These Last Days News - March 15, 2022
URGENT: Forward a link to this web page to your clergy, family, friends and relatives.
20-8. Liturgical Expert Shows How Catholics Needn’t Obey Papal Decrees that Attack Common Good of the Church...
TURN BACK
“This evil has penetrated far into the very heart of My House. You must now turn back and restore My House. I, your God, give you this command for the salvation of your own soul.”
- The Bayside Prophecies
Jesus, August 21, 1976
“I send to My clergy, those whom I have given the grace to represent Heaven upon earth, this warning: You must now return to your traditional rites! You must restore My House from its crumbling exterior and rotting interior. You must rebuild what you seek to destroy--now!
“Many who call themselves My chosen ones have set themselves to destroy from within. Your actions have not gone by unnoticed by the Eternal Father. Error, deception, deceit, in the guise of sanctity and piousness! You are unmasked before the Eternal Father. You shall start little by little and repair the foundation, or you shall be within and destroy.
“I look upon all manner of abominations being committed in My House. Do you think you will go much longer without chastisement? Awaken from your slumber, My clergy! You deceive no one!”
- The Bayside Prophecies
Jesus, November 22, 1975
“This evil has penetrated far into the very heart of My House. You must now turn back and restore My House. I, your God, give you this command for the salvation of your own soul.”
- Jesus, August 21, 1976
The above Messages from Our Lady were given to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, New York.
LifeSiteNews.com reported on March 14, 2022:
by Maike Hickson
Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, in a new small booklet entitled True Obedience in the Church (published by Sophia Press), presents the basis and limits of obedience to Church authorities and makes it clear that the Church has no right to cancel the traditional Catholic Mass and its associated liturgical books. The Church authorities may not suspend or punish a priest simply for adhering to the traditional Mass. This liturgy scholar and philosopher goes so far as to say that such penalties would be “null and void” and that, therefore, such priests “may continue administering the sacraments as before.”
In the first part of his small book, Dr. Kwasniewski points out the foundations for the importance of obedience to both the Church and the state – as both authorities are given to us by God and inasmuch as obedience to them serves the common good. When we obey our authorities, we ultimately obey God. The object of that obedience is clear. “This is the birth of authority: it is born to serve and promote the shared good of many,” the author writes. But at the same time, the very concept of common good also limits this authority. The authority’s power to bind people “resides in the common good, so if the authority deploys its office overtly against the common good, then that command inherently lacks moral binding power.”
This principle is of course laid down even in the catechism for children. We all teach our children that they have to obey us, their parents, unless we tell them to go to the neighbor’s home and steal something. Our orders are null and void if we order our children to sin and go against the common good.
What is then the common good within the Church? It is, as Kwasniewski expounds, “the life of Jesus Christ, her sovereign Head – the superabundant grace of His divinized soul, shared with His members through the illumination of the intellect by revelation and the inflaming of the heart by the supernatural charity of His Heart – and the divinization of souls by the sacramental life and prayer.” The latter part, prayer, is chiefly “the solemn, formal, public worship we call the sacred liturgy.”
And it is this latter point that we wish further to discuss because Dr. Kwasniewski’s book is clearly written in response to the papal document Traditionis Custodes of last July which aims at extinguishing the traditional form of the liturgy for good and for all. Pope Francis then stated that the liturgical books of the Novus Ordo, or new order of the Mass, “are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite,” thereby declaring the traditional rite that has developed over centuries obsolete.
For Dr. Kwasniewski, it is clear that this attitude as expressed in this document is “a profoundly uncatholic, indeed anti-Catholic, point of view.” He goes on to say:
Since the liturgy truly is the ‘font and apex of the Christian life,’ the home of divine revelation and the primary agent of our transformation in Christ, it follows that to abolish or prohibit or in any way work against the venerable Roman Rite that was humbly received, gratefully loved, and lavishly praised for century after century of uninterrupted growth is the most notorious and damaging attack on the common good possible or imaginable.
And here we return to the question of obedience. Since this attack on the traditional rite goes against the common good of the Church, it should not be obeyed. Here, Dr. Kwasniewski quotes the Society of St. Pius X who reiterates that the traditional Mass “belongs to the most intimate part of the common good in the Church.” To restrict it, continues the statement, “can have no legitimacy.”
“This law, is not a law of the Church, because, as St. Thomas says, a law against the common good is no valid law.”
Based on numerous authoritative statements of theologians and churchmen, Dr. Kwasniewski illuminates the duty of any Roman pontiff to preserve the liturgy of the Church and not to drastically alter it. For example, Francisco Suárez, S.J., told us that “if the Pope lays down an order contrary to right customs, one does not have to obey him,” adding that “it would be licit to resist him,” should the Pope order something that goes against justice or the common good. Dr. Kwasniewski goes even further by saying that “we are obliged to refuse [unjust orders] out of the love we bear for Our Lord Himself.”
And it is here that Dr. Kwasniewski insists that those priests who are suspended – or even excommunicated or laicized – for refusing to abandon the traditional rite may continue with their ministry. He writes that “any penalty or punishment meted out for ‘disobedience’ to the revolutionaries would be illicit. If a penalty is given on false theological or canonical premises, it is null and void, just as the canonical trial and excommunication of Joan of Arc were recognized as illegitimate” later. “The priest may continue administering the sacraments as before; his faculties remain unimpaired,” the author asserts. Here, Dr. Kwasniewski insists that we live in extraordinary times, in a state of emergency, “when ecclesiastical authority, by its assault on liturgical and theological tradition, has turned against the common good of the Church.” The author also points out that Bishop Athanasius, though excommunicated at some point, “did not hesitate to carry on with his works nonetheless.”
These few examples of the work’s arguments and quotations might give our readers enough of a sense of its worth. This little book is a treasure for Catholic traditionalists. It gives us all the arguments needed to have a well-formed conscience in these matters of moment, for the sake of the salvation of souls.
Let us also remember that this line of argument as presented in this book may be applied – and was applied – in the case of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Back when the Mass of All Ages was effectively canceled (ask Catholics who lived through that time), Lefebvre resisted in order to preserve that great treasury of the Church, ultimately for all of us who now, in growing numbers, can enjoy this most beautiful liturgy that leads us to God and to His adoration.
It might also be worthwhile to remind our readers of LifeSite’s October 2021 interview with the well-known German author and defender of the traditional Mass, Martin Mosebach, who argued along the lines of Dr. Kwasniewski. He posited that those who love the Old Rite might very well have to live for a short period of time in the state of “legitimate illegality.”
Bishop Athanasius Schneider has endorsed Dr. Kwasniewski’s new book, saying that it “offers a valuable and timely theological clarification on the authentic meaning of obedience.” He added that this publication “will bring peace of conscience to many perplexed souls and confirm their fidelity to the perennial doctrinal and liturgical tradition of Holy Mother Church.”
Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s book True Obedience in the Church: A Guide to Discernment in Challenging Times has just come out and is available on Amazon and can be purchased in paperback or e-book form. On this website, priests may order a free copy, thanks to a generous benefactor.
“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
SOURCE:
The electronic form of this document is copyrighted.
Quotations are permissible as long as this web site is acknowledged with a hyperlink to: http://www.tldm.org
Copyright © These Last Days Ministries, Inc. 1996 - 2012 All rights reserved.