11 Agosto 2021 Pubblicato da Marco Tosatti

Marco Tosatti

Dear readers of Stilum Curiae, we have received and are happy to publish this message by Don Francesco d’Erasmo. Enjoy your reading and reflection.

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The Wheat and the Weeds

Open Letter to all True Catholics and people of good will (Abridged)

In the same field in which the Lord has sown the Children of the Kingdom, the devil has sown the Children of the Evil One. Jesus has personally explained to us the parable of the wheat and the weeds which he had proclaimed a bit earlier (Mt 13).

In his essay written in April 2019, Benedict XVI applied this parable directly to the Holy Church. The direct reference is to ministers who use the authority conferred on them in the name of the Holy Church, in the name of Jesus Christ, in a way contrary to the will of God. This is what abuse is:  a use of authority that is not in conformity to the end for which that authority has been conferred.

In the parable, Jesus says to the impatient workers, who ask for pemission to go immediately and tear up the weeds, that the separation of the wheat and the weeds will take place at the end of the world.

We cannot delude ourselves that prior to the end of the world it is possible that there would be a separation by which the children of the devil are thrown out by the workers. We must recall this truth if we do not want to fall into a trap. It is a truth revealed by God, and no one can change it. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away,” Jesus affirms (Mt 24:35). Pope Benedict XVI, in the heart of the internal battle of the Holy Church over its purification from treacherous ministers, unleashed by the denunciation made by His Excellency Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in August 2018, has strongly recalled this truth, reproposing to us this image used by Jesus, along with another one, that of the net filled with both good and evil fish.

It is therefore necessary to learn to recognize the grain of wheat, without attempting to pull it up before its time, going against the plan of God. We do not have authority to do what the Lord has decided will be entrusted to the angels. There are authorities who have the right to expel their subjects. But subject do not have the right to expel their superiors. For this reason, there are some situations in which the only authority that can effectively purify the field, expelling those who do not belong to His harvest, will be the angels, and they will do so when they are sent by God, the Lord of the field. And Jesus also tells us the reason for this. When we see the impossibility of this expulsion, we should not rebel, or act in a way that attempts to violate the order established by God, deluding ourselves that we can do what we do not have the competency to do. We would also end up causing the very damage that the Master wants to avoid: rooting up the good wheat before its maturation.

Nor can we fall into the opposite error: ignoring that not everything in this field is good wheat. It is Jesus himself who warns us to beware of false prophets. And he gives us the criteria to distinguish them.

Thanks be to God, we still have almost everywhere in the world free access to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) and the Sacred Scriptures in the official version proclaimed by the Holy Catholic Church. The Word of God, according to the dictates of the First Vatican Council: the Vulgate Bible, with its translations, despite many small or large deviations, permits us to access the Revealed Truth that the Holy Tradition of the Church transmits to us down the centuries to all men of good will, that is, to those who truly want the good.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us clearly in paragraph 675 that the “apostasy from the truth” will shake the faith of many believers.

For this reason, remembering the Truth is obviously a help that we can give ourselves as we undergo this trial, in order to sustain our faith and to support those who are at risk of falling for the lie. It is one of the works of mercy. “Jesus said to those Jews who had believed in him: ‘If you remain faithful to my word, you will truly be my disciples; you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:31-32).

Lately we are witnessing a dangerous attack, made by the devil, who is very astute, according to his usual style: divide and conquer. He is called the devil precisely because of his work as a divider, according to a Greek word: diabolon. He pushes the Sacred Ministers of the Catholic Church to betray Jesus, in order to then accuse others before men and push the faithful to abandon the Holy Catholic Church through the rebellion of these wicked ministers, who are new Judases.

No matter how grave are the sins, crimes and betrayals of her members, the Catholic Church is the One Holy Church willed by God, and her ministers administer the Holy Sacraments necessary for salvation validly and licitly, by divine institution. Anyone who rejects the Sacraments administered by such ministers rejects the Sacramental Grace according to the modality which God Himself has established in order to receive them.

Some so-called defenders of Catholic truth are leading the faithful to not receive the Holy Sacraments in the Catholic Church given by priests who name “Pope Francis” in the Canon of the Holy Mass. They affirm that those who receive sacraments from these priests enter into “communion” with all the sins and errors committed by Bergoglio and those who govern the visible confines of the Church under him. But this affirmation is gravely erroneous.

The expression in the Roman Canon does not indicate a communion with the personal acts of the subjective person of the reigning Pontiff, but rather a prayer for him a visible sign of the continuity of Apostolic Succession. God interprets that prayer according to its true significance, which is that which the two-thousand-year tradition of the Church has always attributed to it.

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Now I would like to speak once again to the faithful to whom I direct this writing.

The recent Apostolic Letter Traditionis Custodes issued from the Vatican on 16 July 2021 affirms: “Article 1. The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”

The reference is to one of the pillars of Christian doctrine since the Patristic era. The expression used is lex orandi. But the use of this term, in Sacred Doctrine, identifies it with the lex credendi, the “rule of faith.” In simple words: the Church affirms that one prays in a way that conforms to the faith that is believed. This profound identity was also the path for the recognition of the first Christological doctrines of the Holy Church. If therefore this latest document identifies the lex orandiexclusively with the new rite of 1970, and in the application of the directives of the document itself intends that the use of the preceding rite must be considered purely as a concession for exceptional cases, then by means of these norms it is subtly, without saying so explicitly, placing a distance and a difference between this lex orandi and that of the preceding rite. The lex orandi of the Rite of 1970 would be the only one! But if the lex orandi is the lex credendi, this means that a distance and a difference is being insinuated between the faith expressed by the Rite that is affirmed as “the only one” and the “other one” which is relegated to the sphere of concessions. Therefore, through the legislation, it is being affirmed that the one true faith of the Church would be that of those who could possibly concede its expression in accord with the faith of all time in certain very limited cases, but maintains that it is expressed “solely” in the form of the New Missal of Paul VI. Therefore: anyone who wishes to express one’s faith in a manner conformed to how it was expressed by all Christians who have preceded us up until 1970, is to be considered someone who does something that is simply tolerated, not truly conformed to the one lex orandi which is also the lex credendi. Thus anyone who desires to express the lex credendi of all timeby means of the lex orandi of all time must ask permission, and it does not say whether such permission will be granted. If however the lex credenda of before is different, because the present one is the “only” one, just as the lex orandi is the “only” one, then the one who has issued this document no longer holds a faith that is “one” with the apostolic faith (Eph 4:5).

In short: the faith of all time is no longer at home in the church governed by the one who has issued this document!

Mister Jorge Mario Bergoglio – I call you this because, even if no one has the power to judge you, you do not hide your renewed heresies and apostasies from the Catholic Faith almost daily, losing your office (munus) by the law itself – and all you Sirs who collaborate with this governance of the Holy Church: recall that you are signing your own condemnation. It is you yourselves who are declaring in an ever less-veiled way that your faith is not the faith of Peter, on which Jesus founded His Church. “Let each one be attentive how he builds. For no one can lay a foundation other than the one which is already there, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:10-11).

I did not have the grace of knowing the august Tridentine Rite of the Holy Mass during the time of my formation, but I do not consider it an awkward guest. I live the present Roman Rite as an expression of the ancient rite, imperfect but valid: precisely because, thanks be to God, it still has not lost the totality of its essential content. I hope to have the opportunity to be able to celebrate the Tridentine Rite adequately, which I have not yet done although I have begun to learn. However, it is not the rite which concerns me.

But if you maintain that anyone who loves the Tridentine Rite as the immortal expression of the lex orandi which coincided with the lex credendi of the Holy Catholic Church, is only a guest who is tolerated with difficulty, who brings division, you should know that instead it is we – we who believe the same faith as the Holy Apostles – who tolerate you, according to the exhortation to charity made to us by the Apostle (1 Cor 13), and further you should recall that it is precisely you who are bringing division and destruction into the Holy Church of God by your insufferance towards everything that the Holy Fathers have transmitted to us, faithful to the Commandment of Jesus Christ, not pretending to invent a new Gospel in order to found a new church, as you yourselves are constantly doing!

You can continue to abuse the authority which you have seized, whether by lawful or – much more probably – illicit means, whether in a valid manner or – much more probably – invalidly, but the Holy Church, the One Apostolic Roman Catholic Church, belongs forever and ever to Her One Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who will always take care of us, even in the valley of darkness, and he will not abandon us in darkness and the shadow of death, and he will free us from the hands of our enemies, even if such enemies should be you (Ps 23 and Lk 1:79).

Authority is not absolute, not even in the case of the Holy Church. “Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act….In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law….Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ” (CCC 1778). An order or directive of ecclesiastical authority never supersedes the authority of conscience. This is the faith proclaimed by the Solemn Magisterium of the Holy Church.

Let us remain therefore in peace, firm in doing good and avoiding evil, in obeying the Lord Jesus Christ by fidelity to the Authentic Teaching of the Church He founded as the mediatrix of His Grace and Salvation. Let us approach the Holy Sacraments until the Lord as long as the Lord gives them to us, without setting up deceptive obstacles.

Let us pray through the intercession of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, of Saint Joseph, the patron of the Universal Church, through the merits and mediation of the Mother of God Mary Most Holy, whom Jesus has given us as our Mother at the Holy Cross, certain of the protection of the Holy Angels, whom the Lord has promised to his Little Ones, who contemplate his Holy Face night and day.

And with faith in the Lord’s Promise let us persevere to the end, because so we shall be saved (Mt 24:13). Amen,

Francesco d’Erasmo, Catholic priest

Tarquinia, 29 July 2021, Saint Martha

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