Tomorrow on the Novus Ordo calendar (November 22, 2015) is the “Solemnity Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe”
I recently wrote about the impoverished sermons that typically mark this day: Specifically, one all-too-often hears (and not exclusively in Novus Ordo Land either, I’m afraid) that the Kingdom of Christ is not in this world; His dominion is not concerned with matters temporal and political, but rather is it essentially spiritual in nature.
In other words, it is imagined that the dominion of Christ is confined to the individual soul; a notion that runs counter to the true and immutable doctrine expressed in Quas Primas – the Encyclical with which Pope Pius XI established the Feast of Christ the King in 1925.
At best, a Novus Ordo goer might be reminded that the Lord, as Creator of Heaven and earth, necessarily reigns over all of the created order. While this is most certainly true, the problem lies in the fact that the Feast of Christ the King isn’t really about this; rather, it is about the Kingship that was given and belongs to Jesus Christ as man.
As Pope Pius XI explains:
But if we ponder this matter more deeply, we cannot but see that the title and the power of King belongs to Christ as man in the strict and proper sense too. For it is only as man that he may be said to have received from the Father “power and glory and a kingdom,” since the Word of God, as consubstantial with the Father, has all things in common with him, and therefore has necessarily supreme and absolute dominion over all things created.
The temptation to preach about the supreme dominion of the Creator over all that He has created, in spite of the actual purpose of the Feast of Christ the King, comes in part from the so-called “Responsorial Psalm” found in the Novus Ordo Propers for this day:
R. The LORD is king; he is robed in majesty.
The LORD is king, in splendor robed;
robed is the LORD and girt about with strength.
R. The LORD is king; he is robed in majesty.
And he has made the world firm,
not to be moved.
Your throne stands firm from of old;
from everlasting you are, O LORD.
R. The LORD is king; he is robed in majesty.
Your decrees are worthy of trust indeed;
holiness befits your house,
O LORD, for length of days.
R. The LORD is king; he is robed in majesty.
Though one might labor to make the case that this Psalm prophetically looks ahead to Jesus Christ by virtue of its anthropomorphizing components (regal garments, a throne), the text is clearly ordered toward praising the Creator who reigns “from of old.”
By contrast, the Propers for the Traditional Latin Mass are ordered toward the reign of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and reflect the social dimension of His Kingship.
The Gradual, for instance (to cite just one example), is taken from Psalm 71 which reads:
“He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the end of the earth. And all kings shall adore Him, all nations shall serve Him.”
Could it be that the “experts” who crafted the Novus Ordo Missae chose Psalm 93 deliberately in order to divert attention away from the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ – a decidedly Catholic doctrine – in favor of a text that highlights a teaching that both heretics and Jews can accept?
Only a fool can believe otherwise.
CHRIST THE KING
But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Mark 10:42-45
And if we accept the deliberate treachery, what should be our response? To commune with the treachery, or abstain?
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http://introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.co.nz/2015/10/christus-regnat.html
Pilate therefore said to him: Art thou a king then? Jesus answered: Thou sayest that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice”.
Jn 18:37
The battle cry of the Traditional Catholic Movement is “to restore all things in Christ”. This is the battle cry to usher in the Social Reign of Christ the King.
Many in the Traditional Movement have done an outstanding job of bringing to light the ROTTEN fruits of Vatican II. Can anyone in Novus Ordo Land, list any GOOD fruits of Vatican II? I would be interested in a response.
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives:
love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
and self- control.
Galatians 5:22
Thank you, EM. Now, I’m still interested to know the GOOD fruits of Vatican II. Anyone up to the challenge?
VII’s Novus Ordo redefined ‘a good fruit’ for the purpose of unversally promulgating a new institution. The fruits of the VII religion are what they are: religious indifference; the refusal of Christ’s Social Kingship; the poisoning of vocations; paying homage to the god of novelty, the god of contradition, the god of prostetantism, the god of the rabbinnicalism, of god of mohametism; celebrating the destruction of the Catholic altar; the dismissal of all Roman Rites, the ‘canonisation’ of scores of people who lead lives of unrepentent scandal; a hatred of those who keep the faith. One could go on and on. The real doozy is the selling of anti-Catholic apostates as if they were in league with Christ and thereby poisoning the Historic Chair of Peter with five decades of lies. The heresiarch and his new religion of itching ears and decimated sees is kith and kin with the Anglicanism.
I think the experts (in diabolical disorientation, that is) did well indeed (according to the goals for their new Rite as they were kind enough to communicate to us).
All that is needed is a spirit to covince us that Saint Francis de Sales was barking madly satanic in his painful effort over many decaces to convert early Protestants, and that Teresa of Calcutta was being thoroughly Christ-like when , over many decades, she assisted in the promulgation of Hindus, Sikhs et al.
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But it’s all a matter of opinion, backed by money. No wonder they had no conscience about removing the social Kingship of Christ. His UN Bank Account had run out.
I have come to the conclusion that ALL the fruits of Vatican II are GOOD—for those who are at war with Christ and His Church!!
EM, this quote you put in your comment is about something entirely different. We are not to contrast Jesus Christ as servant, with Jesus Christ King of Heaven and Earth.
I repeat: they are not in contrast. Both are true, both must be preached, both contain part of the mystery of Jesus Christ as God and as Man.
The idea that there is a ‘difference,’ that we must separate each quality and contemplate each of them is part of what’s wrong with the modern Church.
We have been taught to separate Jesus’ Mercy from Jesus’ Justice – thereby contrasting the mean old past, with the warm fuzzy ‘now.’ God is ONE, but He has many qualities – all of them to perfection, with NO division, or contrast among them.
Em, you are correct to list the fruits of The Holy Ghost. But He does not give these gifts indiscriminately. One must be in the state of grace to receive these gifts at Confirmation. We must look at things objectively. Can a people who don’t go to Confession, and MAY be receiving Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin, or who contracept and divorce, and fornicate, and adult be given these fruits? Or maintain them through the teenage years, into adulthood? This is OBJECTIVELY the state of many, many in Novus Ordo Land.
The fruits of The Holy Ghost are special to Him, if you want to put it that way, and certainly are not reflected in the so-called fruits of Vatican II.
That is a good challenge: name one fruit of Vatican II.
Sorry my2cents, I didn’t see your challenge!!
Here’s a wonderful quote (sorry, any Modernists reading – IT’S FROM THE PAST!!!) from St. Vincent of Lerins.
“I cannot sufficiently be astonished that such is the insanity of some men, such the impiety of their blinded understanding, such, finally, their lust after error, that they will not be content with the rule of faith delivered once and for all from antiquity, but must daily seek after something new, and even newer still, and are always longing to add something to religion, or to change it, or to subtract from it.”
He emphasizes: “such is their insanity, such the impiety of their blinded understanding, such their lust after error.”
St.Vincent has recently been mis-quoted, or very selectively quoted, by Pope Francis. What a shame that we have to twist our past into what we want, so we can push our future.
Barbara, I have posed this question to family and friends in Novus Ordo Land. My response is a blank stare and some mumbling. So pathetic!!!
A sick tree cannot produce good fruit. Our Lord warned us!!!
If the purpose of Vatican II may be judged from its effects, I believe it was to stop the Church from asserting to the world that Catholicism is grounded in objective truth and that therefore man has a moral obligation to embrace it. That is, I believe that its aim was to stop the Church from speaking as follows (all emphases below added):
“[The] aim [of apologetics or ‘fundamental theology’] is to give a scientific presentation of the claims which Christ’s revealed religion has on the assent of every rational mind; it seeks to lead the inquirer after truth to recognize, first, the reasonableness and trustworthiness of the Christian revelation as realized in the Catholic Church, and secondly, the corresponding obligation of accepting it”
(extract from the Catholic Encyclopedia on “Apologetics”).
One of the post-Vatican II “effects” that has led me to this opinion is the following extract from “a joint statement by the archbishops of Great Britain”, published in 1980 on the subject of “Abortion and the Right to Life”:
“We speak in a society where all enjoy a freedom which is rightly prized and which was affirmed by the Catholic Church in the second Vatican Council; a full freedom of religious belief and practice, and a freedom to seek the truth about everything including moral matters. We live in a society where many differing moral and political opinions are conscientiously held and pursued in practice. We make no attempt to override the consciences of our fellow-citizens. We do not seek to have all Catholic moral teaching imposed by law, or even adopted as public policy”.
The statement may be found in its entirety here.
There is someone (also, alas, from the past) who exemplified what it means to rule a country under Christ The King: Garcia Moreno. He was president of Ecuador. He died a martyr in the mid 1800s. His reign was predicted by Our Lady of Good Success at Quito.
Here’s a link to Moreno’s Rule of Life. Imagine, if you can, what this rule could do in the hands of Obama, Trudeau, or any other leader if they were converted to the one true Faith!
http://www.audiosancto.org/files/Gabriel-Moreno-Rule-of-Life.pdf
Here’s a very good article about Gabriel Garcia Moreno.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/a-statesman-after-gods-own-heart-gabriel-garcia-moreno
It is one thing to talk about the Rule of Christ the King, but it is helpful to see this idea in action. Moreno actually put this Rule of Christ the King into action – and it worked very well for years – mercy and justice, truth and perseverance, faith and intelligence – he was cut down, literally, by killers hired by the Masons.
Excellent, Barbara! Gabriel Garcia Moreno —- a saint predicted by Our Lady of Good Success.
http://www.traditioninaction.org/OLGS/A011olgsQuito_Garcia_1.htm
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http://www.traditioninaction.org/OLGS/A013olgsQuito_Garcia_3.htm
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This is great. I printed it out and put it on my refrigerator.
Thanks.
ABS is constrained to assist at the Lil’ Licit Liturgy of the Shadow Church and it is true that the Shadow Church has eviscerated the content and context of the great Encyclical to such point where the feast is inexplicable now that Ecumenism, The Universal Solvent of Tradition, has done its level worse.
And Bishops, with their relentless praise of religious liberty (Americanism) are no help here.
Imagine if some Bishops began to publicly preach that the American POTUS, the American Legislature, and the American SCOTUS are all sunk deeply in sin because they promote, pass, and secure laws in direct opposition to Christ the King.
And let’s not even get started on the modern Papacy and how it treats Jesus as though He were just a poor, itinerant, do-gooder rather than He who rose TRIUMPHANT from the grave and RULES as King of Heaven and Earth.
SINFUL PRIDE
Golf acts as a corrective against sinful pride. I attribute the insane arrogance of the later Roman Emperors almost entirely to the fact that, never having played golf, they never knew that strange chastening humility which is engendered by a topped chip shot.
If Cleopatra had been ousted in the first round of the Ladies’ Singles, we should have heard a lot less of her proud imperiousness.
P G Wodehouse