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From the Pastor: Our Most Beloved Saints are in Hell?
For the last two weeks, I have been grousing about the news coming from both the secular world and the Church. Even though I have put up a “news force field” around myself, some of it still manages to slip through. Case in point: The French Bishop Pascal Roland has notified everyone visiting the shrine at Ars (the city where St. John Marie Vianney, patron Saint of priests, was the pastor) that priests may celebrate Mass in any language as long as they are celebrating the Novus Ordo Mass. The Traditional Latin Mass, though, may only be celebrated in a crypt (out of sight of all the Catholics who would be scandalized by such a sight!) without any people in attendance. And please, leave a donation for the use of the facilities. Do you know which form of the Mass St. John Vianney celebrated? I’ll give you a hint. He died in 1859. Of the two forms of the Mass (NOM and TLM), only the TLM had been celebrated for 1400 years or more before his birth. Of the two forms, the TLM was still the only one being celebrated 110 years after his death. Therefore, the TLM produced all of the Saints and converts throughout the world during all of those centuries. But now, at the very place where the famous Curé of Ars celebrated the TLM, only a solitary, hidden priest may celebrate it and no laity may attend. Newsflash: TLMers are treated like lepers. Another bit of Church news also made it through my barrier. This gem is from this side of the ocean and shows that lepers are sometimes treated much better than those who want the TLM. A recording of a homily publicly delivered just last weekend is making the rounds. The preacher is a retired bishop who joked that he is nimis stultum to understand Latin even though he studied it for six years. Self-deprecating humor is good for a laugh from the congregation, but he was deprecating the Latin Mass rather than himself. He didn’t decry not knowing Vietnamese, Spanish, Polish, Lithuanian, Portuguese, or any other of the many languages in which the Novus Ordo Mass is celebrated within the diocese he is residing in after having headed it up for more than two decades. No, he was clearly maligning the Traditional Latin form of Mass rather than simply the language of the Mass. He explained the parable of the wheat and the weeds by inserting the Latin Mass and those who want it into the story. Here is a transcribed tiny fraction of what he said, and it is not being taken out of context. “There are people making seeds that don’t like the fact that the Mass we celebrate is no longer in Latin. Latin! Which I grew up with in my childhood, didn’t understand then, don’t understand now after six years of studying Latin. (laughter) But then Christ’s presence comes to the Altar here in plain sight instead of hidden to all by the priest who has his back to us. These are weeds. These are bad weeds that are being planted. In our midst. There are people, movements which are planting seeds in the Body of Christ, which is the Church.” In that parable, the one responsible for the bad weeds in the Master’s (God’s) field of good wheat was his enemy (Satan). When the harvest time comes, the weeds will be collected and burned. The bad weeds are the heretics, unrepentant evil-doers, and antichrists, used by the devil to infiltrate God’s Church, pervert His teachings, and corrupt His children with false morals and worship. These bad weeds will be sent to hell on Judgment Day. This bishop equated those who celebrate, attend, or even simply desire the TLM with Satan and his demons. He directly implied that they are evil and will burn in hell for all of eternity. He later explained that the parable is one of mercy and a reminder that we “should refrain from judging.” You can’t make this stuff up! He did wrap up by reminding all of the TLMers listening to him, “While things will be sorted out someday, there’s still time. If we are among those who are tempted to plant those bad seeds, there’s still time for us to change.” Yes, dump the TLM if you wish to get to Heaven. I wish that St. John Vianney, who struggled with Latin himself, had had this good bishop warn him how much spiritual damage he was doing to the people and to his own soul by giving them the TLM. He may have refrained from sowing those demonic seeds. According to the “logic” of this sermon, St. John Vianney went to hell and took the whole town of Ars with him. I wonder how many priests since then have turned to that vile man, their patron Saint, and prayed to him, mistakenly thinking that he is in Heaven since the Church proclaimed him a Saint, when, obviously, “Saint” must really mean “damned TLM priest.” Of course, all of the other “Saints” who celebrated or attended the Traditional Latin Mass from the earliest days of its celebration must be in hell as well, so let that be a lesson to you! Rejoice in this good news! Two bishops, one in France and one in the USA, are spiritually joined together, destroying the TLM in order to save the souls of those who want it. The evil that St. John Vianney spread may soon be conquered! The world needs more such merciful bishops who will denigrate the TLM and berate its adherents, for, after all, every single faithful Catholic who died before Advent of 1969 is now and for always, like the bad weeds they were, evidently burning in hell. God, save us from Sainthood! With prayers for your holiness, Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka From the Pastor: How Do You Do It?
Last week I wrote about some of the news I was hearing and reading. Both the secular news and that coming from the Church are disheartening. I said that I wasn’t planning on reading any more news while I was away and I meant it. Yet I still got an earful simply by having the radio on while driving, for even Relevant Radio has news breaks. To those of you who spend hours every day listening to or watching the news, I ask this very serious question: How do you do it? Doesn’t it steal your joy? Doesn’t it lead to hopelessness? Powerlessness? Constant anger and resentment? Do yourself a favor and turn it off and tune it out to the best of your ability. You don’t need to be a prophet to know at least the near future: In the Church, the Syndod on Synodality will be a fiasco, as the unfaithful participants are the promoted messengers. The new kissing cardinal-to-be will endorse heresy and condemn orthodoxy. Bishop Strickland’s persecution for “not being nice” will keep other bishops from speaking the truth even as evil becomes more blatant. China will continue to persecute actual Catholics while their own communist “catholics” will be coddled by Rome. Fr. Rupnik will keep his faculties and his $$$ but will have to be more discreet in his “undercover” work since the Jesuits will not be able to cover for him as meticulously as before. And, as a segue into the current secular issues, the mainstream media and politicians will continue to hate the Catholic Church and will do all they can to promote immoral clergy while simultaneously mocking and berating the clergy and laity who strive to uphold morality. Also in the secular world, you already know that the media will do all they can to denounce Trump and anyone associated with him, not for his real moral shortcomings (for they actually like his immorality) but for all sorts of imaginary and delusive offenses. Hunter Biden will be protected until his father is no longer useful as a tool against Trump. Both political parties will act like they contain the fullness of morality and will only pretend that there is a war going on between them—one of good vs evil—while all members of both sides suck deeply on the breast of anyone who will enrich them, regardless of the cost to the country. The right will be censored by the left (even Country songs are no longer safe!) while the left decries the censorship of the right. The news will continue to lie to protect its largest advertisers. Social media will continue to shadowban and outright cancel anyone the government tells them to. Fake women (males, but certainly not real men) will continue to steal athletic awards and even beauty pageants from females while feminists cheer on their degrading actions. And, bringing this section to a close by combining both Church and secular news once again, so-called “Catholic” schools, colleges, and universities will lead the way in the moral degradation of your children and grandchildren as they try to out-secularize the secular schools, colleges, and universities. Ok. Now you don’t need to watch the news for a few more months. Or years. Except for the weather. It is summer in Florida. It will be hot and humid with a good chance of thundershowers. Now you don’t need anything more. By the time you read this, I will be back to my normal schedule. I won’t be driving as much as I did last week so I won’t be listening to so much bad news. I really do recommend that you take a break from the news as well. It was anything but uplifting or even helpful. I listened because there are only so many rosaries I can actually pray (instead of just going through the motions) a day. I liked listening to some of the Relevant Radio shows when I could tune in that program. I only found one station playing classical music but it went out of range pretty quickly. I listened to country and classic rock and I even heard the country song that was subsequently banned by Country Music Television (a channel I have never heard of before) because the artist, Jason Aldean (a man I had never heard of before), turned out to be a Trump supporter, so his song (Try that in a small town) about how, in a small town, you won’t get away with the horrific and immoral but now-normal things that make up big city life, had to be labeled as racist, white supremist, homophobic, sexist, and orange. Or something like that. I took it as simply a song about how people living in small towns stick up for one another and for (for the most part, anyway) old-fashioned morality. I would guess that a large number of country music artists and listeners support Trump and support small-town life. Is CMT pulling a Bud Light? I hope Jason becomes a millionaire because of the hatred shown by the big city leftists (a pretty good guess on my part as to who would do this) who canceled him. On my time off I drove around Florida visiting people and places I rarely get to see. From Crystal River to Miami, from St. Petersburg to Palatka, I drove and listened and returned home. Here’s this priest’s take on this one particular aspect of my travels: listening to hours of confessions is preferable to listening to hours of the news! The sins I hear in the confessional are from repentant sinners who crave and then receive God’s mercy. Sins heard on the news are generally from braggarts and hooligans who willfully embrace and promote their sins, distancing themselves from God. What a difference! With prayers for your holiness, Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka From the Pastor: Don’t Read This Article!
This week I have had the opportunity to sit back and relax a little. I have spent some of that time perusing the news, both Catholic and secular. I am not sure if it was a good idea, though! Here are some of the “highlights” of world events. Fr. James Martin, LGBTSJ, has been again given special honors by being named as one of the official Synod of All Synods US officials. He is the only non-bishop chosen by Francis to represent the US. But rest assured, the news organizations nearly unanimously proclaim, the Synod will not and can not produce any moral teachings that are not Catholic. After all, that Fr. Martin’s entire identity is wrapped up in convoluting Church moral teachings of the sexual nature doesn’t mean that he will vote in favor of mortal sin. Likewise, Francis’ hand-picked Cardinal McElroy may not vote for women’s ordination, although he has publicly stated that he wants the Synod to do so. The same logic will also have us believe that Cardinal Cupich, another of Francis’ personally chosen members of the US delegation, will now throw his support behind Eucharistic Processions and Traditional Latin Masses. The rest of the group chosen (even though the US Bishops elected their own delegates without including these men) can also be counted on to fully uphold Catholic Church teachings to the same degree. Uh-huh. But enough of this. There is much more news to consider. Not that this paragraph has anything to do with the above paragraph, but Disney+ (the “+” must be the one from LGBTQI+) has a new show in the works, called “Pauline.” In this family-friendly, children-oriented series, Pauline, a teenage girl, has relations with Satan and is pregnant with his child. This is portrayed as a “coming of age” movie. Pauline will supposedly have all sorts of supernatural powers given to her due to this physical union with the devil, which is certain to entice impressionable young girls into searching out a similar relationship with demons as well. Sounds like good, clean entertainment for the whole family to enjoy, doesn’t it? I will sandwich that bit of secular news between Church news by here pointing out that Monsignor Victor Manuel Fernández, archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, was recently appointed to head the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. This is the Vatican position formerly held by Benedict XVI under John Paul II. Until now, the purpose of this dicastery/congregation was to uphold Church teaching. Now the new head, who will be made a Cardinal next month, has been told that rooting out heresy is not to be his function in this new and improved organization. He is rather to find ways to join heresy to doctrine to bring us to a fuller understanding of morality. Gosh, that sounds just dandy, doesn’t it? This appointment is being criticized for two reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with each other. First, when this bishop was still just a priest, he wrote a book titled, “Heal Me With Your Mouth. The Art of Kissing (1995).” He now claims that people are just being mean by pointing out that it is totally inappropriate for a priest to write such a book. Even doing the research would be inappropriate, as he writes about it, “I went to bars, colleges, businesses, in order to ask (over 1000) young people about what they knew to say about kissing, I collected varied opinions about what a kiss means for them, about the different ways of kissing.” Really? Would you want your son or daughter interviewed by a priest about such matters? Would you send your son to the seminary of which he is the rector? The second major criticism is that he supported an abuser priest and disparaged his victims, the first of his multiple alleged coverups as a bishop. He only now has reluctantly admitted that he “made mistakes” in this one case, which “ended” with the suicide of the accused priest. Anyway, remember this man’s position when the Synod proclaims that much more than kissing is now to be embraced as a healing remedy for all that ails us. Back on the secular side again there was cocaine found in the “secure” area of the White House. Just because all visitors have to be signed in and escorted everywhere they go inside that residence, and just because there are security cameras in every room and hallway and secret service agents throughout the entire place doesn’t mean that they can figure out whose cocaine it is. And the Justice Department just filed charges against the whistleblower “Gal” threatening over 100 years in prison for the same charges which were just dropped against the most likely suspect in the cocaine story. Meanwhile, Leslie Van Houten, who took part in the Charles Manson murders, was just released from prison. A California court (of course) made the decision that she is now “safe.” In California holding down a woman while others repeatedly stab her and then personally stabbing her another 14-16 times, cleaning up the blood, changing clothes, and calmly drinking the victim's chocolate milk shows the murderer to be the real victim (of white supremacy, racism, and homophobia, assuredly). Where are all of the people crying out for knife control? On a similar topic, we soon won’t need gun control because the US is out of ammo. At least that is the official reason given for sending cluster bombs to Ukraine. And this immoral ammunition became moral because they are old, so many of them won’t work. So says our old, non-working President. But let me end on a good note. Screen for screen, “Sound of Freedom” (the movie Disney owned but refused to release, which has now been released independently) topped WokeDisney’s emasculated Indian Jones at the box office! With prayers for your holiness, Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka From the Pastor: Welcome Back, Fr. Vincent!
I assume that at least most of you know Fr. Vincent. He used to help out at Epiphany on a regular basis, along with all of the other work he did throughout the diocese and at Jesuit High School. He is a great teacher, homilist, and speaker and a good, holy, personable priest, and was truly missed when he was transferred out of the country. But last year he returned, not quite to our country, but to Miami, which, in geographical terms, at least, is fairly close to Florida. At that time he offered to come and spend a month here in order to give me a break while he took over the Masses. Of course, I jumped at the chance for a respite. But before he came, we had plumbing problems and sewage problems stemming from the construction workers across the street doing something improperly, and everyone was worried that he was going to be coming into a mess. Fortunately, it was all cleared up before he arrived. By strange coincidence, though, we recently had another water outage due to the construction across the street, and, just last week, we had water pouring in through the ceiling downstairs as the air conditioner upstairs decided to drain onto the floor rather than to the outside. We caught several gallons of water before we were able to fix the problem. As you might have surmised by now, Fr. Vincent is coming back for a visit, a bit of work, and a personal retreat, and it looks like he will escape the worst of the plumbing issues once again. He should be here the Monday after this article appears in the bulletin. As mentioned, Fr. Vincent said that while he is here he will be making a personal retreat. There is something quite spiritually uplifting about starting out each day with two Masses, Adoration, and Confessions! Due to his desire to spend time in solitary prayer, he may not be able to go on many social visits, but, he still may be in need of some good home cooking. After all, we do not have a cook at the rectory to take care of his nutritional needs. So if you are willing and able to bring him some of your family’s favorite meals, don’t hesitate to offer him some Southern hospitality, even though it means serving it up in Tupperware rather than on fine China! Once Father Vincent appears on the scene, I will disappear for about 10 days. There are no baptisms or weddings scheduled during the time I will be gone but there are a few other things that I usually tend to that will just have to find ways of continuing without me. I have no doubt that you will all manage to survive my absence. Of course, there are always one or two smart alecks around who may plan on not surviving, just to prove me wrong in that assertation. To them, I say: I forbid it! No dying allowed while the pastor isn’t here! The last time I went away, everyone was pestering my mom about where I was. I had only told her what I told everybody else, namely, that “I will be in a private hermitage with a bed, a bath, and a chapel. No emails, no phone calls, no meetings!” This year, to spare her the endless questions that she was helpless to answer (even though you were convinced that she was holding back on you!) I will tell you exactly where I am going. I will give you the name, address, and even the keys to the place at which I will be staying. I will also have a complimentary chauffeur and limo on call for your convenience, plus free train, bus, and ship tickets for anyone who wishes to come and join me. Oh, and I put approximately $1903.47 cash in each of those 850 information packets so that nobody will feel that they are unable to join me on account of a lack of spending money. You should be able to find me quite easily without having to bother my mother at all. The box containing all of this is quite large and labeled in huge, eye-catching fluorescent print: “FREE VACATION PACKAGES AND CASH. TAKE WHAT YOU NEED!” If, for some strange reason, you cannot find the box where I left it (outside of the doors to the social hall) feel free to check the dumpster to see if somebody accidentally threw it away. I can’t think of any other reason it might be missing. Fr. Dorvil will also be gone while I am away. He has an assignment from his Religious Order wherein he needs to check up on other De Montfort priests in the US to make sure they are doing well, are in good health, have their needs taken care of, and any other thing that might be easily overlooked when they are by themselves in a foreign country. In July he will be traveling to tend to those duties. Please pray for him and the priests he assists as he performs this charitable visitation. I will end this article with a small but necessary reminder. It is very important that if your group is scheduled to meet at Epiphany in the afternoon or evening, especially during the time I am away, should you need to cancel your meeting you let the office staff know that you won’t be here, for that means that you won’t be locking up the facilities. The last group scheduled is tasked with locking up, but every once in a while a group doesn’t meet but fails to have the calendar updated. The church will remain open all night unless I happen to check, which I definitely won’t do when I am not here! With prayers for your holiness, Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka |
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