St. Andrew Bobola Calumniated By Ecumenists

 

To My Readers: The demands of my job have been growing ever-greater. My guest poster, A Simple Man, is also is a busy professional. In order not to cut down on having one well-researched post every Monday, it is my pleasure to introduce a second guest poster, Joanna From Poland. Joanna often comments on my blog, and her English, her writing style, and her faith are so strong, she will be joining A Simple Man and me in producing posts. She is a young, single lady who will turn 30 years old in October of this year. She left the Vatican II sect in 2019, and decided to embrace sedevacantism after a period of intense research. She credits this blog as helping her greatly in reaching that decision. She holds an M.A. in English Studies. I think it will be great to add a female Traditionalist point of view, as well as that of a European. This is her first guest post. As always, I will respond to any comments, but as I am particularly pressed for time this week, they may come much later than usual. Please welcome Joanna on her debut here and feel free to comment. Like A Simple Man, Joanna From Poland is an incredible asset, and I thank God for having brought her to write here. Please pray for her and her family. May she and A Simple Man continue in their edifying writings. 

God Bless you all, my dear readers---Introibo

St. Andrew Bobola Calumniated By Ecumenists

By Joanna From Poland

On the occasion of his 2016 “papal” visit to Georgia (Eastern Europe/Western Asia), Francis addressed the following words to Vatican II sect priests and seminarians: “Proselytism is a grave sin against ecumenism," adding that Catholics must never seek to convert Orthodox for the latter are brothers and sisters of Catholics and the children of the same God (see the Associated Press report: https://apnews.com/article/1c604b0eba6944328bf283dc935c86be) 

 As per Wikipedia, more than 80% of the population of this small Caucasian country is Eastern Schismatic. Vatican statistics, as stated in the report by Associated Press, show that less than 3% of Georgians, that is merely 112,000 people, identify themselves as "Catholic" (Vatican II sect which I also refer to as the "Novus Ordo sect").

Strangely enough, the ultra-conservative Schismatics accused Bergoglio of the very “sin” of proselytism he himself so zealously denounces as he was surprised with a protest organized by the “Union of Orthodox Parents” upon his arrival in Tbilisi, the country’s capital.

In the heretical theory of concentric circles advocated by the Novus Ordo hierarchy whereby members of false religions participate in varying degrees in the “communion” with the Novus Ordo sect, the Eastern Schismatics are classified as those who are nearest to the “fullness of communion."

One would suppose that the Novus Ordo has already supplied itself with plenty of “apostles” of ecumenism over more than fifty years of its existence, with the likes of “St.” Mother Theresa of Calcutta or John Paul II the Great (Apostate), to advance their ever-futile search for “unity." Nonetheless, those who stole our Catholic churches and institutions, also ventured to hijack the true Catholic saints of old, and to calumniate their fearless confession of the One True Faith in order to push forward the heretical ecumenical agenda.

Perhaps one of the most striking example of such blasphemous manipulation perpetuated by the Novus Ordo is St. Andrew Bobola, whose life and death is a verbatim condemnation of the soul-damning ecumenism of Bergoglio and his minions.

Historical background

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), St. Andrew Bobola was born in the Palatinate of Sandomir around the year 1590 of an old and eminent Polish family. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Vilnius (Lithuania) at the age of 21. After being ordained in 1622, he was appointed preacher in the Church of St. Casimir of that same city. He made his solemn vows on the 2^nd of June, 1630 and was made superior at Bobruisk (today’s Belarus), where he “wrought wonders by his preaching and distinguished himself by his devotion during an epidemic of the plague." In 1636 he headed to Lithuania, and began his missionary work there at the time when “Poland was being ravaged by Cossacks, Russians, and Tatars, and the Catholic Faith was made the object of the concerted attacks of Protestants and schismatics."

St. Andrew indeed embarked upon his mission when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a vast and powerful kingdom, faced grave danger from within. However, it wasn’t until about a decade later that schismatic rebellion against the Polish crown would  devastate the eastern frontier of the Commonwealth, the very land where the Saint was headed.

Life and work of St. Andrew Bobola

Pope Pius XII in his 1957 encyclical Invicti Athletae Christi offers a splendid account of the remarkable life of the Saint (all bracketed notes are mine).

The Supreme Pontiff notices that “[w]hat seems to shine forth especially in the life of Andrew Bobola is his Catholic faith, whose vigor, nourished by divine grace, grew so much stronger with the passing of the years that it conferred on him a special mark of distinction, and spurred him on to undergo his martyrdom with courage.

Now my just one lives by faith, as the Apostles [sic] of the Gentiles declares [Hebr. 10: 38], and in Bobola, faith shone with an unusual splendor. Whatever the Catholic Church teaches to be believed or done, he embraced with unwavering mind, and willingly endeavored to practice. Thus, from earliest youth, he considered it normal to check, control, and subdue all those disorderly inclinations which, since the unhappy fall of Adam, disturb our nature and easily attract it to what is forbidden. But at the same time, his every effort and all his strength were directed to the adornment of his soul with Christian virtues.”

The love of the Catholic Faith, of its precepts and disciplines taught and prescribed by the One True Church of Christ animated St. Andrew on the path of his own sanctification, and would shine forth in his zeal for souls as a missionary. Nonetheless, this “unconquered athlete of Christ” as Pope Pius XII calls St. Andrew, had to conquer the vices and deficiencies found in himself before he would sacrifice everything for the salvation of souls.

As Pius XII writes: “[b]ut since he was by temperament proud, impatient, and sometimes obstinate, Bobola had to wage a very sharp contest against himself, and ascend his Calvary, as it were, laden with the cross, in order to reach the height of this virtue. There, at length, impelled and assisted by the grace he had obtained by constant and fervent prayers, he might be able to reach Christian perfection, for as St. Bernard wisely said, the spiritual edifice cannot possibly stand except on the firm foundation of humility.”

“Above all, Bobola was on fire with a great love of God and of his neighbors. As a result, he found nothing sweeter than to spend long hours, whenever possible, before the sacred tabernacle, and to assist the unfortunate in every way according to his means. He loved God above all, and far more than himself. He sought exclusively God's glory, according to the Rule of his Father, St. Ignatius. To this Saint, then, the words of the same holy Doctor (St. Bernard) can be applied, He alone should be desired, Who alone fulfills desire.”

“It is not surprising, then, that this athlete of Jesus Christ, adorned with these gifts of grace, should have achieved such notable progress in the apostolic field, and been able to gather rich fruits in the saving of souls. He was on fire to preserve, extend, and defend the Catholic faith. Thus, when serving as a teacher at Vilna, and later when living in other cities, he diligently taught the elements of Christian doctrine, and encouraged devotion to the Eucharist, and an ardent and filial love of the Virgin Mother of God.”

Persecution and death at the hands of Eastern Schismatics

Europe in the 1600s was a religious battlefield. Although in the West of Europe bloodshed and turmoil was the tragic outcome of the Protestant rebellion, Eastern Europe suffered from the political revolt of Schismatics.

Pius XII continues: “[n]otable among almost countless others was the unforgettable and savage onslaught on the Catholic religion which flared up in the 17th century in the Eastern countries. The Cossack forces then invaded those lands, and directed their furious attack on Catholics and their pastors, and on the heralds of the truth of the Gospel. Temples dedicated to the divine worship were utterly destroyed; monasteries were consumed by fire; priests and their flocks were everywhere put to the sword; everything was laid waste; all that was sacred was scattered to the winds.”

“Andrew Bobola could apply to himself that saying, Nothing that is known to belong to God, do I consider outside my interests [St. Bernard]. He feared death and sufferings not at all. On fire with love for God and his neighbor, he entered the fray with all his resources, in order to draw back as many as he could from a foreswearing of the Catholic faith, and from the snares and errors of those who were separated from the Church, and in order to provide a valiant and rousing encouragement for the preservation of Christian teaching in all its integrity.”

The efforts of St. Andrew were so fruitful that he merited the title of “soul hunter," by which he was honored even by the Schismatics. Nonetheless, this extraordinary success in converting souls separated from the Mystical Body of Christ could not have been overlooked by those in the Schismatic sect who enjoyed political power.

On May 16, 1657 (the feast of the Ascension of Our Lord) St. Andrew was captured by “the enemies of the Catholics” near Janovia (today’s Belarus).

The abductors first beat him with rods, then struck the saintly priest with blows, and finally dragged him by a rope behind a horse. It was merely a horrific prelude to the unspeakable torture to which these godless men would subject St. Andrew in Janovia. Let us ponder upon the inconceivable torment inflicted upon the Saint:

“In that contest, the Polish Martyr rose to the heights of the noblest triumphs which the Church commemorates. Andrew was asked if he were a priest of the Latin rite, and he replied, I am a Catholic priest; I was born in the Catholic faith; in that faith I wish to die. My faith is true; it leads to salvation. Do you rather repent; give place to sorrow for sin, else you will be unable, in your errors, to win salvation. By embracing my faith, you will acknowledge the true God, and will save your souls. [text in italics taken from the letter of Pius XI “Ex aperto Christi latere”]

At these words, those wicked men, utterly devoid of humanity, were roused to a fiendish barbarity, and reached such a degree of cruelty that they inflicted still more horrible sufferings on the soldier of Christ. Once again, he was scourged, a crown like that of Jesus Christ was bound about his head, he was struck heavy blows and lay wounded by a scimitar. Next, his right eye was gouged out, strips of skin were torn off, his wounds were savagely scorched and rubbed with prickly bundles of straw. Nor was that enough: his ears, nose and lips were cut off, his tongue torn out by the root, and finally, a weapon plunged into his heart. And, at long last, the valiant athlete, three hours after midday, displaying a truly marvelous example of fortitude, was pierced by a sword and achieved the glory of martyrdom. [text in italics taken from the canonization homily of St. Andrew delivered by Pius XI in 1938]”

Modernist slurs against St. Andrew Bobola

The gruesome martyrdom of St. Andrew, which rightly brings to mind the excruciating agonies of the early Christian martyrs, and is reminiscent even of Our Lord’s bitter passion, was the direct result of his fearless confession of the Catholic faith before the schismatic murderers. The profession of the One True Faith, and worse yet, proselytism, is out of the question for the Modernists. However, doing away with the well-established cult of such a cherished Saint could prove counter-productive for the modernist cause. In August 1920 his intercession would be invoked by over 100,000 Poles in public procession with his relics in Warsaw when the Bolshevik hordes advanced towards the city; the miracle of Vistula – the victory of the Polish troops over the Bolsheviks – came on the last day of the novena to (then still) Blessed Andrew Bobola. Bp. Achille Ratti, future Pope Pius XI, then serving as the apostolic nuncio in Poland, was an eye-witness to the great confidence the Polish nation had in Andrew Bobola, and would canonize him eighteen years later. Thus, rather than erase St. Andrew Bobola from the minds of the faithful, the Novus Ordo hierarchy decided to falsify his uncompromising testimony of Faith in a most perfidious manner.

The following excerpt is taken from an article titled “St. Andrew Bobola Patron of Poland, Patron of Unity” (orig. in Polish: Święty Andrzej Bobola Patron Polski, Patron Jedności), published on the official website for the cult of St. Andrew Bobola in the Vatican 2 sect in Poland: https://swietyandrzejbobola.pl/swiety-andrzej-bobola-patron-polski-patron-jednosci/. The website is run under the auspices of the National Shrine of St. Andrew Bobola in Warsaw. All translation and bracketed notes are mine:  

“Andrew Bobola gave his own life so that violence or manipulation of any kind would not triumph over dialogue in the spirit of love. Right before his martyrdom, he would persuade the Cossacks to convert to Love, not to sin by hatred towards those with different beliefs, to refrain from violence and killing. (…) Thus, St. Andrew is the Patron of religious unity [original emphasis], the progenitor of ecumenism. The spirit of dialogue permeated his theological disputes with Orthodox priests. In the eastern parts of the Commonwealth the influences of the Catholic, Orthodox, and Uniate Church [the Ruthenian Uniate Church which abjured its schism and reunited with Rome in 1595] would be intertwined, but many simple people did not know Christ. Andrew Bobola would create with them the Church of Christ, lead them to salvation above the divisions in the Church, bringing the tormented the message that there is a good God who shall fulfill the given promise: to wipe away every tear, to heal, and restore peace. Not only in his lifetime would he [St. Andrew] abolish religious barriers.”

Wojtyła, the chief ecumenist of the Novus Ordo from 1978 – 2005, had this to say about St. Andrew in an address to Polish pilgrims, May 29, 1988:

“But St. Andrew Bobola is not only a special, synthetical if you will, sign of our [Polish] history, mostly in the 17^th century, the difficult 17^th century; St. Andrew is at the same time some kind of a prophetic sign. If we realize that upon discovering his relics, his body, which did remain incorrupt in spite of all, by this body, as by a sign given by God, believers would gather, Catholics and Orthodox alike, and they together venerated him, then one may see a kind of a foretoken of the coming together of Christians from the West and the East, a foretoken of this ripe fruit of unity of Christians, the ecumenical effort, which the Church has been making along with our separated brethren, the Christian brothers disjoined from us, especially since the time of the Second Vatican Council.”

Conclusion

St. Andrew Bobola sacrificed his entire priestly life for saving souls from the pernicious error of schism, diverting Schismatics from the path to damnation, and leading them back to the Catholic Church, the sole ark of salvation, whose unity has never and will never be disrupted. This is the infallible promise of Our Lord. For this never-ceasing unity of Faith, Worship, and Discipline found in the Catholic Church alone did St. Andrew give up his life in a cruel martyrdom. The life and death of this glorious martyr is a direct condemnation of the false “unity” through ecumenism peddled by the Vatican II sect.

Let us conclude with the words of Pope Pius XI, who canonized the fearless Jesuit in 1938. In his 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos, the Supreme Pontiff teaches that “the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it." In that same encyclical the Holy Father devotes a separate paragraph to exhort the Schismatics to return to the true unity by the surest and the only path: by subjecting themselves to the Papacy:

Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors. Did not the ancestors of those who are now entangled in the errors of Photius and the reformers, obey the Bishop of Rome, the chief shepherd of souls? Alas their children left the home of their fathers, but it did not fall to the ground and perish for ever, for it was supported by God. Let them therefore return to their common Father, who, forgetting the insults previously heaped on the Apostolic See, will receive them in the most loving fashion. For if, as they continually state, they long to be united with Us and ours, why do they not hasten to enter the Church, “the Mother and mistress of all Christ's faithful”?