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
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 children… Read More Why the Popes Failed to Act.
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. “ — Compare also Larry Chapp on Francis and the current Catholic Moral Theology fight . By E. Christian Brugger, Zenith Dispatch. Problem Lies… 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.
The Antichristic has manifest itself and shadowed the Cross in every age of the Church. Our era is hardly an exception. The war on the moral and natural laws today is ominous. And, be it near or far, we may be approaching times even more difficult. Catholics and other Christians who resist evils today and… Read More Antichristic Uncertainties
“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
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 the priesthood,” “pro-abortion… Read More The New Oxford Review Exchange on Whether Vatican II Was Necessary
“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 of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth… Read More JFK American University Speech More Relevant Than Ever.
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
Opinion(s). Dr. Larry Chapp interviews Dr. Shaun Blanchard who has written extensively on the topic of Vatican II, the hermeneutic of reform, the papacy of Pope Francis, and Traditionis Custodes. Note: Posting this interesting discussion does not imply necessary agreement with every opinion expressed. SH — Dying on the Wrong Hill. Thomas Storck on our… Read More Larry Chapp interviews Shaun Blanchard on Councils & Liturgy
“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”
An unfinished controversy? By Philip Blosser | April 2002Philip Blosser, Professor of Philosophy at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina. “When Cardinals clash in public, it’s serious.“ My priest and I occasionally share articles with each other in an ongoing amicable discussion about the state of the Church. He recently gave me a copy of… Read More Unfinished debate? Dr. Phillip Blosser: The Kasper-Ratzinger debate & the state of the Church
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 funded nongovernmental organizations from performing or promoting abortions in foreign countries. The next Democrat… Read More Traditionis Custodes. New Oxford Review.
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 The New Mass and Indefectibility
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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