A Champion for Truth: Fr Gregory Hesse

Fr Gregory Hesse died 10 years ago (January 25, 2006) – Requiescat in Pace
 

Gregory Hesse, S.T.D., J.C.D. of Vienna, Austria was ordained in 1981 in St. Peter’s Basilica. He held doctorates in both Thomistic theology and Canon Law. From 1986-88 he served as Secretary to Cardinal Stickler at the Vatican. From 1991, he worked in Austria, Germany and the United States giving lectures and producing theological articles that appeared in Catholic Family News, The Fatima Crusader and other journals. He died of complications due to diabetes on 25 January 2006.
 
Fr. Hesse spoke extensively on the true and false understanding of Papal infallibility and the modern errors in the understanding of sacred tradition, religious liberty and ecumenism brought about by the errors or obscurity and lack of definition in the documents of Vatican II based on established Church teaching from previous councils and Papal encyclicals. He also spoke on the question of the new Mass of Pope Paul VI making distinctions between the terms “valid” and “licit” again supported by past Church teaching. (Source: http://www.wikigrain.org/?req=Gregory+Hesse).
 
Father also had a great sense of humour and often quoted the two poems below:
 
 
Heretics All by Hilaire Belloc
 
Heretics all, whoever you may be,
In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,
You never shall have good words from me.
Caritas non conturbat me.
 
But Catholic men that live upon wine
Are deep in the water, and frank, and fine;
Wherever I travel I find it so,
Benedicamus Domino.
 
On childing women that are forelorn,
And men that sweat in nothing but scorn:
That is on all that ever were born,
Miserere Domine.
 
To my poor self on my deathbed,
And all my dear companions dead,
Because of the love that I bore them,
Dona Eis Requiem.
Hilaire Belloc
 
 

The Song of Right and Wrong by G.K. Chesterton
 
Feast on wine or fast on water
And your honour shall stand sure,
God Almighty’s son and daughter
He the valiant, she the pure;
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind attentions,
Go and pour them down the sink.
 
Tea is like the East he grows in,
A great yellow Mandarin
With urbanity of manner
And unconsciousness of sin;
All the women, like a harem,
At his pig-tail troop along;
And, like all the East he grows in,
He is Poison when he’s strong.
 
Tea, although an Oriental,
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast,
Cocoa is a dull, disloyal,
Lying, crawling cad and clown,
And may very well be grateful
To the fool that takes him down.
 
As for all the windy waters,
They were rained like tempests down
When good drink had been dishonoured
By the tipplers of the town;
When red wine had brought red ruin
And the death-dance of our times,
Heaven sent us Soda Water
As a torment for our crimes.
 
 

Pax et Bonum

Sr Constance TOSF