Unless we become like those nine year old girls, we will not enter the Kingdom of God.

Repentance is required for salvation, and repentance takes five forms; alms, confession, forgiveness of others, humility and prayer. This was taught by all the ancient Church Fathers who learned it from the Apostles as reinforced by Holy Scriptures - the five methods of repentance consistent with the cry of the Baptist and the Lord, REPENT for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

Yet what is rare is precious, and what is rarely heard is becoming more and more beloved. The more gold is hidden and diamonds locked away, the greater the treasuring of the golden rule, all kindness and prayer that are a priceless pearl....

The Church is clearly is the midst of a great crisis and ostensibly the Lord is chastising us. It goes without saying that prayer, penance and pereverence is desperately needed by us all. The dirty little secret, however, if we wish to speak frankly, is that "Tradition" and its sociological counterpart homeschooling are hardly providing an increase of vocations on the magnitude needed - that is a misnomer and illusory. This is fault of neither traditionalists nor homeschoolers, but it's the truth. We need heroic, zealous bishops and authentically Catholic schools. Until then, we pray and suffer for our sins as the Lord deems just. Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us. Fr. John Fongemie FSSP

When I was in school before VII, I felt safe and secure in the Faith. I knew it was the bedrock I could depend on.
I am 69 years old. My first shock was in 1960 when the Third Secret of Fatima was not opened, as the Sisters who taught us it would be. They taught us it would be world changing...
Downhill from there...
I still wonder who was the "angel" who told John XXIII to call that abomination? Our Church has never been the same since.

I am also 69. I remember this well. How is it possible that a pope, of all people, could profess to know better than Our Blessed Mother?

Gosh - I'm shocked. I hadn't realized the opening of the secret was so widely expected at the time. I was a little too young at the time and by the time I was old enough to know something, I heard nothing about it, not even from my great-aunt and uncle to whom I owe a lot of my early 'Catholicity' - and they were very traditional! I knew the name Fatima, I think, but can't remember learning about it - definitely not at school. I wonder now - often - what was going on in the minds of my parents etc and how difficult it would have been to try and decide what to say/do and not say/do. Neither they nor my great-aunt and uncle discussed VII with me as a child. Things just slowly changed (for a child) and did indeed go downhill. I exclude the loss of Latin which was a very sudden shock to me - I can still remember the first Sunday there was no Latin - because I loved it.

I think we lost much trust in the Church, as great expectations not fulfilled lead to great disappointment. And the faithful throughout the great change to the NO Church were trying to be obedient and trusting not knowing where it was leading.

I remember that. Not only the Sisters but parents talked about it. Anticipation, excitement! Then came the announcement that the secret would not be told. Something about the time not being right. About only certain people were supposed to see it. Huh? How could that be when Mary herself had said the Secret should be revealed to the world. By 1960. The Church defying Our Lady? She was to be disobeyed? It smacked of the Church protecting itself from what the letter said. You're right, oldfogey, if was after that that the Second Vatican Council came into being and we live with the wreckage it has wrought. And all of the VII Popes have been in on it. That's the harsh truth. I find it hard to even type that.

Eager to criticize the clergy for not promoting nulla salus, why dont you just gather your friends and acquaintances and start spouting it yourself...we'll see how far you get with parishioners these days..the only thing that talking up that particular dogma does is demoralize Catholics who start to think that grandma or their poor dead son must therefore be in Hell. We gain nothing, burdening them with a fear to hard for them to carry. No one chooses to become Catholic or remain Catholic because of it. Its a zero sum game used to prop up pseudo-Trad intellectuals and make them feel righteous and morally superior. It may be true, but teaching what is true without compassion is cruelty, not Catholicism. Jesus had alot to say about that to the Pharisees...and dont call me just another liberal mistaken modern priest. I am a Latin-mass priest who has given more Hellfire and brimstone uncomfortable truth homilies these past years almost every other weekend... and Ive paid the price for them.

????? If you don't believe it why are you a Priest? You've paid the price? For what? Following Christ and obeying him? Grandma or their son may well be in Hell - it might shock them into praying for the dead - something I failed to do for decades. Why? Because Priests couldn't be bothered telling us the truth. If we ignore that particular dogma, we may as well ignore the lot because ignoring it makes a joke of everything else. It doesn't mean we can't also remind people that, as I've been told on here a number of times, God is not bound by His own laws, which are for our benefit and spiritual good, so we may still HOPE and pray that everyone visibly outside the Church can still be saved by God, but that we should not 'assume' that because that is both spiritually dangerous and presumptious.

I'm amazed I can still be gobsmacked by what Priests say but confess to getting a bit angry now (righteously, I believe) when I hear all the sob stories. which cover up what it simply a lack of belief/conviction/desire to do what a Priest should be doing - teaching the Faith and ALL its dogmas and doctrines.

Prayers for you.........

father Potter , is the reason Mother Angelica
spoke against HARRY POTTER...……………….devilish

The word you used, "shocking" is such an apt description. That is how I felt when I first discovered this doctrine. I was never taught this growing up in the Novus Ordo.

When I first read the famous "Extra Ecclesia..." statement, I refused to believe it until I had researched numerous sources, at which point I was forced to accept it. Then I had to tell my Catholic friends and even Protestant friends what I had uncovered. I discovered that I didn't know the catechism and made it a point to learn Catholic doctrine.

It truly is a "shocking" doctrine as you say, when we have little understanding of what sin is and what salvation means. The way Susan put it so concisely, we get that all people are in need of being rescued from Hell. It makes sense in light of Catholic doctrine, but it's really difficult to understand and accept if we don't know doctrine surrounding sin and salvation. Sadly, far too many of us were never taught the catechism as children in the Novus Ordo. By the graces of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I found Tradition, the Latin Mass and then the catechism.

PRAY for others that have been innocently led to slaughter to discover the real TRUTH of the Catholic Church. I pray that the Blessed Mother leads all of them to the truth and tucks them safely under her Mantle.

I was giving him the benefit of the doubt on the name because, frankly, it wouldn't surprise me any more if a Priest should choose Harry Potter, Harry Houdini or Dirty Harry. Sad thing is, it wouldn't surprise me if he really is a Priest, which says it all, really.

For the sake of some clarification: both Houdini (in his real life and profession) and "Dirty Harry" (as the detective) had integrity and that characteristic would help foster the restoration of the Heavenly and Cardinal virtues among churchmen and the laity. While integrity may be in abeyance, hope should increase among those who have not lost the Faith.

Well, it says it all, doesn't it, when we're asking for the hierarchy to be inspired by such people, real or fictional. Didn't Our Lady say something like 'when all seems to be lost'? If we're invoking Dirty Harry, I think that time might be fast approaching!

"it might shock them into praying for the dead".

It also might shock people into praying for the living. How many souls might be saved if people prayed for those who are in a sinful state while they are still alive on this earth. We see a ton of people living lives that are objectively sinful but if we think everyone goes to Heaven anyway then we don't pray for them. What's the point, right? Well the point is that our prayers may get them back on the narrow path because God might answer our prayers for our sakes if not for theirs. Think St. Monica and St. Augustine - he credits her prayers with God turning his heart around. Perhaps if it was just Augustine God wouldn't have bothered to send those extra graces his way - free will and all that. But the virtuous life Monica lived and her unceasing prayers for her son obviously touched God's heart and I suspect it was for her sake that He broke through the young man's obstinate will. It was pity for the father that caused Jesus to raise his daughter from the dead, compassion for the woman that caused Jesus to drive demons from her daughter, and reward for the centurion's faith that caused Jesus to heal his servant.

Like you, Heloisa, I didn't pray for people, either living or dead, for decades Religious pushed the "God's not bound by His own laws" mantras as a way to get to the "Everyone's saved" schtick that effectively ends any reason to pray for anyone's salvation, along with any reason to lead a moral life. I'm so cynical anymore about why all of this was done.

I agree with you completely, Annie. I didn't pray for the living either for decades. I was just so angry last night - and still am this morning. It's this kind of thinking that's got us all in this mess. Whoever the poster is, he's got Catholicism turned upside down and I'm wanting to reply to every sentence. Along the lines of:

The truth isn't nice and upsets people so better to give it a miss and let people stay in some false sort of 'Catholicism' in their own minds? We gain nothing from telling the truth? Jesus wasn't compassionate when he kept repeating the truth? He wasn't being 'Catholic' enough? He might as well have just made friends with those who couldn't take it and have done with it? Hellfire sermons almost every other week?
What do they get the other weeks? The Church of Nice? No wonder people can't cope with it - sounds like a split personality giving sermons - who shall we get this week.

This Priest is either having a very bad crisis of faith in which case HE need our prayers badly or he's exactly what he claims not to be, ie 'another liberal
mistaken modern priest'.

Yes, I'm still jumping up and down - think I've finally cracked! Aaaaagh! Pseudo-Trad Intellectuals? Jesus was a Pseudo-Trad Intellectual? Sounds like Pope Francis!

Sorry you had that experience. I was born in 1950 and the Catholic Church that I grew up in taught the reality of Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell but there was no "brimstone" attached to it. Catholics heard Bible stories at Mass but it was the Baltimore Catechism that generations of Catholics studied and mesmerized. There again, the description and truth of H, P, & H were spelled out but the nuns didn't go on a rant about it. Lesson 37, Book 3 says it all. The information was presented in an almost clinical way. You read it; you memorized it. I know it like I know the multiplication tables. It's like having an encyclopedia of dogma stuck in your head for life. Kids like to know what the rules are and God's rules were spelled out for us in an almost impersonal way. Then came VII and out went the Catechism - interesting, that - and in came "Bible studies" with everyone interpreting what the stories meant - like our more enlightened Protestant brothers, don'tcha know. Now we have the bible stories minus the doctrine to guide us in interpreting them. Instead, our feelings are our guide and that's gotten us "mercy" minus Truth which is no mercy at all.

So, what's your actual problem with the article, then? You just don't like one of the Catholic dogmas?

Dogma should not be used as a tool of deconstructing faith, nor as a kind of gnostic special knowledge to the enlightened traditionalist alone. Surely nulla salus is a precious jewel of the Church, but is it wise for the princes of the Church to parade their treasures about a starving populace and incredulous world? Where do we find the original Apostles using such language? Christ himself tells parables, not dogmas. Not everything is digestable to the American Catholic, so why force it down their throats with absolutist certitude? They will simply vomit that up, for it is meat. Better to give them milk that they can deal with.

"Dogma should not be used as a tool of deconstructing faith,"

So your take is that if a dogma causes someone to move his or her bum off your pews, it's best to pass over that particular dogma and what exactly? See if another one fares better?

I've realized why your posts are making me so angry, Father. Whilst I believe there are plenty of Priests out there who genuinely have no concept of True Catholicism because of bad catechesis/formation (which doesn't excuse them not learning the Truth about Catholicism) you, on the other hand are publicly stating that you know what you should be teaching with regard to this dogma but think it should be kept under wraps to keep bums on seats.

there are some decent bishops sitting ………….

How dare they sit? :-)))

Far better the 'American Catholic' vomit up the Truth than that Christ should vomit a Priest out of His mouth for being luke-warm.

Cool shades, Father!

They were freebies...
handed out by the USCCB in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. But you had to sign a petition to DUMP TRUMP in order to get the hipster sunglasses. The bishops have officially decided to debate illegal immigration. Looks like the bishops dumped the whole Right to Life cause down the river!

Francis says Hell doesn't exist. Cardinal Pell says Adam and Eve weren't real people. Cardinal Kasper said the Resurrection isn't a real physical event. Anyone on the outside looking in would be inclined to ask; Do Catholics actually believe anything?

Here's a clue:
They're few and far between in the FSSP and the SSPX...

If not for the SSPX and the FSSP, the Catholic Church would be history.

The problem is the Church apparently believes in anything. Doctrine is downplayed and has been for a long while. It is outright mocked under Francis. With very few calling foul. The lack of core belief among the hierarchy - as we are witnessing by the tepid response among those few questioning Francis - is shocking but tells a tale.
Gallup just released a poll on Mass attendance in the US. It has collapsed since 1955 when it was 75% to 45% in 2008 and finally a sharp decline during the last years of Benedict's Papacy to today under Francis when it is 39%. At the same time, Protestant attendance at Sunday services has remained stable since the mid-2000s. So one can't put the blame totally on the secularization of America as that would have impacted Protestant churchgoers too. Seminary numbers are falling sharply and have since 2012.
This article informs and helps explain these stark numbers. If the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church continues to abandon doctrine more people will leave the Church. Francis and the hierarchy seem not to care. For believers struggling with all this the FSSP and other "Latin Mass" groups as well as the Eastern Rites provide an alternative. One in which doctrine is preached and the fullness of the faith is intact.

Dear Remnant, this is a soul-touching video after having walking to Chartres twice myself. It is an indescribable experience that truly wakes up our soft souls to WANT to give everything for GOD, and NOT OURSELVES. The world has forgotten, but WE have not. God bless you and save me a spot for Chartres 2019!

Great article. Depressing, yet terribly accurate. One of the things I found odd, as a new Catholic convert, was the prevelance of Notre Dame football talk among the Catholic men I met. When there was a decent homily, no one talked about it after-Mass, just football, or weather. And at the church suppers I attended, all the talk was secular. No table talk about Bible reading, nor anything God related, so I thought, Catholics have the Mass, but little else. The Assembly of God, my former denomination, didn't have the truth of the Mass, but they were interested in Bible learning and about the life of Jesus.
This article struck close to home. Our Church needs help desperately...

Your experience was/is inescapably based on your protestant nurturing.

Having been born, raised, and educated as a Catholic, prior to the vatican2 degradations, bibliolatory never eventualized . As you will note, every Mass has its prayers as well as its Epistle and Gospel. While attending a Jesuit college prep boarding school, one could not help but notice this while attending Mass every day. In effect, one learned that "the pillar and ground of the truth" is the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, and not the Bible.

http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=d...

It is this order of historical development which ought to be kept in mind: the Church discerned and assembled the Bible because the Church existed for centuries before the Bible and thus, having the Apostolic Authority to produce it, did so.

As for what the True Faith possesses, it has the Sacrifice of the Mass which is the most important but it also has everything else. The current occupants of the buildings have merely squandered Our inheritance and it is Our duty to reclaim it.

Got it. But a group of fellows leave a hard won basketball game and for hours the distinguishing plays are all the conversation, players names are mentioned, statistics are readily bandied about. Strangely though, the same group of men leave a superb homily where the priest tells how Christ, as God, healed a man born blind from birth, or raised a 12 year old girl from death, and in the parking lot, after Mass, the conversation is Wendys or the Fish Shack, or, how's the car been running, or a comment or two about the weather. Sorry Sir, but the life-giving vitality inherient in the life of Christ, along with daily saturation in the Book He gave us, the Bible, is sadly missing in the normative Catholic experience. The Church, whose very life should be centered around the person of Jesus, and the Book He gave us, is sadly out of kilter, now focusing upon everything but. See: ecology, gun control, the politics of immigration, LGBT, gay marriage, diversity, transexual politics, abortion as a sometimes necessity, the sublimity of Islam, the Mass given to just anybody, etc, etc, etc. RATHER, GIVE US CHRIST AND HIS PRECIOUS SHED BLOOD, COUCHED UPON HIS WORD, and things will come around, and fast, too. Indeed, look at Francis, our abject, heretical, entirely tragic, Biblically illiterate, Pope, as proof positive concerning our current spiritual dereliction. We need a Reformation!

I don't think you got it; I think you missed the points completely. The last thing the Church needs is another so-called "Reformation." One heresy at a time is quite sufficient and, since Modernism is the Synthesis of ALL heresies, the heresies of the so-called "Reformation" are already included.

You are still bible-obsessed. If the Bible disappeared tomorrow, the One True Church would still be the One True Faith and it would still be the Mystical Body of Christ. We know the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. We also know that it is a tool to teach promulgated by the One True Church. The Church existed and taught for centuries before it Authorized the Bible. When Christ gave His commission to the Apostles, He did not tell them to go out and publish a Bible, did He?

http://www.drbo.org/cgi-bin...

Those of us who attended schools and Church before vatican2 are very lucky. We have a familiarity with Tradition and the Catechism. We know what is true and what is false. Back in the day when priests and nuns were still Catholic, we --- as students, from grade school through HS --- attended Mass every day that we attended school. We read the prayers, the Epistles, and the Gospels if we wanted to (they were Low Masses and we were kids after all). But that is why many of us and, indeed, many who were born into the Church after vatican2, are quite aware of bergoglio's very serious errors as well as the secular distractions which bishops and priests and nuns have embraced. All of them will have much to answer for because they have and had responsibilities not only for their own souls but ours as well.

What we need is another Counter-Reformation and the Restoration of Christ the King. And the first step would be to obey Our Lady's command per Fatima: to consecrate Russia to Her Sacred Heart. All of our present travails can be traced directly to this disobedience by ALL of the Popes beginning with Pius XI. This is not the first time in history where disobedience brought chastisements. Consider:

"Note Our Lord’s words when He appeared to Sister Lucy regarding the preceding: 'Make it known to My ministers given that they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of MY COMMAND (my emphasis), like him they will follow him into misfortune.' The reader will recall that during the French Revolution Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793, one hundred years after his predecessor, Louis XIV, failed to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart of Jesus after being warned to do so by Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque."

http://catholicism.org/foll...

With respect to how the Reign of Christ the King has been intentionally diminished:

http://www.catholicapologet...

Yes, such men are Idolaters. Football is a Cult with each area having its local sub-cult (team) and patron deities (team stars).

It's a caricature that Catholics were not allowed to read the Bible ... but, but it was not heavily encouraged. I have older friends in their 80s who experienced the Church before V2 and they tell me that their parishes as a rule did not have Bible study. Or any real outreach by the laity to bring in converts. That was left to the priest. It's an unfortunate thing but it appears to be a fairly valid picture of the Church in the 50s and 60s. Scott Hahn, who was an evangelical Protestant in the early 90s, focused on bringing young Catholics to "real" Christianity, sadly reports it was easy. Young Catholics had virtually no Biblical knowledge or ability to state and defend Catholic doctrines. This is why, since his conversion, his focus has been on teaching the Bible and the Biblical basis of Catholicism to as many Catholics, including seminarians and priests, as possible.

As someone earlier mentioned, Francis seems unconcerned and oblivious to these sentiments. His love doesn't seem to extend to the rank and file, to the everyday struggling Catholic. He seems strangely intent on other things. Nor does he seem to care about the harm he is inflicting. But it's far worse, in fact, I sence a deep disrespect, even a loathing, on his part, toward those that yearn for a closeness with Christ in the Mass, for Christ's Mother, and our religion in general.

At the wedding of a niece of mine some years ago, I met an acquaintance of my (older) sister who had been raised Catholic pre-V2. She admitted quite honestly that she really didn't know much about the Bible. It just wasn't taught much to Catholic children when she was young (in distinction to the Biblically-oriented Protestant childhood my siblings and I had.)

My father, a lifelong Protestant, had for a time been engaged to a Catholic woman before the engagement broke and he later met my mother (another lifelong Protestant). For a time he had been taking instructions from a priest, and he once said to me that the priest had told him, You want to know what the Bible says? You come ask me, and I'll tell you. This was in the 1930s. (In other words, don't go back to your Protestant ways and try to figure out the Bible for yourself.)

Has Hell frozen over? Isn't this what rad trads have been saying for five years? Better late than never. Welcome, Michael V.
https://www.churchmilitant....

Archbishop Lefebrve's position is still absolutely correct all these years later. At some point- only God knows when- the Magisterium must address all of Vatican II and the Novus Ordo.

Isn't it interesting to notice how far the SSPX has moved from the ideas of Lefebvre. Where Lefebvre said the Novus Ordo church is irreconcilable with Catholicism, we now have Bishop Fellay seeking a personal prelature with the most radical, Marxist, revolutionary pope the Church has ever seen.

Uh, no. The Pope is still the head of the Church, right? When he asks to meet, you meet. Has Bishop Fellay signed the agreement? No. And if and when he signs something, it will be with the backing of the SSPX’s General Council. But I suppose you’ll tell me that it’s under Bishop Fellay’s control.

Lynne, I'm sincerely interested in your perspective here. Do you truly believe that Bergogolio is negotiating with Fellay as a means to defend or solidify Catholic doctrine and that Fellay is obligated to meet with him?

Not quite. Along with his authority, the pope has been given the duty to defend the Catholic faith. That is his chief responsibility. You don’t have to obey him when he summons you unless you are sure he is acting in defense of Christ’s Church. Can you honestly say he is?

Yes, I have also noticed the same thing.

The Enemy now occupies the highest positions in the Church, including right at the top. Since 1965 the faith has not been preached from any pulpits of the Novus Ordo Church. There are still a few - pitifully few - real Catholics left: Most of them associate with Society of St Pius X.

I would love to associate myself and family with the SSPX. However, the closest chapel to my home is over three hundred miles away:-(

SSPX isn't the only option for traditional Catholics, thankfully. There are other independent priests and organizations that offer traditional Catholic Masses. Without getting mired down in a sede/R-R dialogue, there may be other options for you.