Pope Francis is incorrect - a modernist degradation toward "women priests"
Justin Haggerty | The Daily Knight
VATICAN: Pope Francis released a new motu proprio on Monday, establishing that "ministries" of Lector and Acolyte are to be open to women. While it is difficult to challenge His Holiness for the conception of this mandate, since the error has been in practice in many dioceses for decades and started with the abolishment of the "minor orders" by Pope Paul VI's moto proprio Ministeria quaedam in 1972, the fact remains that he also is in error by making such a change to the Code of Canon Law.
To be clear, a papal encyclical and motu proprio are not ex Cathedra unless stated as infallible. According to America Magazine, "when a pope issues a document motu proprio, it means he does so by his own motivation," either "to change or enact an existing church rule—or when he has something to say that...comes from his own interest in a particular matter." While not pastoral in nature, it doesn't give the pope the authority to act outside of Apostolic Tradition or Divine Law.
Modernism, the synthesis of all heresies and the corrupt desire to be worldly, has enabled this false notion that Catholic doctrine, inspired and authored by divine law and revelation, is changeable. On the contrary, the Church only has the pastoral authority to clarify divine revelation, but not to change or create new doctrine. The First Vatican Council makes this clear in Pastor aeternus by affirming that any doctrines must be "conformable with Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Traditions...for the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles."
Let's return to the recent motu propio by Pope Francis to officially establish that Lector and Acolyte are open to women, a move that lies outside of Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Tradition. Our Lord Jesus Christ, during His Divine ministry on Earth, distinctly chose, ordained, and consecrated twelve men to be His apostles and first disciples, with the intent to serve pastorally and celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass Alter Christus (as another Christ).
Moreover, St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "let women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith" (I Cor. 14:34). Men and women have different roles and responsibilities in the Church, just as Our Lady and Our Lord occupy separate capacities in the spreading of grace and the hierarchy of Heaven. This distinction doesn't degrade the importance of each, but ennobles them with clearly defined gifts and virtues. The perversion and mixing of such roles, as promoted by this misconceived notion of a "shared baptism," have led to the decrease of male leadership in the parish and the emptying of monasteries and convents, which have suffered a loss of 72.22% in the United Sates since 1965 (Fox News).
By the heretical abandonment and altering of the Liturgy and Catechism of the Council of Trent, which left the faithful with the Novus Ordo Massae of 1969, the Tridentine Mass of the Roman Latin Rite was reduced to an unpretentious, irreverent, and empty state, similar to that of the protestant celebrations. Simply speaking, the reduction no longer had a purpose for the "minor orders," transforming them into "ministries" to be more ecumenical and charismatic in the approach to incorporating the faithful in the Novus Ordo.
The Holy Orders, on a developmental path toward priesthood, were for centuries applied in the Catholic Church to distinguish what the Council of Trent termed "minor orders" or "lesser orders". The Catechism of the Council of Trent spoke of the "several distinct orders of ministers, intended by their office to serve the priesthood, and so disposed, as that, beginning with the clericaltonsure, they may ascend gradually through the lesser to the greater orders", stating:
"Their number, according to the uniform and universal doctrine of the Catholic Church, is seven, Porter, Lector, Exorcist, Acolyte, Sub-deacon, Deacon and Priest. ... Of these, some are greater, which are called 'Holy', some lesser, which are called 'Minor Orders'. The great or Holy Orders are Sub-deaconship, Deaconship and Priesthood; the lesser or Minor Orders are Porter, Reader, Exorcist, and Acolyte" (Catechism of the Council of Trent).
By his motu proprio Ministeria quaedam of 15 August 1972, Pope Paul VI decreed: "The orders hitherto called minor are henceforth to be spoken of as 'ministries'." Furthermore, it decreed that the Catholic Church would no longer have the major order of subdiaconate, but it permitted that, if so desired, the term "subdeacon" could be applied to those who hold the "ministry" of "acolyte". Today, as stated in the Code of Canon Law, the only existing orders are the episcopate, the presbyterate, and the diaconate.
Ministeria quaedam, like the Novus Ordo Missae, presented a break from Apostolic Tradition, one that created a new path of priestly formation. Clearly, the lifelong process, divinely entwined with the Sacred Liturgy and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, that developed saints like St. Padre Pio and St. John Neumann was lost. The countless liturgical, doctrinal, and Eucharistic abuses rampant in the Church today go hand in hand with the removal of the Tridentine Latin Mass, of which, "even in the earliest Christian times Basil the Great, one of the Eastern Church Fathers, taught that the liturgy was revelation, like Holy Scripture itself, and should never be interfered with" (The Heresy of Formlessness).
A more contemporary, albeit unchanging, perspective of the liturgy was written by the orthodox priest Pavel Florensky, who was martyred under Stalin's regime:
"Our liturgy is older than us and our parents, even older than the world. The liturgy was not invented, it was discovered, appropriated: it is something that always was, namely, the distillation of rational prayer, more or less. The Orthodox faith has absorbed the world's inheritance, and what we have in her is the pure grain of all the religio, threshed free of chaff; the very essence of human kind...So it is beyond doubt that our liturgy comes, not from man, but form the angels." (Titanism and Cult)
If not the original intention, it has sure opened the door for modernists and the devil to attack the Church, the faith, and the faithful. There is no need to articulate the stronger guardianship that the Church would have enjoyed, in the fight against modernism since Pope St. Pius X's Pascendi Dominici gregis, if the "minor orders" were not abolished in 1972. It is well within reason to imagine that the sanctity of the priesthood would be in a much higher degree today.
Unfortunately, that is the state of the Church, a body in crisis. Un-tonsured laymen and women, in violation of Divine Revelation and Apostolic Tradition, irreverently fill the roles of the "minor orders" in the Novus Ordo that has embraced the world more than God Himself. As a result, the greatest injury has been done to Christ, by the decrease of latria, lack of belief in the Real Presence, and sacrilegious mishandling of the Blessed Sacrament by communion in the hand and unconsecrated hands.
By simply considering priestly formation, to include women, even as alter-servers, insofar to assign them roles preserved for the ascension and development for young men to the priesthood, would be a vocational "dead end," as asserted by Cardinal Francis Arinze. Not to be satirical, but it would be similarly ludicrous and socially irresponsible to train young men for motherhood.
The modernist degradation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in correlation with communistic gender ideology and the heretical challenge of God's gender, has allowed "minor orders" to be maliciously and meticulously filled with women with the intent, in the near future, to produce a female diaconate and priesthood. In fact, this heretical endeavor has been championed and accomplished by our protestant "brethren," whom the Church has pledged an ecumenical oath with.
In Christ Crucified and the Most Victorious Heart of Jesus.
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