RORATE CÆLI: Pius XII

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Modernism, Not Ultramontanism, Is the “Synthesis of All Heresies” — A Response to Stuart Chessman

The following article was submitted to Rorate Caeli by José Antonio Ureta, co-founder of Fundación Roma (Chile) and advisor of its pro-life and pro-family project Acción Familia, a senior researcher at Société Française pour la Défense de la Tradition, Famille et Propriété (Paris), and author of Pope Francis’s Paradigm Shift: Continuity or Rupture in the Mission of the Church? (Spring Grove, PA, 2018). We publish it in the interests of open discussion of topics of grave importance in the Church.

Modernism, Not Ultramontanism, Is the “Synthesis of All Heresies”

José A. Ureta

Ultramontanism: Its Life and Death

We cannot understand the crisis in the Catholic Church today or how to escape from it unless we understand how the ecclesiological distortion popularly known as ultramontanism originated, how it functions as a kind of hyperclericalism, and finally how it has consumed itself like the ouroboros. Stuart Chessman published the following very insightful historical analysis in four installments (December 20, 23, 27, and 31) at the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny’s blog. With his permission they are published here as a single essay.—PAK

Ultramontanism: Its Life and Death

Stuart Chessman

The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny

The actions of present Pope have put incredible stress on the Church’s constitution—the papal absolute monarchy. I’d like to offer some reflections on this system of government: ultramontanism. To understand it, though, we have to go back in history, starting with the reign of Pius IX when the ultramontanist regime received its “classic” form. I will focus on history—what actually happened—as opposed to theological considerations.

In many ways the nineteenth century was to become, after the turmoil of the Revolution, a century of Marian favors. To mention but a single instance, everyone is familiar today with the "miraculous medal." This medal, with its image of "Mary conceived without sin," was revealed to a humble daughter of Saint Vincent de Paul... .

A few years later, from February 11 to July 16, 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary was pleased, as a new favor, to manifest herself in the territory of the Pyrenees to a pious and pure child of a poor, hardworking, Christian family. "She came to Bernadette," We once said. "She made her her confidante, her collaboratrix, the instrument of her maternal tenderness and of the merciful power of her Son, to restore the world in Christ through a new and incomparable outpouring of the Redemption."

MAJOR EXPOSÉ: Rooms broken into, dossiers stolen, death threats, armed guards, assassinations... Fr. Charles Murr on Vatican intrigues surrounding Cardinals Baggio, Benelli, Villot, and Gagnon

Rorate readers will be aware of the groundbreaking interview Kevin J. Symonds conducted with Fr. Murr for the October 2020 issue of Inside the Vatican, which was also published at Rorate on October 10. Interested readers may want to read that interview first in order to gain more understanding of context for the present one, which was done once again for Inside the Vatican. In the previous interview, Fr. Murr told us about his friendship with Mother Pascalina Lehnert, the “right hand” of Pope Pius XII for several decades. In addition to this discussion, Fr. Murr made some notable revelations about what was going on at the Vatican in the 1960s, and 1970s. The interview below follows up on these revelations with the theme of “where do we go from here?”

Cardinal Baggi (L) and Cardinal Benelli (R)

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”:

KEVIN SYMONDS’ SECOND INTERVIEW WITH FR. CHARLES MURR

ITV: Thank you, Fr. Murr, for sitting down again with Inside the Vatican. In our previous interview, you spoke of your association with Cardinal Edouard Gagnon and Msgr. Mario Marini. These two men worked closely with the Sostituto of the Secretariat of State, Cardinal Benelli. You yourself, however, did not enjoy the same association with Cardinal Benelli...

I was twenty-four years-old when I met and became friends with the newly appointed minutante in the Vatican Secretariat of State, Monsignor Mario Marini. Soon after, Marini introduced me to another extraordinary man who would play a major role in my life, his good friend, Archbishop Edouard Gagnon (1918–2007). Gagnon and Marini were respected friends and confidants of Archbishop Giovanni Benelli (Sostituto of the Secretary of State); I was not part of that inner circle. I knew Benelli, of course, and spoke with him many times, but I knew my place. Once, on Lago di Bracciano I was at table with him and Monsignors [Guillermo] Zanoni and Marini. I remember talking as little as possible. With Benelli, I knew my place and kept it.

Why did you think of your relationship with Benelli in this way?

To begin with, Giovanni Benelli was Giovanni Benelli! He was one of the most powerful men on earth; brilliant, a strategizer and deal-maker par excellence, the #1 Vatican diplomat, a man on familiar terms with popes and princes, patriarchs and presidents, world leaders of all sorts. I, on the other hand, was a greenhorn American student of philosophy; absolutely no one of consequence. Those special times that I was privileged to be in Benelli’s company were times I knew I was in the presence of greatness.

Preliminary Note: For decades, traditionalists have suspected or accused Annibale Bugnini of being a Freemason, based essentially on hearsay and circumstantial evidence. The matter remained doubtful to such an extent that the eminent French historian Yves Chiron, himself a traditionalist, was unable to credit the rumor, judging the evidence inadequate and inconclusive. The situation began to change last May when Kevin Symonds presented credible details, courtesy of Fr. Brian Harrison, naming Cardinal Dino Staffa as the one who brought Paul VI the "smoking gun" information on Bugnini, which precipitated the latter's sudden fall from grace.

It is therefore of major significance that more and better evidence — in the form of an interview conducted by Kevin Symonds with Fr. Charles Theodore Murr, author of The Godmother: Mother Pascalina: A Feminine Tour de Force (2017) — has now appeared that independently confirms the same sequence of events. With such confirmatory proofs, it is fair to say that there is no longer any reasonable doubt that the moving force in the Consilium was, indeed, a Freemason.

That which seems to Us not only the greatest evil but the root of all evil is this: often the lie is substituted for the truth, and is then used as an instrument of dispute. On the part of not a few religion is passed by as a thing of no importance, and elsewhere absolutely prohibited in family and social life as a remnant of ancient superstitions; public and private atheism is exalted in such a way that God and His law are being abolished, and morals no longer have any foundation. The Press also too often vulgarly reviles religious feeling, while it does not hesitate to spread the most shameful obscenities, agitating and with incalculable harm leading into vice tender childhood and betrayed youth.

By means of false promises a people is deceived and provoked to hatred, rivalry and rebellion, especially when the hereditary faith, the only relief in this earthly exile, is successfully torn from its heart. Disturbances, riots and revolts are organized and fomented in continuing series, which prepare for the ruin of the economy and cause irreparable harm to the common good.

BOMBSHELL: New historical evidence emerges in support of Bugnini’s association with Freemasonry — Names are named

The latest edition of the magazine of the Latin Mass Society of England & Wales, Mass of Ages, contains a review by Kevin Symonds of Taylor Marshall’s book Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within. (The review as published may be viewed in a PDF of the magazine, starting at page 40, as well as on the author’s personal website; it has been reproduced in full here.)

Pursuing hints in the book, Symonds goes much beyond the conclusions of Marshall regarding Bugnini, having uncovered new material on Bugnini that decisively moves the question of his association with Freemasonry from the realm of shadowy speculation, where it remained even as recently as the scholarly biography by Yves Chiron, to the level of reasonable certainty. Instead of “unnamed sources,” where the matter was left by Michael Davies, we finally have named sources, with a plausible paper trail.

New Evidence on the Freemasonic Membership of Annibale Bugnini

Kevin Symonds

In this book, Taylor Marshall firmly maintains that the Catholic Church has been literally infiltrated by her enemies, thereby experiencing a massive campaign of disruption and distortion. A particular area in which Marshall advances this thesis pertains to the influence of the Vincentian priest, and later Archbishop, Annibale Bugnini (1912-1982) in the liturgical reforms of the mid-twentieth century. This review focuses on Marshall’s presentation of Bugnini’s influence upon these reforms and in particular of Marshall’s claim that Bugnini was involved with Freemasonry. It will be argued that, despite his eagerness to find evidence of ‘infiltration’ and his animus against Bugnini, Marshall actually misses some important evidence in favor of Bugnini’s membership of the Italian Freemasons.

On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Novus Ordo: Dr. Kwasniewski’s Lecture “Beyond ‘Smells and Bells’: Why We Need the Objective Content of the Usus Antiquior”

In his Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum (April 3, 1969), Pope Paul VI specified that the Novus Ordo Missae would go into effect on the First Sunday of Advent that year — November 30, exactly fifty years ago. In my recent Minneapolis lecture, written with an eye to this important anniversary, I argue that the Novus Ordo Missae constitutes a rupture with fundamental elements of all liturgies of apostolic derivation, and that, as a consequence, it violates the Church’s solemn obligation to receive, cherish, guard, and pass on the fruits of liturgical development. Since this development is, in fact, a major way in which the Holy Spirit leads the Church “into the fullness of truth” over the ages, as Christ promised, so great a “sin against the Holy Spirit” cannot fail to have enormous negative consequences, as indeed the past five decades have verified. Nor is it possible to bridge the abyss between old and new by applying cosmetics or the drapery of elegant clothing, because the problem is on the order of a genetic mutation, or damage to internal organs. The profound and permanent solution is to maintain continuity with the living liturgical tradition found in the usus antiquior.

The full text of the lecture, with notes, is given below; the recording of the talk may be found either on YouTube or at SoundCloud.

Beyond “Smells and Bells”: Why We Need the Objective Content of the Usus Antiquior

Peter A. Kwasniewski

Minneapolis, Minnesota

November 13, 2019

Novus Ordo: Dr. Kwasniewski’s Lecture “Beyond ‘Smells and Bells’: Why We Need the Objective Content of the Usus Antiquior”'>Read more »

The Feast of the Assumption 2019: The Eternal Magnificat

RADIO MESSGE OF HIS HOLINESS PIUS XII
PRAYER FOR THE CONSECRATION OF THE CHURCH AND THE HUMAN RACE TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY SATURDAY,OCTOBER 31, 1942

Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, Help of Christians, Refuge of the human race, Victress in all the battles for God! Supplicant, we prostrate before Thy throne, beseeching mercy and certain of receiving graces, opportune aid and defense in the present calamities; not by any merit of our own, which we do not presume, but solely because of the immense goodness of Thy Maternal Heart.

To Thee, to Thy Immaculate Heart, in this tragic hour of human history, we entrust and consecrate ourselves - not only in union with the Holy Church, Mystical Body of Thy Jesus, which is suffering and bleeding in many parts and in many ways afflicted - but with the entire world harrowed by ferocious discords, parched in a fire of hatred, victim of its own iniquity.

May your heart be moved by so much material and moral ruin; so much pain; of so many fathers, mothers, spouses, siblings and innocent children in anguish; so many young lives cut short; so many bodies lacerated in the horrendous slaughter; so many tortured souls in agony that many risk being lost for all eternity.

“A Half-Century of Novelty: Revisiting Paul VI’s Apologia for the New Mass”

This lecture was given in Wagga Wagga on March 28, in Melbourne on March 30, and in Hobart on April 3, during Dr Kwasniewski's visit sponsored by the Latin Mass Society of Australia. The full text is presented below, in a Rorate exclusive. UPDATE: The video of the lecture as given in Melbourne may be found here.

A Half-Century of Novelty: Revisiting Paul VI’s Apologia for the New Mass

Peter A. Kwasniewski

April 3 of this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae by Pope Paul VI’s 1969 Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum, the provisions of which were to go into effect on November 30, the first Sunday of Advent.

Apologia for the New Mass”'>Read more »

Video: Vatican City under Pius XII

A traditional seminarian shared with us this historic footage from 1941, starring Fulton Sheen. Take a look when you have time. And, if you can, this seminarian is from Malaysia where it's not exactly easy to get benefactors to help offset seminary training costs. CLICK HERE to check out his fundraising page.

REMINDER: The Case for Pacelli

Rorate Note: Re-posting this from April 2014. Vatican II, Liberation Theology and the near destruction of the liturgy and the Church were canonized today. While we are now asked to pray to Pope St. Paul VI, we are also asked to ignore the last traditional pontificate of Pius XII, whose case for canonization has been thwarted. Yet, while Paul VI laicized so many priests and religious, and oversaw the destruction of the Roman Rite, Pope Pacelli reigned over a glorious flourishing of the Church in almost all measurable aspects. See below for some staggering statistics:
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Original post:

The canonizations of Pope John XXIII and John Paul II will take place this Sunday, with many flocking to Rome to be a part of the historic event.

Without questioning the two already-mentioned canonizations, the question still remains: Why not Pacelli?

Let it not be forgotten that his cause for beatification was expressly launched by Paul VI together with that of John XXIII precisely to combat their "almost being turned into symbols or banners of opposite tendencies within Catholicism". (Source) In beatifying and canonizing one but not the other -- does this not imply something about the relative strength of these "opposite tendencies" within the Church?

Clearly, a very strong case can be made for Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (Pope Pius XII), from a standpoint of sheer numbers alone.

For those who say we are now living in the greatest age of the Church, let us consider the numbers below, just for the dioceses of the United States during the reign of Pius XII. They are remarkable, to say the least -- if the canonization of a Pope also takes into consideration the appraisal of his pontificate (other than his personal holiness and his prophetical wisdom, both of which are irreproachable regarding Pope Pacelli), then these surely deserve observation:

100 years after Pope Blessed Pius IX had extended the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Universal Church, Pope Pius XII, of most glorious memory, decided to celebrate the occasion with one of the brightest lights of his pontificate, the Encyclical Letter Haurietis Aquas, signed on May 15, 1956.

The Canonization of Vatican II: The case for Pacelli, revisited

Today, it was reported that Pope Bergoglio announced last week in his annual Lenten meeting with priests in Rome, that Paul VI will be canonized a saint this year.

As terrifying as this is, it should come as no shock. No matter how much damage they did, no matter how many souls they lost to Hell, no matter how much they destroyed the liturgy and, with it, the Faith, one thing is clear: Vatican II is being canonized via these failed pontiffs.

Since 1983, and the dissolution of the Devil's Advocate, Catholics of good will can honestly question these canonizations. What cannot be questioned, however, is the tragedy that is the case for sainthood for Pope Pius XII.

While the post-Concilliar popes (yes, all of them), left nothing but destruction, or at best the slowing of destruction in their wakes, the Church under Pope Pacelli flourished in every category.

And so we bring you this post, from 2014, as a reminder of what the last, saintly, Pre-Concilliar Pontificate accomplished in the United States:

Prophetic Speech of Pope Ven. Pius XII Warns of "a Church which Weakens the Law of God"

In this time of new persecutions against Christians by Islamicists, secularists, and sexual anarchists, and of a pope who so openly emboldens and gives comfort to these and other enemies of Holy Mother Church, while shirking his duty to confirm his brethren in the faith, we publish in English translation (below) the prophetic words of the Venerable Pope Pius XII in his address Ancora una volta given on February 20, 1949 to the people of Rome, condemning the persecution of Christians in Eastern Europe by the socialist and communist dictatorships.

Pius XII warns of "a Church which weakens the law of God, adapting it to the taste of human desires, when she should loudly proclaim and defend it" and which would give herself over to "the shifting sands of the opinions of the day." He asks: "Would you recognize in such a Church the features of your Mother’s face? Can you imagine a Successor of the first Peter, who would bow to similar demands?" Can anyone now deny that we live in just such a time as this?

What we've lost -- Maundy Thursday and Pius XII

It's remarkable what we've lost in under 60 years. Below, a photo of Pope Venerable Pius XII, on Maundy Thursday in the Sistine Chapel. Santo Subito.

Penance! Penance! Penance!

In a society which is barely conscious of the ills which assail it, which conceals its miseries and injustices beneath a prosperous, glittering, and trouble-free exterior, the Immaculate Virgin, whom sin has never touched, manifests herself to an innocent child. With a mother's compassion she looks upon this world redeemed by her Son's blood, where sin accomplishes so much ruin daily, and three times makes her urgent appeal: "Penance, penance, penance!" She even appeals for outward expressions: "Go kiss the earth in penance for sinners." And to this gesture must be added a prayer: "Pray to God for sinners."

As in the days of John the Baptist, as at the start of Jesus' ministry, this command, strong and rigorous, shows men the way which leads back to God: "Repent!" Who would dare to say that this appeal for the conversion of hearts is untimely today?

Pius XII

Le pèlerinage de Lourdes

July 2, 1957

Vatican II: An anniversary worth forgetting, but numbers that cannot be forgotten

Today is the 54th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. There's really not much left to be written about this -- all you need to know, frankly, is easily found by visiting a local parish. But it is a good opportunity to look at the numbers since the Council's close in 1965. It's also very interesting to look at them in comparison to Pope Venerable Pius XII, which we provide below.

The following statistics via CARA:

Exactly 80 years ago, the tensions within the Spanish Republic reached unbearable levels and the alzamiento of July 18 began. The greatest persecution of Catholics since late Antiquity was about to begin in the territory retained by the Communist-inspired forces, and would be particularly brutal in the first six months of the conflict - giving the Church thousands of martyrs (including 13 bishops), of which around 1,000 have already been beatified.

Ten years ago, we began a special series of posts on the story of this relentless persecution, reverted only after Catholics joined the struggle for the faith: read it all in The Passion of Spain series. We also ask our readers to please share on our Twitter feed their favorite books, videos, online sources on this event, in any language - for instance, the Collective Letter of the Spanish Bishops (July 1, 1937); the response of several national episcopates, including the Bishops of Ireland; or the chilling images in the first and second annex on religious persecution of the Causa General.

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(In the first image, Republican militiamen fire at the Monument to the Sacred Heart, in the Cerro de los Ángeles, province of Madrid -- the monument would be completely destroyed in the first months of the persecution. It would be rebuilt following the war. In the image below, a Russian Orthodox chaplain of the White Russian volunteers assembled by General Evgeny Miller, exiled in France, who would be kidnapped in French soil during the war, tortured and killed in his homeland - source. And in a Mass celebrated near the Sierra Nevada, in Andalusia, for the Tercio Isabel la Católica, of Granada, one of the many Catholic groups fighting against the attempted extermination of the Church - source.)

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As a final reminder of who represented what in that conflict, we once again recall the words of Pope Pius XII when victory was declared, in 1939:

RADIOMESSAGE
«CON INMENSO GOZO»
OF HIS HOLINESS

PIUS XII

TO THE SPANISH FAITHFUL

(April 14, 1939)

With great joy We address you, most dear children of Catholic Spain, to express to you our fatherly congratulations for the gift of peace and of victory, with which God has deemed worthy to crown the Christian heroism of your faith and charity, tried in so many and so generous sufferings. Our Predecessor, of venerable memory, expected, with longing and trust, this Providential peace, which is undoubtedly the fruit of that copious blessing which he sent, in the very beginning of the struggle, "to all those who had devoted themselves to the difficult and dangerous task of defending and restoring the rights and the honor of God and Religion" [1]; and We do not doubt that this peace shall be the one that he himself foretold since then, "the sign of a future of tranquility in order, and of honor in prosperity" [2].

Discourse of His Holiness Pius XII to the Pilgrims in Rome for the Solemn Beatification

of Teresa Eustochio Verzeri

From the Pontifical Palace at Castel Gandolfo

October 28th 1946

To be uniquely an instrument of Providence, an instrument of blind docility in the hands of God yet at the same time, of the most shrewd and personal impetus in the execution of His plans, such is how it seems to Us, Venerable Brothers, beloved sons and daughters, the figure of the newly Beatified, Teresa Eustochio Verzeri.

After [experiencing] the most disconcerting vicissitudes of life, she passed definitively from her silent and contemplative stay at Santa Grata to the buzzing, bustling beehive of Gromo, and the words that gushed from her heart were “Let us go! The words that Jesus used, when passing from the Cenacle to the Garden and then on to Calvary: “But that the world may know, that I love the Father: and as the Father hath given me commandment, so do I: Arise, let us go hence.” (John 14, v.31).

Also she goes on the mission the Father has given her; she goes in the joy of love, sacrifice and in total and absolute detachment, towards unabated tensions, towards the many travails and painful trials of the apostolate.