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When these “Comments” claimed last year that in Sokulka, Poland, there had been in 2008 a Eucharistic miracle worked upon a host consecrated at a New Mass (NOM), a number of Catholics in the English-speaking world denied that such a thing was possible. When the same claim was made recently in Paris (https://youtu.be/IgQnQhxmhH4), it was the turn of some French Traditionalists to call in question the apparent scientific evidence of the miracle furnished independently at the time by two Polish laboratories, both of which claimed that the sample submitted to them from the host in question came from the heart muscle of a human being in acute distress.

In the face of such evidence, two opposite lines of argument are possible. Either one can argue from the modernist poison of the NOM to the intrinsic impossibility of God working such a “miracle” within the framework of the NOM, or one can argue from the seriousness of the evidence to the necessary possibility of a new Mass, new priestly Ordinations and new episcopal Consecrations all being valid (because the priest and bishop concerned were ordained and consecrated in 2005 and 1980 respectively). A number of valiant Traditionalists hotly contest all three possibilities within the modernist Newchurch.

What is certain, at least within the Catholic Church, is that such questions must be decided by doctrine and not by emotion. Reason must prevail – for instance, flying by instinct can be fatal for aviators. What Church doctrine says on the validity of a sacrament is that it requires four things: a valid Minister, Form, Matter and sacramental Intention. The NOM may exclude one or all of these, but it excludes automatically none of them. Where all four are present, the New Mass is valid. That is why Archbishop Lefebvre, who knew his theology, never claimed that the NOM was automatically invalid. That is why the NOM celebrated in Sokulka was not necessarily invalid. That is why it seems more reasonable to argue from the evidence to the miracle than from the impossibility of the “miracle” to the falsehood of the evidence. Otherwise one needs a precise reason to question the pathologists’ precise testimony.

The great objection remains: how can Almighty God work miracles in the framework of the NOM, clearly designed by its makers to poison gradually the faith of Catholics and so destroy the Catholic Church? The answer must be that God is not primarily authentifying the NOM, but He is maintaining its possible validity in order not to abandon a mass of Catholic sheep who are still attending it in relative ignorance and innocence of the poison, and therefore by the miracle He is primarily warning both sheep and shepherds to remember that He is Present beneath the appearances of bread and wine. When one remembers the Catholic doctrine by which the NOM can be valid; when one recalls St Paul saying that anyone who partakes unworthily of the Holy Eucharist is “guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord” (I Cor. XI, 27–39); and when one sees how widespread in the Newchurch is the lack of respect for the Real Presence, then one immediately sees how necessary for the salvation of many souls can be such warnings as the miracle in Sokulka. The parish priest there testifies to how it has raised the level of Catholic faith and practice in the whole region around Sokulka.

But the objector insists – how could God possibly allow such a poisoned rite of Mass ever to be valid? Answer, He does not take away men’s free-will, but He allows us to a great extent to do what we want. In this case the neo-modernists wanted (and still want) a Rite of Mass poisoned enough to kill off the true Church in the long run, but still Catholic enough to deceive in the short run ignorant and innocent Catholics who still trust their pastors telling them, for instance, that the NOM is the Church’s “ordinary rite.” The NOM would never have gained acceptance in the Universal Church had it been obvious from the start that it was automatically invalid.

Kyrie eleison.