"A Cry from the Heart: Things that have never been seen or heard at the Throne of Peter in the history of the Church"

Blog post by Chiesa e Postconcilio

                September 5, 2014

The series “From the Casa Santa Marta” has begun to appear again on the Vatican website. ...[T]hose experts assigned to overseeing this operation have resumed the distribution on the Vatican website of these “Daily Meditations,” offering a sort of running commentary on the Pope’s words, even with the conspicuousness of what he did not say and what was said mistakenly.

The most recent case is attributing to Saint Paul the words, “I boast of my sins,” without making clear that Saint Paul, in the twelfth chapter of the Second Letter to the Corinthians, is not speaking of his sins but rather of his weaknesses.  The Greek word used by Saint Paul is asthéneia [ἀσθένεια], which means “weakness,” and not “sin”.

Formation of the Clergy in Latin and for Latin

The always delightful and insightful Fr. Hunwicke of the blog Mutual Enrichment has frequently written of the binding auctoritas or authoritativeness of Tradition as a measure for subsequent papal and conciliar acts—a sentiment with which Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI would certainly concur, given his pointed remarks on papal absolutism in The Spirit of the Liturgy. 

We Must Be Ready to Defend the Truth of Marriage, Even at the Cost of Martyrdom

Saint John was called to announce the word of God about the sanctity of marriage as God created man and woman from the beginning, in the face of the opposition of the hateful Herodias who was living in an adulterous relationship with King Herod. Saint John the Baptist was indeed “an iron pillar” in announcing the truth, trusting that the Lord would never abandon him but would make the truth prevail, even at the cost of martyrdom.

A Sonnet in Memory of Charles Péguy

IN MEMORIAM: CHARLES PEGUY (JAN. 7, 1873 – SEPT. 5, 1914)

And Have You Heard?

Athena in reverse, the bullet hits
The pate and pierces deep within the folds
Of reason, music, memory. In bits
And pieces, death releases what it holds
And faith is stopped in mid-stride. While the war
Continues counting on, a mournful muse
Has come to mark her dear lieutenant’s hour:
“He came to speak his mind on flesh, accuse
His blood for God, indict the empty thrones
And cast his songs like crowns.” The western world
Now spills more blood across his heap of stones.
Long after Mars had scattered, banners furled,
His tongue, unflagging, speaks this dying word:
O mon Dieu! Mes enfants! And have you heard?


(Our thanks to a reader who submitted this poem to Rorate.)

Pope's on board with communion to "remarried" divorcees?

Zenit, please link and mention us when using our translations (Update: Thanks)

Event: Summorum at 7 - Mass and Conference by Fr. Berg in Hong Kong, Sep. 14

The Tridentine Liturgy Community of the Diocese of Hong Kong sends us the following announcement:

Italian Paper Editorial: "Let's stop beating around the bush: With Islam it is a War of Religion"

With Islam it is a War of Religion

Editorial for Il Foglio

September 5, 2014

Italian Bishop's Startling Words: If Muslims won't denounce Islamic brutality, move back to Islamdom - we don't need enemies here

Islamic Conquests as they stood c. 732 (Eastern Roman Empire in magenta)

It's been all over the Italian media today - the bishop of Imola, Tommaso Ghirelli, writes an editorial for his diocesan paper in which the message is clear: "do-goodism" will bury Italy and Europe. Either Muslims in traditionally Christian countries in Europe behave as "honourable men" and publicly denounce Islamic "persecutions and acts of cruelty," or they should rather be "courageous" enough to own up to their beliefs "and leave our country," because "nobody wants enemies in their own home."

An exclusive Rorate translation:

THE CALIPHATE AND REFUGEES

September 7, 2014

Bernanos, Bresson and McDonagh: Shedding Light on the Catholic Priesthood

 I must confess to being annoyed when people ask me what my favorite anything is:  book, movie, music.  I am annoyed because I am not the type of person that has one favorite of anything.  But if someone asked me which books or films or music have had an important impact on my life, I could definitely answer that question.  There is one book, made into a film, that has impacted my life in a deep way both as a Catholic and as a priest.  That book is George Bernanos’ The Diary of a County Priest and the film based on that book by the French director, Robert Bresson.  When a young man comes to see me to talk about a possible vocation to the priesthood, I always ask him to read The Diary of a Country Priest and then to come back to talk to me about it.  I must say that most of the young men have come back perplexed by the book and by the character of the priest.  That is when I tell them that I will pray for their vocation but that someone else may be more helpful in the process of discernment.

Solemn High Mass for the Feast of St. Stephen of Hungary in Vienna

Una Voce Austria arranged a Solemn High Mass for the Feast of King St. Stephen of Hungary at the Karlskirche in Vienna. The celebrant was the Rev. Fr. Marc Hausmann, a priest of the diocese of St. Pölten and professor of metaphysics at the Pontifical University Urbaniana in Rome.

- Catholic leaves estate to fund Catholic Charity - Charity uses money to fund Homosexual Meeting Spot - Bishop complains, to no avail

Striking gold at the end of the Irish rainbow

Miss Maureen O'Connell, the late owner of "O'Connell's Pub" in Galway, Ireland, died in 1998. That is, she did not die 1000 years ago. No, she died in 1998. That means that if she had wanted to bequeath her estate to a homosexual-activist cause, she could have done so freely.

September 5, 1914: Péguy at 100 - II - Modernity, Eternity, and the Traditional Liturgical Year (a text by Dom Gérard Calvet)

"As the Christian prepares himself for death, the modern man prepares himself for retirement." 

Already in 1902, years still before his own admission that he had returned to the Catholic faith of his roots and childhood, Charles Péguy was already deeply aware of the failures of Modernity, as shown above. It is indeed the ultimate obsession of modernity: a long life, a safe retirement, security above everything else... But ultimately, death will come to us all, should not we rather prepare for Eternity above all?

In his final years, as someone who finally began to understand the Catholic faith abandoned at youth, Péguy could not but be immersed in the beauty of the liturgical year, which is eternity brought to the present life. And the liturgical year in its traditional understanding, adapted to the real, tangible, circumstances of man -- circumstances which, as seasons and birthdays, are naturally annual, not biennial or triennial.

In 2010, our contributor Fr. Demets posted the translation of a deep text by the founder of the Abbey of Saint Madeleine of Le Barroux, Dom Gérard Calvet (a great expert on the writings of the poet), on Péguy and his discovery of the Liturgical Year.

[cf. also Péguy at 100 - Part I, War and Death]

___________________________

The Prayer of the Day

by Dom Gérard Calvet, O.S.B.

September 5, 1914: Péguy at 100 - I - The Mystery of Charity in War and Death

The Saint Patrick's Day Massacre

[Companion-post: Text censored by the Archdiocese of Washington.]

John Cardinal O'Connor, the former archbishop of New York, must be rolling over in the crypt of Saint Patrick's Cathedral.  Having successfully kept Catholic values in the annual Saint Patrick's Day parade, at least on social issues, his sermon on 17 March 1993 contained the unforgettable response to his many, many critics:

  

"Neither respectability nor political correctness is worth one comma in the Apostles' Creed."

The current archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, has taken a very different approach to traditional family issues.

Uh-oh! Time for another edition of the Catholic Samizdat - Courtesy of the Archdiocese of Washington

[For context: "The Saint Patrick Day's Massacre".]

First, criticizing Rahner and Von Balthasar made a text disappear, forcing us to provide the first installment of the Catholic Samizdat. 

Now, a mere commonsensical post apparently (apparently) brought down the entire website of the Archdiocese of Washington. [Update: removal confirmed.] So, here is the text, dated September 3, 2014, once available here:

Time to End the St. Patrick's Day Parade and the Al Smith Dinner?

By: Msgr. Charles Pope 

UPDATE on the Visitation on the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate - Apostolic Signatura acted to reduce illegal powers - Visitators suggest Vatican II Re-education Program

Félix Auvray
The Sword of Damocles
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Regarding the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate's visitation (see our previous post here) by an external agent (Sister Fernanda Barbiero of the Institute of the Teaching Sisters of St. Dorothy, named as Visitator by the Congregation for Religious), Rorate has received the following information from our trustworthy sources:

Cardinal Müller's meeting with the SSPX: confirmed

Rorate is able to confirm that Cardinal Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, will receive in the offices of his Congregation in Rome the superior-general of the Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX / SSPX), Bp. Bernard Fellay, later this month (or on another day in early fall, the date is uncertain).

Without Tradition, We Are Cattle

Spanish writer Juan Manuel de Prada has already been quoted here - for instance, on aspects of the current pontificate (cf. "The Nests of Yesteryear").

In the following article, published days ago, he uses very Spanish examples to make a very profound universal point for all former Christendom. The Catholic Church always used to be the top defender of local traditions, local languages, and local cultures because she was the confident bearer of a Tradition that does not die. Now, with her self-confidence eliminated, her Tradition wounded and humiliated, her liturgy destroyed in vast regions, local traditions also disappear and are replaced with a global pseudo-cultural blob. The strength of Tradition and traditions allowed the Christians of the Iberian peninsula to reconquer their land, and then conquer much of the world for the Church. What will they do now?

_______________________________

Betrayed Traditions

Juan Manuel de Prada

August 31, 2014

Coexist Culture in Vatican Radio

Radio Vaticana - Aug 27, 2014

Roman Forum lectures in New York

I've been asked to advertise these lectures, which have been organised by the Roman Forum (founded by Dietrich von Hildebrand) for many years. This season look interesting as ever. Even in the age of blogs, there's nothing like hearing ideas set out directly by a human being and being able to ask questions and meet other audience members. The lectures are organised by Dr John Rao.

They take place in the Church Hall of University Church of St. Joseph, 371 Sixth Avenue
New York, N.Y.

The entrance to the Church Hall is on Washington Place, south of Waverly Place.

Subway: A, B, C, D, E, F, V to West 4th Street. Wheelchair accessible.

Click on the link for more details.

War in Heaven and the City of Man
Laying the Groundwork for a Garden of Earthly Delights, 1629-1689

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Sanctifying, Expanding & Defending the Meaning of Catholic Christendom

The Tyranny of Words — Or the Triumph of the Word?: Two Conflicting Visions of the Meaning of the Incarnation
(1517–1563)
Fervent Catholics on a Ship of Fools: From the Fall of Constantinople to the Reuchlinstreit
(1453–1517)

Division, Despair & the Torturous Road to Recovery: From the Western Schism to the Fall of Constantinople
(1378–1453)

Counterattack! Primal Assaults on the Medieval Catholic Synthesis
(1270–1378)

“When Values Descended Upon the Earth”: Transformation in Christ and the Birth of the Lay Spirit
(1153–1268)

“Binding the Rhinoceros”: Medieval Catholic Reform and the Taming of Nature
(1025–1153)

Results of Versus Populum—and Remedies

In the past, Rorate has had occasion to quote a true and faithful son of St. Benedict, Dom Mark Kirby, O.S.B., Prior of Our Lady of the Cenacle Monastery (a.k.a. Silverstream Priory) and author of the admirable Vultus Christi blog. We all know about the sufferings that versus populum worship have inflicted on the faithful who are simply hungry for worship in spirit and in truth and who long for a manner of celebrating the Mass that is focused absolutely on Christ our God (as the 2,000-year tradition of ad orientem worship palpably demonstrates), but we do not perhaps reflect as much on the ravages that the versus populum stance have visited upon the clergy.

Here are some excerpts from a recent post of Dom Mark's, "Lex orandi, lex credendi: the ground of priestly piety". (In the article you will also find highly pertinent texts from Pope Pius XII's Mediator Dei that back up these points.)

Persecuted Christians: from Pakistan to Iraq, the same Ideology that is hostile to the Faith

Source:  Il Sussidiario

August 31, 2014

Pietro Vernizzi   

“The root of the attacks against Christians in Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Nigeria is the same, and what they have in common is the ideological matrix that is using religion to impose its own view on everyone.  These persecutions are stronger where there is political instability.”  Paul Jacob Bhatti, president of the Shahbaz Memorial trust, a foundation in honor of his brother killed in Pakistan by Islamic fundamentalists on March 2, 2011, highlighted this in a talk he gave at the Meeting di Rimini called “Witness to Freedom”. The following is from questions that followed the talk.

Editorial: The Synod of Bishops and Divine Law by Roberto de Mattei

Radici Cristiane

Editorial, September 2014

by Roberto de Mattei

Rosso Fiorentino
The Marriage of the Virgin
Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence

The Synod of Bishops in October will discuss on the basis of Instrumentum laboris – “the worksheet” which summarizes the responses to the “preliminary questionnaire” received from the Bishop Conferences, ministries, and more in general - dioceses, parishes, movements, ecclesial associations,[all] consulted on the topic of marriage and the family. Besides the sociological slant which characterizes it, the document contains some disturbing passages. One of these is the implicit and often explicit devaluation of the idea of the natural law. In the Instrumentum laboris, in fact, we find this: “In a vast majority of responses and observations, the concept of natural law today turns out to be, in different cultural contexts, highly problematic, if not completely incomprehensible.” (n.21) The solution suggested would be to abandon the concept and term of the natural law, or “to re-read” it in accessible language, with particular attention to the young being part as a direct interlocutor on these themes.

We seem to understand then, that since the Catholic world no longer comprehends the idea of the natural law, it might as well be shelved and substituted by something more suited to the current mentality.

Two Days of Aberrations - Dispatches from the Catholic World: Colombia, Italy

Thomas Couture
Romans of the Decadence (1847)
Musée d'Orsay

[W]e can also see how incongruous is the demand to accord “marital” status to unions between persons of the same sex. It is opposed, first of all, by the objective impossibility of making the partnership fruitful through the transmission of life according to the plan inscribed by God in the very structure of the human being. Another obstacle is the absence of the conditions for that interpersonal complementarity between male and female willed by the Creator at both the physical-biological and the eminently psychological levels. It is only in the union of two sexually different persons that the individual can achieve perfection in a synthesis of unity and mutual psychophysical completion. From this perspective, love is not an end in itself and cannot be reduced to the corporal joining of two beings, but is a deep interpersonal relationship which reaches its culmination in total mutual self-giving and in cooperation with God the Creator, the ultimate source of every new human life.

Exactly 100 Years Ago: A Beautiful War Story Rabbi Dies Holding a Crucifix for Dying Soldier

At the end of the first month of the Great War:

Events: TLM in Indiana in honor of the Centennial of St. Pius X

Notes of One Week in the Islamist Global War Against Everyone Else: - Christians Beheaded in Nigeria; Massive executions in Syria and Iraq; in England, Massive Abuse and a Startling Publication

1. Nigeria: Our Parish Rectory, Overrun By Boko Haram - Christians beheaded, Christian homes marked

SSPX Priest Celebrates Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica

By the gracious permission of the higher direction of the Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican, the faithful of the church of Saint-Martin-des-Gaules, Noisy-le-Grand (near Paris) -- who were in Rome for a summer vacation pilgrimage led by Father Michel de Sivry, of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) -- were able to attend a Mass at the Altar of Saint Pius X, where the saintly Pope's body reposes.

The Mass in the Vatican Basilica was celebrated by Fr. de Sivry on August 9, 2014, during this special centennial year of the dies natalis of Saint Pius X.

Video below (click on play):

Cañizares goes to Valencia, and his replacement at Divine Worship is...

As mentioned by us days ago, it's been confirmed today: Cardinal Cañizares Llovera, up to today Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, was named by Pope Francis new Archbishop of Valencia (in the place of Carlos Osoro Sierra, named also today Archbishop of Madrid).

Who will now occupy the currently vacant central liturgical position in the most widespread rite in the Church, the Modern Roman Rite ("Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite")? A Ratzingerian? A Bugninian? Someone (or something?...) altogether different? Somewhere in Casa Santa Marta, this has already been decided...

A New Fatima Secret?...

Italian religious commentator Antonio Socci, whom we admire, has a very interesting, almost entertaining, book on what he calls, "the fourth Secret of Fatima," a supposed missing passage of the private revelations originally made in Fatima, Portugal, and put into writing many years later. In the past few days, he has insisted on it (excerpts in English), based on some passages of a newly published biography of Sister Lucia. It must be said that a not so interesting part of Socci's original book were his frequent mentions of... Medjugorje.

Anyway, missing or not, what really matters is that the message of Fatima is the message of Lourdes, which is the message of Our Lord:

POPE SAINT PIUS X A Reflection on The Centenary of His Death,by Roberto de Mattei

Pope St. Pius X celebrates Mass in St. Peter's on 50th Anniversary of Proclamation of the Immaculate Conception
(Dec. 8, 1904)

One hundred years after his death the figure of Saint Pius X stands erect, majestic and heavy-laden in the firmament of the Church. The sadness which clouds Pope Sarto’s expression in his last photographs, not only reveals a sense of the catastrophic consequences of the First World War, which had started three weeks before his death, but seems to foresee an even greater tragedy than the wars and revolutions of the 20th Century: the apostasy of nations and of churchmen themselves in the century which would follow.

The main enemy which St. Pius X had to face, had a name, which the Pontiff himself gave: Modernism. His relentless fight against Modernism characterized his Pontificate indelibly and was a fundamental element in his sanctity. “The lucidity and firmness with which Pius X conducted his victorious fight against the errors of modernism - affirmed Pius XII in his speech at the Canonization of Pope Sarto – testifies to what heroic degree the virtue of the faith burned in his saintly heart (…)”.

To the Modernism that was proposed, “a universal apostasy of the Faith and Church discipline”, St. Pius X opposed it with an authentic reform which had its major point in the custody and transmission of the Catholic truth. The encyclical Pascendi (1907), where he struck down the errors of Modernism, is the most important theological and philosophical document produced by the Catholic Church in the 20th century. Yet, St. Pius X did not limit himself to fighting the evil of the ideas, as if they were disincarnated from history. He wanted to strike at the historical bringers of these errors by imposing ecclesiastical censures, by watching over seminaries and Pontifical universities and imposing the anti-modernist oath on all priests.

This coherence between doctrine and pontifical praxis gave rise to violent attacks from “crypto-modernist” environments.

When Pius XII promoted his beatification (1951) and his canonization (1954), Pope Sarto was defined by opponents extraneous to the renewing ferments of his time, guilty of having repressed modernism with brutal and police-like methods. Pius XII entrusted Monsignor Ferdinando Antonelli, a future cardinal, with the compilation of a historical Disquisitio dedicated to dismantling the accusations against his predecessor, based on witnesses and documents. Today, however, these accusations appear once again even in the “celebration” that the “Osservatore Romano” dedicated to St. Pius X, by the writer Carlo Fantappiè, exactly on the anniversary of his death on August 20.*

Zurbarán at 350: 2 video suggestions - The Agnus Dei; and the half-hour special "Incarnate Images"

Some call him the ultimate "Counter-Reformation" painter, and what could be a greater compliment to a post-16th-century Catholic artist than this? There is certainly no doubt about his sincere Catholic faith and his serious family life - Francisco de Zurbarán, who died in Madrid on August 27, 1664, exactly 350 years ago, dedicated most of his astonishing talents to the depiction of sacred things and of the Holy One.

This could hardly be any clearer than in his Agnus Dei (c. 1635), shown in detail in this video of the Museo del Prado (it has English subtitles - play, then turn on subtitles/CC):

Post-Christian and Secular: The Loss of Pudor

“Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?  No, they were not ashamed; they did not now how to blush.”  Jeremiah 8:12

One of the most glorious parts of Vergil’s Aeneid really has nothing to do with Aeneas’ founding of Rome.  Book IV of the Aeneid deals with the passion of Queen Dido of Carthage for the man-hero Aeneas and its tragic consequences.  Dido has sworn a oath to her dead husband that she will never remarry, that she will always be true to the oath she made to her husband to be faithful and true to him even after his death.  When she meets Aeneas, she is stirred with passion, and in a famous scene she swears to her sister Anna, she swears by the gods, that she will never set aside her pudor and embark on an affair with this man-god Aeneas.  That word pudor:  a Classical word that has come into the vocabulary of all the Romance languages. Those who know Spanish or Portuguese or Italian will recognize this word immediately.  Its meaning lies deep in the understanding of the human psyche, and its English translation, which is inadequate, is a “sense of shame”.  For the Classical author, to lose one’s pudor makes one less than human, more of an animal than a man or woman.  This very word, “shame”, is something that is disappearing from our culture, our society.  The post-modern man, who is a man who has shed or who is ignorant of Western history and culture, that of the Classical Greek and Roman and of its flowering and sacralization in Christianity, has lost his sense of shame.

 This pudor, this sense of shame, is deeply biblical.  

Event: FSSP Low Mass Workshops for priests in December

The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP) will host once again a five-day training workshop on the Traditional Latin Mass (Low Mass) for priests in their Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska, from December 15-19, 2014.

Please make this known to your pastor or other priests who might be interested in learning it.

Click here for further information.

A new traditional Catholic parish is created

Priest: "thus they do not attend the Traditional Latin Mass for nostalgic reasons ... This has been a canard frequently aimed at those who attend the Traditional Latin Mass"

The following post was written and submitted to Rorate by parishioner Jen Mackintosh of Wildflowers and Marbles:
 

After Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI issued his Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, on July 7, 2007, establishing that every priest could offer the Traditional Latin Mass, a group of faithful from Huntsville, Alabama and surrounding areas expressed a great desire for the Traditional Latin Mass.  In 2008, in response to the faithful desiring the Traditional Latin Mass, Bishop Robert Baker (Birmingham, Alabama) established an apostolate in Huntsville, Alabama in order to make this Mass available.  Father Alan C. Mackey was appointed chaplain of the newly formed Latin Mass community in Huntsville with the assignment of offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and making the Sacraments available according to the 1962 liturgical books.  The newly formed Latin Mass Community was granted permission to use the facilities of an existing parish, St. Mary of the Visitation in Huntsville, for Sunday Mass.

The community steadily increased in support and number, and a building fund was established and maintained with the goal of purchasing property for the establishment of a personal parish.  Five years after first expressing a desire for the Traditional Latin Mass, the vision of Father Mackey and the community of faithful came to fruition with the purchase of an Anglican Church in the Five Points district of Huntsville.  Providentially, the first Mass in the new building was offered on January 31, 2013, the Feast of St. John Bosco, who had a special devotion to Our Lady under the title, Help of Christians.

Catholic Identity Conference 2014

Next month the Catholic Identity Conference 2014 will be held, from the evening of Friday, 12 September through noon on Sunday, 14 September, in Weirton, West Virginia, and Steubenville, Ohio, in the U.S., near the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

The theme will be "The Old Evangelization: Restoring Liturgy, Mission and Catholic Tradition."

This will be the third annual Catholic Identity Conference.  New this year are more priests involved with the daily traditional Latin Mass and talks, including from the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, Institute of Christ the King and Diocese of Pittsburgh.  One new speaker on Saturday and two new speakers on Sunday have been confirmed, including this writer.

Guest post: Former student laments liturgical abuse at former Catholic high school

This year’s observance of the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary provides the opportunity to reflect on the two rites of the Roman Missal. On invitation from the Chancery in Philadelphia, the Tridentine Mass was offered in the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, as part of the annual Mass of Thanksgiving by Mater Ecclesiae Parish based in Berlin, New Jersey, contrasted to the “ordinary form” of the Roman Rite, as offered to a group of high school boys at LaSalle College High School in suburban Philadelphia – poolside, in swimsuits. It is important to reflect on the differences in the two Rites of Holy Mass in these times as it demonstrates the increasing divide between those who would call themselves “mainstream Catholics” and “Traditional Catholics”.

Islam: Territorial Advances on the Western African FrontNigerian Cardinal: Young Muslims are Joining Boko Haram

3,000 miles from Mosul (Iraq), and Raqqa (Syria) in the "Islamic State", and 1,800  miles from the new "Islamic Emirate of Benghazi" (itself just 400 miles from Athens or Sicily), Islamist armies are now conquering Nigerian cities in which Christians have lived together with Muslims since the time of the first missionaries.

See below several of their conquering moves in at least three different Nigerian states in the past few weeks, up to this Saturday:

Aug. 12:

The New World Steps Forth to the Rescue and Liberation of the Old: A Seminary in Europe and for Europe with Vocations from the Americas

We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

These, of course, were Churchill's famous words in his speech to Parliament of June 4, 1940, during the most dramatic month of the Second World War. We read it today, and we are stunned by what was apparently an insane level of uncalled-for hope in a desperate situation.

Two numbers released in the past couple of days exemplify the desperate vocational situation of the Church in most of Europe today: in the whole of Belgium, with a population of over 10 million people and a glorious Catholic past just until the 1960s, only 14 priests will be ordained in 2014, half of them foreign nationals (source); in the island of Corsica, France, there is at this moment just one young man, a Lebanese citizen, preparing for ordination (source).

In fact, one of the most surprising elements of the current Islamization of a vast proportion of the European population is precisely that it is a phenomenon of the past few decades -- that is, the religious decline in Europe is not a given for its environment. This is important as a sign (worrisome and at times terrifying as it may be). Many European-born descendants of immigrants from Muslim nations are more religious than their parents, and mosques and minarets spring up everywhere. Why has the movement among the native population, in particular Catholic families, been the opposite after the events of the 1960s, including the Catholic events of that decade?

___________________________________

While Church committees discuss without end without acknowledging the source of the problem, some are doing much more than this. This great new seminary, a specific initiative of the New World coming in rescue of the Old World that gave it so much, was announced elsewhere, but they were kind enough to send us more details: