Alexander Chugel, founder of the St. Boniface Institute, talks about the House of Habsburg and their great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. He also tells the story of how the Holy Sacrament became a symbol of the Holy Roman Empire.
00:00:00.040We're very pleased to have with us someone known to you all, Alexander Chuguel, the great Pachamama destroyer.
00:00:07.000Alexander Chuguel, of course, is someone who lives in Austria.
00:00:31.020He has been very active on the scene since he first came to public attention by being the one who orchestrated the move to remove the Pachamama idols from the church in Rome during the Vatican Synod.
00:00:47.540He has since founded the St. Boniface Institute and works all over the world to bring the truth back to Catholic action.
00:00:57.540Alexander, thank you for joining us on the John Henry Weston Show.
00:01:02.920So, Alexander, can you tell us a little bit about the House of Habsburg and this great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament?
00:01:12.160Yes, of course, I can tell you a little bit.
00:01:14.980Well, first, I want to say that we as Austrians, especially the traditional Catholic Austrians, all have a great devotion to the House of Habsburg itself.
00:01:25.980So it's a great honor to be able to speak a little bit about this.
00:01:29.180Well, the family is Catholic, historically speaking, since about a thousand years.
00:01:36.280They never turned Protestant, which is very good, even though a few of them, unfortunately, tried to turn away a little bit in their faults and some of them also pushed the Protestant agenda.
00:02:01.300He was the first Habsburgian to be the king of the Empire, of the Holy Roman Empire.
00:02:06.860And when he was out hunting, he saw a priest standing with the Blessed Sacrament on his way to bring it to someone who was about to die.
00:02:17.160And he was standing on the river and he could not really go past the river without getting the Holy Sacrament in danger of falling to the river.
00:02:25.840So Rudolf immediately went off his horse and gave him the horse and told him, well, he will lead his horse with the priest, the Holy Sacrament on it, over the river.
00:02:35.800So after this was done, the priest wanted to hand back the horse to King Rudolf.
00:02:40.720And King Rudolf said, well, I'm not worthy to sit on this horse again, because now this horse carried our Lord Almighty in the Holy Sacrament.
00:02:49.440So this is a good story to start with, kind of.
00:02:53.340And it shows which ideas and which ideals were carried through the centuries by this family, even though, as I said, of course, there are a few who decided to do different.
00:03:11.060There's another story about the Holy Sacrament, which also nobody knows, actually.
00:03:37.340And then to paint the picture of this, to show it to the people living in Austria so that they always remember, also the emperor, also the emperor, the vanitas, you know, everything.
00:03:48.740Everything fades away somewhere and your body is not the most important.
00:03:52.420Everything happening in the earth is not the most important.
00:03:55.880So as a sign of this devotion to God, he, by testament, said that he wants his most favorite armor.
00:04:07.760As I tell you, you know, the armor the knight wears in the battle, to be put kneeling in front of the Holy Sacrament in the church in Innsbruck in Tyrone, so that the people always say, always see that this symbol, so that his armor is put into, in the front of the Holy Sacrament, symbolizes that the whole country and all the people who live in it should do the same.
00:04:31.920And as we know, emperors and kings, they live and show us, if they are good emperors and kings, the way of life by giving signs and giving us symbols.
00:04:44.340And that is really a great symbol, actually.
00:04:50.840I want to tell you one last story so that we have maybe three good stories throughout the centuries.
00:04:55.920The last emperor, you all know him, blessed emperor Kairn, also Charles of Austria.
00:05:02.300He wrote diaries and these diaries are very important and very interesting, especially for the time after him being emperor.
00:05:11.360And when they were brought to the island by ship, you know, when you had to go to the exile, they brought him by ship.
00:05:21.360And on this ship, they asked he and his wife, Empress Sita, they asked them to be able to attend Holy Mass and to bring a priest on board of the ship.
00:05:32.160And the crew did not allow them to do so.
00:05:34.380And he was writing down in his diary that this was one of the most terrible times in his whole life, because he, for the rest of his life, and also before that occasion, went to Mass every day and tried to receive the Holy Sacrament every day.
00:05:48.880There's another story of Emperor Karl, and I want to add it because it adds to the same emperor.
00:05:53.480When the last day of his life, he was already feeling very weak throughout the night, and he knew that he's going to end his life on earth and he's going to join the choir invisible.
00:06:30.340As we all know, back then, before the changes, it was only possible to receive Holy Communion if you started fasting from midnight on.
00:06:40.640And the priest told him, you are in a situation of death, so you will most probably die.
00:06:47.400Of course it's possible, and handed him out to the Holy Communion, and then he died afterwards, which is a wonderful story.
00:06:53.600So yes, we have a few stories to look up to this family and to really follow them in many things they did.
00:07:00.960Yeah, what an absolutely great devotion.
00:07:03.120And so what has this meant for Austrians down through the generations, and what does it mean for you personally?
00:07:08.760Well, for the generations, first, yes, we had in Austria, through this very public, through this very public sign and this very public language the Habsburgs gave us by doing that, of course, always a kind of push towards the Catholic faith.
00:07:28.300I want to go a little bit to the Reformation, because the Reformation time was really terrible in Europe, as you know.
00:07:35.920In the German-speaking area, in the 16th century, 90% of all the people living there lost the faith.
00:07:48.560And also the Emperor, Maximilian II, was very weak, very weak, and at the end, he did not even go to Mass anymore, he did not even attend Mass anymore.
00:08:00.320And his son, Rudolf II, was a bohemian, he was very occult, and then he said, when he was about to die, he said, no, I won't go to confession.
00:08:08.580I have to say, they both stayed officially Catholic, but they were really away from the faith.
00:08:14.980And Maximilian even gave a lot of rights to all the Protestants throughout the empire.
00:08:21.820But the brothers of Maximilian was Karl, who was residing in Styria, and Ferdinand, he was residing in my family's home country, Tarot.
00:08:33.400They were both very devout Catholics, both very devout Catholics.
00:08:36.780And they met at the very end of the 16th century with the Prince of Bavaria, the Kurfürst of Bavaria.
00:08:44.420And they met him and asked him how they can now plan the counter-reformation.
00:08:50.900And together with the wonderful Kardia Klesel, they really managed to re-Catholicize the Holy Roman Empire.
00:09:58.360So he went back to Austria and he really turned around the country.
00:10:02.660And after him, Austria was Catholic up until, let's say, modern times.
00:10:08.940We're still mainly Catholic, but since Vatican II and everything which changed, it, of course, faded away.
00:10:14.920So this is what the family did for Austria and for our ancestors.
00:10:18.940They always, even though a few fell away, but in every generation, there was someone who at least tried to be a little bit more faithful than, let's say, the average was.
00:11:01.940Now, you see in Austria right now, even though there's 50% Catholic, that type of Catholicism is quite different from what we'd consider normal or proper Catholicism.
00:11:16.580And part of this is manifested in the method of reception of Holy Communion.
00:11:20.940How do you yourself receive, and why do you do it that way?
00:11:25.920Well, first I have to say that I am really lucky to tell you that after I converted, and I think on another show we had together, I already told the story of my conversion.
00:11:36.040The priest, which led me to the conversion, it was a very conservative, it still is a very conservative and good priest.
00:11:42.640And he told me that the only proper way to receive Holy Communion is kneeling down and receiving on the tongue.
00:11:50.500So without touching it with one's hand.
00:11:53.880And I always and only state to this rule.
00:11:57.700And so by now, since I got Catholic, I never received Holy Communion any other way than kneeling and on the tongue.
00:12:04.500The problem with the Holy Communion in the hand is that in Austria, as a Catholic country, as in many other Catholic countries back then, when the Holy Communion, when the Vatican II Reformations came into our country, the people were all taught, and this started already around 1900, that everything, everything a bishop or the pope says is infallible.
00:12:29.320It's wrong, but this was something, an ideology, which really, really, really was pushed.
00:12:34.740I can tell you a little story nobody knows, but for example, there was a prelate in the Vatican.
00:12:39.120He was the one who led the groups, the pilgrims, how do you call them?
00:12:44.700He led them to the Holy Father when they had an audience, because back then there was no big, huge general audience, but only group audiences.
00:12:52.880And before they were allowed to enter the room where the Holy Father said, he told them, you now will see the Holy Father, you will kneel in front of him, and you will listen to his words.
00:13:09.200And this was kind of accepted at the end of the 19th century, even though it was wrong.
00:13:14.240It was never the teaching of the church.
00:13:15.460So the people were taught this in the families and in the Catholic religious teachings, and so they all followed.
00:13:24.000And when people told them, well, the better way now, the modern way is to receive it on the hand, because it's more of a sign of doing something in communion.
00:13:34.580It's more the sign of the table, you know, of the dining table than the sign of the sacrifice.
00:13:43.260I have to tell you now that even though, of course, it looks like everyone in Austria only receives communion on the hand, that's wrong.
00:13:51.320We have a counter movement to this since the very beginning, and it gains momentum.
00:13:57.220And now we are in my age, I know many, many, many faithful who actually only receive on the tongue, even though their parents were taught to only receive in the hand.
00:14:07.900So this is something which comes back.
00:14:09.920The problem is only that the numbers of Catholics officially are still very high.
00:14:14.080And as you all know, in your country, it's a little bit the same.
00:14:17.020The numbers of Catholics who really believe in the 10th Mass are very low.
00:14:20.520But this number of people who believe in the 10th Mass, the number of people who receive from the tongue, it's actually very high.