“He regards the liturgy as reactionary and effeminate” Damian Thompson. A month ago, 18,000 young people walked on pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres Cathedral in order to demonstrate their love of the Traditional Latin Mass — an intricate and solemn ceremony which, to the horror of Pope Francis, is attracting an unlikely following among Generation Z Catholics. Inside the… Read More Will Pope Francis kill the Latin Mass?
Our New Religion Isn’t Enough. Freya India.Jun 04, 2024. These days it seems like everything is described as a new religion. Social justice is a new religion. So is climate activism. Trumpism, too. I saw a funny tweet recently about how girlboss feminism has now reinvented the Sabbath, with the shocking news that we might benefit from “one lazy day” a… Read More The Universe? Who is God?
Ralph C. Martin is a professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary and was involved in the early Catholic charismatic renewal as founder of the Word of God (community) and cofounder of the Sword of the Spirit association of covenant communities. In this talk Ralph Martin shows how Progressives suppress many parts of Scripture in the attempt to fashion a new Gospel and a new… Read More Dr. Ralph Martin on the Urgent Relevance of Gospel Teaching Today
(CNA) Father Julio Fernández Techera, a Jesuit priest and rector of the Catholic University of Uruguay, has written a widely circulated, critical essay about the Society of Jesus warning that the order, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1534, is in “deep decline.” The essay by the 57-year-old priest is titled “Ad Usum Nostrorum… Read More Rest in Pieces. Jesuits in “Profound Decline” 🪦
Updated. Many see that we are already living in the post-Francis era today. I suspect most of his legacy will be allowed to fade away after he passes. It will matter only to small aging liberal sects until they pass too. The history of the Church shows this. Who thinks of Hans Küng anymore? + What NCR’s… Read More The post-Francis Era
In his novella, The Fall, the Algerian-French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus stops lamenting for a moment all social injustice as well as the “meaninglessness” and “absurdity” of an empty Nietzschean universe in general, and turns instead to biography, specifically to his own cruelty. Camus was a notorious, even “obsessive,” womanizer. But in time it got more… Read More The Falls of Albert Camus
A new Church? Drs. Larry Chapp and Kale Zelden on “Vatican II As A Hyper – Object”. Or, why does anyone need the Catholic Church if you can practically get it all from the late Mr. [Fred] Rogers, Gerard O’Connell, Nancy Pelosi and “Fr.” James Martin? Dr. Larry Chapp is a retired professor of theology. He taught… Read More “The Church is Much More Expansive Than a Single Council”
Updated Note: I too am in anguish over the scandals Mr. Damian Thompson(1) cites in his above-referenced jeremiad. Terribly so. It is a crushing weight all traditional Catholics must feel. But after linking to his article and after prayer I have either fallen prey to some fearful scruples which I cannot ignore, or to some deeper… Read More The scandals haunting Pope Francis.
By Edward Pentin. Being a Catholic in 2024 is no easy endeavour. The West is undergoing a massive de-Christianization, so much so that Catholicism appears to be vanishing from the public sphere. Elsewhere, the number of Christians being persecuted for their faith is on the rise. What’s more, the Church has been struck by an… Read More Lay Movement Launches International Campaign for ‘Total Freedom of the Traditional Liturgy’
“The statement is likely to be embraced by conservatives and stir consternation among L.G.B.T.Q. advocates who fear it will be used as a cudgel against transgender people.” The Vatican on Monday issued a new document approved by Pope Francis stating that the church believes that gender fluidity and transition surgery, as well as surrogacy, amount… Read More NYT: Vatican Document Casts Gender Change and Fluidity as Threat to Human Dignity
Attacking the prevenient natural order, finitude itself, gender theory is ground zero. Dr. Margaret McCarthy, interviewed by Dr. Larry Chapp here, “received her doctoral degree in theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute at the Lateran University in Rome (1994), with a dissertation on the contemporary theology of predestination. Since then, her teaching and writing… Read More Gender Theory: “The Atomic Bomb of Nihilism”
Seven priorities of the next Conclave. A profile of the next Pope, writes Cardinal –two years after the text signed ‘Demos’ (later revealed to have been written by Cardinal Pell) a new anonymous document, linked to the first, defines the seven priorities of the next Conclave to repair the confusion and crisis created by this… Read More Demos II. Seven priorities of the next Conclave.
NCRegister: “A blessing is not compatible with a state of sin: One cannot bless that which breaks, consumes, destroys. To which sacrament, therefore, is the blessing of an irregular couple ordered? It is not true that blessing promotes and justifies nothing, because it implicitly promotes “disordered acts” and a pseudo union… “In the text of Fiducia… Read More ‘Non-Liturgical’ Blessings Do Not Exist
Note: Dismissing James Martin and Jeanine Gramick rather than encouraging their rainbow agendas would have been a more eloquent gesture, but this is not without its confusing significance. Carol Glatz – Catholic News ServiceMarch 01, 2024 VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The gifts of men and women are “fruitful” together, and to erase the difference between… Read More Pope Francis: Gender ideology is today’s ‘worst danger’
We, his critics, drawing strength from Catholic Tradition, have never ceased praying for the Pope, But he doesn’t seem to recognize true friendship. So we keep trying and cannot stop. Will he hear us? We must not seek the applause of the world, only it’s conversion. “St. Thomas provides a guideline for addressing correction of… Read More Will he hear so many?
2/24/24. “For years the annual Religious Education Congress in Los Angeles has been a regular source of liturgical distress as various innovations test the bounds of reverence, not to say sacrilege. This year as the congress unfolded on the West Coast, the genuine sacrilege took place on the East Coast, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in… Read More Dead Synodality. Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.
Catholic World Report. Responsibility, Accountability, Transparency: This was the threefold watchword. Christopher R. Altieri. “Five years ago, the Pontiff railed against “abominable crimes that must be erased from the face of the earth…” His record since has been abysmal and even scandalous.” “Pope Francis has refused to defrock a confessed child molester or even remove him from… Read More “Pope Francis’s ‘all-out battle’ against clerical abuse has been a failure”
St. Antoninus: In the Event of the Most Grave Confusion(s): “The people are not oblidged to know…” And St. Thomas Aquinas on whether one must avoid (ipso facto or otherwise) excommunicated persons before sentence has been passed Principles St. Antoninus, commenting on the Great Western Schism “The question was much discussed and much was written in… Read More In the Most Grave Confusion(s): “The People Are Not Oblidged to Know…”
“Canterbury Cathedral, where St Thomas Becket was martyred just next to the nave, is hosting a “90s Silent Disco” over two nights Feb. 8-9. 3,000 people expected to take part. Faithful are protesting against the event with prayer vigils outside @CburyCathedral”. Faithful Catholics are being taunted all over Europe, the United States and beyond by… Read More Canterbury Cathedral
National Catholic Register. COMMENTARY: Cardinal Fernández’s clarification of ‘Fiducia Supplicans,’ the Pope’s solidarity with the Jewish people, and the lack of priests at the Synod on Synodality were addressed by the Holy See last week. Father Raymond J. de Souza Vatican February 7, 2024 On the feast of St. Blaise, the Vatican cleared its collective throat… Read More Reset Saturday At the Vatican
Cardinal Gerhard Mueller wrote in 2023, “Throughout the history of the Church, whenever Popes have felt or behaved like politicians, things have gone wrong. In politics it is about the power of the people over the people, in the Church of Christ it is about the service of the eternal salvation of men, to which… Read More Peter, When you are converted…
… but pay attention to what is said” — Thomas a’ Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. Begging With Confidence January 27, 2024 Around us, evil on evil is unfurled? “Fear not,” said Jesus, “I’ve overcome the world” (Jn. XVI, 33). On the last day of 2023 a Franciscan priest of the Capucin Friary of Morgon… Read More “Do not inquire, ‘Who said this?’
Edward Pentin Updated. “An academy set up by former members of the Pontifical Academy for Life has called for Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández to be dismissed, saying he “does not have the necessary minimum qualities required to fulfil the role of defender of the faith.” Members of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life… Read More John Paul II Academy Calls for Removal of Cardinal Fernández as Vatican’s Doctrinal Chief
When the heretic Hans Kung met with Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, Kung said it was a deeply personal conversation. Benedict said he “respected” Kung’s “path” (without agreeing with it all). He urged Kung to teach students in regard to world religions and in other areas; and so, again, an ominous pluralism was seen to… Read More Hans Kung and Benedict XVI
And an interview with Raymond Arroyo. “The collaboration between a future pope and young prelate is transformed into profound friendship when circumstances thrust Joseph Ratzinger into the Apostolic Palace, even as he expected to be released in retirement to his beloved Bavaria. Monsignor Georg Gänswein never left his side, and witnessed one of the most… Read More “Who Believes Is Not Alone.” Mons. Georg Gänswein.
“God is Dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we – we still have to vanquish his shadow, too. — Frederich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 109. The Forerunners 2015: For the Neo-modernist or Progressivist Catholic today, the traditional understanding… Read More Progressivist Theology. What it is.
Pinned 2.15.23 —Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794, is a Bull issued by Pius VI in condemnation of the Gallican and Jansenist acts and tendencies of the Synod of Pistoia (1786) In the introductory text the Pope exposed the method, the “art of deception,” as Pius X did again at the dawn of the twentieth century… Read More When Popes Exposed and Denounced Doctrinal Ambiguity, the “Art of Deception.”
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 To be Clear: “The New Mass and Indefectibility”. Michael Davies.
Is Jesus Christ a mere symbol of transcendence or the concrete Redeemer proclaimed in Sacred Scripture, “the same yesterday, today and forever”? (Heb. 13:8) After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, he did graduate work in philosophy at Princeton University and holds an MA in Theology from Sacred Heart School of Theology in the… Read More A Paradigm Shift in Catholic Theology? Dr. Ralph Martin.
” a thing cannot be and not be at the same time”— St. Thomas (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1, chap. 84) “…reason’s first principle is the principle of contradiction. He who denies this principle affirms a self-destructive sentence. To deny this principle is to annihilate language, is to destroy all substance, all distinction between things, all… Read More Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange on Reason and The Law of Non-Contradiction.
It cannot be seriously doubted in our time that since the Second Vatican Council not a little of what has been called “Catholic ecumenism” has in fact gone off the Church’s traditional dogmatic rails. But for all that the principle cannot be doubted. It was doubtless the seemingly radical abruptness of the Church’s turnaround regarding… Read More Traditional Catholic Ecumenism
Also, Dr Ralph Martin on the same. 1255 For the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents’ help is important. So too is the role of the godfather and godmother, who must be firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized. As Pope St. John Paul II beautifully put it in his theology of the body, “the body… Read More National Catholic Register on Recent Vatican Statements on Baptism
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?
Tuesday Update: 11/14/23 Bishop Strickland Calls for Prayers for Pope Francis, Warns of Forces Corrupting Catholic Church WSJ: Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland, a vocal critic of the pope, has “warned of ‘blasphemies emanating from Rome’”(WSJ 11/12/23) “Ousted Bishop Speculates on the Reasons the Vatican Removed Him. National Catholic Register: ““I really can‘t look to any… Read More Pope Francis Fires Conservative U.S. Bishop. Updated.
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.
Catholic Critique 