St. Kolbe: "The purpose of the Knights is contained in these words: to do all you can for the conversion of sinners, heretics, schismatics... above all the Masons, & for the sanctification of all persons under the sponsorship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Mediatrix"
"There is no other way."
St. Kolbe, in 1938, explained what this way is:
The purpose of the Knights is contained in these words: to do all you can for the conversion of sinners, heretics, schismatics and so on, above all the Masons, and for the sanctification of all persons under the sponsorship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Mediatrix. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Immaculatae]
His life also explained what this way of following Jesus Christ is as these excerpts from Robert Royal's book The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century show:
But perhaps the most far-reaching of Kolbe's activities during his stay in Rome was the founding of the Militia Immaculatae, the Army of Mary Immaculate. The immediate inspiration came to him on January 20, 1917, the day that the seventy-fifth anniversary of the apparition of Lourdes was being celebrated in Rome. The simple group devoted itself evangelizing under the aegis of the Virgin as Christ's immaculate mother. It was approved by Kolbe's superiors in Rome when it still consisted of only six members, plus Kolbe. By the time he was arrested by the Nazis twenty years later, Kolbe would have enrolled tens of thousands of members in his little army from countries all around the world. Though the group's name sounds conventionally pious and somewhat odd to modern ears, those who collaborated with Kolbe on this and his other projects did so with wild dedication and enthusiasm--and fun. Like his patron Saint Francis, Kolbe seems to have had a gift for doing humble work, organizing large enterprises, and practicing poverty with a rare spirit of joy that communicate itself to large numbers of people.
Some have described his gift as naïveté combined with deep spirituality: others, more charitably, as a deep simplicity that recognized no limitations on what he felt he was called upon to do, not even when the objections came from other Franciscans who thought Kolbe's activism a disturbance to traditional Franciscan life. He returned from Rome to Cracow to become a professor of church history at the seminary he had once attended. But academic life was not a full enough challenge for a man with Father Kolbe's talents, energy, and dedication. Soon he was engaged in spreading the word of salvation to the world. As he later described his mission: "The earth needs to be flooded with a mighty deluge of Christian and Marian literature, written in every language and reaching every country, so as to dawn in the waves of truth all those voices of error that have been using the printing press as their most powerful ally. The globe must be enriched by words of life in printed form, so that the world may once again experience the joy of living.
Awash in a glut of information generated by the ease of desktop publishing and access to the Internet, we may find it hard to appreciate Kolbe's achievement and how it appeared to his contemporaries. But it is worth looking at carefully. He formed Marian "focus groups" in Cracow for university students, women, and soldiers. He wore himself out giving lectures to groups and taking the time to talk with unbelieving individuals--with astounding effects. But he soon felt the need of a publication and, therefore, a printing press. HIs Franciscan superior did not oppose the idea. In fact, he thought it a good one, "but only on the condition that you raise the necessary funds yourself, because the community is too poor to help you."
So in the great tradition of the poverello of Assisi, Kolbe went out and begged for the money to start up his enterprise. The first issue of The Knight of the Immaculate came out in January 1922, even though the country was going through an economic crisis that forced the closing of established publications. Kolbe had big dreams, but he was honest with his readers. "Due to financial difficulties, we cannot guarantee that our readers will receive the magazine regularly. The magazine relies on free offerings." Indeed, owing to a sharp devaluation of the currency, he did not have enough money to pay for the second issue. His Franciscan superiors could not help; in fact they more or less chided him "we told you so." Kolbe went and prayed in front of the statue of the Virgin. Whether by miraculous intervention or coincidence, when he returned later he found an envelope on the altar with the exact amount he needed marked, "For you, my Immaculate Mother." In similarly uncertain fashion, five thousand copies of The Knight wound up in print every month for two years.
Kolbe decided he need a printing press of his own. Many of the Franciscans believed owning such machinery, even for good purposes, was contrary to Franciscan poverty. Their job was to pray and care for the poor, not to build publishing houses, however modest. But another providential help to Kolbe's enterprises came at this moment. An American Franciscan, Father Lawrence Cyman, was travelling through Poland and stopped at Cracow. When he heard Kolbe's plans, he offered one hundred dollars toward the press. Kolbe was allowed to buy a rickety old machine that had to be cranked by hand. But to remove a potential source of distraction, the Cracow Franciscans also suggested that Kolbe move the entire operation to another friary in the distant city of Grodno.
It moved and turned into a enormous success. If the work was grueling--writing and turning the press crank for long hours--it paid off, at least in terms of influence. Subscriptions increased with every issue. But because Poland was experiencing runaway inflation, Kolbe actually lost more money, the more subscriptions he got. Still, he was successful because he appeared to common Poles in common language. Sometimes he made the arguments easier to follow by casting them as dialogues among several characters. Something in the formula must have touched a neve among the Polish population. By 1936, The Knight of the Immaculate had a circulation of eight hundred thousand and had given birth to two related publications, also with large circulations. And an almanac he published for the Holy Year in 1925 was such a financial success that he brought another, more modern press...
... But Kolbe was not a man to rest on past achievements. He drew up a new plan for the city to make it more effective both as a spiritual center and as a public apostolate. In 1938, The Knight reached a circulation of 800,000. Two susbsidiaries--Young Knight and Little Knight--sold 170,000 and 30,000 copies respectively each month. He was sending out 15,000 copies of an international quarterly in Latin for priests. A "mission bulletin" sought to reach non-Catholics. The city itself published a weekly paper, and soon a daily national Catholic paper, Maly Dryiennik ("The Little Journal") was arriving at 135,000 homes during the week and 225,000 on Sundays. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1938, a radio station went on the air, and Kolbe was making plans for producing Catholic films.
That would remain one of Kolbe's few unrealized dreams. The Nazis invaded Niepokalanow the following year. For reasons of safety, Kolbe had dispersed almost all his flock back to their families before the Nazi arrival. The rest were taken to the Armitz concentration camp. Kolbe's parting words to his people before they went off to face various threats and uncertainties was: "Do not forget love." For some unknown reason, they were all released, again on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, in 1939. Kolbe returned to Niepokalanow with his friends and told them: "Let us pray. Let us lovingly accept all our crosses, and let us love every neighbor, whether friend or enemy, without distinction." It was a twofold rule that Kolbe had lived by all his life, both accepting others as neighbors and accepting all crosses as manifestations of God's will.
These principles were soon put to the test again. Because Kolbe had a German last name, he was offered a Satanic bargain: if he adopted German citizenship, he would be spared any further trouble from the Reich. He refused both on religious and Polish patriotic grounds. Shortly, the SS arrived and were greeted with Kolbe's "Praised be Jesus Christ!" This time, they sent him to another infamous camp at Pawiak. There he was abused and beaten for wearing a crucifix, but did not protest. Before long, he was transferred to Auschwitz. One sign of the impact Kolbe had on Poland through his various activities was that it was noticed when his name was read upon arrival at the camp. Many people, of course, knew about him, and were upset that the Nazis had arrested so eminent and benevolent a figure. But his presence gave courage to the others. One later said,"We were glad to have such a real man, a fighter - a fighter for truth - with us." (Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, pages 201-203 and 206-207)
Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis's Amoris Laetitia.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost - Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
- Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
"[T]he Pope... WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See."
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said "the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church."
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]
- "If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html
- "Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html
- If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the"Roman Rite Communities" like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & "Eminent Canonists and Theologians" by "Resist[ing]" him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html
- LifeSiteNews, "Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers," December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows "sexually active adulterous couples facing 'complex circumstances' to 'access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'"
- On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
"The AAS statement... establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense."
- On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
"Francis' heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents."
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Election Notes:
- Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: "212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted...Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden" [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]
- Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times "Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003": http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
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