Mass. June 2025. Now You See Him. Now You Don’t. Who or what here is front and Center at Mass the whole time? And Who is casually picked up – with one hand! – put back down and de-emphasized quickly, then passed around in what appears to be the real climax of the present liturgical… Read More Dismal Liturgies
“And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun.”— Joseph Pearce Note: I do not consider Pope Benedict XVI to have been perfect. Which pope in history was? Even Pius XII allowed the infamous Teilhard de Chardin to remain a priest in the… Read More Benedict XVI by Joseph Pearce
by Michael Davies.From Catholic, October 1996. The Catholic Church was founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son made Man. He has promised His Church that She will continue to exist exactly as He constituted her until He comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. The Catholic Church is the Church that is indefectible. The… Read More Michael Davies on the Indefectibility of the Mass of Paul VI.
Note: Canon Law 209- 212; emphasis added. Can. 209 §1. The Christian faithful, even in their own manner of acting, are always obliged to maintain communion with the Church 212 §2 “The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires. §3. According… Read More Laity, Obedience, and the Pope
See also, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and a New World Order. Our complex theological predicament, which only the hierarchical Church may, in time, formally adjudicate. By Stephen Hand. 2015. If Francis and Cardinal Kasper have taught us anything over the past few years, it’s that without resurrecting that final “checkmate,” which popes from the… Read More John XXIII, Benedict XVI and Francis. 2015.
Dr. Ralph Martin: “How can someone be appointed Archbishop of Washington, DC, after expressing views contrary to the Catholic faith? This is the question being raised by many within the American Catholic Church after Cardinal Robert McElroy’s recent appointment as Archbishop of Washington, DC. Appointments like this are causing many Catholics to wonder what is… Read More A Time of Trouble. Cardinal Robert McElroy.
He writes, “Pope Francis has already done irreparable damage to the office of the papacy itself. Never again will a (non-ex cathedra) papal teaching just be accepted by the Faithful without scrutiny or criticism. It is done. It cannot be undone. Francis has left his mark, and it’s permanent”. If we do not elect a… Read More Is Shane Right?
Julian Kwasniewski, of the Imaginative Conservative, writes “… Far more of an academic than figures like Belloc, Chesterton, or Evelyn Waugh, Tolkien was not an apologist like his friend C.S. Lewis. Consequently there is less material in which he explicitly speaks of the Church or his relationship with the Church during the last decade of… Read More Tolkien and Vatican II
Roberto de Mattei. “In the Gospels, Jesus makes use of many metaphors to describe the Church He founded. One of the most fitting is the image of the boat threatened by the tempest (Matt. 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; Luke 8:22–25). This image was often used by the Church Fathers and saints, who spoke of the Church… Read More The “true reform” that the Church needed in the 20th century
By Thomas Storck | July-August 2023 | New Oxford Review | I have long felt a certain disquietude about writing this article. As a mere foot soldier in the Church militant, I hesitate to question publicly something that is supported so strongly by those who are set over the Church of God. Pope St. John… Read More Ecumenism: A Reassessment
A discussion between Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, and Fr. C. Murr on the reportedly imminent excommunication of Carlo Maria Viganò who served as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States 2011 to 2016. Archbishop Vigano previously served as secretary-general of the Governorate of Vatican City State from 2009 to 2011. Vatican officials have said that if such… Read More Archbishop Vigano’s Fate
By Jay Dunlap | New Oxford Review. Jay Dunlap served as communications director in North America for the Legion of Christ and its lay affiliate, Regnum Christi, from 1998 to 2006 and as a communications consultant from 2006 to 2010. He is currently President of Madonna School & Workshop, the Archdiocese of Omaha’s outreach to… Read More Why the Popes Failed to Act.
Commentary: ‘People of God’ was seen as the way by which the Church could express herself as an institution rooted in the mystery of the Trinity, yet present and active in the world. National Catholic RegisterFather Joseph Thomas February 26, 2024 How can we explain that the Church is an ineffable mystery, yet also a visible… Read More What Were They Thinking? Vatican II and the ‘People of God’
Hear Davies’ talk: What Happened at Vatican II? +++ Michael Treharne Davies (13 March 1936 – 25 September 2004[1]) was a British teacher and traditionalist Catholic writer of many books about the Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council… Although Davies opposed French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s canonically-illicit consecration of four SSPX bishops in 1988 against the wishes of Pope John Paul II,… Read More Michael Davies. What Happened at Vatican II?
A fireworks of metaphors employed in quest to assess its place in Catholic history. Then there is Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne who (Oct. 8) thinks “The assembly that Pope Francis opened in Rome last week is radical, though not in the sense that his right-wing critics have in mind. Its purpose is downright… Read More Theologians See Trainwreck in Synod of Pope Francis.
Updated. A couple of years ago our son asked me if I watched Michael Voris’ YouTube channel. I replied along the lines of, “Sometimes. Not very often. He’s been around for a long time; I know his thinking well enough. It can lead to wrong impressions, to schism or outright skepticism.” It can also minimize… Read More Michael Davies on Our Priests and Our Tribulation
“New World Order Without God”… Who needs the old Progressivist desire for a Third Vatican Council to mitigate Church teachings when they can have almost anything they want through an incremental permanent synodal Church? A lot of the infiltrators who maneuvered their way into the highest positions in the Church by pretending to be pious… Read More Cardinal Müller challenges Pope Francis
…and Interview With the Authors, Shaun Blanchard and Stephen Bullivant. Note: The book under discussion here represents only one of a number of interpretations of Vatican II and it’s fruits which are found at this website. See Labels / Categories for others. — Editor. “There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that sometime in the 1950s,… Read More Addressing a “Different Kind of Crisis”? A New Introduction to Vatican II
Updated. Cardinals Mueller and Burke on the German Synod and beyond. “Bishops are accusing brother bishops of schism and heresy — and it’s all over the most fundamental and crucial doctrines of the Church.” Signs of the times. “Desecration is the act of depriving something of its sacred character, or the disrespectful, contemptuous, or destructive… Read More Pontificate of Francis 10 Years Later
Are Catholic prelates really moving in on Francis with a view to ousting him as a report indicates? “Vatican plot to force Pope Francis to resign: Conservatives wage ‘secret plan’ to put the liberal pontiff under so much stress he will step down, Italian cardinal reveals’ — Daily Mail, 1/9/22 I’d be surprised if this happens… Read More Moving in on Francis?
By Christian Oliver For Mail online.13 Dec 2022. The Pope has warned of ‘omens of even greater destruction and desolation’. The pontiff said even more dire times for humanity are set to come in the future. He was speaking at a Mass commem- orating the appearance of Mary in 1531 The Pope has offered a harrowing vision of… Read More Pope warns ‘omens of greater destruction and desolation’ for mankind
Book Review.The Great Facade. MAY 14, 2004.James Likoudis. “This book is a fierce polemic on behalf of a “militant traditionalism.” It is full of sound and fury against those whom the authors label disparagingly as “neo-Catholics,” i.e., those who have steadfastly defended Vatican II and the post-conciliar popes against strident charges that the ecumenical council… Read More Book Review: The Great Facade. And “Neo-Catholics”. James Likoudis.
Updated. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s new book, To Change The Church: Pope Francis And The Future of Catholicism … is an urgent, compelling work of popular religious journalism. Douthat reads the signs of these anxious times with acute clarity and far-seeing vision. This book is must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of… Read More Revisiting the 2018 Dreher / Douthat Interview: the Great Gamble of Francis.
Even if it may have caused more problems than it solved, Vatican II for the future Pope was in no small part about reintegrating loose and undisciplined elements of immutable Catholic doctrine with Christological and Eucharistic teaching. George Weigel writes, “In the years immediately after the Council, Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI), who… Read More Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on Reasons for Vatican II
By Michael Brendan Dougherty.National Review, 10/12/22. And six decades of pseudo-theologyYears ago, during a very brief meeting at New York University with the eminent English conservative Roger Scruton, I shared with him — an Anglican by tradition — my reservations about the Second Vatican Council and my interest in the old liturgy. He had no… Read More 60 Years Since Vatican II
By John L. Allen. National Catholic Reporter.March 1, 2013. Now that the papacy of Benedict XVI is over and the sede vacante has begun, the period before the white smoke rises over the Sistine Chapel will be filled with commentary and speculation about the looming conclave, much of it based on time-honored conventional wisdom about… Read More Debunking Conventional Conclave Wisdom. 2013.
“This documentary covers experimental movements that emerged in the American Catholic Church in the wake of the 2nd Vatican Council…” It is instructive, if not so edifying, to read the Comments that attended this YouTube video. And one must wonder what we have learned, or not, in our American Catholic restlessness.
Just and Unjust Wars The Catholic Church distinguishes between two types of justice concerning war: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Most of the time, when people discuss just-war theory, they mean jus ad bellum (justice before the war). Jus ad bellum refers to those four conditions described by Saint Augustine through which we determine whether a war is just before… Read More Justice and War
NYT: Pope Francis Is Tearing the Catholic Church Apart (Revisited). By Michael Brendan Dougherty.The New York Times.August 13, 2021. In the summer of 2001, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to find what we called “the traditional Latin Mass,” the form of Roman Catholic worship that stretched back centuries and was last authorized in 1962, before… Read More All I Really Need to Know in Theology I Learned From … Mr. Rogers?
Catholic Critique 