lifesitenews--2020-05-25--A great Catholic novel that will inspire us to heroic fidelity during this corona crisis

May 25 , 2020 ( LifeSiteNews ) – The recent May 7 Appeal written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and signed , among others , by Cardinal Gerhard Müller , Cardinal Joseph Zen , and Bishop Athanasius Schneider , insisted upon the rights of the Church and that the state has no right to intrude into her decisions concerning her public worship and the Sacraments .
Just recently , and in a similar vein , Catholic commentator and book author Phil Lawler wrote an article arguing that there comes a point where a bishop needs to insist upon the rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her spiritual work , against the state regulations with regard to health matters .
He stated : At some point , these words imply , we might all be faced with the decision to defy civil authorities in order to defend the Catholic Faith and its practice .
In light of these debates about the closing of churches and the suppression of the Sacraments due to the corona crisis – and statements such as this one by Phil Lawler – I have been lately thinking about an Austrian novel that was written at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Enrica von Handel-Manzetti .
Handel-Mazzetti was a famous Austrian writer in the first half of the 20th century , having written several very powerful and impressive historical novels .
She always was especially attentive to the religious struggles between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th and 17th century .
Stephana Schwertner is the title of an as-yet-untranslated historical trilogy which is so fitting for our time .
It was written under the influence of the anti-Modernist work of Pope Pius X , in 1912/1913 .
The novel is a most Catholic depiction of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a new Protestant mayor who uses the plague as a pretext in order to close churches and suppress the public activities of the Catholic Church .
This Austrian town is Steyr to the northeast of Salzburg in Upper Austria on the Enns River not far from the Danube River at Linz ; and the action takes place in the beginning part of the 17th century , the time of the Counter-Reformation after the Protestant Reformation and just before the outbreak of the gravely destructive Thirty-Years ' War ( 1618-1648 ) .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ historical context , that is , just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 .
The novelist sets the scene of the story in such a way that the Catholics of the time are generally shown to be a weak and spiritually listless and also a materially impoverished group of people who are losing ground , strength , and influence day by day .
They have little resistance against the machinations of the Protestant mayor , Joachim Händel .
In the year 1613 , most of the local clerics , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a faint-hearted accommodation with the growing Protestant power in the town .
They send a sign of peace to the newly elected Mayor Händel , who draws his own wealth from his prosperous steel-and- armaments industry and whose hatred of the Catholic Church is only further fueled and fostered by her provocative weakness and her softness and decadence .
The mayor is set to reduce the number of Catholics in the town since he received – after generous donations of armaments – from the Austrian Emperor Matthias the promise that the Protestants may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be in the majority within the next three years .
The sudden appearance of the pestilence in a nearby region gives Händel a good pretext to start repressing the Catholics .
For supposed health reasons , he unjustly closes the Catholic churches and forbids any kind of public religious devotion such as processions .
The Catholics of Steyr are being overwhelmed .
A young woman , Stephana Schwertner , along with the help of Father Albert Grünwald , her monastic confessor , both of whom are saintly and inspiring , will play the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sustained resistance .
Both can also be of great help to the increase of our own fitting responses and Catholic Faith .
Stephana , when we first meet her in this three-volume and more than 1,500-page-long novel , is an 18-year-old girl who has just moved to Steyr with her widowed mother and her three younger brothers and sisters , in order to open a restaurant at the outskirts of the town .
We are told that , at the age of thirteen , on the very day of her First Holy Communion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ female variant of the name of the first martyr , Saint Stephen – had vowed to give herself completely to Our Lord ; and thus she is already generously filled with a deep love for Our Savior .
It becomes clear that this love of Our Lord is at the root of her moral and spiritual resistance against the conduct of the unjust mayor .
In Stephana 's case , her Faith helps her to have no debilitating nor compromising inclination to mere human respect .
She would rather defend God and His @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the respect and the praise of others , or even if her witness damages the commercial business of the family restaurant – and , as we shall see , even if it puts her own life at risk .
Her strong faith makes her promptly do the right thing at the right moment – and for the right reasons .
Father Albert himself – a missionary priest who was specifically called to Steyr by the dying Abbot Wilhelm Heller of the Benedictine Monastery of Garsten to help him fight against the growing power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mayor Händel , and thereby to reawaken the slothful and intimidated Catholics – soon tests the sincerity and character of Stephana when she comes to his Confessional for the first time .
Father Albert , a 30-year-old , stern and energetic man , asks Stephana , after her sacramental confession and absolution , whether her family still has holy images displayed in their family restaurant , in spite of the order of the unjust mayor to remove all holy images from public houses and places .
When Stephana responds with a “ Yes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remove them all , so as not to get into trouble with the civil authorities of the town .
She first answers him with astonishment – for she had heard Father Albert 's strong homilies and had therefore felt drawn to have him as her priestly confessor – and she thus promptly says that she has to obey God more than man and that the holy pictures will stay where they are .
Although Father Albert threatens her then and says that she should henceforth not come to him to confession , Stephana @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leave the confessional when the priest joyfully calls her back and reveals to her that he had only wanted to test her faith .
His heart is leaping , because in her he finds the first Catholic in town with still such a pure heart and a strong faith !
At the end of this first confession – which took place significantly on the Feast of the Protomartyr St. Stephen , on 26 December – Father Albert leaves Stephana with the clear instruction to keep the holy images where they are and , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the restaurant window in front of the image of the Blessed Mother on Saturdays , so that even passengers could see it from the outside !
In Father Albert , Stephana finds her guide whom she needed .
He himself is ascetical , strict and filled with Holy Love and well-disciplined Holy Anger .
He himself will thus soon also come to the test when his own very lax Prior Karl gives him instructions to stop preaching so strongly against Mayor Händel .
Father Albert reflects upon this order in his little cell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment of weakness , the local chronicler , a layman , comes into the room to tell him about the wondrous work of Stephana in her village and how people , through her example of purity and firmness , turn back to the Faith .
Encouraged himself by her witness , Father Albert recovers his deeper fidelity and concludes : “ I would rather be disobedient than a Judas !
” With this renewed grace-filled fire in his heart , he preaches on the following Sunday an even stronger and holier sermon than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the personal name of Händel ) , with the result that the faithful are moved to tears .
Father Albert and Stephana are two Catholic witnesses who will come to save Steyr from heresy and apostasy .
They will now form the larger resistance against Händel and his evil pretenses to suffocate every single practice and devotion of the Catholic Faith in Steyr .
The Catholic churches are about to be closed upon order by the mayor , due to the threat of the spreading plague ( but which had not yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last Mass is offered prior to the closing of the churches for an uncertain period of time – in obedience to Händel 's pestilence laws for the protection of public health – Stephana approaches Father Albert and proposes to organize a sacrificial pilgrimage to a famous pestilence-chapel ( Pestkapelle ) in Weng 75 miles away from Steyr which was known to be the place of prayers in times of the plague .
Father Albert responds with all his might and calls everybody to join that pilgrimage .
The faint-hearted Catholics receive encouragement by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the first to step up and to proclaim that she will go .
Many women and men follow her example , and finally more than one hundred of the faithful promise to participate in the pilgrimage on the very next day , knowing well that this act of defiance might call down upon them the wrath and punishment of Händel .
And indeed , Mayor Händel hears of the plan right away .
In order to forestall this pilgrimage , the mayor sends to the meeting place his own young son , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fiery , and dedicated 21-year-old man , but filled with an uninformed disgust for the Catholic Church and Her devotions and practices .
The next day , surprised by the young Händel and his men – for , he is the valorous commander of the local militia – Father Albert and Stephana ( who are at the head of the procession ) refuse to give up their pilgrimage .
Stephana , who holds one of the banners of the procession , is even able to swing it against the sword which the angry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use so as to hit Father Albert on the head .
Heinrich ’ s sword thus splits in two – indeed an embarrassing moment for a soldier to have been disarmed by a woman – and the life of the priest is thereby saved .
A valorous woman , indeed , this Stephana Schwertner !
( Schwertner in German contains the word “ sword , ” “ Schwert.
” ) Stephana and Father Albert are then arrested , and , while Father Albert as a priest is soon released and handed over to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in accord with the laws of the time , Stephana herself ( as a laywoman ) also has to pay the price for her disobedience against the pestilence and safety regulations of the town .
Her attempt to solve the problem of the plague with supernatural means is now being thwarted by the laws of a man who would ( and does ) rather trust in his own temporal power and in the merely natural means of illness-prevention .
The mayor , Joachim Händel , thus sentences Stephana to two hours of punitive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chains and standing at a pillar in a public place of penance .
Masses of people crowd about her in her hour of suffering , and they insult her and demean her in the most unspeakable ways , just as the crowds of Jerusalem did with Our Lord .
The iron of the chains cuts into Stephana 's flesh , and she soon nearly faints and , rather , hangs at the pillar , instead of standing up erectly .
The young Heinrich Händel , whose duty it is to execute his father @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this beautiful young and innocent girl with golden hair whose only fault it was to turn to God for help .
( While standing at the pillar , she prays the Rosary out loud , until someone rips it out of her hands . )
When , on top of it all , the crowds start accusing Stephana of having had a child out of wedlock – they claim that her youngest brother is really her own son – the young Händel goes into action and frees Stephana from her humiliating and disgraceful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he will now have to give an account and suffer grave punishment from his father for his disobedience toward his ruling by shortening Stephana 's humiliating public penance .
Later , Stephana is to confess to Father Albert that at the pillar she heard things that she had never heard before in her life and that she felt her soul was soiled thereby .
That shows how deep her own purity was .
Yet , “ In the fire of suffering , her heroism matured , ” as Handel-Mazzetti puts it beautifully @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Stephana and her family have much to suffer .
Their restaurant is less frequented , and they fall into poverty .
While Stephana has to carry the burden of having caused this fate for her family , she does not shift or waver one inch concerning what she had done .
She has no regrets , even though her mother , who is often too concerned with earthly matters , reminds her daily of how she had brought so much suffering into their family .
Stephana does not regret her acts because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ love for her One True Spouse to Whom she had given herself so completely at her First Holy Communion five years earlier .
And her acts were also acts of love for the town of Steyr and its people , trying to prevent the pestilence from entering the city .
She believed that only by turning to God in a penitential and reparatory pilgrimage could the pestilence be halted .
Soon , Stephana will turn this same ardent love into action again .
When four Catholic men of Steyr are condemned to death @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oppose the mayor and his injustices , also toward Stephana , it is she who from within the crowd starts saying aloud prayers of repentance and of mercy , so that the condemned men standing on the public place of execution , and soon to be hanged , might still turn their own hearts to God and away from any vengeful hard anger and hatred of their Protestant enemy .
At the moment when one of the men wants to cry out loud a curse against Händel , Stephana 's beautiful angelic voice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Jesus .
The four convicted men , stirred by her prayers , fall on their knees and prepare their hearts for their moment of death .
This is one of the most beautiful scenes of the novel .
( We will notice that there was no priest then present – for fear of the mayor , who explicitly denied the visit of a priest . )
As soon as the four men are hanged , and Stephana sees that she can do no more , she quietly slips out into a dark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so striking in Stephana is that she is so steadfast and so little affected by human respect .
Satan seems to have no access to the interior of her pure soul , though deviously perhaps is trying to grip it and torture it with remorse and self-doubts as to whether she should not have done what she did .
She did not foresee nor wish the death of the four men , but indirectly she might have caused it .
After all , these men had tried to defend her innocence .
Yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for her , not looking right or left .
When any bad thought comes into her heart , she picks up a piece of unfinished work and goes about her dutiful chores .
There is no time to squander .
Stephana prays all fifteen decades of the Rosary every day while she does her needlework and other handwork .
She is both a “ Martha and a Mary in the same time , ” as the author Handel-Mazzetti puts it .
Stephana 's love does not stop at this one good deed of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ God calls her for more .
She assists Father Albert , who is still imprisoned in a tower of his monastery outside of the city walls , when he detects from his tower the first wandering traveler infected with the dreaded pestilence .
After Father Albert 's having convinced his confessor , Father Ertelius , to let him secretly invite the sick man into his cell so that he can either cure or bury him , Stephana then provides food and medicine for the priest , who has put his own life at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Steyr by taking care of the sick and infectious man and by preventing him from entering the town .
Stephana and Father Albert now work together , in order to protect the weak and faint-hearted town , a town that has already shown so much cruelty , incomprehension , and injustice towards them .
But Father Albert and Stephana do even more .
The saintly priest is able to reach the heart of the dying mercenary soldier who had spent most of his own life amidst moral sewage .
( At the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cell of the monk to only see whether he could steal money or food ! )
After a good confession , however , the sinner yearns to receive Holy Communion , and since Father Ertelius himself is too afraid to do it , it is Stephana who will carry Our Lord to him .
She , too , puts her life at risk to bring consolation to a dying and highly infectious man .
She will remember it as the most beautiful moment of her earthly life when she was given the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in a pix on a chain hanging around her neck .
Glowing with that gift of divine love in the Blessed Sacrament , she enters the room of the dying man who , at her sight , calls out the name “ Maria !
” Stephana performs all these heroic acts of virtue with a calmness and with a natural self-forgetfulness that can only be explained with her growing holiness .
She thereby becomes an effective channel of grace to many others and is the mediating instrument of God 's own merciful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ becomes , as it were , a counterrevolutionary , at the moment when a paganized Christian – Mayor Joachim Händel – who is more interested in material wealth and power than in the meeker and weaker aspects , much less the suffering side , of Christianity – confronts the Catholics of Steyr with the demand that they completely apostatize from the Catholic Faith .
Stephana steps up when God calls her .
Stephana 's Catholic witness had darkly inflamed the elder Händel with a deep hatred .
Thus , when he learns of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one night climbing into the tower of Father Albert ( when carrying the Blessed Sacrament on her heart ) , he is considering to use this potentially scandalous conduct as a pretext in order to demand that she and her family move , at once , out of town .
While still hesitating to act in such a harsh manner , the Mayor now realizes that his own son , Heinrich , has ardently fallen in love with Stephana .
Both Händels , father and son , are at an audience with Emperor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his intention to marry Stephana , whereupon the Emperor promises him to be the godfather of Heinrich 's first born son .
( Little did Heinrich then know about Stephana 's secret promises to God . )
Joachim Händel is surprised by his son 's open-hearted disclosure of his love in front of the Emperor .
As soon as his son left town to ride back to his love , the father writes up the order to expel the Schwertner family from Steyr , secretly hoping thereby to be able to win back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a messenger with the new public decree to Steyr .
The son , Heinrich , having arrived in Steyr before the arrival of the unjust decree , visits Stephana and asks her for her hand , but she declines and remains distanced from him .
Leaving her home with a broken heart , Heinrich meets the messenger and hears of the grave charges against Stephana of secretly meeting the priest at night .
He is now inflamed with jealousy toward the suspect Father Albert .
Heinrich earlier himself had been wondering with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responded to his sincere attempts to approach her kindly and affectionately ( even in helping her to recover her Rosary that she had lost during her humiliating public penance at the pillar ) and he now thinks that he had found the true and heart-breaking reason for her conduct .
Heinrich Händel rides in haste back to Stephana 's house , still secretly hoping to be able to disprove the false claims alleged against her , about her secret love affair and nocturnal liaison with Father Albert .
Heinrich encounters Stephana alone in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lighting an oil lamp in honor of Saint Joseph .
When challenged about her purportedly impure affair , she refuses to render any explanation because she had promised Father Albert never to reveal to anyone what they had done together , out of fear that the dead man 's grave would then be dug up and that with it the pestilence would spread in Steyr .
Loyal to her promise , Stephana remains silent .
Heinrich Händel , who regards her behavior as a confirmation of her guilt , but who , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to expose her to another public scene of shame and disgrace , then has a dark and sudden fit of jealous passion , and he stabs Stephana with his own knife and kills her instantly .
Stephana indirectly becomes a martyr in the face of the hatred that the Protestant Mayor Joachim Händel has for the Catholic Faith .
Tragically , this mayor comes to use his own son as the executor – the instrument – of his own arguably demonic hate .
But , as is so often the case in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as it was at the moment when Jesus Christ Himself had died at the Cross – just when the evil powers believe they have achieved their goal and thought to have conquered the Faith , they lose .
( In the same manner today , just when Satan may well believe that he will have conquered the Church , she will spring up again , with the help of the Blessed Mother ! )
The death of Stephana likewise calls down so many graces from heaven upon Steyr , and inspires so many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now returns sincerely to the Catholic Faith , and this within hours of her martyrdom .
Steyr is Catholic again .
Händel the mayor has lost his battle .
Moreover , he in his juridical function as the mayor must now administer justice and thus even condemn his own son to death – according to his own laws – and he has to admit that Stephana , after all , has won , and with her the Catholic Church .
Not even two years after his election as mayor , the ugly face @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and it thoroughly disgraced him .
When the son Heinrich Händel is later being led out of the courtroom into the yard to be executed in public , his own most loyal soldiers suddenly shoot him so as to spare him a shameful death in front of the retributive citizenry .
While Heinrich then lies dying , he unexpectedly calls for a priest .
Filled with sorrow and sincere contrition – for , in the courtroom , Father Albert had finally related the whole truth about Stephana 's visit to him by night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to become a Catholic like his beloved Stephana .
Father Albert who had rushed to him firmly demands from the dying young man a renunciation of Satan and of his Protestant beliefs ; then he removes from him the ban of excommunication ; and , before giving the dying man the Viaticum , he hears his confession .
Questioned by Father Albert about his own personal carnal sins , Heinrich admits that it was Stephana 's purity which had kept him from falling into any kind of such sin .
Stephana 's purity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , moved by this open-hearted statement , realizes that God had even made use of the earthly love of this young man for a beautiful young virgin , in order to prepare his own heart for heaven .
Heinrich 's father , the tyrant of Steyr , who had rushed into the room where his dying son was lying , now witnesses his son 's conversion .
His last hatred against the Church dies away when he realizes that she in her love for the sinner reaches out to a young man who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supernatural charity of the Church shines brightly in the room .
Joachim Händel thus witnesses the peace that enters his son 's soul after having received the sacraments of the Church and after having heard , as well , the touching counsel of Father Albert himself that he , Heinrich , might also soon see Stephana again , but now as brother and sister in Christ , and in heaven .
Heinrich then prays : “ Saint Stephana , Bride of Christ , pray for me , a sinner !
” Thus Heinrich @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his lips while her body is being carried through town and then exposed for veneration in a coffin placed in front of one of the churches whose keys Mayor Händel was just about to give back to Father Albert for its renewed liturgical use by the Catholics .
Heinrich Händel himself was to be buried in the same church where , at the beginning of the tragedy , the plan had been made by Father Albert and Stephana to make a pilgrimage to Weng , in order to save the town of Steyr @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out , God 's plans went even further and did not only save the town from the pestilence , but also from the danger of apostasy , and from many other lesser forms of infidelity and sin .
On the last pages of this novel , Father Albert is shown to give a blessing to the people of Steyr with the Blessed Sacrament which he then is able to return to the tabernacle in the church .
With this most stirring scene , this long historical novel ends .
This deeply Catholic and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us an example of how we are all called to become saints and , thereby , also to become heroic , but humble , counterrevolutionaries , even at the time of the corona virus where , as it seems , different players try to abuse the illness for their own political , anti-Catholic , and globalist intentions .
LifeSite just reported that South Australia , for example , left the Catholic churches closed , even though they had no more active cases of the coronavirus !
And Cardinal Gerhard Müller , the former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Faith , just stated in an interview with EWTN 's Raymond Arroyo that there is a danger of the virus being used in an anti-Catholic way by dictatorial states and “ some other ideological groups.
” “ We have to speak against the instrumentalization of this virus , of this global crisis ” by dictatorial states and “ some other ideological groups ” who wish to “ suppress the Church ” and promote the “ break down of the sacramental life of the Church , ” he said .
He added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Church to worship God .
May this book be soon translated into English and may it inspire many other readers , under grace , unto personal sanctity and unto counterrevolutionary action – and , if it be God 's Will , even unto martyrdom .
In the following , I would like to present some very beautiful quotes from this Austrian novel .
“ Does he think that , because of my mother , I shall be silent ?
Truth it has to be , truth is truth !
” ( Stephana Schwertner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Albert ) “ Where the distress is the greatest , the closest one to us is God.
” ( Stephana Schwertner ) “ Blessed be those who believe and do not fear death.
” ( Stephana Schwertner ) “ What is mother and father in comparison with God and His Will and His Kingdom ?
If God has been merciful with your mother , you will find her again in heaven , to which only the Catholic path leads , but if not , then you sha n't wish to be re-united with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Händel who was then hesitating to reject the faith of his beloved deceased Protestant mother ) “ Or was it the case also with the Church as it was with Stephana herself , whom [ Joachim ] Händel had once called a harlot , and who was actually a saint ?
” ( The interior thoughts of Mayor Joachim Händel himself , as presented by the novel 's narrator ) “ And [ Joachim ] Händel still closed off his hard and frozen heart against the Divine Grace , and yet he saw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Church which he had so much persecuted was , indeed , much more than a human being.
” ( Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti ) “ He whom the devil insults is loved by God.
” ( Stephana Schwertner to her fretful mother ) “ Yes , Steyr is heretical , unfortunately .
But when no good Christians want to live among the heretics and the heathens here , how , then , can the word of Our Lord about the good leaven be fulfilled ; if you , maiden , find it hard to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how Corozaim and Bethsaida were not so sweet for Our Lord either ; but through a good example you can work much good here.
” ( Father Albert to Stephana ) “ Goodness does not consist in tolerating error , and to be silent toward sin is the greatest vice of the pulpit.
” ( Abbot Wilhelm Heller to the lax Prior Karl ) “ Preserve your devout Catholic courage , which is not a sinful form of pride .
I will pray for that.
” ( Father Albert to Stephana Schwertner ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ helps us still so that we remain nevertheless good and faithful !
” ( Stephana Schwertner to her mother . )
“ He is the greatest heretic in Steyr and the fiercest enemy of our Holy Church .
Whoever wants to honor him , may well do so , but I shall not.
” ( Father Albert about Mayor Händel ) “ 'The most beautiful thing on this sinful earth is the Faith , ' said the priest with a deep voice .
'Let us pray for such a Faith which even conquers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Father Albert to Stephana Schwertner )

May 25, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The recent May 7 Appeal written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and signed, among others, by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Cardinal Joseph Zen, and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, insisted upon the rights of the Church and that the state has no right to intrude into her decisions concerning her public worship and the Sacraments.
Just recently, and in a similar vein, Catholic commentator and book author Phil Lawler wrote an article arguing that there comes a point where a bishop needs to insist upon the rights of the Church and the importance of her spiritual work, against the state regulations with regard to health matters. He stated:
When civil officials issue orders about what is good for public health, Catholic bishops should listen, because civil officials have the proper authority to enforce public-health rules. Indeed a prudent bishop would ordinarily heed those rules even if he personally believes they are misguided, because the bishop is not an expert in the field of public health. But if and when the rules infringe on the prerogatives of the Church — if they compromise the evangelical mission — then the bishop must demur, and protest, and if necessary defy the civil authority. And so must we.
At some point, these words imply, we might all be faced with the decision to defy civil authorities in order to defend the Catholic Faith and its practice.
In light of these debates about the closing of churches and the suppression of the Sacraments due to the corona crisis – and statements such as this one by Phil Lawler – I have been lately thinking about an Austrian novel that was written at the beginning of the 20th century by Enrica von Handel-Mazzeti. Handel-Mazzetti was a famous Austrian writer in the first half of the 20th century, having written several very powerful and impressive historical novels. She always was especially attentive to the religious struggles between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th and 17th century.
Stephana Schwertner is the title of an as-yet-untranslated historical trilogy which is so fitting for our time. It was written under the influence of the anti-Modernist work of Pope Pius X, in 1912/1913.
The novel is a most Catholic depiction of a town in Austria under the siege of a new Protestant mayor who uses the plague as a pretext in order to close churches and suppress the public activities of the Catholic Church.
This Austrian town is Steyr to the northeast of Salzburg in Upper Austria on the Enns River not far from the Danube River at Linz; and the action takes place in the beginning part of the 17th century, the time of the Counter-Reformation after the Protestant Reformation and just before the outbreak of the gravely destructive Thirty-Years' War (1618-1648). This historical novel was published within a similar historical context, that is, just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
The novelist sets the scene of the story in such a way that the Catholics of the time are generally shown to be a weak and spiritually listless and also a materially impoverished group of people who are losing ground, strength, and influence day by day. They have little resistance against the machinations of the Protestant mayor, Joachim Händel.
In the year 1613, most of the local clerics, and also the nearby monastery, sought a faint-hearted accommodation with the growing Protestant power in the town. They send a sign of peace to the newly elected Mayor Händel, who draws his own wealth from his prosperous steel-and- armaments industry and whose hatred of the Catholic Church is only further fueled and fostered by her provocative weakness and her softness and decadence. The mayor is set to reduce the number of Catholics in the town since he received – after generous donations of armaments – from the Austrian Emperor Matthias the promise that the Protestants may receive more privileges should they come to be in the majority within the next three years.
The sudden appearance of the pestilence in a nearby region gives Händel a good pretext to start repressing the Catholics. For supposed health reasons, he unjustly closes the Catholic churches and forbids any kind of public religious devotion such as processions. The Catholics of Steyr are being overwhelmed.
A young woman, Stephana Schwertner, along with the help of Father Albert Grünwald, her monastic confessor, both of whom are saintly and inspiring, will play the role of the Catholic leaders of a sustained resistance. Both can also be of great help to the increase of our own fitting responses and Catholic Faith.
Stephana, when we first meet her in this three-volume and more than 1,500-page-long novel, is an 18-year-old girl who has just moved to Steyr with her widowed mother and her three younger brothers and sisters, in order to open a restaurant at the outskirts of the town.
We are told that, at the age of thirteen, on the very day of her First Holy Communion, Stephana – whose name is a female variant of the name of the first martyr, Saint Stephen – had vowed to give herself completely to Our Lord; and thus she is already generously filled with a deep love for Our Savior. It becomes clear that this love of Our Lord is at the root of her moral and spiritual resistance against the conduct of the unjust mayor. In Stephana's case, her Faith helps her to have no debilitating nor compromising inclination to mere human respect. She would rather defend God and His Church, even if she thereby loses the respect and the praise of others, or even if her witness damages the commercial business of the family restaurant – and, as we shall see, even if it puts her own life at risk.
Her strong faith makes her promptly do the right thing at the right moment – and for the right reasons.
Father Albert himself – a missionary priest who was specifically called to Steyr by the dying Abbot Wilhelm Heller of the Benedictine Monastery of Garsten to help him fight against the growing power of the Protestants, to preach against Mayor Händel, and thereby to reawaken the slothful and intimidated Catholics – soon tests the sincerity and character of Stephana when she comes to his Confessional for the first time.
Father Albert, a 30-year-old, stern and energetic man, asks Stephana, after her sacramental confession and absolution, whether her family still has holy images displayed in their family restaurant, in spite of the order of the unjust mayor to remove all holy images from public houses and places. When Stephana responds with a “Yes,” Father Albert urges her to remove them all, so as not to get into trouble with the civil authorities of the town. She first answers him with astonishment – for she had heard Father Albert's strong homilies and had therefore felt drawn to have him as her priestly confessor – and she thus promptly says that she has to obey God more than man and that the holy pictures will stay where they are. Although Father Albert threatens her then and says that she should henceforth not come to him to confession, Stephana stays strong and is even about to leave the confessional when the priest joyfully calls her back and reveals to her that he had only wanted to test her faith. His heart is leaping, because in her he finds the first Catholic in town with still such a pure heart and a strong faith!
At the end of this first confession – which took place significantly on the Feast of the Protomartyr St. Stephen, on 26 December – Father Albert leaves Stephana with the clear instruction to keep the holy images where they are and, additionally, to light a candle in the restaurant window in front of the image of the Blessed Mother on Saturdays, so that even passengers could see it from the outside!
In Father Albert, Stephana finds her guide whom she needed. He himself is ascetical, strict and filled with Holy Love and well-disciplined Holy Anger. He himself will thus soon also come to the test when his own very lax Prior Karl gives him instructions to stop preaching so strongly against Mayor Händel. Father Albert reflects upon this order in his little cell. Just when he himself has a moment of weakness, the local chronicler, a layman, comes into the room to tell him about the wondrous work of Stephana in her village and how people, through her example of purity and firmness, turn back to the Faith. Encouraged himself by her witness, Father Albert recovers his deeper fidelity and concludes: “I would rather be disobedient than a Judas!” With this renewed grace-filled fire in his heart, he preaches on the following Sunday an even stronger and holier sermon than he had before (while tactically leaving out the personal name of Händel), with the result that the faithful are moved to tears.
Father Albert and Stephana are two Catholic witnesses who will come to save Steyr from heresy and apostasy. They will now form the larger resistance against Händel and his evil pretenses to suffocate every single practice and devotion of the Catholic Faith in Steyr.
The Catholic churches are about to be closed upon order by the mayor, due to the threat of the spreading plague (but which had not yet reached Steyr). Shortly before the last Mass is offered prior to the closing of the churches for an uncertain period of time – in obedience to Händel's pestilence laws for the protection of public health – Stephana approaches Father Albert and proposes to organize a sacrificial pilgrimage to a famous pestilence-chapel (Pestkapelle) in Weng 75 miles away from Steyr which was known to be the place of prayers in times of the plague. Father Albert responds with all his might and calls everybody to join that pilgrimage. The faint-hearted Catholics receive encouragement by the calm witness of Stephana, who is the first to step up and to proclaim that she will go. Many women and men follow her example, and finally more than one hundred of the faithful promise to participate in the pilgrimage on the very next day, knowing well that this act of defiance might call down upon them the wrath and punishment of Händel. And indeed, Mayor Händel hears of the plan right away.
In order to forestall this pilgrimage, the mayor sends to the meeting place his own young son, Heinrich Händel, a very handsome, fiery, and dedicated 21-year-old man, but filled with an uninformed disgust for the Catholic Church and Her devotions and practices.
The next day, surprised by the young Händel and his men – for, he is the valorous commander of the local militia – Father Albert and Stephana (who are at the head of the procession) refuse to give up their pilgrimage. Stephana, who holds one of the banners of the procession, is even able to swing it against the sword which the angry and prideful young Händel was trying to use so as to hit Father Albert on the head. Heinrich’s sword thus splits in two – indeed an embarrassing moment for a soldier to have been disarmed by a woman – and the life of the priest is thereby saved. A valorous woman, indeed, this Stephana Schwertner! (Schwertner in German contains the word “sword,” “Schwert.”)
Stephana and Father Albert are then arrested, and, while Father Albert as a priest is soon released and handed over to Catholic ecclesiastical authorities for his trial, in accord with the laws of the time, Stephana herself (as a laywoman) also has to pay the price for her disobedience against the pestilence and safety regulations of the town. Her attempt to solve the problem of the plague with supernatural means is now being thwarted by the laws of a man who would (and does) rather trust in his own temporal power and in the merely natural means of illness-prevention.
The mayor, Joachim Händel, thus sentences Stephana to two hours of punitive exposure, while being chained in iron chains and standing at a pillar in a public place of penance. Masses of people crowd about her in her hour of suffering, and they insult her and demean her in the most unspeakable ways, just as the crowds of Jerusalem did with Our Lord. The iron of the chains cuts into Stephana's flesh, and she soon nearly faints and, rather, hangs at the pillar, instead of standing up erectly. The young Heinrich Händel, whose duty it is to execute his father's sentence, grows in pity for this beautiful young and innocent girl with golden hair whose only fault it was to turn to God for help. (While standing at the pillar, she prays the Rosary out loud, until someone rips it out of her hands.)
When, on top of it all, the crowds start accusing Stephana of having had a child out of wedlock – they claim that her youngest brother is really her own son – the young Händel goes into action and frees Stephana from her humiliating and disgraceful penance, in spite of the fact that he will now have to give an account and suffer grave punishment from his father for his disobedience toward his ruling by shortening Stephana's humiliating public penance.
Later, Stephana is to confess to Father Albert that at the pillar she heard things that she had never heard before in her life and that she felt her soul was soiled thereby. That shows how deep her own purity was. Yet, “In the fire of suffering, her heroism matured,” as Handel-Mazzetti puts it beautifully.
In the wake of this incident, Stephana and her family have much to suffer. Their restaurant is less frequented, and they fall into poverty. While Stephana has to carry the burden of having caused this fate for her family, she does not shift or waver one inch concerning what she had done. She has no regrets, even though her mother, who is often too concerned with earthly matters, reminds her daily of how she had brought so much suffering into their family. Stephana does not regret her acts because she knows that they were acts of love for her One True Spouse to Whom she had given herself so completely at her First Holy Communion five years earlier. And her acts were also acts of love for the town of Steyr and its people, trying to prevent the pestilence from entering the city. She believed that only by turning to God in a penitential and reparatory pilgrimage could the pestilence be halted.
Soon, Stephana will turn this same ardent love into action again.
When four Catholic men of Steyr are condemned to death at the gibbet because they dared to oppose the mayor and his injustices, also toward Stephana, it is she who from within the crowd starts saying aloud prayers of repentance and of mercy, so that the condemned men standing on the public place of execution, and soon to be hanged, might still turn their own hearts to God and away from any vengeful hard anger and hatred of their Protestant enemy. At the moment when one of the men wants to cry out loud a curse against Händel, Stephana's beautiful angelic voice is heard, calling upon the name of Jesus.
The four convicted men, stirred by her prayers, fall on their knees and prepare their hearts for their moment of death. This is one of the most beautiful scenes of the novel. (We will notice that there was no priest then present – for fear of the mayor, who explicitly denied the visit of a priest.) As soon as the four men are hanged, and Stephana sees that she can do no more, she quietly slips out into a dark street and goes home.
What is so striking in Stephana is that she is so steadfast and so little affected by human respect. Satan seems to have no access to the interior of her pure soul, though deviously perhaps is trying to grip it and torture it with remorse and self-doubts as to whether she should not have done what she did. She did not foresee nor wish the death of the four men, but indirectly she might have caused it. After all, these men had tried to defend her innocence. Yet, she walks the way God draws for her, not looking right or left. When any bad thought comes into her heart, she picks up a piece of unfinished work and goes about her dutiful chores. There is no time to squander. Stephana prays all fifteen decades of the Rosary every day while she does her needlework and other handwork. She is both a “Martha and a Mary in the same time,” as the author Handel-Mazzetti puts it.
Stephana's love does not stop at this one good deed of helping the four condemned men. Soon God calls her for more. She assists Father Albert, who is still imprisoned in a tower of his monastery outside of the city walls, when he detects from his tower the first wandering traveler infected with the dreaded pestilence. After Father Albert's having convinced his confessor, Father Ertelius, to let him secretly invite the sick man into his cell so that he can either cure or bury him, Stephana then provides food and medicine for the priest, who has put his own life at great risk for the greater common good of Steyr by taking care of the sick and infectious man and by preventing him from entering the town. Stephana and Father Albert now work together, in order to protect the weak and faint-hearted town, a town that has already shown so much cruelty, incomprehension, and injustice towards them.
But Father Albert and Stephana do even more. The saintly priest is able to reach the heart of the dying mercenary soldier who had spent most of his own life amidst moral sewage. (At the beginning, that man had come into the cell of the monk to only see whether he could steal money or food!) After a good confession, however, the sinner yearns to receive Holy Communion, and since Father Ertelius himself is too afraid to do it, it is Stephana who will carry Our Lord to him. She, too, puts her life at risk to bring consolation to a dying and highly infectious man. She will remember it as the most beautiful moment of her earthly life when she was given the privilege to carry Jesus on her heart, in a pyx on a chain hanging around her neck. Glowing with that gift of divine love in the Blessed Sacrament, she enters the room of the dying man who, at her sight, calls out the name “Maria!”
Stephana performs all these heroic acts of virtue with a calmness and with a natural self-forgetfulness that can only be explained with her growing holiness. She thereby becomes an effective channel of grace to many others and is the mediating instrument of God's own merciful love. She is a saint who becomes, as it were, a counterrevolutionary, at the moment when a paganized Christian – Mayor Joachim Händel – who is more interested in material wealth and power than in the meeker and weaker aspects, much less the suffering side, of Christianity – confronts the Catholics of Steyr with the demand that they completely apostatize from the Catholic Faith.
Stephana steps up when God calls her.
Stephana's Catholic witness had darkly inflamed the elder Händel with a deep hatred. Thus, when he learns of the fact that she had been seen one night climbing into the tower of Father Albert (when carrying the Blessed Sacrament on her heart), he is considering to use this potentially scandalous conduct as a pretext in order to demand that she and her family move, at once, out of town. While still hesitating to act in such a harsh manner, the Mayor now realizes that his own son, Heinrich, has ardently fallen in love with Stephana.
Both Händels, father and son, are at an audience with Emperor Matthias when Heinrich declares to the Emperor his intention to marry Stephana, whereupon the Emperor promises him to be the godfather of Heinrich's first born son. (Little did Heinrich then know about Stephana's secret promises to God.) Joachim Händel is surprised by his son's open-hearted disclosure of his love in front of the Emperor. As soon as his son left town to ride back to his love, the father writes up the order to expel the Schwertner family from Steyr, secretly hoping thereby to be able to win back his son's heart. Händel sends a messenger with the new public decree to Steyr.
The son, Heinrich, having arrived in Steyr before the arrival of the unjust decree, visits Stephana and asks her for her hand, but she declines and remains distanced from him. Leaving her home with a broken heart, Heinrich meets the messenger and hears of the grave charges against Stephana of secretly meeting the priest at night. He is now inflamed with jealousy toward the suspect Father Albert. Heinrich earlier himself had been wondering with a heavy heart why Stephana herself had never responded to his sincere attempts to approach her kindly and affectionately (even in helping her to recover her Rosary that she had lost during her humiliating public penance at the pillar) and he now thinks that he had found the true and heart-breaking reason for her conduct.
Heinrich Händel rides in haste back to Stephana's house, still secretly hoping to be able to disprove the false claims alleged against her, about her secret love affair and nocturnal liaison with Father Albert. Heinrich encounters Stephana alone in the restaurant, just as she is lighting an oil lamp in honor of Saint Joseph. When challenged about her purportedly impure affair, she refuses to render any explanation because she had promised Father Albert never to reveal to anyone what they had done together, out of fear that the dead man's grave would then be dug up and that with it the pestilence would spread in Steyr. Loyal to her promise, Stephana remains silent. Heinrich Händel, who regards her behavior as a confirmation of her guilt, but who, in his ardent love, still does not want to expose her to another public scene of shame and disgrace, then has a dark and sudden fit of jealous passion, and he stabs Stephana with his own knife and kills her instantly.
Stephana Schwertner is dead.
Stephana indirectly becomes a martyr in the face of the hatred that the Protestant Mayor Joachim Händel has for the Catholic Faith. Tragically, this mayor comes to use his own son as the executor – the instrument – of his own arguably demonic hate. But, as is so often the case in the history of the world – and as it was at the moment when Jesus Christ Himself had died at the Cross – just when the evil powers believe they have achieved their goal and thought to have conquered the Faith, they lose. (In the same manner today, just when Satan may well believe that he will have conquered the Church, she will spring up again, with the help of the Blessed Mother!)
The death of Stephana likewise calls down so many graces from heaven upon Steyr, and inspires so many people that the majority of the town now returns sincerely to the Catholic Faith, and this within hours of her martyrdom. Steyr is Catholic again. Händel the mayor has lost his battle. Moreover, he in his juridical function as the mayor must now administer justice and thus even condemn his own son to death – according to his own laws – and he has to admit that Stephana, after all, has won, and with her the Catholic Church. Not even two years after his election as mayor, the ugly face of his tyranny has shown itself fully and it thoroughly disgraced him.
When the son Heinrich Händel is later being led out of the courtroom into the yard to be executed in public, his own most loyal soldiers suddenly shoot him so as to spare him a shameful death in front of the retributive citizenry. While Heinrich then lies dying, he unexpectedly calls for a priest. Filled with sorrow and sincere contrition – for, in the courtroom, Father Albert had finally related the whole truth about Stephana's visit to him by night in his tower – Heinrich now yearns to become a Catholic like his beloved Stephana.
Father Albert who had rushed to him firmly demands from the dying young man a renunciation of Satan and of his Protestant beliefs; then he removes from him the ban of excommunication; and, before giving the dying man the Viaticum, he hears his confession. Questioned by Father Albert about his own personal carnal sins, Heinrich admits that it was Stephana's purity which had kept him from falling into any kind of such sin. Stephana's purity had kept him pure. Father Albert, moved by this open-hearted statement, realizes that God had even made use of the earthly love of this young man for a beautiful young virgin, in order to prepare his own heart for heaven.
Heinrich's father, the tyrant of Steyr, who had rushed into the room where his dying son was lying, now witnesses his son's conversion. His last hatred against the Church dies away when he realizes that she in her love for the sinner reaches out to a young man who is despised by all mankind. The supernatural charity of the Church shines brightly in the room. Joachim Händel thus witnesses the peace that enters his son's soul after having received the sacraments of the Church and after having heard, as well, the touching counsel of Father Albert himself that he, Heinrich, might also soon see Stephana again, but now as brother and sister in Christ, and in heaven. Heinrich then prays: “Saint Stephana, Bride of Christ, pray for me, a sinner!”
Thus Heinrich Händel dies with Stephana's name upon his lips while her body is being carried through town and then exposed for veneration in a coffin placed in front of one of the churches whose keys Mayor Händel was just about to give back to Father Albert for its renewed liturgical use by the Catholics. Heinrich Händel himself was to be buried in the same church where, at the beginning of the tragedy, the plan had been made by Father Albert and Stephana to make a pilgrimage to Weng, in order to save the town of Steyr from the pestilence. As it turns out, God's plans went even further and did not only save the town from the pestilence, but also from the danger of apostasy, and from many other lesser forms of infidelity and sin. On the last pages of this novel, Father Albert is shown to give a blessing to the people of Steyr with the Blessed Sacrament which he then is able to return to the tabernacle in the church.
With this most stirring scene, this long historical novel ends.
This deeply Catholic and most beautiful novel by Handel-Mazzetti can give us an example of how we are all called to become saints and, thereby, also to become heroic, but humble, counterrevolutionaries, even at the time of the corona virus where, as it seems, different players try to abuse the illness for their own political, anti-Catholic, and globalist intentions. LifeSite just reported that South Australia, for example, left the Catholic churches closed, even though they had no more active cases of the coronavirus! And Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, just stated in an interview with EWTN's Raymond Arroyo that there is a danger of the virus being used in an anti-Catholic way by dictatorial states and “some other ideological groups.” “We have to speak against the instrumentalization of this virus, of this global crisis” by dictatorial states and “some other ideological groups” who wish to “suppress the Church” and promote the “break down of the sacramental life of the Church,” he said. He added that the state cannot forbid the Church to worship God.
May this book be soon translated into English and may it inspire many other readers, under grace, unto personal sanctity and unto counterrevolutionary action – and, if it be God's Will, even unto martyrdom.
—Postscript–
In the following, I would like to present some very beautiful quotes from this Austrian novel.
“Does he think that, because of my mother, I shall be silent? Truth it has to be, truth is truth!” (Stephana Schwertner's reflection about a comment by Father Albert)
***
“Where the distress is the greatest, the closest one to us is God.” (Stephana Schwertner)
***
“Blessed be those who believe and do not fear death.” (Stephana Schwertner)
***
“What is mother and father in comparison with God and His Will and His Kingdom? If God has been merciful with your mother, you will find her again in heaven, to which only the Catholic path leads, but if not, then you shan't wish to be re-united with her.” (Father Albert to Heinrich Händel who was then hesitating to reject the faith of his beloved deceased Protestant mother)
***
“Or was it the case also with the Church as it was with Stephana herself, whom [Joachim] Händel had once called a harlot, and who was actually a saint?” (The interior thoughts of Mayor Joachim Händel himself, as presented by the novel's narrator)
***
“And [Joachim] Händel still closed off his hard and frozen heart against the Divine Grace, and yet he saw growing in himself the insight that the Church which he had so much persecuted was, indeed, much more than a human being.” (Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti)
***
“He whom the devil insults is loved by God.” (Stephana Schwertner to her fretful mother)
***
“Yes, Steyr is heretical, unfortunately. But when no good Christians want to live among the heretics and the heathens here, how, then, can the word of Our Lord about the good leaven be fulfilled; if you, maiden, find it hard to live in Steyr, think also of how Corozaim and Bethsaida were not so sweet for Our Lord either; but through a good example you can work much good here.” (Father Albert to Stephana)
***
“Goodness does not consist in tolerating error, and to be silent toward sin is the greatest vice of the pulpit.” (Abbot Wilhelm Heller to the lax Prior Karl)
***
“Preserve your devout Catholic courage, which is not a sinful form of pride. I will pray for that.” (Father Albert to Stephana Schwertner)
***
“If Steyr is evil, God helps us still so that we remain nevertheless good and faithful!” (Stephana Schwertner to her mother.)
***
“He is the greatest heretic in Steyr and the fiercest enemy of our Holy Church. Whoever wants to honor him, may well do so, but I shall not.” (Father Albert about Mayor Händel)
***
“'The most beautiful thing on this sinful earth is the Faith,' said the priest with a deep voice. 'Let us pray for such a Faith which even conquers God's omnipotence.'” (Father Albert to Stephana Schwertner)
Follow Maike Dr. Maike Hickson was born and raised in Germany. She holds a PhD from the University of Hannover, Germany, after having written in Switzerland her doctoral dissertation on the history of Swiss intellectuals before and during World War II. She now lives in the U.S. and is married to Dr. Robert Hickson, and they have been blessed with two beautiful children. She is a happy housewife who likes to write articles when time permits. Dr. Hickson published in 2014 a Festschrift, a collection of some thirty essays written by thoughtful authors in honor of her husband upon his 70th birthday, which is entitled A Catholic Witness in Our Time. Hickson has closely followed the papacy of Pope Francis and the developments in the Catholic Church in Germany, and she has been writing articles on religion and politics for U.S. and European publications and websites such as LifeSiteNews, OnePeterFive, The Wanderer, Rorate Caeli, Catholicism.org, Catholic Family News, Christian Order, Notizie Pro-Vita, Corrispondenza Romana, Katholisches.info, Der Dreizehnte, Zeit-Fragen, and Westfalen-Blatt.
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lifesitenews--2020-05-25--U.S. Supreme Court asked to intervene in California’s ‘biased’ shutdown of churches

SAN DIEGO , California , May 25 , 2020 ( LifeSiteNews ) – Southern California ’ s South Bay Pentecostal Church has petitioned the United States Supreme Court to intervene and issue an emergency injunction against Governor Gavin Newsom ’ s shutdown of churches .
The church ’ s attorneys are arguing that Newsom ’ s shutdown of religious worship in the state is a blatant violation of the First Amendment ’ s constitutional guarantee that citizens may freely exercise their religious faith So far , the South Bay United Pentecostal Church and its Senior Pastor , Bishop Arthur Hodges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawsuit before both San Diego ’ s federal district court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals .
In the 9th Circuit the church lost on emergency appeal , 2-1 before a three-judge panel .
Judge Daniel Collins sided with the church , filing a powerful 15-page dissent that declared the church deserves the relief it seeks .
The South Bay United Pentecostal Church is asking to hold in-person worship services , fully subject to social distancing and other contagion-mitigation steps .
The church is represented by LiMandri & Jonna , doing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , California , as the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund , joined by the Chicago-based Thomas More Society .
The attorneys filed an Emergency Application for Writ of Injunctive Relief on May 23 , 2020 , on behalf of South Bay United Pentecostal Church and Bishop Arthur Hodges III , in South Bay United Pentecostal Church , et al v. Gavin Newsom , et al .
Tom Brejcha , President and Chief Counsel for the Thomas More Society , explained that the lawsuit and the church ’ s petition for emergency relief have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of these and all Americans may be secured .
“ These most essential liberties and fundamental freedoms are prescribed at the very outset of our Bill of Rights .
California ’ s four stage Reopening Plan permits manufacturing , warehousing , retail , offices , seated dining at restaurants , and schools to reopen , but bans places of worship from holding church services .
On its face , ” he said , “ this plan is a blatant violation of the Free Exercise Clause of our First Amendment.
” South Bay United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Governor Newsom and other state and local officials have denigrated churches by downgrading them into a lower category of “ non-essential ” activities , along with movie theaters , salons and gyms – ignoring their preferred status in our Bill of Rights .
South Bay ’ s Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund attorneys , teamed with the Thomas More Society , originally filed a request for the church to be open for worship during the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11 , 2020 .
Repulsed by a San Diego federal judge , they fast-tracked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Circuit Court of Appeals where they lost again .
Brejcha took note that increasingly outspoken and widespread protest on the part of people of faith , on top of President Trump ’ s recent remarks calling for churches to be allowed to reopen , and buttressed by a “ letter brief ” from the United States Department of Justice which argued that California has been violating constitutionally guaranteed rights , may have had an impact .
Governor Newsom has reportedly said that he will soon make a statement about allowing religious services to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States Supreme Court to weigh in on this critical matter to ensure that state or local officials refrain now and forever from governing by decree to curtail constitutional rights , ” declared Brejcha , who noted that relief is now sought for next Sunday , May 31 , which is Pentecost , a significant day in the Christian church .
Judge Collins , in his dissent from the 9th Circuit panel ’ s denial of any emergency relief , which would have allowed the church to hold services , scored compelling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He argued : • The First Amendment ’ s Free Exercise Clause provides that “ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
” South Bay United Pentecostal Church , et al “ have established a very strong likelihood of success on the merits of this claim.
” • California ’ s contention is that constitutional standards that would normally govern our review of a Free Exercise claim should not be applied , yet the state cites “ no authority that can justify its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Governor the power to restrict any and all constitutional rights.
” • California did not simply “ proscribe specific forms of underlying physical conduct that it identified as dangerous , such as failing to maintain social distancing or having an excessive number of persons within an enclosed space.
” Instead , it “ presumptively prohibited California residents from leaving their homes for any reason , ” other than when an exception “ granted back the freedom to conduct particular activities or to travel back and forth to such activities.
” • San @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2020 , reopening of both dine-in restaurants and in-store retail businesses was allowed , yet “ religious services ” are explicitly assigned to a later stage with “ movie theaters ” and other “ personal & hospitality services.
” By explicitly and categorically assigning all in-person “ religious services ” to a future phase without any express regard to the number of attendees , the size of the space , or the safety protocols followed in such services , the state “ discriminates on its face against religious conduct.
” • Warehousing and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so long as they follow specified guidelines .
But in-person “ religious services ” —merely because they are “ religious services ” —are categorically not permitted to take place even if they follow the same guidelines .
The Church offered a wide range of measures they are ready and willing to implement on reopening , including spacing out the seating , requiring congregants to wear face coverings , prohibiting the congregation from singing , and banning hugging , handshakes , and hand-holding .
Judge Collins points out that the state ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is too much risk that congregants will not follow these rules .
He notes that it is illogical to assume “ that the very same people who can not be trusted to follow the rules at their place of worship can be trusted to do so at their workplace and that the state can not assume the worst when people go to worship but assume the best when people go to work or go about the rest of their daily lives in permitted social settings.
” Collins urges California to “ honor its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the free exercise of religion—public worship .
”

SAN DIEGO, California, May 25, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Southern California’s South Bay Pentecostal Church has petitioned the United States Supreme Court to intervene and issue an emergency injunction against Governor Gavin Newsom’s shutdown of churches.
The church’s attorneys are arguing that Newsom’s shutdown of religious worship in the state is a blatant violation of the First Amendment’s constitutional guarantee that citizens may freely exercise their religious faith.
So far, the South Bay United Pentecostal Church and its Senior Pastor, Bishop Arthur Hodges III, have not prevailed in their lawsuit before both San Diego’s federal district court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. In the 9th Circuit the church lost on emergency appeal, 2-1 before a three-judge panel. Judge Daniel Collins sided with the church, filing a powerful 15-page dissent that declared the church deserves the relief it seeks.
The South Bay United Pentecostal Church is asking to hold in-person worship services, fully subject to social distancing and other contagion-mitigation steps.
The church is represented by LiMandri & Jonna, doing pro bono work in Rancho Santa Fe, California, as the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, joined by the Chicago-based Thomas More Society. The attorneys filed an Emergency Application for Writ of Injunctive Relief on May 23, 2020, on behalf of South Bay United Pentecostal Church and Bishop Arthur Hodges III, in South Bay United Pentecostal Church, et al v. Gavin Newsom, et al.
Tom Brejcha, President and Chief Counsel for the Thomas More Society, explained that the lawsuit and the church’s petition for emergency relief have proved necessary in order that the rights of these and all Americans may be secured. “These most essential liberties and fundamental freedoms are prescribed at the very outset of our Bill of Rights. California’s four stage Reopening Plan permits manufacturing, warehousing, retail, offices, seated dining at restaurants, and schools to reopen, but bans places of worship from holding church services. On its face,” he said, “this plan is a blatant violation of the Free Exercise Clause of our First Amendment.”
South Bay United Pentecostal Church and Bishop Hodges argue that Governor Newsom and other state and local officials have denigrated churches by downgrading them into a lower category of “non-essential” activities, along with movie theaters, salons and gyms – ignoring their preferred status in our Bill of Rights. South Bay’s Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund attorneys, teamed with the Thomas More Society, originally filed a request for the church to be open for worship during the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11, 2020. Repulsed by a San Diego federal judge, they fast-tracked an emergency appeal up to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where they lost again.
Brejcha took note that increasingly outspoken and widespread protest on the part of people of faith, on top of President Trump’s recent remarks calling for churches to be allowed to reopen, and buttressed by a “letter brief” from the United States Department of Justice which argued that California has been violating constitutionally guaranteed rights, may have had an impact. Governor Newsom has reportedly said that he will soon make a statement about allowing religious services to resume.
“But we still need the United States Supreme Court to weigh in on this critical matter to ensure that state or local officials refrain now and forever from governing by decree to curtail constitutional rights,” declared Brejcha, who noted that relief is now sought for next Sunday, May 31, which is Pentecost, a significant day in the Christian church.
Judge Collins, in his dissent from the 9th Circuit panel’s denial of any emergency relief, which would have allowed the church to hold services, scored compelling points in his lengthy, persuasive opinion. He argued:
The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” South Bay United Pentecostal Church, et al “have established a very strong likelihood of success on the merits of this claim.”
California’s contention is that constitutional standards that would normally govern our review of a Free Exercise claim should not be applied, yet the state cites “no authority that can justify its extraordinary claim that the current emergency gives the Governor the power to restrict any and all constitutional rights.”
California did not simply “proscribe specific forms of underlying physical conduct that it identified as dangerous, such as failing to maintain social distancing or having an excessive number of persons within an enclosed space.” Instead, it “presumptively prohibited California residents from leaving their homes for any reason,” other than when an exception “granted back the freedom to conduct particular activities or to travel back and forth to such activities.”
San Diego County’s May 20, 2020, reopening of both dine-in restaurants and in-store retail businesses was allowed, yet “religious services” are explicitly assigned to a later stage with “movie theaters” and other “personal & hospitality services.” By explicitly and categorically assigning all in-person “religious services” to a future phase without any express regard to the number of attendees, the size of the space, or the safety protocols followed in such services, the state “discriminates on its face against religious conduct.”
Warehousing and manufacturing facilities are categorically permitted to open, so long as they follow specified guidelines. But in-person “religious services”—merely because they are “religious services”—are categorically not permitted to take place even if they follow the same guidelines.
The Church offered a wide range of measures they are ready and willing to implement on reopening, including spacing out the seating, requiring congregants to wear face coverings, prohibiting the congregation from singing, and banning hugging, handshakes, and hand-holding. Judge Collins points out that the state’s only response was to insist that there is too much risk that congregants will not follow these rules. He notes that it is illogical to assume “that the very same people who cannot be trusted to follow the rules at their place of worship can be trusted to do so at their workplace and that the state cannot assume the worst when people go to worship but assume the best when people go to work or go about the rest of their daily lives in permitted social settings.” Collins urges California to “honor its constitutional duty to accommodate a critical element of the free exercise of religion—public worship.”
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lifesitenews--2020-05-25--England will now ‘presume consent’ to harvest organs of those declared dead

ENGLAND , May 25 , 2020 ( LifeSiteNews ) – English law will now allow the state to “ presume consent ” for harvesting organs of those declared dead .
The new law that came into effect last week grants the government authority to take organs from those certified as dead unless the person had specifically registered that they do not want their organs to be used .
The government says the law was changed “ to help save and improve more lives.
” A similar law has existed in Wales since 2015 .
In Scotland legislation assuming consent to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ March 2021 .
Dr. Anthony McCarthy of the U.K. pro-life group the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children ( SPUC ) told LifeSite that there are a number of issues of concern regarding the change .
“ So-called ‘ brain death ’ enables doctors to remove vital organs from patients who are still very possibly alive though perhaps unconscious and close to death , ” McCarthy explained .
“ Donor hearts , for example , are in practice harvested from so-called ‘ heart beating cadavers ’ .
Publicity to encourage people to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heart beating donors can move when the organs are taken unless they are paralysed by drugs , ” he continued .
“ Transplant surgeons know this and they also know that the person ’ s blood pressure goes up when an incision is made .
Some anaesthetists recommend that the supposed ‘ cadaver ’ should be anaesthetised when his/her organs are removed.
” McCarthy stressed that many who agree to be organ donors are unaware of the realities involved .
“ Most organ donors , including those who give explicit consent before they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may be beating when their organs are taken , and that they may be pink , warm , able to heal wounds , fight infections and respond to stimuli , ” he said .
“ It is also the case that supposedly brain dead people ( such as pregnant women who are given high tech medical support ) can appear to survive for months while demonstrating integrated bodily activity of a kind that arguably indicates that life still remains.
” McCarthy also expressed concern that cardiac death can sometimes be declared “ too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organs .
“ One worrying development in Australia has been the move from declaring that organ removal must only be attempted after ‘ irreversible ’ loss of cardiac function to saying that it must only be attempted after ‘ permanent ’ loss of cardiac function , where the latter can include scenarios where a decision has already been made that resuscitation not be attempted .
As one report puts it , ‘ One can not rightly claim that death has occurred if cardiac function could be restored , even if a decision has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” McCarthy added that presumed consent to organ donation also means that , in effect , the State owns your body after death .
“ A gift is something freely given .
You can not donate your organs , i.e .
give them as a gift , if the State has already usurped ownership of your body and you have not even considered the matter , ” he explained .
“ Under the new system of presumed consent you can opt out of ‘ donating ’ your organs .
But if you do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ harvested and your relatives may be powerless to stop this.
” It is still possible both to register to be an organ donor , or to ‘ opt out ’ and declare that you do not wish to donate your organs in the event of your death .
Residents in England wishing to register their decision can do so online , or by telephoning : 0300 303 2094 .
Those who choose to do so are advised to inform friends and family of their decision and to keep the letter they receive confirming @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Pro-life leader Anthony McCarthy says that 'presumed consent' means that, in effect, the State owns your body after death.
ENGLAND, May 25, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – English law will now allow the state to “presume consent” for harvesting organs of those declared dead.
The new law that came into effect last week grants the government authority to take organs from those certified as dead unless the person had specifically registered that they do not want their organs to be used. The government says the law was changed “to help save and improve more lives.”
A similar law has existed in Wales since 2015. In Scotland legislation assuming consent to organ donation will come into force in March 2021.
Dr. Anthony McCarthy of the U.K. pro-life group the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) told LifeSite that there are a number of issues of concern regarding the change.
“So-called ‘brain death’ enables doctors to remove vital organs from patients who are still very possibly alive though perhaps unconscious and close to death,” McCarthy explained.
“Donor hearts, for example, are in practice harvested from so-called ‘heart beating cadavers’. Publicity to encourage people to donate their organs does not reveal that heart beating donors can move when the organs are taken unless they are paralysed by drugs,” he continued.
“Transplant surgeons know this and they also know that the person’s blood pressure goes up when an incision is made. Some anaesthetists recommend that the supposed ‘cadaver’ should be anaesthetised when his/her organs are removed.”
McCarthy stressed that many who agree to be organ donors are unaware of the realities involved.
“Most organ donors, including those who give explicit consent before they die, are unaware that their hearts may be beating when their organs are taken, and that they may be pink, warm, able to heal wounds, fight infections and respond to stimuli,” he said.
“It is also the case that supposedly brain dead people (such as pregnant women who are given high tech medical support) can appear to survive for months while demonstrating integrated bodily activity of a kind that arguably indicates that life still remains.”
McCarthy also expressed concern that cardiac death can sometimes be declared “too quickly” in order to obtain usable organs.
“One worrying development in Australia has been the move from declaring that organ removal must only be attempted after ‘irreversible’ loss of cardiac function to saying that it must only be attempted after ‘permanent’ loss of cardiac function, where the latter can include scenarios where a decision has already been made that resuscitation not be attempted. As one report puts it, ‘One cannot rightly claim that death has occurred if cardiac function could be restored, even if a decision has been made not to do so.’”
McCarthy added that presumed consent to organ donation also means that, in effect, the State owns your body after death.
“A gift is something freely given. You cannot donate your organs, i.e. give them as a gift, if the State has already usurped ownership of your body and you have not even considered the matter,” he explained.
“Under the new system of presumed consent you can opt out of ‘donating’ your organs. But if you do not do that your organs may be harvested and your relatives may be powerless to stop this.”
It is still possible both to register to be an organ donor, or to ‘opt out’ and declare that you do not wish to donate your organs in the event of your death. Residents in England wishing to register their decision can do so online, or by telephoning: 0300 303 2094. Those who choose to do so are advised to inform friends and family of their decision and to keep the letter they receive confirming their decision in a safe place.
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lifesitenews--2020-05-25--Understanding man’s free will and using it to love God

Formerly Heart to Heart with Mother Miriam , Mother Miriam Live brings you inspiration and solutions for life ’ s @ @ @ @ @ Miriam is a Catholic nun on a mission to bring hope to a world that @ @ @ @ @ let her share that hope and joy with you !
To tune into Mother Miriam @ @ @ @ @ Facebook page here every Monday to Friday at 10am .

To help keep this and other programs on the air, please donate here.
Watch Mother Miriam's Live show from 5.25.2020. In today's special pre-recorded episode for Memorial Day, Mother Miriam continues her series from the catechism of the Catholic Church. Today, she focuses on man's free will and reason.
You can tune in daily at 10 am EST/7 am PST on our Facebook Page.
Subscribe to Mother Miriam Live here.


lifesitenews--2020-05-25--Join our daily worldwide rosary HERE

Join our daily worldwide rosary HERE

May 25 , 2020 ( LifeSiteNews ) – In response to the coronavirus crisis , LifeSite is offering Catholics throughout the world a chance to be united in praying the rosary together , at the same time , every day at 12:00 noon EST .
The rosary is led by Father Anthony Pillari , an American priest currently in Italy .
To date , Catholics from Israel , Uganda , Italy , France , Germany , Ireland , the United Kingdom , the U.S. , Canada , Mexico , Chile , Brazil , Australia , New Zealand , the Philippines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as well as other countries , have been joining in .
The whole world – including the Church – has been thrown into chaos because of the coronavirus ( COVID-19 ) .
Thousands of people have passed away as a result of the viral outbreak , while thousands more have been sickened .
And , across the world , business has come to a grinding halt , resulting in sudden job loss and threatening economic recession .
If there ever was a time for prayer , this is it .
Catholics around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Sacraments , but in many places are unable to access them because of bishops ’ orders or government restrictions .
We know that community with other believers is vital all the time , but especially during this time of global calls for “ sheltering-in-place ” and quarantine .
“ The rosary is the weapon for these times , ” St. Padre Pio said .
Through prayer , we can shape history , change the world , and bring this painful crisis to an end .
Join us today !
Send photos or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rosary with Father Pillari to [ email protected ]

(LifeSiteNews) — In response to the crisis unfolding in our world and in the Church, LifeSite is happy to promote Regina Angelorum Press’s Daily Rosary, which is offering Catholics throughout the world the chance to be united daily in prayer, in the Our Lady of Fatima Rosary Crusade.
Catholics from all over the world — from Israel, Uganda, Italy, France, Germany, Ireland, Pakistan, Singapore, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and other countries — are gathering daily to pray the Rosary, led by Father Pillari, JCL, MCL, STL, an American priest currently studying in Italy.
The Daily Rosary is being offered each day at 12noon EST through Regina Angelorum Press’ YouTube Channel to which you can subscribe HERE.
The goal is, by means of this Daily Rosary and by embracing and living out the message given by the Virgin Mary at Fatima, the triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart.
To help obtain that goal, Bishop Athanasius Schneider graciously composed the following prayer for this worldwide Rosary crusade:
O Immaculate Heart of Mary, you are the holy Mother of God and our tender Mother. Look upon the distress in which the Church and the whole of humanity are living because of the spread of materialism and the persecution of the Church. In Fatima you warned against these errors, as you spoke about the errors of Russia. You are the Mediatrix of all graces. Implore your Divine Son to grant this special grace for the Pope: that he might consecrate Russia to your Immaculate Heart, so that Russia will be converted, a period of peace will be granted to the world, and your Immaculate Heart will triumph, through an authentic renewal of the Church in the splendor of the purity of the Catholic Faith, of the sacredness of Divine worship and of the holiness of the Christian life. O Queen of the holy Rosary and our sweet Mother, turn your merciful eyes to us and graciously hear this our trusting prayer. Amen. + Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana
To learn more about the urgency of responding to Our Lady’s message at Fatima, and about what you can do, please read Cardinal Burke’s 2017 address at the Rome Life Forum.
As St. Padre Pio once said, “The Rosary is the weapon for these times.” Through prayer, God can shape history, change the world, and bring about a great time of renewal and peace for the Church and for the world, through the triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. Join us today!
If you would like to follow along with the prayers said during this Rosary, you can access them HERE. The document also includes a brief F.A.Q. pertaining to the daily Rosary.
You can send your prayer requests to https://reginangelorumpress.com/prayer-intentions/
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lifesitenews--2020-05-27--Bishop Schneider: Lockdown is a trial that can bring about great ‘spiritual benefit’

Urgent appeal to the bishops of the world : Feed your flock !
Sign the petition here .
May 22 , 2020 ( LifeSiteNews ) – Bishop Athanasius Schneider said Catholics should accept the situation brought about by the pandemic as a trial , suggesting that such acceptance will produce great spiritual benefit for the Church , “ a greater spiritual benefit as if we would not have experienced such a situation.
” Bishop Schneider , along with Fr .
Linus Clovis , a canon lawyer of the Archdiocese of Castries , St. Lucia in the West Indies , spoke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ session after their talks at the Rome Life Forum last week , delivered online this year because of travel and gathering restrictions due to the global Wuhan virus lockdowns .
This “ current purifying divine intervention has the power to show all of us what is truly essential in the Church : the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ with His Body and Blood and the eternal salvation of immortal souls , ” declared Bishop Schneider .
Schneider acknowledged that some may not return to Mass attendance after the pandemic restrictions are relaxed and churches @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he seemed to indicate that this might not be entirely bad .
“ In general , I think that the time of deprivation of Holy Mass and the sacraments will have the function of purifying the wheat and separating it from the weeds , as Holy Scripture says ( see Mt .
3:12 ) , ” said Schneider .
“ Some people say that we will have a new hunger for the Eucharist after the coronavirus epidemic has passed , ” said Schneider .
“ It is a common human experience that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the hearts of people with a longing for it .
This applies , of course , to those who really believe and love the Eucharist.
” “ Perhaps those Catholics who were so accustomed to the Holy of Holies that they came to consider it as something ordinary and common will experience a spiritual conversion and understand and treat the Holy Eucharist henceforth as extraordinary and sublime , ” he suggested .
“ The current tribulations teach us and train us to remain always faithful to the Lord and to our holy faith @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Holy Scripture : ‘ The one who endures to the end will be saved ’ ( Mt .
10:22 ) and “ Be faithful unto death , and I will give you the crown of life ” ( Rev .
2:10 ) , ” he continued .
“ And only this matters.
” Asked how Catholics can make this period of separation from the Sacraments a fruitful time instead of a time of bitterness and sadness , Bishop Schneider responded with confident optimism .
“ This situation forces Catholic families to experience literally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said Schneider .
“ In the absence of the possibility to assist Holy Mass even on Sundays , Catholic parents should gather their family in their home .
They should dedicate a holy hour of prayers to sanctify the Day of the Lord and to unite themselves spiritually with the Holy Masses which are celebrated by priests behind closed doors even in their towns or in their vicinity.
” “ A Sunday holy hour of a domestic church could be done for instance in the following way : prayer of the Rosary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Act of Contrition , Act of Spiritual Communion , Litany , prayer for all who suffer and die , for all who are persecuted , prayer for the Pope and the priests , prayer for the end of the current physical and spiritual epidemic , ” continued Schneider .
“ Furthermore , on Sundays parents could gather their children in the afternoon or in the evening and read to them from the Lives of the Saints , especially those stories drawn from times of persecution of the Church.
” Schneider was also asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disappointment in our bishops ’ leadership with regard to finding ways to administer the sacraments during the pandemic ?
” and “ When does obedience to the bishop trump the obedience to Christ ?
” “ The lay faithful should speak and respectfully demand the return of public Masses and also organize outdoor Masses or other creative forms of celebrating worthily Holy Mass , ” he asserted .
“ I ask you , please , to importune the shepherds , to disturb them , all of us shepherds , so that we can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of doctrine and of leadership , ” pleaded Bishop Schneider .
“ Importune ( us ) !
” “ We need to live out the message of Fatima – each one of us individually , in our families , and in our parishes , ” said Fr .
Clovis , when asked how the faithful can demand that the hierarchy fulfill Our Lady ’ s requests .
“ We can ’ t , but we can request it.
” He encouraged the formation of small ‘ Fatima groups ’ throughout the world that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ priests who in turn might be able to influence their bishops .
He noted that several countries have already been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by their bishops , including New Zealand , Australia , the United Kingdom , the United States , and other countries in Europe .
Ultimately , he foresees that “ In God ’ s time even the Holy Father ( will ) consecrate Russia as Our Lady requires.
” “ Don ’ t lose heart , ” encouraged Fr .
Clovis , because Our Lady said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fr .
Clovis discussed the importance of regular confession , reading the lives of the saints , and wearing a Miraculous Medal and Brown Scapular to form devoted Catholic families .
Above all , he urged everyone to develop the habit of praying the Rosary daily .
“ This is a way in which we can reform ourselves , our families , and the world , ” he said .

The bishop believes the pandemic will lead to a purification of the Church and force families to experience 'the meaning of a domestic church.'
Urgent appeal to the bishops of the world: Feed your flock! Sign the petition here.
May 22, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Athanasius Schneider said Catholics should accept the situation brought about by the pandemic as a trial, suggesting that such acceptance will produce great spiritual benefit for the Church, “a greater spiritual benefit as if we would not have experienced such a situation.”
Bishop Schneider, along with Fr. Linus Clovis, a canon lawyer of the Archdiocese of Castries, St. Lucia in the West Indies, spoke during a “Question and Answer” session after their talks at the Rome Life Forum last week, delivered online this year because of travel and gathering restrictions due to the global Wuhan virus lockdowns.
This “current purifying divine intervention has the power to show all of us what is truly essential in the Church: the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ with His Body and Blood and the eternal salvation of immortal souls,” declared Bishop Schneider.
Schneider acknowledged that some may not return to Mass attendance after the pandemic restrictions are relaxed and churches are restored to normal activity, but he seemed to indicate that this might not be entirely bad.
“In general, I think that the time of deprivation of Holy Mass and the sacraments will have the function of purifying the wheat and separating it from the weeds, as Holy Scripture says (see Mt. 3:12),” said Schneider.
“Some people say that we will have a new hunger for the Eucharist after the coronavirus epidemic has passed,” said Schneider. “It is a common human experience that the prolonged deprivation of an important reality inflames the hearts of people with a longing for it. This applies, of course, to those who really believe and love the Eucharist.”
“Perhaps those Catholics who were so accustomed to the Holy of Holies that they came to consider it as something ordinary and common will experience a spiritual conversion and understand and treat the Holy Eucharist henceforth as extraordinary and sublime,” he suggested.
“The current tribulations teach us and train us to remain always faithful to the Lord and to our holy faith, according to the words of the Holy Scripture: ‘The one who endures to the end will be saved’ (Mt. 10:22) and “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10),” he continued. “And only this matters.”
Asked how Catholics can make this period of separation from the Sacraments a fruitful time instead of a time of bitterness and sadness, Bishop Schneider responded with confident optimism.
“This situation forces Catholic families to experience literally the meaning of a domestic church,” said Schneider. “In the absence of the possibility to assist Holy Mass even on Sundays, Catholic parents should gather their family in their home. They should dedicate a holy hour of prayers to sanctify the Day of the Lord and to unite themselves spiritually with the Holy Masses which are celebrated by priests behind closed doors even in their towns or in their vicinity.”
“A Sunday holy hour of a domestic church could be done for instance in the following way: prayer of the Rosary, reading of the Sunday Gospel, Act of Contrition, Act of Spiritual Communion, Litany, prayer for all who suffer and die, for all who are persecuted, prayer for the Pope and the priests, prayer for the end of the current physical and spiritual epidemic,” continued Schneider. “Furthermore, on Sundays parents could gather their children in the afternoon or in the evening and read to them from the Lives of the Saints, especially those stories drawn from times of persecution of the Church.”
Schneider was also asked, “How should we express our disappointment in our bishops’ leadership with regard to finding ways to administer the sacraments during the pandemic?” and “When does obedience to the bishop trump the obedience to Christ?”
“The lay faithful should speak and respectfully demand the return of public Masses and also organize outdoor Masses or other creative forms of celebrating worthily Holy Mass,” he asserted.
“I ask you, please, to importune the shepherds, to disturb them, all of us shepherds, so that we can give you the milk of grace, of doctrine and of leadership,” pleaded Bishop Schneider. “Importune (us)!”
“We need to live out the message of Fatima – each one of us individually, in our families, and in our parishes,” said Fr. Clovis, when asked how the faithful can demand that the hierarchy fulfill Our Lady’s requests. “We can’t, but we can request it.”
He encouraged the formation of small ‘Fatima groups’ throughout the world that might serve, support, and educate priests who in turn might be able to influence their bishops.
He noted that several countries have already been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by their bishops, including New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries in Europe.
Ultimately, he foresees that “In God’s time even the Holy Father (will) consecrate Russia as Our Lady requires.”
“Don’t lose heart,” encouraged Fr. Clovis, because Our Lady said, “It will be done.”
Fr. Clovis discussed the importance of regular confession, reading the lives of the saints, and wearing a Miraculous Medal and Brown Scapular to form devoted Catholic families.
Above all, he urged everyone to develop the habit of praying the Rosary daily.
“This is a way in which we can reform ourselves, our families, and the world,” he said.
Share