“Progressive Manias”: Powerful article by Archbishop Aguer
Announcing a Major New Work on the Nature of the Papacy and the Reign of Francis
“Questioned, deaf to criticism...” -- A Tense "End of Reign" Climate in Francis' Vatican
“Questioned, deaf to criticism...” The end of a lonely reign for Pope Francis
ROME - Never before has Pope Francis faced such adversity. In this year 2022, the tenth of his pontificate, everything seems to be conspiring against him. Rome, always quick to burn what it adores, is in turmoil. Some discern a mature phase of the pontificate. Others see an "end of reign", according to an expression common in the Eternal City. Many are already thinking about what comes next. But Francis, 85 years old and very combative, is far from having said his last word. A great worldwide Christian jubilee is in sight for 2025. Above all, he is preparing his major reform: that of "synodality" for 2024.
Obedience in Crisis: A Review by Michael Charlier of “True Obedience in the Church”
The Council and the Eclipse of God – by Don Pietro Leone : Part 2 of CHAPTER VII –Man’s Cult of God - Sacrosanctum Concilium : a veritable modernist minefield
Don Pietro Leone continues to guide us through the modernist minefield of Sacrosanctum Concilium – The Council’s document on the Reform of the Liturgy.
This section, which is an excellent read, is incontrovertible in its refutations of conciliar conceits and not without humour.
F.R.
The Council and the Eclipse of God
by
Don Pietro Leone
CHAPTER VII
PART 2: MAN’S CULT OF GOD
Help a Traditional Catholic School in Colorado! Sweepstakes for Our Lady Help of Christians Academy
by Fr. Paul Robinson
Our Lady Help of Christians Academy is a school located east of Denver and is run by the Society of St. Pius X. When SSPX priests came to this area in the early 90s, they found traditional Catholics here who had already started schools. Because Abp. Lefebvre asked his priests to start schools and these Catholics had a great love for the Mass and for Catholic education, it was only natural for those schools to become a single SSPX school. Now, in 2022, we are celebrating the 27th anniversary of Our Lady Help of Christians Academy.
“Francis, Kirill, and the Russian war in Ukraine” - by Roberto de Mattei
Among the many successes attributed by the mass media to Pope Francis has been the “historic meeting” that took place on February 12 2016 in Havana with Moscow patriarch Kirill. An event, it was written at the time, that saw the collapse of the religious wall that for a thousand years divided the Church of Rome from that of the East (la Repubblica, February 5 2016).
“Onion liturgy: Francis and nervousness about form” — Scorching article by Luisella Scrosati
“Liturgical Survival in Gray Areas”: Michael Charlier on Room for Maneuvering without Schism
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Rocca di San Leo |
A thoroughly friendly discussion is currently taking place between the blogs Caminante Wanderer (Argentina) and MessaInLatino (Italy) about Pope Francis’s part in the activities against the traditional liturgy. Caminante Wanderer is of the opinion that Francis is, in principle, uninterested in liturgy, that he devotes himself exclusively to the things his neo-Jesuitical thinking considers important and otherwise follows the voices that fit best into his current power calculations. We do not intend to disagree with this, especially since the Wanderer can certainly cite serious arguments in support of his view.
A Communist Regime Arrests a Cardinal Again -- Please, Pray for Cardinal Zen! (Updated: released from custody for now)
The news shocked the whole Catholic world today -- decades after the arrests of Cardinals by Communist regimes, a situation all thought would remain in the past, the 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong and a huge friend of the Traditional Mass, was arrested today by the Communists currently yielding power in the former British colony. We tweeted it as soon as it became public, about 4 hours ago:
A Reply to Gavin Ashenden: the evangelising power of the Traditional Mass
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Evangelising by doing something recognisably sacred: Easter Vigil in London |
Cross-posted on LMSChairman.org
I have an
article in the current issue of Inside the Vatican, and by coincidence
it is preceded by one by Dr Gavin Ashenden, the former Anglican cleric received
into the Catholic Church just before Christmas. Ashenden has become an
important commentator on Catholic affairs, so I was dismayed to read his
treatment of the movement for the Traditional Mass, which is the subject of his
article. I think, however, that Dr Ashenden’s analysis may appeal to many, in
trying to put together the kinds of things Pope Francis has said along with a perhaps
superficial knowledge of the movement itself. For this reason, as well as
because of the respect I have for him as an intellectual, I would like to make
a response.
‘The Mother and the Virgin and the Bride’ - A Review of "A Symphony of Truth", a new book by Father Serafino Lanzetta
The theological essays united in The Symphony of Truth by Father Serafino M. Lanzetta are like various musical instruments interpreting together a unique musical score. One melodic phrase which contributes to the harmony of this symphony recalls to my mind a poem by G. K. Chesterton, entitled An Agreement, in which he opposes the life-giving love of “our human trinity, The Mother and the Virgin and the Bride” to the death-dealing hatred of ‘unmotherly Medea’, the Greek sorceress who murdered her own offspring. Similarly, Fr Lanzetta wields his theological scholarship to defend the vivifying truths of the Catholic faith against the deathly blows of false teachings, particularly those aimed at attacking the fecundity and the indissolubility of the marital bond.
Pope Francis insults liturgical tradition and living from it: On the May 7 address
Happy Mother’s Day — Perpetual Love and Concern: The Glory of Motherhood
Sandro Botticelli’s Madonna della Melagrana (The Pomegranate Madonna), the 1490 masterpiece housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, depicts Our Blessed Mother in a particular pensive and concerned way.
The pomegranate represents, in almost complete certainty, the hearts of Mother and Son, the Most Sacred and the Immaculate Hearts, united in contemplation of the solemn fate of the Divine Child.
It is in our view a very appropriate depiction of Motherhood. In our current age of ever more vapid portrayals of fake happiness, all one sees in social media are smiles… and smiles are wonderful, especially when they are truthful. But parents know parenthood is more often than not also marked by loving care and the grave concerns that come with it.
To all Mothers who pray, and hope, and love, and weep for their children, in the most difficult job in the world, we wish a Happy, Healthy, and Blessed Mother’s Day!
Pope to Students and Faculty of Sant’Anselmo, May 7, 2022: “Every reform creates resistance… All of these things scandalized closed-minded people”
His attacks on tradition are, as always, superficial, hypocritical, and judgmental, and his undying optimism for a failed reform bears all the marks of boilerplate stereotypes, ignoring all realities on the ground. It’s really rather pathetic: he has no experience at all of the joy and energy of the traditional movement, and seemingly no awareness of how deathly dull is the Novus Ordo in most parishes—aging, shrinking, few children, few or no vocations... representing the “active participation” of a few percent of a once-Catholic population, driven away from the “Church of Vatican II” by its sheer banality, irreverence, irrelevance, and lack of anything meaningful to say to anyone hungry for encounter with the mystery of God. That’s what’s “senza vita, senza gioia.”
At New Liturgical Movement, Gregory DiPippo wrote a response (indirectly) to this address, all of which is worth reading. I quote just two paragraphs:
There is probably no area of the Church’s life today that is unaffected by ideologies . . . but there is certainly none in which this is more the case than in the field of the liturgy. Many people insist on looking at the post-Conciliar reform only through certain ideological lenses. Through these lenses, it is declared to be the product and fulfillment of the original Liturgical Movement inspired by men like Dom Guéranger and Fr Romano Guardini, whose ideals it betrayed, whose principles it largely rejected, and whose goals it did not fulfill. It is declared to be the product and fulfillment of the will of Vatican II as expressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium, whose ideals it also betrayed, whose principles it also largely rejected, and whose goals it also did not fulfill. Concerns that the scholarly premises of the reform were erroneous at best, and its methods fraudulent, are ignored or dismissed. It is declared to be a spectacular pastoral success, as churches and religious houses and schools empty and close, and membership in the Church collapses precipitously. And because it is in the very nature of an ideology to blind those who believe in it to its failures, those who point out its failures are either insulted or silenced, but never answered.. . . [T]here will come a day when the ideological conviction that the post-Conciliar reforms have been a spectacular success no longer holds the unreasonable fascination that it does on so many minds, especially among those who lived through them, and remain unduly attached to the naïve optimism of their youth. Then the insults and forced resignations and suppressions will come to an end, and there will begin the difficult process of honestly assessing what went wrong, and why it went wrong, and determining what needs to be done to put it right.
Read the rest there.
Upcoming Lectures by Dr. Kwasniewski in Washington DC (May 23), Buffalo (June 3-4), and Cleveland (June 4)
“True Obedience in the Church” Now Available in Spanish and German Editions
La verdadera obediencia explicada
Catholic News Service Fires 21 Staff, Ends U.S. Operations
In a stunning announcement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) today, 21 employees of the USCCB / Catholic News Service will be laid off and Catholic News Service's U.S. offices will close.
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Catholic News Service, founded in 1920, is the journalist arm of the USCCB, which employs a team of reporters for articles that appear in diocesan papers and websites. Only the Rome bureau of Catholic News Service will remain open.
This will likely be devastating to diocesan papers and websites, which rely heavily on Catholic News Service articles for national Church news. Many diocesan newspapers have already downgraded their frequency, from weekly to biweekly or even monthly, if not closing up altogether. And many papers are barely publishing, including the Catholic Standard of the Archdiocese of Washington, which is down to a sporadic monthly edition, but does not have a print edition listed since its March 17 issue. Without Catholic News Service articles to fill pages, already-skeletal local diocesan newsrooms will have to produce more copy.
Why Ecclesia Dei Communities Should Avoid Concelebrating the Chrism Mass: A Response to Michael Charlier
The Council and the Eclipse of God – by Don Pietro Leone : CHAPTER VII –Man’s Cult of God - Sacrosanctum Concilium : a veritable modernist minefield
Many people praise Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Council’s document on the Liturgy as being something orthodox, but Don Pietro shows how, in reality, it is but another modernist minefield. In this section, he quotes from Don Gueranger’s prophetic book on anti-liturgical heresy ‘Liturgical Institutions.’
For a fuller analysis of how the Mass was changed as a result of the
Council, readers may consult Don Pietro’s book, 'The Destruction of the Roman Rite' found here: https://loretopubs.org/the-destruction-of-the-roman-rite.html and which was first published on Rorate Caeli some
years ago: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2011/10/roman-rite-old-and-new-i-introduction.html .
The
Council and the Eclipse of God
by
Don
Pietro Leone
CHAPTER
VII
(Part I)
MAN’S
CULT OF GOD
“Secure in the faith, despite Rome”—Archbishop Hector Aguer
“Concelebration as compromise?” — Article by Michael Charlier
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Holy Thursday 2022 in Rome. Does such a giant concelebration with clergy from many dioceses correspond to the essence of the episcopal Chrism Mass? |
Rorate presents this translation of an essay by Michael Charlier, posted on April 30, 2022 (source). It does not represent Rorate's view. It is offered in the spirit of fostering conversation. A response from Peter Kwasniewski will be published in the next days.
Moloch Loses One Round: Roe
Memorial of Unborn Children, Madison, Wisconsin (Martin Hudáček) |
Or so it seems, if the final decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health resembles the February draft leaked most likely by a liberal clerk to the website Politico late last night, a draft in which the monstrous 1973 Roe v. Wade and 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decisions are explicitly overturned.
If so, and if confirmed, may God be praised in his Angels and in his Saints!
The Ouellet Question - Who’s the real man behind the appointments of bishops?
2: Montfort: “God wishes Mary to be the Mother of His children” - #MayMonthOfMary
God the Father wishes Mary to be the mother of his children until the end of time and so he says to her, "Dwell in Jacob", that is to say, take up your abode permanently in my children, in my holy ones represented by Jacob, and not in the children of the devil and sinners represented by Esau.
Just as in natural and bodily generation there is a father and a mother, so in the supernatural and spiritual generation there is a father who is God and a mother who is Mary. All true children of God have God for their father and Mary for their mother; anyone who does not have Mary for his mother, does not have God for his father. This is why the reprobate, such as heretics and schismatics, who hate, despise or ignore the Blessed Virgin,
May, a Very Special Month:
EGO FLOS CAMPI
ET LILIUM CONVALLIUM - #MonthOfMary

Chalice - Lily. The chalice is the lily, stylized and adapted to our use, and which, born from water, is proper for us to take to our lips.The lily, and especially the water-lily, also called lotus or nenuphar, has always had a peculiar place in the symbolism of all religions. It projects its roots to substantial and deep regions, separated from our sight by these fluid, contemplative, mirror-like layers which are the domain of that which is contingent, unstable, of illusion and of this "time", of this reflection which relates to several circumstances.