Prayer to Our Lady of Kibeho:

Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Word, Mother of all those who believe in Him and who welcome Him into their life, we are here before you to contemplate You. We believe that you are amongst us, like a mother in the midst of her children, even though we do not see You with our bodily eyes.

We bless You, the Sure Way that leads us to Jesus the Saviour, for all the favours which You endlessly pour out upon us, especially, that, in your meekness, You were gracious enough to appear miraculously in Kibeho, just when our world needed it most.

Grant us always the light and the strength necessary to accept, with all seriousness, Your call to us to be converted, to repent, and to live according  to your Son’s Gospel. Teach us how to pray with sincerity, and to love one another as He loved us, so that, just as You have requested, we may always be beautiful flowers diffusing their pleasant fragrance everywhere and upon everyone.

Holy Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, teach us to understand the value of the cross in our lives, so that whatever is still lacking to the sufferings of Christ we may fill up in our own bodies for His mystical Body, which is the Church.

And, when our pilgrimage on this earth comes to an end, may we live eternally with You in the kingdom of Heaven.

Amen.

• Imprimatur:
• Gikongoro, the 25th of March, 2006-05-29
• + Augustin Misago – Bishop of  Gikongoro

Homily #120526 ( 04min) Play- Fr. Dominic preaches on how we are to concentrate on ourselves and not on other’s business and work with the grace of God to become saints.
Ave Maria!
Mass: Saturday 7th Week of Easter – Wkdy – Form: OF

Readings: 
1st: act 28:16-20, 30-31
Resp: psa 11:4, 5, 7
Gsp: joh 21:20-25

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MaryCast Specials #162 ( 08min) Play – For this Pentecost Dr. Mark Miravalle is inviting us all to add our names to a new world-wide open petition to Pope Benedict for proclaiming the Blessed Virgin Mary as Spiritual Mother of the entire human race in hopes of bringing about a New Pentecost and an Era of Peace.

Link: http://www.peacethroughawoman.com

To ask questions regarding Mary, email Dr Mark Miravalle: marycast@airmaria.com

Ave Maria!

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Rorate Caeli has given a translation of an excerpt of yesterday’s  address of the Holy Father to the Italian episcopal conference:

[M]ay the 50th anniversary of its beginning [of Vatican II], which we will celebrate in the fall, be an occasion to deepen the study of its texts, the condition for a dynamic and faithful reception. “That which above all concerns the Council is that the sacred deposit of the Christian faith be kept and taught in a more efficacious way,” Pope Blessed John XXIII affirmed in his opening address. And it is worthwhile to meditate and read these words.

The Pope charged the Fathers to deepen and present such a perennial doctrine in continuity with the millennial Tradition of the Church: “to pass on the doctrine, pure and whole, without attenuations or distortions,” but in a new way, “according to what is required by our times.” (Address of solemn opening of the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican II, October 11, 1962). With this key for its reading and application – according to a view, certainly not of an unacceptable hermeneutic of discontinuity and of rupture, but of a hermeneutic of continuity and of reform -, listening to the Council and making ours the authoritative indications are the path to ascertaining the ways with which the Church may offer a significant response to the great social and cultural transformations of our time, which have visible consequences also on the religious sphere.

Applying the principles of the faith to the problems of the modern world has been a complicated process.  Progressives used the liberty granted by the Council as a pretext for a modernist revolution.  It was a risk all the postconciliar popes have been to say was necessary to take, and while we can continue to argue to the end of the world about what hypothetically would have happened had there been no Council, Peter, to whom Christ entrusted his Church, has settled the matter.  This is abundantly clear, but, of course, not clear enough to those who really “know” what is good for the Church.  Take a look at the comments on Rorate Caeli.  This one, fairly moderate as they go, is a succinct summary:

Father B said…
More and more I look at Vatican II as an event of unnecessary surgery.
24 May, 2012 16:50

It is a bit disconcerting that Cardinal Brandmüller refers to Dignitatis humanae and Nostra aetate as “non-binding,” because of a lack of “binding doctrinal content.”  Is he suggesting that “pastoral authority” is no authority?  It seems that Pope Benedict’s argument regarding the “hermeneutic of reform,” which includes both a measure of discontinuity of application within the continuity of doctrine, is not an attempt at all to declare that the Council must be followed because it is infallible, or always doctrinally binding.  Rather, it is the affirmation of the magisterium’s pastoral authority to interpret doctrine and apply it according to circumstances. Furthermore, such applications are not always merely pastoral, as is the case in regard to religious liberty.  They constitute a development of doctrine.

I find it remarkable that Pope Benedict patiently reaffirms this at every turn in spite of the unvarying responses of traditionalists.

Filed under: Chivalry, Church, Culture, Religion Tagged: Benedict XVI, Cardinal Brandmüller, Dignitatis Humanae, Hermeneutic of Continuity, Nostra aetate, Rorate Caeli, Second Vatican Council
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Homily #120525 ( 05min) Play – In today’s Gospel Jesus gives Peter the chance to declare three times that he loves Him in order to make up for the three times that Peter denied Him. Fr. Angelo points out that it is an individual’s choice to be converted through the grace of God. Let us pray for this grace for all.
Ave Maria!
Mass: St. Bede the Venerable – Opt Mem – Form: OF
Readings: Friday 7th Week of Easter
1st: act 25:13-21
Resp: psa 103:1-2, 11-12, 19-20
Gsp: joh 21:15-19

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Prayer given to Sr. Agnes on July 6th, 1973: 

“Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, truly present in the Holy Eucharist, I consecrate my body and soul to be entirely one with Your Heart being sacrificed at every instant on all the altars of the world and giving praise to the Father, pleading for the coming of His Kingdom.”

Please receive this humble offering of myself. Use me as You will for the glory of the Father and the salvation of souls.”

“Most holy Mother of God, never let me be separated from Your Divine Son. Please defend and protect me as Your Special Child. Amen.”

Homily #120524 ( 09min) Play – Fr. Angelo preaches on the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Francis and although St Francis did not build this church he was called by Our Lord from the St. Damiano Cross to rebuild His Church which He said was in great need of repair. Fr. Angelo preaches on this fact and that the chapel building St. Francis was in was, in fact, physically falling down and how he took this at first as meaning to rebuild church buildings. But he soon realized that it was a call to renew the entire Church of Christ and it is this work which he did so successfully that resulted in the construction of the Basilica in his memory.
Ave Maria!
Mass: Dedication of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi – Feast – Form: OF
Readings: 
1st: rev 21:1-5
Resp: psa 95:1-7
Gsp: joh 10:22-30

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Homily #120523 ( 05min) Play – Fr. Dominic preaches on the need to avoid the spirit of the world that suggests we would loose ourselves in selfish pleasures, instead we should keep our eyes on God and live for eternal life, looking out for others as Jesus did.
Ave Maria!
Mass: Wednesday 7th Week of Easter – Wkdy – Form: OF
Readings: 
1st: act 20:28-38
Resp: psa 68:29-30, 33-35, 35-36
Gsp: joh 17:11-19

Audio (MP3)

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Take away the sovereign Pontiff and the Catholic Church would no longer be catholic. Moreover, without the supreme, effective, and authoritative pastoral office of Peter the unity of Christ’s Church would collapse. It would be vain to look for other principles of unity in place of the true one established by Christ Himself. As St. Jerome rightly observed: “There would be as many schisms in the Church as there are priests” (emphasis mine).

We would add that this cardinal principle of holy Church is not a supremacy of spiritual pride and a desire to dominate mankind, but a primacy of service, ministration, and love. It is no vapid rhetoric which confers on Christ’s vicar the title: “Servant of the servants of God.”

This passage from the first encyclical of Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam (1964, 110) focuses its attention on the pastoral authority of the pope.  It is no less apropos today as it was during the Second Vatican Council.  There are countless schisms in the Church today across the whole spectrum of belief, so that while liberal and conservative are unfortunate and inadequate appelatives in reference to Catholic belief, we nevertheless find it necessary to distinguish between the dissenters of both extremes.  Often the argument is given, regardless where the dissenter lies along the spectrum, that this or that particular teaching of the Church is not “infallible.”  It is the same argument, whether it has to do with Humanae Vitae or Dignitatis Humanae.

In the 1990 instruction of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Veritatis, “On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, the magisterium gives the lie to the pretexts used to legitimize private opinions that find themselves at odds with Church teaching

Dissent sometimes also appeals to a kind of sociological argumentation which holds that the opinion of a large number of Christians would be a direct and adequate expression of the “supernatural sense of the faith”.

Actually, the opinions of the faithful cannot be purely and simply identified with the “sensus fidei”. The sense of the faith is a property of theological faith; and, as God’s gift which enables one to adhere personally to the Truth, it cannot err. This personal faith is also the faith of the Church since God has given guardianship of the Word to the Church. Consequently, what the believer believes is what the Church believes. The “sensus fidei” implies then by its nature a profound agreement of spirit and heart with the Church, “sentire cum Ecclesia” (emphasis mine).

Although theological faith as such then cannot err, the believer can still have erroneous opinions since all his thoughts do not spring from faith.Not all the ideas which circulate among the People of God are compatible with the faith. This is all the more so given that people can be swayed by a public opinion influenced by modern communications media. Not without reason did the Second Vatican Council emphasize the indissoluble bond between the “sensus fidei” and the guidance of God’s People by the magisterium of the Pastors. These two realities cannot be separated. Magisterial interventions serve to guarantee the Church’s unity in the truth of the Lord. They aid her to “abide in the truth” in face of the arbitrary character of changeable opinions and are an expression of obedience to the Word of God. Even when it might seem that they limit the freedom of theologians, these actions, by their fidelity to the faith which has been handed on, establish a deeper freedom which can only come from unity in truth.

The CDF makes a cardinal point when it says:  The “sensus fidei” implies by its nature a profound agreement of spirit and heart with the Church, “sentire cum Ecclesia.”  To think with the Church means to have “a profound agreement of spirit and heart with the Church.”  This is the true sense of the faithful, and the reason why devout Catholics can apply the “smell test” to what they are hearing from the private pontifications of theologians, catechists and preachers and know when it does not square with Church doctrine, even if they are not always able to explain clearly why.

But as I say, this “smell test” applies across the whole spectrum of Catholic persuasion. The doctrinal preamble presented to the SSPX speaks also about this “profound agreement of spirit and heart with the Church”:

This preamble enunciates some of the doctrinal principles and criteria of interpretation of Catholic doctrine necessary for ensuring fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church and to the sentire cum Ecclesia, while leaving open to legitimate discussion the study and theological explanation of particular expressions and formulations present in the texts of the Second Vatican Council and of the Magisterium that followed it.

Of course, the preamble is directed toward the acceptance not of dogma, which the SSPX has no issue with, but toward the acceptance of pastoral teaching. It distinguishes between “the supreme, effective, and authoritative pastoral office of Peter,” and the “legitimate discussion and theological explanation” of particular texts of the Council.  Notice that the preamble does not even suggest that these particular passages, worthy of discussion, are ambiguous or otherwise unclear.  They may or may not be. That is not the point.  Simply put, the Supreme Pastor must be followed and he is willing to do what he can to facilitate assent, especially when he knows that the sheep are having a hard time following.  But such pastoral condescension does not imply a surrender to the sheep.  Rather, it is the humility and service of the ”Servant of the servants of God,” and an exhortation to embrace the sentire cum Ecclesia.

Filed under: Catholicism, Church, Religion Tagged: Benedict XVI, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitatis Humanae, Doctrinal Preamble, Ecclesiam Suam, Humanae Vitae, Sensus Fidei, Sentire Cum Ecclesia, Society of St. Pius X
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Mary’s Maternal Mediation  

God and his Christ make use of Mary in this sense, that they make all the graces which they destine for us pass through her … By using her as intermediary, they temper their action all the more with humanity, without in any way diminishing its divine efficacy. They make Mary live by the life we are to live by. She is first filled to overflowing with it. Grace is pre­formed in her and receives in her the imprint of a special beauty. All grace and all graces come to us thus canalized a1nd distributed by her, impregnated with that special sweetness which she imparts to all she touches and all she does.  

By her action Mary enters therefore into our lives as bearer of the divine. In the whole course of our lives, from the cradle and before it to the grave and beyond it, there is nothing of grace in which she had no part. She shapes us to the likeness of Jesus … She leaves her mark on everything and adds to the perfection of what passes through her hands. I have said that we are sustained by her prayer: we are similarly sustained by her action and, if one may say it, have our spiritual being in her hands. Every Christian is a child of Mary, but a child is not worthy of the name unless it is formed by its mother.

Fr. Pierre Rogatien Bernard, O.P.