Halloween Horrors in Lund!


Torch of The Faith News on Tuesday 01 November 2016 - 10:55:20 | by admin

a_table.jpg
I was not going to taint this great feast of All Saints with any mention of the events in Lund yesterday. However, some things must be said.

Meeting House...Table...Bread and Wine

Firstly, let us recall that the 16th-Century Protestant revolutionaries were intent on overthrowing the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Here, for example, is what the heretic Thomas Cranmer had to say on the matter: ''First, the form of a table shall more move the simple from the superstitious opinions of the Popish Mass unto the right use of the Lord's Supper. For the use of an altar is to make sacrifice upon it: the use of a table is to serve men to eat upon.''

One of the most wicked features of the Protestant Revolution in the 16th-Century was the large-scale destruction of the stone High-Altars throughout Europe. Here in England, the stone tops of many High-Altars in the abbeys and parish churches were laid as porch stones, in order to force the parishioners to walk over the original Altar to enter for the heretical Protestant Lord's Supper service, celebrated on a simple table.

This was nothing short of diabolical.

Coming closer to our own times, and as I have said before, at Ushaw Seminary in the 1990's, we were forced to attend a Mass every Monday evening which used a low coffee table - at times even a low circular table from the public bar - with participants reclining and sprawling on bean-bags scattered about the floor.

This has all been done to destroy any conception of the Mass as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; and of the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Most Holy Eucharist.

Another breach that came from the Reformation, was the reconception of the church-building from its conception as the Holy of Holies, in which the Holy Sacrifice and Real Presence are central, into a notion of the church-building as a mere meeting house for ''believers''.

With all of this background for context, now let us hear Pope Francis' troubling words in Lund yesterday.

The emphasis in dark type is mine: ''Jesus Christ calls us to be ambassadors of reconciliation... (using stones)... for building bridges so that we can draw closer to each other, houses where we can meet together and tables - yes, tables - where we can share the bread and the wine, the presence of Jesus Christ Who has never left us and Who calls us to abide in Him so the world may believe.''

Although Francis speaks of the ''presence of Jesus Christ'', his talk of meeting houses, his strong emphasis on the word ''tables'', and his use of the expression ''bread and wine'' all have a distinctly Protestant ring.

After all, Lutherans have their own erroneous conception of Christ's ''presence'' at the Lord's Supper service. Orthodox Catholic priests and laity do not traditionally speak like this; preferring instead to speak reverently of the Sacred Host and the Precious Blood. 

This all calls to mind Francis' consistent failures to genuflect before the Most Blessed Sacrament.

And also the never-refuted claim by Jacquelina Sabetta, the divorced/re-''married'' woman from Argentina, who claimed that Francis told her on the telephone to go to Communion, with the disturbingly sacrilegious words that were reported in major daily papers throughout the world: ''A little bread and wine does no harm.''     

Gifts of the Reformation?!!!

Pope Francis prayed yesterday that the Holy Spirit would help us to ''rejoice in the gifts that have come to us through the Reformation''.

Anyone who has honestly studied the Reformation is aware that Luther's revolt caused a horrific split from the Church and the sundering of Christendom: contributing to wars of religion and state; paving the way for the worst aspects of the Enlightenment; and ending in the Enlightenment's own subsequent collapse into the atheistic and post-Christian milieu which threatens to submerge us today.

What is to celebrate in any of this, when it has caused so many millions of souls to live and die without the salvific graces of the Catholic Faith?

The only thing a true Catholic would want to celebrate in any of this is the fact that God raised up a glorious Catholic/Counter Reformation to truly reform the Church, to resist and overcome the disparate Protestant heresies and to evangelize effectively in the New World.

We can thank God for the Council of Trent, the Catechism of Trent and the Canons of Trent. We can thank Him for the great reforming saints like St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis de Sales, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Philip Neri and St. Vincent de Paul.

How any Catholic could thank God for Martin Luther and his ilk without blasphemy is unclear.    

Post-Modern Halloween?

Thirdly, and certainly more subjectively, the above image seems very disturbing to us.

Given that the Lund event took place on Halloween - a day which has sadly become the most evil day of the year - it is beyond strange to have Pope Francis and the Lutherans sitting on a stage which is literally dominated by something that looks like a giant, post-modern Jack-o-Lantern.

Even more odd, is the fact that the central flame seems to be on its side.

If you look at the clearer and larger versions of this picture, which are readily available on the internet, it gives an impression akin to the ''All Seeing Eye''. Whatever it is, it looks weird.

A Truly Merciful Embrace

A couple of days before the Lund event, Pope Francis tweeted a message asking everyone to ''abandon the language of condemnation and embrace one of mercy.''

Perhaps the most genuine implementation of this in Lund came from the courageous members of the American Fatima Center (US spelling).

A group of these members travelled to Lund to bear witness to the true Catholic Faith. To the displeasure of the local Catholic priest (!), they gave out literature to local Catholics as they left Holy Mass at the weekend. They also prayed the Rosary in reparation, gave out solid literature to anyone else who would accept it and made a series of videos. These latter can be viewed at Fatima Network News under the Rapid Response Team banner.

As I said above, to my eyes at least, these people gave perhaps the most genuine response in Lund to Francis' call for an ''embrace of mercy''.

Here is what they have said at their website: ''We hold no enmity toward Lutherans, but we cannot pretend that contradictory beliefs can both be true, or that no contradiction exists, when it clearly does. Nothing can be built on a foundation of lies, no matter how many sweet words are poured forth and how many ecumenical embraces occur. Through Luther's cry of ''Faith Alone'' and his rejection of the dogmatic and sacramental theology of the Catholic Church, Europe was shaken to its foundations and we live among the ruins. The only way to put the pieces together again is to invite those who have left the One True Church to return to Her loving embrace and receive the graces waiting for them in the Sacraments instituted for them by Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ...

...What is at stake is the salvation of souls. Since there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, we must do all we can, in the spirit of fraternal charity, to help those who have left their spiritual home to return to it. Love demands the truth, and the truth will set us free.''

Judging by the 65-year old Els from Sweden, Pope Francis' approach has done little to further that authentically Catholic mission.

Els told the National Catholic Register that she emphatically did not feel drawn toward the Catholic Church as a result of the Papal visit. Instead she contended that ''Francis does not want us to be altogether as Catholics, but remain as we are. We have to keep our identity and that is the only way to become one church, because unity is in diversity, and not in difference.''

And so, to the splintered minds of post-modernity, being ''two churches'' is what makes us ''one church''.

By the standards of natural logic, this sounds about as sensible as employing a chocolate fire-screen.

It makes for a strange twinning of Gansweinian proportions...

As Fides et Ratio famously taught: faith and reason either flourish together, or else they will both perish without the other.

On this Feast of All Saints we must pray for the leaders of the Catholic Church to recover the true sense of the Church as the Light of All Nations - the real Lumen Gentium if you will - and not to remain blinded by the sinister Jack-o-Lanterns of post-modernity.


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