Pentecost VIII
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
This is the Mt. Carmel weekend, and tomorrow is the feast itself. Are you wearing your scapular right now? If not, why not? Heaven has given us so many aids to salvation, but they avail not if we do not devoutly use them. A year ago, a young lady in Louisiana whom I had baptized, confirmed and offered Mass and sacraments for her whole short life, died in a fiery auto wreck, her body entirely incinerated. What became of her soul? She moved with a fast crowd. Her scapular was in her other purse. Her mother is disconsolate. Our Blessed Mother wants to help, but cannot if we will not listen.
It is the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel which takes me back to Mexico this weekend. After visiting Fr. Mardones and his faithful in Mexico City, today we are on our way to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Dos Rios, Veracruz. But on the way we’re stopping to see the Baby Doctor Jesus in Tepeaca. Be sure I bring all of your intentions, especially your sick to this venerated shrine, to the Holy Child Jesus. Tomorrow we have the feast day Procession and Mass in Dos Rios, followed by Confirmations. Tuesday, God willing, I return.
Tomorrow Fr. Lehtoranta goes home to Finland for a proper vacation. He flies to Helsinki, when Trump and Putin will just have met, but by his Tuesday arrival things should be calm. In his apostolic spirit, Father goes to Gothenburg, Sweden next Sunday to offer the Holy Sacrifice for a very small group he stays in touch with. Father’s zeal has produced yet another book, Laura Vicuña, which tells the story of a South American girl, a very holy young soul and a martyr of innocence and piety. Get your copy at the bookstore.
Did you get a chance to pick up your copy of the classic St. Anthony’s Treasury? If we’re sold out, we’ll order some more. Every home should have this treasure. Just relax and pray with it at home, morning or night, or bring it with you to follow the St. Anthony Mass on Tuesdays.
Boys camp concludes our major Summer activities next week. Will your boys be attending? It offers a wonderful chance for our young men to be with the McFathers and good Catholic dads, as they mostly have fun and games all day, but also get a chance for daily Mass, sermon and Rosary. Don’t miss it.
The Trump Supreme Court nominee is touted by the media as a conservative and prolife, but we shall see. He is a Jesuit educated Novus Ordo, and a deep state insider, indeed an insider’s insider, he and his wife. He recently ruled that the government has a “compelling interest” in providing birth control on your dime and that an illegal immigrant has a right to one of our “safe and legal” American abortions. Not too safe for the baby, though.
I write this because many of you are only exposed to the Fake News which dominates our airwaves. Smoothly presented photo ops are meant to be persuasive, not objective. Another example of this is the election of the new head of the Pius X Society. He, too, is portrayed as a conservative, who will step back from full union with Conciliar Rome. But the conservative/liberal paradigm comes to us from the godless French Revolution. Sillies celebrated it yesterday, July 14. But we should not be taken in.
The Society is essentially a sect, with its own peculiar doctrines. Like most groups (this is why I am so wary of formal groups today) its prime directive is its own proper good, and propagation, and survival; its power. It may be helpful to remember that the Pius X Society views itself as a kind of a superchurch, perfectly free permanently to operate outside of Church structures. This is usually a definition of schism. So while holding that Bergoglio (who’s fond of them, you know) is a true pope, they also insist that he is not to be obeyed unless they give the okay. Only they must be obeyed, and that without question, even when they impose liberal, Vatican II style changes. Conservative they’re not. Stay away.
But go with the Prophet Elias to Mt. Carmel. May Our Lady clothe you with the “dyed garments of the Precious Blood.” Brown is the color of dried blood, His Precious Blood. It is our protection, refreshment and forgiveness. Safe travels to you, but go clothed in Brown, His Blood, Our Lady’s Scapular.
– Bishop Dolan