Bon Marché!
Sister Wilhelmina, OSB: new note from Benedictines of Mary
The Benedictines of Mary are amongst the greatest women religious in the Catholic Church today. Several Rorate contributors have supported them, and they have been friends to many, many readers, communicants, families and priests. It is difficult to say enough good things about them, and we have encouraged readers to consider donations for their second monastery.
La Croix: "Exclusive Survey - Traditional Mass: a Rite that attracts Young Catholics"
Traditional Mass: a rite that attracts young Catholics
EXCLUSIVE SURVEY: between sacredness, tradition and identity, some young French Catholics are attracted to the Tridentine Mass. The 2023 edition of the Chartres pilgrimage is set to break attendance records, thanks in no small part to young people.
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A first in living memory. The Chartres pilgrimage, organized by the Notre-Dame de Chrétienté association, is sold out this Pentecost weekend: a record 16,000 walkers are expected. And for the first time in the history of this pilgrimage, in which Mass is celebrated using pre-conciliar missals, the organizers have been forced to close registrations in the face of the influx of pilgrims, half of whom are under the age of 20.
Can we conclude from this that the "Trad" mass is really making an impression on young people? At the very least, some of them like it. According to a survey carried out by La Croix among participants at the WYD in Lisbon, 38% of them say they appreciate this liturgy: 8% say it's their favorite Mass, 11% say they like it as much as the French Mass, and 19% attend it occasionally. In many churches, 18-35 year-olds make up a large part of the congregation, "a good third, not counting the children", according to several of them in various French dioceses.
"A Sense of the sacred"
"We are Ordinary Catholics who want to live Extraordinarily!"
📣 Nous sommes des catholiques ordinaires qui veulent vivre de la forme EXTRAORDINAIRE !#NDC2023 pic.twitter.com/nlxQMBDMdt
— Notre-Dame de Chrétienté (@ndchretiente) May 26, 2023
More “Francis Effect”: Record-breaking participation in upcoming Chartres pilgrimage forces organizers to close registration
Allelúia, Christum Dóminum ascendéntem in cælum, Veníte adorémus, allelúia.
Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven? alleluia: This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, as you have seen him going into heaven, alleluia, alleuia, alleluia. (Acts 1, 11)
“What is ‘indietrism’ (backwardness) anyway?”—Michael Charlier
Parisian traditionalists gather to question Cardinal Roche; Roche cancels, and then French bishops try to escape through the back door
Announcing “Illusions of Reform: Responses to Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy in Defense of the Traditional Mass and the Faithful Who Attend It”
Sermon of Bishop Vitus Huonder on the Glory of the Priesthood
The following sermon was delivered by Bishop Vitus Huonder on December 8, 2018, in his cathedral in Chur, on the occasion of the ordination of a priest from his diocese. The text was made available recently through Paix Liturgique. The bishop, whose name has been very much in front of traditional Catholics owing to his marvelous new videos (part 1, part 2), presents a compact theology of the priesthood and defends clerics against the malevolence of those who prattle about the "clericalism" of traditionalists when they themselves are the worst examples of it. -- PAK
Francis confirms his hatred for the Latin Mass is ideological, since the greatest "danger" in the Church today is "reaction against the modern" - and criticizes the liberality of John Paul II and Benedict XVI
He clothes his hatred by saying Traditionalists are ideological, and basically calling his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI idiots (in so many words) for somehow not having the brilliant "pastoral" foresight he has -- that persecution is good and "pastoral"...
From his talk with Hungarian Jesuits, as reported by Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica:
The Chartres Pilgrimage: Despite pressures, we will always keep the Traditional Mass, it is our raison d’être
Notre-Dame de Chrétienté will walk this year meditating on the theme of the Eucharist for its Pentecost pilgrimage. Explanations with Jean de Tauriers, president of Notre-Dame de Chrétienté.
For the 41st time, Notre-Dame de Chrétienté pilgrims will travel from Paris to Chartres on May 27, 28 and 29. Why did you choose the theme "The Eucharist, salvation of souls"?
“Why Should Pope Francis and the FBI Care about the Latin Mass?” — Kwasniewski’s Charleston Lecture with Q&A
It's Today! Watch Live the Consecration of the Church of the Immaculata, in St. Marys, Kansas (Second Post)
Father Terrence Gordon, FSSP, RIP
As many readers have probably heard, the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter lost a great priest last week, Father Terrence Gordon, FSSP. He died of a heart attack.
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Saint Joseph church near Richmond, Virginia, where Father once served. |
One of a handful of sibling sets of priests in the Fraternity, his brother administered last rites. Several traditional Latin Masses have already been offered for Father Gordon, with several more to come. Please take a moment to pray for him -- a good and faithful servant.
The North American Province of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter is grieved over the loss of one of our confreres, Fr. Terrence Gordon, FSSP, who passed away on Friday April 28th. Fr. Gordon was ordained on June 3, 2006 and was assigned as assistant Pastor at Immaculate Conception in Colorado Springs.
Ten Points in Favor of Communion on the Tongue—and the Sordid History of Communion in the Hand
May 3 - A Major Dedication: the Church of the Immaculata, in St. Marys, Kansas (First Post)
The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) will host the consecration of the new Immaculata church on May 3, 2023, on the grounds of the historic St. Mary’s Academy & College. Seating over 1,500 people, this will be the largest Catholic church in Kansas and the largest of the Society in the world.
Bishop Bernard Fellay, an auxiliary bishop of the SSPX, will be the celebrant. More information on the live ceremony of the consecration of this gorgeous Neo-Romanesque gem built in the middle of America, a declaration of belief in this age of unbelief, will be posted by Rorate soon, as well as many pictures of the church and celebration.
Anglican service at the Lateran: a grave episode - by Roberto de Mattei
I would like to comment on an episode that seems to me to be grave and significant. We learned of this from an official statement of the venerable Chapter of St John Lateran, released on 20 April 2023. The statement reads:
“The Lateran Chapter, in the person of His Excellency Guerino Di Tora, Chapter Vicar, expresses deep regret for what happened last Tuesday, 18 April, within the Basilica of St John in Rome. In fact, a group of about 50 priests, accompanied by their bishop, all belonging to the Anglican communion, celebrated at the main altar of the cathedral of Rome, contravening the canonical norms. Bishop Di Tora has also explained that the regrettable episode was caused by a lapse in communication.”
Bishop Di Tora is the Vicar of the Archpriest of the Lateran Basilica, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, who is in turn Vicar General of Pope Francis for the Diocese of Rome. Bishop Di Tora has attributed the occurrence to a “lapse in communication”.
A Catastrophic Pontificate, Undermining the Structural Elements of the Church - by Father Benoît de Jorna
A Church Shaken to the Core
The President of the Pontifical Academy for Life: "Personally I would not practice assisted suicide, but..."
It is pretty safe to say that, since its "reform" in late 2016, the Pontifical Academy for Life has become a withered husk of its former self, embroiled in controversy after controversy under its current president, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia - from damaging statements on abortion, to suggestions that the Church's teaching on contraception in Humanae vitae is "reformable", to some of its members (even the 'Catholic' ones!) being openly against Church teaching on life issues.
Perhaps, then, it should not come as too much of a surprise that the Academy's president is in favour of the liberalisation of euthanasia laws. Archbishop Paglia, in a speech to the International Festival of Journalism in Perugia, Italy, said on April 19 that:
[I]t cannot be excluded that in our society a legal mediation is feasible which allows assisted suicide in the conditions specified by the [Italian] Constitutional Court's Judgment 242/2019... The bill approved by the Chamber of Deputies (but not by the Senate) basically followed this line. Personally I would not practice assisted suicide, but I understand that legal mediation can constitute the greatest common good concretely possible in the conditions in which we find ourselves. (Italian text; video)
The Francis Way: Freemason Anglican “Bishop” Celebrates in Mother of Churches — while community in formation is banned from celebrating the Latin Mass in Parish
In the same week in which a large group of Anglican “clerics”, led by a Freemason and divorced “bishop” celebrated what onlookers and those present thought was a Catholic (Novus Ordo) Mass in the most important Cathedral in the world — Saint John Lateran Basilica, the “Mother and Teacher of all Churches in the City and the World” — this news arrives.
The burgeoning community of the Oratory (in formation), in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, which celebrated both the Novus Ordo and the TLM, have had severe restrictions imposed on their Latin Masses:
Vindicating the Allegorical Interpretation of the Mass: Abbé Claude Barthe’s “Forest of Symbols” Finally in English
"My Lord and my God!" - This Faith Continues because the Risen Lord dies no more
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From the Gospel for the Sunday in Albis: "My Lord and my God!" |
“My Lord and my God!” We too renew that profession of faith of Thomas. I have chosen these words for my Easter greetings this year, because humanity today expects from Christians a renewed witness to the resurrection of Christ; it needs to encounter him and to know him as true God and true man. If we can recognize in this Apostle the doubts and uncertainties of so many Christians today, the fears and disappointments of many of our contemporaries, with him we can also rediscover with renewed conviction, faith in Christ dead and risen for us. This faith, handed down through the centuries by the successors of the Apostles, continues on because the Risen Lord dies no more. He lives in the Church and guides it firmly towards the fulfilment of his eternal design of salvation.
Announcing “Tradition & Sanity”
Jesuit Father Thomas Reese: Lazy, or Liar?
Religion News Service, the center-left media agency that now dominates secular newspaper coverage of religion, carries a column by Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, called Signs of the Times. It is almost always predictable viewpoints from the Jesuit who is so liberal that he was forced to resign as editor-in-chief of America Magazine thanks to Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. One column by Reese called for a ban on young Catholics attending the traditional Latin Mass.
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Thomas Reese, SJ, in the center of his DC Jesuit community |
In his latest column Reese decided to travel back to April 2007 and make up a story that traditional and conservative Catholics looked the other way when Pope Benedict XVI did something liberal, using Benedict's opinion that Limbo may not exist. According to Reese, had Francis done the same thing as Benedict (which was to agree with the Vatican's International Theological Commission's report dismissing Limbo) the right would have criticized him.
His first paragraph stated: "Many conservative Catholics are upset with Pope Francis, who they complain is changing church doctrine, but they hardly blinked when Pope Benedict got rid of Limbo, a Catholic doctrine that had been taught for centuries."
The problem with Reese's narrative is he is either very lazy, or he lied on this one.
In fact, one of the most widely published articles on the April 2007 issue concerning Benedict and Limbo, written by two Los Angeles Times reporters and syndicated in many other publications in print and online, quoted Reese himself, who praised Benedict as "not afraid to look at something that has been taught in the church for centuries and say it is not at the core of Catholic belief." Yet there was more to the same article.
Four paragraphs after Reese's quotes contained a section titled "Conservatives skeptical." It stated:
Warning to Traditional Orders, Parishes, and Traditional-minded dioceses: don’t answer this e-mail
There’s a bizarre e-mail being sent to Traditional communities and Tradition-friendly dioceses, coming from a supposed Italian doctoral student or professor in a semi-abandoned Pontifical Theological Institute in Italy, and asking all kinds of curious details about liturgical practices and a long list of similar questions, supposedly for “research” purposes. We have seen the e-mail messages.
Our sources believe this is a trap: some in Rome want to gather “evidence” of “disobedience” and manufacture disinformation to set the basis for even more illegitimate restrictions on the Traditional Liturgy.
So… this is a very important heads-up. Let anyone trustworthy in positions of authority in these institutions become aware of this and NOT answer this “research” trap. Thank you!
Traditional Silent Retreats for Men and Women at New Center in Indiana
Cardinals Roche and Cantalamessa: The Mass of Paul VI Corresponds to a New Theology
"It is not the traditionalists, but Roche who ignores the Council": Luisella Scrosati's latest column
RESURRECTION: I the Lord have spoken, and done it, saith the Lord God
From the Traditional Easter Vigil.
A Reading from Ezekiel Prophet (Chapter 37):
PLEASE DONATE - PLEASE HELP the oldest continuing Traditional Catholic Community in South America through Friends of Campos (Holy Week and Easter Appeal)
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Traditional Sister guiding a class of young students in a chapel of the Campos Apostolic Administration |
[Our website donations page (at www.friendsofcampos.org/donations.html) accepts Stripe or Paypal; there's also information for sending bank transfers.]
Revised (post-Rescript) edition of Fr. Rivoire's canonical critique of 'Traditionis Custodes' now available
Papal Liturgies and the Missing Crucifix
Even more comments like this may be found on the Vatican website here.
Let's recall how things looked at an outdoor Mass under Benedict XVI:
"Missae pro Missa" Update: Help Reach 1 Million Masses for the TLM!
Dozens of billboards go up around Rome in defense of the TLM
2023 National Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage
Members of the group, which included three priests, on the steps of Saint Matthews Cathedral at the conclusion of the walk today. The event may become biannual with another pilgrimage potentially scheduled for September this year. (Photo credit Juventutem DC.)
Fontgombault Sermon for the Annunciation: Mary's "Yes" is the Greatest Moment in Human History
and Simple Profession of Br. Jean-François Charlebois and of Br. Hernane Pereira
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
My dearly beloved Sons,
and most especially you, who are now going to make your religious vows,
Monks like to pronounce theirs vows and promises underMary’s eyes. They do that in the hope that these eyes will never turn away from their everyday life, and they can do it with a firm trust. How could a mother, the Mother par excellence, turn away from those she has received as children, for we are truly her children?
What then is this unique motherhood?
St. Irenaeus wrote in his Treatise against Heresies: