The illustration is a cuff belonging to Pope Pius XII. Now there was a man who knew how to dress for church.
This was going to be one of my weird shit posts, about the Holy Prepuce, but I see that speaking or writing about it is now punishable by excommunication & I can't risk that! In fact it would seem very similar to my post at St Valentine's about the number of St Valentine's heads, which Jesus seems to have trumped by having something like thirteen foreskins at one point.
I have posted repeatedly on here about the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church; amongst the reasons I think can be adduced for it is that these people plainly do not believe their own religion. I have a lot of time for orthodox (I.e. Right-teaching) Christians. I expect them not to accept me, & similarly I would expect real Christians not to protect child abusers.
What is not trumpeted so loudly is that there are a number of faithful Catholics, who while they are Catholics themselves, essentially take exactly the same position as I've just taken on paedophile-protecting clerics, amongst other issues, that they are not the real thing at all. Take, for example, this reporting of the Anglican-Rite liturgy recently approved for Anglican Ordinariate Catholics:
'Francis-Bergoglio's New Order sect has rolled out a new version of the Novus Ordo Protestant-Masonic-Pagan service, this one based directly upon the invalid service of Thomas Cranmer, Heretic Archbishop of Canterbury, who colluded with English King Henry VIII in the imposition of an invalid Protestant service on the English Catholic people and in the murder of St. Thomas More, Catholic Chancellor of England.
'The newly-approved invalid rite, used for the first time on October 11, 2013, contains sections of the Protestant Church of England service. Originally fabricated for use by Benedict-Ratzinger's "ordinariate" for Anglicans, Newmonsignor Andrew Burnham, a senior cleric in the ordinariate at the inaugural Novissima Ordo service, admitted that something that was until now "merely Anglican" had become part of the Newchurch of the New Order. The inaugural Mess was accompanied by music in the English vulgar tongue. This "ordinariate" was similar to the one proposed for Bernie Fellay and his Neo-SSPX.
'The new invalid and heretical service was given the Novus Ordo seal of approval by Newvatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the [Non-Catholic] Faith and the Congregation for [New Order] Divine Worship and fully approved by Newchurch. Newmonsignor Burnham specifically praised the Arch-heretic, who composed the Protestant Book of Common Prayer to replace the Roman Missal. After the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary, Cranmer was finally put on trial for treason and heresy and, after several cowardly vacillations and recantations, was hismelf executed after the fashion of St. Thomas More, whose execution he helped engineer just a few decades before.' (http://www.traditio.com/comment/com1310.htm)
The sometimes strange phrasing (mess means Mass & newchurch means what most people would recognise as the Catholic church) is because this is written from a sedevacantist point of view. I can't do better in defining sedevacantism than wikipedia:
'Sedevacantism is the position, held by a minority of Traditionalist Catholics,[1][2] that the present occupant of the papal see is not truly pope and that, for lack of a valid pope, the see has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958.
[...]
'Sedevacantism owes its origins to the rejection of the theological and disciplinary changes implemented following the Second Vatican Council (1962�65).[8] Sedevacantists reject this Council, on the basis of its documents on ecumenism and religious liberty, among others, which they see as contradicting the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church and as denying the unique mission of Catholicism as the one true religion, outside of which there is no salvation.[citation needed] They also say that new disciplinary norms, such as the Mass of Paul VI, promulgated on April 3, 1969, undermine or conflict with the historical Catholic faith and are deemed heresies.[9] They conclude, on the basis of their rejection of the revised Mass rite and of postconciliar Church teaching as false, that the popes involved are false also.[1]
[...]
'Traditionalist Catholics other than sedevacantists recognize as legitimate the line of Popes leading to Pope Francis.[11] Some of them hold that one or more of the most recent popes have held and taught unorthodox beliefs, but do not go so far as to say that they have been formal heretics or have been widely and publicly judged to be heretics. Sedevacantists, on the other hand, claim that the infallible Magisterium of the Catholic Church could not have decreed the changes made in the name of the Second Vatican Council, and conclude that those who issued these changes could not have been acting with the authority of the Catholic Church.[12] Accordingly, they hold that Pope Paul VI and his successors left the true Catholic Church and thus lost legitimate authority in the Church. A formal heretic, they say, cannot be the Catholic pope.[13]
'Sedevacantists defend their position using numerous arguments, including that particular provisions of canon law prevent a heretic from being elected or remaining as pope. Paul IV's 1559 bull, Cum ex apostolatus officio, stipulated that a heretic cannot be elected pope, while Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law provides that a cleric who publicly defects from the Catholic faith automatically loses any office he had held in the Church.' (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedevacantism)
Now of course it will immediately be obvious that this is bang up my street. This is exactly the sort of thing I love. It's also not difficult to work out who my sympathies are with, since the opposing argument to that of the sedevacantists' always boils down to: ubi papa, ibi ecclesia - the pope would always have to be the locus for the church. I have a terrible confession to make, that I'm a bit of a closet Thomist, that is I loooove the theology of Thomas Aquinas. And here is the thing about real traditional Catholics - they have been nourished by the true greatness of the Catholic faith. This is why for centuries Catholicism was the religion of the intelligentsia: Thomism is such a satisfying system. Also because we Witches are not a missionary religion we can forget the sense of urgency that Christians get because they are. I am posting this as weird shit (because it is) but the protagonists are deadly serious about what is at stake. The sedevacantist position again:
'Communion in the Catholic Church is always based first upon unity in the Catholic and Apostolic Faith. That is why, in the history of the Church, we see not only popes but also bishops, priests, and laypeople refusing to be in communion with those who no longer have, or are suspected of no longer having, the immemorial Catholic Faith transmitted by the Apostles.
'Indeed, the pope has "the fullness of power over all the churches" (St. Bernard, Epistulae 131), but this power is limited to confirming and defending the faith of Peter, not for altering it or encouraging those who would alter it. This is the limit, set from on high and proclaimed dogmatically by the First Vatican Council (Pastor Aeternus, cap. 4): "For the Holy Ghost was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by His revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by His assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or Deposit of Faith transmitted by the Apostles."' (http://traditio.com/tradlib/faq09.txt)
In fact for traditional Catholics these matters are important because they depend on Vincent of Lerins's test of what actually is Catholic:
'Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors.
'What then will a Catholic Christian do, if a small portion of the Church have cut itself off from the communion of the universal faith? What, surely, but prefer the soundness of the whole body to the unsoundness of a pestilent and corrupt member? What, if some novel contagion seek to infect not merely an insignificant portion of the Church, but the whole? Then it will be his care to cleave to antiquity, which at this day cannot possibly be seduced by any fraud of novelty.
'But what, if in antiquity itself there be found error on the part of two or three men, or at any rate of a city or even of a province? Then it will be his care by all means, to prefer the decrees, if such there be, of an ancient General Council to the rashness and ignorance of a few. But what, if some error should spring up on which no such decree is found to bear? Then he must collate and consult and interrogate the opinions of the ancients, of those, namely, who, though living in various times and places, yet continuing in the communion and faith of the one Catholic Church, stand forth acknowledged and approved authorities: and whatsoever he shall ascertain to have been held, written, taught, not by one or two of these only, but by all, equally, with one consent, openly, frequently, persistently, that he must understand that he himself also is to believe without any doubt or hesitation.' (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3506.htm)
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