The Murder of Charlie Kirk: The End of an Illusion

 

Charlie Kirk's widow, Erika, raises a rosary to wellwishers

Main excerpts from the latest piece from the Harvard Salient:

[Kirk] could also be unexpectedly, almost annoyingly, moderate: a man who prized argument over obliteration, outreach over insularity, whose modus operandi was to cross campus thresholds and address anyone curious enough to ask a question. He exhorted a generation, plainly and insistently, to love God, love their family, and love their country. That was enough to get him killed.

The U.S. churches Francis will visit

Pope Francis is currently in the United States, for the first time in his life.

During his visit in America, he will step inside five churches (not including chapels): the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and Saint Patrick's church, all in Washington, D.C.; the Cathedral of Saint Patrick in New York City; and the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.

Remarkably, four of the five churches still have altar rails, which of course will not be used during any of the liturgies with this pope.  All of the churches were built before the Second Vatican Council, and three of them have seen traditional Latin Masses offered at their main altars since the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei in 1988.

Having visited each of these churches, we thought it may be of interest to present a brief summary, from a traditional viewpoint, of the sacred spaces the Holy Father will encounter.

1) The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle started out as a parish church when Washington, D.C. was part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It is most known for the Requiem Low Mass offered by Richard Cardinal Cushing, archbishop of Boston, for President John F. Kennedy's funeral in 1963.

Today, in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, it is considered one of the most liberal parishes in the region, with a notable portion of its congregation opposed to Church teachings and natural law (to put it kindly). Although the cathedral offers a Sunday morning novus ordo partially in Latin (except when something more important bumps it) attempts to offer traditional Latin Masses have been denied.  The cardinal-archbishop lives at another parish, not at the cathedral.

The American Kulturkampf For the record: USCCB statement and full list of plaintiffs

For the record, a summary of current events. From the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:

WASHINGTON—Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), in a May 21 statement applauded 43 dioceses, hospitals, schools and church agencies for filing 12 lawsuits around the nation saying the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services mandate violates religious freedom.

His statement follows.

“We have tried negotiation with the Administration and legislation with the Congress – and we’ll keep at it – but there's still no fix. Time is running out, and our valuable ministries and fundamental rights hang in the balance, so we have to resort to the courts now. Though the Conference is not a party to the lawsuits, we applaud this courageous action by so many individual dioceses, charities, hospitals and schools across the nation, in coordination with the law firm of Jones Day. It is also a compelling display of the unity of the Church in defense of religious liberty. It's also a great show of the diversity of the Church's ministries that serve the common good and that are jeopardized by the mandate – ministries to the poor, the sick, and the uneducated, to people of any faith or no faith at all.”

The complete list of plaintiffs in Monday's lawsuits is the following: