31 July – St. Ignatius of Loyola! Please intercede for your spiritual sons.

Today is the Feast of the founder of the Jesuits.

May I say from the onset that I have some spiffy Pope Clement XIV gear? HERE

Here is the Martyrologium Romanum entry for this great saint, Ignatius of Loyola. To the right is my first class relic.

Memoria sancti Ignatii de Loyola, presbyteri, qui, hispanus in Cantabria natus, in aula regia et militia vitam egit, donec, post grave vulnus acceptum ad Deum conversus, Lutetiae Parisiorum studia theologica complevit et primos socios sibi ascivit, quos postea in Societatem Iesu Romae constituit, ubi ipse fructuosum exercuit ministerium et in operis conscribendis et in discipulis instituendis, ad maiorem Dei gloriam.

This morning Holy Mass will be celebrated in the presence of a 1st class relic of the saint.

Here is the spiffy Collect from 1962 edition of the Missale Romanum:

Deus, qui ad maiorem tui nominis gloriam propagandam, novo per beatum Ignatium subsidio militantem Ecclesiam roborasti: concede; ut, eius auxilio et imitatione certantes in terris, coronari cum ipso mereamur in caelis.

LITERAL VERSION

O God, who strengthened the Church militant with a new reinforcement through blessed Ignatius, in order to spread widely the greater glory of Your Name, grant that we, who are contending on earth by his help and example, may deserve to be crowned with him in heaven.

The experts who cut and pasted together the Novus Ordo Collect for Ignatius weenied-down the content:

Deus, qui ad maiorem tui nominis gloriam propagandam
beatum Ignatium in Ecclesia tua suscitasti,
concede, ut, eius auxilio et imitatione certantes in terris,
coronari cum ipso meramur in caelis.

Notice anything important missing?

Let’s have your perfect renderings of the prayers.

Here is a shot of the altar and tomb of St. Ignatius in the Church called the Gesù in the heart of Rome.  It is a must stop if you ever visit Rome.

Now that’s an altar.

Church architecture reflects the Church’s understanding of her own identity.  

Each era has a different expression.  Compare and contrast to what is being built and used now.

The dopey Jesuits removed the Communion rail for this altar, thus turning decorative metalwork into inexplicable objects and destroying the integrity of the design.  To the right of the altar is a heroic marble group depicting of the Triumph of Truth over Heresy. Heresy, in this case, is manifest by the books of the error-filled works of Calvin and Luther.  The little angel is tearing up a bad book.   The ugly heretical bad guys shrink from the Cross and the light that Truth holds.

Under the lower heretic, there is a book with a visible spine that says MARTIN LUTHER. The dopey Jesuits, who now probably idolize Luther, hid it.  For shame.  You have to know they are there to make out the letters now.  Calvin and Zwingli are on the spines of the other books.

See? Nearly invisible now.

I found an older photo of the spine before it was wussified:

Zwingli

Calvin

And then there’s this.  No, this is not a rendering of a Jesuit.

Were these statues to have experienced a true aggiornamento, they’d be tearing up a certain book by James Martin, though though there are many other candidates.  

Meanwhile, since our church architecture tells present and future generation about our Catholic identity at the time it was built, let’s have a few shots from inside the church.

The cupola:

The Holy Name of Jesus (which in its iteration at Georgetown the Jesuits covered over when Obama spoke there):

A glimpse of me, shooting the photo of the ceiling of the nave in a mirror angled just so for viewing ease.

The altar with the arm of St. Francis Xavier

My favorite version of the Sacred Heart, which you can find repeated all over Rome, in a small chapel to the Epistle side of the sanctuary.

There is an adage in Latin, corruptio optimi pessima.  The corruption of the best, is the worst kind of corruption.

Some might dispute the notion that the Jesuits were the best.  But there is no dispute that they have been among the best.

The Enemy works relentlessly to take us down.  Hence the Enemy will focus not only on the rank and file, but in a special way on leaders.

It is one thing to destroy or corrupt a small start up group of religious.  It is another entirely to twist the largest group of male religious, with universities and colleges.  It is one thing to lead some garden variety cleric into sins.  It is entirely another to subvert a Cardinal who is influential in conclaves and in the appointment of bishops.

Bring down a great group like the Jesuits?  What a coup for Hell.

I hope and prayer that great saints will rise within the Jesuits who will Make the Society Great Again.

Today, let us ask the intercession of St. Ignatius, and the other saintly founders of the Society, to intercede with their ultimate General, Christ Jesus, to guide and correct them or to bring them down until they can do no harm.   How I would dearly prefer the former to the later.  I’ll take either one.