Written by Hillary White
Pope to Purge What’s Left of Catholic Nuns
More evidence keeps pouring into my email inbox that the current administration of the Congregation for Religious[1] is planning on using the provisions of Cor orans to totally rewrite the nature of contemplative women’s religious life, particularly the “conservative” and traditional communities, in the name of the “New Paradigm” of VaticanTwoism. [Editor’s Note:”Cor Orans” (“Praying Heart”) is the title of an April 1, 2018 document that Implements instructions on how to apply Pope Francis’ 2016 Apostolic Constitution – “Vultum Dei Quaerere” (“Seek the Face of God”) addressed to Catholic women religious in contemplative communities. MJM]
As I have written many times elsewhere, the one uniform characteristic of the current pontificate is the purge. It is clear now that Jorge Bergoglio was elected by a group of 1960s progressives to bring about the final removal of the last elements within Catholicism that have resisted the Vatican II revolution. After 50 years of ambiguity, of the two implacably opposed “paradigms” living in an uneasy truce within the same institution, those few recalcitrants left who refused to accept the new liturgical forms, new theological “formulations,” the new disciplines are being forced either to conform or leave.
In all Catholic institutions the so-called “conservative” middle ground, the safe and reasonable compromise position that was allowed to exist under the last two pontificates has evaporated. As Amoris Laetitia will have the effect of forcing out priests and seminarians who refuse to desecrate the Holy Eucharist by giving it to unrepentant adulterers, so Cor orans will be used to remove “conservative” contemplative nuns who have refused to adopt the full Vatican II programme of “renewal” of religious life.
We must never forget the appeasement of LCWR by the Congregation for Religious after Pope Francis’ election. The new prefect[2], Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, effectively apologised to the world’s most notoriously heretical organisation of modernist religious, soothing feathers that had been ruffled by his predecessor’s abortive attempt at bringing them back to Catholicity. Contrast this with the ruthless suppression by that office of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Immaculate at the same time, and the programme becomes obvious.
This week I received another a document that included extensive quotes from a 2015 speech given by the Congregation’s Secretary, Jose Rodrigues Carballo, in which he darkly implied that traditional forms of Catholic religious life had “served their purpose” and must be allowed to die out so that something as yet undefined, but assuredly new and wonderful, could replace them.
At a meeting of religious formators in April 2015 in Rome, Carballo said quite clearly that it is Vatican II that must take precedence over the classical charisms of religious life.
“With this explicit reference to the Second Vatican Council, we point to our profound conviction that the council is the point of reference, non-negotiable, in the formation to the consecrated life.”
In his speech in Avila[3], Spain a month later, Carballo spoke even more plainly, denouncing the “many fundamentalist groups” in the religious life, saying, “This is not of the Spirit.” “Vatican II is our compass” he said, adding that the pope “takes his lead from Vatican II.”
Carballo said that with the collapse of vocations over the last 50 years, it is clear that the forms of religious life that have been known through the last 20 centuries have “done their task in the Church.” This, he said is a time of “purification” for the religious life. He called “some forms” of religious life “antiquated” and claimed that they “say hardly anything to people today.” These, he said “will not remain even though they have [had] a certain success.” [emphasis added.]
“As with the Gospel,” Carballo said, the charisms of religious life “are on-going,” they “develop” and “continue to grow over time.” He said, “Some forms are dying out. But new forms are rising.”
With regard to the living of their charism, “The church asks us not only for fidelity but for creative fidelity,” he said.
He asked the assembled Carmelites, friars and nuns, “What does Teresa want now?” and “we don’t want to walk as we did 500 years ago.” The charism “goes forward.” He denounced those who respond “We have always done it this way,” saying that “even good people need changes,” and being “faithful does not mean staying the same.”
As is usual with Catholic progressives, he went on to spin the total collapse of religious life since Vatican II as a positive, comparing the current “chaos” in religious life with the conditions before Creation, urging those present to “think of Genesis” and to imagine “a new creation” that is coming soon.
Speeches and documents from the Congregation for Religious often employ the phrase “creative fidelity” or “dynamic fidelity” when speaking of the ancient orders or charisms. At this meeting, Carballo clarified this, saying it means that being “faithful does not mean staying the same.”
This “updating”, he said, will be brought about through formation. “Only formation transforms the heart and mind.”
Given these hints, what Cor orans tells us is that with regard to the female contemplative life, the progressives, who expected the “chaos” of the post-conciliar upheaval they engineered to bring to birth a “new church,” are tired of waiting.
With this pope they have been given a mandate to crush the remaining hold-outs and, instead of “singing,” to bluntly force “the new church into being.” Cor orans’ language, put together with Carballo’s clear messages in his various speeches, has made it unmistakable; this is a purge.
And the document is equally clear about its status as a piece of legislation. It isn’t a suggestion; superiors are already reporting receiving messages from Rome, and the existing federations and associations, that they are to implement it “immediately”. It mandates membership in a federation, with that body’s president and council having unprecedented powers over finances, new foundations, formation and, crucially, decisions about the suppression of monasteries.
And the religious orders themselves are already on board. A document from the same meeting, the 2015 General Chapter of the Discalced Carmelites, blamed the imminent collapse of the order on the failure of the religious to get with the Vatican II programme.
[…]
[COMMENT: So the General Chapter of the Discalced Carmelites blames the religious’ failure to attract vocations on not getting with Vatican 2… whereas the greatest failure of all time was that selfsame Vatican 2 Council ? This just gets crazier and crazier every minute. Read the rest of this pope purge article at The Remnant, HERE.]
How about purging the progressive women religious orders; they are already dying out. They don’t have the numbers and young women wonder why they would want to join them. The new conservative orders, much to the modernists dismay, are getting recognition by the general public and young women who see that feminism doesn’t work (constant heartache and no satisfaction). So will the conservative orders be able to exist under these new papal orders or will they have to go underground??!! Just doesn’t make sense to ruin a good thing that’s going on with the conservatives religious orders!
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My suspicions of this Pope are more profound than ‘doesn’t make sense’. I think all the traditional orders should keep very quiet because, as we know, they are attracting young people and vocations. The Pope, when they succeed in attracting young people closes them down, (see FFI). Tell me, even for a committed modernist, what true Catholic would close down orders that attract vocations. It looks to me like he wants to close down the Church.
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My heart is literally breaking as I read this. My daughter is entering a traditional,Latin only (Mass,prayers etc…) Carmelite monastery in September. I pray with all my heart that she will be protected from desecration of this beautiful,holy,desperately needed, contemplative Order. Dear God in Heaven and all His Angels and Saints and especially Our Lady of Carmel, have pity on us.
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Sadly it is not only the Traditional Orders that will suffer. Small communities will virtually disappear, and those that manage to survive will find their financial matters transferred to an overseer. There are many non-traditional communities that, through age and lack of vocations now live in small groups in private houses. There are also Carmels that have less than 6 religious left. It is very very worrying for these that are cash rich (from the sale of convents and lands) but number poor. The facts I quote refer to the United Kingdom; the US might be faring better.
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This is such a monumental tragedy, it is hard to sum up one’s shock and sorrow in words to describe it. Gradually the tools to do away with religious orders, large and small, are being put into motion by the destroyers of Francis’ church!
How could anyone who loves the True Church and who recognises Her Divine mission on earth – and possessing only a minimal understanding of the importance of contemplative prayer – do such a wicked thing as put the axe to cut down the very roots of the Church? It’s pure evil.
For that is what contemplative religious orders are, the roots of the vine planted by Our Lord Jesus Christ. Without the holy nuns who daily intercede, sacrifice and pray for the needs of the Church Militant, we will die! St John Paul II called them the “power-houses” that sustain the whole Church.
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In short, we need a crusade by all continents to pray for vocations all the more!!!! Like the Rosary Crusade just recently. Rally the people!!!
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Interesting how Hillary White reports that this ‘Cor orans New Paradigm’ comes from an anti-women “South American Dictatorship” mentality! It explains why nuns are being targetted with these bullying tactics far more than male religious orders.
Whilst it is evident that all religious communities that fully embraced “the spirit” of Vatican II (a.k.a. Modernism) have been languishing and disappearing for years, the Traditional orders that rejected that evil “spirit” were not, especially the contemplative orders, and Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Female religious orders in nations that have still not become swamped with the secular, consumerist ideology so rampant in the West, are also thriving.
However, even in the West, the most orthodox and truly Catholic religious orders where the sublime ancient Liturgy is celebrated, had been enjoying a real “springtime” … up to 2013. This is the case with both male and female orders. But this success of the traditional orders doesn’t please this current Pope and his buddies. One only has to look at their attempts to break up the FFI and that new Belgian Order of The Holy Apostles that we talked about recently! How long before the axe is taken to the FSSP and the ICKSP ?
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Cathy (@ 02:32), prayers for you, your daughter and the traditional Carmelite monastery she will enter in September. Please God, all will be well…
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Who is to be blamed for the scorched earth attack on religious orders? Does anyone, even the most fanatic of ultramontane apparatchiks, dispute that a fish rots from the head? Would either St JP II or Benedict XVI allow it to happen? Why should we discard their guidance for something new?
I came across this article today by an orthodox Catholic. It will resonate with most (not all) people who read Catholicism Pure & Simple, although I do not pretend to speak for CP&S:
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There’s an old song
my grandfather used to sing
that has the question,
“…or would you rather be a fish?”
In the same song
is the same question,
but with a donkey and a frog,
But the one I hear sometimes
in my head is the fish one.
Just that one line.
Would you rather be a fish?
As if the rest of the song
didn’t have to be there.
Borrowed / inspired – not stolen from William Carlos Williams, Paterson, New Jersey.
Happy Canada Day to anyone else out there who lives here legally.
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Rutherford, New Jersey, actually, but the above is a gloss on his 5 volume poem Paterson.
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The Catholic Bells
Tho’ I’m no Catholic
I listen hard when the bells
in the yellow-brick tower
of their new church
ring down the leaves
ring in the frost upon them
and the death of the flowers
ring out the grackle
toward the south, the sky
darkened by them, ring in
the new baby of Mr. and Mrs.
Krantz which cannot
for the fat of its cheeks
open well its eyes, ring out
the parrot under its hood
jealous of the child
ring in Sunday morning
and old age which adds as it
takes away. Let them ring
only ring! over the oil
painting of a young priest
on the church wall advertisng
last week’s Novena to St.
Anthony, ring for the lame
young man in black with
gaunt cheeks and wearing a
Derby hat, who is hurrying
to 11 o’clock Mass (the
grapes still hanging to
the vines along the nearby
Concordia Halle like broken
teeth in the head of an
old man) Let them ring
for the eyes and ring for
the hands and ring for
the children of my friend
who no longer hears
them ring but with a smile
and in a low voice speaks
of the decisions of her
daughter and the proposals
and betrayals of her
husband’s friends. O bells
ring for the ringing!
the beginnng and the end
of th ringing! Ring ring
ring ring ring ring ring!
Catholic bells !
William Carlos Williams
(Another medical doctor with Catholic sympathies)
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The once great teaching order of the Sisters of Mercy ( now reduced to about 7-8, 70-80 year old’s) can now be seen dressed in their power suits attending the local Casino ( Perth Western Australia)
And/or attending the latest seminar on climate control. The Franciscan Sisters of the immaculate have disappeared from WA as have the Friars. Run out of town for being too Catholic…
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We have the Sisters of Mercy in Sydney (who, of course, have no vocations), and they wear “elegant” (in a 1980’s way), scarves, together with a massive amount of make-up. They look very sexy…
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Oxymoronic word: sexy sisters.
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Sad… the mystical Body of Christ, the CHURCH, is being attack by evil spirits….I pray that the strict contemplative life of nuns who live in silence and solitude and fixing their attention on Jesus daily, will not be asked to turn their back to Jesus and turn to take communications with public. These contemplative nuns represent the Heart of the mystical Body of Christ, to take this Heart out will bring the mystical Body of Christ to die….sad indeed….Please pray that our contemplative nuns will be preserved to live in close union with our dear Lord as the outer members of Christ’s mystical Body like, the brain, eyes, mouth, hand & feet etc. etc which active consecrated religious, Priests etc . represent, can also do their mission to spread the good new of Christ in the world.
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