Rorate Cæli 10-year anniversary: your thoughts

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of Rorate Cæli, founded on Rorate Sunday, 2005. 

Thank you to all our readers for your loyalty and support. As mostly anonymous bloggers, we do this out of love of our Lord, His Church, and you -- not for fame, and certainly not for money, as we have never accepted a dime.

We promised no hoopla and no big splash today. When you think about the almost unfathomable notion that the Church is in worse shape today than it was 10 years ago when we started there's no real reason for us to celebrate. We have failed Christ and His Bride and have much work to do before we break out the champagne. God willing, we'll be alive to pop those corks.

What we did do in preparation for today was to ask you, our dear readers, to share your thoughts on what this blog means to you. We were overwhelmed with the response, both in volume, and in content. Lives changed, families saved and vocations berthed. 

We cannot post all the emails we received, but here is a sampling. Thanks to all of you who wrote in. Even if you don't see yours here, it warmed our hearts, and we appreciate it.

Rorate reader responses:

I would  like you to know that it was on your website back in 2012 that we discovered the FSSP Mission trips. Our daughter X went with the good FSSP priests in 2012 (Dominican Republic) and 2013 (Peru). 

The following year, she announced her desire to become a nun. After a spiritual retreat to aid discernment, she discovered the Dominican Sisters of Wanganui: http://www.dominicansisterswanganui.blogspot.com 

X is currently a postulant with the Dominicans at Rosary Convent in Australia and finishing up her teaching certificate. She will be entering as a novice this January.

Thank you for posting the FSSP mission trips on your site! As her mother, I can clearly see that Rorate was an instrument for God's calling. 

Please keep X in your prayers.

In Christ and His Blessed Mother

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Rorate's Caeli's 10-year anniversary: Tell us your story

Reposting once more, with some of your responses being posted this upcoming Rorate Sunday:

On the fourth Sunday of Advent, this blog will celebrate its 10th anniversary since its beginning, by our prolific, gifted and pious founder, New Catholic. It has been an amazing 10 years with Rorate Caeli now the most-read international traditional Catholic blog in the world.

Before becoming a contributor -- one of the greatest blessings, and spiritual burdens, of my life -- I was once a reader and admirer. I would email, along with news tips, my appreciation to NC. 

Rorate spiritually woke me up, in a good way. It was slavishly traditional, yet never knee-jerk. It was well researched and thought through: the kind of blog that lifted the veil from your eyes but didn't cause you to go to an untenable extreme. 

It was, without any exaggeration, a great spiritual gift to me, dropped down from Heaven. 

Over the years many of you, whether laymen, priests, religious, bishops or even princes of the Church, have conveyed your appreciation to us. And we can say doubly back to you how much we not only appreciate, but need, your words of encouragement. 

We make no money for running this blog yet, at times, it's almost like having a second full-time job. And even though we try our best, the criticisms come from all angles, from all levels, like a constant barrage. At times, when we've been at our lowest, that one email coming in telling us how much we've meant to a reader is enough to pick us back up, dust us off and get us back to work doing our small part to bring about the restoration of the traditional Latin Mass and Faith. 

Your words of encouragement -- and the graces of God bestowed on us by Our Lady -- sustain us. 

This Rorate Sunday, we will not have any hoopla, no big splash. But we will commemorate the day. 

Please send us your brief thoughts on what Rorate Caeli has meant to you. This shouldn't be long and don't worry about getting it perfect. Just send us your thoughts and we will do our best to compile them all and publish them without names attached (unless you specifically ask us to). 

You may send your thoughts to athanasiuscatholic AT yahoo . com 

A very heartfelt thank you to all of our dear readers for 10 years of loyalty and encouragement. May God grant us all another 10 years to fight for tradition and work out our salvation.

Book Review (and exclusive interview with Father Joseph Fessio): The Rigging of a Synod, by Edward Pentin

The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? by Edward Pentin

a guest book-review for Rorate Caeli,

 by Maike Hickson

In addition to the recent publication of the two pre-Synod books written by prelates of the Catholic Church, namely the Eleven Cardinals Book and the African Prelates Book, a book written by a reliably faithful layman is also of great importance in the wider preparation for the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family. Edward Pentin, the well-respected Vatican Correspondent, has published with Ignatius Press a new book, interrogatively entitled The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? And the author's question mark in the main title was intentional and emphatic so that the reader may more freely draw his own cumulative conclusions. The subtitle of the book is An Investigation into Alleged Manipulation at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family. In the book, he presents the results of his research in Rome and elsewhere concerning the many weighty proofs that the last Synod on the Family was intentionally manipulated in order to promote a more liberalizing message concerning marriage and the family.

In preparation for this book review, I thought to ask Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., the founder and editor of Ignatius Press, a few questions about the book to which Father Fessio has kindly responded. I will present that brief interview here first, before discussing the book itself.

Q: What was the reason why you accepted to publish Pentin's book on the manipulations at the last Synod?

"Christ's New Homeland - Africa" - Book review - Cardinal Sarah and other African Prelates demolish Pre-Synod Documents

Cardinal Sarah and Bishop Adoukonou

Strongly Criticize the Preparatory Synod Documents

a guest book review by 

Dr Maike Hickson

In addition to the earlier “Eleven Cardinals Book” (Eleven Cardinals Speak On Marriage and the Family), Ignatius Press published this month a book written by eleven African Prelates – Cardinals and Bishops – dealing also with the topics Marriage and the Family, in preparation for the upcoming October Synod of Bishops on the Family in Rome: Christ's New Homeland – Africa (Ignatius, 2015, transl, by Michael J. Miller)

This review deals specifially with the first part of the book, which include two specific essays in which two prestigious African prelates, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and Bishop Barthélemy Adoukonou, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture, have analyzed and sharply criticized the essential preparatory Vatican documents for the upcoming Synod – both the Lineamenta (questionnaire which contains the Final Report – Relatio synodi – of last year's Synod) and the Instrumentum laboris (working document). Even though I recommend reading and savoring the entire book, I shall here in the following exposition only concentrate on these important, first two contributions in the book.

First of all, Cardinal Sarah discusses the problems contained in the 2014 Synod's own Final Report (Relatio synodi) as it was sent out in December 2014 to the whole Catholic Church in the form of the Lineamenta, together with an additional set of questions inviting further world-wide commentaries. Sarah says that, in this Final Report, there is “some confusion and even some serious errors that need to be pointed out, because, coming from an official Roman body, they could very well be troubling and confusing for those whose consciences are weak.” I propose now to present a few specific points from Cardinal Sarah's fuller critique.

Guest Book Review: Magisterial Authority, by Fr. Chad Ripperger

Magisterial Authority 
Fr. Chad Ripperger
$ 9.95 on Amazon

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Guest Book Review, by Ryan Grant

For many years, the faithful have been confused, bewildered, scandalized and have even lost their faith on account of the verbal bombs and trendy verbiage emanating from various members of the magisterium, even and including the Pope himself irrespective of whether they identify as Traditional Catholics or Conservative Catholics. This has been even more so under the current Pontificate, where absurd statements are made almost for their shock value. The difficulty is, that many people attempting to come to grips with the implications of odd statements of members of the magisterium, often lack the theological training and seriousness to do so. Everyone thinks they are a theologian, and begin misapplying theological arguments, or even argue themselves headlong over the edge, into sedevacantism. The solution to this state of affairs, however, is not to lob the equivalent of bombs with respect to theological arguments, but rather to do theology properly. In his many years of writing, the greatest assistance to the Traditionalist argument along solid theological—rather than polemical—grounds has been given by Fr. Chad Ripperger, Ph. D.

Fr. Ripperger offers well grounded arguments based on principles, and arms the laymen with the well grounded principles necessary to discern what is and is not authentic teaching to which a Catholic is bound. We noted this in our review of the work The Binding Force of Tradition, and it is again the case with his latest work, Magisterial Authority.

Fr. Chad Ripperger's "The Binding Force of Tradition" Book review

Ryan Grant

Didn't you know, Vatican II got rid of that! Or so you thought. How many countless times, more than what space in this journal could recount, have traditional Catholics along with conservative minded faithful been told such and such by priests and even bishops, by "habitless" nuns running a parish office, and self-annointed apologists even. How many times have we sent our children to a "catholic" school and they came back saying that the we just need to follow the Bible and not what the Church says, or that everything can change? And on the other side when we look squarely at the real source of the problem, namely the Council and its ambiguities, we are told no, the council is great and beautiful, it is just the implementation that caused all these problems. Yet the above mentioned, even members of the magisterium¹ have not gotten the memo. 

The average faithful of a conservative or traditional mind, who has the goal of recouping and restoring the tradition of the Church not only in liturgy or in devotion but also in theology, often feels assaulted on all fronts by theologians and clergy who have forgotten that Jesus Christ is pre-Vatican II. Yet most books written by and for traditionalists on current miscellanea address effects of the problems in the Church today, or various facets of the problems around liturgy, doctrine, ecumenism and the like. None of the works out there go back to the very core of the problem, they do state the effects, namely the prior magisterium universally taught "x", but today clergy, prelates and even members of the magisterium at least appear to be saying the opposite. The real question is what is the "Tradition", and what principles have been deviated from that we should see the crisis in the Church not only unfold but continue?

Reader opinion: Breviarium Romanum Angelus Press and Nova et Vetera editions

We are re-posting this for two reasons.

-(First), a reader asks us the following: "Was any edition of the Breviarium published in the early 1960s according to the 1960 rubrics but with the traditional, not the Pius XII, Psalter?" We know that both the Les Amis de Saint François de Sales edition, sold by Angelus Press, and the Nova et Vetera edition fall into this category - but they are both current publications. The reader's question is related to Breviaries published anywhere in the world at the time.

-(Second), if you did not add your voice to the comments below, please do: we would like to know your opinion regarding any version of the Breviaries of the Latin Church (including partial editions, such as the several available Diurnales).

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