NANYANG, China — Bishop Joseph Zhu Baoyu, Bishop Emeritus of Nanyang, has recovered from coronavirus. At age 98, he is among the oldest infected patients to have recovered.
Bishop Zhu was diagnosed with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by coronavirus, Feb. 3. He was treated at a hospital in Nanyang, in China's Henan province, and was said to be no longer infected Feb. 14.
In mainland China the fatality rate from coronavirus is 2.3%, though that figure jumps to nearly 15% for those 80 years or older.
[Catholicism.org] The day before Ash Wednesday, in all English speaking countries except the United States, is called Shrove Tuesday. “To shrive” (active voice), or to “be shrove” (passive) in Old English meant not only to confess one’s sins and be absolved, but to receive the advice of a spiritual counselor. Having done this, you had been “shrove.” (I do not think “shriven” is the correct past participle. If someone can correct me, please do.) The word survives today in the expression “given short shrift,” which means that the person petitioning for something, or being accused of something, was not given a full hearing. To prejudge someone of a crime, “give him short shrift and a long rope,” meant to give the accused a bogus trial and hang him.
Shrove Tuesday was also called “pancake day” in Ireland and England because all the left over fat had to be cooked with batter on this day, being that fat and dairy products were traditionally given up, along with meat, during Lent. Mardi Gras, is, as you know, a French term meaning “Fat Tuesday.” The tradition was the same in France, all fat had to be finished off by Ash Wednesday. Carnival is derived from the Latin “carne vale,” which means “good bye to meat.” The fact that the traditional Christian carnival has degenerated, in places like New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro, into a day of debauchery, is a corruption of what once was, for the most part, innocent, festive celebrating the day before Lent began.
[7news] A date has been set for the final appeal of disgraced cardinal George Pell, who remains behind bars for historical child sex abuse offences committed in the 1990s.
The High Court has listed a two-day hearing before the full bench on March 11 and 12.
In the video above, George Pell’s request for special leave to the High Court explained
Lawyers for Pell, 78, sought special leave to the High Court late last year, after Australia’s most senior Catholic was convicted on five charges relating to the sexual assault of two choirboys in St Patrick’s Cathedral while he was Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996.
On Wednesday, Pope Francis released
his long-awaited Apostolic Exhortation on the Amazonian Synod, Querida
Amazonia, which can best be described as an insidious attempt to secularize
the Catholic Church.
Specifically, the pope in his
exhortation:
Advocates an "inculturated liturgy" that
incorporates Amazonian dance and rituals, and introduces the idea of
establishing an Amazonian liturgical rite.
Recommends granting lay people formal authority over
Amazonian parishes, and mentions their ability to "celebrate certain
sacraments" (excluding the Eucharist and Confession).
Says women should be given formal positions in the
faith community as a result of a "commission from the bishop."
Endorses the Amoris Laetitia approach of
allowing Communion to those living in adultery, saying there is no
"room … for a [traditional] discipline that excludes and turns people
away."
Defends idol worship as witnessed with the veneration of Pachamama at the Synod, saying that it is not superstition.
Concerning idols, Francis says
that we “should
esteem the indigenous mysticism that sees the interconnection and
interdependence of the whole of creation, the mysticism of gratuitousness that
loves life as a gift,” as well as the “sacred wonder before nature.”
So Catholics are now exhorted to esteem "the indigenous mysticism" of the occult that is generated by "the prince of this world." (John 12:31) Shall we esteem voodoo too?
“Ecological
Conversion”
The
exhortation then spearheads the Amazonian Synod’s plan to unite the Catholic
Church with the world, that it might be ecological, ecumenical – one world. For
it “exhorts” the Church to bow to the planet in idolatrous fashion – a planet
symbolized by Pachamama.
The historic Amazonian Synod that
convened in Rome this past October 6-27 brought to fever pitch this globalist
plan to merge the Church with the environment. This perfidious attempt was
captured live on film in a deplorable scene inside of St. Peter's Basilica—a
nude Mother Earth idol [Pachamama] along with Pope Francis and various
cardinals chanting, dancing, and praying before the statue. The synod was all
about making "reparation" to “Mother Earth” for the environmental
"sins" committed against her.
In keeping with the synodal theme,
the exhortation urges us to forget things eternal and to be absorbed with
things terrestrial. Its clear and unabashed endorsement of profaning the liturgy
with pagan dance and ritual is in itself justification for decrying it. And
while its proposals are applied to the Amazon region for the moment, the Amazon
is only being used as a trial balloon. As Francis himself says in his
exhortation:
"I am addressing the present Exhortation to the whole
world. … the Church’s concern for the problems of this area obliges us to
discuss, however briefly, a number of other important issues that can assist
other areas of our world in confronting their own challenges."
The ploy was to first implement
these changes in the Amazon so that other areas of the Church
"deprived" of these "rights" could cry
"discrimination" and clamor for these same innovations, whereupon the
Vatican would concede to their wishes with the justification that the plan thus
far had been "successful" in the Amazon.
Baited With Slick Political Maneuver
While the exhortation doesn't
explicitly support the idea of ordaining married men to the priesthood as some had anticipated, it appears that
this was never a key part of the plan to begin with. The ploy was to initially
scare conservatives with this proposal with the plan of easing up on it at the
last minute in order to pacify the faithful and better gain their confidence in
Francis' environmental program.
This is typical of the political
maneuvers used by Francis to elicit the Church's support of controversial
proposals, e.g. down-talking gay-marriage so that we will feel relieved and
even gratified by his mere endorsement
of gay unions.
Pagan
The bottom line is that "enculturating
the liturgy," giving lay persons authority over parishes, empowering women
in religious matters, giving Communion to adulterers, and bowing to idols are heinous insults to God’s Majesty that the faithful may never
accept. It is our duty to denounce these pagan innovations.
And so, while many are
"counting their blessings" that Querida Amazonia hasn't
formally endorsed married priests, they should well consider that they have
been baited into swallowing the gist of its message that we betray Jesus
Crucified and be one with a pagan environment.
[ABC] A teacher at a Catholic seminary in Buffalo, N.Y. has been arrested and charged with cyberstalking after he allegedly made a series of threats against an investigative reporter whose work focused on the ongoing scandal surrounding the handling of sex abuse claims against local clergy.
Paul E. Lubienecki, 62, of Hamburg, N.Y., is an adjunct professor at Christ the King Seminary within the Diocese of Buffalo, which recently announced that the seminary will “cease operations” at the end of the current academic year amid financial troubles.
On the same day that announcement was made, Lubienecki allegedly called Charlie Specht, an investigative reporter for local ABC affiliate WKBW, who had first reported on the alleged mishandling of sexual misconduct complaints at the seminary, and left him a message in which he threatened to kill him.
Pope Francis: People who are fixed on the ordination of viri probati or female deacons will be disappointed with the letter "Querida Amazonia"
Vatican (kath.net) Pope Francis in a conversation with some US bishops from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming on Monday during the "ad limina" visit made it clear that people fixated on ordaining viri probati or female deacons, will be disappointed by the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation "Querida Amazonia". The letter will be published tomorrow, Wednesday. This is reported by CNS.
Bishop Oscar Solis of Salt Lake City informed the agency that the Pope did not provide any details about "Querida Amazonia", but made it clear that he did not currently believe in the ordination of viri probati. The discussion about this should not be over, however. The Pope also warned the bishops that many in the avoidance are only focused on these two points. For him, however, the focus is on the social, pastoral, ecological and cultural challenge.
kath.net video blog with Jan Ledóchowski, President of the Platform for Christian Democracy: https://christdemokratie.at/
Swiss law "against homophobia" is a gross restriction of private autonomy!
Vatican City (AFP) - Seven years after his surprise resignation, Benedict XVI -- weakened by age but still intellectually spry -- appears unable to remain in the shadow of his Argentinean successor Francis, creating the appearance of "two popes" at odds.
On February 11, 2013, at the age of 85, the German intellectual Joseph Ratzinger announced in Latin to astonished cardinals that he would cease being pope, a situation unheard of for seven centuries.
For five years, the unusual cohabitation in the smallest state in the world between the 265th pope in retirement and the 266th, Francis, went on without a hitch.
Francis and the Amazon Synodal - sophisticated regional circles with pre-fabricated results and global ramifications.
By Roberto de Mattei *
The message we anticipated was in the air. The confirmation is sent to us confidentially by some bishops who have received part (not all) of the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation from Pope Francis on the Amazon Synod. This part essentially deals with paragraph 111 of the Synod's final document.
“Many church communities in the Amazon region have enormous difficulties in accessing the Eucharist. It takes months or years for a priest to return to a church to celebrate the Eucharist, to offer the sacrament of reconciliation, or to celebrate the anointing of the sick for the ill in the church.
We value celibacy as a gift from God insofar as this gift enables the missionary disciple ordained to the priesthood to devote themselves fully to the service of the Holy People of God. It stimulates pastoral love, and we pray that there are many vocations that live the celibate priesthood. We know that this discipline 'is not required by the nature of the priesthood itself' (PO, 16), although there is a ratio of usefulness to it for many reasons. In his encyclical on priestly celibacy, St. Paul VI. upheld this law and exposed the theological, spiritual, and pastoral motivations that motivate it. In 1992, the post-synodal exhortation of St. John Paul II for priestly training confirmed this tradition in the Latin Church (PDV, 29). In view of the fact that legitimate diversity does not affect the community and unity of the Church, but expresses it and is at its service (cf. LG, 13; OE, 6), as evidenced by the existing diversity of rites and disciplines, we propose that within the framework of Lumen Gentium 26, the competent authority shall lay down criteria and provisions for the ordination of suitable and recognized men of the congregation to priests who practice fruitful permanent diaconate and receive adequate priestly training to support the life of the Christian community to be supported by preaching the word and celebrating the sacraments in the most remote areas of the Amazon. "
So the breach has been made. There is then no reason to ban what other regions of the world will allow in some areas of the Amazon. The German bishops, and not just them, are ready to open priesthood to married men who are deemed appropriate by the competent authority. What is thereby liquidated is not only a changeable "Church discipline", but a law of the Church, which is based on a commandment of divine and apostolic origin.
Fifty years ago at the symposium of European bishops in Chur in July 1969, Cardinal Leo-Joseph Suenens read an appeal by Hans Küng to abolish the celibacy of priests in his closing speech. This demand coincided with the role assigned by the progressive theology of sexuality: an instinct that man should not suppress by asceticism, but "liberate" by finding a form of "realization" of the human person in sex. Since then, this demand has expanded and has gone hand in hand with the Church's process of secularization and self-destruction.
In reality, the violations of celibacy and simony were always the great plagues that afflicted the mystical body of Christ in times of crisis. And the call for abstinence and poverty, as the Gospel calls it, were the banner of the great saints of church renewal. In the coming days of February, the anti-reformer will not, as is so often the case, be a bishop or a group of bishops, but the successor of St. Peter.
Ecclesiastical celibacy is the glory of the Church, and what makes it so is the will of Christ, which the apostles have handed down to our times.
Is it conceivable that the Catholics can remain silent in the face of this scandal?
* Roberto de Mattei, historian, father of five, professor of modern history and history of Christianity at the European University of Rome, chair of the Lepanto Foundation, author of numerous books, most recently in German translation: Defense of Tradition: The Insurmountable Truth of Christ, with a foreword by Martin Mosebach, Altötting 2017 and The Second Vatican Council. A previously unwritten story, 2nd adult Edition, Bobingen 2011. [His books are available in English on Amazon.com]
Books by Prof. Roberto de Mattei in German translation Martin Mosebach's books can be obtained from our partner bookstore.
Translation: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Corrispondenza Romana
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG