Here is one of my last few evenings to enjoy the view of the Sabine chapel.
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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
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- The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
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“Until the Lord be pleased to settle, through the instrumentality of the princes of the Church and the lawful ministers of His justice, the trouble aroused by the pride of a few and the ignorance of some others, let us with the help of God endeavor with calm and humble patience to render love for hatred, to avoid disputes with the silly, to keep to the truth and not fight with the weapons of falsehood, and to beg of God at all times that in all our thoughts and desires, in all our words and actions, He may hold the first place who calls Himself the origin of all things.”- Prosper of Aquitaine (+c.455), De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem 22.61
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
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"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
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Let us pray…
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.























Father, what’s the word in Rome on this? Why is the mainstream Catholic media so quite on this story?
The Wielgus affair: Communist spy turned Archbishop of Warsaw
From Friday, January 05, 2007
Rorate Caeli
The Wielgus affair: Communist spy turned Archbishop of Warsaw
The fallout from the appointment of a former source of the secret services of the Polish Communist government as Archbishop of Warsaw continues to rock Poland and the Vatican two days before his installation.
Andrea Tornielli (Rome), in Il Giornale’s Friday edition (Italian):
The position of the new archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, 67 years old, appointed last December 6 as successor to Cardinal Glemp and who will enter the diocese in two days: new documents from the archives seem to demonstrate, as the authoritative Polish daily Rzeczpospolita affirms, that the prelate was “a secret agent of the Communist services for twenty years”.
Now, thanks to a microfilm, new and graver elements emerge. “I, Grey-Stanislaw [one of the supposed pseudonyms used by Wielgus] agree to collaborate with the secret services of the Polish Popular Republic during my time abroad. The collaboration will be based in an offer of intelligence services from Federal Germany and other hostile nations, according to the instructions of the Center for Intelligence Services. The services shall make available all means and eventual legal help for the development of the aforementioned activities.” This is the text of the document reported in unabridged format by Rzeczpospolita. …
It is probable that the circumstances were not [known to the Vatican] in all their consistency and extent. Anonymous sources from the Polish Church do not hide the embarrassment which this situation is causing, a few hours before the installation of the new archbishop: “It is a grave affair, a sad and delicate story, it is not a pleasant thing.”
From The Guardian:
“The new archbishop of Warsaw was a secret and conscious collaborator with the SB [Security Service] for more than 20 years. Documents confirm this,” the well-respected Rzeczpospolita newspaper wrote yesterday of Mr Wielgus, who was chosen by Pope Benedict XVI last month to fill one of the most important roles in the Polish church.
Mr Wielgus is accused of spying for the SB from 1967, when he was a philosophy student at Lublin University, until the collapse of communist rule in 1989, and of operating under at least three pseudonyms: “Adam”, “Grey” and “Adam Wysocki”.
Rzeczpospolita claimed to have unearthed Mr Wielgus’ signed agreement to work for the SB, along with documents showing that he gathered information about church matters and students whom he taught, and even papers suggesting that he received “special training” for agents and was given a grant to study in Germany as reward for his collaboration.