ironically, I attended MBS in KL

Saints of the Day

Saint Ignatius of Constantinople (877)

He was the son of a Byzantine emperor. He was first a monk, then an abbot, and then a patriarch of Constantinople. He suffered much from Photius, who was the father of the Greek Schism that eventually led to the so-called Greek Orthodox Church, which divided people from unity with the Holy Roman Catholic Church, outside of which no one can be saved.



Saint Anthony Mary Claret (1870)

He was born in Catalonia, in Spain, in 1807. He was ordained a priest in 1835. He was a missioner in his own country and in the Canary Islands, which are just off the northwest coast of Africa. He formed a group of priests into an Order known as the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary — also known as the Claretians. He was made Archbishop of Santiago in Cuba, in 1851. He was recalled to Spain in 1857. He was exiled with his queen in the revolution there of 1868. Many attempts were made on his life. He is the one saint so far canonized who was present at the Vatican Council of 1869-1870.

Saint of the Day

Saint Raphael

There are seven special angels who stand before the throne of God. We know the names of three of them. They are: Saint Michael, whose name is a challenge and means Who is like to God?; Saint Gabriel, whose name is a message and means Strength of God (God going the limit by way of grace); and Saint Raphael, whose name is a comfort and means Healer of God or Medicine of God. In some loving way, Saint Michael is the angel of Saint Joseph, Saint Gabriel is the angel of Our Lady, and Saint Raphael is the angel of Our Lord.

Saint Raphael was the angel who came to console Our Lord in His bitter agony in the Garden of Olives, when Jesus sweat blood. Saint Raphael’s name is mentioned in Catholic prayers, including the Litany of the Saints. He is one of our special helpers in times of sickness and the hardships that go with it. His story in the Old Testament makes up nearly all of the Book of Tobias.


Tobias and the Angel Raphael by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo

Saint of the Day

Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian (285)

They were shoemakers by trade who, because of the simple holiness and innocence of their lives, were known to be Catholics. They courageously refused to yield to the persecutors of their Faith who wanted them to apostatize. At the beginning of the reign of Diocletian they were both beheaded. Some of their relics are in Rome. Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian are invoked by Catholic cobblers.



This post has been edited by yeeck: Oct 25 2019, 10:40 AM

Nov 01, 2019: All Saint's Day Mass Schedule, Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur

Solemnity of All Saints is a day of Obligation ...

Saint of the Day

Saint Simon and Saint Jude (67)
OCT 28

They were Apostles of Our Lord and were brothers. We are let known what eager and ardent apostles of the Faith Saint Simon and Saint Jude were, first by the distance they traveled to preach the Gospel (they went eventually as far as Persia), and also by the names given to them. Saint Simon is called the Zealot, both to distinguish him from Simon Peter and to show his ardor in preaching the true Faith. Saint Jude is called Thaddeus, which means big-heart.

Saint Simon was martyred by being crucified. Saint Jude was martyred by being clubbed to death. Both were killed in the same year. Their relics were brought back and were placed near those of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the Vatican, in Rome. Saint Jude is the author of one of the Epistles in the New Testament. “Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ unto life everlasting,” Saint Jude writes in his holy Epistle.

Saints of the Day

Saint Narcissus (222)
OCT 29

Saint Narcissus was the Bishop of Jerusalem. He died when he was one hundred and sixteen years old.

He was eighty years old when he was made Bishop of Jerusalem. He was a wonderful and paternal pastor of souls. Once, he miraculously changed water into oil to make lights for the lamps of the church on the vigil of Easter. Once, three men who made false witness against him were struck dead.

Notable centenarians among the saints are: Saint Simon Stock, who died when he was one hundred; Saint Raymond of Pennafort, who died when he was one hundred; Saint Anthony the Abbot, who died when he was one hundred and five; Saint Patrick, who died when he was one hundred and six; Saint Paul the Hermit, who died when he was one hundred and twelve; Saint Eusignius, who died when he was one hundred and ten; and Saint David of Wales, who died when he was one hundred and forty-seven.


“Saint Narcissus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in a Landscape,” compliments of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco


Saint Linda (595)
OCT 29

Saint Linda (Ermelinda) was a Belgian girl who lived as a solitary, dedicating her whole life to God alone.


Saint Ermelinda of Meldaert

The Antichurch of the Pseudomissionaries, and How it Came to Be

IT'S 2051, and you’re on a top-secret mission to New York City which has been overrun by zombies since The Great Zombification of 2028, caused, as we now know, by a disastrous biological experiment in population control funded by Jeff Bezos and the Ford Foundation. In other parts of the nation and the world, the strange contagion has been contained and eradicated, but the Big Apple has been, to mix a metaphor, a tough nut to crack. The elite Bio-Force Rangers have selected and equipped you and four others to look like zombies, mix with them, and gradually spread the antitoxin that will, it is hoped, heal all the infected New Yorkers. Grueling work, and tense, because you must look like zombies to zombies, but like a healthy human to the newly de-zombified. The work is progressing apace, and your team is creating “missions” that are quarantined and secured, where healthy New Yorkers can now live in safety. The mission is going well, but then … it happens.

One of your fellow elites has lost his mind, cracked under the pressure. He becomes convinced that the zombified state is more in keeping with his Rousseauian philosophy, and uses his advanced training to reverse the work that you all set out to do. His goal is not only to reinfect all of New York, but to send his own zombie agents into uninfected cities all over the world; and his plans are working …

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The above Halloween tribute to the zombie-horror genre, tacky though it be, came to mind while I was thinking of the subject at hand, for the recently concluded Amazon Synod was at least as horrifying as expected: on display were idolatry, syncretism, indifferentism, feminism, modernism, radical environmentalism, and liberation theology, a much more terrifying combination than anything Steven King or John Carpenter could imagine.

It is not mine to give a rundown of the event, but rather to ask a fundamental question: How did we get here? For this was not something that started in 2019 or 2013, but long before.

Let us begin our answer in the Amazon itself. Why is the Catholic Church there? Because, in the sixteenth century, she declared it to be mission territory. What is a mission? It is an effort to extend the Kingdom of Christ — the Catholic Church — by following His command to teach and baptize all nations. But why does the Church do that? Aside from obeying the command of Christ, who has unique authority to bind us to His commands, we do so to give glory to the Holy Trinity and to save souls. This two-fold purpose can be unified into a neater formula: to give glory to God by saving souls. This is the mission of the Church. She is called “catholic” precisely because of this divine mandate to teach “all nations” (Matt. 28:19, Luke 24:47), and even “every creature” (Mark 16:15). To extend the Kingdom of Christ is her divine mission; there is no divine mission to “dialogue.”

Here, then, is a provocative question: what if that mission becomes something the missionaries themselves no longer believe in? What if they “crack” under the pressure of the world and fall prey to false philosophy?

The first missionaries to Brazil arrived with Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500. Immediately on the heels of Christopher Columbus, that same century would see evangelism all over what we in the Anglosphere call Latin America. The mass conversion of Mexico, largely due to the gracious visit of Our Lady of Guadalupe to those blessed people, happened in that century.

Regarding that same sixteenth century, Pope Benedict XVI said:

If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were still convinced that those who are not baptized are forever lost — and this explains their missionary commitment — in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council that conviction was finally abandoned.

From this came a deep double crisis.

On the one hand this seems to remove any motivation for a future missionary commitment. Why should one try to convince the people to accept the Christian faith when they can be saved even without it?

But also for Christians an issue emerged: the obligatory nature of the faith and its way of life began to seem uncertain and problematic.

If the Church is not necessary for salvation, then the missions do indeed lose their urgency, as Benedict pointed out. The missionaries themselves, all but the ones who haven’t fallen for the heresy, become social workers at best; at worst — and here is what we are seeing now — they become revolutionaries. One of the persistent mantras of the Amazon Synod was the need to listen to and learn from the Amazonians.

To be sure, a good missionary will learn about his people, their language, customs, beliefs, etc., else how can he minister to them effectively, teach them, correct their beliefs and their morals? So, too, he must love them deeply, and be willing to die for them (even by their hands) so as to get them the Faith. Thus the heroism of so many missionaries.

But the new missionary, the social worker or revolutionary, what of him? His Christian heroism is absent. This is the model pseudomissionary that was being promoted in the Synod Hall, and in him we see both sides of the Ratzinterian “deep double crisis”: the actual mission of the Catholic Church is scuttled, and the “obligatory nature of the faith and its way of life” is questioned, altered, and mutilated into something it is not — zombified, if you will. Hence, in this second part of the double crisis, not only do we, contrary to Christ’s command, not need to baptize the natives — as Austrian Bishop Erwin Kräutler boasted — but we now, having “listened to the natives,” know that we must have deaconesses, married priests, an ecclesiastical structure that resembles the vision of condemned and impenitent Marxist liberation theologians, and a host of other novelties that more closely resemble the ecclesiastical vision of European and American Modernists than the ideas of the poor Amazonians themselves, who have been put on display and used as foils by cynical Western progressivists. (Many of the Amazonians, by the way, were flatly ignored by the Synod Fathers.) And speaking of cynical progressivists, the same Bishop Erwin Kräutler, who wants women priests, admitted to Edward Pentin that the Amazonian female deacons he is agitating for “may be a step to” a female priesthood.

Really? What a surprise!

A little over a year ago, I gave a talk to a Fatima Youth Conference on the subject, “In the World, Not of It: Being Catholic amid the New Paganism.” The main thesis I developed in that talk, and around which the practical advice was woven, was this: the members of the Catholic Church are those “called out of” the world, and when we blur the distinction between “the Church” and “the world,” we don’t sanctify the world; rather, we corrupt the Church. “The world,” as I use the term here is Johannine; it is not the world that God made and called “very good” (Gen. 1:31), but the fallen world, or, rather, those rational animals on this earth who make its temporal goods the sole objects of their desire. Concerning these, Dom Prosper Guéranger says, “Men were called after the object of their love. They shut their eyes to the light; they became darkness; God calls them ‘the world.’”

The Amazon Synod was simply a very fast-paced version of this process of corrupting the Church by tearing down the distinction between it and “the world.”

The preposterous notion that Catholic dogma, apostolic tradition, and ecclesiastical discipline must be adapted to those the Church evangelizes is not something the Apostles themselves believed. It contradicts the very notion of “conversion.” Saint Paul did not want to alter the Gospel’s teaching on idolatry, sodomy, or drunkenness in an effort to “listen to” the Corinthians who might find Christian restrictions on this behavior somehow incomprehensible. No, instead he says to them, after their conversion:

Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God. And such some of you were; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God. —1 Cor. 6:9-11

Christian faith and baptism have made the Corinthians different, and they were to live accordingly. It has brought them from the world into the Church. Neither was the Apostle sanguine about the pre-baptismal state of the pagan Ephesians, those former devotees of Artemis, who were the objects of his Apostolic zeal:

For which cause be mindful that you, being heretofore Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision in the flesh, made by hands; That you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the conversation of Israel, and strangers to the testament, having no hope of the promise, and without God in this world. But now in Christ Jesus, you, who some time were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh....” —Eph. 2:11-14

But for the last half-century and more, some successors of the Apostles have been freely discussing how Christian Faith is not necessary for salvation, going so far as to say things like this: Because, for the children of the Church, incongruity between believing and living can cause the loss of salvation, for non-Christian a harmony between belief and life can be positively salvific. The italicized is my very accurate paraphrase of something written by a very learned cardinal, who favorably cites this abomination and others from the book, In Ways Known to God: A Theological Investigation on the Ways of Salvation Spoken of in Vatican II, by Dr. Francis Fernandez. There is nothing essentially different between the theories this cardinal favors and Karl Rahner’s heretical “Anonymous Christian.”

Between such so-called “theology” and the madness of the Pan-Amazonian Synod there is a straight line.

Lose track of the purpose of a thing, and eventually you will abuse it. Thus it is with the missions, which have become tools of revolution in the Church, even to the point of grave sins against the first commandment. Hence, the Italian Bishops are now promoting idolatrous prayers to Mother Earth, whereas a zealous laywoman who actually evangelizes is accused of wicked “proselitysm” by the Successor of Saint Peter himself, whose harsh words on the occasion brought to my mind harsher words of the Prophesy of Isaias: “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Is. 5:20).

If we had truly Christian hearts, we would weep at such things.

God Himself must cleanse His Church. Meantime, the faster we abandon the novel thinking that has brought all this upon us, the better off the Church will be — looking more like an All Saints’ Day feast, and less like a bad Halloween flick.

Most devotedly yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

All Saints
NOV 1


This is the feast, not only of all saints who have been canonized, but of all saints who have not been canonized and are in Heaven. It is, in a generous way, the feast of all those who are still on earth and are trying to be saints. No one can be a saint, without love for and protection by and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is Queen of All Saints. She is abundantly called so in the Litany of Loreto, where she is greeted as Queen of Angels, Queen of Patriarchs, Queen of Prophets, Queen of Apostles, Queen of Martyrs, Queen of Confessors, Queen of Virgins, Queen of All Saints, Queen Conceived without Original Sin, Queen Assumed into Heaven, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, Queen of Peace.

Saint Paul tells us, that the will of God is not merely for our salvation, but also for our sanctification. Everyone is called to be a saint. Anyone who does not become a saint has no one but himself to blame. Our Lady holds her greatest bounties and generosities in store for those who are starting to be saints.

Saint of the Day

Saint Charles Borromeo (1584)
NOV 4

He was the nephew of Pope Pius IV. He was “the soul of the Council of Trent,” which protected the Catholic Faith in the sixteenth century against the inroads of the Protestant Reformation. Saint Charles Borromeo wrote the following prayer to his Guardian Angel: “O beloved angel, who has been given me as a protector by the Divine Majesty, I desire to die in the Faith which the Holy, Roman and Apostolic Church adheres to and defends, in which all the saints of the New Testament have died, and outside of which there is no salvation.” Saint Charles Borromeo gave Saint Aloysius his first Holy Communion.

Saint John Damascene and the Iconoclasts

St. John the Evangelist succinctly described the essence of the Incarnation when he wrote: “The Word was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us.”

Roots of Iconoclasm

Iconoclasm comes from the Greek Eikonoclasmos , which is literally “image breaking.” Eradication of the visible representations, in any form, be it statues or paintings of Christ, His Mother, or the Saints, was the end to which Iconoclasts strove. The rise of Iconoclasm can be traced to a variety of causes, all coming together at that particular time in history. As is the case with all heresy, we are dealing not only with a doctrinal error, but also with historical circumstances which form its particular character. To aid us in our understanding of Iconoclasm then, we will quickly glance at a few circumstances and attributes of the heresy, and then we will go on to describe the events which occurred at this pivotal era in the history of Christendom.

Geographically:

Iconoclasm and the Iconoclasts operated within the boundaries of the Byzantine Roman Empire, with some minor exceptions. 1

The Holy Father in Rome opposed any manifestation of Iconoclasm in the Church in the West. Likewise, those Eastern Patriarchs who were not within the bounds of the Roman Empire, but situated in lands under the control of Islam, were against the Iconoclasts.

Iconodules (“Defenders of Images”) who lived within territories controlled by the Moslems were free to write against the Iconoclast heresy without fear of persecution. As we will see, our hero, St. John of Damascus, was one such Iconodule.

Politically:

The carrying out of the persecution came primarily from the secular head of state, the Roman Emperor, and the Praetorian Guard — his professional army.

During the 8th and 9th centuries, the Byzantine Empire was closely allied with the Jewish Kingdom of Khazaria. Not only was there a close military alliance (both kingdoms opposed the advancement of Islam into North Central Asia and the West), there existed as well a close political relationship between the Roman Emperor and the Kagans of Khazaria. In fact the relationship was so close that Khazaria could claim to have contributed at least two Emperors and two Empresses to the throne of Byzantium during this time. (For example, the first of the Iconoclast Emperors, Leo the Isaurian, arranged for the marriage of his son Constantine to the daughter of the Kagan of Khazaria. 2 Constantine’s son by his Khazarian wife would rule Byzantium as Leo IV, “the Khazar.”)

Part of the relationship between Khazaria and Byzantium included the contribution of Khazarian soldiers to the Emperor’s professional army — his Praetorian Guard. (Note: The professional soldier swore allegiance to the person of the Emperor and not the Empire at large.) It was the army that first put Leo on the throne.

The Roman Emperors never gave up their claims to Pontificus Maximus in regard to religious things even after having become Christian. Caesaro-Papism (head of state = head of church) was rooted in their makeup since the times of pagan Rome, when the Caesars were looked upon as gods. Eradicating visible manifestations of the Spiritual Authority would certainly fit well into the Emperor’s plans, as he wanted to consolidate power within his realm.

Theologically and Philosophically:

St. John’s arguments show that the Iconoclast position de-Incarnationalizes religion and turns it into a form of Manichaeism, 3 where flesh is evil and the corporate body of the Church is replaced by the individual’s immaterial contemplation of a God who is no longer “the Word made Flesh.”

Carried to its extreme, Iconoclasm becomes Docetism, 4 where God merely appears to use a body of flesh. Docetism is very much alive in many modern Christian heresies.

Enter the Iconoclasts

The Roman Emperor Leo III, “the Isaurian,” who reigned from 716 to 741, was the first of the Iconoclasts. As his surname denotes, he came from the district of Isauria, located in what is now south central Turkey. Isauria was once a part of the district of Galatia in the time of the Apostles. St. Paul evangelized this region of Asia Minor where he attempted to convert his fellow Jews to the Catholic Faith. From his Epistle to the Galatians we can see that he came amongst large numbers of Jews who lived in that area, many of whom never ceased to pervert and distort the teachings of the true Faith. In fact, at the time of Leo, many Jews still lived in this region as did members of the heretical sect called the Paulicians, 5 whose teachings mirrored those of Mani-chaeism. The Catholic historian Conybeare made the observation that the Iconoclast Emperors were practically Paulicians themselves.

The story is told of Leo III’s youth that, while still in his father’s cabin amid the mountains of Isauria, he once heard Jews blaspheme and curse an image of the Redeemer. One of them turned to him and jokingly remarked: “Were you emperor, would you not destroy all those impious images?” “I swear,” replied the boy, “that I should not spare a single one!” 6

In time, Leo’s father, a peasant tradesman, moved the family to Thrace (where many Paulicians were emigrating), raised sheep, and sent 500 of them, with his son Leo in the bargain, as a present to the Emperor Justinian II. Leo became guardsman of the palace, then commander of the Anatolian legions. After forcing the Roman Emperor Theodosius III to abdicate, Leo was made Emperor by the vote of his army, thus becoming the fourth emperor in three years to sit upon the Byzantine throne. His rule would last 25 years, and through him would begin what is known in history as the Isaurian dynasty.

In the year 723, in order to prove to his subjects that he was not a Jew, Leo issued a decree giving all Byzantine Jews the choice between Christianity or banishment. By and large, the Jews received baptism. 7

Three years later, Leo published another decree announcing that in gratitude for the favors heaped upon him by God since his accession, he wished to destroy the idolatry which had crept into the Church; that the pictures of Christ, of the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints were idols (based upon his understanding of Exodus 20:4-5) to which honor was given that was only due to a jealous God. He accordingly ordered their removal from the churches, oratories and private dwellings. St. Germanus, the Patriarch of Constantinople, refused to sign his name to the edict, and in reply to the Emperor he said: “Christians do not worship images, but only honor them as memorials of the saints and of their virtues. Painting is but an epitome of history for Christians, not an idolatry. You must distinguish between direct and relative veneration .” (Emphasis ours. This sentence briefly puts forth a major argument used by Catholics against the Iconoclasts. It is found in St. John’s writings and in the texts of the Council of Nicea II.) Leo refused to understand so clear and simple an explanation. He again ordered St. Germanus to receive his decree with the alternative of banishment or even death in case of refusal. When Germanus again refused, the Emperor physically struck the Patriarch and, in time, with the senate’s approval, sent him into exile as a traitor. A willing and compliant priest named Anastasius took the Patriarch’s place.

As Father J.E. Darras relates, “From that hour an unparalled fanaticism wreaked its fury upon every sacred symbol. Leo’s troops broke into the churches and private dwellings, destroyed every pious work of art, and murdered all who dared to oppose them. Leo found it profitable to confiscate a number of gold and silver statues, costly vessels used in the service of the altar, jewels which enriched the images of Mary, so dear to the faithful hearts of the empire, and destroyed a large brass crucifix with which the piety of Constantine the Great had adorned one of the porticos of the imperial palace. Since it had always been held in special reverence by the inhabitants of Constantinople, some women of the lower class rushed upon the officer who had executed the impious order and murdered him. This but gave the signal for a savage slaughter, and these women were put to death with a number of other Catholics. The martyrs were covered with a coat of pitch, and burned upon a pile of sacred images. Their calcined bodies were then thrown to dogs.”

The celebrated Byzantine library was contained in a basilica situated between the imperial palace and the church of St. Sophia. This basilica, called the Octagon, from the eight splendid porticos which gave entrance to it, was the residence of the professors of theology. The Emperor directed these scholars to subscribe to his decree, which they refused to do. Unable to convince them, Leo became determined to destroy them, and so with a sociopathic cruelty, he consigned the books, the basilica, and the professors to the flames.

A Golden Stream Flows out of the East

There is a river that rises out of the southeastern slopes of Mount Hermon in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains that flows to the southernmost lake of Damascus. It is highly extolled by the local inhabitants for its purity and clearness. It was called, in Greek, Chrysorrhoës , or “golden stream.” Damascus owes everything to the river Barada, as it is called today. Its value to the Damascenes is inestimable, as it fertilizes the fields that provide much of the food for the city.

In the year of Our Lord 676, St. John Damascene was born into an illustrious Christian family in Damascus. St. John’s father was the grand vizier (high executive officer) at the court of the Umayyad caliphs of Damascus, Syria at this time being under the control of the Moslems. The family enjoyed the esteem of the caliphs to an eminent degree.

Wanting to give his son the best education possible, St. John’s father had been seeking for some time the right teacher for the job. Divine Providence helped him find a poor Sicilian monk named Cosmas, who had spent his life in the study of philosophy and the sciences. Under Cosmas’ tutelage, St. John made quick and steady progress in the study of grammar, dialectics, algebra, geometry, music, astronomy, and especially theology. The Catholic historian, M. Charles Lenormand, eulogizes St. John’s intellectual impact on his people: “Who opens the list of those master-minds that inspired the genius of Arabia? It is a very good Catholic, a Father of the Church, St. John Damascene, who initiates the Arab mind into the reasonings of Greek philosophy, not at the court of the Abbasids, but a century earlier in that of the Umayyad dynasty; not in Baghdad, but at Damascus. The illustrious Father, St. John, who enjoyed the highest consideration at the court, yet had left it for the religious cell, and was certainly the most renowned character of his day in the East, introduced the Arabs into the sphere of Aristotle’s philosophy.” (Though excelled by his pupil, the monk Cosmas was also a great man. Raised to the episcopal see of Majuma, he won the martyr’s palm in 743.)

Seeing the qualities that St. John exhibited, the caliph of Damascus made him vizier upon the death of John’s father. But St. John had other plans in mind. He preferred the life of solitude, so he obtained the caliph’s permission to live in retirement. He then entered the monastic life.

In 726, when the Iconoclast Leo began to issue his infamous decrees against images, St. John immediately entered the fight. He wrote his first treatise on the defense of images, which won great popularity in the East, and spread rapidly throughout the empire. St. John’s first work began: “Conscious of my own unworthiness, I ought perhaps to have kept an unbroken silence; but at the sight of the Church tossed by a violent storm, the words break of their own accord from my lips, for I fear God more than any earthly emperor.” St. John then goes on to discuss the question with depth, clearness, and learning. He proves the lawfulness of venerating images, by Sacred Scripture, Catholic tradition, and sound logical arguments. He wrote: “A picture is to the ignorant what a book would be to the learned. The picture does the same office through the sight as the word through the hearing. Holy images are a memorial of the Divine works. Besides, the decision in such matters falls not within the province of princes, but of councils. It was not to kings that Jesus Christ gave power to bind and to loose; it was to the apostles and their successors, the bishops and doctors of the Church. Let these rash innovators recall the words of the apostle St. Paul: Should an angel come down from heaven to preach to you another gospel than that which you have received… We will not finish the text, but leave them time for repentance. But if — what God forbid — they obstinately cling to their error, we may then add the rest: Let him be anathema!” Needless to say, this work created a deep impression in the Catholic world. And it enraged Emperor Leo.

To revenge himself on St. John, Leo committed an infamous fraud. He caused a skillful forger to counterfeit the handwriting of St. John, and then addressed a spurious letter from St. John to the Emperor, inviting him to march upon Damascus, which he promised to place in his power. Leo then sent the false document to the caliph of Damascus as a pledge of his friendship and a proof of his desire to preserve peace between them. The caliph, taken in by the fraud, and too much angered to listen to St. John, ordered his right hand to be cut off.

After the bloody punishment, St John threw himself upon his knees before an image of the Blessed Virgin, begging Her to intercede with her Divine Son for the restoration of his mutilated hand, that he might still defend the cause of holy images. His prayer was granted; his severed hand was restored to his arm!

Struck by the miraculous cure, the caliph loaded the saint with favors.

In the meantime, Pope St. Gregory II was rallying about him all the powers of the West to meet the onslaught of Iconoclasm. The people of Rome, upon learning of the lengths to which the Iconoclasts had desecrated the holy places and the destruction that was caused to holy pictures, began a program of destruction of their own. It was not holy pictures that they began to trample under foot, but images and statues of the Emperor! At the same time Pope Gregory was clearly laying down the Catholic teaching on the subject in his letters to Leo. The Emperor, maddened by such resistance on the part of the Church, organized a conspiracy against the Pontiff’s life. His plans went awry. The conspirators were discovered and put to death. One of Leo’s underlings, Paul, exarch of Ravenna assembled an army and prepared to take Rome in order to force the election of a new Pope. Against this threat the Roman people took up arms. People in the surrounding countries hastened to join the Romans in order to defend the city and the person of the Sovereign Pontiff. Paul was forced to retreat before such an imposing array of arms.

Leo’s senseless rage caused two results of vast importance in the history of the Church. It brought to the fore the importance of the temporal independence of the Popes, and it helped to establish the foundations of the Western power of the Franks and their protector role to the Primal See.

As he became increasingly powerless against the Church of Rome, in 733 the Emperor redoubled his cruelty towards the Catholics in his empire. He issued an imperial edict withdrawing all the provinces between Sicily and Thrace — comprising Greece, Illyria, and Macedonia — from the Roman Church’s immediate jurisdiction, and declared them henceforth subject to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The tax of Sicily and Calabria was increased by 33 percent, and even the children were taxed from the day of their birth.

In 741, Leo died and left the empire to his son Constantine Copronymus. 8 The second of the Iconoclast emperors, Constantine would make the persecutions enacted by his father seem tame in comparison.

Copronymus held a special hatred for the religious in his empire, partly due to his Paulician leanings and partly due to the fearless eloquence of the holy monk St. John of Damascus, whose reputation was becoming as wide as the boundaries of the East. St. John’s genius grew with the indignation everywhere aroused through the Catholic world by the cruelty of the Iconoclasts. His works followed each other with wonderful rapidity. In the immense tome called the Source of Science , addressed to his early teacher, Cosmas, then bishop of Majuma, St. John treats of the whole of human intellectual achievement and crowns it all with the divine science of theology. He met the various heretical systems with the truths of the Faith, and proved, by powerful reasoning and a captivating eloquence, the absurdity of Iconoclasm. Besides Source of Science , the Golden Stream’s writings also include three separate treatises in defense of holy images.

To popularize devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, he wrote hymns full of sublime beauty. For instance, in singing the praises of the Mother of God, St. John wrote: “Mother of life, kill in me the passions of the body, which are the death of the spirit. Protect my soul when it leaves this earthly tabernacle to soar above, to a better world. The storm of passion plays wildly round me now, the billows of iniquity hurry me to the gulf of despair. Star of the sea, still the foaming surge. The roaring lion seeks to devour me. Leave me not to his fury, O Immaculate Virgin; thou who didst give to the world the divine Child Whose hand hath broken the lion’s teeth.” Though St. John may not have intended to insert such polemics in his sublime praises of the Theotokos, we wonder if the lion reference (leo , in Latin) is a coincidence.

In 754, Constantine Copronymus convoked the famous Iconoclast council 9 with 138 Eastern bishops, fawning slaves, wherein the veneration of images was condemned, and those who honored them were anathematized. The documents of the pseudo-council contained several colorful expressions of hatred for St. John of Damascus. He was nicknamed “Manzer” (bastard), and they called him a “traitorous worshipper of images,” the “cursed favourer of Saracens,” a “wronger of Jesus Christ,” a “teacher of impiety,” and a interpreter of the Scriptures”!

Upon the close of this pseudo-synod, the work of devastation — the plundering of churches and monasteries, and the shedding of Catholic blood — was resumed with the same savage fury as in the days of Leo. The Iconoclast heresy did as much to swell the martyr ranks of the Church as the paganism of Nero and Diocletian. Throughout the liturgical year, the Roman Martyrology bears testimony to the carnage, naming a host of martyrs who died “for the defense of holy images.” Holy priests, virgins consecrated to the service of the altar, persons of every rank and condition, covered with blood and loaded with chains, were savagely dragged through the streets of Constantinople, and then plunged into dark dungeons to die of hunger and misery. Some of the most celebrated martyrs of this time included St. Stephen, abbot of the monastery of St. Auxentius, St. Andrew the Calybite, and St. Peter the Stylite.

The Iconoclasts Vanquished

It would be only after the death of Constantine Copronymus’ son Leo IV, “the Khazar,” that the Byzantine Empire would again establish good relations with the Catholic Church. An Ecumenical Council, the 7th in the history of the Church, would be convened in Nicaea in 787. Nicaea II condemned the erroneous teachings that were promulgated by the Iconoclast pseudo-synod of 754, and it confirmed Catholic tradition as regards the veneration of images. The Council also characterized the Iconoclasts as “godless Jews and enemies of truth,” and it also made repeated references to the iconoclastic acts as being initiated by Jews. 10

As a footnote, the Council reversed Leo the Isaurian’s decree forcing baptism upon the Jews in the Empire. The Council decreed that those Jews who were forced to christianize would no longer be considered Catholics, unless they had truly converted.

St. John Damascene would not live to see the Council vindicate him and his heroic defense of the Incarnation (he died in 756), but he would go down in history as one of the greatest teachers of the Church. He is referred to as the “Thomas Aquinas of the East” because he introduced Aristotle’s logic to the study of theology among the Greeks. In fact, pre-dating St. Thomas Aquinas, he is looked upon as the father and founder of scholastic theology. He is also the last of the Greek Fathers of the Church, and with him the Patristic age came to an end. He was declared a Doctor of the Universal Church by another Leo — Pope Leo XIII — in 1890.

Holy Minds Think Alike

As we started with an Apostle of the Incarnation describing for us the essence of Incarnational Christianity, let us end with St. John of Damascus, the great defender of the Incarnation, describing in similar terms, the essence of the Incarnation:

“Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men (Bar. 3:38), I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God. How could God be born out of lifeless things? And if God’s body is God by union, it is immutable. The nature of God remains the same as before, the flesh created in time is quickened by a logical and reasoning soul. I honor all matter besides, and venerate it. Through it, filled, as it were, with a divine power and grace, my salvation has come to me. Was not the thrice happy and thrice blessed wood of the Cross matter? Was not the sacred and holy mountain of Calvary matter? What of the life-giving rock, the Holy Sepulchre, the source of our resurrection: was it not matter? Is not the most holy book of the Gospels matter? Is not the blessed table matter which gives us the Bread of Life? Are not the gold and silver matter, out of which crosses and altar-plate and chalices are made? And before all these things, is not the Body and Blood of Our Lord matter? Either do away with the veneration and worship due to all these things, or submit to the tradition of the Church in the worship of images, honoring God and His friends, and following in this the grace of the Holy Spirit. Do not despise matter, for it is not despicable.”

Dear Golden Stream, pray for us

1 One exception had to do with the Caliph Yazid, who ruled in Palestine from 720-724. A monk named John testified, at the 7th Ecumenical Council, that a Palestinian Jew named Tessarakontapechys (“Forty-Cubits-High”) had promised the Caliph that he would reign for thirty years if he would destroy ‘every representational painting, whether on tablets or in wall mosaics or on sacred vessels and altar coverings, and all such objects as are found in all Christian churches…and so also all representations of any kind whatever that adorn and embellish the market places of cities…’ The Caliph yielded to the advice of the Jew, and a minor iconoclastic event occurred in his territory. Ironically, the Caliph died the very next year.

2 The rulers of the Khazar kingdom made Judaism the formal religion of the state in the eighth century. For more on this and the history of Khazaria, see Arthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe and Kevin Brook’s website .

3 Manichaeism is a complex heresy whose major tenet was that a good god created spirits and an equally powerful evil god created matter. Combated effectively by St. Augustine (d. 430), the Manichaean sect died, but the error lived on. See the article “St. Dominic de Guzman ” in Housetops No. 47.

4 Docetism is derived from the Greek dokesis, means “appearance” or “semblance.” The Docetae were not heretics, properly speaking, as this error came from outside the Church. Docetism was always an accompaniment of Gnosticism and Manichaeism. Gnosticism finds its roots in the Jewish Kabbala. This is evidenced in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, a direct disciple of St. John the Evangelist, when he wrote of the Docetics in his time (c. 105) being closely connected with the practice of Judaism. There were other early Church Fathers who also made this Judaic-Docetic connection, among them St. Polycarp (†166), another disciple of St. John.

5 Fr. Adrian Fortescue wrote in his article on the Paulicians that they rejected the Old Testament; there was no Incarnation, Christ was an angel sent into the world by God (the Paulicians believed as the Docetae: He only “seemed” to have taken on our humanity; His real mother was the heavenly Jerusalem. His work consisted only in His teaching; to believe in Him saves men from judgment. The true baptism and Eucharist consist in hearing His word, as in John 4:10.) Many Paulicians, nevertheless, let their children be baptized by the Catholic clergy. They honored not the Cross, but only the book of the Gospel. They were Iconoclasts, rejecting all pictures. Their Bible was a fragmentary New Testament. They rejected St. Peter’s epistles because he had denied Christ. They referred always to the “Gospel and Apostle”, apparently only St. Luke and St. Paul; though they quoted other Gospels in controversy. The whole ecclesiastical hierarchy is bad, as also are all sacraments and ritual. As they were very anti-ascetical, they held a special aversion to monks.

6 General History of the Catholic Church from the Commencement of the Christian Era to the Twentieth Century, M. L’Abbe J.E. Darras, © 1898, p. 310.

7 As history has shown, whenever this phenomenon has occurred, many of these Jews, while ostensibly practicing Catholicism, secretly continued to follow the rites of Judaism to which they remained deeply attached. Unfortunately, this “Marranist phenomenon” did not stop here. Many of these false Christians went on to enter the ranks of the clergy and religious, becoming priests, nuns, and even bishops!

8 As one author put it, Constantine was branded with arguably the worst moniker in history. “Copronymus” comes from Kopros , the Greek word for dung.

9 Catholic historian, M. Poujoulat, wrote: “Cold rigid Protestantism devoid of greatness of life, is enthusiastic in its admiration of the Iconoclast council of 754. With Leo the Isaurian and Copronymus, it raises the cry of idolatry! superstition! on seeing our churches decorated with the masterpieces of great artists.”

10 Mansi, Giovanni Domenico; Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio . Florentiae, Expensis Antonii Zatta, 1859-1898, Volume 13, 24E-32A, and 41A.

Why Celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church?
GRAHAM OSBORNE

It is true that in the early Church, some of the Apostles and priests were married. But very early on, the Church was keenly aware of the wisdom of this discipline of priestly celibacy. This discipline was formally instituted in the early 300's, but recent evidence suggests that it may actually be of Apostolic origin. St Paul writes clearly in favor of it in 1 Corinthians 7:7,38, saying: "I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God.... he who marries his betrothed does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better." Note that St Paul refers to celibacy here as a "gift"!

Jesus also spoke of it in Matthew 19:12, where he clearly recommends celibacy to those who can accept it: "Some are incapable of marriage because.... they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it."

In Mark 12:24-25, Jesus would also confirm that in heaven, people would not actually be "married" as we know it. "Jesus said to them, 'When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven'".

In fact, this is part of the spiritual dimension of priestly celibacy. Priests are "conformed to Christ" in many ways. Included in this is following Jesus' example of taking up a celibate life that more closely and perfectly parallels the heavenly life we are preparing for while on Earth. They have given up something "good" (marriage), for something even better — total devotion to Jesus and His Church. In a sense, they marry the Church — "the Bride of Christ".

And there are some practical considerations as well. Ask any married clergy whether it is difficult to have two "families", his natural family and his congregation. Many that I've talked to and read about admit that it is tough, and their time and loyalties can be torn. "I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife", St Paul would write in 1 Corinthians 7:32-33. As a married man and father of four, I can wholeheartedly attest to this!

Now what about the sexual abuse scandals in the Church? Many contend that it is largely the result of this discipline of celibacy. But this cannot be. Why? Because Jesus clearly calls for it in Matthew 19:12 above. Recall, "Some.... have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it." And we also saw earlier how St Paul, celibate himself, appeals strongly for the same (1 Corinthians 7:7-38).

When we examine the research (and space permits only a cursory overview here), in fact, it shows that sexual abuse has a much higher percentage of occurrence in Protestant churches than within celibate Catholic clergy — and this according to Protestant research! (cf Christian Ministry Resource's 9 year U.S. study; also "Pedophiles and Priests", Philip Jenkins). When we look to the secular world, again, research shows that the percentage of abuse is much higher among non-celibates than among celibate Catholic clergy. If celibacy were at the root of things, we would expect the opposite. Jesus picks 12 as his first priests, and one is Judas. We should expect difficulties and temptations to come –and some, sadly will fall in this area.

And finally, some suggest that we would have many more vocations to the priesthood if we allowed married men to apply. First of all, the Church relies on the Holy Spirit to discern such decisions, and so we trust the Holy Spirit to guide the Church in these matters, just as Jesus promised in John 14 through 16.

Secondly, God has been calling men to priestly celibacy by the thousands for centuries now. There is no reason to think He has stopped this in our time. More likely, the onslaught of secular, worldly influences is muffling God's call, and the faithful, devout family life that can be so helpful in nurturing this vocation seems to be in the minority these days.

Perhaps we need to look in part to ourselves and the surrounding culture as the problem. And do we all truly ask the master of the harvest to send more laborers for the harvest, as Jesus has told us to do in Luke 10:2?

So is it possible that some day this discipline of priestly celibacy might change? Possibly, but not likely. There is spiritual wisdom at work here — and infinite practicality. And if Jesus commends it, St Paul recommends it, and the Church confirms it, who are we to argue?

THE APOSTOLIC ORIGINS OF PRIESTLY CELIBACY

The old joke is still funny: Why did Peter deny Jesus? Peter was still mad that Jesus healed his mother-in-law. All kidding aside, many non-Catholics look at the indisputable fact that Peter had a mother-in-law (who was indeed healed by Jesus in Mark 1:30-31), and therefore must have had a wife, and consider the Catholic practice of clerical celibacy – well, a bad joke. They ask, “How can the Catholic Church require priestly celibacy when it’s clear that at least Peter – and possibly other Apostles – were married?”

Today’s Gospel sheds light on both the Catholic practice in general, and Peter’s particulars. This is good evidence that Jesus himself required his apostles to share his way of life:

Peter began to say to Jesus,
‘We have given up everything and followed you.”
Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you,
there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:
houses and brothers and sisters
and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.
But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

– Mark 10:28-31

The fact of the matter is that many clerics were ordained as married men in the early Church, but here’s the thing: they were required to be continent (abstain from marital relations) after ordination. There’s plenty of evidence that this practice dates to the Apostolic age and continued in both East and West. Strong documentation is found in Christian Cochini’s The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy, and Stefan Heid’s Celibacy in the Early Church, both published by Ignatius Press. Wives of potential clerics had to agree to such a change, or the ordination could not be carried out.

Peter, as Jesus indicated, left his wife and family home behind to follow Jesus more closely, as the Apostolic band roamed the countryside of Galilee. But this did not in any way indicate that he cruelly abandoned his bride, if she was indeed still living at the time. The extended family unit was paramount in Eastern cultures of the time, as it still is in many cases today. Many family members would often live under the same roof, and Mark notes that the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law occurred at Peter’s home in Capernaum. Peter’s wife would have been cared for. It is hardly imaginable that Jesus, who so despised divorce (which left women in a very precarious economic predicament in those days), would have advocated a cold dismissal of one’s spouse in order to be an Apostle.

Recently, the prominent canon lawyer Edward Peters has argued that the Church should return to her historical roots and that all clerics in higher orders, including permanent deacons (who currently are not required to do this), should observe the ancient practice of clerical continence. http://www.canonlaw.info/Studia%20c.%20277.pdf

Bro Yeeck, would you happen to know how many Catholic priest that are involved in such scandals ?

Also how many more Catholic priests dutifully serving the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world, without scandal ?

Thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Chur...ases_by_country

what's with the sudden interest in the vow of celibacy?

No sudden interest bro. Bro. Yeeck was responding to accusations in another thread. I have never followed these child abuse scandals and I presumed that there would be only a few cases until Yeeck showed the link.

Oh ... that old tired trope of 'rampant' child abuse in the Church. A huge nothing burger, and a convenient means of attacking the Church that was founded by Christ. Best to leave these heretics well alone to stew in their own ignorance. They are simply a bunch of idol worshiping pagans who don't know anything about Sacred Scripture.

Pederasty is a serious offence. We cannot simply say it is a nothing burger, however, in response to the heretics that attacks the Church as if only Catholic priests commits those acts, let these statistics be their answer. In fact, Protestant pastors commit more of these, but it is not lumped under Protestants because each of them are popes to themselves as they interpret Scripture to their own destruction.