Deus herbarius

[fsa]

Pope Francis: ‘Morally everyone must take the vaccine’

Nothing less than the future of humanity is at stake, which is why the Holy Father insisted in January that “morally everyone must take the vaccine. It is the moral choice because it is about your life but also the lives of others.”

 

Pope Francis: ‘Morally everyone must take the vaccine’ - Cardinal Blase J. Cupich - Chicago Catholic

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While the growing availability of effective COVID-19 vaccines is a sign of hope, the pandemic is still far from over. The number of cases is growing globally, with India seeing more than 400,000 in just one...

 

[fsa]

Pope Francis and the Pope emeritus receive Covid-19 vaccine

Pope Francis and the Pope emeritus receive Covid-19 vaccine - Vatican News

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Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI receive their first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine in the Vatican.

 

[fsa]

Papal masses in Slovakia only for vaccinated

Only those fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be able to attend the meeting with Pope Francis, who will visit Slovakia in September, announced Health Minister Vladimír Lengvarský, after an agreement with the President of the Conference of Bishops of Slovakia Stanislav Zvolenský was reached.

 

Papal masses in Slovakia only for vaccinated

WWW.EURACTIV.COM

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[Bernard]

Lasting immunity found after recovery from COVID-19

“Several months ago, our studies showed that natural infection induced a strong response, and this study now shows that the responses last,” Weiskopf says. “We are hopeful that a similar pattern of responses lasting over time will also emerge for the vaccine-induced responses.”

 

                                             

 

Lasting immunity found after recovery from COVID-19

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The immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection.

 

[Bernard]

«Un prete non preoccupato delle anime diventa inutile.

Nella nostra società è in crisi tutto quello che porta in sé i segni chiari della stabilità, dell’immutabilità e dell’eternità, come il matrimonio e il sacerdozio. L’uomo contemporaneo vive di cose immediate e materiali, di sensazioni e pulsioni emotive. Gli è difficili realizzare, anche solo col pensiero, valori e ideali astratti. Il pensare che sia possibile impegnare la propria vita per valori spirituali e soprannaturali senza un immediato utile materiale o psicologico sembra impossibile o assurdo. Anche la vita sacerdotale è vittima di questa crisi della modernità, potremmo dire: ‘crisi metafisica’ e soprannaturale dell’esistenza umana».

Cardinal Robert Sarah

 

[fsa]

Pope Francis greets persons receiving Covid vaccinations at the Vatican

On Good Friday morning Pope Francis visited with the homeless and those needing special assistance while they received Covid vaccinations provided by the Vatican. He greeted the volunteers, doctors and nurses assisting them.

 

Just before 10 am this morning, Pope Francis visited the atrium of the Paul VI Audience Hall where Covid vaccinations were underway for the homeless or those needing special assistance. They were accompanied by volunteers from charitable associations of Rome.

Pope Francis spoke with them as they awaited their vaccination. He greeted the doctors and nurses, while also observing the process for preparing the vaccine doses.

To date, about 800 of the approximately 1,200 persons in need are being given the vaccine this week and have been vaccinated with the first dose.

Pope Francis greets persons receiving Covid vaccinations at the Vatican - Vatican News

WWW.VATICANNEWS.VA

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On Good Friday morning Pope Francis visited with the homeless and those needing special assistance while they received Covid vaccinations provided by ...

[fsa]

Pope Francis says he's in line to take COVID-19 vaccine

"It is an ethical duty to take the vaccine, here in the Vatican we will start next week, I am also in line to take it,"

 

Pope Francis says he's in line to take COVID-19 vaccine

WWW.CTVNEWS.CA

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Pope Francis has said the Vatican will begin COVID-19 vaccinations next week and that he is in line to receive the jab.

 

[fsa]

[Bernard]

Beware when Church leaders manipulate the language: Part I

As an editor, a writer, and a reader, I cherish clarity of expression. As a Catholic, I am appalled by the abuses of language—the pretense, the confusion, the obfuscation, and even the outright deceit—that I see in many recent pronouncements from our Church leadership.

Last week the Vatican announced that a meeting Synod of Bishops, which scheduled for October 2022, will be postponed for a year, to allow for broader discussions of the chosen topic: synodality. The Vatican has suggested a full program of consultations: in parishes, then at the level of dioceses, then episcopal conferences, and finally at the “continental” level, leading to the bishops’ session in Rome.

The topic of all these consultations, again, will be synodality. The quest for synodality is a key theme in the teaching of Pope Francis. But the truth is that no one has a very clear understanding what “synodality” means. And maybe that’s the point. Will a year of consultations clarify things, or will it simply allow for more general confusion?

Or—a more likely possibility, in my view—will that general confusion allow for a cadre of activists to seize control of the process, and turn “synodality” into a handy cover for their own preferred plans?

This week, in a similar development, the Vatican unveiled a a seven-year “action platform” to implement the teaching of the encyclical on the environment. Pope Francis explained the ambitious goal of this program, saying that “we need a new ecological approach, that can transform our way of dwelling in the world.”

So how does the Vatican propose to transform human life? The plan suggests that the first year of the effort should focus on “the three fundamental tasks of community building, resource sharing, and drawing up of concrete action plans.” Thus after calling for seven years of concrete action, the Vatican proposes to begin by making plans for concrete action. So this isn’t really an “action platform,” so much as a call for some action(s) which have not yet been identified. The Vatican’s plan, as described, is not for specific actions but for a lengthy and malleable process.

In both cases—the synod consultation and the environmental “action platform”—the Vatican calls for the recruitment of activists who will work with parishes, dioceses, and episcopal conferences to pursue the desired goals. So a fresh layer will be added to the ecclesiastical bureaucracy, with new operatives holding meetings, attending conferences, issuing statements, and promoting what they see as the top priorities for their Catholic communities.

The great conservative theorist Russell Kirk attended the “Call to Action” conference in Detroit in 1976, and saw how a cadre of such activists—whom he described as “the church mice”—could and did drive the agenda, producing a pastoral disaster from which the Church in America has not yet fully recovered. The bishops who should have controlled the meeting were unprepared; the activists were oh-so-very prepared, and ready to seize the day.

Is this the meaning of “synodality”—a process that would allow a determined, organized minority to dictate pastoral practice? Is this the way the Vatican under Pope Francis proposes to transform human activity, ushering in an environmentalist utopia? And if that is the immediate future of our Church, what will the cost be, in terms of the integrity of Catholic doctrine, the vigor of sacramental life, and the mission to make disciples of all nations?

Coming next: the misuse of language by American Church leaders.

 

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

 

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Beware when Church leaders manipulate the language: Part I

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Thus after calling for seven years of concrete action, the Vatican proposes to begin by making plans for concrete action.

 

 

Beware when Church leaders manipulate the language: Part II

Yesterday I wrote about “the abuses of language…that I see in many recent pronouncements from our Church leadership,” with my focus on two recent Vatican announcements. Now let me turn to a few noteworthy American examples.

Sometimes the misuse of language is downright Orwellian. When Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich announced that unvaccinated Catholics must not be allowed inside churches without masks, he stipulated that each parish should have officials at the doors to check every individual for proof of vaccination. These people—who will block the doors to those who are unmasked and undocumented—are identified as “the parish’s greeter/hospitality team.” Some greeting; some hospitality.

Unless I’m much mistaken, these “greeters” will not be asking parishioners to show the results of their latest tuberculosis tests. They won’t quiz people about other legitimate public-health concerns (“Do you smoke? Take intravenous drugs? Engage in sexual practices known to spread disease?”). They will have one, and only one, medical concern: the single test ordered by Cardinal Cupich in his capacity as a public-health official. But the cardinal is not a public-health official. He is a bishop of the Catholic Church, who should have other concerns.

So if the parish guards (let’s use honest language) are deciding which people should be allowed into the church, aren’t there more important questions that they might ask? For instance: “Are you party to an invalid marriage?” Or: “Have you voted to support legal abortion?”

Ah, there’s the rub! Because Cardinal Cupich has also recently been leading the charge to block a discussion of Eucharistic coherence, currently scheduled to take place at the US bishops’ meeting in June. He and other bishops have argued that the discussion should not take place, because the American bishops lack the “high standard of consensus” that would be required for a strong statement on the issue.

Now explain to me, please, how the US bishops’ conference can develop that “high standard of consensus,” if there is to be no discussion of the question. Clearly Cardinal Cupich and his allies are not being entirely forthright about their reasons for wanting to avoid the topic.

There are other signs of dissimulation here, too. Although in theory Cardinal Cupich strongly supports Pope Francis in his call for decentralized decision-making, in practice he lobbied energetically for Vatican intervention to curtail an open discussion among the American bishops. Although he complains that the discussion might cause divisions, he and his allies deepened the fractures within the episcopal conference by urging a late change to the agenda—the elimination of a topic that had already been approved by the usual process.

Above all, Cardinal Cupich and his allies do not want “dialogue” on this issue. For all their insistence on open discussion, it is an open discussion that they are doing their utmost to thwart. The incessant calls for “dialogue” are a smokescreen: an attempt to ensure that the issue will remain unresolved indefinitely.

The proponents of this inauthentic “dialogue” argue that instead of upholding the perennial teaching of the Church, instead of fulfilling the clear demands of canon law, pastors should engage in quiet, personal conversations with those prominent Catholics who support the slaughter of the unborn. There is, of course, no reason why a pastor cannot undertake that dialogue and fulfill his canonical duties. But again there is a deeper point at issue.

In nearly 50 years since the Roe v. Wade decision, some of this country’s most prominent Catholic politicians have grown steadily more forthright in their support for unrestricted legal abortion on demand. While bishops trumpet the need for ever more “dialogue,” politicians scoff at the Church’s moral law, and denigrate those who uphold it. Show me one case of an active Catholic politician who has repented of his support for abortion, and embraced the pro-life cause, after a quiet conversation with his bishop. Just one case, and I’ll take the argument for “dialogue” a bit more seriously.

 

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

 

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Beware when Church leaders manipulate the language: Part II

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Explain to me, please, how the US bishops’ conference can develop that “high degree of consensus,” if there is to be no discussion of the question.

 

[Bernard]

 

[Bernard]

Ko još uvek veruje u pamdemiju??

Excess mortality in the United States in the 21st century

               

 

Discussion

Because it has captured a great deal of national attention, the number of deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 forms a timely basis of comparison. On 20 February 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 376,504 deaths ascribed to COVID-19 had occurred in the United States in calendar year 2020 (10). That figure is similar to but below the estimated total number of excess deaths of 401,000 in the United States in 2017 (Table 1).

The comparison is more striking when years of life lost is the measure used. Goldstein and Lee (11) estimate that the mean loss of life years for a person dying from COVID-19 in the United States is 11.7 y. Multiplying 377,000 decedents by 11.7 y lost per decedent gives a total of 4.41 My of life lost to COVID-19 in 2020, only a third of the 13.02 million life years lost to excess mortality in the United States in 2017 (Table 1). The reason that the comparison is so much sharper for YLL than for excess deaths is that COVID-19 deaths in 2020 occurred at much older ages, on average, than the excess deaths of 2017.

 

Excess mortality in the United States in the 21st century

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We use three indexes to identify how age-specific mortality rates in the United States compare to those in a composite of five large European countries since 2000. First, we examine the ratio of...

 

 

                                

 

                             

[Avocado]

пре 2 часа, Bernard рече

Ko još uvek veruje u pamdemiju??

Samo nepismeni...

 

 

[Bernard]

                                                                         

                                   

 

 

                                        

[Bernard]

The era of the Coronavirus is seeing a new phase in the cosmic struggle between the celestial and infernal forces. In history, in fact, along with the hand of God, we also need to see the hand of the Demon who is always rivaling the Divine plans in order to realize his own warped projects. The Kingdom of God is that of order, peace and harmony; the Demon’s is a kingdom of chaos, conflict and perennial revolution. God permits, for His greater glory, that the two kingdoms – the first always victorious, the second always beaten – wrestle until the end of time.

Today the followers of the Demon are the scientists, who, in their laboratories, are seeking to be lords over the life and death of mankind. Then we have the social engineers, who, by means of sophisticated techniques, manipulate the state of mind of public opinion. After the failure of the great illusions that opened the 20th century, the revolutionary forces are now fostering a scenario of profound mental and social chaos.  

 Covid 19 is a perfidious, mendacious and multifaceted virus, that terrorizes some, paralyzing  their forces and destroys the equilibrium of others, making them think that it doesn’t exist. Thanks to these contradictions, the kingdom of Babel is advancing in an atmosphere of fear and pessimism. Abandonment to Divine Providence is required to resist, without losing the supernatural virtue of hope.  Devoid of hope are those living in the terror of being infected, who subject themselves to any and all impositions by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities; but also [ without hope] are those who attribute all that is happening to a project of destruction against which nothing can be done except cry out in anger.

Those living in terror, anger and frustration in the era of Coronavirus, are losing the battle against the maleficent virus. Only those who conserve in the depth of their souls the joy of serving the Lord, are victorious. This joy is a divine gift and for those who do not ask for this help – all is lost. Those who trust in the help of grace, on the contrary, fight and win, especially if they entrust themselves to the One Who is the channel of all graces – the Blessed Virgin Mary.   
 

[Bernard]

 

Over one century ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote a masterpiece poem titled The Ballad of the White Horse. Today, more than ever, it strikes chords in the hearts of all who love the Catholic Church and her traditions. In soul-stirring rhymes, Chesterton tells the story of ragged King Alfred, who mournfully wanders through his once Catholic kingdom, now overrun with pagan Danes. The ballad weaves a tapestry of medieval legends, but its essence rings as true as historical fact. It is the story of the fight for truth, goodness, and beauty in a fallen world. The profound sorrow experienced by Alfred at the sight of his afflicted kingdom bears a striking resemblance to the sorrow of Catholics today who, realizing what the Church has lost, yearn for the restoration of beauty, tradition, and true Catholic culture.

In the first book of the ballad, Alfred begs Our Lady to tell him if he will ever succeed in driving the Danes from his land. She gives a cryptic reply that includes two of the ballad’s most resounding stanzas:

I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?

These ominous words resonate much with us in our own dark days, awash with the waves of scandal, apostasy, and unprecedented internal attacks. The Mother of God does not minimize the Cross. She who speaks of darkness to Alfred speaks as one who watched God die on a cross when darkness came over the whole land (Matthew 27:45). When we acknowledge the dark state of things and open our eyes to the black reality of evil, we find something deeper and more resilient than consolation — it is a sort of naked hope like that of the martyrs, who, though they could see, hear, and feel nothing but atrocities in their final moments, nevertheless rejoiced in the infinite goodness of God.

Some Catholics today hide their eyes from the Church’s affliction like frightened children at the sight of a wound. They cannot bear to look at reality because the magnitude of its evil swallows their shrunken idea of God and the Church His bride. In a pharisaical attempt to save the nation (John 11:50–51), they haggle and make compromises with secularists as if the Church were an earthly kingdom that must bow to the powers of the world in order to survive. This denial of reality closes them off from the mysterious and liberating naked hope that dawns only when one fully embraces reality, which is the Cross itself. The Mother of God beheld the horror of the Cross far more clearly and painfully than any other disciple, but such was her faith in God, that the enormity of the evil only deepened her adoration. For those who embrace the Cross, great evil will always point to an infinitely greater God.

 

The fight for the Church, tradition, and culture continues under desperate conditions. Unchecked moral relativism in secular education systems and abysmal catechesis within the Church combine to produce individuals who seem to lack the ability to ask even the most basic philosophical questions. A vast part of the population even within the Church does not think to ask, “Where did I come from?” and “Where am I going?” Amazingly, in the midst of this stupor, a few sparks of sanity have ignited the traditional movement.

Very few Catholics who love tradition are unharmed by the disastrous catechetical neglect of the last several decades. Nor do they easily elude the toxic fumes of relativism that permeate the very walls of the Church. But despite these misfortunes of the past and dangers of the present, they struggle on. They know beyond doubt that their Church is not a bureaucracy, but a bride, and that a bride is worth fighting for.

Chesterton captures the spirit of these people, the “kind of Christ,” in another portion of Our Lady’s message to Alfred:

But you and all the kind of Christ
are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.

 

This stanza is an apt description of the distressed faithful in the Church today. Even those of us who claim to know something of the Faith cannot really understand God’s reasons for the Church’s present suffering. We can only fight on in ignorance, striving to save our own souls and the souls of others as best we can. But Chesterton, never one for pessimism, deftly draws each of his lines up from man’s weakness to poetic summits that illuminate the victorious power of God: Christ, brave, win, save. All dissonance resolves in these resounding tonic chords, and we find ourselves spurred on once again by the mysterious naked hope.

Our Lady touches again on the inevitable ignorance of Christians in the face of their sufferings when she says to Alfred:

The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.

This reference to ignorance, the Cross, and darkness bears with it a new development: gaiety. This is gaiety in the old and true sense, that word that so richly describes a joyful and brilliant mirth. Alfred experiences this mirth when a servant woman strikes him across the face because she believes he is a beggar rather than the king. So, too, we can experience it only when we cease to regard ourselves as powerful people and see only our total dependence on God.

After hearing Our Lady’s beautiful exhortation, Alfred finds himself full of courage. He enters the Danes’ camp and sings a song that masterfully captures the splendor of the persecuted Christian spirit. I quote two stanzas here:

That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare on the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.

That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.

Indeed, in the battle for souls and the Church we love, we are often “hares on a hillside” with little success, much humiliation, and much loss. Our lances split on the vast barricades of modernism found everywhere in the Church, but like Alfred, we never lose the heart to run. We lust for loss because loss in the fight for the Catholic Church, in all her traditional splendor, still far exceeds the tainted rewards of compromise.

Our enemies both within the Church and without ridicule us, and we are no more than ragged beggars before them. They gleefully arm themselves with reports of scandals, changing doctrine (as if that were possible), and all manner of groundless accusations to convince us and the rest of the world how foolish we are. In answer to their jeers, we must simply say with Alfred,

But though I lie on the floor of the world,
With the seven sins for rods,
I would rather fall with Adam
Than rise with all your gods.