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The “Anglican orders are null and void” reblog…

Mundabor's Blog

Rorate Coeli has a beautiful detail that will make you smile; very fitting for a Monday.

When in Westminster Abbey for the Evensong (about which I have written here), Pope Benedict wore a stole made for Pope Leo XIII.

Now, Pope Benedict is profound and intelligent enough not to wear a stole from a Pope who has been dead these more than 100 years simply because he likes the look of it. No, this stole was certainly a willed, conscious, tribute to a particular Pope in a particular circumstance.

Leo XIII is, as I have repeatedly stated on this blog, the Pope of Apostolicae Curae (please see link under “Church Teaching”). With Apostolicae Curae, Pope Leo XIII has not (importantly) decreed, but he has repeated the nullity of Anglican orders.

What a pleasant, saucy old German Pastor we have ; )

Mundabor

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Communication In The XXI Century

Those times are gone…

There was a time when the reaction times of the Church was very slow. A heresy would pop out somewhere in Europe and it was year before a meaningful reaction came. Still, the apparent slowness was a result of the slowness of the communications of the time, and the difficulty in getting and checking information. The slowness of movement also made the rest, with travel slow, expensive and dangerous in a way we today can not even easily imagine.

It is, therefore, understable in those tomes the Church reaction to worrying and ptentially heretical development was measured in years.

Please compare, though, with the world of today. A bunch of heretic German clergymen defies the very foundation of sound Catholicism on both contraception and abortion, and the news is all over the panet in a matter of hours. Never could heresy spread so easily and so fast, never was it -because of the unprecedented global interconnection – so important that heretical movement of simply confusing statements be stopped as fast as possible.

What is there to stop the relevant deciders from acting? Do they have the need for months of verification, waiting for carefully selected people to travel to Germany, comes back hopefully alive, and report about what thwrey themselves have heard? Nowadays heretical statements can be read not only from verbatim reports in the newspapers – which, if not denounced as wrong in a matter of hours, can be safely considered truthful – but in many cases can even be read in the web site of cardinals, bishops and bidhops’ conferences themselves! What is there to proof?

Then there is the extreme multiplying factor of social networks: an heretical statement will nowadays be retweeted with extreme rapidity, spreading like wildfire exactly among those most interested in reading, spreading and manipulating heresy.

What does the Vatican do to react o this? Nothing.

For example, the Pope has a twitter account followed by a vast number of people. If a heretical statement starts to spread, nothing is better than Twitter to stop it from spreading. Two or three strategic twits explaining in few statement what the Church teaches, and announcing further action in the matter would immediately alert the Catholic world that a problem has been seen and corrected for the moment, whilst further meaures will be taken in due time (which means: very soon).

The sad reality of our days is that Twitter is used to post pious platitudes instead, perpetuating the Vatican II image of Popes without power or bite.

If you think, though, that the Vatican is slow because the Pope and the Cardinals are old, You should think again. When they want, the reaction is rather fast, and rather sharp. Cue the rather whining press release of today, with which Vatican officials openly complain about attempt made by the press to influence the workings of the Conclave. Whilst it is not said explicitly, it is obvious the crux of the matter is the loud cry to adk hat Mahony and Daneels (Mahony at the very least) be asked by the Pope to please “renounce” to take part to the Conclave; a cry which started to mount only in the last days, and took a couple to get traction in the first place.

You see, then, that the old men in the Vatican are alert at all times, and not shy of a fast reaction when they consider the matter burning.

Heresy and open disobedience are, therefore, not burning issues and not worthy of prompt actions. Calls to disallow the one or other cardinal from taking part to the conclave are. The German bishops are openly simoniacal like a man, and several monhs later we are still waiting from a reaction from the German Pope; a reaction which, in this like in too many other matters, will now never come.

Welcome to The wonderful world of Vatican II, and let us truly pray the next Pope will be a holy man of action.

Mundabor

Pope Benedict: Inaction To The End?

Pope still in charge, but nowhere to be seen.

I have renounced to write yesterday about the latest antics of that heretical troop we insist in calling German Catholic Clergy, because my doctor would not have approved; but the life of a blogger is such that he cannot escape the adrenaline and the anger (because he reads the news aggregators, and therefore all the heretical filth lands on his computer screen at some point), and will have to report on the very worst of what is happening around us.

Today is one of those days, and it is another day when the culpable inaction of the present Pontiff comes to light in its entirety.

The German bishops, united in counsel and heresy, have now decided a raped woman can receive the so-called “morning after pill”. The poor men are confused or, more probably, disingenuous, and they still think or say they think that, for some reason we don’t know, an embryo isn’t an embryo until they say it is, and therefore the destruction of said embryo isn’t abortion until they please to call it so. En passant, they forget the Church is against contraception, too; but they are way past these minutiae, aren’t they now…

This is grave enough. This would also, of course, call for a prompt intervention of the Pope. Actually, it is fair to say the first duty of every Pope should be to prevent these situations to arise, and to correct the mistakes and punish those responsible when they do. As widely expected, we have seen nothing of the sort, once again reinforcing the impression that this papacy is a replay of Pope Paul VI’s one, plus Summorum Pontificum.

Alas, worse has happened since. Not only has the Vatican simply not acted – which was largely to be expected – but the present head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Bishop Carrasco, even agrees with them.

In doing so, Bishop Carrasco goes not only against logic, common sense and basic Catholicism, but he even openly contradicts a formal paper of his own organisation on this matter, published in 2000.

The text of this instructive document is published in its entirety at the end of this message for future reference, and because it is very sound reading.

Bishop Carrasco is obviously Pope Benedict’s choice for the job, exactly as Archbishop Paglia and Archbishop Mueller are. It is difficult to find another modern Pope so catastrophically wrong in his appointments, and it is even more difficult to find a justification for his inaction after his appointees, for whose action he will have to answer one day, conduct attack attacks to fundamental tenets of the Catholic church undisturbed. This, obviously, in addition to the attacks already daily moved to Catholic truth from the German clergy, from bishops and Cardinals he either appointed or allowed to remain in place unpunished and even undisturbed.

The sad reality, that I do not read often around the Internet but I think should be said, is that this Pope is the son of the same rotten Vatican II climate which produced the Muellers and The Meisners, the Lehmanns and the Zoellitschs, and the Woelkis of the world. You can take Pope Benedict out of Germany, but you can’t take Germany out of Pope Benedict. The proof of this is in front of our very eyes, with the offensive of the German clergy becoming now outright shameless, in the knowledge nothing will happen in Rome, where a Pope is still in charge, and therefore still responsible.

We can be accessory to other people’s sin by silence, which means that a terrible responsibility rests on the shoulders on this Pope; a responsibility that cannot be excused with an impairing disease, and therefore cannot be excused at all; then last time I looked, weakness in front of the enemy wasn’t a virtue.

I do not agree with those who mourn the end of this papacy. If you ask me, this papacy can’t end too soon. We need a strong Pope, which even the presently reigning Pontiff had at least to good sense to acknowledge.

We might, of course, end up with what they call a “Benedict clone” (God forbid!), and if things go really wrong we could even end up with a worse one (God forbid even more!). But I never thought that one should be satisfied or appeased with leaders being mediocre, just because they could be worse.

The German clergy has polluted the Church in the last fifty years. It is time this influence is stopped.

Please Lord, please give us a strong, orthodox Pope.

Mundabor

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PONTIFICAL ACADEMY FOR LIFE

STATEMENT ON THE SO-CALLED
“MORNING-AFTER PILL”

As is commonly known, the so-called morning-after pill recently went on sale in Italian pharmacies. It is a well-known chemical product (of the hormonal type) which has frequently – even in the past week – been presented by many in the field and by the mass media as a mere contraceptive or, more precisely, as an “emergency contraceptive”, which can be used within a short time after a presumably fertile act of sexual intercourse, should one wish to prevent the continuation of an unwanted pregnancy. The inevitable critical reactions of those who have raised serious doubts about how this product works, namely, that its action is not merely “contraceptive” but “abortifacient”, have received the very hasty reply that such concerns appear unfounded, since the morning-after pill has an “anti-implantation” effect, thus implicitly suggesting a clear distinction between abortion and interception (preventing the implantation of the fertilized ovum, i.e., the embryo, in the uterine wall).

Considering that the use of this product concerns fundamental human goods and values, to the point of involving the origins of human life itself, the Pontifical Academy for Life feels the pressing duty and definite need to offer some clarifications and considerations on the subject, reaffirming moreover already well-known ethical positions supported by precise scientific data and reinforced by Catholic doctrine.

* * *

1. The morning-after pill is a hormone-based preparation (it can contain oestrogens, oestrogen/progestogens or only progestogens) which, within and no later than 72 hours after a presumably fertile act of sexual intercourse, has a predominantly “anti-implantation” function, i.e., it prevents a possible fertilized ovum (which is a human embryo), by now in the blastocyst stage of its development (fifth to sixth day after fertilization), from being implanted in the uterine wall by a process of altering the wall itself.

The final result will thus be the expulsion and loss of this embryo.

Only if this pill were to be taken several days before the moment of ovulation could it sometimes act to prevent the latter (in this case it would function as a typical “contraceptive”).

However, the woman who uses this kind of pill does so in the fear that she may be in her fertile period and therefore intends to cause the expulsion of a possible new conceptus; above all, it would be unrealistic to think that a woman, finding herself in the situation of wanting to use an emergency contraceptive, would be able to know exactly and opportunely her current state of fertility.

2. The decision to use the term “fertilized ovum” to indicate the earliest phases of embryonic development can in no way lead to an artificial value distinction between different moments in the development of the same human individual. In other words, if it can be useful, for reasons of scientific description, to distinguish with conventional terms (fertilized ovum, embryo, fetus, etc.) different moments in a single growth process, it can never be legitimate to decide arbitrarily that the human individual has greater or lesser value (with the resulting variation in the duty to protect it) according to its stage of development.

3. It is clear, therefore, that the proven “anti-implantation” action of themorning-after pill is really nothing other than a chemically induced abortion. It is neither intellectually consistent nor scientifically justifiable to say that we are not dealing with the same thing.

Moreover, it seems sufficiently clear that those who ask for or offer this pill are seeking the direct termination of a possible pregnancy already in progress, just as in the case of abortion. Pregnancy, in fact, begins with fertilization and not with the implantation of the blastocyst in the uterine wall, which is what is being implicitly suggested.

4. Consequently, from the ethical standpoint the same absolute unlawfulness of abortifacient procedures also applies to distributing, prescribing and taking the morning-after pill. All who, whether sharing the intention or not, directly co-operate with this procedure are also morally responsible for it.

5. A further consideration should be made regarding the use of themorning-after pill in relation to the application of [Italian] Law 194/78, which in Italy regulates the conditions and procedures for the voluntary termination of pregnancy.

Saying that the pill is an “anti-implantation” product, instead of using the more transparent term “abortifacient”, makes it possible to avoid all the obligatory procedures required by Law 194 in order to terminate a pregnancy (prior interview, verification of pregnancy, determination of growth stage, time for reflection, etc.), by practising a form of abortion that is completely hidden and cannot be recorded by any institution. All this seems, then, to be in direct contradiction to the correct application of Law 194, itself debatable.

6. In the end, since these procedures are becoming more widespread, we strongly urge everyone who works in this sector to make a firm objection of moral conscience, which will bear courageous and practical witness to the inalienable value of human life, especially in view of the new hiddenforms of aggression against the weakest and most defenceless individuals, as is the case with a human embryo.

Vatican City, 31 October 2000.

Garbage Can Dwellers

My garbage can is environmentally friendly…

 

When you write a blog, you learn a thing or two about human nature. 

I should not need to say that I am very much (at least in this) like Darcy in Pride and Prejudice: my good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. 

The basic thinking behind this is that adults rarely change, and they never change because I would want them to. Besides, life’s too short to waste time with idiots. Therefore, if I decide that Caius or Titius is an idiot, I will not revisit my assessment in three weeks’, or three months’ time. 

Surprisingly, people continue to write posts (long ones at times) that land in my garbage can without even being seen by me. I must miss many of them, because I very rarely look in my garbage can; but whenever I do, I see people who have written recently (the garbage can not only has an automatic catch, but also a self-cleaning function) for reasons it is impossible for me to fathom. Perhaps they want to attract the attention of my garbage can, thinking it smart to be read by it; in other cases I suppose alcohol plays a role. Then there are those who write messages asking to be “readmitted”, which is plain stupid, or spitting the worst insults, which is mildly amusing as it gives me double joy to can it. 

It is as if they liked to exist in my garbage can. It takes all sorts, I suppose… 

Therefore, two words of advice: if I have already kicked you out, I will not allow you to get back in, and if you write a comment on my blog, chances are I will never even know you have written it, as my garbage disposal service works far more frequently than my visits into the forum can. If after reading this you still want to waste your time, be my guest…

Of course, every now and then it may happen that something goes wrong, and the one or other perfectly innocent message has been captured by my “spam and idiot protection service” by mistake. Alas, being rather forgetful I might not remember to check the spam folder, and therefore your message might get lost forever. 

Please don’t be offended if this is the case; I am sure everyone of you can easily realise whether his message was intentionally canned or not. 

Whilst I value intelligent conversation on this blog, this blog is like the reception room of my house: if anyone behaves in a way I don’t like, he’ll be kicked out without compliments, and not be readmitted back. The life of a Catholic blogger – particularly of an emotional guy as I am – provides one with more than enough adrenaline as it is, and I personally have no inclination whatever to have further anger with the wrong kind of people commenting on this blog. 

I write this also because the amount of messages has increased in the last months, and with them the number of messages my esteemed readers never get to see. Therefore, I will in future have to make more extensive use of the spam function, with an increased danger of good messages being “caught in”. 

With all this said, i think the quality of the message I publish is on average very high. I take it as a great compliment made to my insignificant, but passionate, blog, and thank you for contributing to make of this little effort, as I hope, a good use of your time.   

Mundabor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Cardinal Schoenborn Reblog

Mundabor's Blog

My six readers are certainly aware (they should be at least, as the post is prominently displayed in my right hand column) that the heresy in Austria has been going on pretty much undisturbed for now far too long.

I do not report about the minutiae of this endless non-story, as the only thing worth nothing is the absolute inaction of  Cardinal “I support Medjugorje” Schoenborn, here and there interrupted by some positive non-action like pointing out to the rebels their careers might suffer if they continue rebelling. Their careers might suffer? You don’t say? Ah, there must really be some smart people at work in Austria. It must be the mountain air.

It has now transpired the Vatican itself has finally moved with devastating energy, and is going to fall on Father Schueller with all the weight and the lethal energy of a timid pussycat. The meowing is, in…

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Heretics Then And Now

I picked this from Father Z, who in turn picked it from Let Nothing You Dismay.

It is so beautifully un-PC I must have it on my blog.

Mundabor

“If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us…. And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them… It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less…”

Henri de Lubac: Further Paradoxes (Newman Press 1958) and reprinted in Paradoxes of Faith (Ignatius Press 1987)