Catholic Herald has a good article by Ed Condon, which is reproduced below, about the real reason why the Catholic Church has always condemned freemasonry and why Catholics are still forbidden to join, support, or defend masonic lodges.

Here is a list of Papal documents in which freemasonry is unequivocally condemned:

1738: Clement XII, In eminenti apostolatus.

1751: Benedict XIV, Providas Romanorum (Italian).
1821: Pius VII, Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo (Italian).
1825: Leo XII, Quo graviora.
1829: Pius VIII, Traditi humilitati.
1830: Pius VIII, Litteris altero.
1832: Gregory XVI, Mirari vos.
1846: Pius IX, Qui pluribus.
1849: Pius IX, Quibus quantisque malis.
1864: Pius IX, Quanta cura.
1865: Pius IX, Multiplices inter (French).
1865: Pius IX, Multiplices inter (Latin).
1869: Pius IX, Apostolicae Sedis moderationi.
1873: Pius IX, Etsi multa.
1882: Leo XIII, Etsi Nos.
1884: Leo XIII, Humanum genus.
1887: Leo XIII, Officio sanctissimo.
1890: Leo XIII, Dall'altodell'Apostolico Seggio.
1892: Leo XIII, Custodi diquella fede.
1892: Leo XIII, Inimica vis.
1894: Leo XIII, Praeclara gratulationis publicae.
1902: Leo XIII, Annum ingressi.


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The Real Reason Catholics Can't be Freemasons.

The real reason Catholics can’t be Freemasons

by Ed Condon

posted Thursday, 10 Aug 2017

An 1891 cartoon in Puck shows Pope Leo XIII doing battle with Freemasonry

The principles of Freemasonry are fundamentally incompatible with Catholic teaching. The mutual antagonism of the Catholic Church and Freemasonry is well established and longstanding. For most of the past 300 years they have been acknowledged, even in the secular mindset, as implacably opposed. In recent decades the animosity between the two has faded somewhat from the public consciousness as the Church’s direct institutional involvement in civil affairs has become less pronounced and as Freemasonry has waned dramatically in numbers and prominence. But as Freemasonry turns 300 years old, it is worth revisiting what was at the core of the Church’s absolute opposition to the group. Freemasonry can appear to be little more than an esoteric men’s club, but it was and remains a highly influential philosophical movement – one which has made a dramatic, if little-noticed, impact on modern Western society and politics.

 

The history of Freemasonry itself is long and interesting. Its gradual transformation from the medieval workers’ guilds of stonemasons into a network of secret societies with their own Gnostic philosophy and rituals is a fascinating tale in itself. The era of the latter version of Freemasonry began with the formation of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717 in the Goose & Gridiron pub near St Paul’s Cathedral. In the early days, before the Church made any formal pronouncement on the subject, many Catholics were members and the English Catholic and Jacobite diaspora was crucial to spreading Freemasonry to continental Europe. At one point it was so popular among Catholics in some places that Francis I of Austria served as a formal patron.

 

And yet the Church became the greatest foe of the Masonic lodges. Between Clement XII in 1738 and the promulgation of the first Code of Canon Law in 1917, a total of eight popes wrote explicit condemnations of Freemasonry. All provided the strictest penalty for membership: automatic excommunication reserved to the Holy See. But what did and does the Church mean by Freemasonry? What are its qualities which are so worthy of condemnation?

 

It is sometimes said that the Church opposed Freemasonry because of the lodges’ supposedly revolutionary or seditious character. There is a widespread assumption that Masonic lodges were essentially political cells for republics and other reformers, and the Church opposed them as part of a defence of the old regime of absolute monarchy in which she was institutionally invested. But while political sedition would eventually come to the front of the Church’s opposition to Masonic membership, this was by no means the initial reason the Church opposed the Masons. What Clement XII described in his original denunciation was not a revolutionary republican society but a group spreading and enforcing religious indifferentism: the belief that all religions (and none) are of equal worth, and that in Masonry all are united in service to a higher, unifying understanding of virtue. Catholics, as members, would be asked to put their membership of the lodge above their membership of the Church. The strict prohibition, in other words, was not for political purposes but for the care of souls.

 

From the outset, the primary concern of the Church has been that Masonry suborns a Catholic’s faith to that of the lodge, obliging them to place a fundamental secularist fraternity above communion with the Church. The legal language, and penalties, used in the condemnations of Freemasonry were actually very similar to those used in the suppression of the Albigensians: the Church sees Freemasonry as a form of heresy. While the Masonic rites themselves contain considerable material which can be called heretical, and is in some instances explicitly anti-Catholic, the Church has always been far more concerned with the overarching philosophical content of Freemasonry rather than its ritual pageantry.

 

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the Catholic Church and its privileged place in the government and society of many European countries became the subject of growing secularist opposition and even violence. Now, there is little if any historical evidence of the lodges playing an active role in beginning the French Revolution. However, the anti-clerical and anti-Catholic horrors of the Revolution can be traced back to the secularist mentality described in the various papal bulls outlawing the Masonic lodges. Masonic societies were condemned not because they set out to threaten civil or Church authorities but because such a threat was the inevitable consequence of their existence and growth. Revolution was the symptom, not the disease.

 

The alignment of Church and state interests, and their assault by seditious and revolutionary secret societies, were clearest where the Church and state were one: in the Papal States of the Italian peninsula. As the 19th century began, a new iteration of Freemasonry came to prominence which was explicit in its revolutionary character and avowed in its opposition to the Church; they called themselves the Carbonari, or charcoal merchants. They sanctioned and practised both assassination and armed insurrection against the various governments of the Italian peninsula in their campaign for a secular constitutional government, and were perceived as an immediate threat to the faith, the Papal States and the person of the pope.

 

The link between the passive threat of the philosophy and secrecy of Masonry and the active revolutionary plots and acts of the Carbonari was laid out in Pius VII’s apostolic constitution Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo, promulgated in 1821. While the Carbonari’s avowed and active opposition to the temporal governance of the Papal States was addressed and condemned, it was still made clear that the gravest threat posed even by these violently revolutionary cells was their philosophy of secularism.

 

Throughout all the various papal condemnations of Freemasonry, even when lodges were actively supporting military campaigns against the pope, as they did with Garibaldi’s conquest and unification of Italy, what was always the first objection of the Church to the Lodge was its threat to the faith of Catholics and the freedom of the Church to act in society. The undermining of the teachings of the Church in the lodges, and the suborning of her authority on matters of faith and morals, were described repeatedly as a plot against the faith, both in individuals and in society.

 

In the encyclical Humanum Genus, Pope Leo XIII described the Masonic agenda as the exclusion of the Church from participation in public affairs and the gradual erosion of her rights as an institutional member of society. During his time as Pope, Leo wrote a great many condemnations of Freemasonry, pastoral and legal. He outlined, in detail, what the Church considered to be the Masonic agenda and, reading it with contemporary eyes, it is still shockingly relevant.

 

He specifically referred to the aim of secularising the state and society. He referenced in particular the exclusion of religious education from state schools and the concept of “the State, which [Masonry believes] ought to be absolutely atheistic, having the inalienable right and duty to form the heart and the spirit of its citizens.” He also decried the Masonic desire to remove the Church from any control in, or influence over, schools, hospitals, public charities, universities and any other body serving the public good. Also specifically highlighted was the Masonic push for the reimagining of marriage as a merely civil contract, the promotion of divorce, and support for the legalisation of abortion.

 

It is almost impossible to read this agenda and not recognise it as the underpinning of almost all of our contemporary political discourse. The settled view on these matters of many, if not all, of our major political parties, indeed the very concept of the secular state and its consequences on Western society, including the pervasive divorce culture and near universal availability of abortion, is a victory of the Masonic agenda. And this raises very real canonical questions about Catholic participation in the modern secular political process.

 

Throughout the centuries of papal condemnations of Freemasonry, it was normal for each pope to include the names of new societies that shared the Masonic philosophy and agenda and which should be understood by Catholics to come under the heading of “Masonic” in terms of canon law. By the 20th century, this had come to include political parties and movements such as communism.
 

When the Code of Canon Law was reformed, following Vatican II, the canon specifically prohibiting Catholics from joining “Masonic societies” was revised. In the new code, promulgated in 1983 by St John Paul II, explicit mention of Freemasonry was dropped completely. The new Canon 1374 referred only to societies that “plot against the Church”. Many took this change to indicate that Freemasonry was no longer always bad in the eyes of the Church. In fact, the reforming committee made it clear that they meant not just Freemasons, but many other organisations; the “plot” of its secularist agenda had spread so far beyond the lodges that to keep using the umbrella term “Masonic” would be confusing. The then Cardinal Ratzinger issued an authoritative clarification of the new law in 1983, in which he made it clear that the new canon was phrased to encourage broader interpretation and application.

 

Given the crystal-clear understanding in Church teaching regarding what the Masonic plot or agenda against the Church includes (marriage as a merely civil contract open to divorce at will, abortion, exclusion of religious education from public schools, exclusion of Church from the provision of social welfare and or control of charities), it seems impossible not to ask: how many of the major political parties in the West can now be said to fall under the prohibition of Canon 1374? The answer may well be rather uncomfortable for those who want to see an end to the so-called culture wars in the Church.

 

More recently, Pope Francis has repeatedly spoken of his grave concern at Masonic infiltration of the Curia and other Catholic organisations. At the same time, he has warned against the Church becoming a mere “NGO” in its methods and goals – which is the direct danger of that secularist mentality which the Church has always called a Masonic philosophy.

 

Masonic infiltration of the hierarchy and Curia has long been treated as a kind of Catholic version of monsters under the bed, or McCarthyite paranoia about commie infiltrators. In fact, when you speak to people who work in the Vatican, you will quickly discover that for every two or three people who laugh at the very notion, you can find someone who has directly encountered it. I myself know at least two people who were approached about joining during their time working in Rome. The role of Masonic lodges as a confidential meeting point and network for those with heterodox ideas and agendas has changed little from pre-Revolutionary France to the modern Vatican; 300 years after the founding of the first Grand Lodge, the conflict between the Church and Freemasonry is still very much alive.

 

Ed Condon is a canon lawyer. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of the Church’s legal sanctions against Freemasons.

Consecration of a Catholic Church

THE CONSECRATION OF A CATHOLIC CHURCH

Holy Innocents Church in NYC in 1901 - the year of its consecration.

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The consecration of a Catholic church is a very solemn and impressive ceremony, with rites that devote the edifice exclusively to sacred use. The various parts of the traditional ceremonies of consecration are of very ancient date, and are substantially the same today as they were many centuries ago.

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As formally decreed by the Council of Trent, Holy Mass is not to be celebrated in any place except a consecrated or blessed church, which is why the Church wants that cathedrals and parish churches be solemnly consecrated, and that smaller churches be blessed. The consecration of a church is reserved to a bishop, by which the church is dedicated  to the service of God, thereby raising it perpetually to a higher order, removing it from the malign influence of Satan, and rendering it a place in which favors are more graciously granted by God (Pontificale Romanum).

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As part of the consecration of a church, at least one fixed altar must be consecrated. According to the Catholic Encylopedia (1913), before the time of Constantine, the consecration of churches was a private matter due to persecutions. However, after Constantine’s conversion, it became a public rite: “After these things a spectacle earnestly prayed for and much desired by us all appeared, viz. the solemnization of the festival of the dedication of churches throughout every city, and the consecration of newly-built oratories” (Eusebius of Cæsarea, Church History X).

 

The consecration of churches is believed to be, in a sense, a continuation of the Jewish rites instituted by King Solomon. Some authors date the rites to around the year 105 and attribute its origin to Pope St. Evaristus, but it seems probable that he merely promulgated as a law what had been the custom before his time. There are many examples to prove that churches were consecrated before peace had been granted to the Church, such as the one taken from the life of St. Cecilia, who prayed for a cessation from hostilities against the Christians so that her home might be consecrated as a church by St. Urban I (222-230). Another example is taken from the life of St. Marcellus (308-309), who consecrated a church in the home of St. Lucina (Breviarium Romanum, 16 January).

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On the evening before the consecration of a church, exposition of the relics that will be buried in the altar to be consecrated with the church, the keeping of the vigil, the blessing of the Gregorian water (a mixture of water, salt, ashes, and wine), the sprinkling of the altar, and the translation of the relics to the church are the same as those described for the consecration of a church. When the relics have been carried to the church, the consecrator anoints with holy chrism the four corners of the altar and the sepulchre of the altar, and then he incenses them. The incense symbolizes the sweet odor of prayer, which is to ascend from the altar to heaven.

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On the day of consecration, the candles under the crosses on the walls are lighted. After this, the bishop and the clergy go to the place in which the relics of the martyrs were deposited the evening before. Whilst the bishop is being vested, the Seven Penitential Psalms are recited, after which all proceed to the main entrance of the church, where, remaining outside, the bishop blesses the water. The bishop then goes three times around the outside of the church, the first time sprinkling the upper part of the walls, the second time the lower part, and the third time on a level with his face.

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After each round, the bishop strikes the door with the base of his crosier and says, “Lift up your gates, ye princes, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.” Every time the deacon inside the church asks, “Who is this King of Glory?” and the bishop twice answers, “The Lord, strong and mighty; the Lord mighty in battle;” and the third time he says, “The Lord of Armies, He is the King of Glory.” According to Blessed Yves of Chartres in his Sermo de Sacramentis, this triple sprinkling and circuit of the walls symbolizes the triple immersion at holy baptism, the consecration of the soul as the spiritual temple of God.

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The essence of the consecration of a church consists in the anointing of the (12) twelve crosses on the inner walls with the form: “Sancificetur et consecretur hoc templum,” etc. According to a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites dated April 12, 1614, if before this ceremony the consecrator should become incapacitated for finishing the function, the whole rite must be repeated from the beginning. These crosses are not to be of wood or of any fragile material. They must never be removed (Cong. Sac. Rit., 18 February, 1696), and documents failing, they serve to prove that the church has been consecrated. Under each cross a bracket holding a candle is affixed.

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“Such are the impressive ceremonies which our Church uses for the sanctifying of a temple of God. It is sprinkled, within and without, with holy water; the door and walls are signed with blessed Chrism, the altar is anointed with the same oil, and is made a tomb of one of God’s illustrious servants. The odor of incense fills the house of God, and the solemn prayers of the Church are used to consecrate both temple and altar to His service forever. ‘This is none other than the House of God and the Gate of Heaven” (The Externals of the Catholic Church, Rev. John Sullivan).

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Tracing of the letters of the Alphabet in Latin and Greek letters on sand on the floor of the church.
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Incense being burned on the five corses on the mensa of the Altar(s).
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Mastery or Martyrdom

Here is an article from Crisis Magazine that may be of interest to some: Metaphysical Mischief:The Bergoglio Gloss by James Patrick.

We always keep in mind the following truth that history has confirmed time and time again:

“In dealing with the world, the Church says: ‘All things of the world are yours, in all things pertaining to you, in all that is temporal, we are submissive; we are your subjects, we love to obey. But within the sphere of the Truth of God, within the sphere of the unity and discipline of God’s Kingdom, there is no choice for the Catholic Church but mastery or martyrdom.’”

~The Glories of the Catholic Church (Volume II).

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Metaphysical Mischief: The Bergoglio Gloss

James Patrick

   

Every theology necessarily incorporates a philosophy, for there will always be a natural way of thinking that under-girds the exposition of revelation. Like everyman, popes have philosophies, and although it is not the business of a pope to advocate any philosophy, the philosophy every pope presupposes will influence his representation of the Catholic faith and his government of the Church. John Paul II is often cited as an exponent of Thomism as interpreted through the lens of the phenomenology of Husserl. Benedict XVI is steeped in the Augustinian tradition, which carries with it certain themes borrowed from Plato, but which in the end was not too different from the Thomism of John Paul II, both teaching that human intellect could grasp transcendent ideas. Like his mentor Saint Augustine, Benedict has spent much effort explaining the relation between faith and reason. Famously, Benedict cited the rejection of reason as the great defect of Islamic thought.

Philosophy is common sense raised to the level of reflection, and nothing in the thought of John Paul II or Benedict challenges reason, rather the opposite, for reason itself is elevated in their teaching of the faith. But then comes Pope Francis who offers what seems to be yet another gloss on the Catholic faith. The pope does not deny the divinity of Christ or the necessity of the sacraments; his reiteration of the Divine Mercy and exhortation to solidarity in matters political and economic have won broad approval. But something that seems alien is at work in his teaching, and that is because he accepts, perhaps deliberately, perhaps unwittingly, the intellectual backwash of the Enlightenment as the philosophical basis of his teaching and particularly of his moral theology. He is at heart a romantic, and sympathy will always trump thought.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an eighteenth-century French critic and philosopher whose thought has permeated the West. It was a theme of his philosophy that man although naturally innocent had been corrupted by the intrusion of law and tradition, which, rather than informing and elevating, always restricted and deformed. Pope Francis has not been known to advance a doctrine of original innocence, but his persistent theme that the mission of the Church is misrepresented by defenders of the tradition, whom he unfailingly associates with the Christ-denying Pharisees, who are soul-damaging rigorists, is an idea that, while it may have other immediate sources, can certainly be traced, by however circuitous a route, to Rousseau.

It is probably unlikely that Francis has read the turgid philosophy of the famous Prussian G. W. F. Hegel who lived a generation after Rousseau, but he is arguably a disciple. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History were among the most popular philosophical sources of the nineteenth century, and if few had read the book there were many who knew the Hegelian slogan: “Whatever is, is right.” For Hegel, history was a process through which reason exhausts itself in events and world-historical persons. The truth of things is not known by the light of intellect or by the application of reason in its transcendent character but by what happens in history. In Evangelii Gaudium, Francis notes that there is always a tension between reality and ideas. But then he writes: “Reality is greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom” (231).

 

At first sight this list seems unexceptionable, but at the same time one may see in it the shadow of the Hegelian triumph of whatever is over thought. One of its terms is a nod to Benedict’s condemnation of the tyranny of relativism. The reference to angelic purity is puzzling. Does it refer to a dedicated pursuit of holiness or to a destructive scrupulosity? There are commonplaces: the unexceptionable rejection of empty rhetoric and unwise intellectual discourse. But then what is “ahistorical fundamentalism”? In this context fundamentalism is a highly charged word. Ahistorical fundamentalism must be a system of rigorist moral precept that does not take into account what actually happens. However, it is the work of moral precepts not to take into account what may be done at any one time or place but instead to lift up, guide, and form.

In his introduction to his translation of Plato’s Dialogues Benjamin Jowett, the fabled president of Balliol College, Oxford, wrote: “The universal is prior to the particular; the law conditions the event, the ideal regulates the actual. Knowledge consists in the discernment of a general pattern which the particular thing embodies, virtue consists of regulation of impulse according to eternal standards.” Jowett was writing of Plato, but, broadly. Every Christian philosopher, including the modern popes, would subscribe to Jowett’s summary as the presupposition of thought and morality.

When Saint Thomas asks where truth resides, he answers that it resides in the mind and only secondarily in things. A historical or scientific account may derive truth from what happens in the world by explaining events under a generalization, but reality remains unintelligible without ideas, and in that sense ideas are always more important than reality. And also with theological truth and moral precepts. And so also with the exercise of authority. The attempt to rule without reference to tradition or any other transcendent rational ground, or even the regulative claims of the past, however benign the results may or may not accidentally be, will result in a government that rests upon unmoderated will, difficult in principle to distinguish from a vernacular Marxism.

The attempt to derive moral guidance from reality, from how mankind behaves, from the sorry story of our aspirations and failures, will make every teaching of the Church uncertain, as has Amoris Laetitia in the opinion of many. An editorial writer in the Guardian has said that Francis has changed the Church forever from a rule-bound institution to an instinctive Church. Good luck with your instincts. The world is full of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics who think it would be good to receive the body and blood of Christ. If their instincts say they are at peace with God, why not? The vast majority of Catholics don’t follow Humanae Vitae anyhow so, as Francis has written, Humanae Vitae must be revisited. The teaching of the Church should be accommodated to what is actually happening. Rigorists, says Francis, do not go with the flow of life. Ah, Hegel.

Sed contra. Historically, it has been the role of the teaching Church, in the name of Christ, never to accommodate itself to the ways of the world, but to ask of mankind the impossible, proposing the heroic and offering unstinting forgiveness for failure. It has been unsympathetic to claims that human nature must be treated gently. “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted unto blood” (Heb. 12:4). It has viewed with horror the deliberate defection of one will from obedience to God. Cardinal Newman wrote that it would be better for millions to die in pain and poverty than for one soul knowingly to commit a venial sin, that, he said, was merely a preamble to the Gospel just as “Whereas” might be to an act of Parliament. To this has been appended the fact of the sacrifice of Christ, the aid of the sacraments and the offer of forgiveness. The requirement that we love God most is ideal, and it will be realized in his elect. Without this high calling, mercy is the answer to a question that has not been asked.

The Sacrament of Penance

THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE

MAN, even though regenerated and justified, is still liable to fall into sin, on account of the depravity of his fallen nature, and also on account of the many temptations that surround him: therefore our loving Lord, in His infinite mercy, instituted another sacrament for the forgiveness of sin committed after baptism.

This is the sacrament of penance, in which, by the absolution of the priest, joined with the contrition, confession, and satisfaction of the penitent, the sins of the penitent are forgiven by God, through the application of the merits of Jesus Christ, and a grace is given him to help him to avoid sin in future.

 

Contrition is an interior grief, horror and detestation of sin committed, with the firm resolve never more to relapse into our evil habits.[1] Contrition thus includes in itself two acts: sorrow of the heart for sin committed, and the purpose of the will to avoid sin in future.

Confession is an express, contrite, but secret self-accusation, to a duly authorized priest, of at least all grievous sins committed after baptism, of which he wishes to receive absolution, or of all the mortal sins committed since the last confession when absolution was received, as far as we can recall them to our memory.[2]

Satisfaction means doing the penance enjoined by the priest in confession, repairing the scandal if any was given, and restoring the property and good name to our neighbor in case of his having been injured by us.

 

Almighty God certainly can, if it so pleases Him, depute a man to forgive sins in His name. That He did depute certain men to forgive sins is plain from what our blessed Lord said to His Apostles, and in the persons of the Apostles to their legitimate successors to the end of the world: “Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When He had said this, He breathed on them; and He said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” (St. John xx. 21-23).
 

 
 

This divine commission to forgive sins in Christ’s name was always understood to mean what the words just quoted from St. John naturally and plainly signify; namely, that God has commissioned certain men to grant, and also withhold, the forgiveness of sin in His name; and these words have thus been understood from the time of the Apostles until now by the Catholic Church, and have thus been understood also by the separated Greek and other Oriental schismatical churches, in which the sacrament of penance is also believed and practised.
 

 
 

It is of course always God Who forgives when forgiveness is granted through the instrumentality or ministration of a priest who acts as minister of God. As in holy baptism, it is God who forgives, yet it is done through the medium of the minister who dispenses that sacrament of regeneration, for whether it be Paul or Cephas who baptizes, it is always Jesus Christ Who baptizes; so in the sacrament of penance, when the priest forgives, it is God Who forgives through His appointed authorized minister. From the words of St. John, lately quoted, it is evident that the priest has, by the commission of Christ, sometimes to forgive, and sometimes to retain, that is, to withhold forgiveness of sin; therefore it is necessary that the penitent sinner should make known to the priest in confession the state of his conscience, in order that the priest may give or withhold absolution with knowledge and prudence, and not grant or deny it unduly or at hazard, which Jesus Christ never intended.
 

 
 

The priest, in fact, who is called upon to dispense the sacrament of penance, to remit or to retain sin, has to decide whether the person who comes to him as a penitent is really guilty of sin or not; whether, if guilty, the sin is grievous or is venial; whether reparation to a neighbor is required or not ; he must see what instruction, admonition, advice, or penance he has to give him; he must form a well-grounded judgment whether the penitent has or has not the dispositions which render him fit to receive absolution. In short, the priest in the tribunal of penance is a judge, and as such he must, as a rule, have full knowledge of the case upon which he has to pronounce judgment; and this knowledge he can only have from the confession of the penitent person.
 

 
 

That it is a good thing to confess our sins appears from the following passages of Holy Writ: “He that hideth his sins shall not prosper; but he that shall confess, and forsake them, shall obtain mercy” (Proverbs xxviii. 13). St. James writes: “Confess, therefore, your sins one to another” (v. 16). If open confession is good for the soul, how much more advantageous is it to confess to a priest who has deputed power from God to forgive our sins.
 

 
 

We must bear the shame of showing our wounds and bruises, and festering sores, if we wish to be cured. To humble ourselves before the minister of God is some reparation for the evil we have done; that humiliation pleases God and procures for us many great blessings.

 

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[1] See Council of Trent, Session xiv. Chap. 4.

[2] † See Method of Confession, Part II. No. 6 of this book.

 

TAKEN FROM THE GLORIES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (VOLUME 1).

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In the four pictures below, one can see the "virgula pœnitentiaria" that was abolished in April of 1967 under the Pontificate of (who else?) Pope Paul VI.

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Above and below, Cardinal Canali in 1950, with the "virgula pœnitentiaria."

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The Invocation of Saints

A CONCISE EXPOSITION OF THE TENETS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, CONCERNING THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS.

THE doctrine of the Catholic Church with respect to the honor which is due to the Saints, and especially to the blessed Virgin, is founded on the most obvious principles of reason; and expressly sanctioned by numerous and explicit warrants of Scripture.

We are inclined, by the impulse of nature, to be pleased with objects that are beautiful, and the best feelings of the human heart prompt us to do homage to goodness and virtue. Those feelings are in perfect accordance with the principles of right reason, for it cannot be wrong to admire excellence nor unreasonable to esteem what is worthy of veneration. God commands us to "render to all men their dues, tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, and honor to whom honor" (Rom. xiii. 7), and thus expressly sanctions our doing homage to the exalted dignity and transcendent splendor of His servants in heaven, who, "having overcome, are clothed in white, and walk with Him because they are worthy" (Rev. iii. 4). Jesus Christ declares that to those "that shall overcome, He will give to sit with Him on His throne" (Rev. iii. 21), "and they shall be like to the angels of God in heaven" (Matt. xxii. 30), "and shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matt. xiii. 43); that "they shall see God face to face" (1 Cor. xiii. 12); "and beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, they are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, by the spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. iii. 18), "and they shall reign for ever and ever" (Rev. xxi.-xxii. 5).

Such is the dignity which the Lord God confers upon His servants. He exalts them to a fellowship with Himself, and makes them partakers of His throne and glory. It is an imperative duty, therefore, to honor the Saints, and in doing so we follow the example of God Himself.

But while the dignity of the Saints claims our respectful homage, their ardent charity demands the warmest affection of our hearts. Seeing God face to face, they cannot cease to love Him, and loving Him, they must also love all the members of His mystical body here on earth, and earnestly desire their eternal happiness; for "there is joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance" (Luke xv. 10). It is therefore a portion of the happiness as well as of the duty of the Saints to pray to God for their brethren on earth. "And the four living creatures, and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints" (Rev. v. 8); "and another angel came and stood before the altar, having a golden censer, and there was given to him much incense, that he should offer the prayer of all the Saints upon the golden altar, which is before the throne of God. And the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the Saints ascended up before God, from the hand of the angel" (Rev. viii. 3). And the angel Raphael speaks as follows to holy Tobias: "when thou didst pray with tears, and didst bury the dead, and didst leave thy dinner, and hide the dead by day in thy house, and bury them by night, I offered thy prayers to the Lord" (Tob. xii. 12); and in Zach. i. 12 we read that "the angel of the Lord answered and said, O Lord of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem; and on the cities of Juda with which thou hast been angry? This is now the seventh year: and the Lord answered the angel, that spoke in me, good words, comfortable words."

Here, then, is evidence that the angels and Saints offer up their prayers to the throne of grace on behalf of their brethren on earth and that God responds to them "good words, comfortable words." It is absurd, therefore, to deny that it is lawful to ask for the prayers of the blessed in heaven. Such prayers are evidently agreeable to God, and must be profitable to man. For as "the Lord accepted the face of Job" (xlii. 8), who was still in this state of probation, how much more the face of those who "have proved themselves worthy;" "who are made to their God a kingdom and priests" (Rev. v. 10); "who shall judge nations and rule over people" (Wisd. iii. 8), "and shall reign upon the earth" (Rev. v. 10).

In conformity with the evidence of the foregoing, and numerous other express warrants of Holy Writ, the Catholic Church teaches that "The Saints who reign with Christ offer up their prayers to God for men, and that it is useful and good to invoke them, and to have recourse to their prayers, help and assistance, in order to obtain blessings from God, through His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour" (Conc. Trid., Sess. 25). In the catechism of the Council of Trent, the infinite difference between the worship which is due to God, and the honor which, on His account, may be given to the Saints, is so strongly marked and so fully and clearly explained as to obviate all the cavils raised against Catholics on that subject. A Catholic child, acquainted with the first outlines of the Christian doctrine, will commit no mistake on that point; and the most rude peasant in the most remote part of Ireland, is quite aware that it would be idolatry to give to the Saints the honor which he owes to God, from Whom alone he hopes for mercy, while he looks for nothing from the saints but the assistance of their prayers; and hence it is that he always concludes his supplication to the Saints with the words, "through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

Catholics in every age of the Church had a special devotion to the blessed Virgin. They venerated her more than the other Saints, because her sanctity was far superior to theirs. They believed her to be full of grace and blessed among women, and to hold a relation to God, as the Mother of Jesus Christ, to which no other creature could lay claim. They have recourse to her intercession, therefore, with the utmost confidence; knowing that her divine Son was obedient to her here on earth, and that, in His last agony on the cross, He committed the children of His Church to her care in the person of St. John, His beloved disciple.

But, notwithstanding the profound veneration in which Catholics hold the blessed Virgin, and the precedence which they justly give her above all God's creatures, they limit their respect within proper bounds, and stop infinitely short of paying her that honor which is due to God, and which it would be idolatry to give to any other being. To God they offer supreme homage as the great creator and preserver of the universe. They adore, honor and love Him for His own sake, and on account of His own innate perfections. From Him they ask for grace and mercy, and deliverance from spiritual and temporal evils, because He alone is omnipotent—He alone can forgive and relieve them. From the blessed Virgin, however, they expect no more than her intercession, and the homage which they pay her is for the sake of God, is directed through her to God, and ultimately terminates in God.

Whatever, therefore, may be the terms used by Catholic writers, or in Catholic books of devotion, relative to the blessed Virgin, they are all to be understood as limited to the genuine sense of the Catholic doctrine; no language, however strong or metaphorical, must be supposed—for it is not meant—to confer upon her any attribute or privilege which is peculiar to God. If she is invoked to "assist, defend, deliver us," etc., it is always understood by her prayers and intercession; and if she be styled “the hope of sinners, the mediatrix, the refuge of the afflicted, the help of Christians, the merciful, the all-powerful Virgin," all those terms are to be understood in the same limited sense, and to mean no more than that God, in His infinite goodness and mercy, is ever willing to grant her petitions.

The holy fathers and other spiritual writers seem to have exhausted the powers of language in celebrating the virtues of this august Virgin Mother of God; and, full of tender devotion toward her, they have sometimes used expressions so strong and metaphorical that the enemies of Catholicity, either from ignorance of its real principles, or through invidious motives, have imputed doctrines on this subject to Catholics which they abhor and utterly disavow; and as the little book now presented to the public was principally compiled by its venerable author from the writings of the saints and the holy fathers, it has been considered prudent to prefix the foregoing observations, in order that the enemies of the blessed Mother of God may not affect to discover new grounds for calumny and invective.

With regard to the histories or miracles recorded in this or any other book of devotion, it may be useful to remark that no histories or miracles, except those recorded in the Holy Scriptures, are proposed to Catholics as parts of divine revelation or articles of faith. All others rest on their own bare historical authority, and the credit due to their narrators.

In conclusion, it may not be amiss to observe, that the reasonableness of the Catholic doctrine with respect to the invocation of Saints is so obvious and accords so fully with the whole tenor of the Scriptures, and the constant belief of the primitive Church, that very many learned Protestants have acknowledged it. Bishop Montague writes as follows in his Antidote, page 20: "I do not deny but the Saints are mediators, as they are called, of prayer and intercession. They interpose with God by their supplications, and mediate by their prayers." And again, in his Treatise on the Invocation of Saints, page 118, he says: "I see no absurdity in nature, no incongruity unto analogy of faith, no repugnancy at all to sacred Scripture, much less impiety for any man to say, as they of the Roman Church do, 'Holy Mary, pray for me;'" and he adds, "Indeed, I grant Christ is not wronged in His mediation by such invocation of the saints, and this," he continues, "is the common voice with general concurrence, without contradiction, of reverend and learned antiquity, for aught I ever could read or understand, and I see no reason or cause to depart from them, touching intercession in this kind" (Invocation of Saints, page 103).

TAKEN FROM THE GLORIES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (VOL. 3).