Dear Friends: In my new Underground, I take a look at massive scandal that took last week in New York when the Abomination of Desolation stood in the holy place that was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I say “was” because I believe that after THIS the Cathedral needs to be reconsecrated if it is to again be considered a holy place.
So, this is where it has come, just six decades after the close of the Second Vatican Council. When I was a boy, the Modernist marauders had already infiltrated the seminaries. Soon thereafter, they started dismantling the venerable Roman Rite, a process which culminated in the bulldozing of the sanctuaries, high altars, and communion rails. And now they’re sitting back and allowing Prophet Daniel’s “abomination of desolation” to occupy the Holy Places – either too weak or too complicit to stop it.
So much for the Springtime of Vatican II!
St. Athanasius was the bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. He, like Archbishop Lefebvre and now Bishop Strickland today, held the Catholic ground and was thrown out of his own diocese and exiled five times by rightful (albeit heretical) authority.
How could this brutal sacrilege not remind us of the words of St. Athanasius the Great in reference to the Arian marauders of seventeen centuries ago? “They have our buildings,” wrote St. Athanasius to the remnant of Catholic believes at the time, “but we have kept the Faith.”
St. Athanasius was the bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. He, like Archbishop Lefebvre and now Bishop Strickland today, held the Catholic ground and was thrown out of his own diocese and exiled five times by rightful (albeit heretical) authority. For nearly 20 years, he was obliged to serve as a Bishop in exile, administering to his flock as an “excommunicated” shepherd. In life, he was a pariah where the authorities were concerned. In death, Athanasius is hailed as perhaps the greatest defender of the Faith in history, revered as a saint and named a “Doctor of the Church” – even through he’d resisted popes to their faces.
Let the words of Saint Athanasius the Great fill us with hope that, no matter what happens, God will not be mocked:
Letter of St. Athanasius to his flock
“May God console you! ...What saddens you ...is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises ─ but you have the apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle-the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith?
“True, the premises are good when the apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way ...You are the ones who are happy: you who remain within the church by your faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your faith, beloved brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day.
“Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.”
May St. Athanasius intercede for us today. Please watch and share the video evidence below that indeed they have our building but we have the Faith.
In Christo Rege,
Michael J. Matt
The ABOMINATION of DESOLATION Standing in New York’s Holy Place
