Pieter Vree, New Oxford Review “We see how the power of the Antichrist is expanding, and we can only pray that the Lord will give us strong shepherds who will defend his church in this hour of need from the power of evil.” — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, 2015 German journalist Peter Seewald first met Joseph… Read More Was Pope Benedict XVI Holding Back the Destroying Flood?
By Victor Bruno | New Oxford Review, October 2025 Victor Bruno is an author whose writing has been featured in VoegelinView, The Political Science Reviewer, In Medias Res, Sacred Web, The Fortnightly Review, and elsewhere. He has two books published in Portuguese, the latest being René Guénon Revelado (2023). He also writes the newsletter Cartas da… Read More The Danger of Equating the Church with the Mass
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.
And a response It Ain’t Broke, But Let’s Fix It Anyhow June 2004, NOR We picked up a Catholic magazine, and on the cover was one big headline, and it was a striking one: “Was Vatican II a Mistake?” In the background to the headline were a litany of post-Vatican II disasters: “practicing homosexuals in… Read More The New Oxford Review Exchange on Whether Vatican II Was Necessary
Update: July 2025. Did Pope Francis Mislead the Church Regarding Traditional Latin Mass Survey? Traditionis Custodes: Taking a Bulldozer to an Anthill. Traditionalists and Pope Francis by Pieter Vree, editor |New Oxford Review, October 2021. “Nobody comes out clean…” In January 1985 President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, signed the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits federally… Read More Traditionis Custodes. New Oxford Review.
The objective of the modernist has always been to force ‘God’ into a relative obscurity in order to make more room for the autonomy of man. In order to do so it is necessary for the modernist to utterly reject the traditional understanding of the Incarnation, whereby God consummated His love and revelation of Himself… Read More The “Specious Pretext”. Modernism.
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?
American University Speech, delivered just months before he was gunned down in Dallas, remains more relevant and challenging than ever. Many believe it was this speech which sealed his fate.. “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons… Read More JFK American University Speech More Relevant Than Ever.
Trump joins other world leaders at “reopening” of Notre Dame Cathedral. What burned in that fire and what is possibly being reborn? Antichristic Uncertainties. 12/7/24 + March 2025. Christians reportedly suffering increasing persecution in Syria + UN ignores Persecution of Christians + “…more than two Christian monuments are targeted EVERY day in France” + At… Read More Antichristic Uncertainties
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
… and the state of the Church.. unfinished controversy? | New Oxford Review 2001. Cardinal Walter Kasper famously contested Cardinal Ratzinger’s defense of the “ontological primacy of the universal church” over the local churches. By Philip Blosser | April 2002Philip Blosser, Professor of Philosophy at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina. “When Cardinals clash in… Read More Revisiting The Kasper-Ratzinger debate
If it is true that John XXIII controversially determined it was neither opportune nor wise to conclude the Council with the anathemas which usually follow Church councils, it is also true that the Councils of Trent and Vatican I (the latter had been interrupted in the last century and needed completion) were specifically cited and… Read More The Hermeneutical Firewall Protecting Vatican II
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.
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.
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
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?
“For the first time in over fifty years, a Catholic bishop has published his own comprehensive presentation of the Faith–what to believe, how to live, and how to pray as Christ taught. Sure to be a classic for generations to come, Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith offers a clear and readable summary of Catholicism… Read More Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith. Athanasius Schneider.
Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register writes, “Pope Francis appears to open the door to same-sex blessings in his response to dubium no. 2, saying that priests may use their discretion in giving such blessings, so long as they don’t imply a same-sex union is equivalent to a heterosexual marriage: a) The Church has… Read More Francis Appears to Open Another Door
“Pope Francis oversees a curia where the Relator General for the Synod on Synodality claims the Church’s teaching about homosexual acts is “false,” where the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life endorses a book that calls for a complete reversal of the Church’s teaching on contraception, and where the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of… Read More Hard to Believe History Will Be Kind
by Gregory Caridi.A Journal of the McGrath Institute for Church Life.June 03, 2021. “… The issue of improper correction of prelates has existed since the Church’s inception, and it is not likely to be resolved any time soon, particularly in a world that has become especially protective of the right to public speech, public criticism,… Read More How to Correct Bishops Correctly
Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register wrote, “The former cardinal-archbishop of Milan [Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini], a favorite of those pushing for heterodox reforms in the Church, had envisioned a permanent synodal Church in which the idea of collegial governance introduced at the Second Vatican Council could be better realized. The Jesuit biblical… Read More Martini’s Endless Dream
…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. 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.
“But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31) — The Great Deformer. On the Final Phase of Francis’s Turbulent Papacy by Pieter Vree, editor New Oxford Review. August 2021.… Read More The Effects of Limiting The Traditional Latin Mass
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.
“If a type of action always destroys, damages or impedes some basic element of human good, then no ranking of proportional outcomes can make that action consistent with integral human flourishing. “ By E. Christian Brugger, Zenith Dispatch. Problem Lies in Idea of Maximizing Good. WASHINGTON, D.C., 27 JULY 2011 (ZENIT) Here is a question… Read More The Battle Over Proportionalism Rises Again
BXVI: “We have to reflect on what was insufficient in our education, in our teaching in recent decades. There was, in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the idea of proportionalism in ethics: It held that nothing is bad in itself, but only in proportion to others. With proportionalism, it was possible to think for some… Read More Benedict XVI: The Church Links Pedophilia to the Error of Proportion-alism in Ethics.
“Tucked at the end of a hotly debated passage in Lumen Gentium about the Church’s role in salvation comes one sentence that has not received as much attention. What follows the statement that “all the Church’s children” have received their holy Catholic faith not from merit, but from “the special grace of Christ,” is the… Read More The Most Harrowing Text of Vatican II
“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.
“The new totalitarianism presents itself as the liberator of humanity.” Is it any wonder Benedict was considered out of step and belonging to the ‘yesterday’ of the Church and history? Benedict XVI: “The true threat for the Church, and thus for the Petrine service… comes … from the universal dictatorship of apparently humanistic ideologies. Anyone… Read More Benedict XVI on “The True Threat For the Church”
Prescinding from any questions regarding the wisdom of calling the Council in the time and manner it did, regarding the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, and its Decrees on Ecumenism, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2007 clarified confusions, showing again that the Holy Spirit protects the Church from dogmatic errors through the… Read More Dogmatics Clarified, 2007: Second Vatican Council doctrine of the Church
“The living magisterium makes extensive use of documents of the past, but it does so while judging and interpreting, gladly finding in them its present thought, but likewise, when needful, distinguishing its present thought from what is traditional only in appearance. “It is revealed truth always living in the mind of the Church, or, if it is preferred, the present… Read More The Living Magisterium
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