RU 45+46/2010 - Turkey, Sweden, SSPX, B16, Russia

TURKEY (ru, Nov. 22nd, 2010) . UNEC communicates: We have been able to collect 6,000 Euro for the Catholics of Iskenderun in Turkey, whose bishop, Mgr Luigi Padovese, Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, has been ritually killed by an Islamist on June 4th,  2010, and we forwarded this donation on November 14th via the Apostolic nuncios of Paris and Ankara, for delivery until Iskenderun in southern Turkey. Here is the answer we received from the nuncio in Ankara, our friend Mgr. Antonio Lucibello, already of October 6th, 2010: “I found your kind message concerning the announcement of a very appreciated donation of several thousand Euro from your institution UNEC in favour of the small Catholic community of the Apostolic Vicariate of Anatolia, whose headquarter is located at Iskenderun. Your sign of solidarity has touched me deeply, and I am sure that even the +bishop Padovese will not remain indifferent but, on the contrary, will pray from above according to your intentions. Upon receipt of the donation, I shall transmit it  to the Apostolic Administrator of the Vicariate. Let me repeat once again my thanks. Please accept my fraternal salutations, +Antonio Lucibello, Apostolic nuncio, Ankara". And on November 19th, after our transfer of the sum of 6,000 Euro (collected for 2/3 from UNEC’s friends in France, and for 1/3 from our friends with the ‘Archiconvent der Templer’ of Munich), the same nuncio of Ankara wrote us these simple lines full of gratitude: "Thank You very much for your very commendable initiative to demonstrate how much you are close to the ‘pusillus grex’ of Iskenderun, after the tragedy that nobody would have suspected. I shall not fail to transmit your donation to the Apostolic Administrator of the Vicariate of Anatolia at Iskenderun. Please accept my always dedicated salutations, +Antonio Lucibello, Apostolic nuncio, Ankara". Thank you, dear friends in France and Germany, for having participated by your personal donation to our fraternal action between Catholics, face to our brothers and sisters in the faith who are in the first battle line under the Islamic violent attack against Christianity which is lasting already for 13 centuries and is yet intensifying! » - Let us recall that, following the bloodshed which was perpetrated by Islamists in Baghdad/Iraq on October 31st (leaving 57 people dead, and 80 injured under the faithful) and the 13 attacks in Baghdad of November 11th against different Christian homes in Baghdad (6 dead and 33 wounded), we couldn’t help starting a new action of fraternal (financial) help, according to our principle: "Crocodile tears are worthwhile nothing in the Kingdom of God". This time our aid is intended for the small Carmel monastery in the centre of Baghdad, that we have already been able to help on two occasions (in 2003 and 2005). Your first donations already have arrived with UNEC, but we are still waiting for more help from you, in order to be able to transmit, by a reliable and already experienced path - this gift by Christmas. Your checks please to UNEC, BP 70114, F-95210 St-Gratien, and please indicate on the rear of the check: ‘for Carmel Baghdad’. Thank you very much!

SWEDEN (ru, Nov. 22nd, 2010). UNEC communicates: Our friend Rev. Fr. Sten Sandmark (SSPX), former Swedish Lutheran pastor who became a Catholic priest on June 26th, 2010, at Zaitzkofen in Bavaria, sent us the following message from Bristol, England, from where he is organizing his future mission in Sweden. This message was read at our slideshow-conference on ‘Sweden - Christian country and mission  country’ of November 10th, 2010, in Paris : ”Dear friends of UNEC, I am pleased to have the possibility to thank you all for your permanent support, and as a proof of my gratitude I look at the wonderful chalice of 1893 - your gift - that I’m using for my daily masses here at Bristol. Today I am responsible for the masses and confessions at Taunton and Middlemarch. I preach retreats here at Bristol, and once a month I help during three days with masses, confessions and conferences at St Michel’s school. I received the authorization to organize a SWEDISH retreat here at Bristol for early February 2011. Thus the Swedish, who hopefully will attend, can speak Swedish during their confession, and the conferences will be in Swedish language. During the same month of February 2011, I’ll be on tour in Sweden to say masses in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Oskarshamn. I shall hear confessions and will give conferences. Perhaps I shall have my own driver over these ten days, a Norwegian who lives with us at Bristol. I prefer to go by car to Sweden, and not by plane or train. I hope that the situation in Scandinavia will improve in the future, because the purchase of a house is rather a necessity, I mean a house at a central location, a priory. The most central place in this regard is Gothenburg, a city near Denmark and Norway. And why not a small chapel at Oskarshamn, place of my former (Lutheran) parish? I thank you all for your prayer and support and hope to see you soon again in Paris. In communion of prayer, in Jesus through Mary, Fr. Sten Sandmark SSPX.” Last remark : Father Sandmark receives willingly your mess intentions (together with a donation of 20 Euro for his subsistence). Our young friend Joacim, currently student in Sweden, will pass towards the middle of December through Paris and will thus be able to bring your intentions to Father Sandmark at Bristol where he is going after Paris, provided that you send your mass intentions now to UNEC (BP 70114, F-95210 St-Gratien).

FRATERNITY SSPX (ru, Nov. 22nd, 2010). We received, via the site www.dici.org of November 20th, the following astonishing communiqué from SSPX, refraining ourselves from any comment: “GENERAL HOUSE PRESS RELEASE, 11-22-2010. The Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, has learnt by the press of Bishop Richard Williamson’s decision, just ten days before his trial, to dismiss the lawyer charged with his defense, in favor of a lawyer who is openly affiliated to the so-called neo-Nazi movement in Germany, and to other such groups. Bishop Fellay has given Bishop Williamson a formal order to go back on this decision and to not allow himself to become an instrument of political theses that are completely foreign to his mission as a Catholic bishop serving the Society of Saint Pius X. Disobedience to this order would result in Bishop Williamson being expelled from the Society of Saint Pius X. Menzingen, November 20 of 2010. Fr. Christian Thouvenot, general Secretary.”

BENEDICT XVI (ru, Nov. 22nd, 2010). Another declaration, even more surprising, or even completely disconcerting. In a book written by a German journalist, entitled ‘Light of the World’, which is published this week, we can read, according to our information, the following passage. Question "Is the Catholic Church not fundamentally against the use of condoms?” The Supreme Pontiff is said to have replied (our translation into English): "In some cases, when the intention is to reduce the risk of contamination, this may still be a first step to pave the way to a more human sexuality, lived otherwise. There may be individual cases, such as when a prostitute man uses a condom, where this can be a first step towards a moralization, a beginning of responsibility to take new conscience that all is not permitted, and that one cannot do everything wanted. But this, strictly speaking, is not the way to bring the evil of HIV infection to an end. That really must occur by humanization of sexuality," he allegedly declared. Frankly: this statement is deeply appalling. So the condom would no longer be intrinsically immoral? All declarations of Church on this subject until now would be nil ? The Church was misled ? Worse: The Church would therefore have misled humanity about the morality of certain common practices, overloading unnecessarily the consciences? It would have contributed, by this fact, to spread the AIDS infection in the world? It should therefore have to beat its ‘mea culpa’, make everywhere public repentances, pay indemnities to those who, in complying with the teaching of the Church, definitely infected many people with Aids and other sexual diseases? Already some titles of the media promise fine days: "AIDSUN applauds the Opening of B16 towards the Condom» (24Hours, Nov. 21st), “Benedict XVI withdraws the Condom from the Index » (Liberation, Nov. 20th), "a Step forward … yet not enough » (Le Parisien, Nov 21st,). On the other hand, where is the implacable refutation against condom defenders who induce people in security where, in 3 cases on 100 (3%), the condom fails, i.e. infects with Aids? And especially: where is exactly the ‘first step towards a more human sexuality’ if a ‘prostitute man’ uses the condom, encouraged in this by the Pope ? When will come up the condom trade mark ‘Nihil obstat’?

RUSSIA (ru, Nov. 22nd, 2010) - Good News from Russia where, according to a recent survey, 60% of people say they believe in God (France: 40 %). Christianity is, today, located more towards the east of Europe than to the west, let’s put that into our minds! Here are the facts: on Nov. 17th,  the Duma (Russian parliament) voted in 2nd lecture a bill concerning the transfer of 17,000 churches, monasteries and other religious buildings, sometimes with their iconographic treasures (as specified by Le Figaro of Nov 18th), by the State to the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate, which were stolen by Lenin in 1922 when the latter had ordered "the confiscation of the property of the Church with the most violent and the most implacable possible energy". Of course, some sites have been exempted from the present measure, for example Souzdal in the Golden Ring, and of course the Kremlin in Moscow. The Orthodox Church does not fear to take the responsibility for the maintenance, and often the repair, of these sites, thanks to the new awakening of Christianity in eastern Europe, following the collapse of communism. –  We can now logically ask: when will occur the return of the countless properties of the Catholic Church which were confiscated by the French Revolution and its off-springs who – yet today – are occupying the first places of the ‘Republic’ ? The State gangsters can be found, today, less in the east – as some keep injustly saying - but much more in the west. Lux ex Oriente !