Tuesday, May 29, 2007

"Brother" Andre Marie's mother issues an apologia...

On Friday, April 20, 2007, I wrote a post at this Blog in which I said: "On a related note, 'Brother' Andre Marie of the Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, has been photographed wearing a biretta. As this article explains: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biretta, the biretta has traditionally been worn by members of the Catholic clergy or in some instances seminarians. Has 'Brother' Andre Marie been passing himself off as a Roman Catholic priest or seminarian? Does this have anything to do with a previous announcement (made in the SBC's newsletter Mancipia) that the SBC intended to have 'Brother' Andre Marie ordained without canonical permission - dimissorial letters?"



This was an entirely legitimate question. Especially since 'Brother' Francis (in the announcement referred to above) had said:



"Since the death of Father Feeney, we have never had a cleric as a religious member of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, circumstances in the Church [read their own disobedience to Church teaching and authority] making it virtually impossible to attain that goal. Regardless of this, it was the intention of our Founder to have priests in our First Order, and we have never abandoned that desire...Years of searching for priests to assist us have turned up no long-term solution.... The demands of serving our community call for a priest convinced of our position and goals. Otherwise, longevity is not likely. The most obvious question is how will it be done? We have long prayed for this goal, and sought to achieve it through proper canonical channels. Knowing how saturated the hierarchy is with modernism - from Rome on down - we have concluded that passage through these channels is impossible without compromising our Crusade. We are forced to take extraordinary measures to procure ordination. To be precise, we would be seeking ordination without dimissorial letters, the canonical permission granted by a diocesan bishop or other prelate for a man to be ordained. Is this action justified? In a word: Yes..."



Just this morning, a Catholic lay woman forwarded me an email which was apparently written by "Brother" Andre Marie's mother, Mrs. Eleonore Villarrubia, in which she wrote in part:




"Dear Ms. Duclos,

I am sorry that you have publicly referred to Brother Andre as a "con man." He may be many things some folks don't like, but he is the most honest and open person I know. You seem to know something about the workings of Chruch procedure. (Most of the ignoramouses who write to this blog [Keene Sentinel Talkback, My Note] criticising St. Benedict Center have no idea what a dismissorial letter is.) Yes, it is true that St. Benedict Center functions without the Bishop's permission. Brother Andre and Brother Francis have seen the Bishop at least once, possibly twice, to present their case. Brother Andre tries to stay in touch with the Bishop to keep him informed of the situation in Richmond. Brother has petitioned the Bishop for regularization and recognition, but he ignores us.

Surely, as a Catholic, you are aware of the terrible crisis in the modern Catholic Church - diminishing vocations, silly music, no reverence, priests who do not believe in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist, nuns who have become witches, Catholic Schools who do not teach Catholicism. The list is endless. Many good Catholics are left scratching their heads in the New Church of NICE.

St. Benedict Center adheres to Catholic dogma as it has been taught for two millenia. Vatican II did not change doctrine. NO ONE can change doctrine. Vatican II was merely a pastoral council, not a doctrinal council. This is history and fact. The changes were brought about by liberal churchmen who undermined the church from within. This, too, is history.

The fact is, that St. Benedict Center is Catholic, functioning independently as many Traditional Catholic groups do in this time of trial. Brother Andre is an ordained deacon, not by the local bishop, but ordained nevertheless. I happened to be present at the ordination. In the pictures you see on the website, he is wearing the vestments of a DEACON, not a priest, as some of our detractors have claimed (again, showing their ignorance).... Yes, there is a hate group in Richmond, but it is not St. Benedict Center, Mrs. Duclos; it is our few, but very vocal opponents in this town who are atheists, agnostics, and who knows what else who fear a small, powerless (except for God's grace), poor little independent Catholic monastery.."


"Brother" Andre is an ordained deacon? How so? Once again, Canon 1015 of the Code of Canon Law states that: "Each candidate is to be ordained to the presbyterate or the diaconate by his own bishop or with legitimate dimissorial letters from him." Therefore, it would appear that Mrs. Villarrubia isn't all that familiar with "the workings of Church procedure."


This was also the case, of course, under the previous Code of Canon Law. In his classic work Moral Theology, Fr. Heribert Jone writes that:



"A suspension not reserved is incurred by: (b) One who is maliciously ordained without dimissorials or with falsified ones.." (Canon 2374). (Moral Theology, p. 306).

This is very serious. I fully understand that Mrs. Villarrubia wants to defend her son's actions. But his actions are indefensible. And her email epitomizes that lack of charity and arrogance which has come to define the SBC cult. In her email, Mrs. Villarrubia refers to "chruch procedure" (read Church procedure) and to "ignoramouses" (her plural of the word ignoramus) who have "no idea what a dismissorial (the word is dimissorial) letter is."

But does Mrs. Villarrubia possess an adequate understanding of what a dimissorial letter is? It would seem that she does not.


Bill Maher's anti-Christian bias

I received this email from the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association this morning:



Bill Maher Mocks Christianity and Catholics Again

Send an e-mail to HBO Chairman Chris Albrecht and Bill Maher.

Dear Paul,

The anti-Christian bigotry gets more and more sickening. Bill Maher, host of the talk show "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO, recently showed the hatred Maher and the other Hollywood types have for Christianity and Christians.Just three days after Rev. Jerry Falwell's death, Maher began his weekly HBO program with a verbal assault on Rev. Falwell and then escalated into a vicious attack on Christianity in general and Catholics in particular.Maher: "We weren’t having sex, officer. I was performing a very private Mass, here in my car. I was letting my rod and staff comfort him. Take this and eat of it, for this is my roommate Barry...and for all those who believe there is a special place for you in Kevin."Please click here for earlier comments of Mr. Maher calling Christians crazy.Time-Warner, owner of HBO, issued no apology for the on-air explicit homosexual mockery of Scripture and Catholic theology. Neither did the mainstream media bring it to the public’s attention as they did with Don Imus. For the mainstream media, Christians are the only religious group in America against whom such bigotry is allowed.

Take Action

Send the e-mail to HBO Chairman Chris Albrecht and Bill Maher.

Forward this e-mail to your Christian friends to help them better understand the bigotry against Christ and Christians in the mainstream media.

Hopefully, you do not subscribe to HBO. If you do, please cancel your subscription.

Click Here to Send Your Letter Now!

Monday, May 28, 2007


We Shall Keep the Faith

by Moina Michael,
November 1918

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet - to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith With All who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.
And now the Torch and Poppy Red

We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.
DUTY HONOR COUNTRY



General Douglas MacArthur's Farewell Speech
Given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point
May 12, 1962


General Westmoreland, General Groves, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps. As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" and when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place, have you ever been there before?"

No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this, coming from a profession I have served so long and a people I have loved so well. It fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily for a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code - the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the meaning of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always.

"Duty," "Honor," "Country" - those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you want to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?

Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.
But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.

In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.

From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs of the glee club, in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light.

And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.

Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory - always victory, always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of Duty, Honor, Country.

The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong. The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training - sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him. However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country, is the noblest development of mankind.

You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres and missiles marked the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind - the chapter of the space age. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a greater, a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; of purifying sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.

And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; but you are the ones who are trained to fight.

Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.

Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.

Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government. Whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should be.

These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.

The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished - tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.

Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.


I bid you farewell.

Friday, May 25, 2007




41!


Today is my birthday. And I am 41 years young. I share a birthday with St. Padre Pio. And so I would like to share the following prayer:



A Prayer to Padre Pio


Beloved Padre Pio, today I come to add my prayer to the thousands of prayers offered to you every day by those who love and venerate you. They ask for cures and healings, earthly and spiritual blessings, and peace for body and mind. And because of your friendship with the Lord, he heals those you ask to be healed, and forgives those you forgive.


Through your visible wounds of the Cross, which you bore for 50 years, you were chosen in our time to glorify the crucified Jesus. Because the Cross has been replaced by other symbols, please help us to bring it back in our midst, for we acknowledge it is the only true sign of salvation.


As we lovingly recall the wounds that pierced your hands, feet and side, we not only remember the blood you shed in pain, but your smile, and the invisible halo of sweet smelling flowers that surrounded your presence, the perfume of sanctity.


Padre Pio, may the healings of the sick become the testimony that the Lord has invited you to join the holy company of Saints. In your kindness, please help me with my own special request: (mention here your petition, and make the sign of the Cross).


Bless me and my loved ones. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.


Amen.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Pope John Paul II on Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus....

"The Council speaks of membership in the Church for Christians and of being related to the Church for non-Christian believers in God, for people of (cf. Lumen Gentium 15-16). Both these dimensions are important for salvation, and each one possesses varying levels. People are saved through the Church, they are saved in the Church, but they always are saved by the grace of Christ. Besides formal membership in the Church, the sphere of salvation can also include other forms of relation to the Church. Paul VI expressed this same teaching in his first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, when he spoke of the various circles of the dialogue of salvation (cf. Ecclesiam Suam 101-117), which are the same as those indicated by the Council as the spheres of membership in and of relation to the Church. This is the authentic meaning of the well-known statement 'Outside the Church there is no salvation.'" (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, pp. 140-141).

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

There is no doubt about it. We are witnessing an increase in disasters: physical, economic, political and religious. We are witnessing sad divisions within the Church and a general corruption of morals, most notably in the areas of sex, marriage and family life. There is a wide-scale increase in drug use, alcoholism, violent crime, disbelief and atheism. These are signs of the times pointing toward chastisement. The world is sick. Men have become weary of striving to be men. In 1926, Oswald Spengler issued a warning to the Western Nations, a warning which was ignored:

"You are dying. I see in you all the characteristic stigma of decay. I can prove that your great wealth and your great poverty, your capitalism and your socialism, your wars and your revolutions, your atheism and your pessimism and your cynicism, your immorality, your broken-down marriages, your birth-control, that is bleeding you from the bottom and killing you off at the top in your brains - can prove to you that these were characteristic marks of the dying ages of ancient states - Alexandria and Greece and neurotic Rome." (Decline of the West, London: Allen & Unwin, 1932).

Watch and pray.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Memorare to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Remember, O most kind Jesus, that none who have had recourse to Your Sacred Heart, implored its assistance, or called for mercy, have ever been abandoned. Filled, and animated by this same confidence, O divine Heart, Ruler of all hearts, I fly to You, and oppressed beneath the weight of my sins, I prostrate myself before You. Despise not Your unworthy child, but grant me, I pray, an entrance into Your Sacred Heart. Sustain me in all my combats and be with me now, and at all times, but especially in the hour of my death. 0 gracious Jesus! 0 amiable Jesus! 0 loving Jesus!

[Reparation for the neglect of the majority of Catholics who have left our Lord alone and abandoned on the altar, never visited, is a key feature of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Following are a number of very beautiful Acts of Reparation to the Sacred Heart, not generally known, which can form a part of one's daily prayer life, particularly when before the Blessed Sacrament.]

Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

O Jesus, divine Savior, deign to cast a look of mercy upon Your children, who assemble in the same spirit of faith, reparation, and love, and come to deplore their own infidelities, and those of all poor sinners, their brethren.
May we touch Your divine Heart by the unanimous and solemn promises we are about to make and obtain mercy for ourselves, for the world, and for all who are so unhappy as not to love You. We all promise that for the future:
For the forgetfulness and ingratitude of men, *(We will console you O Lord)

For the way You are deserted in Your holy tabernacle,
For the crimes of sinners,
For the hatred of the impious,
For the blasphemies uttered against You,
For the sacrileges that profane Your Sacrament of Love,
For the outrages against Your divinity,
For the injuries of which You are the adorable Victim,
For the coldness of the greater part of your children,
For the contempt of your loving invitation,
For the infidelity of those who called themselves Your friends,
For the abuse of Your grace,
For our own unfaithfulness,
For the incomprehensible hardness of our hearts,
For our long delay in loving You,
For our tepidity in Your holy service,
For Your bitter sadness at the loss of souls,
For Your long waiting at the door of our hearts,
For the heartless scorn that grieves You,
For Your loving sighs,
For Your loving tears,
For Your loving imprisonment,
For Your loving death,*
We will console you, 0 Lord

Let us pray

0 Jesus! divine Savior, from whose Heart comes forth this bitter complaint, "I looked for one that would comfort me, and I found none," graciously accept the feeble consolation we offer You, and aid us so powerfully by your grace, that we may, for the time to come, shun more and more all that can displease You, and prove ourselves in everything, and everywhere, and forever Your most faithful and devoted servants. We ask it through Your Sacred Heart, O Lord, who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit one God, world without end. Amen.

Traditional Prayer of Reparation

Most loving Jesus, when I consider your tender heart and see it full of mercy and tenderness toward sinners, my own heart is filled with joy and confidence that I shall be so kindly welcomed by You. Unfortunately, how many times have I sinned! But now, with Peter and with Magdalene, I weep for my sins and detest them because they offend You, infinite Goodness. Mercifully grant me pardon for them all; and let me die rather than offend You again; at least let me live only to love You in return. Amen. (Raccolta n. 255)

Traditional Prayer of Reparation

My loving Jesus, out of the grateful love I bear you, and to make reparation for my unfaithfulness to grace, I give You my heart, and I consecrate myself wholly to You; and with Your help I purpose to sin no more. Amen. (Raccolta, n. 260)

Traditional Prayer of Reparation from the Irish

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me.O God, forgive me for all the sins of my life;The sins of my youth and the sins of my age,The sins of my body and the sins of my soul,The sins I have confessed and the sins I have forgotten,The sins against others in thought, word, and deed, My sins of omission.0, my God, I am sorry for all my sins, because you are so good; And I will not sin again with the help of God.God be merciful to me, a sinner.Divine Heart of Jesus, convert sinners, save the dying, Deliver the holy souls in purgatory.

Contemporary Prayer of Reparation

Lord Jesus, who loves us so much: we have not loved You as we easily might have, nor served You enough in our neighbor as we could have. We are truly sorry for this unfaithful love and promise to do better in the future. Because You accept everything that we do in God's grace, when done in a spirit of love and obedience, as reparation, we now offer You and Your Heart our every thought, word, deed, and suffering in union with Your own sufferings. Join our Reparation to that which You ceaselessly offer to the Father in the Mass and in the silence of the tabernacle. Help us to suffer lovingly and to aid those who suffer. Make Your redemptive love fruitful in the hearts of all those who will die today, so that all of us may love You for ever in heaven. Amen.

Daily Prayer to the Sacred Heart

0 Sacred Heart of Jesus, mercifully accept the prayer which I now make to You for help in the moment of my death, when at its approach all my senses shall fail me.
When, therefore, 0 kind and merciful Jesus, my weary and downcast eyes can no longer look up to You, be mindful of the loving gaze which I now turn to You, and have mercy on me, a sinner.


When my parched lips can no longer kiss your most sacred wounds, remember that hour those kisses which I now imprint on You, and have mercy on me, a sinner.

When my cold hands can no longer embrace Your cross, forget not the affection with which I embrace it now, and have mercy upon me, a sinner. When my swollen and lifeless tongue can no longer speak, remember that I called upon You now, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, to you I commend my soul.

0 Sacred Heart of Jesus, filled with infinite love, broken by my ingratitude and pierced by my many sins and yet loving you still, accept this act of consecration that I make to You of all that I am and all that I have. Take every faculty of my soul and body, draw me day by day near and nearer to Your Sacred Heart, and there, as I can bear the lesson, teach me Your blessed way.
0 Sacred Heart of Jesus, Incarnate Son of God, who for our salvation did vouchsafe to be born in a stable, to pass Your life in poverty, trials, and misery, and to die amid the sufferings of the cross, I entreat You, in the hour of my death to say to Your divine Father, "Father forgive Him"; Say to my soul, "This day you to shall be with me in Paradise." My God, my God forsake me not in that hour. "I thirst"-truly, my God, my soul thirsts after You, who are the fountain of living waters. My life passes like a shadow; yet a little while and all will be consummated. Wherefore, my adorable Savior from this moment, and for all eternity, "into your hands I commend my spirit." Lord Jesus, receive my soul.


O Queen of the Holy Rosary and most kind and loving Mother of Perpetual Help, in memory of your Seven Sorrows, intercede for us with your divine Son and beg Him, in honor of His precious blood and sacred passion and death upon the cross, to forgive our sins and grant us the grace of a holy and happy death. Amen. (Say one Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be.)

Prayer for the Forgiveness of Daily Neglects

Eternal Father, I offer the Sacred Heart of Jesus with all its love, all its sufferings of and all its merits:

First-To expiate all the sins I have committed this day and during all my life. (Glory Be)

Second-To purify the good I have done badly this day and during all my life. (Glory Be.)

Third-To supply for the good I ought to have done and I have neglected this day and during all my life. (Glory Be.)

0 Sacred Heart of Jesus, I Place My Trust in Thee


O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place my trust in Thee,Whatever may befall me, Lord, though dark the hour may be;In all my woes, in all my joys, though nought but grief I see,O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place my trust in Thee.

When those I loved have passed away, and I am sore distressed,0 Sacred Heart of Jesus, I fly toThee for rest.In all my trials, great or small, my confidence shall beUnshaken as I cry, dear Lord, I place my trust in Thee.


This is my one sweet prayer, dear Lord, my faith, my trust, my love, But most of all in that last hour, when death points up above,O sweet Savior, may Thy face smile on my soul all free. Oh may I cry with rapturous love, I've placed my trust in Thee.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Three kinds of slavery

In his classic work The Secret of Mary, St. Louis Marie de Montfort explains that, "..there are three kinds of slavery. There is, first, a slavery based on nature. All men, good and bad alike, are slaves of God in this sense. The second is a slavery of compulsion. The devils and the damned are slaves of God in this second sense. The third is a slavery of love and free choice. This is the kind chosen by one who consecrates himself to God through Mary, and this is the most perfect way for us human beings to give ourselves to God, our Creator." (The Secret of Mary, No. 32, Montfort Publications, p. 271).

And, in The Love of Eternal Wisdom, Montfort says, "For exterior and voluntary mortification to be profitable, it must be accompanied by the mortifying of the judgment and the will through holy obedience, because without this obedience all mortification is spoiled by self-will and often becomes more pleasing to the devil than to God...By holy obedience we do away with self-love, which spoils everything; by obedience the smallest of our actions become meritorious. It protects us from illusions of the devil, enables us to overcome our enemies, and brings us surely, as though while sleeping, into the harbor of salvation." (The Love of Eternal Wisdom, No. 202, Montfort Publications, p. 106).

For Montfort then, slavery to the Immaculate Heart of Mary must be characterized by holy obedience. This great marian saint always remained obedient to his superiors. In what became known as the Pontchateau Affair: www.montfort.org/English/LifeLM.htm, Montfort spent an entire year building a Calvary scene only to be ordered by his Bishop to tear it down. He immediately obeyed.

For Montfort, disobedience to a Bishop of Christ's Church would have been unthinkable. This point is lost on a small group of cultists based in Richmond, New Hampshire who call themselves the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This group operates within the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire without the permission of the local Bishop - The Most Rev. John B. McCormack - and is not in union with the Diocese. They oppose the Magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church regarding the correct interpretation of the Dogma: Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus while engaging in anti-Semitism. They have also stated their intention (publically) of seeking ordination for one of their members without dimissorial letters - canonical permission.

Montfort would have had nothing to do with such a work. He would have seen it as a kind of slavery, but not to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But rather to belial. For Montfort, slavery to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was defined by love and obedience. And there is nothing loving about anti-Semitism. There is nothing of obedience in contradicting the teaching of the Church and operating without the permission of one's Bishop.

Signs

Friday, May 04, 2007

The Saint Benedict Center cult will be holding its annual conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nashua, New Hampshire. Among the guest speakers scheduled is Mr. John Sharpe. My friend at Fringe Watch has provided some background on Mr. Sharpe:
http://fringewatcher.blogspot.com/2005/12/john-sharpes-legion-of-st-louis.html

Paul.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Founders Message: Southern Poverty Law Center

Small wonder that residents of Richmond, New Hampshire - and beyond - are so concerned about the Saint Benedict Center cult.
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