These Last Days News - January 31, 2023
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8-5. US Cardinal Demands Homosexuals in Mortal Sin Be Given Communion, Women Be ‘Ordained’ Deacons...
ONLY MEN
"In the Holy Sacrifice that I left with you, I did not ask for women to be upon the altar, nor try to be a high priestess. They carry this on in the churches of satan; therefore, it shall not be carried on in My Church."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Jesus, October 2, 1987
YOU WILL BE SURELY DESTROYED
"As in Sodom and Gomorrha, mankind had gone down and given itself over to satan. I ask you now, My children, to turn back from your road to destruction, for you will be surely destroyed as was the time of Sodom and Gomorrha. Homosexuality shall not be condoned."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Jesus, June 18, 1991
CHURCH OF MAN
"There must be change, My children, but a change back to reality and tradition. My Son has given you a true foundation, but many come now with axes and they chop away. They seek to build a church without spirit, a church of man. The walls will crumble, the earth will shake. The Eternal Father will send His wrath upon mankind."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, December 6, 1975
The above Messages from Our Lady were given to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, New York.
LifeSiteNews.com reported on January 26, 2023:
by Raymond Wolfe
One of America’s top liberal bishops is ramping up his attacks on Catholic teaching and tradition, insisting that homosexuals and remarried couples in “objectively grave sin” be allowed to receive the Eucharist and that women be admitted to the diaconate.
In a lengthy essay Tuesday in America Magazine, the heterodox publication of the Jesuits of the United States, Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego took aim at Church teaching on various subjects, including conscience, sexual ethics, and intrinsic evil.
The essay reads like a call to action for left-wing U.S. Catholics, urging the removal of “structures and cultures of exclusion” in the Church as part of Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality. The reform McElroy imagines “will require a long pilgrimage of sustained prayer, reflection, dialogue and action—all of which should begin now,” he wrote.
This is just the latest attack on the faith from McElroy, a favorite of the pope and a rising star in the liberal Catholic world who has repeatedly undermined Catholic teaching. He encouraged a “transformation” of the Church through the Synod on Synodality and changes to “reformable Church doctrine” in a similar article for America last year.
San Diego cardinal rejects ‘theology of eucharistic coherence’
In his essay Tuesday, McElroy demanded that “the [C]hurch must embrace a eucharistic theology that effectively invites all of the baptized to the table of the Lord, rather than a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the [E]ucharist.”
McElroy explained that his idea of “eucharistic theology” includes allowing people in “objectively grave sin,” particularly homosexuals and illicitly remarried couples, to receive Communion without repentance and chastity.
“Unworthiness cannot be the prism of accompaniment for disciples of the God of grace and mercy,” he wrote.
But McElroy’s “radical inclusion” of unrepentant sinners blatantly contradicts Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church, which make clear that Catholics must be free of mortal sin to partake in Communion.
St. Paul declares in the First Letter to the Corinthians:
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.
Citing this passage, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “The Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church.” “Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion,” it continues. Canon law reiterates the same teaching.
McElroy has ignored Catholic doctrine on reception of the Eucharist before, however. He previously suggested that giving sacraments and Christian burials to unrepentant homosexuals is “the appropriate policy that I would hope the priests would observe.”
As bishop of San Diego, McElroy has personally presided over LGBT-themed Masses where homosexuals and their sexual partners freely receive Communion, including one Mass that featured a nationally-known drag queen activist.
McElroy criticizes Catholic teaching on sexuality
The cardinal recognized that some may object to his “notion of radical inclusion” because “the exclusion of divorced and remarried and L.G.B.T. persons from the Eucharist flows from the moral tradition in the church that all sexual sins are grave matter.”
“This means that all sexual actions outside of marriage are so gravely evil that they constitute objectively an action that can sever a believer’s relationship with God,” he noted, adding that this objection “should be faced head on.”
McElroy then criticized the Church’s teaching that sexual activity outside of marriage is always mortally sinful, saying this doctrine has put excessive weight on sexuality in moral life, and suggested that Catholics can maintain a relationship with God while in grave sin:
The effect of the tradition that all sexual acts outside of marriage constitute objectively grave sin has been to focus the Christian moral life disproportionately upon sexual activity. The heart of Christian discipleship is a relationship with God the Father, Son and Spirit rooted in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The church has a hierarchy of truths that flow from this fundamental kerygma. Sexual activity, while profound, does not lie at the heart of this hierarchy. Yet in pastoral practice we have placed it at the very center of our structures of exclusion from the Eucharist. This should change.
McElroy did get one thing correct: The Church indeed condemns all sexual action outside of marriage as gravely sinful and disordered, as sexuality is oriented to the conjugal love of man and woman.
“The sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church states. “Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.”
The Baltimore Catechism also notes that, “if deliberate,” sins of impurity “are always mortal.”
Underlining the gravity of sexual sins, St. Paul lists unrepentant adulterers, fornicators, and homosexuals as among those who “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church, canon law, and various magisterial pronouncements of Pope St. John Paul II specify that the divorced and remarried may not receive Communion without continence.
McElroy has previously attacked Catholic teaching on sexuality, including the Church’s recognition that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered,” which he slammed as “very destructive language.”
Moreover, any mortal sin — and therefore any deliberate sexual sin — does, in fact, break off one’s “relationship with God the Father, Son and Spirit.”
The Council of Trent declared as a dogma that the faithful are “cut off from the grace of Christ” by every grievous sin, even if they do not lose their faith.
“Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms. “If it is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell.”
In Veritatis Splendor, St. John Paul II condemned the idea that someone could “remain faithful to God independently of whether or not certain of his choices and his acts are in conformity with specific moral norms or rules.” Echoing St. Thomas Aquinas, he taught in Reconciliatio et Paenitentia that mortal sin occurs whenever someone “knowingly and willingly, for whatever reason, chooses something gravely disordered,” which contains “contempt for the divine law, a rejection of God’s love for humanity.”
Jesus Himself states that loving Him means following His commandments: “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14-15).
And while McElroy attempts to downplay purity as an essential element of Christian discipleship, Jesus demands radical chastity, warning that “every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Emphasizing the vital importance of chastity, He says: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” In the Beatitudes, Jesus declares purity of heart, which necessarily includes chastity, “the precondition of the vision of God,” in the words of the Catechism.
McElroy has previously attacked Catholic teaching on sexuality, including the Church’s recognition that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered,” which he slammed as “very destructive language.” According to the Catechism, “tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’”
McElroy says hostility toward homosexuals is ‘demonic’
Continuing his theme of “exclusion,” McElroy cited alleged “exclusions of L.G.B.T. Catholics beyond the issue of the Eucharist” mentioned in synodal dialogues.
The Church’s pastoral approach to homosexual and gender-confused individuals “must be one of embrace rather than distance or condemnation,” and must occur without distinguishing between those who do and do not practice homosexual behavior, he insisted.
“The distinction between orientation and activity cannot be the principal focus for such a pastoral embrace because it inevitably suggests dividing the L.G.B.T. community into those who refrain from sexual activity and those who do not,” McElroy wrote.
In fact, the distinction between LGBT-identifying people who commit sodomy and those do not is a necessary one especially in the context of the Eucharist, as it distinguishes those who do and do not sin mortally with regard to homosexual acts.
St. Paul made clear distinctions in this regard:
Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals,nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
And in the words of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral.”
The San Diego cardinal also criticized the teaching of the Church that some acts, including murder, adultery, and homosexual acts, can never be morally permissible.
Ratcheting up his rhetoric, McElroy lamented that “so many men and women have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities,” which he called “a demonic mystery of the human soul.”
McElroy has on multiple occasions falsely attributed violence against homosexuals, including the assassination of LGBT activist and San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, to hatred based on sexual orientation. Milk, a child abuser whom McElroy memorialized at a San Diego Mass, was murdered by another Democratic official over a political dispute.
McElroy: Conscience has ‘primary place’ over Catholic teaching
Underpinning McElroy’s vision of “radical inclusion” is his belief that conscience can legitimately contradict doctrine, including in matters of intrinsic evil.
“While Catholic teaching must play a critical role in the decision making of believers, it is conscience that has the privileged place,” he wrote.
The San Diego cardinal also criticized the teaching of the Church that some acts, including murder, adultery, and homosexual acts, can never be morally permissible. “Categorical exclusions,” he complained, “undermine that privilege precisely because they cannot encompass the inner conversation between women and men and their God.”
Contrary to McElroy, St. John Paul II explicitly rejected the possibility that concrete circumstances could allow for “certain exceptions to the general rule and thus permit one to do in practice and in good conscience what is qualified as intrinsically evil by the moral law.”
“On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept,” he observed in Veritatis Splendor.
This line of thinking, the pope taught, “diverges from the teaching of the Church’s tradition and her Magisterium” and challenges “the very identity of the moral conscience.”
John Paul II was equally clear about the reality of intrinsically evil acts:
It must be added … that some sins are intrinsically grave and mortal by reason of their matter. That is, there exist acts which, per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object. These acts, if carried out with sufficient awareness and freedom, are always gravely sinful.
The Catechism reiterates:
There are some concrete acts — such as fornication — that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil. It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery.
It also clarifies about conscience: “A well-formed conscience will never contradict the objective moral law, as taught by Christ and his Church.” “Personal conscience and reason should not be set in opposition to the moral law or the Magisterium of the Church,” it adds.
Female deacons, priests?
Not finished with his scandalous remarks, Cardinal McElroy insisted that the Church should ordain women as deacons.
“The church should move toward admitting women to the diaconate” due to “reasons of inclusion” and so that women can “provide critically important ministries, talents and perspectives,” McElroy said, without specifying what those might be.
He presented the ordination of women to the priesthood as an open question as well, saying that it may be a position that “emerges from the synodal discernment.”
“The call for the admission of women to priestly orders as an act of justice and a service to the church was voiced in virtually every region of our world church,” he related.
The Church’s inability to ordain women to the priesthood is an infallible truth of the faith that “requires definitive assent,” as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared in a responsum approved by St. John Paul II.
While espousing blatant heterodoxy and contradicting John Paul II on numerous points, McElroy complained of “polarization” in the Church in the United States and a “false divide between ‘Pope Francis Catholics’ and ‘St. John Paul II Catholics,’” as well as a “schism” between “pro-life communities and justice-and-peace communities.”
Vatican figures ramp up pro-LGBT messaging
McElroy’s latest controversial comments come amid a blitz of pro-LGBT messaging from high-profile Vatican figures following the death of Pope Benedict XVI.
In an interview with the Associated Press Tuesday, Pope Francis said that the Church “must” work for the decriminalization of sodomy around the world, a pronouncement that conflicts with the teachings of the Church Fathers.
Heretical LGBT activist priest Fr. James Martin, SJ, sparked blistering outrage Sunday for equating same-sex unions with marriage and defending Biden transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s homosexual “marriage.”
Martin, whom McElroy has publicly defended over criticism about his heterodox advocacy, retweeted the cardinal’s America essay.
"Many now rebel against their leader, their God-given leader, your Vicar. In matters of faith and morals, man must not change the God-given laws, coming from the seat of Peter, and established through tradition upon earth through My Son's Church."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, October 6, 1979
"Because of the fall in Babylon, many new languages were given because of the sin of Babylon. Therefore, as a member of one country, My children, with a universal language, you carried with you your own country's translation, and were you to visit abroad, you could enter upon any foreign edifice, Church of My Son, and feel comfortable and in one with the man, the priest, the one chosen by My Son to represent Him in His House.
"If you were, My child, to go from your United States to France, could you understand the words in French? But, My child, you would recognize the words in Latin and you would have your book with you to read in your American language, just as those in France could read in their French language, bringing upon the world a beautiful and common bond of language among all who have been given the grace to be called to the Roman Catholic Church of My Son.
"Do not leave My Son's Church though, My children, because they have taken this language from among you. You must wait and persevere and weep with My Son for this defilement by man."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, April 10, 1976
These Last Days News - Febuary 3 2023
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Denver Archbishop Refutes Cardinal Mcelroy’s Call for ‘Radical Inclusion’ of Homosexuals, Adulterers...
WRATH OF THE FATHER
"Much tribulation lies ahead, but these trials have been brought upon you by man. As it was in the days of Noe, so it is in your day that man is prideful and arrogant, seeking to place scientific knowledge above the Father. Rationalization for sin, so that sin now is a way of life! Souls in darkness, homes in darkness, and churches in darkness--whatever will become of you? You ask for the wrath of the Father upon you!”
- The Bayside Prophecies
St. Paul, March 24, 1974
PASTORS HELD RESPONSIBLE
"We hold the pastors of My Son's House, We hold them as being responsible for the fall of the children. Be ye warned now, My children, that woe to the man who has this responsibility upon his conscience and his soul. Scandals have been brought into the lives of your children. Perversion, homosexuality, immorality, perverted sex, My children-where shall you stop but at the abyss!"
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, December 7, 1977
"Are you so blind that you do not recognize the acceleration of sin among you? Murders abound, thievery, all manner of carnage, destruction of young souls, abortion, homosexuality, condemned from the beginning of time by the Eternal Father. Yet sin has become a way of life. Sin is condoned now, even unto the highest judge of your land and your lands throughout the world. As you have sown so shall you reap. Sin is death, not only of the spirit, but of the body. Wars are a punishment for man's sin, his greed, his avarice."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, August 14, 1981
The above Messages from Our Lady were given to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, New York.
LifeSiteNews.com reported on Febuary 2, 2023:
by Raymond Wolfe
Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver pushed back on Cardinal Robert McElroy’s call to give Communion to homosexuals and adulterers in “objectively grave sin,” insisting that inclusion “cannot mean that we remain in our sins.”
McElroy sparked controversy with an essay last week in America Magazine explicitly rejecting “a theology of eucharistic coherence” and demanding “radical inclusion” of “LGBT persons,” including those who practice sodomy, without calling them to repentance.
Archbishop Aquila published a powerful response to the left-wing San Diego cardinal in Catholic World Report on Wednesday that detailed his reversion to Catholicism as a young man and took aim at bishops who fail to preach “the radicality of the Gospel.”
“Cardinal McElroy’s reflection paints the Church as an institution that harms due to its incapacity to welcome everyone into full participation in the life of the Church,” he observed. “According to His Eminence, the Church categorically discriminates, but did not Jesus himself put demands on his disciples which distinguished them from those who did not respond to the radical and costly call of the Gospel?”
The Denver archbishop pointed to Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man in Mark’s Gospel, in which He “demands radical discipleship from the young man” but allows him to refuse it. “Furthermore, Jesus lays out the cost of discipleship as denying oneself, and even family, for the sake of the Gospel (cf. Lk 9:23-26; Mt 16:24-25; Lk 14:25-27),” he noted.
“Jesus never waters down his teaching, nor does he appeal to conscience; he gives testimony to the truth,” he stressed. The Lord’s call is indeed “radical, and it goes out to everyone, but is not received by everyone because of the cost of discipleship.”
Those who reject Christ through mortal sin and separate themselves from Him consequently cannot receive Communion, Archbishop Aquila affirmed, reiterating immutable Catholic teaching.
“The Church recognizes that someone who lives a particular way, whether it be in willing violation of natural law or some other moral category, is not in communion with the Church,” he wrote. “This is not to condemn the person, but to recognize the truth of their situation and call their immortal soul to something greater.”
While the Eucharist is “not for the perfect,” he acknowledged, “it is for those who are in communion” and is “a sign of unity that belongs to those who are in a state of grace.”
“Inclusiveness does not and cannot mean that we remain in our sins,” the archbishop strongly emphasized, as “Jesus wants us to be happy.”
“Yes, we are to invite and include, but not at the expense of leaving others and ourselves mired in sin that separates us from God. The laws of God are laws of a loving Father so his children may live in his joy.”
Jesus’ call to the woman in adultery — “sin no more” — “is the same call Jesus makes to each of us,” he added. “We are included in his company, but we are also called to turn from sin.”
“The Church needs the courage, and love, to be clear in inviting people to leave their sin. What Jesus offers is better than what the world offers the person in sin, and his grace and power is sufficient to free anyone from the slavery to sin,” Archbishop Aquila said.
He criticized certain prelates today for neglecting that message. “The presentation of some bishops and cardinals sadly fails to preach the radicality of the Gospel and obscures the true eternal love of the Father for the sinner.”
This failure to proclaim the fullness of Gospel and remain rooted in Christ, the “vine,” may well be the cause of declining Mass attendance, the archbishop argued.
“We must ponder in our hearts if the real reason for our empty pews is that we have not stayed attached to the vine,” he wrote. “Our dropping attendance may be a fulfillment of the promise of Jesus that if we do not stay attached to him, we will wither (cf. Jn 15:1–6).”
“Those Christian communities who have tried inclusion to the exclusion of sin only divide more and their pews are still empty.”
‘I thought the way some of my brothers think, I would have left the Church’
In a striking indictment of heterodox bishops, the Denver archbishop confessed that he “would have left the Church long ago” if he shared their convictions.
“I must admit that if I thought the way some of my brothers think, I would have left the Church long ago and joined another Christian community,” he wrote.
A revert to the faith in his youth, Archbishop Aquila revealed that only the “call to leave the values of the world behind” and follow Jesus brought him back to Catholicism.
“As a college student, I strayed away from the Church. The Catholic faith did not draw me, as my experience was that of confessors yelling at me or trying to talk me out of my sins. The truths of the faith, even the difficult ones, were not presented with charity,” he recalled.
“It was only when I read the book in the late 1960s by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, titled The Cost of Discipleship, that I started my journey back to Christ and eventually the Catholic Church,” the prelate said, stressing the powerful draw of the Eucharist in particular.
I began to understand what the Eucharist is and what I had left behind. I wanted the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and his mercy and forgiveness in Confession, and that brought me back to the living out of my faith. It was a call to leave the values of the world behind and to have my heart and mind formed by Jesus (cf. Rm 12:2). Bonhoeffer’s distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace” is timely for us today.
The Church “radically” invites everyone, regardless of their situation, to the “loving embrace of Jesus and the Father, and holy mother Church,” he noted. But more than merely inviting, the Church — always seeking the other’s good — demands a life of authentic freedom and love according to God’s plan rather than the confusion of the world.
She invites because she loves; and to love is to will the true good of the other. Only God’s love can move us from all the confusing identities of the world, to see that we are not the ones who decide our identity. Rather the Gospel shows that through the Father’s loving plan, each of us can become a beloved daughter or son of the Father, with our identity firmly rooted in Jesus’. Through conversion, a disciple discovers that he or she is not god. God alone determines what is good and evil and, like Christ, the disciple seeks only the will of the Father.
Archbishop Aquila’s insistence on the God-given reality of human nature over the “confusing identities of the world” echoes the late Pope Benedict XVI, who appointed him to the Archdiocese of Denver and similarly condemned gender ideology, by which “man wants to be his own master” and overthrow the “essence of the human creature” “as ordained by God.”
Cardinal McElroy’s claims about conscience are ‘very dangerous’
Concluding his article, the Denver prelate refuted McElroy’s claim that conscience “has the primary place” over doctrine, blasting it as “very dangerous.”
“His Eminence makes the frequent claim that our conscience is our ultimate guide. In a certain sense this is true if, as the Catechism teaches very clearly, we first have a well-formed conscience,” he explained. “Conscience is an act of the intellect in judging the morality of past, present, or future actions.”
Appealing to conscience, however, cannot be a “‘get out of jail’ card,” he said, “and it is very dangerous to imply as much. Rather, it is a judgment measured by reality.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches clearly: “A well-formed conscience will never contradict the objective moral law, as taught by Christ and his Church.” “Personal conscience and reason should not be set in opposition to the moral law or the Magisterium of the Church,” it adds.
Archbishop Aquila previously defended Eucharistic coherence in two essays in April 2021. McElroy penned an article for America Magazine the following month insisting on Communion for pro-abortion politicians.
McElroy, a divisive and controversial prelate named a cardinal last year by Pope Francis despite his well-known heterodoxy and problematic record on clerical sex abuse cases, has repeatedly drawn rebukes from fellow bishops. His latest essay has prompted widespread criticism, including from prominent Catholic commentators Fr. Gerald Murray, Dr. Jeff Mirus, Fr. Raymond de Souza, Stephen White, and George Weigel, among others.
"Man shall not condone evil or rationalize sin. Homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of God and man! The Creator condemns those who do not repent of this sin."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, August 5, 1977
"Are you so blind that you do not recognize the acceleration of sin among you? Murders abound, thievery, all manner of carnage, destruction of young souls, abortion, homosexuality, condemned from the beginning of time by the Eternal Father. Yet sin has become a way of life. Sin is condoned now, even unto the highest judge of your land and your lands throughout the world. As you have sown so shall you reap. Sin is death, not only of the spirit, but of the body. Wars are a punishment for man's sin, his greed, his avarice."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, August 14, 1981
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