Catholics resist only dangerous-to-Faith, dubious formulations, but must obey when such formulations faithfully transmit sacred tradition, otherwise known as “the Deposit of Faith”: “Although it clearly follows from the circumstances that the Pope can err at times, and command things which must not be done, that we are not to be simply obedient to him… Read More When Catholics Must Obey
This week Raymond Arroyo, Father Gerald Murray, and Robert Royal break down new reports suggesting Pope Leo may be easing the Latin Mass restrictions through broader exemptions. They examine what this means for bishops, traditional communities, and whether these changes signal the beginning of a quiet shift away from Traditionis Custodes. The Posse also unpacks… Read More “Generous Exemptions” from Pope Francis’ Restrictions on The Latin Mass On Route?
What follows is a critique of Calvinist Apologist James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.. “…that you may know how you ought to behave yourself self in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” — 1 Timothy 3:15 By Stephen Hand The living… Read More White Lies
“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
… and a present or future faithful and deeply spiritual Pope. Acts ch. 2: “‘In the latter time, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit… Read More Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich On the Infiltrations of a Dark Theology…
Sacred Tradition must have its unchangeable dogmatic guardrails, to be sure. And it surely does. But it must also have breadth and depth. It breathes anew with the Church in every age and is as powerful as the Sacred Scriptures, as dynamic as the multitudes of the Saints. It belongs to both past and present,… Read More Is Your View of “Tradition” Too Small?
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
By Dr. Richard Bauckham. A groundbreaking work in New Testament studies, expanded and updated. Winner of the 2007 Christianity Today Book Award in Biblical Studies, this momentous volume argues that the four Gospels are closely based on the eyewitness testimony of those who personally knew Jesus. Noted New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham challenges the prevailing assumption that… Read More Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
Pope Leo XIII Apostolici Muneris, December 28, 1878. As the nature of Our Apostolic office required of Us, We have not omitted, from the very outset of Our Pontificate, addressing you, Venerable Brothers, in Encyclical Letters, in order to advert to the deadly plague which is tainting society to its very core and bringing it… Read More Socialism, Communism, Nihilism: Encyclical Letter. Leo XIII. 1878.
Fr. Chad Ripperger writes, “The juridical concept of the deposit [of Faith] requires that it is not the property of the guardian. In other words, it is not the person who receives it that has ownership of it, but of the consigner who is handing it over to him to keep it in a safe… Read More The Binding Force of Tradition
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.
You may be a traditional Catholic with ten beautiful home-schooled children who are each proficient in academics and in the arts. You may contribute substantially to both your church’s financial soundness and, to all appearances, to her reputation for spiritual integrity and growth . You may work hard, have a secure financial portfolio of stocks,… Read More The Successful, Proud, and Conflicted Traditionalist
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.
And Fulton J Sheen on the meaning of Palm Sunday. Homily of Benedict XVI, Palm Sunday, 2006. To understand what occurred on Palm Sunday and to know what it meant not only for that time but for all times, a detail is important, which became for his disciples the key to understand that event when,… Read More “The Cross Is the Tree of Life” – Benedict XVI
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.
“In Archbishop Georg Gänswein’s memoir, Nothing but the Truth — My Life Beside Benedict XVI, there are some passages which confirm that the pope emeritus, in relation to ethically sensitive issues, was in full harmony with the Magisterium of the Church and in significant discord with the magisterium of Pope Francis albeit presented with extreme grace… Read More On abortion and gender Benedict and Francis are irreconcilable
“It is fashionable for Catholic liberals to decry the pre-conciliar Church as concerned with little more than personal piety and indifferent to the injustice and suffering in the world. This is a monstrous travesty of the truth as every adult Catholic must surely know. Never in the history of our planet has so much concern… Read More Michael Davies on the Merciful, Ever Welcoming 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… Read More Tradition and the Living Magisterium.
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
What is Natural Law? The idea of natural law holds that all people, whatever their ethnicity, culture, or religion, can know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. The idea, for example, of the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—is understood as a principle of moral conduct… Read More The Essential Natural Law. Samuel Gregg.
Larry Chapp seems to express a kind of anxiety or apprehension in this video discussion about the obvious problem of the traditional magisterium as he comes “out of the closet” and reveals himself to be, of all things, an eschatological “universalist” wherein, in the end, we can all hope that Scripture and Tradition will be… Read More A Note on Dr. Larry Chapp — at the edge of Hell. Nothing to lose.
In this interesting interview, despite the heading given by Maike Hickson, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller says he believes Pope Benedict XVI understood liturgical development in the context of sacred Tradition correctly, without prejudice to previous expressions of the same sacred Sacrifice. Diversity of rites have always existed side by side in the Church. Müller accepts diversity… Read More Cardinal Gerhard Mueller on Misunderstandings of Liturgical Substance and Unity
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
Reginald Garrigou Lagrange and St. Alphonsus Ligouri. The New Oxford Review has been interested in this important subject recently and so I thought the following might assist those likewise interested and / or baffled by it all. See also other essays by following links regarding predestination, grace, free will, etc at this website. 1. Catholic… Read More Harmony and Differences on Predestination in Catholic Theology
Countering Increasing Irreverence and Disrespect. By Gerard T. Mundy | New Oxford Review. April 2024. Gerard T. Mundy is a writer who teaches philosophy at a New York City university. The sacred territory of the Catholic altar, at which the Lord Himself is consecrated and the tabernacle holding the Lord is expected to repose, commands respect… Read More A “Cleansing of the Altar” Is Long Overdue
AP. A step back in time’: America’s Catholic Church sees an immense shift toward the old ways. “… The progressive priests who dominated the U.S. church in the years after Vatican II are now in their 70s and 80s. Many are retired. Some are dead. Younger priests, surveys show, are far more conservative. “They say… Read More In This Post-Francis Era – Immense shift toward the old ways.
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’
See Dr. Mark Miravalle talk below. Pope Leo XIII wrote, “… as soon as the constitution and the spirit of the masonic sect were clearly discovered by manifest signs of its actions, by the investigation of its causes, by publication of its laws, and of its rites and commentaries, with the addition often of the… Read More St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Popes & the Masonic Sect
+ Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect. Declaration:+Dominus Iesus, August 6, 2000. + On the Unicity and SalvificUniversality Of Jesus Christ and The Church. INTRODUCTION: 1. The Lord Jesus, before ascending into heaven, commanded his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world and to baptize all nations: “Go into… Read More On the Unicity and Universality Of Jesus Christ
“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
…the considerable numbers of trendy theologians and clerics who have fallen away from the teachings of the Sacred Scriptures (and the apostolic fathers who faithfully passed on these teachings) and appear to be selling their souls for the pleasures of this world. Dr. Ralph Martin received his BA from the University of Notre Dame in Philosophy… Read More Theologian Targets the Heart of the Problem
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.
“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
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
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.
Calls for “an ecology of the human being”. BBC: “Pope Benedict has called for “an ecology of the human being”. Pope Benedict XVI has suggested that the need to save mankind from a destructive blurring of gender roles is as important as saving the rainforests. He explained that defending God’s creation was not limited to… Read More Pope Benedict XVI Laments Blurring of Genders. 2008.
What did the first Christians believe about the Eucharist? How did they follow Jesus’ command, “Do this in remembrance of me”? How did they celebrate the Lord’s Day? What would they recognize in today’s Mass? The answers may surprise you. In The Mass of the Early Christians, respected author, scholar, and television host Mike Aquilina reveals… Read More The Mass of the Early Christians. Mike Aquilina.
Catholic Critique 