Freemasons Blocked From Church

Italy. From the 21th to the 26th of August the "Grand Lodge of Italy" and the "Grand Orient" have organized an event in the 3,000 population city of San Leo near the Adriatic. On the 20th of August the Bishop Luigi Negri of San Marino-Montefeltro, had published a pastoral letter in his Diocese which was read against the Freemasons. At the same time, the Bishop made clear that the Catholic religion is incompatible with Freemasonry. These live for their antagonism to the Church and desire Its destruction. The pastor of the village, Father Andrea Bosio, ordered that during the event that all houses of God in the city will be closed outside of Mass times. He explained to the Italian media that normally it wouldn't be justified during the day. Bishop Negri has supported Father Bosio's precautions.

From the bottom of kreuz.net's daily news...

Franciscan Imitates St. Francis, Rebuilds Church Alone for Fifty Years

Editor: Franciscans are "friars" not monks.

God Willed It

The unbelievable story of Father Pietro Lavini: From 1954 to 2003 he rebuilt a monastery completely alone, in an untraveled mountain area in the Apennines.

Montemonaco (kath.net) In the spring of 1954 Father Pietro disappeared without a trace from his Cloister to rebuild a ruined Monastery in the Apennines Mountains. In the summer of 2003 the Bishop of Father Pietro received a letter with the sentence: "The Monastery is finished."

Andreas Englisch told the story of the Italian priest in his book "Traces of God: Miracles of the Catholic Church". Englisch had also related this story to the Hamburg evening news.

In the spring of 1954 the Abbot of the Franciscan Cloister by Ascoli Piceno in Adria noticed that Father Peitro had vanished. After a fruitless search he was removed from the list of priests, which entitles them to government support. He was reported as missing.

In the Summer of 1971, in the mountains near Gola del Infernaccio, a deep canyon in the middle of the Apennines mountains, which are famous for falling stones and avalanches, a mountain climber met the monk and told his Bishop: "The priest had very long, matted hair and a filthy beard. He lived in the cold of the high mountains in a kind of improvised hut made only from a few branches and a torn plastic tarp."

He sustained himself with heavily moldy bread, greens and tree bark. With self-made tools, he broke stones from the cliffs, there he was completely alone, without money or machines, where he wanted to rebuild the ruins of a Monastery. He had even built an aqueduct which carried water across the canyon. He collapsed from work many times, suffered broken bones, which he cured by himself with herbs. He showed me his serious injuries. I feared, the man was severely mad."

The Bishop then sent an inspector with the mission to bring the priest to a psychiatric clinic of the Franciscans. After his expedition, the inspector reported to the Bishop that after many discussions attempting to persuade Father Pietro, that "the brother isn't mad, rather he is a saint. I bid his blessing and hope that the Church will leave him there, where he is, completely close to God. I fear our time is mad, so that for us, the example of a man like Father Pietro is so rare." All attempts by the social office of the Bishop to induce the Priest to return, were unsuccessful.

Father Pietro had contact with a family from the village of Montemonaco, which lays some 20km from Father's abode. The father, Franco D'Agonsino, then wrote to the Bishop, "I don't wonder that he doesn't starve up there! The climb is difficult, and I bring Father Pietro something to eat, and every time his larder is bare. he appears not to be concerned by it. When the snow falls, he is cut off for months at a time. I don't know how he endures."

In the summer of 2003 a letter arrived at the Diocese of Ascoli Piceno: Father Pietro wrote only one sentence: "The Monastery is finished." The Bishop traveled by helicopter to the place and wrote a report to the Vatican thereon only one sentence: "What I have seen, is a wonder."

The Village of Monemonaco in central Italy has about 700 inhabitants and lays about two hours by car from the beaches on the Adriatic. And suddenly visitors from all parts of the world came to the village to ask the way to the Gola del Infernaccio
canyon in order to see "a saint". Great gaps in the cliff walls are witness thereto, how over decades of work by hand, block upon block had been separated from the cliff.

After four hours of climbing the visitor suddenly arrives at a beautiful Monastery building. Father Pietro Lavini receives visitors happily and says: "Naturally, I could never have built these great buildings alone. That was beyond the power of a man, God desired it. God had given me this life's dream: 'Build me there, where it is impossible, a house under impossible conditions, and I will sustain you, heal your sickness and give you to eat, even when you think you must starve.'

The video in Italian is here.



From kath.net...here.

Holy Father: No Opposition Between Tradition and Progress in the Liturgy

Editor: Pope Benedict is addressing one of the chief sources of Liturgical abuses in the Church today, the Benedictines of Sant'Anselmo. He seems to make a backhand swipe at Dom Beauduin, perhaps. New Liturgical Movement got an Italian translation which describes Benedict's critique in terms of going "beyond" the Council. [About which Rorate Caeli was more circumspect, and Vatican Radio didn't touch on any of this at all.]Basically, this is more reform of the reform talk to Old Liberals who will do their best to ignore the Holy Father's admonitions and prescriptions. That doesn't appear in the following essay by theologian Armin Schibach, but there it is:

'sana traditio' and 'legitima progressio': The program of reform of the Council Fathers. Back in the future on the way to "Sacrosanctum Concilium'. The river of Tradition. by Armin Schibbach

Rome (kath.net/as) In the area of Liturgy, Tradition and progress are not put together in "an "awkward manner" one against the other. Actually, both enrich each other: Tradition contains in itself the principle of development and is always a living reality: "The river of Tradition always flows from its source as it strives toward its mouth". With these words Pope Benedict addressed today's Friday lecture, taking part in the event, organized for the the Papal Liturgical Institute 'Sant'Anselmo', on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of its founding.

Benedict XVI next addressed the reason for the memorial, which lead to the founding of the Liturgical Institute. In this, it was the wish of Pope John XXIII to take up the Liturgical Movement [Editor: Its Revolutionary character, founded primarily in illicit and therefore sinful liturgical abuses don't get mentioned in talks like this.], whose aim was to give a new impetus to the prayer of the Church, shortly before the Vatican Council, by forming the Liturgical Institute at the Benedictine University at the Aventine. The Pope was to have a firm basis for the Liturgical Reform of the Council in this way.

On the eve of the Council, continued Benedict XVI, the need for the reform of the Liturgy made itself ever more certain. The pastoral necessity, which the Liturgical Movement ensouled, made it requisite that the active participation of the faithful in the Liturgical Celebration would be encouraged by the use of the vernacular and that the adaptation of the rites deepening the various cultures.

Similarly, there has been a necessity present from the beginning, to study the depths of the Liturgical foundation, "in order to avoid falling into Ritualism or to validate the subjectivism and protagonism of the celebrant." The reform should find itself centered in the area of the offering of the divine Sacrifice and its justification in the Tradition of the Church.

Proceeding with the theme of the Congress (The Papal Liturgical Institute between Commemoration and Prophesy") the Pope stressed that the reason for the institute is "Commemoration". The Institute has accomplished its task toward the reception of the IInd Vatican Council. For that reason it has become possible to help the holy people of God, "to live the liturgy as an expression of a praying people, as Christ's presence in the midst of the people and as constitute an actuality of salvation history".

The Constitution of the Holy Liturgy "Sacrosanctum Concilium" poses the twofold theological and ecclesiological character of the Liturgy: "The celebration simultaneously makes real an Epiphany of the Lord and an Epiphany of the Church, two dimensions, which is bound to the reality the Liturgical assembly". In the Liturgy of the Church "gives the active presence of Christ: What he brought into fruition during His stay among the people, whose focus formed in the Eucharist is made real."

The Liturgy of the Church "goes out from the 'Conciliar Reform'", says Benedict XVI. Its goal is not, above all, to change the rites and texts, but it is much more to renew the mentality and put the Christian life and the pastoral care of the celebration of the Pascal Mystery of Christ at its center.

"Unfortunately the Liturgy would-- even among us shepherds and experts -- be seen as an object, that it was necessary to reform, and not as a Subject, that is capable of renewing the Christian life, where there was a very narrow band between the renewal of the Liturgy and the renewal of the whole life of the Church: the Church draws its power to live from the Liturgy." In that point, he recalled Pope John Paul in his Apostolic writing "Vinesimus quintus annus" (4. Dezember 1988)on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Constitution of "Sancrosanctum Concilium".


The Liturgy is "the highpoint, to which the action of the Church reaches and is the source from which all of her virtues proceed", said Benedict XVI. So She becomes the great tutor of the primacy of the Faith and of Grace. The Liturgy is the "privileged witness of the living Tradition of the Church", in truth Her fundamental mission, in the "Today" of human affairs the "opus Redemptionis" between the apparent and the existent. For that reason the Liturgy lives "of a correct and standing relation between 'sana traditio' and 'legitima progressio'" (compare. Sancrosanctum Concilium, Nr. 23).

With these two concepts the Council Fathers desired to lay out their "program of reform", "to put the same weight on the great liturgical Tradition of the past with that of the future".