Mythologies abound in the fantasy world that is the counterfeit church of conciliarism. As has been noted so many times before on this site, there are only Girondits/Mensheviks or Jacboins/Bolsheviks in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. The appearance of conflict is only that, an appearance. It is the same game that occurs in the world of politics, a place in this country where House Speaker John Boehner (R-West Chester, Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Addison Mitchell McConnell (R-Kentucky) serve as useful pawns in the reigning caesar's game of "transforming" the United States of America into a model of Eurosocialism without regard for the laws of God or of men. Those who want to be distracted by these kinds of games are simply refusing to see the forest for the trees.
That is, there are no “conservatives” or “ultra-progressives” in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, just different shades of revolutionaries who defect from articles contained within the Sacred Deposit of Faith to a greater or lesser extent. Anyone who permits himself to believe otherwise is greatly deceived. Indeed, some who cling with desperation to the belief that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is the Catholic Church have to use every shopworn cliché and sophistic, ahistorical argument imaginable in order to keep themselves from being branded by that horrible “pejorative,” sedevacantism. (For a very fine review of the “heretical popes” canard that has been thrown around for such a long time by anti-sedevacantists, please see "Heretical" Popes at Novus Ordo Watch Wire.)
To be sure, the late Father Edward Michael Egan, who was born on April 2, 1932, in Oak Park, Illinois, was a scholar, having served as the vice rector and professor of moral theology and canon law at the North American College in Rome just three years after his ordination there by the institution’s rector, Bishop John Martin O’Connor, December 17, 1957. Father Egan had served as a parish priest at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, Illinois, before he began serve as an assistant to the arch-Americanist and arch-ecumenist Albert Cardinal Meyer, whose attack on the very nature of dogmatic truth at the “Second” Vatican Council was identical to that of a German peritus by the name of Father Joseph Alois Ratzinger (see Puzzled?). He then served Meyer’s successor, the venal, morally corrupt John “Cardinal” Cody, and became known as one of Cody’s “enforcers.”
It was, however, his work on the Roman Rota from 1971 to 1985 permitted him to distinguish himself as of the chief architects of the destruction of the 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law, many of whose provisionally superseded in the years after the “Second” Vatican Council, in order to compose a new legal code for a new religion. The counterfeit church of conciliarism’s 1983 Code of Canon Law provided the legal framework for the “new ecclesiology,” false ecumenism, and episcopal collegiality. Morever, the 1983 Code of Canon Law enshrined Giovanni Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul the Sick’s inversion of the ends of Holy Matrimony that were the foundation of Humanae Vitae, July 25, 1968 (see Forty-Three Years After Humanae Vitae, Always Trying To Find A Way and Planting Seeds of Revolutionary Change, Jorge Puts On His "Catholic Hat"? Don't You Believe It and "Rabbits" to Jorge, God's Blessings to Pope Pius XII).
Here is the relevant provision from the counterfeit church of conciliarism's 1983 Code of Canon Law:
Can. 1055 §1. The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized. Canon 1055.1.
As is so frequently the case, the conciliar revolutionaries have to boast of the "novelties" that their beloved revolution against the Catholic Faith have been enshrined into the law, the liturgy and the pastoral life of their false religious sect. This is what Francesco "Cardinal" Coccopalmerio of the "Pontifical" Council on Legislative Texts did on January 22, 2013, as he celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the revolutionary 1983 Code of Canon Law:
The schedule for a Study Day titled “The Code: A Reform Desired and Requested by the Council” was unveiled Tuesday to journalists in the Vatican Press Office. It will take place on 25 January, in the Pius X Hall, Rome, marking the 30th anniversary of the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law.
The study day has been organized by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and the International Institute of Canon Law and Comparative Studies of Religion in Lugano, Switzerland and is sponsored by the Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) Vatican Foundation and the John Paul II Foundation. Participating in the conference were Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of that dicastery, and Msgr. Giuseppe Antonio Scotti, president of the Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) Vatican Foundation.
Cardinal Coccopalmerio began his address with the recollection that Blessed John XXIII, in his speech convening Vatican Council II in 1959, explained that the Council’s legal scope was to bring about the awaited revision of the 1917 Code. “In his broad perspective, the Pope saw clearly that the revision of the Code had to be guided by the new ecclesiology that emerged from an ecumenical and a global summit such as the Council.” Blessed John Paul II, under whose pontificate the Code was promulgated, also repeated that “the council’s ecclesiological structure clearly required a renewed formulation of its laws”.
“As John Paul II emphasized at the beginning of the Apostolic Constitution ‘Sacrae disciplinae leges’, the reason for the close relationship between Vatican Council II and the Code of Canon Law was that the 1983 Code was the culmination of Vatican II … in two ways: on the one hand, it embraces the Council, solemnly reproposing fundamental institutions and major innovations and, on the other, establishing positive norms for implementing the Council.”
The president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts then cited various examples of the strong bond between Vatican Council II and the Code of Canon Law.
The first is the “doctrine regarding the episcopate and the relationship between the episcopate and the primate, that is, episcopal collegiality. This is not entirely new doctrine in the deep consciousness of the Church but rather a happy discovery. The Code firstly, in canons 330–341, represents this clearly, and secondly, in canons 342–348, accompanies it with the positive view that constitutes the structure of the Synod of Bishops, allowing effective implementation of the structure of episcopal collegiality.”
A second example is the “Council’s teaching on the laity and therefore on the appropriate and active mission of the lay faithful in the life of the Church. Once again, this is not absolutely new but more a rediscovery … through a series of regulations … regarding the diocesan pastoral council or … the parochial pastoral council. They are structures that allow the faithful laity to effectively participate in the pastoral decisions of the bishop or the pastor. This innovation is also the eloquent voice of the faithful relationship between Council and Code.”
“A third example may come from the conception of the parish as presented by the Council and implemented by the Code. Ultimately, the Council conceives of the parish as a community of believers, not as a structure or a territory. This represents an important innovation with respect to the previous point of view. The Code receives this concept, particularly in canon 515, and sanctions it with the positive regulations of the following canons.”
A final example of doctrine and innovation provided by the Council in the area of ecumenism “resides in the conciliar documents ‘Lumen gentium’, ‘Orientalium Ecclesiarum’, and ‘Unitatis redintegratio’, which show the doctrine of ecclesial communion as still imperfect yet real and existent between the Catholic Church and other Churches or non-Catholic communities. This is also a fact of incalculable value and scope already found in the Council and then later in the Code (cf. canon 844), with the possibility of welcoming non-Catholic Christians, even if under specific conditions, into the sacraments of the Catholic Church.
“In conclusion,” finished the cardinal, “we can affirm that the happy union between Vatican Council II and the Code of Canon Law has produced fruits of renewal in the life of the Church in many areas and on many levels." (Study day on reform of Code of
Canon Law
.)
Well, there you have it direct the mouth of a conciliar revolutionary, who even said that the "new ecclesiology" was the brainchild of the first of the current line of antipopes, Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII.
This is relevant to the late Edward Michael “Cardinal” Egan as he helped to shepherd the overthrow of the 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law at every step. The late John L. “Jack” Swan, a co-author of the original The Quotable Chesterton collection and a personal friend of the then “Bishop” Egan, told me in 1985 that Egan had sat down with “Pope” John Paul II to go through the conciliar sect’s “revision” of the Code of Canon Law on a “line-by-line” basis, a process that took a number of meetings. This fact was emphasized at the Fellow of Catholic Scholars meeting in Los Angeles, California, in September of 1987 that featured “Bishop” Egan as a participant. (I was at that meeting to present a paper, making observations from the floor following the presentation of other speakers as well. Egan came up to me at the end of the weekend to say, “It was a pleasure spending the weekend with you.” I think that that “pleasure” dissipated by the time I was writing about his ecumenism in 2001 and thereafter.)
Although he worked tirelessly to provide Rosaries to the rescue and search personnel at site of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, and personally staged the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service’s “Mass of Christian Burial” for many of those killed that tragic day, it was during those sad days that “Cardinal” Egan’s ecumenism came to prominence, especially when he participated in an ecumenical “prayer” service at Yankee Stadium II (the “House That Mayor John Vliet Lindsay Rebuilt”) on Sunday, September 23, 2001.
"Cardinal" Egan was silent about the Holy Name at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001, emceed by Oprah Winfrey and James Earl Jones, of all people, twelve days after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, keeping his peace about Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the presence of a pro-abortion Talmudic rabbi, Arthur Schneier, who blew a ram's horn (the Blowing of the Shofar), and representatives of Protestantism, Orthodoxy, Mohammedanism, Hinduism and of the Sikhs. Egan sat as an "equal" with these charlatans. Here is what "Cardinal" Egan prayed that day:
Almighty and eternal father, we are gathered here as your people and your children. Out of love you brought us into existence, out of love you fashioned each and every one of us in your own image and likeness. Thus we come to you with the greatest measure of confidence, we come to you with the greatest measure of trust. We come as well with heavy hearts for just 13 days ago our beloved city and our beloved nation were violated. We lost women and men and children whom we sorely needed, whom we greatly admired, whom we dearly cherish. In our hospitals hundreds are in pain, in our homes thousands are in mourning, and in all of us there abides an urgent need for you and your grace. Heavenly father, wrap us in your providential care. Take our deceased brothers and sisters into your divine presence forever, strengthen our injured, console our families from whom so many have been taken so brutally. And make us all here in New York, in Washington and across the length and breadth of this land your noble people, your virtuous people. Yes, Lord, your holy people. We need courage to deal with our pain, we need justice to deal with the evil doers who have harmed us so fiercely. We need faith, wisdom and strength of soul for ourselves, each and every one, for our president and those who work with him, for our governor and those who work with him, for our mayor and those who work with him, for our police officers, heroes all, for our firefighters, heroes all, for our health care and emergency workers, heroes all. Gracious God, guide us, hear us. We are yours and yours we have a wish to be. Draw us closer to you in this hour of tragedy and pain. This we beg as your children with the utmost of trust, the utmost of confidence, the utmost of love, now and forever. Amen (applause). (Yankee Stadium Prayer Service. Although he should not have been at this ecumenical travesty, it is to the credit of the conciliar "bishop" of the Diocese of Brooklyn at the time, Thomas Daily, that he did mention the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ once and did invoke Our Lady under the title of "Mary, Queen of Peace." The Armenian Orthodox bishop, Anania Arapajian, started his prayer with an invocation to Our Lord, Who was also invoked by two Protestant ministers, meaning that four speakers of twenty-seven mentioned Our Lord's Holy Name. A member of the conciliar "college of cardinals" refused to do, as did a representative of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States of America.)
Who yet attached to the conciliar structures can criticize Edward Egan for not mentioning the Holy Name of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?
Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II represented himself as an "equal" with representatives of false religions repeatedly throughout his false "pontificate." So did Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. So has Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francs. Egan was indeed "right with" the teaching and example of the conciliar "popes",
Silence about the Holy Name is a grave sin, especially so on the part of a priest. Joseph Ratzinger is not a bishop, no less a legitimate Successor Saint Peter. He is a true priest, however, ordained on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 1951, which makes his betrayal of Christ the King even more offensive to God. The Apostles rejoiced when they were deemed worthy ill-treatment for the sake of the Holy Name of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ:
And they indeed went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus. And every day they ceased not in the temple, and from house to house, to teach and preach Christ Jesus. (Acts 5: 41-42.)
The conciliarists do voluntarily what the Sanhedrin ordered the Apostles to do under threat of death: to refrain from any public mention of the Holy Name of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ:
And calling in the apostles, after they had scourged them, they charged them that they should not speak at all in the name of Jesus; and they dismissed them. (Acts 5: 40.)
The conciliarists do voluntarily what the Roman emperors and other pagan potentates and barbarians and the Protestants and Freemasons and all social revolutionaries have sought to do from the time of French Revolution to the present, to keep Christ the King from reigning over nations as He is recognized as the King of individual men and of all nations on the face of this earth as He has revealed Himself exclusively to men through His Catholic Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.
Yes, Edward Michael "Cardinal" Egan certainly acquitted himself as a man of complete doctrinal orthodoxy in the days after the September 11, 2001, attacks. That "orthodoxy," however, was to the false doctrines of his false religious sect, not to the Catholic Faith which has forbidden communion in religion with adherents of false religions from Apostolic times:
Bishop George Hay explained the consequences that a cleric would incur upon entering such places to engage in “prayer” with heretics and infidels:
From this passage the learned translators of the Rheims New Testament, in their note, justly observe, “That, in matters of religion, in praying, hearing their sermons, presence at their service, partaking of their sacraments, and all other communicating with them in spiritual things, it is a great and damnable sin to deal with them.” And if this be the case with all in general, how much more with those who are well instructed and better versed in their religion than others? For their doing any of these things must be a much greater crime than in ignorant people, because they know their duty better. (Bishop George Hay, The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)
The spirit of Christ, which dictated the Holy Scriptures, and the spirit which animates and guides the Church of Christ, and teaches her all truth, is the same; and therefore in all ages her conduct on this point has been uniformly the same as what the Holy Scripture teaches. She has constantly forbidden her children to hold any communication, in religious matters, with those who are separated from her communion; and this she has sometimes done under the most severe penalties. In the apostolical canons, which are of very ancient standing, and for the most part handed down from the apostolical age, it is thus decreed: “If any bishop, or priest, or deacon, shall join in prayers with heretics, let him be suspended from Communion“. (Can. 44)
Also, “If any clergyman or laic shall go into the synagogue of the Jews, or the meetings of heretics, to join in prayer with them, let him be deposed, and deprived of communion“. (Can. 63) (Bishop George Hay, (The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)
The conciliar “popes” and their "bishops" have held the apostolical canons in contempt as they have engaged in that which Holy Mother Church has condemned from time immemorial, namely, the keeping of communion in matters of religion with heretics and infidels. Indeed, Edward Michael "Cardinal" Egan helped to write a "code of canon law" that overthrew those canons, whose prohibitions against communio in sacris with heretics and infidels had been contained in the 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law.
Well, things did not get any better with "Cardinal" Egan in the Cathedral of Saint Patrick on September 11, 2002, in a Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. Egan referred to "Our Lord" once while explaining that those who died a year before were with in Heaven. This is what I wrote at the time to explain how a Catholic prelate should have spoken in Saint Patrick's Cathedral that day, keeping in mind that I had yet to come to recognize the true state of the Church Militant on earth:
My brothers and sisters in Christ,
We gather this evening to commemorate a terrible event in the history of the United States of America. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in three different locations across this country, including right here in New York, by Mohammedan terrorists. [2011 note: Please, no letters about that reference. We will never get to the bottom of the events on September 11, 2001, in this passing, mortal vale of tears any more than we will know definitively what happened to James Riddle Hoffa.]
We gather here this evening to pray for the happy repose of the souls of those who were killed. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the unbloody re-presentation or perpetuation of the one Sacrifice offered by the Son to the Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross to pay back the blood debt owed because of Original Sin. The Mass extends the Sacrifice of Calvary in time, making present the fruits of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ's Redemptive Act to the Church Militant here on earth and the Church Suffering in Purgatory. Thus, we pray tonight that the fruits of this Mass will assist the souls of those who were killed one year ago today.
Why do we have Masses offered for the dead? Why can't we assume that those killed so suddenly one year ago today are in Heaven? Well, the answer is very simple. Nothing impure can enter Heaven. Very few people who are in a state of sanctifying grace at the time of their deaths have paid back the entirety of the debt they owe God because of their forgiven mortal sins and their general attachment to sin. God has given us the grace of Purgatory so that those who died in a state of final justification can pay back after death that which they owed at the time of their deaths. We in the Church Militant on earth can assist the members of the Church Suffering in Purgatory by remembering them in our prayers and, most especially, by having Masses said for them. We are gathered here principally to offer the fruits of this Mass to those souls who died a year ago who are in need of this satisfaction.
Some of you might ask, "Your Eminence, what if my loved one is in Heaven? Why should I pray for him and have Masses said for him? After all, he died so tragically?" Well, we have to understand that a tragic death is not the same thing as a holy death. While one of the priests near the World Trade Center did give General Absolution to all of those who were in danger of death as the twin towers collapsed, we do not know very much about who died at any particular time. Thus, to be on the safe side, therefore, we continue to pray. Believe me, as Padre Pio taught, no prayer is ever wasted. If one of our loved ones is in Heaven, our dear Blessed Mother will direct the fruit of those prayers to some other deserving soul. So, my friends, we continue to pray and to have Masses offered for the souls of all of our relatives and friends, including those who died one year ago today in the events of September 11.
We also pray, obviously, for the consolation of those who still grieve over the death of their loved ones. The fruits of the Mass are meant to fortify them, especially by means of the worthy reception of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, in Holy Communion. One of the things that has been lost in the past year is the fact that death is going to come to us all, including ourselves and our relatives, sometimes when we least expect it. "You do not know when the Master will come. The Master comes like a thief in the night." We must be prepared at all times to die, which is why we should be mindful about being in a state of sanctifying grace at all times. One of the best ways we can prepare to meet the Divine Redeemer in the face is to spend time with Him in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, to develop a deep and tender devotion to His Most Blessed Mother, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, and to frequent the Sacrament of Penance in order to root out sin from our lives and to so increase the beauty of our souls and the fervor with which we receive Holy Communion.
We are not people are maudlin sentimentality. We do not exalt the "human spirit," which is certainly capable of natural acts of goodness and heroism, as the ultimate end of human existence. We are people of the Catholic Faith, who must view all things, including terrible tragedies, through the eyes of the Faith. And our Faith teaches us that Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has conquered the power of sin and death forever on the wood of the Holy Cross. It is up to us to cooperate with the graces we receive in the Sacraments to see the events of the world supernaturally through the eyes of the soul. For we know that a soul who has died in a state of sanctifying grace will one day see the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in Heaven. As Saint Paul noted, "And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. . . . And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins." (1 Cor. 15:14, 17)
Our Lord's Easter victory over sin and death puts the events of each one of our lives and the world in their proper perspective. Meaning not to disparage for one moment the depth of the pain and the suffering that has visited so many people in the past year, we have to remember that there is nothing any of us can suffer, including the sudden and unexpected and unjust loss of a loved one, that is the equal of what one of our venial sins caused Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross. Our pain and our suffering are meant to unite us to the pain and suffering experienced by the God-Man as He hung atop the heights of Golgotha to make it possible for us to realize an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise. Suffering is redemptive if we offer it up in union with the Cross of Christ. And those who are totally consecrated to the Mother of God entrust all of the merit they earn by the patient embrace of their own daily crosses to her Immaculate Heart, knowing that she will not deny them anything at the moment of their own deaths if they remain faithful to the end.
It is also from the Cross of Jesus Christ that we learn of the divine mandate to forgive those who harm us and our loved ones. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34) The Pater noster teaches us: "Et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris." (And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.) That is, if we want to be forgiven by Our Lord then we must offer that forgiveness to others, including those who perpetrated the horrible attacks on this country a year ago today. This does not mean that it is wrong to seek to bring to justice anyone who aided the now dead terrorists. Not at all. However, it does mean that we must recognize that the beneficiaries of Divine Mercy must also be the administrators of such mercy in their own lives. This is hard. It is not possible to do on the natural level. It goes against every fiber of fallen human nature. We can only offer such forgiveness when we cooperate with supernatural grace to understand our total reliance upon Christ's Mercy. As the late Father John Hardon once noted, "God permits us to sin so that we can forgive each other." Indeed.
The events of September 11, 2001, call to mind the sanctity and inviolability of each innocent human life. Please understand what it is I must say at this point. Unless I do say it, however, I will be remiss in my obligation as a Successor of the Apostles to preach the fullness of the splendor of Truth Incarnate in charity.
Every human life is made in the image and likeness of the Blessed Trinity. Our Lord could have become man any way He chose. He is the Logos, the Word, through Whom all things were made. There is nothing lacking in His omnipotence as God. He chose to enter human history so as to redeem us on the wood of the Holy Cross by being conceived as a helpless embryo in His Blessed Mother's virginal and immaculate womb by the power of the Holy Ghost at the moment of the Incarnation.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the Lord of history. He knew that there would come a time in the history of the created world that innocent human life in the womb would be subject to barbarous extermination under cover of law, yes, even in these United States. One of the reasons Our Lord condescended to become the prisoner of the tabernacle of Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb was to place Himself in solidarity with every child in every mother's womb without exception. Although He cannot suffer again in His Glorified Body, He did teach us that "Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me." (Mt. 25:40) The least of His brethren are in the womb today, totally defenseless, totally dependent upon their mothers and those around them to protect their absolute inviolability. Thus, to kill a child in the womb is to execute mystically Jesus Christ. I repeat: every abortion is a mystical destruction of Jesus Christ in the person of unborn babies. We cannot say we love Our Lord and support His destruction mystically in the wombs of mothers under cover of law.
Over one million babies have been put to death under cover of law since September 11, 2001. Again, meaning to disparage not one whit from the suffering of those gathered here this evening, we must also grieve for the deaths of these innocent children-and for the over 40 million children who have been put to death in this country under cover of law since the killing of children became "legal" in California in 1967, in our own State of New York in 1970, and on demand nationally as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973. A nation that puts to death the innocent unborn under cover of law makes itself more vulnerable to attacks from those outside of our borders, people who have no more respect for the inviolability of our lives than we do for the most defenseless within our own midst. No amount of show of military force will render such a nation secure as long as it permits the shedding of innocent blood under cover of law.
Thus, in the presence of so many public officials, most of whom support this slaughter of the unborn by the use of various linguistic devices designed to anesthetize the reality of child-killing, I must remind everyone here that human law must be conformed to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. Contingent beings whose bodies are destined for the corruption of the grave until the Last Day do not determine right and wrong. We have the obligation to subordinate our lives, both individually and collectively in society, to God's Sovereignty over us and our societies. We make our nation more vulnerable to attacks from without as long as we refuse submission to that sovereignty, taking it upon ourselves to deny the sanctity and inviolability of innocent human life in the womb. If we want to make our country more secure, and therefore a more fitting instrument in the pursuit of justice both here and abroad, then we must stop all forms of abortion, chemical and surgical alike. To honor those killed on September 11 of last year, we must defend innocent life in the womb without exception.
A ceremony is taking place at Ground Zero to remember the dead. As soothing as that might be, the Mass is the only place where true and eternal consolation will be found for the dead and those who mourn them. And it is from the Mass that we will receive the graces to recognize that every abortuary is a "Ground Zero" of its own, requiring us to pray for the conversion of those who call down upon themselves the blood of the innocent and who thereby put the entire country in greater jeopardy from attacks from without.
May Our Lady, the Mirror of Justice, pray for us so that we will be fortified in this Mass to remember the dead always in our prayers, and to understand our obligation to prevent further blood from being shed in our own land. God is merciful. However, He is also just.
We cannot guarantee that a fidelity to God's laws will keep us secure from attacks leveled against us by terrorists bent on destruction. However, a Catholic does know with certainty that fidelity to God's laws is the surest way to save his soul, and thus to plant the seeds for a world where everyone lives in the shadow of the Holy Cross for the glory of Christ the King and the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, the Queen of Peace.
Remember, Father Timothy Michael Egan had come by his commitment to Americanism and to false ecumenism very honestly as a protégé of Albert Cardinal Meyer. This Americanism was so deeply ingrained in him to he dared to refer to then New York Governor George Elmer Pataki’s “right as an American” to support the chemical and surgical execution of innocent preborn children even though he, Egan, said that he was praying for the “happy day” that Pataki changed his mind, something that I reported in June of 2001 and that veteran pro-life activist Helen Westover referenced in a report she wrote on Egan’s appearance at Saint Joseph's Church in Kingston, New York:
On June 12, 2001, Cardinal Egan spoke at St. Joseph's Church in Kingston, hosted by the Ulster County vicariate. I work as music director at St. Joe's in New Paltz, so I was invited to attend, along with my Pastor, Father Maurice Moreau, several members of our choir, and others who have an official capacity in the parish. I had heard some things Egan was purported to have said about politicians having a "right" as Americans to be pro-choice. I will return to that later.
As a pro-life activist, I was determined to question him on his commitment to the issue. I notified Father Maurice, and several of the others that I would be doing this. When he began to speak, however, he seemed so dynamic, so passionate, that my defenses went down, and I was sure that I had been wrong about him!
So when I asked the questions, it was with affection and respect. The narrative went as such:
"Your Eminence, what are your plans to continue and foster the pro-life effort in the Archdiocese?"
He immediately came back with, "Well, I never use a religious approach."
He also addressed the priests, prior to the statement, and said, "Now some of you will get mad at me for this!" But, he said:
"Apart from the Faith, there is much controversy over when life begins. Science cannot tell us for sure. Is it a human life at six weeks? At six months? Science cannot tell us."
He continued that he uses the "Deer in the Forest" analogy, i.e., a hunter is not sure if what is moving in the bushes is a person or a deer, therefore He may not kill it. And this is what he said over and over, Rod. If we are not sure, we must not kill it!
I stood up again and responded, Your Eminence, with all due respect, science does know when life begins. I use science and fetology all the time, and have never lost a debate. The only time there is doubt is when we are talking about abortion.
I also said, that in vitro fertilization has settled the argument: the scientists involved certainly can tell us when human life begins. Then he changed his approach.
T"he problem with the abortion issue is you pro-lifers. You are disorganized, work at cross-purposes, and are therefore ineffective."
I stood up and said, Respectfully, that is not true, Your Eminence. We all have the same goal, but work in different facets of the issue; my group (STOPP) targets [Planned Parenthood], others attend to crisis pregnancy, others more in the political field, but we are not working against one another
Over two hundred people, including my own pastor, witnessed this exchange. The meeting's organizer, as well as five people I had spoken with at the time, including the Vicariate's lay contact, Tom Conway, has more recently corroborated my report of my brief dialogue with Cardinal Egan.
My subsequent research has revealed that Egan constantly uses the deer in the forest argument, primarily for his relations with non-Christian groups. Tom Droleskey has quoted him (and notes from the ex-employee of Catholic New York, John Burger, concur) to the effect that he gives pro-abort Catholics like ex-mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Governor George Pataki a pass, saying that their pro-choice stands are their rights as American Citizen. (As contained in Straight Guy with the Catholic Eye, no. 2.)
Edward Cardinal Egan was simply a poster boy for the fact that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is not the Catholic Church. Please examine the naturalism of his remarks recorded in Nothing but an American Right and No Room for Christ at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, both of which were written in my "resist while recognize"/indulterer days. His words abd actions proved the sterility of conciliarism. His words demonstrated a complete lack of understanding that those who support various moral evils must be corrected publicly, and on the basis of nothing other than Catholic truth, keeping in mind first and foremost the honor and glory of God and the eternal good of the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem. Gone entirely from the conciliarist mind and lips of Edward Egan was the authentic Catholic tradition contained in these words of Pope Pius VI in Inscrutabile, December 25, 1775:
We thought it useful to speak to you lovingly on these matters in order to strengthen your excellent resolve. But a much more serious subject demands that We speak of it, or rather mourn over it. We refer to the pestilent disease which the wickedness of our times brings forth. We must unite our minds and strength in treating this plague before it grows rife and becomes incurable in the Church through Our oversight. For in recent days, the dangerous times foretold by the Apostle Paul have clearly arrived, when there will be "men who love themselves, who are lifted up, proud, blasphemous, traitors, lovers of pleasure instead of God, men who are always learning but never arriving at the knowledge of truth, possessing indeed the appearance of piety but denying its power, corrupt in mind, reprobate about the faith." These men raise themselves up into "lying" teachers, as they are called by Peter the prince of the Apostles, and bring in sects of perdition. They deny the Lord who bought them and bring upon themselves swift destruction. They say they are wise and they have become fools, and their uncomprehending heart is darkened.
You yourselves, established as scouts in the house of Israel, see clearly the many victories claimed by a philosophy full of deceit. You see the ease with which it attracts to itself a great host of peoples, concealing its impiety with the honorable name of philosophy. Who could express in words or call to mind the wickedness of the tenets and evil madness which it imparts? While such men apparently intend to search out wisdom, "they fail because they do not search in the proper way. . . and they fall into errors which lead them astray from ordinary wisdom."[9] They have come to such a height of impiety that they make out that God does not exist, or if He does that He is idle and uncaring, making no revelation to men. Consequently it is not surprising that they assert that everything holy and divine is the product of the minds of inexperienced men smitten with empty fear of the future and seduced by a vain hope of immortality. But those deceitful sages soften and conceal the wickedness of their doctrine with seductive words and statements; in this way, they attract and wretchedly ensnare many of the weak into rejecting their faith or allowing it to be greatly shaken. While they pursue a remarkable knowledge, they open their eyes to behold a false light which is worse than the very darkness. Naturally our enemy, desirous of harming us and skilled in doing so, just as he made use of the serpent to deceive the first human beings, has armed the tongues of those men with the poison of his deceitfulness in order to lead astray the minds of the faithful. The prophet prays that his soul may be delivered from such deceitful tongues. In this way these men by their speech "enter in lowliness, capture mildly, softly bind and kill in secret." This results in great moral corruption, in license of thought and speech, in arrogance and rashness in every enterprise.
When they have spread this darkness abroad and torn religion out of men's hearts, these accursed philosophers proceed to destroy the bonds of union among men, both those which unite them to their rulers, and those which urge them to their duty. They keep proclaiming that man is born free and subject to no one, that society accordingly is a crowd of foolish men who stupidly yield to priests who deceive them and to kings who oppress them, so that the harmony of priest and ruler is only a monstrous conspiracy against the innate liberty of man.
Everyone must understand that such ravings and others like them, concealed in many deceitful guises, cause greater ruin to public calm the longer their impious originators are unrestrained. They cause a serious loss of souls redeemed by Christ's blood wherever their teaching spreads, like a cancer; it forces its way into public academies, into the houses of the great, into the palaces of kings, and even enters the sanctuary, shocking as it is to say so.
Consequently, you who are the salt of the earth, guardians and shepherds of the Lord's flock, whose business it is to fight the battles of the Lord, arise and gird on your sword, which is the word of God, and expel this foul contagion from your lands. How long are we to ignore the common insult to faith and Church? Let the words of Bernard arouse us like a lament of the spouse of Christ: "Of old was it foretold and the time of fulfillment is now at hand: Behold, in peace is my sorrow most sorrowful. It was sorrowful first when the martyrs died; afterwards it was more sorrowful in the fight with the heretics and now it is most sorrowful in the conduct of the members of the household.... The Church is struck within and so in peace is my sorrow most sorrowful. But what peace? There is peace and there is no peace. There is peace from the pagans and peace from the heretics, but no peace from the children. At that time the voice will lament: Sons did I rear and exalt, but they despised me. They despised me and defiled me by a bad life, base gain, evil traffic, and business conducted in the dark." Who can hear these tearful complaints of our most holy mother without feeling a strong urge to devote all his energy and effort to the Church, as he has promised? Therefore cast out the old leaven, remove the evil from your midst. Forcefully and carefully banish poisonous books from the eyes of your flock, and at once courageously set apart those who have been infected, to prevent them harming the rest. The holy Pope Leo used to say, "We can rule those entrusted to us only by pursuing with zeal for the Lord's faith those who destroy and those who are destroyed and by cutting them off from sound minds with the utmost severity to prevent the plague spreading." In doing this We exhort and advise you to be all of one mind and in harmony as you strive for the same object, just as the Church has one faith, one baptism, and one spirit. As you are joined together in the hierarchy, so you should unite equally with virtue and desire.
The affair is of the greatest importance since it concerns the Catholic faith, the purity of the Church, the teaching of the saints, the peace of the empire, and the safety of nations. Since it concerns the entire body of the Church, it is a special concern of yours because you are called to share in Our pastoral concern, and the purity of the faith is particularly entrusted to your watchfulness. "Now therefore, Brothers, since you are overseers among God's people and their soul depends on you, raise their hearts to your utterance," that they may stand fast in faith and achieve the rest which is prepared for believers only. Beseech, accuse, correct, rebuke and fear not: for ill-judged silence leaves in their error those who could be taught, and this is most harmful both to them and to you who should have dispelled the error. The holy Church is powerfully refreshed in the truth as it struggles zealously for the truth. In this divine work you should not fear either the force or favor of your enemies. The bishop should not fear since the anointing of the Holy Spirit has strengthened him: the shepherd should not be afraid since the prince of pastors has taught him by his own example to despise life itself for the safety of his flock: the cowardice and depression of the hireling should not dwell in a bishop's heart. Our great predecessor Gregory, in instructing the heads of the churches, said with his usual excellence: "Often imprudent guides in their fear of losing human favor are afraid to speak the right freely. As the word of truth has it, they guard their flock not with a shepherd's zeal but as hirelings do, since they flee when the wolf approaches by hiding themselves in silence.... A shepherd fearing to speak the right is simply a man retreating by keeping silent." But if the wicked enemy of the human race, the better to frustrate your efforts, ever brings it about that a plague of epidemic proportions is hidden from the religious powers of the world, please do not be terrified but walk in God's house in harmony, with prayer, and in truth, the three arms of our service. Remember that when the people of Juda were defiled, the best means of purification was the public reading to all, from the least to the greatest, of the book of the law lately found by the priest Helcias in the Lord's temple; at once the whole people agreed to destroy the abominations and seal a covenant in the Lord's presence to follow after the Lord and observe His precepts, testimonies and ceremonies with their whole heart and soul." For the same reason Josaphat sent priests and Levites to bring the book of the law throughout the cities of Juda and to teach the people. The proclamation of the divine word has been entrusted to your faith by divine, not human, authority. So assemble your people and preach to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. From that divine source and heavenly teaching draw draughts of true philosophy for your flock. Persuade them that subjects ought to keep faith and show obedience to those who by God's ordering lead and rule them. To those who are devoted to the ministry of the Church, give proofs of faith, continence, sobriety, knowledge, and liberality, that they may please Him to whom they have proved themselves and boast only of what is serious, moderate, and religious. But above all kindle in the minds of everyone that love for one another which Christ the Lord so often and so specifically praised. For this is the one sign of Christians and the bond of perfection. (Pope Pius VI, Inscrutabile, December 25, 1776.)
To accept these beautiful words of Pope Pius VI means rejecting the entire ethos of conciliarism and its perverse "accommodation" to the world (viz. Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965). The necessity of of beseeching, accusing, correcting and rebuking those in error enters not into the minds of those who are steeped in the errors of conciliarism. There is thus no spirit of Saint John the Baptist to be found amongst most of the false shepherds of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. There is no spirit of the Brag of Blessed Edmund Campion. There is only the desire to curry the favor with the high and mighty of this world. Edward Michael "Cardinal" Egan embodied, therefore, the "fear of losing human favor" that was condemned by Pope Saint Gregory the Great in his Pastoral Guide, referenced by Pope Pius VI in Inscrutabile.
Ultimately, you see, the abortion of the Faith represented by conciliarism produces a vast harvest of aborted souls. This harvest of aborted souls embraces the evils of the world with a ready abandon, knowing full well that they will remain in perfectly good canonical standing in the conciliar structures despite a bold, unrepentant embrace of the very thing, sin, that caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer so horribly during His Passion and Death. Souls in need of correction rarely hear a word of correction. And even when halting words of reproof are offered by a conciliar shepherd, you see, these words are founded on the shifting sands of naturalism, not on the rock solid foundation of the one and only true Faith, the Catholic Faith.
The counterfeit church of conciliarism's aborting of the Catholic Faith has involved something heretofore unprecedented: the closing of old Catholic church buildings for reasons other than unsafe conditions. This has been and continues to be a direct result of the sterility of the conciliar revolution. Souls have flocked out of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the past fifty years, and the conciliar revolutionaries are loathe to attempt to keep existing churches and schools open by seeking converts to the Holy Faith. Possessed of a bottom-line "chief executive officer" mentality, men such as the late Edward Michael "Cardinal" Egan sought to close budgetary gaps by treating historic Catholic churches and their parishes as so little more than "assets" to be used at will in order to gather the filthy lucre.
Indeed, this is the principal reason that “Saint John Paul II” moved the then “Bishop” Egan from Bridgeport, Connecticut, a perch from which he claimed in 1998 that the Diocese of Bridgeport could not be held legally liable for the morally deviant actions of his priests/presbyters because they were “independent contractors (which is true insofar as clergy are paid by the parishes; however, it is the ordinary who assigns them to their parish assignments in the first place), back to New York in 2000 to clean up the mess that had been caused by John Joseph “Cardinal” O’Connor’s fabled financial profligacy.
According to a true priest who knew all of the principals involved, O’Connor was so incensed at the probability of Egan’s appointment after his, O’Connor’s, pending death from terminal brain cancer that he got on an airline flight to Rome to beseech Karol Wojtyla/John John Paul II not to do so. O’Connor was told that Egan was going to be his successor, something that pained him very much as he had never wanted Egan in the archdiocese as an auxiliary in 1985 and had clashed with him repeatedly in the three years prior to Egan’s being named as the successor to retiring Bishop Walter Curtiss, who was a true bishop, having been consecrated in 1957. According to the late Jack Swan, O’Connor and Egan had a clash in 1987 on a number of matters. It was at one heated meeting that the two high-spirit Irish Americans shouted at each other as O’Connor said “I never wanted you here in