Prayer for the Beatification of the Servant of God Sister Lucia
“Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore you profoundly and I thank you for the Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima, that revealed to the world the riches of her Immaculate Heart. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I implore You, if it should be for Your greater glory and the good of our souls, to glorify Sr. Lucy, one of the Shepherds of Fatima, by granting us the grace which we implore through her intercession, the miraculous healing of Yvonne Cheryl Ann. Amen. Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be.”
LifeSiteNews reports that the unanimous legislation “mandates a minimum of life imprisonment for first-time offenders over 19 who are found guilty of trafficking a minor in the state. Those who are under 18 will be charged with a Class A felony, which carries with it at least 20 years in prison.” […] Alabama Daily News relates that the Sound of Freedom Act “does not require that the perpetrator be aware of their victim’s age to be given a life sentence, nor is mistaking the victim’s age a legitimate legal defense.”
“Mandates a minimum of life imprisonment” — “minimum” — Trump said that the minimum sentence should be immediate execution.
Just a question for those who know who they are: Do you really wanna go that route?
This was posted five years ago [now seven years in 2024]. A good day to bring this to light once again. Outside of Saint Philomena – the veracity of whose existence as a virgin and martyr of the early Church has recently been sustained by exhaustive scientific evaluations of the evidence – outside of her… there is perhaps no saint more scorned as being no more than a figment of pious imagination than Saint George, who, however, boasts of more archaeological and historical evidence than most any other saint in the history not only of the early Church, but for some lesser known saints, right into our own day. Churches dedicated to Saint George sprang up in their dozens throughout the ancient world immediately after news of his martyrdom on 23 April 303.
Liberal warning: The most obnoxious denial of the existence of Saint George that I’ve come across comes from a super liberal professor of “ecumenism” (which I put in quotes because he had no idea what true ecumenism is). Many of my fellow priests today have had Father XXX as a professor in the various countries, seminaries and universities where he’s misled people. He had the idea that Saint George couldn’t possibly have existed because of the iconography of him slaying a dragon. This priest-professor’s arrogant idea was that we’re very smart today, and people of the past were so very gullible and stupid. He laughed his nervous, cowardly, mocking laugh when I tried to explain a few things about the iconography:
Those in the first centuries, who were suffering under the severe persecutions of the dragon of the Apocalypse, namely, the possessed-by-Satan pre-Constantinian Roman Empire, understood the dragon to be the Roman Empire. Even so, such depictions only came later, but for this very reason.
The white horse, similarly, is the white horse of the Apocalypse 6:2, whose rider goes out conquering and to further his conquering.
In the early fourth century, after George was martyred, it is interesting to note that all martyrs in the Montefiascone/Bolsano region of Tuscany, whether male or female, with no regard to how they met their deaths, were all depicted as riding on the white horse of the Apocalypse.
The woman who is to be saved in the background of some Renaissance paintings is, similarly, Holy Mother Church, who is represented by her saints.
The point of all this wonderful triumphalism in the iconography is not that Saint George or the other martyrs successfully fought their way out of being martyred. The point is not that they slew the dragon by, for instance, assassinating the Emperor of the time. It’s that they conquered the demonically controlled world by witnessing to Christ Jesus’ goodness and kindness and truth right unto their deaths, so hated is goodness and kindness and truth by the demonically controlled world. Saint George and the other martyrs slew the dragon by continuing in faithfulness while being slain.
By the way, the dragon, the ancient serpent, the devil and Satan, of Genesis 2:4-3:24, is, in the ancient usage of the word, an Oracle from God on behalf of man, a spirit, an angel, now a fallen angel. There are no talking snakes in Genesis. We’re talking about Satan here. The ancients knew this. Why is it that we don’t in all our clever self-congratulation?
None of this – or the archaeological proofs – made any impression on the super-liberal priest to whom I was speaking, for the last thing he wanted to hear was faithfulness to the Church unto death. That’s not what his own life was about. He was against all doctrine, all morality, all Sacred Revelation. Since he couldn’t answer in any reasonable way, he merely laughed his nervous, cowardly, mocking laugh once again. I was to see the “spirit” of that priest in so many other priests throughout my whole priesthood. Such adversity is an occasion by which friendship with Christ Jesus and the Saints can flourish.
This icon was given to me by Cardinal […]. It’s from the Mount Zion crowd just outside the wall of the Old City of Jerusalem. There is great devotion to Saint George in Palestine until today, with about every third boy being named after Saint George.
George’s father, Gerontius, was well known to the Emperor Diocletian as one of his very best soldiers. When Gerontius’ son George applied to Diocletian to be in the military service of the Emperor, Diocletian quickly made him part of the Imperial Guard and gave him the rank of Tribune. These positions taken together made young George, perhaps in his early twenties, almost as powerful as the Emperor himself. Very few people would have ever had such power, both military and political, and at such a young age. George was an instant phenomenon. Everyone would have known exactly who he was in the entire ancient world.
Diocletian was persuaded by the might-makes-right Galerius to have all his soldiers offer sacrifice to the Roman gods. George, with the zeal of the saints, loudly and with great reason proclaimed his worship of Christ Jesus, so that he couldn’t possibly offer sacrifice to any Roman gods. Diocletian, distraught – for he had never intended this – offered George all sorts of bribes, all of which were scorned by our Saint. Diocletian then set out to make an example of him, first attaching him to a wheel of swords and then having him decapitated.
Saint George and Saint Michael the Archangel sometimes meld into one presentation with wings being granted to Saint George on his white horse. That’s O.K. I’m sure they were great friends!
By the way, George is the Name of God the Father: ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ γεωργός ἐστιν (John 15:1). “My Father is George.” O.K., so, a pedantic translation would be “My Father is the Farmer” or “My Father is the Tiller of the Ground.” Some translations have “Vinedresser.” Truth be told, it’s γεωργός, that is, George!
Just to be insistent about this: “Adam” means “Tiller of the Ground.” “Adam” = “George.” Jesus is the New Adam. Jesus is the New George. Yours truly is merely the old George, the old Adam. But Christ has conquered and goes out to conquer still. Thanks be to God our Father that Jesus sets about slaying me so that, dead to myself, I live for Him alone. Yikes!
By the way, my parish, which takes in the most outrageously beautiful mountains of the Great Smoky Mountains, boasts, of course, of being at one end of “The Dragon’s Tail”, which is an extremely dangerous curvy road that every motorcycle enthusiast in North America loves to ride. They all come here! There are hotels just for two-wheelers throughout the area. There are all sort of motorcycle fix-it shops. I invite all cyclers to to make a weekend of this, slaying the dragon by the tail, and stopping in for Mass at 8:30 Sunday morning at Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Robbinsville, NC, or 11:00 Mass Sunday morning at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Andrews, N.C. If you’re not afraid of heights or gravel roads, come to Andrews from Robbinsville over Tatham Gap Road. If you’ve never once said “Yikes!” in your life, you will when you ride this one. I say that in solidarity, as most all my broken bones in life (really very many) have come from riding on two wheels with a motor.
There is no other saint I know of who is more archeologically established than Saint George. We have found the ruins of early centuries church buildings built in his honor at the very time of his death throughout the still anti-Catholic Roman Empire, from throughout Europe to throughout the Near and Middle East and everything in between.
Saint George is trashed because of Renaissance paintings of Saint George on a white horse slaying a dragon so as to save a maiden. “All fiction!” it is shrieked. “Don’t be a martyr! Be a man-of-consensus with the world!” That’s the brow-beating, bullying insistence which the soft and self-absorbed readily accept.
But the white horse is that of Jesus in the Apocalypse. In that Apocalypse the dragon is the great Serpent and Satan who is possessing the Caesars of the day. In that Apocalypse the maiden is the Church and the Mother of God. In the Apocalypse those who are killed in witness to Christ Jesus are the victors by their faithfulness right through death. The renaissance paintings are not original to those painters: They were merely representing frescoes in catacombs which depicted all martyrs like Saint George and at the time of Saint George in this fashion. Men who were martyred, women who were martyred, all depicted riding on white horses slaying the dragon, victorious over Satan by being faithful right through death.
Likewise, the virgin martyrs are dismissed as those to whom modern teenagers cannot relate. The first to be cancelled is Saint Philomena. In recent scientific studies, it is established absolutely that her catacomb stone reads: “Pax tecum Philomena” with no other possibility, and that the small glass vase found in that place contains the blood of a girl carbon-dated to the time of Philomena. Yep.
A priest working in the Holy See at the time I attended the presentations of these scientific studies actually hunted me down in Rome and insisted that it cannot be that I, a student at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, could promote the viability of placing Saint Philomena in the liturgical calendar once again. He was frantic, as if possessed. Yep.
The problem is both virginity and martyrdom, and martyrdom because of the virginity because of giving oneself over to Christ Jesus, to be “hidden with Christ in God” as Saint Paul says. We can’t have that today, shriek the inverted.
But that’s all years ago. Now what we have presented to us is that Jesus and His dear mother are irrelevant in every way. We must ignore them; we must obey the fallen world, we must worship Satan, Pachamama. Yep.
I will worship our Heavenly Father through, with, and in Jesus by the Holy Ghost and I will thank our dearest Immaculate Virgin Mary for interceding even for me as advocate, mediatrix, co-redemptrix. Thank you Jesus. Thank you Mary.
Translations of this are as poetic as the vocabulary. None of them fail. All are glorious. We could say that all the translations struggle, as would any attempt of mine. But poetry is all about “triggering”, to use a modern poetic descriptive. You yourself have to bring your whole life to any poetry as an occasion to hope to unlock a smidgeon of what, as Hopkins said, is inscaped therein. Take his description of the Holy Spirit as Manley speaks directly to Christ Jesus, Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception:
THE WINDHOVER — by Gerard Manley Hopkins —
To Christ our Lord…
I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind.
My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
Speaking, repeating… such words to Christ Jesus, the Son of His Maid-Servant, words spoken to the Risen Jesus still bearing His wounds – that Heart! – King of kings, Lord of lords, Prince of the Most Profound Peace, I weep as “deep calls to deep.”
Who am I to interpret such things? I am very much afraid, of myself, my lack, my ineptitude, my nothingness. Do people want my death consequent upon the hubris of my claiming such a pulpit, the angels desirous of sundering me with mighty swords for not rendering justice to the Scriptures inspired by that fiery Holy Spirit? I fear that everything I might say will be an insult, not that it would be wrong, or malicious, but that it would be devastatingly inadequate…
Wisdom, chapter 9, comes to mind:
“God of my ancestors, Lord of mercy, you who have made all things by your word, and in your wisdom have established mankind to rule the creatures produced by you, and to govern the world in holiness and righteousness, and to render judgment in integrity of heart: Give me Wisdom, the consort at your throne, and do not reject me from among your children; for I am your servant, the child of your maidservant, a man weak and short-lived and lacking in comprehension of judgment and of laws. Indeed, though one be perfect among mortals, if Wisdom, who comes from you, be lacking, that one will count for nothing.”
Some months ago while preaching on the glories of Sacramental Confession, I waxed poetic on my fear of hearing the words at the end of my life, called before Jesus for my judgment: “Get away from me you evildoer: I never knew you.” I rhetorically asked in my homily about how it is that we can be certain that Jesus will know us as His friends, as part of His Holy Family. I again spoke of Sacramental Confession where we hear the words of Jesus commanding His Father to forgive us: “Father! Forgive them!”
To hear those words, we have to be there, on Calvary, returning, like John, accompanying Mary accompanying Jesus (back to the images at the top of this post). That’s where we are when we go to Sacramental Confession.
Well, well… we can speak of such things as poetically as we might, but it is not a matter of us inscaping everything we are into the facts at hand, but of dying to ourselves and being drawn into the reality of what is happening there, where heart speaks to heart. The yearning of my heart, crying out to Jesus, wanting to explain to His Little Flock such Mysteries of the Kingdom, was this deep speaking to deep, heart speaking to heart?
I am nothing. But the Lord Jesus had pity on me, right then, right there, while I was preaching away. I went silent, standing there not saying a word for what seemed an eternity, self-conscious that the homily was delayed and someone would try to help me because of thinking that I was suffering a stroke.
But here’s my experience of heart speaking to heart, deep calling to deep, and this has nothing to do with me bringing anything, inscaping anything into the situation:
All of a sudden my perspective, my heart, my depths [if any], were those of Jesus on the Cross, no longer looking to Him but instead one with Him, He sharing with my continuing nothingness and continuing blindness and continuing weakness and continuing ineptitude… He sharing the solidarity He had with His Immaculate Mother, the depths of those Hearts crying out to each other.
It’s not philology speaking to philology, exegesis speaking to exegesis. Instead, deep calling deep, heart speaking to heart, is the consequence of the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophesy: When I am lifted up [on the Cross], I will draw all to myself. When we are there, one with Him on the Cross, we see Mary’s heart from within Jesus Heart… we’re drawn into the calling out of those depths…
The images, the sounds, that come to mind, so banal, I’m so sorry, are those of whales, mother and calf, in the deep, calling out to each other in the deep, obviously heart speaking to heart…
I feel like running away, thinking I could speak to such ineffable, unspeakable calling, crying out…
I beg the Lord that I not to fall asleep again in this Gethsemane of today, oblivious that the betrayer is at hand, oblivious of Sacred Heart speaking to Immaculate Heart, of such Deep calling to Deep.
It is not a matter of our nothing-love that we stay awake and not run away into the dark, a matter of our hearts speaking, our depths crying out, but a matter of His love, His Mother’s love, those Hearts, those Depths into which we are drawn so as to be one with the two Hearts of Jesus and Mary. I know who you are! Come into the kingdom prepared for you!
We must wake up now in the Gethsemane of today:
Arise! Let us be going! Behold! My betrayer is at hand!
/// This waking up was moments after Jesus was sweating blood, after Jesus’ Heart was sundered in concern for His Mother’s heart… Back to the poetry of those images up top…
“But Father George! Father George! You’re an ol’ meanie! You’re wrong, Father George! You gotta retract and apologize to the writers of Dignitas infinita! They made a distinction between ontological evil, which is NEVER LOST, and moral evil, which they admit can be really really bad Father George! So they’re right and you’re wrong! We’re all going to be saints in heaven! Get with the program, Father George ! ! ! ! ! ! “
No matter how many exclamation points are used, it’s actually that distinction between moral evil and ontological evil that is wrong, heretical, and is the attempted destruction of the Catholic Church, the divinity of Christ, the fact of sin, the fact of any forgiveness of sin, etc.
The consequences of sin are also and deeply ontological. The consequences of grace are also and deeply ontological. Sanctifying grace transforms the very being of the individual, turning to glory in heaven. There’s nothing more ontological than that, being transformed to see God in the Face. But sin, mortal sin, wrecks destructions upon the very being of the individual, the mere shell of which, in all hatred and rebellion, goes to hell for eternity, never to see God in the Face.
The ontological fact of redemption, of salvation, is that we are ontologically fit to be and are tabernacles of the Most Holy Trinity (the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity as the saints call it), tabernacles of the fiery Holy Spirit, as Saint Paul says. God radiates from our very being, all ontological.
Martin Luther rejected the beauty of our Redemption and said that we remain forever a pile of bull s*** in eternity in heaven; it’s just that, he said, Christ covers that pile of s*** like a blanket of snow, the glistening of which is what the eyes of God the Father are dazzled by, God the Father being deceitfully tricked by God the Son. Though God the Father is so gullible, we are nevertheless nothing more ontologically than s*** forever. This insult to our redemption by the Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception (also a terrible insult to her) is what is embraced wholly by Dignitas infinita. What an irony: each person has infinite dignity by being, ontologically, a pile of s*** in eternity.
I reject all that s***.
I accept the forgiveness of my sin wrought not by a mere external decree, but by the flooding into my soul of the life of the Most Holy Trinity. No more room for sin and guilt in this re-creation in the Body of Christ. This is the difference between heaven vs hell, grace vs s***, truth vs Dignitas infinita.
Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.
P.S. If I notice this kind of thing, it’s not because I’m especially smart, but because I’ve seen it all before as a seminarian. This was all the rage after Vatican II amongst the heretics. The writers of Dignitas infinita are altogether unoriginal, stuck in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With the publication of this kind of Lutheran s***, their time has now come to an end.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!
P.S. Again, these guys tried to blame all this on JPII. That’s a lie. That’s for another post.
So, while trying to get some sleep last night I listened to the document Dignitas infinita on my Android phone, using the always annoying text-to-speech app [settings / accessibility / select-to-speak]. What I noted is that there are constant contradictions throughout this weirdly self-cancelling document.
It’s obvious that there are a number of “voices”, mumblings in meetings, contributions by committee members which had to be included but only grudgingly, and which are not well integrated, to the point that you can name the source of this or that paragraph as coming from Cardinal “Tom”, or Father “Dick”, or Sister “Harriette”, none of them always agreeing with each other. After all, it’s a dicastery of dialoguers (appointed people), not a congregating specifically of member Cardinals, right?
I offered the painful agony of the experience of listening to this document for the souls in purgatory. I couldn’t endure physically reading it. The document is so annoying. Everything in the context of the document is wrong, including every “the” and “and”, while the contradictions pile up.*
The perverted wishful thinking in Dignitas infinita is universal salvation: everyone, without any exception, retains infinite dignity in eternity in heaven regardless of any moral defect whatsoever, even actively hating God and neighbor in eternity in heaven, forever trying to murder everyone and lie to everyone in eternity in heaven.
“But Father George! Father George! That doesn’t make sense and I gotta make it make sense or I’ll just up and die!”
Look: Error is such because you can’t make sense of it. Don’t try. If you succeed, you will be in error. Accept the fact that some people even want to share their error with you. There’s Judas, right? We’re not entitled to have no Judas among us. Are we then betrayed. Yes. Rejoice that you can stand with Jesus. If you willingly, knowingly want to be in error by rationalizing it, you risk going to hell. Don’t do that. You’ll need to go to Sacramental Confession because you will, objectively speaking, have lost your dignity altogether.
The corollary for this theoretical error is, of course, practical error, blessing sin, because, well, error and all that. God doesn’t bless sin. No priest can force God to bless sin. If a priest were to attempt to bless sin, to force God to bless sin, he will risk going straight to hell, you know, speaking objectively. He will need to go to Sacramental Confession because he will have actually lost his dignity altogether.
The summary corollary for all this error is that there is no sin, no salvation, no Savior, no religion, but only a fraternity of dark and violent arrogance cutting everyone off from God and from each other, and then calling that eternal dignity in heaven, you know, because, well, error and all that. Such people have a desperate need to repent and go to Sacramental Confession. Our Lord says that those who deny Him will be denied by Him before our Heavenly Father, they having lost their dignity at that point forever. There’s nothing infinite or heavenly about lost dignity. It’s hell.
By the way: don’t despair; don’t leave the Church; don’t abandon Jesus; don’t let the knuckleheads get you down so that you attempt to use them as an excuse for thus hating God and neighbor. Tough it out, and… and… meanwhile, rejoice, because you are being given an opportunity to be crucified with Jesus. He knows well what this is all about. Been there. Done that. Be the little child trusting in Jesus within the mantle of Immaculate Mary.
If you bother to read the document (I don’t recommend it but the link is up top), you’ll notice that it races from half-baked morality, reminiscences of natural law, all the way to the mere ethics (customs of fallen-human-nature imposed by elitists), the customs of, by definition, going along to get along with no foundation of that being a creature with free will before His Creator and all the obligations that such free will before God entails. There is, in all of this mere political correctness, no moral imperative of “Love one another AS I have loved you” with a crucified love, with God’s love, but merely a casuistic, condescending and pandering scolding for that which relatively makes these people feel uncomfortable for whatever unrepeatable nanosecond, a scolding that all can even laudably ignore because -Hey! – we all have infinite dignity forever in heaven no matter what! Again, if you think that doesn’t make sense, know that it doesn’t. Don’t try to make sense of it. All of this is pure evil.
Examples? While the rights of, say, the disabled are touted, the executioners of the disabled in the Third Reich T-4 program to eliminate all the disabled in gas-chambers and ovens are canonized with the infinite dignity thingy that continues in eternity in heaven even while they forever actively hate God and neighbor, continuing with their murdering and lying in heaven. “Infinite dignity” is a license to murder, to hate, to lie. Does that sound like dignity? Again, don’t try to make sense of it.
It comes down to power, the power to shake one’s fist at God and neighbor, the power to go to hell. That’s not power, but such people think it is. Feel the adrenaline while executing the innocent! Hey! Heaven and hatred at the same time! Yay! /// off sarcasm
“Oh! That’s really evil” the document exclaims, but then repeats that no one ever loses their dignity, not in any circumstance, not amidst the accomplishment of any evil. Again, this doesn’t make sense. Don’t try to make it make sense or you will end up in hell, because, you know… Feel the adrenaline, the power of shaking your fist at God and neighbor. But then, the nanosecond you die…
Summary: the whole document comes across as someone trying to get out of being condemned to hell forever with no dignity whatsoever, thus desperately coming up with excuses from within themselves as reasons why they shouldn’t be condemned, you know, like Narcissus seeing his reflection in the water, finding the totality of the reason for his existence in the reflection of himself. I dunno. It’s a question people can ask themselves…
Recommendation: If that’s what you’re doing, get your hide off to Sacramental Confession. Go to Jesus and have your sins forgiven. Do it now while you have the chance. And don’t sin again!
My own penance given to me in Sacramental Confession the other day: Five reps of the Lord’s Prayer. Thank you, Jesus.
Monitum: Footnote (1) of Dignitas infinita blames JPII for this heretical phrase. It’s a lie. That’s for another post. What they did in blaming JPII for this is very terrible.
– * – A few days ago I cited a couple of paragraphs about human trafficking which were entirely correct. I did that as ammunition, however cynical, however ironic, against the traffickers. Je suis un enfant terrible. See: Dignitas infinita and human trafficking.
Not having any special eclipse opticals, the phone-camera did just fine from the backyard of the rectory. 2:55 PM, 8 April 2024.
Being stupid, I looked at the event also with bare eyes, well, ultra-super-squinting as one might do driving directly into a bright sun low on the horizon ahead of you (which happens frequently enough to me racing on errands from Andrews to Murphy and back at the end of whatever day). No way to avoid it.
The universal reaction right through the history of mankind is an existential facing of the magnitude of the universe. I was at about 86% of totality, like dusk, the dogs confused, the songbirds singing. Awesome.
Last time I saw an eclipse was in 2017, the path being exactly directly over the rectory, 100% totality. All dark. Dogs more confused. Songbirds gone quiet. Awesome. I recall taking this picture:
Previously, on 10 May 1994, although it was 100% cloud cover, I was at about 97% of the totality at that rectory back in the day. It did get dark, though not completely. There was still an existential awareness, if you will, of the magnitude of the universe. No dogs at the time! The songbirds were singing, it being still more dusky than totally dark.
There’s somehow a spiritual analogy with eclipses. Let’s see… God shines His goodness and kindness and truth on all, but some of us get in the way, not permitting that light to shine through us to others. Meanwhile, the Lord will take care of others regardless of our idiocy. We hurt ourselves in not being the lamps lit brightly with Him who is the Lumen Gentium, the Light of the Nations. Sacramental Confession is the best, re-lighting lamps or turning up the ardent flames of the love and truth of the Holy Spirit, who was sent among us for the forgiveness of sins. The Holy Spirit forms us to be one with the Son, our sins forgiven, we being pointed to heaven, where grace, as Saint Paul says, turns to glory.
Speaking of glory, it is Saint Ephraim, the deacon from Syria, who made the comment that the references to the glory of God in the Sacred Scriptures refer to God shining through us (How to say it?). Get a concordance and search out all the references and… pray about it… He’s right. God is good.
Meanwhile, clothed with the sun, not blocking the sun, but radiating the Son:
From the Holy See, 9 April 2024 [with my comments]:
Resignation and appointment of bishop of Charlotte, U.S.A.
The Holy Father has accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the diocese of Charlotte, United States of America, presented by Bishop Peter Joseph Jugis. [In the past, such an statement would be followed by “§1” or “§2”, which refer to paragraphs concerning the reasons why a bishop has retired, with “§1” referring to having attained the age (75) of a mandatory tendering of resignation, with “§2” having reference to any other reason, such as poor health. In this case, Bishop Peter Joseph Jugis has had poor health ever since I’ve known him, much more so in the past couple of years. He actually tendered his resignation in June of 2023.]
The Holy Father has appointed the Reverend Fr. Michael T. Martin, O.F.M. Conv., member of the Our Lady of the Angels Province, United States of America, until now parish priest of Saint Philip Benizi in Jonesboro, Georgia, as bishop of Charlotte, United States of America.
Curriculum vitae
Msgr. Michael T. Martin, O.F.M. Conv., was born on 2 December 1961 in Baltimore, Maryland, in the archdiocese of the same name. He entered the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor Conventual, and gave his solemn vows on 2 August 1985. He was subsequently awarded a bachelor’s degree from Saint Hyacinth College and Seminary in Granby, Massachusetts, and studied theology at the Pontifical Theological Faculty “San Bonaventura” in Rome. [That would be the Seraphicum.]
He was ordained a priest on 10 June 1989.
Following ordination, he first held the roles of admissions director and teacher at Saint Francis High School in Athol Springs, New York (1989-1996). After obtaining a Master of Education from Boston College (1993), he went on to serve as principal and then head of Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore, Maryland (1996-2001, 2001-2010), director of Duke Catholic Center in Durham, North Carolina (2010-2022), and since 2022, parish priest of Saint Philip Benizi in Jonesboro, Georgia.
Bishop Jugis’ legacy includes:
the annual glorious Eucharistic Congress
one of the best seminaries anywhere in the Church
Those two things say really a lot about the Bishop Jugis, when, as mentioned above, he struggled the whole time with ill health. Fare well, good Bishop.
Meanwhile, I don’t know Msgr Martin at all, though I’d say he’s got a lot of energy what with all the sports in his background. I’d say he’ll have no problem visiting the far mountain outposts of the diocese such as my little parish (the smallest in North America), and will, perhaps, thrive, as I do, in racing about the mountains on behalf of the Little Flock of the Lord Jesus.
I’ve been to the Seraphicum and lived near Dodici Apostoli Basilica in Rome, going to school at the PIB, the neighboring building. I spent much time over the years, the decades, at the altar of St Joseph Cupertino in the Dodici Apostoli. My confessor of many years lived there. It is from them that I learned of the ferocity of the these conventual Franciscans. They rejoiced to have tens of thousands of martyrs in France back in the day. There are not many members today because of this, but they are not dwarfed in stature by the OFM or the OFM.Cap. And if you question my use of the word ferocity, that means you don’t know Saint Francis of Assisi. No, not at all.
I’m sure our new bishop will forgive me if I was once going to be ministering with the OFM at the Holy Sepulcher and then teach at the OFM Studium Biblicum Franciscanum down the street in Jerusalem on behalf of the OFM Custody of the Holy Land. Franciscans are Franciscans are Franciscans, right?
Human trafficking must also be counted among the grave violations of human dignity. While it is not a new phenomenon, it has taken on tragic dimensions before our eyes, which is why Pope Francis has denounced it in particularly emphatic terms: “I reaffirm here that the ‘trade in people’ is a vile activity, a disgrace to our societies that claim to be civilized! Exploiters and clients at all levels should make a serious examination of conscience both in the first person and before God! Today the Church is renewing her urgent appeal that the dignity and centrality of every individual always be safeguarded, with respect for fundamental rights, as her social teaching emphasizes. She asks that these rights really be extended for millions of men and women on every continent, wherever they are not recognized. In a world in which a lot is said about rights, how often is human dignity actually trampled upon! In a world in which so much is said about rights, it seems that the only thing that has any rights is money.”
For these reasons, the Church and humanity must not cease fighting against such phenomena as “the marketing of human organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, slave labor, including prostitution, the drug and weapons trade, terrorism, and international organized crime. Such is the magnitude of these situations, and their toll in innocent lives, that we must avoid every temptation to fall into a declarationist nominalism that would assuage our consciences. We need to ensure that our institutions are truly effective in the struggle against all these scourges.” Confronted with these varied and brutal denials of human dignity, we need to be increasingly aware that “human trafficking is a crime against humanity.” It essentially denies human dignity in at least two ways: “Trafficking profoundly disfigures the humanity of the victim, offending his or her freedom and dignity. Yet, at the same time, it dehumanizes those who carry it out.”
The Supreme Pontiff, Francis, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, with the Secretary for the Doctrinal Section of the Dicastery, on 25 March 2024, approved this Declaration, which was decided at the Ordinary Session of this Dicastery on 28 February 2024, and he ordered its publication.
Given in Rome, at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, on 2 April 2024, the nineteenth anniversary of the death of Pope St. John Paul II.
Víctor Manuel Card. Fernández Prefect
Msgr. Armando Matteo
Secretary for the Doctrinal Section
Ex Audientia Die 25.03.2024 FRANCISCUS
I wholeheartedly support these two paragraphs of Dignitas infinita, and hold them out as an accusation to those who are doing these crimes in the name of all that is Catholic and in the name of charities. It’s like reading a description of the activity of NGOs, if you get my drift.
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 