RORATE CÆLI: Church of Vatican II

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Guest Article: “Is Jorge Bergoglio a Strategist? A Reply to Caminante-Wanderer”

Readers will recall the unparalleled theological analysis of the Francis pontificate by Vigilius, first published here on July 10, 2024. Today, we are pleased to publish a follow-up (in a translation authorized by the author; original German here), in which Vigilius explains why he respectfully disagrees with the eminent Argentinean commentator about the theological program of the present pope. —PAK

Is Jorge Bergoglio a Strategist? A Reply to Caminante-Wanderer

The Paulists, on life support

Ten years ago Rorate shared the news that the Paulist Fathers were selling their seminary. As we noted, according to the order's website, "The Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, known as the Paulist Fathers, is the first community of Catholic priests founded in the United States."

Fast forward a decade and "is" will soon be "was".

The Paulists announced a massive downsizing, including leaving colleges, closing offices and cutting priests at remaining Paulist locations -- including their infamous Paulist Center in Boston.

By Paix Liturgique

October 4, 2023

Although we haven't published a review of traditional liturgy in France and around the world since 2019... we felt it necessary to return to the question of the number of Catholic faithful who wish to live their faith to the rhythm of traditional liturgy. We asked Christian Marquant, who has been interested in this subject for many years, to return to this theme which, as we shall see, remains a burning issue.

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Louis Renaudin - Dear Christian, why is it important to ask the question of the size and therefore the number of the Catholic faithful who are attached to the traditional Roman liturgy?

Christian Marquant - In theory, it doesn't matter... no one, apart from learned researchers, is going to be interested in the number of Syro-Malabar or Syro-Malankar faithful... nor in the number of priests and faithful who still participate in the Ambrosian (reformed) rite in Milan, or the Mozarabic (cobbled-together) rite in Toledo and Salamanca, because in all these cases there is no controversy or underlying problem. However, when we consider the number, and therefore implicitly the importance, of those who wish to remain attached to the usus antiquior, i.e., to the Mass that has been the Mass of all Latin Christendom for over 1,000 years, we immediately find ourselves in a polemical field whose stakes are quite considerable for a large number of pastors and for members of the "modern" lobby. We are touching on the great division that has afflicted the Church since Vatican II, and to which the Holy Father indirectly alluded at the last consistory in his appeal for unity. A pathetic appeal to an almost empty St. Peter's Square...

Louis Renaudin - What division are you referring to?

“The Current Crisis of Faith in the Church Has Its Ground in the New Mass” — Analysis by Fr. Michael Gurtner

The following superb article by Austrian priest Fr. Michael Gurtner appeared in German at the site katholisches.info on November 27, 2022; the translation is published here with permission.—PAK

At present, the modern Church is working to change its internal constitution, transforming itself and by its own initiative from a hierarchical Church, as willed and instituted by God, to a “synodal” (and therefore humanly constructed) Church. In the one and only Church of Jesus Christ, which is the Catholic Church, a process of successive detachment from divine revelation and from Christ Himself has been underway for decades: it is thus a process of self-destruction. The Church is currently tearing itself apart from within. Unfortunately, the question is now very legitimate as to how Catholic the Catholic Church on earth still is. Is it really still as Christ intended and wanted it to be?

IMPORTANT! -- Francis Effect: The End of the Traditional Latin Mass in St. Peter's Basilica

The Traditional Mass used to be celebrated hidden, out of sight, in the crypt of the Vatican Basilica (the Hungarian Chapel) from the days of the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei to Summorum.

Since the 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which recognized that the Traditional Mass had never been abrogated (and in fact could never be so), many priests who have celebrated in the several side altars of St. Peter's have done so by using the 1962 Missal. And it was celebrated daily in two of the Basilica's major altars, especially the Altar of Blessed Pope Innocent XI.

Alas, the new order (see below) that has come to the Vatican Basilica has abolished all privately celebrated masses in the upper body of the Basilica (including Novus Ordo masses, which used to be very numerous as well), and has determined that all masses celebrated in the Basilica will have to be (naturally Novus Ordo) concelebrations, liturgically "animated" by "readers" and "singers"...

(Order from the Secretariat of State below:)

“Today, Pastors and the entire people of God need to return to a correct order of priorities: to begin with, by shouting from the rooftops the first and most important of these priorities: the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.”

by Gianfranco Amato

President, Jurists for Life

La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana

August 21, 2020

Every day, it seems like ‘a great absence’ is making itself felt inside the Church: Our Lord Jesus Christ. We talk about everything except Him. In official discourses, prolusions, interventions and now even in documents, every reference to the Son of God seems to have disappeared. The idea that there can be a Christianity without Christ is making increasing headway in a creeping manner. For that matter “the Powers that be” are fond of a religion that attends to the poor, the needy, the diverse, immigrants, social justice, respect for the environment and peace, but which eclipses the troublesome figure of Christ – the only Truth – with all the ensuing weaponry of the precepts, dogmas, principles values and ideals of this Truth. This is why in the ecclesiastical world we keep hearing authoritative voices going on about everything except the Unicum necessarium . But wasn’t it the mission of the Church to “proclaim the Kingdom of God and Christ and establish it among the peoples” as it would seem No. 565 of the Catechism indicates?

The name of Neil McCaffrey (1925–1994) will be familiar to those who have followed the fortunes and trials of the conservative movement in the United States, as well as to long-time readers of Rorate Caeli, which has featured a number of his outstanding occasional writings: his ever-relevant “Memorandum on Papal Cheerleaders” from February 1976; his incisive essay “Archbishop Lefebvre, Pope Paul VI, and Catholic Tradition” from 1977; a couple of his personal letters (1, 2) on the meaning of true charity and how it coexists with right judgment; and a letter exchange with Msgr. Eugene Clark on the superiority and insuppressibility of the old Mass.

Born in Rye, NY and a lifetime resident of Pelham, Neil McCaffrey was the founder of Conservative Book Club and Arlington House Publishers, which he ran for decades, and a respected behind-the-scenes political organizer who knew everyone, collaborating especially with William F. Buckley, Jr., and others at National Review. Neil was also a knowledgeable enthusiast of old films and the music of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, an enthusiasm reflected in his founding of the Nostalgia Book Club in 1968 and his leading of the Movie Entertainment Book Club from 1978. Above all, Neil was a faithful and well-educated Catholic who saw what was happening to the Church because of the Vatican II revolution, and who spoke with unusual eloquence in defense of the orthodox Faith.

Communion handling: the gravest problem (First of Two Posts)

Inspired by recent debates on the matter, we repost this 2011 item.

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Translation problems? Mass celebrated towards the people? Altar girls? Postures?

No, the greatest and gravest problem of the liturgy of the Latin Church - that is, of the "Ordinary form", or Mass of Paul VI - is one that transcends all this, even it is related to all of them: it is the way the Body of Christ is treated.

Special De Mattei: The New Pact of the Catacombs: the fulfillment of Vatican II?

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

October 21, 2019

The secret testament of the Second Vatican Council has [now] become public and official. On October 20, 2019. in the Catacombs of the Domitilla ”The Pact for a poor servant Church”, was solemnly renewed as stipulated on November 16, 1965 in the same place, by forty-two Council Fathers, some weeks before the conclusion of the Council Assembly.

Monsignor Luigi Bettazzi, Emeritus Bishop of Ivrea, the only living signatory of the Pact of the Catacombs, revealed that the 1965 text had been written by Monsignor Hélder Câmara (1909 -1999), Archbishop of Olinda e Recife, who, however, that November 16, did not sign it as he was busy at a meeting for the final drafting of Gaudium et Spes, perhaps the most significant document of the Second Vatican Council.

From the very start of the Council, Monsignor Câmara had established an ironclad friendship with Cardinal Suenens, who, in his correspondence, is referred to by the code name “Padre Miguel”. From then on, the Câmara-Suenens tandem constituted one of the “hidden” motors behind the Council gathering. At the beginning of the second session, Helder Câmara defined Suenens “the key man of the Council, certain of the direct and personal trust of the Holy Father”. Highlighting the path taken by the first session, he writes that not without reason the Belgian Cardinal was designated as “the world head of progressivism”. “He is my leader at the Council” wrote the Brazilian Bishop in a circular to his faithful.

Many Rorate readers will already know about the magnificent website The Josias, which, among other merits, explains and defends traditional Catholic Social Teaching better than any other site I have ever seen. Recently, The Josias published a remarkable three-part essay by Thomas Pink called "Vatican II and Crisis in the Theology of Baptism" (part 1, part 2, part 3). This, to be quite honest, is the best article I have read in years about the unmooring of Catholic theology from traditional Catholic doctrine since the Second Vatican Council, and a deeply insightful explanation of how we have ended up with the debacle of Pope Francis.

Dying Italian Dominicans leave behind Fra Angelico

The latest example of a beautiful, centuries-old religious house closing due to a lack of vocations is found in Florence, where the Dominicans have decided to abandon their convent after self-destructing following Vatican II.

Elizabeth Povoledo of the New York Times has an article published in today's paper:

Vatican releases latest worldwide Catholic statistics:
Decrease in the overall share of Catholics in the world population. Fall in priests, seminarians and religious continues unabated

The Vatican Bollettino for June 13, 2018 has a report (only in Italian as of this writing) about the publication of the Pontifical Yearbook for 2018 and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2016, containing the statistics for the Catholic Church worldwide as of the end of the year 2016.

The earliest reports appearing on the Catholic media about this report focus on the increase in the absolute number of baptized Catholics from the end of 2015 to the end of 2016 -- from 1,285,000,000 to 1,299,000,000. The Bollettino's actual report however has the sobering observation that the increase in Catholics from 2015 to 2016 is lower than the annual increase recorded in the period from 2010 to 2015. Additionally, the rate of growth of the worldwide Catholic population is slower than that of the world's population as a whole, with the result that the percentage of Catholics in the world population dropped from 17.73 % in 2015 to 17.67 in 2016.

When it comes to priests, the trend of diminishment since 2014 is confirmed: there were 414,969 Catholic priests in the whole world as of the end of 2016, compared to 415,656 priests in 2015 and 415,792 in 2014.

Vatican II, "electric saw"

Over 50 years later we still read about examples such as what happened to even cloistered orders following Vatican II.

The New York Times looks at the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament:

The level of the order’s isolation was relaxed in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, a sweeping set of reforms in the Roman Catholic Church known as Vatican II. Sister Marie Aimée remembered the grille being brought down by a sister wielding an electric saw. “I said, Holy Toledo!” she recalled.

From the same article:

De Mattei: Minimalism: the present-day sickness of Catholicism

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

January 17, 2018

In Italy recently, two videos have been circulating online which give pause for thought. The first replicates the words of Don Fredo Olivero, Rector of the Church of San Rocco in Turin, uttered during Midnight Mass. “Do you know why I’m not going to say the Creed? Because I don’t believe it!” Amidst the laughter of the faithful, the priest continues: “As if anyone understands it – but as for myself after many years I’ve realized that it was something I didn’t understand and couldn’t accept. Let’s sing something else that presents the essential things of the faith.” The priest then substituted the Creed with the song “Dolce Sentire” from the film “Brother Sun, Sister Moon”.

For the record: Fr. Minutella threatened with "double excommunication"

There's no point in even comparing the good Don Minutella with every wretched heretical priest -- even some speaking on behalf of the Vatican -- who bring countless souls to Hell through their preaching and television appearances. Not only do these priests not not face excommunication, but are widely praised, and are empowered by Pope Francis himself. But the names are too endless to even start comparing. So we simply bring you this sad video, dubbed over in English. Welcome to the Church of Francis:

Celebrating 500 years of the Lutheran Heresy, Italian Catholic Churchmen and Lutherans sign agreement towards fake unity

NOTE: Dear Readers, in all my years of translating religious documents for Rorate Caeli, I have never translated one so devoid of any real content, so forgive me if it’s not a “good” read -- superficiality is not easy to translate. F.R.

To be reconciled in order to proclaim the Gospel

Declaration of the Italian Episcopal Conference and the Italian Lutheran Evangelical Church for the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation [sic, Revolt]

“Rather than past conflicts, the divine gift of unity among us will guide collaboration and deepen our solidarity. Closely united in our faith in Christ, praying together, listening to one another, experiencing the love of Christ in our relationships, we, Catholics and Lutherans, are open to the power of the One Triune God. Rooted in Christ and rendering witness to Him, we renew our determination to be faithful heralds of the infinite love of God for all of mankind” (Joint Declaration on occasion of the Catholic-Lutheran Commemoration of the Reformation, Lund, October 31, 2016). These words have guided the path of reconciliation and sharing which has involved Catholics and Lutherans in many places throughout this year, [so as]to experience a mutual commemoration of the 500^th anniversary of the commencement of the Reformation, along the lines indicated in the document: From Conflict to Communion of the Lutheran-Catholic Commission for Unity.

There have been numerous initiatives in Italy, at various levels, in which Christians have taken part in commemorating the Reformation of the XVI century, in a spirit which, even if it cannot be considered a novelty in the light of steps made over the past few decades, it has surely opened up a new season on the path to constructing a visible unity of the Church through which the scandal of divisions can be brought to an end.

Vatican investigator Archbishop Hoser purposely contradicts Francis on Medjugorje hoax

We here at Rorate rarely laud Francis. However, he has been consistent, and we have consistently lauded him, for his numerous dismissals, and outright mochary, of the Medjugorje hoax.

But one man is openly, and purposely, contradicting Pope Bergoglio.

Archbishop Henryk Hoser was appointed to simply investigate whether "pastoral practices" were being properly handled at Medjugorje. However, he has taken the opportunity, according to Poland's Catholic Information Agency, to himself declare the hoax is real and predict that it will be approved, and possibly as early as this year.

This must infuriate Francis. Why? Because it was only back in May that Francis, for all intents and purposes, closed the door on the hoax that fools 2.5 million ignorant Catholics a year. And Archbishop Hoser knows this -- it was said on the Papal Plane and widely reported:

Pope Francis: "... The apparitions, the presumed current apparitions: the report [Ruini] has its doubts. I personally am more nasty, I prefer the Madonna as Mother, our Mother, and not a woman who’s the head of a telegraphic office, who everyday sends a message at such hour. This is not the Mother of Jesus. And these presumed apparitions don’t have a lot of value. This I say as a personal opinion. But, it’s clear. Who thinks that the Madonna says, ‘come tomorrow at this time, and at such time I will say a message to that seer?’ No."

Now, if Francis doesn't shut down the Hoser Hoax, and actually does flip flop and "approve" the evil stemming from Medjugorje, what are serious Catholics to do?

According to Benedict XVI: "It is possible to refuse to accept such revelations and to turn from them, as long as one does so with proper modesty, for good reasons, and without the intention of setting himself up as a superior."

Whether it's consecrated religious disobeying their superiors, fake seers getting rich off the fake apparitions, fake apparitions saying fake religions are equal to Catholicism, and so on and so on, serious Catholics can modestly, and with very good reason, agree with Francis, even if they're approved.

They can rightly and confidently continue to say: "This is not the Mother of Jesus."

You report: Priest in drag on national TV says his 'talent' is God's gift

The following report is from a reader in Ireland who feels compelled to share this story with the rest of the Catholic world. Every time you think it can't get worse in Ireland ...

On Irish National TV (RTE 1) last Sunday night, we saw an Irish parish priest from the Diocese of Waterford & Lismore, perform a drag act as "Shirley Bassey." It was the third show in a series of "Francis Brennan's Tour of Vietnam" with 12 travellers including Fr. Richard Geoghegan, P.P. (Ballyneale, Tipperary).

Father Geoghegan says he is following the parable Jesus preached about not hiding your talents under a bushel but to go out and use them. He is saying that he has a talent for drag and he is using the drag talent that God gave him.

Guest Op-Ed - Bishop Schneider: The interpretation of Vatican II and its connection with the current crisis of the Church

Once again, we are honored to post this guest op-ed, submitted to us by His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider. We not only allow but encourage all media and blogs to reprint this as well.

By Bishop Athanasius Schneider

Special to Rorate Caeli

July 21, 2017

The interpretation of Vatican II and its connection with the current crisis of the Church

The current situation of the unprecedented crisis of the Church is comparable with the general crisis in the 4^th century, when the Arianism had contaminated the overwhelming majority of the episcopacy, taking a dominant position in the life of the Church. We must seek to address this current situation on the one hand with realism and, on the other hand, with a supernatural spirit – with a profound love for the Church, our mother, who is suffering the Passion of Christ because of this tremendous and general doctrinal, liturgical and pastoral confusion.

We must renew our faith in believing that the Church is in the safe hands of Christ, and that He will always intervene to renew the Church in the moments in which the boat of the Church seems to capsize, as is the obvious case in our days.

The myth of the Hermeneutic of Continuity

The following Rorate translation was first published by our Spanish-language partners "Adelante la Fe."

Interview of José María Permuy, conducted by Javier Navascués

Papolatry is a widespread phenomenon in the Catholic Church. Many Catholics take as infallible everything the Pope says, failing to realize that the successor of Peter is only infallible under very specific and limited conditions and when he speaks ex cathedra, which in practice occurs only rarely. Conservative groups, together with many members of the Church, cherish an especial veneration for the Second Vatican Council and its documents. In effect, they elevate what was merely a pastoral council to the level of infallible dogma. In accordance with Benedict XVI’s thesis of the hermeneutic of continuity, they would interpret the Second Vatican Council in the light of Tradition, without rupture or break, without the least error, approving of everything. This cannot be.

José María Permuy, a professional in the field of education, a lecturer and author of many articles on the traditional teachings of the Church, explains on this occasion why it is not possible to speak of “hermeneutic of continuity” in its proper sense.

Why cannot this concept be accepted?

Because it is a half-truth, well-intentioned as it may be. It is certain that there are conciliar texts that are susceptible to two or more interpretations. There, precisely, lies the problem. If these texts were clear, there would be no room for diverse interpretations. The fundamental problem, therefore, is not the subjective interpretations that are made, but the ambiguities and the objective contradictions made in some of the affirmations of the Second Vatican Council in comparison with the Magisterium of all time.

It is true that over the years the Popes have tried to clarify doctrinal issues, such as the primacy of the Pope or the necessity of Christ and His one true Church for salvation.

It is no less certain that on other occasions, the Popes, including Benedict XVI, have promoted, in theory or in practice, conciliar ideas contrary or alien to the Tradition of the Church, such as the separation of Church and State, ecumenical and interreligious prayer meetings, the recognition of the “martyrdom” of heretics and schismatics, the translation of the Mass into the vernacular and the progressive introduction and permission for Communion in the hand, extraordinary Eucharistic ministers, altar girls, etc… Francis is doing nothing but taking these erroneous ideas to their logical conclusions.