Less is More!
Much has been said, much written. Have we digested, discerned and understood it all? If not, then to keep providing healthy nourishment day in and day out, when many are satisfied with nothing but junk food, really accomplishes nothing.
In the Traditional Liturgy,
as pointed out by none other than the Abbot Dom Gueranger, the
time of Christmas extends from December 25th until February 2nd, the Feast of
the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary which is also the
Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, the
beautiful fourth mystery of the Joyful Mysteries. It is also Candlemas Day
as well as the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany. All those feasts in one. So
it made sense to keep our Christmas issue on until then. This was not done
on purpose by us, but by an act of God for
whatever reason He deemed it - we accept it.
You see it was an 'act of
God' which terminated the terminal of our main computer. We
were prepared for a white Christmas. The weather people in the area had even
predicted a few inches of snow on Christmas Eve morning. What they didn't
predict was the heaviest Christmas snowfall in the history of the Tri-Lakes
area. Fourteen inches of snow! We love snow, but not
ice, especially ice storms, and that was the culprit that hit the
computer. Naturally I was on when it spritzed on me, blinked twice, and
then faded into total ebony. The problem was we lost power and at that
very second our UPS was fried. Later in talking with 'computer experts'
(isn't everyone an expert?), the theory is that some kind of fatal virus could
have invaded since I was working in The Daily
Catholic's Outlook Express e-mail program and had just clicked on one
of those blasted, aggravating spammers in order to delete it. I had not
opened it, but the fact I had clicked on it, according to some high-tech
theorists, it replicated that I was opening it when the wires were
fried. Zap equals zip. Nada.
I won't bore you with the details of
how we tried to fix it after Christmas. You've heard the axiom, "if it
ain't broke, don't fix it"? Well, "if it is broke, don't take it apart
unless you know what you're doing." We didn't and the obvious
ensued. Get a new computer. One problem: cost. Thanks to the readers
we have raised enough to be able to afford one. Now comes the second
problem: which one would be best? Decisions. I never realized
shopping for a computer could be worse than looking for a car. It
is! You can't test drive a computer. Everytime we were ready to
settle on this one or that one, someone would put the "be careful" in our
ear. Not wanting to do anything rash (like I haven't before!) we've
decided caution and patience are the better part of valor, value and
verve. Through the good graces of a neighbor who wishes to
remain anonymous in his generosity, I am able to format on my Outlook Express
and e-mail the articles to him to upload on our FTP. Therefore I can
use Cyndi's E Machine, which would not be sufficient
memory-wise for the files, software programs, etc. needed for producing
The Daily Catholic. So we wait.
Perhaps, in God's time, He will place in
our path some faithful Traditional Catholic who is younger, with far more
computer savvy, who would like to tackle the wonderful ministry of The Daily
Catholic; take it to the next level and expand, quite possibly, with the
cooperation of several, form a staff of volunteers where it would return to a
daily. That would be wonderful if that is God's plan. But
we do not know yet. So we wait.
There are a few
reasons for waiting, for slowing down. Aside from the fact we don't want
to get stuck with the wrong computer (irregardless of the famous "money back
guarantee" which always has strings attached, and besides, who in their right
mind can get it back into the box it came in!?), we looked at the
numbers. The numbers I'm referring to is that
despite the circumstances of only having one issue - the Christmas issue
-on-line for six weeks, throughout January we had over 45,000 readers log on
with over 850,000 hits for the month of January from 102 countries. Adding
the 264,764 hits from December 22nd (when the Christmas issue went
on-line) through December 31st we had well over one million hits by over
63,000 readers from all over the globe for one issue!!!
So what does
that tell us? First, it reveals that the
readers are hungry for the Truths and Traditions of the Sacred Deposit of the
Faith and trying to make sense out of all the confusion that has been allowed to
fester for lo these past 40 years. Secondly, it reveals
that to maintain readership we do not need to be publishing daily or even
weekly. Monthly is sufficient since what we are able to provide is a
plethora of material which is not of the USA Today variety but has much
depth to its content. It takes time and at least an iota of intelligence to
decipher and to discern through prayer. That is vital: Prayer.
Whatever we publish in
The Daily Catholic we can guarantee you are getting 100% solid Roman
Catholic doctrine. No innovations, no novelties except maybe in layout and
graphics. In other words, the wheat without the chaff. Since we have
so much 'wheat' in the field of our archives in having built up an excellent
bank of articles and columns over the past few years by our excellent, nay,
extraordinaire group of Traditional Catholic writers, there is much to sift
through, to inhale and digest. Thirdly, this is a labor of
love. No one - from the editor to the contributing writers - get
paid one penny for what is on The Daily Catholic.
Naturally your humble editor here does the work of formatting, editing and
designing each page of the hundreds of pages available in archives on
The Daily Catholic. Now put yourself in my shoes (normally I
don't ask anyone to do that, but this is an exception). What if you
were being paid the same and you were given the choice to
one, put out either 20 to 25 issues a month, or two,
four issues (weekly), or three, one issue a month.
Unless you were a glutton for punishment you would opt for the latter, number
three. Now, when you consider that with one issue you are reaching, at a
maximum, only 12 to 15% less audience than if you had 25 while still
reaching practically every person in the same countries you previously - reached
except not as frequently - wouldn't you opt for that? Unless you were a
workaholic you'd agree you could be very content with those
numbers.
Now add to
the reality that I will be 60 in April and I need to slow down a
bit. Add to this the fact there are other projects of evangelization of
the Truths and Traditions Cyndi and I must be working on and to which we must
giv needed time and attention. Therefore, with that in mind I think
you can see my rationale for paring back to provide a monthly issue where we
will update as needs be. It would be easy to just close up shot
- walk away from The Daily Catholic if I needed to, but I do
not want to. The Holy Ghost has not indicated we
should abandon this publication which picks up new readers everyday, but the
Sanctifier is indicating, through signs and wonders interiorly and
exteriorly, that we need to put it in cruise control and let it fly by the
power of His wind - on a whisper that has stretched around the world. I
remind you, we have never spent one dime on advertising to promote
The Daily Catholic. We can't. We're broke. Hey, we're
non-profit and Traditional. That combo guarantees we'll make no money but
we will help produce conversions. And, when you think of it, that's all
that matters.
I think that is another
reason why the Traditional Catholic movement is gaining such
steam. If it is of God, no matter how much opposition, it will
continue and grow. If it is not, it will die of its own
volition. We can only pray the latter will be the fate of all that
has transpired over the past 40 years in the error-filled, barren agenda of
Vatican II and the abominable rite they still call a "Mass" even though
it in no way resembles canonically, doctrinally, scripturally and
intellectually the sublime propitiation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
as the faithful assisted at for well over 1200 years in the Tridentine Rite
with the Ancient Gregorian Mass of
All Ages.
With that in mind I
urge you to read the latest articles in this issue beginning with Mario
Derksen's final installment of his excellent syllogism on why there
could have been no official excommunication according to the Laws of the
Church - both the spirit and letter of the law. We've also included
his previous four installments to better acquaint you with the issue.
You'll find his fifth installment Schism or the Syllogism of Truth?
in this issue. Speaking of the SSPX, we also present
Bishop Bernard Fellay's letter
Our Relations With Rome
to update the reader on the latest developments in the great "dialogue" with
Rome. If this is the way Rome has been dialoguing with the Jews, Muslims,
Protestants and New Agers, etc. God help us! We've
already seen the 'fruits' of that as Dr. Thomas A.
Droleskey illustrates in his popular series The Germs of
G.I.R.M. which we resume with the 63rd installment which we call
Acolytes or whAco-lites?
We are
also excited that we will be able to continue Father Louis
Campbell's no-nonsense, solid, doctrinal sermons for each Sunday
Mass. We will post them as we receive them. He has a
powerful one to kick off this issue from last Sunday titled
The
Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth which asks some hard questions but
they need to be said and acknowledged for no longer can anyone - be they
neo-Catholic, liberal Catholic or non-Catholic - ignore the fact that the
problems inherent in the Church today begin and end at the top - the very
top!
Dr. Edward
Ciaccio has a dynamite article on just that in his Feed My
Sheep column Decisions, Decisions! and Catharine
Lamb's article Statistics: The Real
Price in her Shears and Tears of a Lamb column
deals with the same malaise that has so rendered the Church of today impotent
when it comes to professing the the Truths and Traditions that had been
promulgated for the past 1900 years until the catastrophic reforms that have so
jeopardized millions and millions of souls.
If we are hurting the
sensibilities of neo-Catholics who have their heads bent so low because they are
worshipping the ground John Paul II walks on, then so be it. We
will not be part of papal idolatry since that flies in the face of the
First Commandment. He is a finite man who, as Dr. Ciaccio points out, is truly
in our Blessed Mother's Sorrowful Heart for he has hurt her
Divine Son so by not being the strong Vicar of Christ expected. Pray for him for
truly he needs it. And if there are any out there, such as Patrick
Madrid or self-made canon lawyer Peter Vere who want
to say that I or any of our contributing writers are "more Catholic than the
Pope," then I say, "Yes, we are! Unless all that preceded Vatican II was a ruse,
was not Roman Catholic." We know for a fact it was and to veer from what we were
weaned on would be apostasy. Ah ha, apostasy. Who is truly in apostasy? Those
who refuse to follow a pope and agenda that leads to perdition, or those who
follow and blindly obey directives that have been declared "anathema" by
pre-Vatican II Pontiffs? Consider this: it is better to not follow shepherds -
whether they be bishop or pope - who disrespect what Christ has asked of His
One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church than to disrespect Christ
by saying nothing. Folks, the emperor has no clothes and as
tough as that may be to take, the evidence and documentation give truth to that
fact.
So,
though we have not had a new issue for six weeks nothing has really changed in
Rome or in the American episcopacy. In fact, it is only getting worse as
the daily reports from Zenit manifest that. More spin, more mumble
jumble, but no teeth. While everyone is praising the Vatican
document - the tome if you will - on finally calling pro-abort politicians to
task for their sinful, anti-Catholic stance, the sad fact is that - like every
document since the death of good Pope Pius XII - it lacks any
enforcement, is totally toothless. Presidential candidate pro-abort
John Kerry has proved that point. Unless you can multiply
Bishop William Wiegand by 300 or more, there won't be any
clout, because the vast, vast, vast wasteland of bishops and
cardinals appointed by this pope are toothless wimps who don't have the
guts to do what the Sacramento ordinary did in rightly refusing the Sacrament of
the Holy Eucharist to the blatant offender California's Governor Gray
Davis. Why? Because his soul is not in the state of Sanctifying
Grace. To receive Holy Communion in such a state makes it even more of a sin,
more blasphemous. At least one bishop finally did what we have been
calling the appointed shepherds to do for three years in our Herod's
Heroes series. That only means the
pro-abort, pro-sodomite Davis won't be able to receive Communion in
Sacramento. Most likely Davis will just wait until he goes down
to his parish in Santa Monica in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles where he'll have
no problem because that is under Cardinal Roger Mahony's
jurisdiction - with the full approval and blessing of John Paul II - and the
truth of the matter is that the heretical red hat of Hollywood is no
longer Roman Catholic. Maybe American Catholic, but
definitely not Roman Catholic!
The sad truth is that very, very few of the hierarchy
today resemble true Roman Catholics and that definitely includes the Bishop
of Rome. When that day comes when God says 'Enough!' and he is taken
from this earth, there will be many who will assemble the countless storeys of
stories on and by him, amass the tons of tomes he has written that could very
well fill Paul VI Hall and St. Peter's Square with the trees it took to print
the endless words he produced from his time as one of the key periti at
Vatican II to the present. Were the same scrutinous standards for
sanctification still in place as in the time of Papa
Pacelli, it would guarantee there would be none of
the nonsensical idea of canonizing John Paul II after his death.
Think about it. It would take a century just to read and discern
everything since the devil's advocate would be required to
meticulously read and discern everything he wrote. As painful as the
idea of that sounds, I must admit that we ourselves were so duped as
to promote such a concept just four short years ago. We have
learned from our mistakes. If only the Holy Father and the bishops he
appointed would.
It causes us to consider that with all that has been
written since John XXIII through John Paul II and all the bishops they
appointed, not once has the word been used that would bring offenders to their
knees. That word is "anathema." Strange isn't it how the
brevity of the pre-Vatican II Popes' decrees spoke volumes and carried such
clout and respect the world over, while the Vatican II operatives have chosen to
destroy forests and souls while saying nothing? We should all
learn from the wisdom of the Popes of the past: Less is more!
Michael Cain, editor
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