Thus, a new profanation was initiated.

On October 27, in the closing Mass for the synod, he accepted a bowl used in the idolatrous worship of Pachamama and placed it on the altar.

Pope Francis himself confirmed that these wooden images were pagan idols. In his apology for the removal of these idols from a Catholic church, he specifically called them Pachamama,  a name for a false goddess of mother earth according to pagan religious belief in South America.

Different features of these proceedings have been condemned as idolatrous or sacrilegious by Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Bishop José Luis Azcona Hermoso, Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer, and Bishop Marian Eleganti.  Lastly, Card. Raymond Burke has given the same assessment of this cult in an interview.

This participation in idolatry was anticipated by the statement entitled “Document on Human Fraternity”, signed by Pope Francis and Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, on February 4, 2019.  This statement asserted that:

“The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives.”

Pope Francis’s involvement in idolatrous ceremonies is an indication that he meant this statement in a heterodox sense, which allows pagan worship of idols to be considered a good positively willed by God.

Moreover, despite privately advising Bishop Athanasius Schneider that “You [the Bishop] can say that the phrase in question on the diversity of religions means the permissive will of God…” , Francis has never corrected the Abu Dhabi statement accordingly.  In his subsequent audience address of April 3, 2019 Francis, answering the question “Why does God permit that there are so many religions?”, referred in passing to the “permissive will of God” as explained by Scholastic theology, but gave the concept a positive meaning, declaring that “God wanted to permit this” because while “there are so many religions” they “always look to heaven, they look to God (emphasis added).”  There is not the slightest suggestion that God permits the existence of false religions in the same way He permits the existence of evil generally.  Rather, the clear implication is that God permits the existence of “so many religions” because they are good in that they “always look to heaven, they look to God.”

Worse, Pope Francis has since confirmed the uncorrected Abu Dhabi statement by establishing an “interfaith committee”,  which later received the official name of “Higher Committee,”  located in the United Arab Emirates, to promote the “goals” of the document; and promoting a directive issued by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue addressed to the heads of all the Roman Catholic institutes of higher studies, and indirectly to Catholic university professors, asking that they give the “widest possible dissemination to the document", including its uncorrected assertion that God wills the “diversity of religions” just as He wills the diversity of color, sex, race and language.

The rendering of worship to anyone or anything other than the one true God, the Blessed Trinity, is a violation of the First Commandment. Absolutely all participation in any form of the veneration of idols is condemned by this Commandment and is an objectively grave sin, independently of the subjective culpability, that only God can judge.

St. Paul taught the early Church that the sacrifice offered to pagan idols was not offered to God but rather to the demons when he said in his First Letter to the Corinthians:

“What then? Do I say, that what is offered in sacrifice to idols, is any thing? Or, that the idol is any thing? But the things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God. And I would not that you should be made partakers with demons. You cannot drink the chalice of the Lord, and the chalice of demons: you cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons.”

(1 Cor. 10:19-21)

By these actions Pope Francis has incurred the reproach uttered by the Second Council of Nicaea:

“Many pastors have destroyed my vine, they have defiled my portion. For they followed unholy men and trusting to their own frenzies they calumniated the holy Church, which Christ our God has espoused to himself, and they failed to distinguish the holy from the profane, asserting that the icons of our Lord and of his saints were no different from the wooden images of satanic idols.”

With immense sorrow and deep love for the Chair of Peter, we beg Almighty God to spare the guilty members of His Church on earth the punishment that they deserve for these terrible sins.

We respectfully ask Pope Francis to repent publicly and unambiguously of these objectively grave sins and of all the public offences that he has committed against God and the true religion, and to make reparation for these offences.

We respectfully ask all the bishops of the Catholic Church to offer fraternal correction to Pope Francis for these scandals, and to warn their flocks that according to the divinely revealed teaching of the Catholic faith, they will risk eternal damnation if they follow his example of offending against the First Commandment.

November 9th, 2019

In Festo dedicationis Basilicae Lateranensis

“Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei est et porta cæli; et vocabitur aula Dei”

Protest against Pope Francis's sacrilegious acts

CLICK HERE!

Support the initiative!

Dr Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, The Netherlands

Dr Robert Adams, medical physician in Emergency & Family Medicine

Donna F. Bethell, J.D.

Tom Bethell, senior editor of The American Spectator and book author

Dr Biagio Buonomo, PhD in Ancient Christianity History and former culture columnist (1990-2013) for L'Osservatore Romano

François Billot de Lochner, President of Liberté politique, France

Rev. Deacon Andrew Carter B.Sc. (Hons.) ARCS DipPFS Leader, Marriage & Family Life Commission, Diocese of Portsmouth, England

Mr. Robert Cassidy, STL

Dr Michael Cawley, PhD, Psychologist, Former University Instructor, Pennsylvania, USA

Dr Erick Chastain, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Fr Linus F Clovis

Lynn Colgan Cohen, M.A., O.F.S.

Dr Colin H. Jory, MA, PhD, Historian, Canberra, Australia

Rev Edward B. Connolly, Pastor Emeritus, St. Joseph Parish St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Girardville PA

Prof. Roberto de Mattei, Former Professor of the History of Christianity, European University of Rome, former Vice President of the National Research Council (CNR)

José Florencio Domínguez, philologist and translator

Deacon Nick Donnelly, MA Catholic Pastoral & Educational Studies (Spiritual Formation), England

Fr Thomas Edward Dorn, pastor of Holy Redeemer Parish in New Bremen OH in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati

Fr Stefan Dreher FSSP, Stuttgart, Germany

Dr Michael B. Ewbank, PhD in Philosophy, Loras College, retired, USA

Fr Jerome Fasano, Pastor, St John the Baptist Church, Front Royal, Virginia, USA

Dr James Fennessy, MA, MSW, JD, LCSW, Matawan, New Jersey, USA

Christopher A. Ferrara, J.D., Founding President of the American Catholic Lawyers’ Association

Fr Jay Finelli, Tiverton, RI, USA

Prof. Michele Gaslini, Professor of Public Law, University of Udine, Italy

Dr Linda M. Goulash, M.D.

Dr Maria Guarini STB, Pontificia Università Seraphicum, Rome; editor of the website Chiesa e postconcilio

Fr Brian W. Harrison, OS, STD, associate professor of theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico (retired), Scholar-in-Residence, Oblates of Wisdom Study Center, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Sarah Henderson DCHS MA (RE & Catechetics) BA (Mus)

Prof. Robert Hickson PhD, Retired Professor of Literature and of Strategic-Cultural Studies

Dr Maike Hickson PhD, Writer and Journalist

Prof., Dr.rer.pol., Dr.rer.nat. Rudolf Hilfer, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Universität Stuttgart

Fr John Hunwicke, Former Senior Research Fellow, Pusey House, Oxford

Fr Edward J. Kelty, OS, JCD, Defensor Vinculi, SRNC rota romana 2001-19, Former Judicial Vicar,  Archdiocese of Ferrara, Judge, Archdiocese of Ferrara

Dr Ivo Kerže, prof. phil.

Dr Thomas Klibengajtis, former Assistant Professor of Catholic Systematic Theology, Institute of Catholic Theology, Technical University Dresden, Germany

Dr Peter A. Kwasniewski, PhD, USA

Dr John Lamont, DPhil (Oxon.)

Dr Dorotea Lancellotti, catechist, co-founder of the website: https://cooperatores-veritatis.org/

Dr Ester Ledda, consecrated laywoman, co-founder of the website https://cooperatores-veritatis.org/

Fr Patrick Magee, FLHF a Franciscan of Our Lady of the Holy Family, canonical hermit in the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts

Dr Carlo Manetti, jurist and lecturer, Italy

Dr Christopher Manion, PhD, KM, Humanae Vitae Coalition, Front Royal, Virginia, USA

Antonio Marcantonio, MA

Michael J. Matt, Editor, The Remnant, USA

Jean-Pierre Maugendre, general delegate, Renaissance catholique, France

Msgr John F. McCarthy, JCD, STD, retired professor of moral theology, Pontifical Lateran University

Prof. Brian M. McCall, Orpha and Maurice Merrill Professor in Law, Special Advisor to the Provost for Online Education, University of Oklahoma

Patricia McKeever, B.Ed. M.Th., Editor, Catholic Truth, Scotland

Mary Angela McMenamin, MA in Biblical Theology from John Paul the Great Catholic University

Fr Cor Mennen, lecturer canon law at the diocesan Seminary of ‘s-Hertogenbosch and member of the cathedral chapter

Rev Michael Menner, Pastor

Dr Stéphane Mercier, Ph.D., S.T.B., former research fellow and lecturer at the University of Louvain

David Moss, President, Association of Hebrew Catholics, St. Louis, Missouri

Dr Claude E Newbury, M.B. B.Ch., D.T.M & H., D.P.H., D.O.H., M.F.G.P., D.C.H., D.A., M. Prax Med.

Prof. Giorgio Nicolini, writer, Director of “Tele Maria”

Fr John O'Neill, STB, Dip TST, Priest of the Diocese of Parramatta, member of Australian Society of Authors

Fr Guy Pagès, Archdiocese of Paris, France

Prof. Paolo Pasqualucci, Professor of Philosophy (retired), University of Perugia, Italy

Fr Dean P. Perri, Diocese of Providence, Our Lady of Loreto Church

Dr Brian Charles Phillips, MD

Dr Mary Elizabeth Phillips, MD

Dr Robert Phillips, Professor (emeritus) Philosophy: Oxford University, Wesleyan University, University of Connecticut

Prof. Claudio Pierantoni, Professor of Medieval Philosophy, University of Chile; former Professor of Church History and Patrology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Prof. Enrico Maria Radaelli, Professor of Aesthetic Philosophy and Director of the Department of  Aesthetic Philosophy of the International Science and Commonsense Association (ISCA), Rome, Italy

Dr Carlo Regazzoni, Philosopher of Culture, Therwill, Switzerland

Prof. John Rist, Professor emeritus of Classics and Philosophy, University of Toronto

Dr Ivan M. Rodriguez, PhD

Fr Luis Eduardo Rodrìguez Rodríguez, Pastor, Diocesan Catholic Priest, Caracas, Venezuela.

John F. Salza, Esq.

Fr Timothy Sauppé, S.T.L., pastor of St. Mary’s (Westville, IL.) and St. Isaac Jogues (Georgetown, IL.)

Fr John Saward, Priest of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, England

Prof. Dr Josef Seifert, Director of the Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute of Philosophy, at the Gustav Siewerth Akademie, Bierbronnen, Germany

Mary Shivanandan, Author and consultant

Dr Cristina Siccardi, Church Historian and author

Dr Anna M. Silvas, senior research adjunct, University of New England NSW Australia.

Jeanne Smits, journalist, writer, France

Dr Stephen Sniegoski, PhD, historian and book author

Dr Zlatko Šram, PhD, Croatian Center for Applied Social Research

Henry Sire, Church historian and book author, England

Robert J. Siscoe, author

Abbé Guillaume de Tanoüarn, Doctor of Literature

Rev Glen Tattersall, Parish Priest, Parish of St. John Henry Newman, Australia

Gloria, Princess of Thurn und Taxis, Regensburg, Germany

Prof. Giovanni Turco, associate professor of Philosophy of Public Law, University of Udine, Italy

Fr Frank Unterhalt, Pastor, Archdiocese of Paderborn, Germany

José Antonio Ureta, author

Adrie A.M. van der Hoeven, MSc, physicist

Dr Gerd J. Weisensee, Msc, Switzerland

John-Henry Westen, MA, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief LifeSiteNews.com

Dr Elizabeth C. Wilhelmsen, Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, retired

Willy Wimmer, Secretary of State, Ministry of Defense, (ret.), Germany

Prof. em. Dr Hubert Windisch, priest and theologian, Germany

Mo Woltering, MTS, Headmaster, Holy Family Academy, Manassas, Virginia, USA

Miguel Ángel Yáñez, editor of Adelante la Fe

Nuncio to the U.S.A. demands obedience to the Francis Magisterium

Christophe Pierre, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States has spoken at the USCCB Central Committee demanding that all bow down and adore at the name of Francis and his magisterium.

So now, we have the "Francis Magisterium."

Pierre can follow Bergoglio straight into Hell.

Where they both belong.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

We will remember them.

Fascists/Communists/Socialists attack Church in Chile

Other than Breitbart and Fox News where is this in the media?

Interesting coincidence? The same date as the November Pogroms against our Jewish brothers and sisters in Germany - Kristallnacht.

Has Bergoglio made comment?

Cardinal Burke, the Pope cannot do "whatever he wants"

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/09/opinion/cardinal-burke-douthat.html

POPE SACHS CHURCH: Vatican Embraces United Nations Goals

Bergoglio hugs Bono.

La cage aux folles.

The Novus Ordo Mass becomes a cult of toxic Marxism - Zita Tradlinger Fletcher reports

Zika Tradlinger Fletcher has reported extensively on Germany's heretical Catholic Church for Catholic Fake News Service. She is a regular reader of Vox Cantoris blog and we have received this report from her while on special assignment.

Zika Tradlinger Fletcher

The Novus Ordo Mass becomes a cult of toxic Marxism 

By Zika Tradlinger Fletcher.

The Novus Ordo Mass becomes a cult of toxic Marxism

One culture within the Catholic Church needing major reform is that surrounding the practice of the New Mass, a.k.a. Novus Ordo Mass.

In this new era, the New Mass is merely a disjointed and substandard way of celebrating the liturgy in the United States. In the wake of the not needed reforms instituted by the Second Vatican Council, the New Mass has become a rallying point for change-obsessed radical sects within the church. The ultra-liberalism practiced by these Novus Ordo Mass groups is radical and empty-headed. They utilize the Novus Ordo Mass structure to wield control over believers — particularly men, who are reduced to a state of discriminatory subjugation in Novus Ordo rites. The stubbornly resistant, anti-Traditional practices of these Novus Ordo Mass adherents border on cultism.

The Novus Ordo Mass fosters heretical structures in the church. The liturgy — spoken in a vernacular, colloquial language no longer the traditional, sacred language usage — places all power in the hands of the people and Susan from the Parish Council. The priest keeps his back turned to the Tabernacle, where the Most Blessed Sacrament is reserved, for most of the ceremony. Aside from making occasional responses, the priest  plays no active part in worship. All people inside the church are not expected to kneel on cue at various points. The priest is at the center of the spectacle. His ministry is not longer differentiated from the people he is supposed to worship with, and the altar rail is the structure that marks the sacred space and reserved for his ministry, and where to receive the Body of Christ Novus Ordo people refuse to kneel at His feet.

Meanwhile, the new modernist innovations oppress men. Men are expected — indeed, in some cases almost commanded — to wear T-shirts, cargo pants, and flip flops, instead of collar shirts, trousers and shoes, and women uncover themselves with revealing clothing, mini skirts and tight yoga pants. No such rules exist for the seniors. It is discrimination, and therefore the New Mass actively endorses agism and attacks decorum. Instead of a unifying form of worship, the New Mass has become an instrument of oppression and a gathering point for Catholic fundamentalists.

In most cases, it is useless to politely disagree with people in the Novus Ordo Mass sect. Their attitude creates blindness — not only to true faith, but to their own behavior. They treat others with pride and animosity, but their conscience fails to kick in because they are convinced their way is holy and other ways are not.

Anyone who may accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about — a favorite indictment of the Novus Ordo Mass ideologues — would be wrong. My opinion is based on facts and personal experiences.

I grew up in a household of steady and solid faith, which grew stronger over time. My parents stayed married until death. My mother was Catholic who had been to church all her life. In the branches of my family tree were relatives who might best be described as Catholics, and others as Christian. My mother decided to be faithful to the Catholic Church when she was young. From an early age, I believed in Christ because I was Catholic — others tried in vain to convert me to atheism and modernism while I was still in elementary school.

Maybe this sounds like the beginning of a happy story of faith and discovery. It was. My family's journey into the Catholic Church was a long, steady and pleasant road marked by a series of a wonderful treatment by Catholic clergy, religious, schools and parishioners. (It's a miracle that I'm Catholic and became a Catholic journalist.)

The Novus Ordo Mass rears its unveiled head in the unholy, modernist rebellious history at several points. The last Latin Mass my mother remembered attending took place just after the Second Vatican Council, so unwillingly she started going to New Masses when she stayed in the church because they were imposed. The church was going to welcome us Traditional Catholics, she thought. The treatment we got was slightly shy of the Communist gulags.

Needless to say, anything in the church looking remotely Traditional was completely veiled. The people had the humor of a second-rate comedy club crowd and the pastor, arrayed in modern vestments, was more like a prima dona. After over an hour spent every Sunday drowning in pablum, I was incensed, and getting sneered at, we did not feel any closer to God.

Rules, also, were a strange issue. For example, the chapel veil was forbidden to be worn in the church. A confessor there hit one of my family members with a "permanent daily practice"— a positive thought every day, forever, to atone for an alleged life of iniquity. After some while of this torture, my mother spoke with a different priest about the unbearable situation. He advised her that genuine Catholic faith did forbid wearing immodest clothes or allow priests to inflict a "penance" for sins. Immediately we stopped going to Novus Ordo Mass at that parish.

But it wasn't the last time I would run into New Masses — or the Novus Ordo Mass sectarians, present today in many Catholic organizations.

After staying in the church as a teenager, I chose to be a more faithful Catholic by learning and practicing the true Faith and devotions — following the perennial Magisterium of the Church and Tradition, and attending the very few churches where the Latin Mass was celebrated. On one instance, a Novus Ordo priest noticed I was showing up regularly and approached me with a persuasive speech to convert me to the Novus Ordo Mass faction — disguising discrimination as encouragement. "You should come to the Paul VI Mass instead and not wear a veil. Women look the most beautiful in church when they are not veiled," he tried to persuade. "The long hair types are the best kind — the really long ones, past the shoulders. I recommend it to you — you have such pretty red hair, but it would even look nicer if you didn’t wear a veil over it. I think it would be best for you."

Most disturbing about this conversation was his effort to make impiety sound positive. Of course it made no sense that my hair would somehow look better if people could see it. Indignant, I asked him to explain why he thought I should consider not covering my head. “Because it's disrespectful," he replied solemnly.

When asked why it wasn’t respectful to veil the hair that God had glorified in women — and why men in church did have to uncover their heads — he was not able to answer. He reacted badly because I challenged his authority. Anyway, I had no intention of listening. I knew I was called to keep my belief in God in a Traditional church. I never returned to that modernist church afterwards. 

The priest's attitude towards veiling women is typical of Novus Ordo Mass cultists. They seem to believe that women look better in church when people can see them. They try to sell immodesty to girls as a symbol of feminine freedom. They hold that not covering up and not hiding yourself is beautiful although such a practice is the very opposite of natural beauty.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how pretty, sexy or raunchy clothes may seem to potential wearers — cloths are meant to conceal female beauty and prevent people from ogling women. By not promoting the chapel veil, Novus Ordo Mass fundamentalists rob women of freedom, while trying to make it seem like a liberating choice. Their attitude is not much different from extremists under Communism.

Given such practices, it should come as no surprise that a contingent of women active within the sectarian Novus Ordo Mass environment have sexist and misandrist worldviews. These types believe they are superior to men simply because they are female.

I cite two examples to support my view. One occasion that remains burned into my memory was when I attended a Novus Ordo Mass at a Catholic university. It was a busy Sunday and the Sunday obligation demanded I attend Mass. I did not know it was a Novus Ordo Mass until I stumbled over the doorstep. The atmosphere was typically liberal. I was surprised to recognize some people there. One of them was a professor who was known to be a namby-pamby person. When I saw his wife, I was shocked — and suddenly realized the ugly extent of his weaknesses. His wife was a mere ghost of a woman. She was almost naked from head to toe. Her dress was so short that you could see her underwear. Even her entire legs and her arms were “weapons of mass distraction.” She kept her head high and always walked in front of everybody. She carried a cell phone and looked physically slinky — almost sexy.

The professor, by contrast, looked deprecated and unhealthy. He ambled around and didn’t chat with others in church as she strutted around and in front of him like a peacock. Seeing this, I believed I had witnessed a very dark side to the professor's wife spirituality. Her religion was a mechanism of abusive control.

My second example concerns a younger Catholic age group — many of whom are apparently falling victim to the ultra-liberal Latin Mass ideology promoted in Catholic activity groups and on college campuses. A female acquaintance of mine, about my age, decided to brave the Catholic dating scene — a recipe for disaster, in my personal opinion. Among the stories I heard from her were of liberal Catholic males shopping for dates, asking her and other girls, "Are you willing to get laid?" before marrying them. These men did not want to associate with women whom they couldn't sexually dominate.

Men she met in this liberal Catholic peer group would interview girls about sexuality before deciding to spend time with them — they were arrogant and believed they were somehow morally superior to the women. Instead of standing up for her own dignity, she decided to cave into the pressure — go to liberal services and start wearing shorts. I still don't understand why she wanted to associate with that group, or why she decided to give in to oppression.

It is very unfortunate that younger generations of Catholics seeking to deepen their faith are getting sucked into this vortex of toxic, liberal radicalism. I saw few young families at a Novus Ordo Mass recently when I was invited to attend a speaking engagement at a liberal church. I happened to arrive before the Protestantized Mass was quite over — having nowhere else to go before the event, and wishing to receive Holy Communion, I decided to kneel during the Mass. Unsurprisingly I found myself surrounded by almost naked women who entertained themselves in between chatting bouts by casting disapproving glances at my chapel veil and rosary.

Looking around, I was astonished to see few college-aged men and women among the crowd. The priests seemed to be in their 70s. Clearly these people were too old to celebrate the times before Vatican II. Yet something had drawn them here. Parental influence? Doubtful. It seemed to be a shared spirit of ultra-liberalism. I found it frightening to reflect on how the closed, Novus Ordo Mass mindset had managed to replicate itself over time and spread like a virus.

Unsurprisingly, while there I had another memorably bad experience. I went to receive Holy Communion kneeling and on the tongue. Most liberal-type priests I'd encountered in my lifetime would give me the Eucharist only in the hands. This pastor too. He literally made a scene at the altar and jerked the Eucharist away from me when I put out my tongue to receive it — as if my tongue would contaminate the very Jesus who, according to the Catholic faith, seeks Communion with my soul. I seriously considered walking out of the church at that point, but decided not to receive the Eucharist and make a Spiritual Communion instead, since I wanted to pray. After Mass I gave the priests a piece of my mind.

Liberal clericalism defined the response I received. When I informed an assisting priest that the pastor had been very rude to me at the altar and asked that my views be relayed, he replied: "I won't throw our pastor under the bus. He's the pastor. I refuse to tell him to correct his behavior," the priest said. I reminded him that, as a priest, he was supposed to worship God and value my feedback as a believer. The priest took a step back and looked at me in astonishment, as if the notion of worship to God had never occurred to him. "Very well. I'll tell the pastor what you said," he said condescendingly. "But I don't think he did anything wrong." His attitude was a trademark example of the culture within the Catholic Church that encourages abuse. His first reaction was to default to absolute loyalty to his pastor, then dismiss my views. When pressed further, he flat-out denied all wrongdoing. To liberal modernists, Traditionalists are always the problem — not those who belong to the herd, and certainly not modernist clergy.

With liberal rigidity, the modernist priest argued in defense of his liberal pastor against the traditions of the "Old Mass"—a derogatory term used by Novus Ordo cultists to denote regular Latin-language Masses. He said the Latin Masses I regularly attended were abandoned “over 40 years ago" — as if that devalued them somehow —and insisted they were only "allowed to exist, but not standardly recommended." He claimed the church only allowed Communion on the tongue “in extreme cases." Of course, I know this is not true. He capped his radical fundamentalist arguments by saying the Novus Ordo Mass is a solemn rite equal to Byzantine and Coptic rites and that rules cannot be changed for anyone. He accused me of being "rude" by not expecting them "to change their rites."

I feel it necessary to point out — lest readers be confused by his illogicality — that the Byzantine and Coptic rites originate in the traditions of distinct Catholic churches in foreign countries. The Latin Mass, by contrast, is merely the perennial model of tradition practiced in the United States and all countries since the early Church, and was never abrogated by the Church nor adopted in almost every single country. Therefore the Latin Mass can be compared to Coptic and Byzantine churches as Eternal Rome can be compared to the New Jerusalem. Saints, martyrs and our forefathers will be disenfranchised by changes made to the Latin Mass — just faithful Catholics unable to let go of the sacredness and beauty of the Traditional Latin Mass.

What I gained from this experience was a deeper recognition of how the Latin Mass foments a reverential, beautiful and rich culture within the Catholic Church that Pope Francis is actively working to change.

In his homily earlier last month, Pope Francis warned Catholics against hypocrisy. He described liberal hypocrisy as "appearing one way, but acting in another," and said that a hypocritical attitude "always kills." Jesus did not tolerate hypocrisy, according to Pope Francis, but enjoyed unmasking it. "A Christian who does not know how to accuse himself is not a good Christian," the pope said.

The intolerant atmosphere against the Latin Mass stands in clearly follows Pope Francis's description of what the new Church is being forced to be.

“The post II Vatican Council Church is a fortress, a tent incapable of expanding and offering access to people the richness, spiritual depth and beauty of the Traditional Latin Mass, the Mass of the Angels”, a Traditional Pope would have said. "The church is 'following Tradition’ or it is not the Catholic Church, either it is worshipping, always widening its Traditional room so that all may enter or else it is not the Catholic Church."

Tradition defines true Catholicism. Radical liberal modernists who cling to the guitars, felt banners and empty-headed, mindless hippie rituals of the outdated 60s practices would do well to follow the advice of St. Paul to the Galatians, Chapter 1: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.”

Bergoglio the racist. It’s called “projection”

In typical Marxist fashion, Bergoglio has determined that anyone who opposes the error at the Amazon Synod is really a bigot and a racist. 

What a disgusting, evil man.

What disgustingly effeminate Cardinal and Bishops that do not confront this man for his hatred of Christ and his flock.

For the record, my wife is African from Capetown, Irish, Dutch, and mostly Black and the blood in my veins is from Mount Lebanon.

Bergoglio is an evil monster. He is a sociopath. A bully and an abusive man.

"Francis excoriated certain “circles and sectors” who .. consider much of humanity a “lower-class entity” with scant “spiritual and intellectual life.” These unnamed individuals, the pope opined, hope out of racism or bigotry to withhold the Gospel."

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-11/pope-francis-interview-valente-mission-book.html?fbclid=IwAR3QGWNrmcndrD7f2JK1uJO_ipWYKh8pikdb23tf5KE6-MBvF0WCWAKfMBs

The Pope and mission: “Without Jesus we can do nothing”

At the end of the Extraordinary Missionary Month, we are providing a few extracts from the book-length interview of Gianni Valente from Fides News Agency with Pope Francis, in which the Pope emphasizes that “Either the Church evangelizes or she is not Church”. The book, published by Libreria Edictrice Vaticana and Edizioni San Paolo will be available in bookstores as of November 5th.

“The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus”. Thus begins the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, published by Pope Francis in November 2013, eight months after the Conclave during which he was elected Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter. That programmatic text of his pontificate invited everyone to re-harmonize every action, reflection and ecclesial initiative with “the proclamation of the Gospel in today's world”. Six years later, the Holy Father called for an Extraordinary Missionary Month to be held in October 2019, and at the same time convened the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome dedicated to the Amazon Region, with the intention of suggesting new  paths for the proclamation of the Gospel in the "green lung", martyred by predatory exploitation that violates and inflicts wounds “on our brothers sisters, and on sister earth” (Holy Father’s homily for the closing Mass of the Synod for the Pan-Amazon Region).

During this period, Pope Francis has included in his public discourses insistent references to the specific nature of the Church’s mission in the world. For example, the Holy Father has repeated numerous times that evangelization is not “proselytism”, and that the Church grows “by attraction” and by “witness” – a host of expressions all of which are oriented toward suggesting by association what is the dynamism of each apostolic work, and what its source can be.

Pope Francis speaks about all this, and much more, in the book-length interview entitled Without Him We Can Do Nothing: a Conversation about Being Missionaries in Today’s World. Here, Fides News Agency provides a few pre-publication excerpts.

Holy Father, you said that as a young man you wanted to go to Japan as a missionary. Can we say then that the Pope never became missionary?

I don’t know. I joined the Jesuits because I was struck by their missionary vocation, of always going to the frontiers. At the time I could not go to Japan. But I have always felt that to proclaim Jesus and His Gospel always involves a certain outgoingness and being on the move.

You always repeat: "A Church that is on the move". Many have picked up this expression, and sometimes it seems to have become a hackneyed slogan, used by a growing number of people who spend their time lecturing the Church on what she should or should not be.

"A Church on the move" is not a fashionable expression that I invented. It is Jesus’ command, who in the Gospel of Mark asks His followers to go into the whole world and preach the Gospel “to every creature”. The Church is either on the move or she is not Church. Either she evangelizes or she is not Church. If the Church is not on the move, she decays, she becomes something else.

What does a Church that does not evangelize and is not in movement become?

It becomes a spiritual association, a multinational that launches ethical and religious initiatives and messages. There is nothing wrong with that, but that is not the Church. This is the risk of any static organization in the Church. We end up taming Christ. You no longer bear witness to what Christ does, but speak on behalf of a certain idea of ​​Christ. An idea that you have appropriated and domesticated. You organize things, you become the little manager of ecclesial life, where everything happens according to an established plan, to be followed only according to instruction. But the encounter with Christ never happens. The encounter that touched your heart at the beginning doesn’t happen anymore.

Is mission itself an antidote to all this? Is the will and effort to “go out” on mission enough to avoid these distortions?

The mission, the "Church on the move", is not a program, an intention to be carried out by sheer force of will. It is Christ who makes the Church go out of herself. In the mission of evangelization, you move because the Holy Spirit pushes you, and brings you. And when you get there, you realize that He is already there, and is waiting for you. The Spirit of the Lord arrived first. He has already prepared the path for you, and is already at work.

In a meeting with the Pontifical Missionary Societies, you suggested that they read the Acts of the Apostles, as a habitual text to pray over. Why is it a narrative of the beginnings, rather than a “modern” strategic missionary manual?

The protagonist of the Acts of the Apostles is not the apostles. The protagonist is the Holy Spirit. The apostles are the first to recognize Him and testify to Him. When they communicate the decisions established by the Council of Jerusalem to the community in Antioch, they write: “We have decided, the Holy Spirit and us”. They realistically acknowledge that it was the Lord who daily added to their number “those who were saved”, rather than the persuasive efforts of men.

And is it the same today as it was back then? Has nothing changed?

The experience of the apostles is like a paradigm that is always valid. Just think of how things happen spontaneously in the Acts of the Apostles, without coercion. It is a human story, in which the disciples always arrive afterwards, they always arrive after the Holy Spirit has already acted. He prepares and works on hearts. He upsets their plans. It is he who accompanies them, guides them and comforts them in all the circumstances they find themselves living. When problems and persecutions come, the Holy Spirit works there too in an even more surprising way with His comfort, His consolations, as happens after the first martyrdom, that of Saint Stephen.

What happens next?

A time of persecution begins, and many disciples flee Jerusalem, going to Judea and Samaria. And there, while they are dispersed and fugitive, they begin to evangelize, though they are alone and without the Apostles who remained in Jerusalem. They are baptized and the Holy Spirit gives them apostolic courage. There we see for the first time that baptism is enough to become evangelizers. That’s what mission is. Mission is His work. There’s no point in getting agitated. There’s no need for us to get organized, no need to scream, no need for gimmicks or stratagems. All we need to do is ask to be able to repeat the experience today that makes us say, “We have decided, the Holy Spirit and us”.

And without this experience, what do the calls for missionary mobilization mean?

Without the Spirit, wanting to do mission becomes something else. It becomes, I would say, a plan to conquer, the pretext that we are conquering something. A religious, or perhaps an ideological conquest, perhaps carried out even with good intentions. But it’s another thing.

Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, you often repeat that the Church grows by attraction. What do you mean? Who attracts? Who is attracted?

Jesus says it in the Gospel of John, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself”. And in the same Gospel, he also says: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him”. The Church has always recognized that this is the proper form of every movement that brings us closer to Jesus and the Gospel. It is not a conviction, a rationalization, it’s not taking a position; not a pressure, or a constraint. It is always an attraction. The Prophet Jeremiah already said “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped”. And this applies to the apostles, to the missionaries, and to their work.

How does what you have just described take place?

The Lord's mandate to go out and evangelize comes from within, by falling in love, by loving attraction. One does not follow Christ, and even less become an evangelizer, because of a decision made sitting around a table, or by one’s own activism. Even missionary thrust can be fruitful only if it takes place within this attraction, and transmits it to others.

What is the meaning of these words with respect to the mission and the proclamation of the Gospel?

It means that if you have been attracted by Christ, if you move and do things because you are attracted by Christ, others will notice it without effort. There is no need to prove it, let alone flaunt it. Instead, anyone who thinks he or she is the protagonist or manager of the mission, with all the best intentions and declarations of purpose, often ends up attracting no one.

In the Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii gaudium, you recognize that all this can "can cause us to feel disoriented". It's like those who dive into the ocean not knowing what they will find. What did you want to suggest with this image? Do these words also concern mission?

Mission is not a tried and tested company plan. Neither is it a public spectacle organized to flaunt how many people are associated with it thanks to our marketing. The Holy Spirit works as He wills, when He wills and where He wills. And this can lead to "vertigo". Yet the high point of freedom rests precisely in this letting oneself be carried by the Spirit, renouncing the need to calculate and control everything. This is precisely how we imitate Christ Himself, who in the mystery of His Resurrection learned to rest in the tenderness of the Father’s embrace. Mission’s mysterious fruitfulness does not consist in our intentions, in our methods, in our impulses and in our initiatives, but rests precisely in this "vertigo": the "vertigo" we perceive when we hear Jesus’ words: “without me you can do nothing”.

You also often repeat that the Church grows “by witnessing”. What are you trying to suggest by insisting on this?

The fact that attraction makes us witnesses. This witness testifies to what the work of Christ and His Spirit have really accomplished in our life. After His Resurrection, it is Christ himself who reveals Himself to the apostles. It is He who makes them witnesses. In addition, this witness is not self-serving. We are witnesses to the Lord’s works.

Something else you repeat often, in this case in a negative sense: the Church does not grow through proselytizing, and the mission of the Church is not proselytism. Why do you insist on this so much? Is it to maintain good relations with other Churches and dialogue with other religious traditions?

The problem with proselytism is not only the fact that it contradicts the ecumenical journey and interreligious dialogue. There is proselytism wherever there is the idea of ​​making the Church grow by putting less emphasis on this attraction on the part of Christ and the work of the Spirit, focusing everything on any type of "wise discourse". Therefore, proselytism first of all cuts out Christ Himself and the Holy Spirit from the mission, even when we claim to speak and act nominally in Christ’s name. Proselytism is always violent by nature, even when it is hidden or exercised with white gloves. It does not tolerate the freedom and graciousness with which faith can be transmitted from person to person by grace. This is why proselytism is not only something of the past, of bygone colonialist times, or conversions forced or bought with the promise of material advantages. Proselytism can also exist today even in parishes, communities, movements, religious congregations.

So what does it mean to evangelize?

To evangelize means delivering Christ's own testimony in simple and precise words, like the apostles did. But there is no need to invent persuasive discourses. The proclamation of the Gospel can even be whispered, but it always passes through the overwhelming power of the scandal of the cross. And it has always followed the path indicated in the letter of the Apostle Peter, which consists in simply "providing reasons" of one’s hope to others, a hope that remains a scandal and foolishness in the eyes of the world.

How do we recognize a Christian "missionary"?

A distinctive feature is that of acting as facilitators, and not as controllers of the faith. Facilitating, making easy, without us placing obstacles to Jesus' desire to embrace everyone, to heal everyone, to save everyone, not being selective, not imposing "pastoral tariffs", not playing the part of the guard at the door controlling who has the right to enter. I remember parish priests and communities in Buenos Aires who set up many initiatives to facilitate access to baptism. In the last few years, they realized the number was growing of those not being baptized for various reasons, even sociological ones, and they wanted to remind everyone that being baptized is something simple, that everyone can request it, for themselves and for their own children. The path taken by those parish priests and those communities had one objective: not to add burdens, not to make claims, to remove any cultural, psychological or practical difficulties that could push people to postpone or drop the intention to baptize their own children.

In America, at the beginning of evangelization, missionaries discussed who was "worthy" to receive baptism. How did those disputes end?

Pope Paul III rejected the theories of those who claimed that the Indians were by nature "incapable" of accepting the Gospel and confirmed the choice of those who facilitated their baptism. They seem to be things of the past, yet even now there are circles and sectors that present themselves as ilustrados [enlightened], and even sequester the proclamation of the Gospel through their distorted reasoning that divide the world between "civilized" and "barbaric". What irritates them and makes them angry is the idea that the Lord might have a predilection for many cabecitas negras [a derogatory term]. They consider a large part of the human family as if they were a lower class entity, unable to achieve decent levels in spiritual and intellectual life according to their standards. On this basis, contempt can develop for people considered to be second rate. All this also emerged during the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon.

Some tend to drive a wedge between the transparent proclamation of the faith and social work. They say that we must not reduce mission to a type of social activity. Is that a legitimate concern?

Everything that is within the scope of the Beatitudes and the works of mercy is in agreement with mission, is already proclamation, is already mission. The Church is not an NGO, the Church is something else. But the Church is also a field hospital, where everyone is welcome, as they are, where everyone’s wounds are healed. And this is part of her mission. Everything depends on the love that moves the heart of those who do things. If a missionary helps dig a well in Mozambique because he is aware that those he baptizes and evangelizes need it, how can it be said that that work is separate from evangelization?

Today what are the new focusses and sensitivities to put into practice in the processes aimed at making evangelization fruitful in the various social and cultural contexts?

Christianity does not embrace only one cultural model. As John Paul II acknowledged, “while remaining completely true to itself, with unswerving fidelity to the proclamation of the Gospel and the tradition of the Church, Christianity will also reflect the different faces of the cultures and peoples in which it is received and takes root”. The Holy Spirit embellishes the Church, with the new languages of persons and communities that embrace the Gospel. Thus the Church, taking up the values ​​of different cultures, becomes “sponsa ornate monilibus suis”, “the bride  bedecked with her jewels”, of which the Prophet Isaiah speaks. It is true that some cultures have been closely linked to the preaching of the Gospel and to the development of Christian thought. But in the period we are living, it becomes even more urgent to bear in mind that the revealed message is not identified with a particular culture. And when meeting new cultures, or cultures that have not accepted the Christian proclamation, we must not try to impose a determined cultural form together with the evangelical proposition. Today, in missionary work as well, it is even more important not to carry heavy baggage.

Mission and martyrdom. You have often recalled the intimate bond uniting these two realities.

In Christian life the reality of martyrdom and evangelization both have the same origin, the same source: when the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit gives strength, courage and consolation. Martyrdom is the maximum expression of the recognition of and the testimony rendered to Christ, which represents the fulfillment of mission, of apostolic work. I always think of the Coptic brothers slaughtered in Libya, who quietly uttered Jesus’ name while they were being beheaded. I think of Saint Mother Teresa’s Sisters murdered in Yemen, while they were taking care of Muslim patients in a home for disabled elderly people. The sisters were wearing work aprons over their religious habits when they were killed. They are all victors, not "victims". And their martyrdom, to the point of the shedding of blood, illuminates the martyrdom that everyone can suffer in everyday life, with the witness rendered to Christ every day. It’s what can be observed when visiting old missionaries in their nursing homes. They are often battered by the life they have had. A missionary told me that many of them lose their memories and no longer remember anything about the good they did. "But it does not matter", he told me, "because the Lord remembers it very well".