sing-prayer.org

Devonne Kathy DeFrantz Keevers, March 7, 1948–January 9, 2021

(Please leave your greetings in the comment form, below.)

Devonne was born in Stockton, eldest child of a school-teacher, James DeFrantz, born 1920, and a nursing educator, Roberta nee Dennis, born 1922. Devonne had two brothers, Dale (deceased) and Michael. She lived on Los Angeles Street in Stockton. Her dogs were Sisi, Jeanine, Bubbles and Ebony. As a child she and Dale rode on the back of their family pig.

Devonne had five children, Christopher (1969), Jonathan (1982), Heather (1983), Kimberly (1985), and Matthew (1987).

Devonne’s grandchildren are Anthony Sr., Janessa, Hope, Rodrigo, Jacob, Otis and Philomena. Devonne’s great-grandchildren are Elizabeth, Alfons, Alicia, Victoria, and Anthony Jr.

Devonne received a Bachelor degree from CSUS. She studied bacteriology and cello. As a bacteriology student, she was able to solve problems the instructor couldn’t solve. Devonne could produce accurate answers to calculus problems off the top of her head without using calculus, and she was an ace at solving quick math problems. Once Devonne wrote a musicology paper for the department chair, which was at first rejected because it was too insightful and presumed to be plagiarism, until Devonne provided the instructor with the research notes and it was acknowledged that her work was far superior to the standard of undergraduates.

Shortly before her death, Devonne led the musical arrangement of the pre-Victorian poem “The Virgin” by William Wordsworth (1820), which is renowned for the line “our tainted nature’s solitary boast”; Devonne is credited as the arranger, having specified how the musical form would be adapted with more verses than are present in the original metrical index, the number of syllables of the original Old 124^th hymn tune, and Devonne decided how the melody would be adapted, where certain rises and falls would occur; the song is at http://www.sing-prayer.org/anthems-of-the-immaculate-virgin-mary-star-of-the-sea#OurTaintedNaturesSolitaryBoast.

Devonne was a school teacher at Immaculate Conception School, Sacramento, in the early 1990s. During Devonne’s first year as teacher, she had 6 ADHD students in a single second-grade class–it would be remarked that what Devonne didn’t know about ADHD wasn’t worth knowing. Devonne was a humble and resolute truth-teller, insisting on the basis of Catholic teaching that the responsibility for conveying “the facts of life” rests with the parents–and paying the price for her witness without complaint. To the end Devonne was a teacher, really sacrificing her life to help ensure her grandchildren got their education. Devonne was a true hero.

Devonne was President of a small, private non-profit charity, Showers on Wheels, which gave baby showers with car seats, blankets (thanks to project Linus), baby clothes and things, and diapers. Devonne gave parties to 275 Moms at Showers on Wheels baby showers from 2008 to 2015.

Devonne interviewed about Showers on Wheels by Bob Dunning on the Bishop’s Radio Hour on May 25, 2015

Devonne was married to William for 39 years.

“I don’t want to hear cute, I want to hear successful …”

They were married in the Catholic Church, at Sacred Heart Parish on J Street in Sacramento.

Memorial Hymn, Hopes for Devonne’s Release From Purgatory and Entrance into the Beatific Vision
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Unto Her, for whom this Day

Right Reverend Msgr. H.T. Henry	Nicola A. Montani
1. Unto her, for whom, this day; Juste judex ultionis (Just Judge of Retribution) We in love and pity pray; Donum fac remissionis. (Grant her the gift of release) (Refrain)	Refrain: Pie Jesu Domine, Dona ei requiem. Pie Jesu Domine, Dona ei requiem. (Holy Lord Jesus Grant her rest.)
2. When at Judgement she shall stand, Rex tremendae majestatis, (Immensely Majestic King) Grant her what Thy love hath planned, Qui salvandos salvas gratis. (Who freely saves the needy) (Refrain)	3. She hath fought the gallant fight Inter oves locum praesta, (Provide her a place among Your lambs) Lead her on to Heaven’s light Statuens in parte dextra. (Send her to Your right hand.) (Refrain)

Hymns for the Release From Purgatory of the Holy Souls

Devonne’s Ring – with five fruits of her body

Devonne says she loves you.

Devonne, “we saw a meteor shower last night. It was AWESOME! I saw two meteors! Ooh!”

Devonne’s funeral will be held at
St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, 65th and Fruitridge, Sacramento
Tuesday	February 23, 2021
9:00	Visitation
10:00	Mass
11:00	Burial

Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us. — Ecclesiastes 1:10

A recent work of speculative fiction, reasonably predicts a voyage to our nearest star about a century hence. Upon arrival after years of travel, it is discovered that this latest voyage was preceded by 10,000s of years by travelers from earth from a now unknown civilization previously dominant across the earth, a scenario easily imaginable considering the great contrast between how little is known of the details, and yet the great extent of undeniably existing archeological ruins of the Indus Valley, Harappan civilization of Mohenjo-Daro, nearly as old as Sumeria. (In the story, the Alpha-Centauri, early voyagers’ elites worshiped a three-eyed snake-man god to which child sacrifices were made that would make those the the Canaanite god Moloch look like the work of rank amateurs.)

Given how we presently live on a hazardous technological edge while knowing so little about the lives even of our near ancestors 100 years ago–much less about what a normal way of life should aspire to look like–it’s worthwhile trying to get a view from far off afield, of the developments of civilization since the fall of the middle ages and the rise of the modern period. We could speculate on four distinct divisions of technological development:

1. Agricultural Revolution – Starvation Policy
2. Manufacturing Revolution – Keeping workers too poor to buy their own products
3. Information Revolution – Flooding common people with low quality, disinformation, from the irrelevant to the factually inaccurate
4. Un-named Revolution, possibly, Algorithmic Revolution – technology emulates human consciousness with the result of enslaving it.

Two characteristics of the Tower of Babel, are that 1) its fall greatly increased human confusion and 2) that fall was occasioned by humans trying to assert their own self-originated autonomy against the Providence of God.

The Agricultural Revolution is concerned with food. When satan tempted Jesus with the offer to turn stones into bread, Jesus cited the book of Deuteronomy, 8:3, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The people of Jesus’ day wanted to make Him a secular king, not only to expel the Romans, but to give them bread, after He multiplied the loaves and fishes. “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” John 6:26 But His offer of Himself as the bread that comes down from heaven, they didn’t want, instead they were scandalized, and many of His disciples no longer walked with Him.

The issue of world hunger is a political playing piece, a carom that is zoomed all around the playing board of the self-avowed masters of the universe. Jesus said, “the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me.” Matthew 26:11. The issue of ending starvation, which was the main plot theme of the 1968 movie The Shoes of the Fisherman, revealed this continuing, strange anxiety about, not only feeding ourselves, but elaborate concern about the political economics of need while failing actually to feed the poor. Fifty years after the movie which influenced even the selection of Popes, no Pope himself has proposed to systematically eliminate world hunger, no American presidential ally of the Papacy has ever formulated a policy of using American military aircraft to food-bomb with excess American agricultural production, areas where deliberate starvation is used by local warlords as a political half-nelson against vulnerable populations.

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow	Sir John Stainer
1) Three Kings came riding from far away, Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar; Three Wise Men out of the East were they, And they travelled by night and they slept by day, For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.	2) The star was so beautiful, large and clear, That all the other stars of the sky Became a white mist in the atmosphere, And by this they knew that the coming was near Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy.
3) Three caskets of they bore on their saddle-bows, Three caskets of gold with golden keys; Their robes were of crimson silk with rows Of bells, pomegranates and furbelows, Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees.	4) And so the Three Kings rode into the West, Through the dusk of the night, over hill & dell, & sometimes they nodded with beard on breast, And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest, With the people they met at some wayside well.
5) “Of the child that is born,” said Baltasar, “Good people, I pray you, tell us the news; For we in the East have seen his star, And have ridden fast, and have ridden far, To find and worship the King of the Jews.”	6) And the people answered, “You ask in vain; We know of no King but Herod the Great!” They thought the Wise Men were men insane, As they spurred their horses across the plain, Like riders in haste, who cannot wait.
7) And when they came to Jerusalem, Herod the Great, who had heard this thing, Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them; And said, “Go down unto Bethlehem, And bring me tidings of this new king.”	8) So they rode away; and the star stood still, The only one in the grey of morn; Yes, it stopped—it stood still of its own free will, Right over Bethlehem on the hill, The city of David, where Christ was born.
9) And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard, Through the silent street, till their horses turned And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard; But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred, And only a light in the stable burned.	10) And cradled there in the scented hay, In the air made sweet by the breath of kine, The little child in the manger lay, The child, that would be king one day Of a kingdom not human, but divine.
11) His mother Mary of Nazareth Sat watching beside his place of rest, Watching the even flow of his breath, For the joy of life and the terror of death Were mingled together in her breast.	12) They laid their offerings at his feet: The gold was their tribute to a King, The frankincense, with its odor sweet, Was for the Priest, the Paraclete, The myrrh for the body’s burying.
13) And the mother wondered and bowed her head, And sat as still as a statue of stone, Her heart was troubled yet comforted, Remembering what the Angel had said Of an endless reign and of David’s throne.	14) Then the Kings rode out of the city gate, With a clatter of hoofs in proud array; But they went not back to Herod the Great, For they knew his malice and feared his hate, And returned to their homes by another way.

THE WISE MEN

G.K. Chesterton

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all the labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And serve the made gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly … it has hailed and snowed…
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
(… We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly, humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain.
And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.

Accurate account of an indisputable history documented in black & white, of planned cultural, intellectual and spiritual destruction, on the part of hidden elite forces.

The arenas are disparate, the one, Catholic liturgical music, the other, the curricula of public schools. The essential similarity is that powerful hidden interests have successfully acted to destroy the common weal.

We know why Catholic Liturgical Music was deliberately made ugly in the 1960s, deprecating the fine, vigorous, traditional Catholic choral tradition, breaching the walls of the ancient cultural edifice with the calculated philistinism of guitar Masses. It was an essential strategy of the movement to attack and destroy the Catholic Mass. This is documented history in the case of Archbishop Rembert Weakland, a highly educated and talented musician who knew exactly what he was doing fostering “Hootenany” Masses in the mid-1960s.

And we know why a similar process was planned and implemented in the period of 1880 to 1918, at the founding of mandatory, universal public education–with an unannounced agenda of propagating students’ educational failure–a design calculated to “crush the imagination” of school children at the behest of the better classes, natural supervisors of the lives of the great, unwashed masses. The complete set of base institutional features of public education–bells, attendance, location controls, intentional fostering of dependency rather than initiative, disorienting memorization of random, disconnected facts irrelevant to any vocational path but only as fodder for standardized testing itself a self-justifying dead-end, conscious disruption of students’ coherent attainment of authentic accomplishments in any specific field, fostering indifference, an arbitrary regime granting conditional esteem for those rated in the middle to fear elite rankers and despise the “dumb kids”–were all designed from the outset simply to regiment children for institutional efficiency, and precisely not to foster their individual development.

(Nineteenth century common people were oriented toward self-employment, guarantor with property ownership of independence from forced industrialization, as the Amish and the Catalan, Mondragon commune still do today. They generally enjoyed a fine, modest, middlebrow culture with high aspirations. Ordinary, common people often with little formal, institutional education, commonly only a few grades in school, were nevertheless possessed of a surprisingly high average culture level, based on primary education that looked for its model to the Christian acceptance of the classics of Western civilization, the good if not the great books prior to programmed curriculum deprecation 1915-1930. Their basic educational needs could easily be met in homeschools, and their extension in local community-controlled one-room schools, by an approximation of a mere 40 hours literacy instruction and 42 hours for basic numeracy. The common aspiration was to treat kids from 13 on under the expectation of self-reliant little adults rather than perpetually dependent children into middle age.)

It was for the purposes of handicapping the ordinary populations of Europe and America, to render them helpless, to ensure easy control, to regiment them for mass military service and factory employment, to eliminate small innovators’ perceived competition to financial capitalists for the accumulation of investment money, competition posed to the great financial families by average farmers, practical engineers and small entrepreneurs.

John Taylor Gatto documents this very long term process of deprecating curricula–colloquially termed “dumbing-down“–advocated and planned over an unimaginably long stretch of time, hundreds, indeed, thousands of years, beginning with of philosophical writings of Plato, Baruch Spinoza and the Kantian, Prussian philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

Queue to 1:09:42 – Napoleon remarked that “each corporal has a field marshal’s baton tucked in his rucksack”; that is, his explicit expectations were that, against the institutional inertia of the upper military officer hierarchy, small squads of line soldiers isolated on the battlefield were expected to violate orders and seize the situational initiative. This policy was credited by Fichte with causing the institutionally top-heavy Prussians’ defeat by the French in the Battle of Jena, 1806, and served as the philosophical basis for the total revolutionizing of the Prussian state, the retrenchment of institutional hierarchization over all lower classes, and Prussia’s remarkable rise dominance from 1870 until 1920. It would be difficult to overemphasize the far-reaching influence of the Prussian model on the educational planing of all nations of the world during the period of industrialization 1880-1930.

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The Barbed Dagger in the Heart of Harmony

A similar process of deliberate spiritual and intellectual destruction was implemented another in wave in the 1960s, targeted against dedicated Catholic religious culture. Bismarck’s 19^th century, atheist-Protestant kulturkampf against the Catholic Church had failed because Catholics stuck together; the enemy of souls’ solution was to attack the Church from within. Without the capitulation of the Church, the horrible wars of the 20^th century would not have been possible.

“All the trouble in the world is caused by things people know aren’t true.” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen spoke about a man converted on his death-bed, a man named William whose face was half-eaten away with cancer. William’s sister related his life history, that he delighted in deliberately corrupting young people, writing and distributing to them, pamphlets of poisonous ideas.

Archbishop Rembert Weakland, heresiarch of the decimation of culture, was centrally placed in this position, perfect to corrupt Catholic Liturgical music, as an expert in Gregorian plainchant, never-the-less, implacably opposed to its use in the Divine Liturgy. It requires someone who most precisely knows the truth, to most effectively devise and propagate lies which will be unknowingly repeated by the unwitting. And an essential element in this highly articulated, planned corruption, is that the proto-dolos, this founding Apate, personification of deceit, be able to find hidden weaknesses in the uninformed, weak places in their flesh with which to hook them.

One of the motives in telling his story, Weakland wrote [in his 2009 biography A Pilgrim in A Pilgrim Church], is that he is concerned about “revisionism,” and wants to tell the true story about his amazing career, where he was front and center at some of the most important events in the life of the Church in the latter half of the 20th century. He was most disastrously part of the liturgical “reform” that followed Vatican II.

Weakland’s admission that he is, and has been since his teenage years, a homosexual, is yet another indication that homosexual liturgical revolutionaries were the driving force behind the demolition of the Roman Rite of the Mass.

That process began more than five years before the revised Missal of Pope Paul VI, the Novus Ordo.

The late Msgr. Richard Schuler of St. Agnes Church in St. Paul, Minn., had the misfortune of observing Weakland closely as he led the liturgical wrecking crew that had commandeered the newly formed Church Music Association of America in 1964. Msgr. Schuler wrote in A Chronicle of the Reform: Catholic Music in the 20th Century (Sacred Music: 1990) that Weakland and his co-conspirators around the world were united in their opposition to the liturgical renewal called for by Vatican II. They routinely ignored appeals from the Holy See to stop their “useless and harmful” innovations. They carried on a massive public relations and propaganda campaign in both the secular and Catholic press, as well as in deceptive, official- sounding communications to priests and religious, distorting what the Church desired in terms of sacred art and music.

Continue reading “Rembert Weakland Promoted Hootenany Masses to Undercut the Catholic Priesthood”

The first beast of the Apocalypse, which represents freemasonry, is personified in the antichrist, and the second, which represents ecclesiastical freemasonry, in the false prophet.

Thu Dec 10, 2020 – 8:38 am EST

December 10, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — There is a prophecy of St. Francis of Assisi in an authentic and renowned source, in which he speaks of the appearance of an apostatic antipope in the time of tribulation (“futurae tribulationis”).[1]

It says “that someone who is not canonically elected and is infected with heretical wickedness, at the turning point of that tribulation raised to the papacy, would make a refined effort to give many the death of his error to drink” (“quod aliquis, non canonice electus et haeretica pravitate infectus, in articulo tribulationis illius ad papatum assumptus, multis mortem sui erroris sagaciter propinare moliretur”).[2] St. Francis of Assisi predicted that this figure “tyrannically usurps the papacy” (“papatum usurpare tyrannice”).[3]

It is in this sense that in our time St. Padre Pio has entrusted to his spiritual son, the famous exorcist Don Gabriele Amorth, the following dramatic words: “It is satan who has entered the womb of the Church, and within a short while, he will rule over a false church.”[4]

The well-known Spanish journalist José María Zavala asked Don Gabriele Amorth about it in more detail, and summarized the conclusion of the dialog as follows: “There were two recurring and interrelated themes: the great apostasy in the Church from its apex — in accordance with the testimony of Cardinal Ciappi — and the introduction of the devil to the head of the Church by means of a pope under the control of satan.”[6]

In this context, Zavala referred to the exact correspondence of these words to the statement of Frère Michel, a great expert on the message of Fatima and author of a trilogy on the subject. He stated: “It will be the time of the decisive battle between the Virgin and the devil. A flood of diabolical confusion will spread throughout the world. Satan will penetrate the highest levels of the Church. This will be the great apostasy announced for the last days, […] the ‘false prophet’ who betrays the Church in favor of the ‘beast,’ according to the prophecy of the Apocalypse.”[7]

In fact, as Sr. Lucia herself pointed out[8], the secret is revealed in the last book of Holy Scripture.

In that book, there is talk of the fiery red dragon (cf. Apoc 12:3), which is manifest in atheistic communism, and of the black beast (cf. Apoc 13:1-2), which represents freemasonry.

Then it says: “Another beast came up out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the power of the first beast before its eyes. It made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast” (Apoc 13:11-12).

The beast, which looks like a lamb, represents the ecclesiastical freemasonry that has penetrated into the interior of the temple — especially into the hierarchy. Its goal is to overcome the Catholic Church from within. It wants and achieves for a short time the creation of an idol — a false christ and a false church.[9]

The reference to the hierarchy of the Church is crucial, in which the mitre — with two horns — indicates the fullness of the priesthood. The beast that comes up out of the earth looks like a servant of Christ, the Lamb, but is a servant of satan, the dragon.

Thus, if the second beast is ecclesiastical freemasonry, it is personified and literally elevated to the summit in the false prophet at its head[10], who is expressly designated as such in three passages of the Apocalypse (Apoc 16:13; 19:20; 20:10).

He is the pseudo-religious leader of the anti-church. Through grave heresies and despicable sacrileges he advances the great apostasy from the top. He deceives and cheats the inhabitants of the earth (cf. Apoc 13:14) and wants to lead people to worship the antichrist, whose direct forerunner he is (cf. Apoc 13:12).

The former Bishop of Fulda, the exegete of the New Testament Prof. Dr. Eduard Schick, has also pointed out this dimension in his work on the Apocalypse: “The second beast’s mission is the unlimited seizure of power by the first; for this purpose it is ordered and equipped by the first; it is to lead people to recognize the first as what it claims to be, namely God himself. All his propaganda aims at this in words and deeds […] It is a matter of religiously transfiguring the world power of the antichrist and getting mankind to pay him cultic veneration in turn.”

Bishop Schick accordingly speaks of a satanic trinity. It consists of the dragon and the two beasts.

The first beast, which represents freemasonry, is personified in the antichrist, and the second, which represents ecclesiastical freemasonry, in the false prophet.[12] Their goal is the unrestricted rule of the world, the kingdom of the devil on earth.

“The rulers of the world, who had placed themselves in the service of the ‘satanic trinity,’ believe that the favorable opportunity has come to lead together the final destructive strike against the Church of Christ on earth. The satanic triad doubles its propaganda for this purpose.”[13]

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen made it clear in this context that this agenda is marked by the establishment of a counter-church: “It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. There will be a mystical body of the antichrist, which will resemble in all its externals the Mystical Body of Christ.”[14] Accordingly, an anti-church at its head necessarily needs an anti-pope, who is the false prophet of the Apocalypse.

The hostile aspiration wants to seduce people to “accept a new religion without the cross, a liturgy without the hereafter, a religion to destroy religion, or a politics that is a religion.”[15]

Blessed Anna Katharina Emmerich, the great German mystic, has seen and described the rise of the pernicious anti-church. She “saw how […] another dark church arose in Rome.”[16] In doing so, she used a drastic term that clearly demonstrates the apocalyptic extent of the event: “But the whole house was dark and black, and all that happened in it was darkness and gloom […] I also saw how very bad the consequences of this after-church would be. I saw it grow, I saw many heretics of all ranks go to the city.”[17]

Blessed Anna Katharina Emmerich saw the closure of the churches and the great distress of the Catholic communities everywhere.[18] She described the spread of the “dark after-church” as an implementation of the antichristian decisive struggle: “The sect receives its signature from the apocalyptic beast which, risen from the sea, dwells with it and drives it to fight against the flock of Christ.”[19]

Against the background of this apocalyptic period, the famous message of La Salette echoes like a loud and insistent warning: “Rome will lose faith and become the seat of the antichrist”[20].

November 30, 2020
St. Andrew, Apostle, brother of St. Peter
Fr. Frank Unterhalt

[1] Bartolomeo da Pisa, De conformitate vitae Beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu, Liber II, Fruct. VI, Pars II, 3, in: Analecta Franciscana sive Chronica aliaque varia documenta ad historiam Fratrum Minorum spectantia, Edita a Patribus Collegii S. Bonaventurae, Romae 1912, Tomus V, p. 167.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] José María Zavala, El secreto mejor guardado de Fátima, Spanish edition, Planeta Publishing 2017, p. 231.

[5] Cf. ibid., p. 20.

[6] Ibid., p. 267.

[7] Ibid., pp. 83–84.

[8] Cf. ibid., p. 271.

[9] Cf. also Rudolf Graber, Athanasius und die Kirche unserer Zeit [St. Athanasius and the Church of Our Time], Abensberg 1987 (11th ed.), p. 38.

[10] Cf. also Augustin Arndt (ed.), Die Heilige Schrift des Alten und Neuen Testamentes. Mit dem Texte der Vulgata [The Holy Scripture of the Old and the New Testament. With the Texts of the Vulgata], Regensburg. Rom & New York 1901, 3. vol., p. 979, footnote 18.

[11] Eduard Schick, Geistliche Schriftlesung. Die Apokalypse [A Spiritual Reading of Scripture: the Apocalypse], Düsseldorf 1971, pp. 149–150.

[12] Cf. also ibid., pp. 141–142.148–149.

[13] Ibid., p. 175.

[14] Fulton J. Sheen, Der Kommunismus und das Gewissen der westlichen Welt [Communism and the Conscience of the West], Berlin 1950, p. 12.

[15] Ibid., S. 11.

[16] Karl Erhard Schmöger, Das Leben der gottseligen Anna Katharina Emmerich, 2. vol., Freiburg im Breisgau 1870, p. 492.

[17] Ibid., p. 493.

[18] Cf. ibid., p. 494.

[19] Ibid., p. 501.

[20] Johannes Maria Höcht, Die Große Botschaft von La Salette [The Great Message of La Salette], Stein am Rhein 2004 (8th ed.), p. 161.

Friday, December 11, 2020

Bishops Schneider, Strickland on the Morality of Vaccines

Written by  +Athanasius Schneider

On the moral illicitness of the use of vaccines made from cells derived from aborted human fetuses

In recent weeks, news agencies and various information sources have reported that, in response to the Covid-19 emergency, some countries have produced vaccines using cell lines from aborted human fetuses. In other countries, such vaccines are being planned.

A growing chorus of churchmen (bishops’ conferences, individual bishops, and priests) has said that, in the event that no alternative vaccine using ethically licit substances is available, it would be morally permissible for Catholics to receive vaccines made from the cell lines of aborted babies. Supporters of this position invoke two documents of the Holy See: the first, from the Pontifical Academy for Life, is titled, “Moral reflections on vaccines prepared from cells derived from aborted human fetuses” and was issued on June 9, 2005; the second, an Instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is titled, “Dignitas Personae, on certain bioethical questions” and was issued on September 8, 2008. Both of these documents allow for the use of such vaccines in exceptional cases and for a limited time, on the basis of what in moral theology is called remote, passive, material cooperation with evil. The aforementioned documents assert that Catholics who use such vaccines at the same time have “the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available.”

In the case of vaccines made from the cell lines of aborted human fetuses, we see a clear contradiction between the Catholic doctrine to categorically, and beyond the shadow of any doubt, reject abortion in all cases as a grave moral evil that cries out to heaven for vengeance (see Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 2268, n. 2270), and the practice of regarding vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines as morally acceptable in exceptional cases of “urgent need” — on the grounds of remote, passive, material cooperation. To argue that such vaccines can be morally licit if there is no alternative is in itself contradictory and cannot be acceptable for Catholics.

One ought to recall the following words of Pope John Paul II regarding the dignity of unborn human life: “The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights — for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture — is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.” (Christifideles Laici, 38). Using vaccines made from the cells of murdered unborn children contradicts a “maximum determination” to defend unborn life.

The theological principle of material cooperation is certainly valid and may be applied to a whole host of cases (e.g. in paying taxes, the use of products made from slave labor, and so on). However, this principle can hardly be applied to the case of vaccines made from fetal cell lines, because those who knowingly and voluntarily receive such vaccines enter into a kind of concatenation, albeit very remote, with the process of the abortion industry. The crime of abortion is so monstrous that any kind of concatenation with this crime, even a very remote one, is immoral and cannot be accepted under any circumstances by a Catholic once he has become fully aware of it. One who uses these vaccines must realize that his body is benefitting from the “fruits” (although steps removed through a series of chemical processes) of one of mankind’s greatest crimes.

Any link to the abortion process, even the most remote and implicit, will cast a shadow over the Church’s duty to bear unwavering witness to the truth that abortion must be utterly rejected. The ends cannot justify the means. We are living through one of the worst genocides known to man. Millions upon millions of babies across the world have been slaughtered in their mother’s womb, and day after day this hidden genocide continues through the abortion industry, biomedical research and fetal technology, and a push by governments and international bodies to promote such vaccines as one of their goals. Now is not the time for Catholics to yield; to do so would be grossly irresponsible. The acceptance of these vaccines by Catholics, on the grounds that they involve only a “remote, passive and material cooperation” with evil, would play into the hands of the Church’s enemies and weaken her as the last stronghold against the evil of abortion.

What else can a vaccine derived from fetal cell lines be other than a violation of the God-given Order of Creation? For it is based on a serious violation of this Order through the murder of an unborn child. Had this child not been denied the right to life, had his cells (which have been further cultivated several times in the lab) not been made available for the production of a vaccine, they could not be marketed. We therefore have here a double violation of God’s holy Order: on the one hand, through the abortion itself, and on the other hand, through the heinous business of trafficking and marketing the remains of aborted children. Yet, this double disregard for the divine Order of Creation can never be justified, not even on the grounds of preserving the health of a person or society through such vaccines. Our society has created a substitute religion: health has been made the highest good, a substitute god to whom sacrifices must be offered — in this case, through a vaccine based on the death of another human life.

In examining the ethical questions surrounding vaccines, we have to ask ourselves: How and why did all of this become possible? Was there truly no alternative? Why did murder-based technology emerge in medicine, whose purpose is instead to bring life and health? Bio-medical research that exploits the innocent unborn and uses their bodies as “raw material” for the purpose of vaccines seems more akin to cannibalism than medicine. We also ought to consider that, for some in the bio-medical industry, the cell lines of unborn children are a “product,” the abortionist and vaccine manufacturer are the “supplier,” and the recipients of the vaccine are “consumers.” Technology based on murder is rooted in hopelessness and ends in despair. We must resist the myth that “there is no alternative.” On the contrary, we must proceed with the hope and conviction that alternatives exist, and that human ingenuity, with the help of God, can discover them. This is the only way to pass from darkness to light, and from death to life.

The Lord said that in the end times even the elect will be seduced (cf. Mk. 13:22). Today, the entire Church and all Catholic faithful must urgently seek to be strengthened in the doctrine and practice of the faith. In confronting the evil of abortion, more than ever Catholics must “abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thess. 5:22). Bodily health is not an absolute value. Obedience to the law of God and the eternal salvation of the souls must be given primacy. Vaccines derived from the cells of cruelly murdered unborn children are clearly apocalyptic in character and may possibly foreshadow the mark of the beast (see Rev. 13:16).

Some churchmen in our day reassure the faithful by affirming that receiving a Covid-19 vaccine derived from the cell lines of an aborted child is morally licit if an alternative is not available. They justify their assertion on the basis of “material and remote cooperation” with evil. Such affirmations are extremely anti-pastoral and counterproductive, especially when one considers the increasingly apocalyptic character of the abortion industry, and the inhuman nature of some biomedical research and embryonic technology. Now more than ever, Catholics categorically cannot encourage and promote the sin of abortion, even in the slightest, by accepting these vaccines. Therefore, as Successors of the Apostles and Shepherds responsible for the eternal salvation of souls, we consider it impossible to be silent and maintain an ambiguous attitude regarding our duty to resist with “maximum of determination” (Pope John Paul II) against the “unspeakable crime” of abortion (II Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, 51).

This statement was written at the advice and counsel of doctors and scientists from various countries. A substantial contribution also came from the laity: from grandmothers, grandfathers, fathers and mothers of families, and from young people. All of those consulted — independent of age, nationality and profession — unanimously and almost instinctively rejected the idea of a vaccine derived from the cell lines of aborted children. Furthermore, they considered the justification offered for using such vaccines (i.e. “material remote cooperation”) as weak and unsuitable. This is comforting and, at the same time, very revealing: their unanimous response is a further demonstration of the strength of reason and the sensus fidei.

More than ever, we need the spirit of the confessors and martyrs who avoided the slightest suspicion of collaboration with the evil of their own age. The Word of God says: “Be simple as children of God without reproach in the midst of a depraved and perverse generation, in which you must shine like lights in the world” (Phil. 2, 15).

December 12, 2020, Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe

Cardinal Janis Pujats, Metropolitan archbishop emeritus of Riga

+ Tomash Peta, Metropolitan archbishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana

+ Jan Pawel Lenga, Archbishop/bishop emeritus of Karaganda

+ Joseph E. Strickland, Bishop of Tyler (USA)

+ Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana

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