Old Liberal Cardinal Just Won't Go Away

Edit: there's almost complete silence on this, the Puerto Rican Archbishop who won't go away, either, among other things, but there is no shortage of senior clergy who won't do everyone a favor and step down. They seem to get passed over by the usual suspects, especially when there are real Catholics who can be attacked for not being in tune with today's "Church".

[La Times] The next day, a church spokesman said Mahony was "reducing his public profile" voluntarily. The cardinal had taken it upon himself to cancel appearances, including confirmations, the spokesman said.

But at the very same hour, Mahony was mounting a high-profile defense. In an extraordinary open letter to Gomez posted on his blog, the cardinal struck an aggrieved tone. "Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices, or procedures" for abuse cases, he wrote.

Gomez subsequently released a statement he said was designed to clear up "confusion" in the media: "Cardinal Mahony has all the prerogatives and privileges of his standing as a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church." [Why?]

Link to LA Times...

Here's an article by Charles Coulombe, a longtime foe of Cardinal Mahony in an piece entitled Cardinal Unbound.

[New Oxford Review] All the world, Catholic and otherwise, was agog at the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI and is keen to find out where Pope Francis is going to lead us. His record as a Jesuit and Archbishop of Buenos Aires is being scoured, his every action carefully examined for clues. No doubt the forthcoming months and years will reveal all. But against the background music of that cosmic orchestra is heard the codetta of a tinny kazoo: the implicit criticisms of Benedict XVI made on Twitter by Roger Cardinal Mahony, Dowager Archbishop of Los Angeles. Here is a sampling from the cardinalatial bouquet:

“So long, Papal ermine and fancy lace! Welcome, simple cassock, and hopefully, ordinary black shoes! St. Francis must be overjoyed!”

“Mass with Pope Francis: moving from HIGH Church to LOW and humble Church! What a blessing that we are encountering Jesus without trappings!”
Link to NOR....

 He didn't have the grace to stay home from the Conclave, despite calls to do some from senior Church officials, so he's unlikely to shut up now.  For many, including Robert Keiser, the Cardinal is a possible sign for discontinuity, revolutionary change and adopting the sins of the modern age.

EWTN Personality Flies Into Anti-Semitic Tirade

Edit: people have been asking about what it is about EWTN that might make them anti-Semitic.  We suspect that it has to do with certain EWTN personalitys' demonic hatred for fellow Catholics who truly are Semites.  We shudder to think what these alleged champions of Catholicism at the Network Gone Wrong, would say of Arab Catholics who are not only Semites, but are suffering terribly in Palestine till this very day at the hands of the Israeli state.

Kevin O'Brien is an EWTN celebrity who is most well known for his portrayal of a profoundly disturbed fruitcake theology professor named Stanford Nutting who not only claims there is no truth, but is also deeply interested on punishing those students of his who believe there is.



Ironically, here he is in a real-time conversation on Facebook, seemingly his real self, Kevin O'Brien.  Unless he's lost his grasp of reality, and we suspect he has,  he presumably is not in character.   Art imitates life.  He has certainly taken it upon himself to defend a group of people that probably doesn't hold him in high regard (Israelis) and might be a little offended too at his misplaced zeal, but here he is.  The following is a discussion between Paul Moeller and Kevin O'Brien which took place in mid-April in a public forum, where Mr. O'Brien loses his composure and became verbally abusive and frankly, slanderous, and worst of all, anti-Semitic.

We've censured his bloopers but felt it was necessary to portray the kind of person EWTN has working for them.  Here he is denying the holocaust... of the Chinese at the hands of the Japanese during World War II:

• Paul Martin Moeller Unnamed 
  
  Kevin O'Brien: Well, I just shared your Kissinger quote from your FB wall. Good one. What do you object to in Simcha's article?
  
  Paul Martin Moeller: I think it is horrible.
  
  Kevin O'Brien: Yes, it's horrible. But funny.
  
  Paul Martin Moeller: I guess I'd ask what you like about it.
  
  Kevin O'Brien: Everything. Spot on. Now, Paul, stalking your FB page to try to find out who you are, this is an interesting post ... 
  “On Holocaust Remembrence Day, please remember:
  1. You are Catholic. You *are* Israel.
  2. 2. Christ was "the Holocaust".”
  Both 1 and 2 are true.
  
  Paul Martin Moeller : Absolutely.
  
  Kevin O'Brien: But ... WTF?
  
  Paul Martin Moeller: wtf what?
  
  Kevin O'Brien: I mean, is this not a way of denying the actual historical fact of the Holocaust of the Jews? On Holocaust Awareness Day? Of all days???
  
  Paul Martin Moeller: Is there a Nanking awareness day?

  April 12 at 1:51am · Edited · Like
• 

  Paul Martin Moeller Unnamed exFBfriend: "a Nanking" - what do you mean? Nanking?
  
  Paul Martin Moeller: Well, this is where it helps to know your history. Why isn't there a Nanking awareness day?
  
  Kevin O'Brien: F&^% you.
  
  Paul Martin Moeller : I thought you were Catholic.
  
  Kevin O'Brien : Jew hating bastard. You're out of here. I am Catholic, mother f*&^3er.
  
  Paul Martin Moeller: Falsely accusing someone is a sin.
  
  Paul Martin Moeller : When did I ever say I hated anyone? I don't. I have seven kids, a wife, and pray my Rosary every night. I say the chaplets of mercy every day.
  
  Kevin O'Brien: I'll say one for your miserable rotting soul.
  
  Kevin O'Brien: He's blocked.
  
  Paul Martin Moeller: He's copied the whole convo.
  
  Kevin O'Brien: This is a vile demon that stirs up this kind of stuff.

  April 12 at 1:47am · Unlike · 1
• 

  Paul Martin Moeller Paul Martin Moeller: And I'm going to post it to my page
  
  Kevin O'Brien: I thought you were blocked. Post it, s*&^% wad.

Vienna Elementary School Removes Crosses From Classrooms

For the firs ttime since the time of the National Socialists the cross of Christ is being banned from class rooms.

The cross as a sign of God is an eyesore to National Socialists, Communists, anti-clericals, 

Jacobins and Muslims. 

Totalitarian systems have always fought it [Image: koptisch.wordpress.com]

The Cross is Hung in All Classrooms

The Vienna school law rules that in obligatory schools, in which the majority of the students belong to the Christian communion, a cross may hang in all classes.

What is not ruled is, what will happen to the cross if this majority is no longer present, respectively if this is not in the entire school, or if it is still in the individual classes.

Finally, in Vienna the mother of a female student has successfully appealed for the suspension of the cross.  That was last seen during the time of the Nazis.

She feels  "religiously imposed upon".  Clearly she is unteachable and is still placed in grade school instruction.

The mother has been bullying the school for a long time, till it finally gave in.

The socialistically governed city of Vienna (at present through a coalition of Socialists and Leftist "greens") has already been noticeable through its abolition of St. Nicholas Feast in kindergartens.

Atheist Advance

The Jacobin Atheist-Association is pleased to say "religion is a private matter".  Here is another indication that further action will be undertaken.

The president of this Association is Heinz Oberhummer, whipmaster and organizer of the soon to be complaining anti-Church-"people's" desire: "As a humanist I am for service to the humanity, not for service to God."

Counterposition of Freedom

The FPÖ- Education Speaker in the National Assembly was clear in his statement:  "It is already astonishing, how an individual person with her minority opinion can boss around the majority. ... Normally such questions must be decided by the school council. That on the other hand a single person can force a silent majority, has nothing to do with civil courage, but with a failure of mature democracy.  It doesn't mean that it is only his will what is imposed, who screams the loudest."

Parallel Case in Lower Austria

The attacks on Catholicism are not new.

Already in 2009 a "self-described" lower Austrian atheist demanded the removal of a cross in a kindergarten.

He wanted that his daughter, "be raised to religious maturity without a religious denomination, but committed to be open to the world and pluralism,"  he waffled.

He would have his human rights violated through this.  Through Thanksgiving and the Feast of St. Nicholas, the atheistic upbringing of his daughter was made impossible, although the participation was not mandatory.

Therefore his daughter is really not "open to the world", but raised in anti-clericalism (and even preventing the acquisition of Catholicism by the other kindergartners).  Perhaps he probably wouldn't have a problem, that his daughter also learns about Christian holidays.

ÖVP for the Installation of Crosses

At that time the standing ÖVP State representative Johanna Mikl-Leitner (now Interior Minister) in a positive statement for the installation of crosses explained:  "It is a proposal which goes against the foundations of the West."

In March 2011 the Constitutional Court recognized the installation of crosses in a kindergarten as constitutional.

Initiative comes from publicly visible advertising?

If the Church haters are consistent, a referendum against advertising in public space may be expected in the near future - so that the children do not "patronized" but can be educated as "open to the world".

Link to kreuz.net...

Jesuits Have Also Newly Discovered the Old Mass

(Washington) The Jesuits are, as elsewhere, shadow and light together. What matters is what prevails in a given time. There were Jesuits who exchanged the cross for a Kalashnikov. The Jesuit University Gonzaga University in Washington state recently denied a Catholic youth organization recognition, because it accepts only Catholics. There is complete silence about esoteric Zen-inspired and Eneagramm hunters among the Jesuits.

In the Jesuit Order’s Church of Santo Stefano in San Remo (Liguria) end of 2007, the rector of the Church, himself a Jesuit, celebrated Mass in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite according to the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, was forbidden by the Order Provincial Father Francesco Tata SJ to say any more Masses. The Motu Proprio of Benedict XVI. will not be implemented in all of the churches in Italy assisted by the Jesuit Order, said the Provincial. At the end of 2012, the American Jesuit Father Bill Brennan was suspended and prohibited the exercise of his priesthood, after the 92-year-old “concelebrated Mass" with a self-proclaimed Catholic "priestess" woman "concelebrated Mass”.

But there are good initiatives that ensure a future for the Order. In the German-speaking area there also emerged from the Jesuit Order, a New Order called The Servants of Jesus et Mariae (Servi Jesus et Mariae, SJM), which has been founded for the celebration of the Mass of Saint Pius V and its founder, Father Andreas Hönisch himself was a Jesuit. We have already reported on the conversion of the chapel of the Jesuit High School of Tampa in Florida. In July 2012, Father William V. Blazek SJ of the Chicago-Detroit Province of the Order is one of 12 new priests of the Jesuit Order in the U.S. who has celebrated his first Mass in the extraordinary form of the Roman rite.

Last Sunday, Father Robert John Araujo, SJ celebrated Holy Mass in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite at the convent's Loyola University of Chicago, as reported by New Liturgical Movement.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi
 Image: New Liturgical Movement

Link to katholisches...

Church Desecration in France -- Consecrated Hosts stolen from the Tabernacle in Vienne

(Vienne) in the French city of Vienne, there was a sacrilege. The parish of Naintré the tabernacle was broken into during the night from Sunday to Monday. The perpetrator or perpetrators forced entry into the Church and stole two consecrated Hosts from the tabernacle which served for Eucharistic adoration. The perpetrators broke most of the radial parts of the monstrance. They then set off in search of other consecrated hosts in another tabernacle in a side chapel, in which, however, no Most Holy Sacrament of the altar was reserved.

The pastor lamented that the media have not even taken note of the blasphemous sacrilege. "If someone had laid hands on a mosque, all would have been screaming for a media scandal. But what of it when it happens to a Catholic Church? ", As L'Observatoire de la Christianophobia reported. Satanists are suspected as the perpetrators.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: L'Observatoire de la Christianophobia\
Translated: Tancred

 Link to Katholisches...

Holy Mass of Pius V in the Cathedral of Bologna -- Icon of Saint Luke

(Bologna) Every year in the northern Italian city of Bologna, the miraculous image of Our Lady is  seen all over the city  from near and far during a pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of St. Luke in the city's cathedral. The statue dates from  the middle of the 12th Century. Since that time, this devotion is located at  Colle della Guardia, on which now stands the great pilgrimage church.

The local tradition attributes the miraculous image to the evangelist Luke, whose remains are located in the nearby city of Padua in part. According to tradition, a pilgrim had called Theocles get the icon in Constantinople by the monks of St. Sophia, to bring them up to the Colle della Guardia. In Italy he learned that this hill is located near Bologna. He handed over the icon to the local bishop, who entrusted it to two sisters who lived in a small monastery on the hill.  In 1732 an imposing sanctuary was built on the hill.

The miraculous image corresponds to the representation of Maria Hodegetria, the Mother of God with Baby Jesus is shown as Guide. The Byzantine original was attributed to the evangelist Luke, however, was lost in 1453 when the city was conquered by the Turks. There are numerous other images of Mary modeled after the original,  the Roman miraculous image Salus Populi Romani in the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, in front of which  Pope Francis has already prayed twice, as the Black Madonna of Czestochowa and the no less famous Mother of God of Kazan, but also the miraculous image of Bologna.

The veneration of the image intensified from 1433. As a long-lasting rainfall endangered the harvest, people determined to bring the picture of grace in the city. On the day of the transfer, the rain stopped. Since then, the transfer takes place annually. In the 17th/18th Centuries there was a 3.7 kilometer long arcade to allow for its dry passage.

The stay  in St. Peter Cathedral of the Archdiocese runs from the eve of the Sixth Sunday after Easter (the fifth Sunday according to the old Liturgical Calendar) to the Solemnity of the Ascension which is celebrated in Italy on the following Sunday.

The week in which the miraculous image is located in the Cathedral, is always rich in liturgical events. Since 2011, one of the Holy Sacrifices of the Mass has been celebrated in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. It is celebrated by the priests Cardinal Archbishop Carlo Caffarra has entrusted with the care of the Mass location according to Summorum Pontificum.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Wikicommons / Archdiocese of Bologna

Translation: Tancred

Link to katholisches...

Careerists and Climbers Doing “Great Harm” to the Church

Edit: here’s the Pope asserting himself as Popes have in the past. Perhaps you’ll remember Pope Benedict’s statement about professional Catholics? We’ve known pro-Catholics in the recent past who’ve usurped the Pope’s authority, and even chosen to lay claim to the special minority status of certain protected groups for their own purposes. This lay apostolic magisterium doesn’t get to decide who’s Catholic, they have always struck as as being anti-Semites. Here’s an excerpt, thanks to Rorate Caeli:

CAREERISTS AND CLIMBERS DOING “GREAT HARM” TO THE CHURCH

Vatican City, 8 May 2013 (VIS) – “The men and women of the Church who are careerists and social climbers, who 'use' people, the Church, their brothers and sisters—whom they should be serving—as a springboard for their own personal interests and ambitions … are doing great harm to the Church.” This is what Pope Francis asserted in his address to the participants in the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) whom he received in audience this morning.

The pontiff spoke to the sisters of obedience, poverty, and chastity: “Obedience as listening to God's will, in the interior motion of the Holy Spirit authenticated by the Church, accepting that obedience also passes through human mediations. … Poverty, which teaches solidarity, sharing, and charity and which is also expressed in a soberness and joy of the essential, to put us on guard against the material idols that obscure the true meaning of life. Poverty, which is learned with the humble, the poor, the sick, and all those who are at the existential margins of life. Theoretical poverty doesn't do anything. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ in the humble, the poor, the sick, and in children.”

“And then chastity, as a precious charism, that enlarges the freedom of your gift to God and others with Christ's tenderness, mercy, and closeness. Chastity for the Kingdom of Heaven shows how affection has its place in mature freedom and becomes a sign of the future world, to make God's primacy shine forever. But, please, [make it] a 'fertile' chastity, which generates spiritual children in the Church. The consecrated are mothers: they must be mothers and not 'spinsters'! Forgive me if I talk like this but this maternity of consecrated life, this fruitfulness is important! May this joy of spiritual fruitfulness animate your existence. Be mothers, like the images of the Mother Mary and the Mother Church. You cannot understand Mary without her motherhood; you cannot understand the Church without her motherhood, and you are icons of Mary and of the Church.”

Link to VIS...

Shots Disturb Christians in Istanbul, Turkey

(Constantinople) At an Armenian church in Istanbul an unidentified man fired seven shots from his rifle on Sunday. Panic broke out among the believers who were gathered in the church for Easter.

The Turkish press reported that an intimidation campaign took place yesterday against Christian communities of Istanbul which concerns Surp Hovhannes about the Armenian Church. As the Armenian Archbishop Aram Atesyan said, the gunman threatened the Christians in the church, "You are too many!" As the Archbishop said, a young Armenian Christian was beaten on Sunday in front of another church in the nearby district Samatya. Other Christian communities of Istanbul were also victims of assault and intolerance in the past days.

In Atesehir a group of 40 people attacked the New Hope Lutheran Church on 27 April. They pelted the church with stones and smashed the stained glass windows. The next day, a group plundered the Greek Orthodox Church of Burgas Ada. All the incidents took place in Istanbul.

According to Archbishop Atesyan “with these attacks they want to stoke fear among the members of our communities” who in Turkey have been repeatedly victims of violence and discrimination in recent years. In 2006 the Catholic priest Andrea Santoro was murdered in Trabzon, in Malatya three Protestants in 2007 and 2010 in Antioch, the Catholic Bishop Padovese.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi Image: Christians in the East

Link to Katholisches...

Catholics Are Not Welcome at “Liturgy” Celebrating Homoheresy by Bishop Gumbleton

Edit: Gomorrah “Masses” in Detroit at evil IHM Sister college will continue indefinitely at present.

Jesuit Superior General Reduces the Jesuits to an NGO in his Recent Sermon

Edit: While the SSPX and other Traditionalist societies are growing, the Jesuits are not only scaling back their commitment to Catholicism, but they’re all scheduled to retire by 2018 in Spain.

(Madrid) What happened to the glorious order of the Jesuits, from the spiritual forces of God on earth, the Order to its founder, the former Spanish Captain Ignacio de Loyola, organized like an army that fought in close formation, and in which every soldier a lone fighter?

The Order was feared for centuries. But his mention in some circles sparked reactions, inferior to none in Catholic circles as Freemason saying goes.

What became of the Order, that won all countries in missions or won back to the Church those lost, and almost accomplished the Christianization of China and Japan?

Its spiritual power and thus its influence was so great that they had the mighty Bourbon rulers in their corner and not just because they met the economic interests of a few grandees, stood in the way with their Indian Reductions and their defense of the dignity of the Indians. The Order survived its ban from 1773 to 1814 in the underground, existing openly only in Orthodox Russia.

The formation of a Jesuit takes much longer than in other orders. And Yet!

The signs of decay and exhaustion leaves the largest Catholic religious organization to shrink more and more. A proverb says: There is nothing, where at least one Jesuit doesn’t have his fingers in the game. So the Jesuits were heralded and outstanding defenders of the Catholic faith, but for some decades there is hardly a bizarre byway, where even the Jesuit would not tread.

The situation in Spain, the heartland of the Order, is dramatic. In 2014, the five historical religious provinces of Spain are to be merged into a single province. Currently in Spain there are still 1,393 Jesuits, a large number, but their average age is 70. Many can not or only exercise their office to a very limited extent. In five years, the Order in Spain reaching the age limit of 75 years and will probably number less than 1000 members. 2018 will force the Order to that magical retirement threshold introduced by Pope Paul VI..

The Order is leaderless. The great absentee, the "Black Pope" Adolfo Nicolas Pachon, who is the 30th General of the Order since 2008 directs the fortunes of the Society of Jesus. He seems no less absent, as God the great absentee in Nicolas' recent sermon last Sunday in Valladolid (full text) is.

According to the General’s recent sermon pdf, the Order of the Jesuits is reduced to a humanitarian NGO, whose purpose is to help others, but not to lead them to God. This is remarkable, because Pope Francis, who joined the Jesuit Order himself, has repeatedly rejected the Church's role as an NGO. In his order, the words of the Pope, have not reached the General and his fellow brothers. For Father Nicolas reduces the spiritual life to an absolute minimum, but rather a life in which everyone actually does what he wants, because everything is inspired by God somehow.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi Image: La cigüeña de la torre Translation: Tancred

Link to source katholisches…

AMGD

Bishop Fellay Consecrates New Church in Berlin

Berlin (Kathnews). As the Society of St. Pius X. reports on its website, Bishop Bernard Fellay (SSPX) will consecate the Church of St. Peter on the 25th May 2013 in Berlin. It's located in the urban district of Berlin-Wilmersdorf.  The church was built in 2002-2005.  In the simple appearance of Saint Peter, it draws on the eclectic-historicist design. In its interior, the four-bay barrel-vaulted nave surprises with its magnificent Renaissance style, embodied in forms of wall and ceiling painting by the church painter Ralf Lürig. A special feature is the 1900's pipe organ by the English organ builder Albert Keates (1862-1950) with 16 sounding registers a complement of two manuals (keyboards), according to  pius.info.

Photo: St. Peter in Berlin-Wilmersdorf -
Image source: Wikipedia / Bodo Kubrak

Kathnews...

Patriarch of Moscow Positive About Ecumenical Course with Rome

Moscow Patriarch Kyrill I on "gay marriage": In a consumer society no one wants to relinquish his vice: "On the contrary, vice is legalized and legitimized."

Moscow (kath.net/KNA) The Moscow Patriarch Kyrill I. is expressed himself hopefully for ecumenical collaboration.  The Russian Orthodox Church is in "open dialog with the Roman Catholic Church" and hopes, that this dialog will continue to develop together with the Pope, said the Patriarch in a television interview on Orthodox Easter.

Patriarch Kyrill stressed the positive development already begun under Benedict XVI. He hopes that this trend will continue and deepen with Francis.  The new Pope is "open to social problems and sensitive to social injustice."

Under Benedict XVI. (2005-2013) relations are to have essentially improved between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, because it was decided, to put aside some "extravagant projects", said the Patriarch with a view to an earlier proposed visit to Moscow.  There is a common challenge for both churches.

As for so-called gay marriage, Kyrill I said, in the consumer culture no one wants to give up his vices: "On the contrary, vices will be legalized and legitimized."  All this leads to a "destruction of personality" and to possible economic, financial, political or ecological crises.  The enormous protest in Paris against "gay marriage" had been a "joyous surprise", said the Patriarch.  He had not expected such a powerful, religiously motivated protest.

Link...

The Swiss Guard Swears its Oath on the Fateful 6th of May

The Saddest Memorial for the Fairest
 and Bravest Flower of Swiss  Manhood

Edit: tradition endures through the ages as they stand watch on the ramparts of the Vatican. The Swiss Guards have a long and illustrious battle history, whether it was dying to the man defending the King of France during the French Revolution, fighting to hold Lutheran Landskenechts back long enough for the Pope to escape, or keeping the revolutionary mob from laying hands on Pius IX, they’ve loyally and ever acquitted themselves valiantly in the defense of the Church and the anointed heads of kings. Today, they will swear their oath to a grateful Pope Francis.

 Each year on May 6th, the Swiss Guard commemorates the sacrifice of 147 soldiers who died defending Pope Clement VII during the “Sack of Rome,” in 1527.   Here’s the oath they swear:

"I swear I will faithfully, loyally and honourably serve the Supreme Pontiff Francis and his legitimate successors, and also dedicate myself to them with all my strength, sacrificing if necessary also my life to defend them. I assume this same commitment with regard to the Sacred College of Cardinals whenever the See is vacant.

Furthermore I promise to the Commanding Captain and my other superiors, respect, fidelity and obedience. This I swear! May God and our Holy Patrons assist me!”

Then one by one the new recruits are called by name. Each one advances alone, and with his left hand he grasps the Guarďs standard, holding high his right hand with three fingers open, as a symbol of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he confirms the oath:

"I, . . ., swear I will observe faithfully, loyally and honourably all that has now been read out to me! May God and his saints assist me!”

  Source... at Vatican Radio.

Pictorial Fragment of Indians in Vatican Painting

Edit: Silvia Poggoli never loses n opportunity to attack the Church. The black legends surrounding the pontificate of Alexander VI is a fairly outworn implement in the arsenal of anti-Catholic propagandists. But this Italian journalist gets her information on the Catholic Church mostly from her contempt for it, and popular television programs. In any case, she manages to find in a very interesting fragment of the Church's artistic patrimony, a worthy cause for her blithe hostility.

[NPR] The painting was commissioned by Pope Alexander VI. Anyone who has followed the TV series The Borgias knows he was the infamous Rodrigo Borgia, a Spaniard who fathered several children and became a symbol of church corruption.

Alexander VI became pope in 1492, only a few months before Columbus made landfall.

Art historian Paolucci is convinced the entire Pinturicchio fresco cycle for the Borgia Apartments inside the Vatican had been completed by the end of 1494.


http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/05/180860991/long-hidden-vatican-painting-linked-to-native-americans

State Challenges Church's Right to Discipline Immoral Employees

[Columbus Dispatch] The firing of a gay Catholic-school teacher by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus raises competing constitutional questions about religious freedoms and civil liberties, legal experts say.

Carla Hale, who taught physical education at Bishop Watterson High School, has filed complaints with her local teachers union and the city’s Community Relations Commission, saying that her March firing was discriminatory.

Commissioners could decide within a few months whether the diocese violated the city’s ordinance that protects employees from discriminatory treatment for a range
of reasons that include sexual orientation.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/05/05/teachers-firing-raises-questions.html

Bishop of ’s-Hertogenbosch Holland Institutes Latin Mass Parish

S-Hertogenbosch (Kathnews). Pope Benedict XVI. had approved the so-called classical Roman liturgy as the so-called "Extraordinary Form” of the Roman Rite in July 7, 2007 with his Motu Proprio "Summorum Pontificum”. In the Instruction "Universae Ecclesiae" as the highest law he gave in concrete instructions for the priests and ordinaries.

Dutch Model

Since the liturgical development after the Second Vatican Council, a course points to an act of legislation in the Netherlands, is the classic form as is prescribed in the Liturgical books of 1962, celebrated in various churches of the country. The Bishop of Haarlem-Amsterdam, Msgr Punt, has built his own personal parish for the classical Roman liturgy according to the Motu Proprio earlier this year. The Archbishop of Utrecht, Cardinal Eijck, and the Bishop of Roermond, Msgr Wietz, a church rector assigned for the so-called extraordinary form. There are also different priests in each diocese (especially the younger generation) that implement the Motu Proprio in their parishes.

Sunday Masses in the cathedral town of 's-Hertogenbosch

The Motu Proprio is also implemented in the diocese of 's-Hertogenbosch in the Dutch province of Brabant. So for some time Holy Mass is said according to the Gregorian Tridentine form in the cathedral. Since a Mass has on Sunday in the traditional form in the cathedral has proven difficult to carry out because of other Masses and liturgical celebrations, the bishop of the diocese, Monsignor A. Hurkmans, has now assigned now a facility located in the center of historic and architecturally special church as main church for the classical liturgy in his diocese. It is the Church of St. Catherine (St. Catharienkerk), an octagonal central building, which also has the liturgy was celebrated in the Byzantine Rite. The bishop has decided that as of Sunday, May the 5th, 2013, to hold a weekly Mass in this church in the “Extraordinary Rite". The sung Mass (Missa cantata) is to be celebrated at !:15pm. Two priests and the ex officio of the diocese were appointed by the bishop as celebrant to do so. The diocese of 's-Hertogenbosch is territorially the largest diocese in the Netherlands. Among other things it includes the renowned cities of Nijmegen and Tilburg University.

Photo: Cathedral of 's-Hertogenbosch - Source: nl.wikipedia.org, user Karrow

Bishop Aillet Calls for New “Resistance” Against the Perversion of Marriage

(Paris) The traditional Bishop Marc Aillet of Bayonne called on the French to continue resolutely in their opposition to the law on the introduction of gay "marriage” .  The bishop stressed the peaceful nature of the "new Resistance" and warned them not to let themselves be “provoked infiltrated extremists and plainclothes police" . "No Parliament has the power to define marriage, which is a divine institution.” said Bishop Aillet. "It is the spiritual weapons which I propose to use in this very month of May" and "God will give the victory.”

Link to katholisches..

Curia: Msgr. Guido Pozzo Appointed to CDF

(Vatican) Pope Francis has named Curial Bishop Guido Pozzo as new Consultor to the Congregation for Doctrine and the Faith. Pozzo was the Secretary of the Papal Commission Ecclesia Dei from 2009-2012 which is responsible for the traditional orders, communities and groups and is subject to the CDF. In November 2012 Pope Benedict XVI. named him to Papal Almoner and titular Bishop, an office he will also manage. Msgr. Pozzo came in 1987 as an assistant to the CDF in the Roman Curia.

http://www.katholisches.info/2013/05/03/kurienerzbischof-guido-pozzo-neuer-konsultor-der-glaubenskongregation/

Queen Christina of Savoy to be Beatified

Rom, 3.5.13 (Kipa) For the first time after many years the beatification of a queen is imminent. The Vatican Congregation for the causes of saints will recognize the testimony of a miracle worked by Maria Christina of Savoy (1812-1836) on Friday.

Thus the first hurdle for beatification is passed. The last monarch to be beatified was in 2004, the last Emperor of Austria Karl I. (1887-1922). A Queen had not been raised to the altars during the John Paul II. and Benedict XVI..

Maria Christina was born on 14.November 1812 as the youngest daughter of King Victor Emanuel I. of Sardinia-Piedmont and his Queen Maria Theresia of Austria of Austria-Este in Cagliari in Sardinia.

In 1832 she was married to King Ferdinand II. of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and moved to the palace in Naples. She was honored by her subjects for her humility and piety. 15 days after the birth of her first son the Queen died on 31. January 1836.

The cause for the "Queen of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies" was opened more than 150 years ago on 9. July 1859. Pius XII. (1939-1958) had recognized the Queen for the heroic virtue of her life in 1937. In the following decades the process made no further progress. The blessed, however, became honored as a saint in the region of her kingdom.

The Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints will additionally recognize the Italian mystic Maria Bolognesi's miracle. The Polish religious foundress Maria Teresa of St. Joseph (1885-1946) and of the Italian religious founder Gioacchino Rossello i Ferra will be affirmed in his heroic virtue for a life worthy of veneration.

(kipa/cic/gs)

Father Stefano Maria Manelli is 80 -- Successful History of the Franciscans of the Immaculata: Traditional and Missionary

Edit: you mean you can be Franciscan and still have magnificent and beautiful Liturgy?

Father Stefano Maria Manelli 80 - History of the Franciscans of the Immaculate Conception: altrituell and missionary

(Rome) On the 1st of May Father Stefano Maria Manelli, the Superior General and founder of the Franciscans of the Immaculate (FFI) turned 80.

As the year gathered together yesterday,  members of the Order founded by Father Manelli and organizations associated with the Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Frigento Campania gathered in southern Italy, where the mother house of  the male religious branch is located. The brothers and sisters thanked and asked the Lord in prayer through the intercession of Mary Immaculate for their religious father.

The religious family founded by Father Stefano Maria is one of the success stories traditionally associated in the Catholic Church and represents a most remarkable success story. The Franciscans of the Immaculate have adopted the traditional rite five years ago after a long journey of preparation. International orders will be maintained the entire liturgy in the Tridentine rite. They keep the Franciscan-Marian spirit with their evangelical radicalism including poverty, which Pope Francis supports, but - and this is something special - in the Old Rite. Unlike other traditional communities  the Franciscans of the Immaculate are engaged in traditional missionary work. The Great Commission is a constitutive element of their charism; they go out of their cloisters, seek direct contact with the people who are on the front line in the defense of non-negotiable values and use their apostolate in the modern media and means of communication.

Father Stefano Maria marked by Padre Pio of Pietrelcina and Father Maximilian Kolbe

Its founder, Father Stefano Maria Manelli, was born on 1 May 1933, in what was then Fiume, Italy, and today is the Croatian town of Rijeka on the upper Adriatic. He was the sixth of 21 children. His parents, the servants of God Settimio Manelli and Licia Gualandris, have had their beatification process begun on 20 December 2010. The spiritual leader of the family was the holy Capuchin, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. From him, the young Stefano received his first Holy Communion in 1938.

The family had moved into the southern Italian province of Apulia, where Padre Pio lived.  Stefano was visited from the 8th December 1945 at the age of 12 years, the minor seminary of Cupertino. He entered the Friars Minor, and took simple vows on 4 October 1949, which on 27 May 1954 was followed by solemn perpetual vows.

On 30 October 1955 he was consecrated at Christ the King, a particularly precious feast to him as a priest.

Dissertation on the Immaculate Conception - Back to the Franciscan Sources

1960 PhD Father Stefano received his doctorate at the Seraphicum, the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Rome, with a thesis on the Immaculate Conception. The work explains the choice of his community's name.  He then followed by teaching Patristics and Mariology at the convent's seminaries at the Archdiocesan Seminary of Benevento and the Institute of Religious Sciences of Avellino. From 1982-1988 Father Stefano Maria was twice provincial of the Order of Friars Minor of the Province of Naples.

Around 1965 began a gradual rediscovery and long observation of the Franciscan sources and the writings of the Holy Father Maximilian Kolbe for him.

The call of the Second Vatican Council, to return to the sources of religious renewal and adjust the proclamation of faith to the changed circumstances of the time, knew Father Stefano Maria as reputation in the footsteps of the Founder Francis of Assisi completely Franciscan life after the example of Saint Maximilian Kolbe to lead the John Paul II as "St. Francis of the 20th Century "called.

In 1970 the new Franciscan-Marian Journey - 1990 Order of founding

On 24 December 1969  Father Stefano Maria and his brother, Father Gabriele Maria Pellettieri asked the Superior General of the Friars Minor for the permission to lead a renewed, more rigorous Franciscan life, which was tied into the foundation . A Franciscan-Marian manner of life they called the "Marian traces of Franciscan life." The result was in the first Marian House in August 1970 at the Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Avellino Frigento.

Over the years, the two brothers grew more and more  inspired by the ideal of evangelical radicalism. This increase, the special charism, the consolidation of a particular manner of life, and others opposing trends in parts of the Mother house led the Order, after 20 years on 22 June 1990, to the establishment of a separate order. The Church's recognition of diocesan right was professed in a corresponding decision by Pope John Paul II, through the Archbishop of Benevento, Monsignor Carlo Minchiatti. On 1 January 1998 the recognition of the Order was established by papal law. A special feature has been added to the three traditional religious vows poverty, chastity and obedience, a fourth vow, the unconditional consecration to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God.

On 1 November 1982 Father Stefano Maria and Father Gabriele Maria, founded the first community of Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate in Novaliches, Philippines. The female branch, which was passed in its inception phase was led by Father Gabriele Maria Pellettieri, lives according to the same Franciscan-Marian ideal of the brothers. Today there are more than 50 branches of the Franciscan Sisters on all continents. The Order has more than 350 sisters.

In 2006  the youngest of the family followed with the Order of Poor Clares, a contemplative branch of the Immaculate Conception, which includes today four cloistered convents with more than 40 sisters.

Franciscans and Franciscan The Lay Association of the Immaculate Conception

8 September 1990 there followed alongside the male and female religious branch, the establishment of a lay association, the Mission of the Immaculate Mediatrix (MIM). The laity living the religious ideals in their respective state and various stages of Consecration to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God (Missionaries of the Immaculate Conception with consecration, Missionaries of the Immaculate Conception with a private vow as Franciscan Tertiaries of the Immaculate Conception).

2008, the General Chapter undertooktook the decision to return as a community to the traditional form of the Roman Rite rehabilitated by Pope Benedict XVI.  in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite and returned to the Church.

Monastery in Kitzbühel - In the German areas living life connected to  a religious tradition is no easier

In the German-speaking world, a monastery of the Franciscans of the Immactulate, was founded in 2002 in Kitzbühel in Tyrol. The then Archbishop of Salzburg, Georg Eder, gave the Order the abandoned Capuchin convent.

Not all of the young religious received the same favorable reception. Being connected to a religious tradition is not so easy for the Franciscans in the areas where German is spoken. Two other monasteries  founded were thwarted by the resistance of the local churches.

The Franciscans of the Immaculate showed interest in 2007 in taking over  the Franciscan monastery of San Candido, South Tyrol, which was rejected by the then Bishop of Bolzano-Bressanone, the Capuchin Wilhelm Egger.  Since 2012, the monastery has remained empty.

In 2010 the Capuchin monastery on the Ried im Innkreis dissolved their last monastery in Upper Austria. Again, the Franciscans of the Immaculate were interested in the takeover of the monastery. "These and other rumors are their concern," the newspaper of the Diocese of Linz immediately wrote. Because of internal resistance in the Church, the order was denied even this branch. In contrast to San Candido, the monastery in Ried is at least not yet empty. In 2012 it was purchased by an Indian Carmelites. Other members of the order were established in Kerala in 1831 by the Congregation of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, are also Indian

The Franciscans of the Immaculate are now represented on all five continents. The order counts all together, some 650 members of religious orders have stirred an increase in vocations. They promote the Tridentine Rite and go to the street and around the world as missionaries.

Since 23 June 1990  Father Stefano Maria Manelli has been Minister General of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, whose Generalate is in Rome.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Franciscans of the Immaculate / Vocazione religiosa

Trans: Tancred

Link to kath.net...