In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
In today’s gospel, we have Our Lord feeding the multitudes on the loaves of bread and the fish which He miraculously multiplied. And this is not only a prefiguring of the Blessed Sacrament, meaning it’s a foreshadowing of it because you look at the language they used. He took the bread and giving thanks He broke it. Right? It starts out exactly like what?, you know. Last Supper. But then He gave it to the disciples to distribute to the people. He didn’t pronounce the words of Consecration over it. But notice at the end they collected the fragments. What do we do? We put the hosts that haven’t been consumed back into the Tabernacle. It was a prefiguring of that.
But not only was it a prefiguring. He was showing us part of the catechism for giving them the real Blessed Sacrament that it was going to be His Body and Blood because He had the power to do that. Everybody was there, everybody saw that he had this many loaves and He had a few little fish, and that He fed probably twice — it said four thousand. That meant just grown males. That’s how they counted things in those days. And probably twice that, at least, of people with these few loaves and fish that He multiplied miraculously.
So, right after this, He tells the people, “You have to eat My Body and drink My Blood”, and, then, a year later He takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and says, “This is My Body”. So, He was showing that He had the power to give us His Body and Blood under the form of bread and wine.
Now, that’s not really what I wanted to talk about today. That’s just by way of introduction, because I also see what Our Lord is doing as a shepherd of souls, the type of parish, what a Catholic parish is supposed to be, and what it would be in the future. Not only a place where you come and receive the Blessed Sacrament and leave, but where you receive nourishment for your souls on a grander scale. What moved Him to pity for the people was some of them lived afar off. And, if He didn’t feed them, they would perish, they would faint away on the way. And having pity on them, He fed them with not only His words, because He preached to them, but with real food as well.
Now, I would see that as the ideal of a parish, and I just wanted to say a few words about our parish, really, and what it is and why it is different. I know, many of you appreciate — nobody more than I, believe me — the miracle that Our Lady Help of Christians actually is. But some of you, you know, it’s all you’ve known possibly. You haven’t known any other parish and you don’t know what it really is in our day and age. You don’t know what it takes to keep it what it is and what our vision as priests is for the parish and is for you.
I wanted to start out with the very name, Our Lady Help of Christians. Not well known in this country as a devotion, but known in other countries. Italy, for example. Our Lady Help of Christians is the patron saint of Australia; also, one of the principle patrons of St. Roch of the Philippines. And the title came by way of the great Pope St. Pius V, truly, truly a great Pope. Following the Battle of Lepanto, he wanted to honor our patroness because he credits her with the victory over the darkness of Islam. And the reason why this name was chosen for this parish — and, mind you, I ultimately decided on the name for the parish, don’t get me wrong. But, some of you had been around long enough to remember that I did ask for suggestions. And I would say miraculously most of those suggestions were Our Lady Help of Christians, something that most people hadn’t even heard about. And, so, it was decided. Because the darkness of this world, the paganism and the modernism of modern-day Rome are encircling us about like the infidels in days of old. And, we are calling upon the patroness who saved us more than once from such a fate to save us and to preserve us again and still, I guess, is a better way of putting it.
So, that name was chosen because in a spiritual sense our situation is analogous to a Europe that was about to be overrun and destroyed by the Muslims. And, had they done that, they would have tried to annihilate the Church. That’s the purpose of them.
If anybody is under any kind of delusion about Islam, it’s not a religion. They go, Oh, the Muslims, over the one god and stuff. Islam is not a religion. It is an oppressive political philosophy worse than Marxism, worse than Marxism. It is virtually Satanic and you have to be absolutely clear, because people such as the Pope don’t seem to be too clear about this, and even previous popes haven’t been too clear about this. Oh, Vatican II and the so-called catechism of the Catholic Church say, We together worship the one merciful God. Well, first of all, together hopefully we don’t worship anything because you’re not supposed to worship with the pagans. And we don’t worship the same god, because we worship the God who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. That is the truth of God. It is the duty of the Church to preach this to the Muslims, but, are they doing it? No. They are rubbing elbows and doing the jig together and having parties and pancake breakfasts or whatever they are doing in Rome today.
Okay. So, that is the reason we chose the name, because it is the ideal of what our parish is supposed to be. This is an oasis. For those of you who don’t know, you have my permission to go stand in the back of any Mass at any local parish in the near future if you would like to. And what you will see there, if you don’t already see it from the newspapers, is complete insanity. It’s anything but Catholic. Once again in my ministry at St.-Arbucks (for those of you who don’t know St.-Arbucks, S – t – a – r – b – u – c – k – s) somebody always comes up to me and has a religious issue. And this one was this woman, she was saying, But, you know, we love the rock and roll Mass, we just love it. And I’m going, Oh, this is great. Monsignor laughing) I want my people to see a rock and roll Mass and they will come back here, they will superglue themselves into a pew and they will never leave. She goes, Oh, it brings the youth in, it’s so…. And I go, But — you know, but you’re thinking, You’re an idiot. Right? But you don’t just say, You’re an idiot (Monsignor laughing). You go, Okay, think about it. What is the Mass? — because they have abandoned the notion of Mass as a sacrifice. Okay, the Mass is — it’s Christ shedding His last drop of blood to make heaven possible for us sinners and to pay the price, the debt to the Father. Okay. So, you are at the foot of the cross at the Holy Mass. Tell me where the rock and roll band fits in there. Can you tell me? Between St. John and the Blessed Virgin. Could we put the bongos, maybe –. They don’t understand. And, then, she kind of, you know, Oh, well, thank you, Father. Nice to meet you. Bye-bye. Like the Roadrunner, exit Stage Left.
Okay, so we are an oasis in the middle of this. And there are different things happening here that people don’t realize their true nature. So, they’ll go, Well, we have an Indult Mass, or now it’s the Motu Mass over at this place or that parish, stuff like that. And I say, Okay, fine. What is that. You get the Motu Mass at St. John the Baptist or the Polish Center or whatever, now you want to get married in the traditional rite. Oh, sorry, we don’t do that. Or, you want to have a funeral for somebody in the traditional rite. Oh, nope, can’t do that. You get the Mass once on Sunday and you just darn well better be happy with that. Now, get your Mass and go away. Okay?
Not that I want to talk about health care at the moment, but this is a total health plan here. We address every part of your soul. We don’t just give you a Mass and shove you off into space until the next time. You have your baptisms here, all the sacraments in the traditional rite you have here, which is the way the Church wants it. You know, they say things about us like, Oh, you’re disobedient. You’re not under the bishop, and things like that. Well, can we call a spade a spade? If we had a Catholic bishop, things would be different. But, you know what? We don’t. And we don’t have any Catholic parishes in this diocese. There isn’t one. Let’s get the book with the pictures that shows what is Catholic and let’s walk around the diocese starting at the chancery and compare the pictures to what you see. It ain’t what it was before, what the Church always taught and always did. And the Church firmly declared at the Council of Trent, although it has proclaimed it for the 1500 plus years before the Council of Trent, that this is the Catholic Church. These Sacraments are Catholic, and no others. This is the way you do the Mass and you may not change that. This is Catholic. They were in the face of Protestantism. And they said, we see this Protestantism, we saw how Germany turned mostly Protestant virtually overnight, virtually overnight. If that kind of Mass ever creeps into the Church, we are doomed, millions will lose their faith. And, then, what did they do? They gave us a Protestant Mass in 1969, and millions have lost their faith.
They have no right to exist. The parishes that are around here, they are proclaiming to be Catholic and then doing what they are doing, they have no right to exist. And a bishop who is not doing what the Council of Trent said he must do, has no right to our obedience. He has no right to it. And this is what you tell people. Oh, you’re not under the bishop. Well, of course I’m not under the bishop. We should be under what. It would make more sense to be under Saddam Hussein or something — oh, he’s dead now, huh. Well, whoever’s not dead and was one of those notorious figures. It would make more sense because they’re not pretending to be Catholic.
So, this is something you have to firmly understand. What you get here is your right. What we are doing here as priests is not what — the situation is not what existed a hundred years ago, but what is around us did not exist a hundred years ago. Remember, the enemy is modernism, a complex heresy that now has — even the current Pope firmly embraced modernism well before Vatican II. Father Ratzinger, in his coat and tie, helped put the most awful parts of the Vatican II documents in to there. And his writings — he’s never taken back any of them.
You know, people keep coming on coming to me, everybody’s hopeful. They go, Oh, Father, I think the Pope is getting it, he just did this Motu Proprio, or he just did this or just did that. And, I’m saying when he formally retracts the heresies of his previous writings, we will know that he is making progress. He has not done this. Just look — it’s there available in English translation. I wouldn’t search the Internet for a synopsis of the heresies of his writings, because, if you read them, you might be seduced yourself. That’s what can happen. Dom Gueranger, one of those Dominicans, I think Gueranger, but he said — he had encouraged people to take classes or people went to take classes in Rome from the modernists that they could convert them and they ended up being converted to the heresy. So, you have to watch out. Their stuff can be seductive, but it is absolutely wrong.
Okay, so, we are then an oasis. What else is different about us? Suppose the bishop were having a very, very good day and decided to establish an indult traditional parish, all the sacraments traditional. What would be wrong with that? Well, first of all, everyone who could possibly service that parish has to promise that they will never criticize Vatican II. In, fact, that they accept Vatican II. So, if you go into one of these other parishes, let’s say , San Diego, St. Ann’s run by the Fraternity of St. Peter or one of these, their priest has agreed to Vatican II is fine, with the little thing they say, “when viewed in light of tradition”. To me, that’s an oxymoron. The Vatican II documents, especially religious liberty and others, when viewed in the light of tradition, means you reject them. You reject them flat out. And they go, Oh, well, this document is not so bad, or that document is not so bad. We don’t pick and choose the documents. One bad apple does spoil the whole bunch, you see.
If you get a book and it’s mostly good literature with some dirty little chapter in the middle with all kinds of lewdness and lasciviousness, it doesn’t matter that the other chapters are good. You reject it as a whole. Okay? I remember in my day people used to say, Well, I get this particular magazine but it’s for the articles, you know. (Monsignor laughing) Oh, no, you reject it as a whole. Okay? You reject it as a whole. And that is the correct way of thinking. We reject the Vatican II documents as a whole.
Did you know — I’ll get you the citation for it — did you know the One World Order with the UN as the world police is called for in the Vatican II documents? You are subscribing to that if you accept Vatican II in the light of tradition. It specifically calls for the One World Order, run and policed by the UN in one of the documents of Vatican II. So, reject them.
Not only that, they have to promise that, if needed, they will say the Novus Ordo. And some of them regularly do in the Fraternity of St. Peter and the Institute of Christ the King and these kinds of things. At those other indult Masses, you know, you’ll have a priest even from St. Michael’s Abbey which I think very highly of, I think if they would convert a little more, they would be absolutely formidable because there are many good men there, many good men. They haven’t got it. They haven’t gotten there.
So, you have a priest who says the traditional Mass once on Sunday, and the Novus Ordo during the week. Are you kidding me? They are opposed. Those two liturgies are opposed. I don’t know how these people don’t blow up. It’s like matter and antimatter. You know, how do you go from Hoc est enim, to brothers and sisters in the Lord, play those bongos a little more, and this kind of thing. They are opposed to each other. And, so, I would say this with the utmost charity. A priest who says both Masses is not fully converted. And, as such, you can’t trust him where he’s at because he’s certainly not going to give you the antimodernist mind.
I’ll say it again. Modernism is the enemy. It’s not just the new Mass. That’s a symptom of modernism. Know modernism and know the enemy. Read about it in the documents of the Church.
Okay, so, what else is different. They can’t tell you the whole truth, even if there was a Fraternity of St. Peter parish here and an Institute of Christ the King parish. They can’t talk about things. They can’t criticize Vatican II. They can’t condemn modernism. They can’t tell you the truth.
Let’s look at some current events that they are not talking about. The former Holy Office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has a new boss. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is right under the papacy. It’s the highest normal office in the world, with the Holy [See] being the highest, right above it. Cardinal Ratzinger had the position as head of that before he was elected Pope Benedict XVI. It’s called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly called the Holy Office, formerly, and I wish it were still called, the Inquisition. And its’ job is to maintain the purity of the faith in the Church.
So, His Holiness just appointed this guy, I think his name is Muller, Herr Muller, another Germanic guy, which might not be entirely bad in itself being Germanic, but I’m really praying we get an Italian pope next, because really only Italians know how to run the Church. And Germans have proven that neh eh eh eh eh. Okay. So, at least a Latin something or other, maybe if not Italian, Spanish or something like that.
In any case, so he appointed him as head of the Congregation that oversees the purity of the faith. Well, this guy has denied in writing the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Resurrection, tons of things. And, was he punished? No, he was made prefect of the highest office underneath the Holy See, responsible for the purity of the doctrine. Now, we can’t excuse the pope. Why can’t we excuse him? Because Herr Muller writes in German and wrote in German. The pope is German and knows exactly what he was appointing as head of that office.
Now, as head of the CDF, he is the new boss of Ecclesia Dei, the office responsible for doling out to traditional Catholics their little morsels and tidbits here and there. You know, remnants of traditionalism, as long as they don’t demand a whole traditionalism kind of thing, with the whole truth. They’re the boss of that now. So, what’s the Fraternity of St. Peter saying today, or the Institute of Christ the King? Their new boss is a heretic’s heretic and shows no sign of repenting or taking back this stuff, and then, they say zero. Why? Because they can’t. They depend for their existence on him. It’s like a drug dealer, you know? Here, I’ll give you this little whatever it is that they are doing. You can smoke a pill or something. (Monsignor laughing) You know, this drug here, but if you get out of line, I’m taking your drug away from you, and you are going to go into shakes and shivers and sweats and fits and things like that, whatever happens to you when you get off the strong stuff. Okay? So, they can’t say anything about it.
Modernism is the enemy. If you cannot condemn modernism and modernists, then it’s like a battle where you can’t fire bullets. You will get nowhere. And the pope has done this before. The famous, infamous bishop, His Excellency Patrick McGrath of San Jose, denies the Resurrection and the miracles of Jesus, and strong protest was made by courageous and good Catholics up there, but he’s still bishop. He wasn’t removed for this kind of thing. Well, if you don’t believe in the Resurrection, then why are you a priest? Why are you a bishop? Why are you here? You are toxic waste. You are like an unshielded canister of spent uranium, that are sent around to parishes to pollute them and destroy them, and, then, when everybody is dead in that parish, they’ll move the container somewhere else. That’s what these people are. They need to be removed, but we don’t have a pope who is going to do that any time soon.
Okay, that is part of what — another thing that makes us unique here that people don’t realize is we have no limited tenure. You may not like the fact that you’re stuck with me, or you might. And I do the best job I can. I try to have a good parish. My vision for this parish is to have a normal parish, just like if you were a hundred and something years ago and you went in to a parish, I want this to be that, a place not where I just tell you about, Oh, you’re all going to hell, you know, this kind of thing, like some parishes do. You know, God is a merciful God and a loving God who wants you to go to heaven. And I want to help Him help you get there. Okay? And you need encouragement and you need a spiritual nourishing, and you need education.
Part of the difference between a modern parish really and the old, is that we need more education now. More of the sermons I have to do must by nature, be educational, because we’re not surrounded by that stuff anymore, like we were in the old days. And, so, sometimes I have to add education to the spiritual prompting. But what I am saying we have no limited tenure. In other parishes, it varies by diocese to diocese, but they all have it. I’m not sure what the numbers are in this diocese is, but if you are a priest there, you can be moved at three years, and you must be moved at six to somewhere else.
Now, I can tell you as a shepherd of your souls, I couldn’t do anything. If I were looking at maybe leaving in three years, and have to leave at six, it’s not worth starting, because everything that I would do when I was moved, would be undone by the next priest. You see? But, we priests here at Our Lady Help of Christians have a unified vision for where we want to take the parish, along the path to heaven. And we realize more and more as the years go on we could only do that by staying here and by shepherding people. Because it’s not a fast process. It’s like, Okay, off to heaven. Poof. Next crowd, next one, next one. Okay, you’re saved. That’s Protestantism, okay? We have to stay to the end, because it’s not over until the fat lady sings — Oh, sorry. (Monsignor laughing)
So, that is another difference, and we all agree, how do they do it in a modern parish? You know, it must be very discouraging to be a priest in these parishes. And even traditional priests are moved regularly. Now, I can see, it works out if you’ve got a jerk as your pastor or something like that. Hopefully — I try to be honest with myself. I think I’m not a jerk. But I know some people think I am, too. (Monsignor laughing) But, you know, we are always evaluating each other, and we try to be charitable and good priests, and lead the parish in that direction.
Just a final little difference, too. The Missal we choose to use here. A lot of people just think, Oh, it’s the traditional Missal. No, it’s the pre ‘55 Missal. Every other traditional organization that is, not individual priests but organizations officially uses the 1962 Missal. The 1962 Missal is a compromised Missal. It violates the document Quo Primum of Pope St. Pius V. It has new rites put into it. It has lots of new stuff put into it. I can get a list sometime for you, but there are the octaves that were suppressed, the vigils that were suppressed, the list of suppressed feasts from my Missal to their 1962 Missal is as long as my arm. Not only that, they have Novus Ordo rites introduced in to them, in to the 1962 Missal. So that somebody who is using the 1962 Missal has no reason not to say the Novus Ordo if asked, because there can be no argument. If you are going to use a compromised Missal, then what are you going to say to another compromised Missal. You see?
And so, Father Schell — now I was doing it independently of Father Schell, but it’s one of the things we agreed upon instantly is he never used anything after the 1955 or later Missal for the very same reasons. And that’s why we got along so well is because we both saw that problem. We saw it early on. Why is it that when the Pope made the first indult in 1984, he specified you must use the ‘62 Missal, it has to be according to the ‘62 Missal, it must be according to the ‘62 Missal. Because if you’ll buy the ‘62 Missal, you’ll buy the Novus Ordo. That’s all there is to it. You’ll have no rational reason not to.
So, my dear faithful, these are all things that make us a unique oasis, and very different even from other traditional parishes. Those of you who have been around the block will know that there’s a lot of different elements that are attracted to traditionalism, and part of our duty as priests is to keep it a normal parish. You know, people come in and try to subvert, like those idiots, the sedevacantists. Okay? They are dangerous. Sedevacantists are dangerous. They ruin parishes. They are very uncharitable, they are angry, bitter people. That’s why we have no place for them here. I’ve never told anyone to leave the parish. I’ve never done it, not in my whole life. But what happens is, they see everybody else so normal and happy, they can’t stand it, so they leave. (Monsignor laughing) And I go, This is great. I don’t have to do anything.
Anyway, it’s a full-time job keeping these people at bay, and you have to know that. The reason why you can be happy here is because that’s the way we are fighting day and night to keep it. We have social activities we want you to know about coming up. These are not fund raisers, by the way. We have a parish picnic coming up in a while. We’ve reserved the park and everything like that. And we have these just so we refugees from the world and from the modern church can spend time together. And, you know, you don’t have to worry about anything. Right? You don’t have to worry about tiptoeing, about talking about this, that and the other thing because somebody is going to be offended or whatnot. You be Catholic. It doesn’t matter. You just be Catholic and you are going to get along with everybody else, and you are going to be happy and prosper basically.
I want to finish by making a plea for your prayers specifically for vocations. And I don’t mean necessarily just to send vocations, but also that our good Lord in His Providence will provide a place for vocations to go, be educated and get ordained. There aren’t really any when it comes down to it. There are no fully Catholic solutions at the moment to this problem. You would think, Well, what about the Society of Pius X? Well, because they believe, unfortunately, or at least the people running things that outside of the Society of Pius X there is no salvation. The young men we have sent to visit there have been treated shamefully, verbally abused from one end of their visit to the other, because they don’t come from a Pius X parish. And, finally, each of these young men, and there have been several, has decided that if in order to become a priest I have to stay with the Society, I would rather be a layman. And that’s, considering the nature of a vocation, that is a very, very strong statement on the way they were treated at these places. Another couple had visited the Institute of Christ the King Fraternity of St. Peter. They were told that when their priests were away at a meeting, the Superior General had said they must go to the Novus Ordo on a daily basis, and that if they did not agree to say the Novus Ordo when called upon, they would not be ordained. They weed them out before ordination. So, if you are somebody who will only say the traditional Mass, you are not welcome amongst the indult organization, such as the Fraternity of St. Peter.
So, then, where do they go? Where do they go? So, when I ask you to add it to your intentions, I know a lot of people say, Well, I will add it to my intentions, but what it involves is right now, saying to God in your heart, just you and He, that whatever prayers, works, joys and sufferings you have that are meritorious, some part of that will go towards the vocations problem, that God will send vocations and they will have some place to bring them to fruition. I would love to start a seminary. We need a house or two. That would be nice. If anybody out there has got an extra house, and is thinking maybe of dying someday or something like that, or that they don’t need the house while they are alive, we could start a convent. How many girls have come through here and — the situation for convents is a little better in the church today than for the priests, but they rely on these priests who are somewhat questionable.
We could start a seminary, if we can get the possibility of a bishop to do the ordinations, which I think may be possible some day, considering how things are going. You never know. But it has to be through God’s Providence and prayer.
So, I ask you to add that right now to your prayer intentions and pray for us. Pray for this place. You don’t always see things in the spiritual sense that some of us maybe have to see them in, but we are encompassed, we are surrounded. We are surrounded and they are trying to destroy us for all of these reasons. What’s left of the Church but faithful groups of Catholics here and there, peppered around the world. And Satan has multitudes of demons assigned to each one of them, trying to undo them and tear them apart, because without traditional Catholics, what would there be to compare modern Rome with? There would be nothing. People would think that was Catholicism and then there truly would be nothing left of the church.
Keep us in your prayers as well. May God continue to prosper Our Lady Help of Christians to guard and protect each one of us and keep us strong. I have these little prayers I say to the Blessed Virgin mainly, and one of them is that she gets the grace from her Son to increase us, to multiply us, to prosper us, to keep us close to the faith that her Son died to found, to keep us close to that. Our Lord died to found the Catholic Church. And we are part of that Church. In fact, then, He died to found what we are doing here, and we pray to the Blessed Virgin that she gives the grace to keep us close to that, that we don’t become nuts like some places have become, but we remain purely Catholic until the end.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.