From a reader… QUAERITUR: Is it permissible to attend an SSPX wedding? I thought that the couple (or priest) would first need to request permission from the local bishop and then also have a diocesan priest at the wedding, but … Read More →
I wonder if the recent move of the Holy Father to change the text – the teaching of the Church – of the paragraph in the Catechism of the Catholic Church about the death penalty will generate enough buzz to … Read More →
We had a phrase in the Curia that described our approach to some questions and challenges: Cunctando regitur mundus. This is a fundamental dimension of Romanitas: the world is ruled by delaying. You outwait your opponents, rather than outwit them. Think Cincinnatus and … Read More →
I’ve been working my way through the very long Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et exsultate. It’s a whopping 20K words. A point that people have been asking me about, and which libs will surely throw in the teeth of anyone who wants a … Read More →
At First Things, there is an essay cum review by Richard Rex (professor of Reformation history at Cambridge ) of Ross Douthat’s recent book: To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism I wrote about Michael “Wile E. Coyote” … Read More →
Some people were clued in a long time ago, but were asked to keep it under wraps. Now it is out in the open. The Dictator Pope (revised and updated) – now available in hard copy from Regnery for pre-order (23 … Read More →
Because I have about 60 emails having to do with this, and since I’ve already made a few comments about this odd story elsewhere, here is a follow up, for the sake of completeness. Sandro Magister posted the full text … Read More →
At the site of the Pew Research Center you can read about the survey about Pope Francis five years into his pontificate. The numbers are on the move. They also, in surveying Americans, break the numbers down according to political leanings. … Read More →
I’m still reading the book, which will be vilified – with its author – by papalotrous libs who will not have read it. The New catholic Red Guards don’t permit questions. They don’t have to read, either. They react. Lost Shepherd: … Read More →
A couple people in my email have referred to the pseudo-anonymous offering Il Papa Dittatore – The Dictator Pope as “The Book”. My post HERE No… The Book™ remains Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church – US HERE – … Read More →
UPDATE: I am just about done with this. It’s quite a read. Among other things it is a summary of events of the last few years. At the pace of the modern world, one forgets. It is in English, too. … Read More →
Do you remember that, no too long ago, some wags in Rome clandestinely slapped up some posters “manifesti” on the walls of Rome addressing themselves – in the Roman way – to Pope Francis? The posters were hurriedly removed. … Read More →
Italian vaticanista Andrea Gagliarducci writes regularly a column at his place called “Monday Vatican”. You should read him. Today, however, he has a piece at CNA about how Pope Francis seems to approach the selection of and translation of bishops. … Read More →
A young woman at my home parish, St. Agnes in St. Paul, MN, penned a piece for the National Catholic Register in reaction to Pope Francis’ recent curious statements about liturgical reform. As you may recall, the Pope (or, better, his ghost … Read More →
His Holiness of Our Lord has made an interesting revelation. See the story at the UK’s best Catholic weekly (for which I also write), the Catholic Herald. Pope Francis saw a psychoanalyst every week for six months when he was … Read More →
Claimed: Russian Prime Minister and former-KGB Lt Colonel Vladimir Putin has offered some rather negative comments about His Holiness Pope Francis. QUAERITUR: Is this “fake news”? Sure looks like it. From Your News Wire (my emphases and comments): Putin: ‘Pope Francis Is … Read More →
This isn’t the sort of thing that should pull much of our attention or energy. However, I have been asked about it in email by a surprising number of people, including priests. It seems that the site Messa in latino picked … Read More →
Here is something to ponder. HERE On this day in 2013 I posted: Over at First Things I saw a piece called Five Myths About Pope Francis by William Doino Jr. What are those myths? 1. “Francis is the anti-Benedict.” … Read More →
I arose today to a loud PING on my phone as a friend in Rome sent me a link to a piece in the American Spectator by the hardly-ever-subtle George Neumayr about the influence of Communism and Socialism on Pope Francis. The Spectator … Read More →
In the wake of last week’s cover of the Rolling Stone, Andrea Gagliarducci in his Monday Vatican offering does some analysis of the status quaestionis, the present state, of the pontificate of Pope Francis, especially in view of the MSM. Read the whole thing, … Read More →
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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
L. on Daily Rome Shot 1223 – “Sluggish schizophrenia”: “The dishonesty of the description of the traditional Mass is breathtaking: “…a taste for …clerical ostentation, which is none other…”
IaninEngland on Daily Rome Shot 1223 – “Sluggish schizophrenia”: ““unhealthy for the liturgy to become ideology … rigidity … ecclesiastic…individualism … sectarian worldliness” What gross hypocrisy!”
A.S. Haley on Daily Rome Shot 1221 – mistreated: “No one seems to have solved the chess problem yet, so I’ll suggest this: 1. . . . f7f6+ 2.…”
Les Buissonets on Daily Rome Shot 1223 – “Sluggish schizophrenia”: “Phil Lawler’s wife, Leila, has a very interesting ‘take’ on Francis’s approach to argument or controversy on her Substack: https://leilamarielawler.substack.com/p/the-bulverism-of-pope-francis?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=1i2dg&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email”
Everyone, work to get this into your parish bulletins and diocesan papers.
The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
St. John Eudes
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“Until the Lord be pleased to settle, through the instrumentality of the princes of the Church and the lawful ministers of His justice, the trouble aroused by the pride of a few and the ignorance of some others, let us with the help of God endeavor with calm and humble patience to render love for hatred, to avoid disputes with the silly, to keep to the truth and not fight with the weapons of falsehood, and to beg of God at all times that in all our thoughts and desires, in all our words and actions, He may hold the first place who calls Himself the origin of all things.”
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
- C.S. Lewis
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As for Latin…
"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thine image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of Thine Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor, during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.