Renewal and Restoration in the Church: An Open Letter to the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church

(The document below may be downloaded as a PDF here.)

An Open Letter to the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church

Your Eminences:

The following document emerged from discussions over the past year among theologians, pastors, and canonists, who had been encouraged to produce this document by a senior cardinal. Originally our thought had been to seek for signatories—knowing, as we do, how many notable figures in the Catholic Church are in agreement with or sympathetic to the points made herein—but in view of the suddenness of the upcoming conclave, we have decided to publish the statement as it is.

In publishing this statement, we do not wish to take upon ourselves tasks to which we have not been called by God. Rather, we simply wish to offer, out of love for the Church and according to our lights, some suggestions that may be helpful to those who have received the awesome responsibility of governing Christ’s flock. This we do, moreover, on the traditional feast of St. Catherine of Siena, a laywoman who was a light to the Church in her time, and reminds us of the need to speak with boldness or parrhesia, as befits disciples of the one Master.

The authors recognise that “in vast areas of the world, the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel” (Benedict XVI, Letter to Bishops), while errors and deviations abound within the Church; and they hope that the proposals here set forth constitute a timely call to metanoia.

With the assurance of our fervent prayers to the Holy Ghost for the College of Cardinals especially in the upcoming Conclave, we humbly ask your prayerful consideration of the content that follows.

April 30, 2025

St. Catherine of Siena

(usus antiquior)

Appeal: Help keep the Roman Forum going

Many of our readers are aware of the critical work our friend, Dr. John Rao, and The Roman Forum  do every year on behalf of the Church and traditional Catholics everywhere. Their work is more important today than ever before, for obvious reasons.

The last time we implored you, our reader, to help, we helped raise over $10,000 to keep the Forum going. We are asking now once again. Please read below, and please click here to donate whatever you can.

The Roman Forum

11 Carmine St., Apt. 2C

New York, NY 10014

www.romanforum.org

http://jcrao.freeshell.org

drjcrao@aol.com

 

Dear Friends of the Roman Forum

         

Funds continue to be needed for Gardone because we have eleven scholarship candidates from among the eighty Summer Symposium participants--future seminarians, and students---none of whom has sufficient means for attending. Each of them needs $1,500 to be able to attend. Allow me to summarize why I think attendance is so important.

IMPORTANT: International Declaration of Fidelity to the Church's Unchangeable Doctrine and Uninterrupted Discipline on Marriage (Sign it as well !)

80 Catholic personalities reaffirm their loyalty to the Magisterium of the Church on the family and Catholic morals

A Declaration of Fidelity to the Church’s Unchangeable Teaching on Marriage and to Her Uninterrupted Discipline was disclosed today by a group of 78 Catholic personalities, including cardinals, bishops, priests, eminent scholars, leaders of pro-family and pro-life organizations and influential figures of civil society.

The statement was disclosed by the association Supplica Filiale [Filial Appeal], the same organization that collected, between the two Synods on the family, nearly 900,000 signatures of Catholic faithful (including 211 prelates) in support of a petition asking Pope Francis a word of clarification to dissipate the confusion disseminated in the Church on key issues of natural and Christian morality since the consistory of February 2014.

Noting that the confusion has only grown in the faithful after the two Synods on the family and the subsequent publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (with its more or less official adjacent interpretations), the signatories of the Declaration of Fidelity feel the urgent moral duty to reaffirm the immemorial teaching of the Catholic magisterium on marriage and family and the pastoral discipline practiced for centuries with regard to these basic institutions of a Christian civilization. This grave duty, according to the signatories, becomes even more urgent in view of the growing attack that secularist forces are unleashing against marriage and the family; an attack that does not seem to find any more the accustomed barrier in Catholic doctrine and practice, at least in the way they are now generally presented to public opinion.

Solidly supported by a crystalline and indisputable teaching, confirmed by the Church in recent years, the Declaration is concatenated around 27 statements upholding those truths explicitly or implicitly denied or rendered ambiguous in the present ecclesial language. According to the signatories, what is at stake are unchangeable doctrines and practices concerning, for example, faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the respect due to this Sacrament, the impossibility of receiving Communion in a state of mortal sin, the conditions of true repentance that enable to receive sacramental absolution, the observance of the Sixth Commandment of the Law of God, the most serious obligation not to give public scandal and not lead the people of God to sin or to relativize good and evil; the objective limits of consciousness when taking personal decisions, etc.

The Declaration of Fidelity is already available in English and Italian and it will soon be available also in French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. Whoever wants to adhere to it can do so by signing at the address http://www.filialappeal.org/ 

(* For more information contact supplicafiliale@gmail.com)

***

"Let marriage be honored among all" (Heb. 13: 4)

Declaration of Fidelity to the Church’s Unchangeable Teaching on Marriage and to Her Uninterrupted Discipline

SUMMARY

(Full text of the Declaration after list of Signatories at the end of this post)

Errors about true marriage and family are widespread today in Catholic circles, particularly after the Extraordinary and Ordinary Synods on the family and the publication of Amoris Laetitia.

Urgent: An Appeal to Prayer for Italy

Louis Duveau
A Mass at Sea in 1793 (1864)
Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes

Don Pietro Leone is a priest who has written numerous relevant pieces for Rorate, including the remarkable series "The Roman Rite - Old and New".

In view of the current legislative situation in the nation where the seat of Saint Peter presides to the Catholic Church, a situation that led to the massive rally in favor of Natural Law and the Family last Saturday in Rome, he sends us the following appeal to prayer.

Dear Brothers in the Holy Priesthood and Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The Italian government is on the verge of passing a law to impose on the schools from the kindergarten level upwards the so called “Gender Ideology” , characterized by its peculiar intellectual and moral baseness which promotes natural and unnatural fornication within a purely hedonistic conception of sexuality.

This shameful and entirely despicable initiative in the very heart-land of Catholic Christendom certainly represents one of the focal points of this the gravest and most profound crisis that the Church and the world has ever known. It will result not only in the corruption and perversion of all our children but will also provoke the avenging fire of Divine wrath on the entire nation.

Help the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter! Appeal from FSSP Australia Ezechiel House Novitiate

His Eminence Cardinal George Pell of Sydney Australia is speaking at a fundraising dinner for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP) on Saturday, November 19, 2011. Cardinal Pell is helping the FSSP to raise funds to build the Fraternity's Ezechiel House Novitiate in Sydney. Ezechiel House has trained the FSSP first year seminarians from Australia, New Zealand, Asia and sometimes Nigeria so far. However, they won't be able to accept any more candidates until the house is complete, due to safety reasons.

The FSSP priest in charge of the building is Fr Laurence Gresser who was horribly injured in a fire last year. During his recovery he has been able to oversee the building, but was unable to do much fundraising. So Cardinal Pell has generously offered to promote the cause.

Fr Phil Wolfe (American) has just visited Ezechiel House and seen the wonderful quality of the work. He asks for your prayers for the success of the fundraising dinner. They need another $250,000 to complete the seminary.

For more information about the dinner or to help financially, please click here. If you run a Catholic blog, and want to help this great cause, please link to this as well.

Ezechiel House is producing a DVD for the dinner which will show the Novitiate and featuring many of the FSSP priests stationed in Australia including Fr Duncan Wong, Fr John Rizzo and Fr Define, who are remembered very fondly from their time in US apostolates. Fr Wong is the Director of Ezechiel House and has done a magnificent job in forming men in a half built house. He will try to make the DVD available after the dinner.