IN SPITE OF DUNGEON, FIRE, AND POPE

 A REFLECTION FOR THE CHAIR OF UNITY OCTAVE

If there is one single week in the Church’s year that is completely devoted to the virtue of Faith, it has to be the eight days beginning with the Chair of St. Peter at Rome and ending with the Conversion of St. Paul.  The first of these feastdays falls on Tuesday of this week and celebrates the global supremacy of the Church of Rome and its bishop, the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of Christ.  The week ends with St. Paul’s conversion to the true faith, an event that underscores the requirement for salvation to belong to that Catholic faith which God has revealed.

To emphasize the significance of these two feasts, Pope St. Pius X, in the year 1909, approved the practice of devoting these eight days to Church Unity.  The week was called the Chair of Unity Octave, emphasizing the concept that Christian unity was to be achieved only under the Chair of Peter, the Roman Church.  

This beautiful practice, like so many of the Church’s traditions, was perverted by the modernists in the mid-20^th century.  With its emphasis on a new type of vague ecumenism, the conciliar Church suppressed the feast of St. Peter’s Chair and turned the octave into a circus of unbridled “togetherness” with our separated brethren.  Rather than attempting to draw souls to the true faith, the emphasis had changed to one of “dialogue”, in which all religions would seek out the “truths” that each was presumed to hold, and which they would share with each other.

As the devil is the ape of God, so did the modernists take something of great value and turn it into a tool for destroying souls.  It has become intolerable to the modern world to claim that the Catholic Church is the one, true Church founded by Christ, and the only means of salvation.  The result—conversions have all but ceased.  There is no longer any appeal to belong to a church which is merely one of many.  Today, people choose the most convenient church they can find, the one with the best parking, the nicest people, the most entertaining pastor.  They blithely turn the weekly routine of going to church into something that best fits their own schedule, their own political principles, or even their own preference for progressive versus traditional liturgy.  They attempt, in other words, to make the worship of God conform with their own self-indulgence.

Let us use this important week to renew our prayers for true Church Unity.  To the usual prayers prescribed by the Church, let us add the most important supplication of all—that our holy Roman Catholic Church may be restored to the unity she enjoyed before the schism caused by Vatican II.  A house divided must surely fall, and the post-conciliar “popes” have been the most destructive force ever to storm our great bastion of faith, the Church.  Slowly, we see the walls tumble around us, and this Chair of Unity Octave is an important means to slow down and even stop the demolition.  So let’s pray for unity this week, the kind of unity that is based on Truth, pure and simple.