Chick-fil-A has emboldened the LGBT mob.

Patrick B. Craine, "Chick-fil-A has emboldened the LGBT mob" LifeSiteNews (November 29, 2019):

We have sadly decided to boycott Chic-fil-A. Sadly, because we LOVE Chic-fil-A chicken. No one makes better chicken. Much better than KFC or any other vendor. And normally I wouldn't care much where I'm getting my fast food on the road, as long as it's good. I wouldn't care if those making my food are religious, agnostic, or gay. But when an institution stands for traditional Christian family values, is closed on Sundays out of respect for Judeo-Christian sabbath observance, and has "Christian" in its mission statement, but then caves in to anti-Christian lobbies where it’s hard – where the Gospel butts up against our culture of death and sexual licentiousness – they have betrayed their Christian identity. Chic-fil-A is the warning canary in the coal mine, and it just died. Sad. Caveat emptor!

If you’re still defending them, watch this:



[If you would prefer to read a transcript of the video, click here.]

What French priests neglected to preach as the church in France collapsed

"A Crisis of the Four Last Things" (New Oxford Notes, July-August 2018)

NOR readers will be familiar with the stark reality that much of Europe is no longer Christian. That goes, too, for the eldest daughter of the Church, France, which boasts hundreds of renowned Gothic churches visited by the thousands each week, most not for purposes of religion. Think Notre Dame in Paris, or the cathedrals in Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, Strasbourg, and Beauvais. The list goes on and on. If only these churches were still honest representatives of a Catholic culture in France. If only that culture were as strong as the flying buttresses of its sacred houses. Alas, each of these cathedrals at this point in its history is little more than a monument to times past, a sepulcher for a once-flourishing religion and way of life. It is instructive to note that only 1.7 percent of Catholics regularly attend Mass in France — and according to Guillaume Cuchet, a professor at the University of Paris-Est Créteil who specializes in contemporary Church history, “regularly” isn’t even defined as meeting the Sunday obligation; it merely means “at least once a month.” Thousands of old French churches are no longer active places of worship; priests often have the care of 20 to 30 parishes and only celebrate regional Masses each week — and even those are attended by few. When Catholics die in France, chances are slim that a priest will be around to bury them.

There is certainly no shortage of hypotheses for the causes of the demise of the Church — the disappearance of Christians and the decline of the traditional Catholic way of life — in France. Popular fingers point to the old French Revolution, the newer sexual revolution, and the increasing influence of scientism, moral relativism, and other personal philosophies of life that have eclipsed the idea that piety, tradition, and doctrine provide a natural compass for faith and morals.

Recently, French Orthodox writer Jean-Claude Larchet reviewed Cuchet’s new book, How Our World Stopped Being Christian: Anatomy of a Collapse (OrthoChristian.com, May 29), a penetrating look at the spectacular decline of Catholicism in France. Some — though likely not most NOR readers — might be surprised at what Cuchet identifies as the root cause of this decline. Catholicism itself, says he, bears the heaviest responsibility in the de-Christianization of France. And yep, he specifically identifies the Second Vatican Council as the primary catalyst of it all. The Council, writes Larchet in his review, “proposed to face the challenges of the modern world,” and yet it “did nothing but adapt itself to the latter; thinking to bring the world to its side, it ended up giving in to the world, and despite wanting to be heard in the secular sphere, Catholicism has instead become secularized.” In other words, the Church in France (and elsewhere, of course) became impotent by its own hand.

Though this assertion is hardly groundbreaking, Cuchet gets into specifics that are worthy of serious consideration. This rupture in the Church, which he traces back to 1965, the year the Council closed, can be identified with the liturgical reforms, yes, but more precisely with the changing attitudes toward sin occasioned by both the Council and its liturgical reforms. In the area of piety, the abandonment of Latin and the change toward the reception of Communion in the hand played an important role, but Cuchet focuses more on the promulgation of a religious relativism that, if not written straight up in the documents of Vatican II, was the result of willful misinterpretation or misapplication of these summary documents. The Council’s documents seem to have been designed to allow for liberal interpretations, the kind that led to the secularization of Catholicism throughout France — a secularization that happened almost overnight. “A whole series of ‘truths’ suddenly fell into oblivion,” writes Larchet, “as if the clergy themselves had ceased to believe in them or did not know what to say about them after having spoken of them for so long as something essential.” More importantly, writes Cuchet in his book, “the Council paved the way for what might be called ‘a collective exit from the obligatory practice on pain of mortal sin.’”

Cuchet traces almost all the official and unofficial conciliar reforms to two fundamental crises: the crisis of the Sacrament of Penance and the crisis of not preaching on the Last Things. According to Cuchet, the massive abandonment in just a few years of the practice of confession had a profound impact on Catholic attitudes toward sin, and toward life in general. In 1952 51 percent of French Catholics went to confession at least the obligatory once per year. By 1983 that was down to just 14 percent. The concept of a personal conscience, misunderstood as it universally was, led to most Catholics rationalizing away the sins they had committed. Not only that, says Cuchet, the French clergy allowed them to do so. They abandoned the practice of confession (that is, hearing confessions frequently) just as had the so-called faithful.

Cuchet, in fact, lays most of the blame at the feet of the French clergy. They failed, he says, in their duty to preach about sin, to preach properly on the work of a well-formed conscience, and to preach about the importance of confession and penance. Thus, the usefulness of confession became less obvious, as did the connection between confession and Holy Communion. In a word, Communion was trivialized and confession nearly non-existent.

Cuchet also claims that the French clergy stopped preaching about the Four Last Things — death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell — “as if they had stopped believing in it themselves.” French priests, he says, in effect “paved the way to Heaven.” They gave the distinct impression that the path was no longer narrow and steep, but was now a wide, well-travelled thoroughfare. In a sense, wonders Cuchet, doesn’t that essentially mean the end of salvation? If one does not believe in sin, why the need for salvation? If there’s no need for salvation, why bother with Jesus Christ? If we needn’t bother with Jesus the Savior, why go to Mass? Why belong to the Church? Why identify as Christian? The rhetorical answer to those questions leads back to the astounding statistic that only 1.7 percent of French Catholics attend Mass even once a month.

Though Cuchet doesn’t provide a way out of the decline explicitly (and that is not his purpose as a historian), one can easily see the implicit solution: a strong Church made up of vibrant, faithful clergy who are not afraid to preach on sin or the effects of sin, and who promote the myriad spiritual, physical, and communal advantages of being a practicing member of the Church.

The foregoing article, "A Crisis of the Four Last Things" was originally published in the July-August 2018 issue of the New Oxford Review and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.

"Et Tu, Benedict? (Wrinkles in Time & Theology)"

Prefatory note:

Dionysius the Areopagite was a 1st century convert of St. Paul mentioned in the Book of Acts; but the man who wrote under his name in the late fifth or early sixth century and transposed the whole of pagan Neoplatonism from Plotinus to Proclus into a distinctively new Christian context is more aptly called "Pseudo-Dionysius."

Frank J. Sheed (1897-1982) was an Australian-born lawyer, Catholic writer, publisher and speaker who was married to Maisie Ward, who together with her lent his name to the famous English imprint Sheed & Ward and was a forceful speaker in the Catholic Evidence Guild; but the man who, under the name of "Frank J. Sheed," is the author of the contemporary blog from which the following article is taken should perhaps better be known as "Pseudo-Frank J. Sheed," since, like "Pseudo-Dionysius," he conceals his own identity behind a pseudonym taken from the name of someone he wishes to honor. -- Editor

Pseudo Frank J. Sheed, in "Et Tu, Benedict? (Wrinkles in Time & Theology)," introduces his subject as follows:

When you read Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, it can be a faith-rewarding exercise or a head scratcher. I, for one, am very grateful for his Gospel, Catechesis, Catechism, his book on the Infancy Narratives, his Handmaid of the Lord, and Ignatius Press’ volumes of weekly teachings as pope like A School of Prayer. Not to mention his output at the CDF, which considering the possibilities he prevented seems heroic.

But then there are other scattered books, like Principles of Catholic Theology, Introduction to Christianity, In the Beginning, and Highlights of Vatican II. These often seem ambiguous on key points, and suggest a mind conditioned by the more liberal currents of the 60s and 70s. For the conservative crowd, that’s lamentable. Which all that in mind, I was both irked and intrigued by Hilary White’s column. It follows here, and as you’ll discover, she takes no prisoners.

Indeed, there is much here "irk and intrigue" most anyone.

Yes, by all means: Caveat emptor! But by the same token, know that those who neglect acquaintance with many of the dark details here related do so at their own peril of blissful ignorance. [Disclaimer: Rules ## 7-9]

Fr. Z's amusing rant about the "choo-choo kiddie Mass"

It's about much more than the title suggests: "Communion in the hand. Wherein Fr. Z rants and provokes" (Fr. Z's Blog, March 10, 2018). Amusing, as almost always.

How trendy experiments in music and liturgy have led to the triumph of bad taste, banality, and a deflated sense of the sacred

Composer and Catholic James MacMillan writing in a recent issue of Standpoint:

In the 1970s many well-intentioned types thought that such 'folk' music and pop culture derivatives would appeal to teenagers and young people and get them more involved in the Church, when the exact opposite has happened. It is now thought that these trendy experiments in music and liturgy have contributed to the increasing risible irrelevance of liberal Christianity, and that liturgy as social engineering has repulsed many. Like most ideas shaped by 1960s Marxist ideology it has proved an utter failure. Its greatest tragedy is the willful disingenuous, de-poeticisation of Catholic worship. The Church has simply aped the secular West's obsession with 'accessibility,' 'inclusiveness,' 'democracy,' and anti-elitism, resulting in the triumph of bad taste, banality and a deflation of the sense of the sacred in the life of the church."

Maybe this is the sort of trendy banality he had in mind -- gone-to-seed, perhaps?




Well, the choreography of the latter is almost good enough to serve for the closing "Christmas-in-Heaven" performance in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, if that's not being overly generous. The horror of it all is just the philistine assumption that any of this belongs to the worship of Almighty God.

"St Anthony, St Anthony, please come around ..."

As a reader says, "if you do a quick online search for the mag. using Google's ‘ images’ filter, you get the vague sense from many covers that 'something’s been lost' for maybe too long now."


Dorothy Cummings McLean, writes, in "Major Catholic family magazine spotlights pro-LGBT priest in favorable interview" (LifeSiteNews, November 30, 2017):

Many faithful Catholics who read St. Anthony Messenger will likely be scandalized that a Catholic magazine that congratulates itself on its august past and popularity with Catholic families would give so much space to a high-profile critic of the Catholic Church and her doctrines without challenging either him or his ideas.

Christian defeatism?

Our underground news correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, recently sent me this:

There is widespread misgivings in every church about the increasing evidence of Christian defeatism. A monthly periodical created a sensation with an article entitled, “Have Christians lost Their Nerve?” Most of the bishops whom I met in Rome had read his article and none was inclined to dispute its depressing conclusions.... One feared that the ecumenical movement was taking what little was left of the fight out of the Church:

“Christ said ‘They will throw you out of the synagogues.’ Today we priests are being invited to preach in the synagogues. Too many of our Catholics are like the pale tepid lot who Dante said were not fit for Heaven and too cheap for Hell. He wasn’t going to bother to speak about them. Just look at them and pass on. The great word now is ‘Dialogue,' which means futile conversation between Christians of different communions, none of whom has any real belief in anything which he professes. Another popular word is ‘Encounter, which means meeting God rather less then half way.”

Arnold Lunn, 1968

Austin Ruse: "James Martin SJ Thinks You're a Nazi"

Austin Ruse: "James Martin SJ Thinks You're a Nazi" (Crisis Magazine, September 29, 2017): "... Martin became incensed when Catholic Vote said he had been 'beaten' in a debate. He said it was a call for violence against him. Yet, now he is saying his critics are no better than Nazis, and his friend McElroy compares them to cancer. One wonders how far McElroy, Martin, Scalia, Faggioli, and Ivereigh want to go in getting rid of those they do not like."

"Sex-drenched"

Thus reads another missive from our underground correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, sent yet again by carrier pigeon from God-knows-where. Unfolded and spread on the table, it read:

Ding ding ding! Read this (but kids, please be safe…)

Rod Dreher, "Cheap Sex = Dying Christianity" (American Conservative, September 5, 2017), who quotes Mark Regnerus, "Christians are part of the same dating pool as everyone else. That's bad for the church." (Washington Post, September 5, 2017):

Cheap sex, it seems, has a way of deadening religious impulses. It’s able to poke holes in the “sacred canopy” over the erotic instinct, to borrow the late Peter Berger’s term. Perhaps the increasing lack of religious affiliation among young adults is partly a consequence of widening trends in nonmarital sexual behavior among young Americans, in the wake of the expansion of pornography and other tech-enhanced sexual behaviors.

Cohabitation has prompted plenty of soul searching over the purpose, definition and hallmarks of marriage. But we haven’t reflected enough on how cohabitation erodes religious belief.

We overestimate how effectively scientific arguments secularize people. It’s not science that’s secularizing Americans — it’s sex.

About which, Noir noted that decades ago Frank Sheed also wrote on sex, as one finds here in this beautifully arranged post entitled "Let's Talk about Sex" (September 9, 2017).

In answer to which, sent back to Noir via carrier pigeon the following reply, folded up in a paper:

This is good stuff from Sheed. As always. I've run into several things on the topic lately, and one thing I'm gathering is that (ironically) the actual practice of sexual intercourse has dropped off precipitously since the advent of pornography. In Japan they're apparently no longer interested in getting married. It seems that actual relationships with real human beings are too much trouble. People are too busy having sex with themselves to trouble themselves with having it with others.

Sad.

Monsignor Bux: We Are in a Full Crisis of Faith

Edward Pentin (National Catholic Register, June 21, 2017) writes: "Theologian and former consulter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith calls on the Pope to make a declaration of faith, warning that unless the Pope safeguards doctrine, he cannot impose discipline." Read more here >>

[Hat tip to JM]

First Things: A Call for the Restoration of the Roman Rite

[Disclaimer: Rules ##7-9]
I received my latest copy of First Things and noticed with delight an article by Martin Mosebach, the German author of the marvelous book, The Heresy of Formlessness, published by Ignatius Press. The article is entitled, "Return to Form: A Call for the Restoration of the Roman Rite"; and I was also pleased to see it transcribed over at Rorate under the blog post title: "Exactly! First Things compares Novus Ordo to the Protestant Revolt" (Rorate Caeli, March 14, 2017), where Adfero prefaces Martin's article with these words:

For those paying attention, First Things has had a lot to say lately, so much of it timely and important. In the following piece, that we find fitting to bring to our readers' attention, not only do they rightly compare the Novus Ordo to the Protestant Revolt, but credit the saving of the Roman Rite to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

In any case, below is the article for our own readers here:

RETURN TO FORM

A CALL FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE ROMAN RITE
The times in which a new form is born are extremely rare in the history of mankind. Great forms are characterized by their ability to outlive the age in which they emerge and to pursue their path through all history’s hiatuses and upheavals. The Greek column with its Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian capitals is such a form, as is the Greek tragedy with its invention of dialogue that still lives on in the silliest soap opera. The Greeks regarded tradition itself as a precious object; it was tradition that created legitimacy. Among the Greeks, tradition stood under collective protection. The violation of tradition was called tyrannis—tyranny is the act of violence that damages a traditional form that has been handed down.One form that has effortlessly overleaped the constraints of the ages is the Holy Mass of the Roman Church, the parts of which grew organically over centuries and were finally united at the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. It was then that the missal of the Roman pope, which since late antiquity had never succumbed to heretical attack, was prescribed for universal use by Catholic Christendom throughout the West. If one considers the course of human history, it is nothing short of remarkable that the Roman Rite has survived the most violent catastrophes unaltered.

Without a doubt, the Roman Rite draws strength and vitality from its origin. It can be traced back to the apostolic age. Its form is intimately connected with the decades in which Christianity was established, the moment in history the Gospel calls the “fullness of time.” Something new had begun, and this newness, the most decisive turning point in world history, was empowered to take shape, take on form. Indeed, this newness came above all in the assumption of form. God the Creator took on the form of man, his creature. This is the faith of Christianity: In Christ all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form, even in that of a dead body. Spirit takes form. From this point on, this form is inseparable from the Spirit; the Risen One and Savior, returning to his Father, retains for all eternity the wounds of his death by torture. The attributes of corporeality assume infinite significance. The Christian Rite, of which the Roman Rite is an ancient part, thus became an incessant repetition of the Incarnation, and just as there is no limb of the human body that can be removed without harm or detriment, the Council of Trent decreed that, with respect to the liturgy of the Church, none of its parts can be neglected as unimportant or inessential without damage to the whole.

It is said that every apparently new thing has always been with us. Alas, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The industrial revolution, science as a replacement for religion, and the phenomenon of the wonderful and limitless increase in money (without a similar increase in its material equivalent) have given rise to a new mentality, one that finds it increasingly difficult to perceive the fusion of spirit and matter, the spiritual content of reality that those who lived in the preindustrial world across thousands of years took for granted. The forces that determine our lives have become invisible. None of them has found an aesthetic representation. In a time that is overloaded with images, they have lost the power to take form, with the result that the powers that govern our lives have an intangible, indeed, a demonic quality. Along with the inability to create images that made even the portrait of an individual a problem for the twentieth century, our contemporaries have lost the experience of reality. For reality is always first seized in a heightened form that is pregnant with meaning.

In a period such as the present, unable to respond to images and forms, incessantly misled by a noisy art market, all experimentation that tampers with the Roman Rite as it has developed through the centuries could only be perilous and potentially fatal. In any case, this tampering is unnecessary. For the rite that came from late antique Mediterranean Christianity was not “relevant” in the European Middle Ages, nor in the Baroque era, nor in missionary lands outside Europe. The South American Indians and West Africans must have found it even stranger, if possible, than any twentieth-century European who complained that it was “no longer relevant”—whereas it was precisely among those people that the Roman Rite enjoyed its greatest missionary successes. When the inhabitants of Gaul, England, and Germany became Catholic, they understood no Latin and were illiterate; the question of the correct understanding of the Mass was entirely independent of a capacity to follow its literal expression. The peasant woman who said the rosary during Mass, knowing that she was in the presence of Christ’s sacrifice, understood the rite better than our contemporaries who comprehend every word but fail to engage with such knowledge because the present form of the Mass, drastically altered, no longer allows for its full expression.

This sad diminution of spiritual understanding is to be expected, given the atmosphere in which the revision of the Roman Rite was undertaken. It was done during the fateful years around 1968, the years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and a worldwide revolt against tradition and authority after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. The council had upheld the Roman Rite for the most part and emphasized the role of Latin as the traditional language of worship, as well as the role of Gregorian chant. But then, by order of Paul VI, liturgical experts in their ivory towers created a new missal that was not warranted by the provisions for renewal set forth by the council fathers. This overreaching caused a breach in the dike. In a short time, the Roman Rite was changed beyond recognition. This was a break with tradition like nothing the Church in its long history has experienced—if one disregards the Protestant revolution, erroneously named “the Reformation,” with which the post-conciliar form of the liturgy actually has a great deal in common.

The break would have been irreparable had not a certain bishop, who had participated in the council (and signed the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy in good faith, assuming that it would be the standard for a “careful” review of the sacred books) pronounced an intransigent “no” to this work of reform. It was the French missionary archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his priestly society under the patronage of Saint Pius X whom we have to thank that the thread of tradition, which had become perilously thin, did not break altogether. This marked one of the spectacular ironies in which the history of the Church is rich: The sacrament, which has as its object the obedience of Jesus to the will of the Father, was saved by disobedience to an order of the pope. Even someone who finds Lefebvre’s disobedience unforgiveable must concede that, without it, Pope Benedict XVI would have found no ground for Summorum Pontificum, his famous letter liberating the celebration of the Tridentine Mass. Without Lefebvre’s intransigence, the Roman Rite almost certainly would have disappeared without a trace in the atmosphere of anti-traditional persecution. For the Roman Rite was repressed without mercy, and that repression, supposedly in the service of a new, “open” Church, was made possible by a final surge of the centralized power of the papacy that characterized the Church prior to the council and is no longer possible—another irony of that era. Protests by the faithful and by priests were dismissed and handled contemptuously. The Catholic Church in the twentieth century showed no more odious face than in the persecution of the ancient rite that had, until that time, given the Church her identifiable form. The prohibition of the rite was accomplished with iconoclastic fury in countless churches. Those years saw the desecration of places of worship, the tearing down of altars, the tumbling of statues, and the scrapping of precious vestments.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

Archbishop Chaput on how liberal democracies become despotic

Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World (2017), Chapter 1, "Resident Aliens" (comments mine):

In a democracy, political legitimacy comes from the will of sovereign individuals. Their will is expressed through elected representatives. Anything that interferes with their will, anything that places inherited or unchosen obligations on the individual -- except for the government itself -- becomes the target of suspicion. [Which is why the Principle of Subsidiarity articulated by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931) is so important, like the Kuyperian concept of Sphere Sovereignty of 'Intermediary Institutions.']

To protect the sovereignty of individuals, democracy separates them from one another. And to achieve that, the state sooner or later seeks to break down any relationship or entity that stands in its way. That includes every kind of mediating institution, from fraternal organizations to synagogues and churches, to the family itself. This is why Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French observer of early American life, said that "despotism, which is dangerous at all times, [is] particularly to be feared in democratic centuries."

Tocqueville saw that the strength of American society, the force that kept the tyrannical logic of democracy in creative check, was the prevalence and intensity of religious belief. Religion is to democracy as a bridle is to a horse. Religion moderates democracy because it appeals to an authority higher than democracy itself.


But religion only works its influence on democracy if people really believe what it teaches. Nobody believes in God just because it's socially useful. To put it in Catholic terms, Christianity is worthless as a leaven in society unless people actually believe in Jesus Christ, follow the Gospel, love the Church, and act like real disciples. If they don't, then religion is just another form of self-medication. And unfortunately, that's how many of us live out our Baptism.

Until recent decades, American culture was largely Protestant. That was part of the country's genius. But it also meant that Catholics and other minorities lived through long periods of exclusion and prejudice. The effect of being outsiders has always fueled a Catholic passion to fit in, to find a way into the mainstream, to excel by the standards of the people who disdain us. Over time, we Catholics have succeeded very well -- evidently too well. And that very success has weakened any chance the Church had to seize a "Catholic moment" when Catholics might fill the moral hole in our culture created by the collapse of a Protestant consensus.

As a result, Tocqueville's fear about democracy without religious constraints -- what he called its power to kill souls and prepare citizens for servitude -- is arguably where we find ourselves today...."

Nothing new here, folks. Move along.

Claire Chretien, "Prominent Jesuit priest tweets support for transgender bathrooms to 100k followers" (LifeSiteNews, February 23, 2017).

Fr. James Martin, editor-at-large of the Jesuit America magazine and Big Mack Jesuit Daddy of American Jesuits in the media. Who else???

Yawn ... Capitulators are so ... boring.

Fr. Perrone: How could a Catholic possibly support a party promoting abortion, contraception, euthanasia, sodomy, and "transgender" identification?

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, February 12, 2017):

A few made known to me their appreciation for the pastor's column last week in which there was a commendatory word about President Trump for his pro-life stand. One may wonder whether it is to be afeared that the pastor now becomes an advocate of partisan politics. Without addressing that suspicion, it must be admitted that for a long time Catholics generally -- and the clergy especially -- have been victims of the gag rule which has deterred them from deep opposition to the immoral policies of the Democrat party, those very moral issues St. John Paul II stigmatized by the shocking epithet, "the culture of death." Surely it ought not to be a matter of preference for one political party over another that every Catholic, every Christian -- indeed, every citizen of sane mind and moral decency -- should oppose abortion, contraception, euthanasia, sodomy, and "transgender" identification. And yet this one partisan body has made these particular issues the basis of much of its program for a revolutionized American society. Can Catholics support these anomalies, these moral atrocities which are an outrage to God and a repugnance to any rational being? This is no endorsement of one political body over another (historically, by the way, the American hierarchy has had a long track record of open support for the Democrat Party). The fact that both major political parties, though unequally, have been supportive of these crimes against humanity means that Catholics must work to expunge these deleterious proposals from any political platform.

Catholics have every reason and duty to be the best of American citizens. they represent, no matter how poorly they may exemplify it in their individual lives, the teachings of Christ and the magisterium of the church which upholds the natural law. They must send this 'message' to their politicians and insist that they uphold moral truth. On its side, government must protect the rights of the Church to be this moral voice for American society and it must not interfere in the right of the Church to assert the moral truths God implanted in human nature and expressed so clearly in divine revelation.

Catholics must contribute to the good of society by its untiring witness to the law of God. The fact that one political party has chosen to espouse immoral ways of living and acting is most regrettable. We pray in our daily rosary "for God's mercy on our country,." This is not a plea that God allow us to continue merrily downward towards moral degeneracy with impunity -- that would be a veritable mockery of divine mercy. Rather, we are praying for a moral conversion of men's minds and their ways of living to conform to God's truth while we make reparation for damage already done by the sins that "cry out to God for vengeance" (as they are labled in the catechism).

There's much work to be done for the spiritual rebuilding of America. If our mores begin to improve, many other national benefits will result, including a renewed confidence in the basic, though not perfect, good of our constituted government; a rediscovered love of our fatherland (patriotism); and the recovery of the Christian faith upon which the entire moral and political order depends.

I have at time spoken in sermons on this theme, though perhaps with less of a political epmhasis, and concluded by insisting that there cannot be hope for a morally improved country or Church without a personal reform of each individual to keep from the sins which are the cause of his own ruin (those so called "besetting" sins of spiritual literature). Everyone contributes wittingly or not to the upbuilding or the ruination of public life. In short, if you do not reform your own life, you become part of America's and the Church's "problem."

By the time you read this the funeral rites for Fr. John's father will have taken place. While I did not know Anthony Bustamante very well, I know he was a lifelong Catholic, very dedicated to his faith, to Holy Mass, and to his family. With the parishioners of Assumption Grotto Church I wish to express condolences to the Bustamante family in this sorrowful time. While their faith and hope in Christ is a great consolation, the inevitable sadness of this great absence in their lives cannot be denied. We lend them the unseen support of our prayers for Anthony's eternal welfare.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him!

Fr. Perrone

A "Climate of Fear" in the Vatican?

The Editors, "A 'Climate of Fear' in the Vatican?," New Oxford Review (January-February, 2017):

Several independent reports out of Rome paint a troubling picture of the working situation at “headquarters.” Indications are that the Eternal City is on edge. And in the midst of the palpable sense of unease, anxiety, and, yes, even fear, one man looms large. That man is Pope Francis.

Much, though not all, of the distress radiates from a remarkable development: Four high-ranking prelates have publicly challenged the Pope over Amoris Laetitia, his murky and verbose apostolic exhortation in which he seems to suggest that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can be admitted to Holy Communion. On November 14 cardinals Raymond Burke of the U.S., Carlo Caffarra of Italy, and Walter Brandmüller and Joachim Meisner of Germany made public a dubia, a set of five short yes-or-no questions addressed to Pope Francis about passages in Amoris Laetitia that, they say, have caused “uncertainty, confusion, and disorientation among many of the faithful.”

The cardinals decided to go public with the dubia after submitting it to Francis privately in September — and then waiting two months for a reply that never came. The dubia calls on the Pope, “with profound respect,” to “dispel ambiguity” and “resolve the uncertainties and bring clarity.”

So far, not only has Francis refused to respond privately to the cardinals’ request, he has also refused to respond publicly. In fact, he’s made only one public comment about the dubia. In an interview in Avvenire, an Italian Catholic magazine (Nov. 18), Francis referred obliquely to “a certain legalism” that wants to see everything as “black and white,” and he wondered aloud whether such criticism doesn’t come “from an evil spirit” or “the desire to hide one’s own dissatisfaction under armor.” Yes, you read that correctly: Francis actually suggested that the men who asked him to make specific some of his (intentionally?) ambiguous ramblings might be under the influence of demons!

While maintaining a certain aloofness about it in public, the Pope is apparently very agitated about the dubia. Edward Pentin, a respected Vatican correspondent, told Raymond Arroyo, host of EWTN’s The World Over (Nov. 18), that Francis is “boiling with rage.” Reportedly, the Holy Father has been working hard behind the scenes to vilify and isolate the four cardinals and their supporters.

Pentin offered further insight in an interview with Beverly Stevens, editor of Regina, an online Catholic magazine (Dec. 8). The Pope, he said, instead of addressing the cardinals’ concerns — either in public or private — is treating them as “adversaries.” He has even questioned the cardinals’ “mental state.” Observers are reading this as a manifestation of Francis’s “anger at having his agenda taken off course,” Pentin went on to say. And so, one hears the phrases “reign of terror” and “Vatican martial law” frequently bandied about in Rome these days.

Pentin’s report was echoed by Steve Jalsevic, managing director of the pro-life news service LifeSiteNews.com. Blogging from Rome during a recent visit, Jalsevic wrote that there is a “consistent pattern of widespread anxiety and very real fear among faithful Church servants,” the likes of which he’d never witnessed before in his ten years of making biannual trips there (Dec. 16). The tension gripping the Vatican is by no means limited to those embroiled in the dubia controversy. Many curial functionaries, Jalsevic said, are “afraid of being removed from their positions, fired from their jobs in Vatican agencies or of encountering severe public or private reprimands and personal accusations from those around the pope or even from Francis himself.”

That the Pope could be so vindictive would be startling if he hadn’t already given us glimpses of the man behind the magnanimous papal persona. “Severe reprimands” and “personal accusations” don’t seem all that out of character. As anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to this papacy knows, Francis rarely passes up an opportunity to deliver a tongue-lashing to Catholic prelates or laymen (see, for example, our New Oxford Note “Pope Francis: Put-Down Artist?” Apr. 2014) — especially to those whom he considers excessively orthodox (or “rigid,” as he likes to label them). It is odd — isn’t it? — that the alleged “Pope of mercy” would so readily indulge his mean streak.

Jeff Mirus's critique of Henri de Lubac

Dr. Jeff Mirus, "Henri de Lubac's fascinating notes on Vatican II" (CatholicCulture.org, August 18, 2015):

Here I explore the notes made by the French theologian Henri de Lubac as he prepared for and participated in the Second Vatican Council. I will gradually add revealing excerpts and comments from successive stages of de Lubac’s involvement. Each stage will be linked below. They will be announced in City Gates as they are added.

• Introduction
• Theological Background
• Preparing for the Council: Highlights through the end of 1961 (presented 5/1/2015)
• Final Preparations: Highlights from 1962 until the Council opened on October 11th (presented 5/8/2015)
• Early Weeks of the Council (presented 5/26/2015)
• Discussing Revelation: Mid-November 1962 (presented 6/15/2015)
• De Lubac’s Closing Chapter: The End of 1962 (presented 8/18/2015)

Introduction [top]

I’ve been wondering how to handle the decision of Ignatius Press to publish the notebooks kept by Henri de Lubac, SJ on his participation in the Second Vatican Council. Volume I has been released, which covers de Lubac’s observations between July 25, 1960 and September 2, 1963.

In printed form, these observations run to nearly 500 pages, and they include everything from physical descriptions of people he met to brief points of analysis concerning key issues facing the Council. To comb the text searching for particular information would be difficult, and to read the whole thing slowly enough to take my own notes would be unlikely to repay the effort.

And yet de Lubac (1896 - 1991) is a pivotal figure in Catholic theology in the mid-20th century, a man unwillingly locked in a battle on two fronts. On the one side were the largely misguided systematic Thomists who dominated the Roman Curia, expending great energy to secure condemnations of every insight that did not fit conveniently into their own excessively abstract system—almost a philosophy rather than a theology, and increasingly divorced from the sources of theology in Scripture and the Fathers. On the other roamed the Modernists, rapidly rising to leadership in the Jesuit Order and elsewhere, who for many good reasons distrusted the narrow establishment in Rome, but who spiraled into an unbridled secularism which has seriously undermined the Faith.

So some notice must be taken of this new and important resource for understanding the questions, problems, personalities, and even hostile forces surrounding the work of the Council. What I have decided to do, therefore, is read through the notebooks at my leisure, mostly for enjoyment, marking brief passages which shed light on issues of continuing importance. Then, in a series of “interventions” of my own (not to the body of bishops but to my readers in this space), I will present and sometimes comment on what I have found to be of special interest.

To make things easier for readers, who will have to digest this material in fits and starts according to my own schedule, I will use internal links which lead to the beginning of each new and dated addition of highlights. In addition, italics will be used to indicate my own comments. Paragraphs in regular type are de Lubac’s own words. But before I begin to notice the most interesting aspects of the notebooks, I will offer just a little bit of background.

A traditional Catholic's cri de coeur over what is happening

Jimmy Fallon, Bill Murray, Sting and Bianca Jagger all lament that the Catholic Church is in all out revolution, so why is it that so many mainstream Catholics seem intent on denying that this is the case, asks Michael Matt. The Editor of the traditionalist Remnant magazine relates his experience at a recent Novus Ordo 'Gathering Rite,' and launches into a welcome rant about the appalling indifference to the Real Presence of Christ in our churches. He also asks: "What is neo-Catholicism?" and "What is the New Mass?" Hard times for Catholics who know the details of recent changes in the Church.


I bet you anything that many Catholics would find nothing at all exceptional about the 'Gathering Rite' referenced at the beginning of this video. Matt's reaction is so different because, as he says, he's never been to one of these Novus Ordo Masses. He's apprently spend his whole life in the Extraordinary Form (the Traditional Latin Mass); and his reaction is probably similar to how some of our ancestors would react in a contemporary Catholic church. What does this tell us about changes in the Church; and what should we think about this?

Was that a Catholic Mass or Protestant Service? Hilarious.

Of course, humour, like alcohol (in vino veritas), always conveys some truth:


"No One At Mass Sure Whether They At Catholic Or Protestant Service" (Eye of the Tiber, September 7, 2016):

Despite efforts to figure whether they were in a Catholic or Protestant service, local parishioners were left baffled after an “animated” man wearing vestments put on a head mic and began pacing back and forth as he delivered his sermon.

“The man looked like a priest and I was quite certain I was in a Catholic Church,” said longtime parishioner Joyce Parlin who had no clue as to what the hell was going on. “But he kept pacing back and forth, ending each statement with a ‘can I get an amen?’ No one was exactly sure what he was asking for. I overheard one gentleman respond, ‘yes, I suppose,’ but the priest or pastor or whatever he was kept desperately asking if he could get more amens.”

Parlin went on to add that the priest or pastor or whatever the heck he was continually used words like “fellowship” and “ministry” during his sermon, words, Parlin admitted, she had never heard before.

“He also used the phrase ‘saved by the Blood of the Lamb,’ which I suppose is some sort of Christian take on the TV show ‘Saved by the Bell.’ Hell, I don’t know.”

At press time, the band has begun singing praise a worship as beach balls are being thrown to and fro, confirming that the event is a Life Teen Mass.

[Hat tip to Fr. Z]

Hillary's Hammer ...

Amateur Brain Surgeon, "Hillary's Hammer" (Mick Jagger gathers no Moss, September 5, 2016). Referencing this bit of news, ABS offers the following delightful little ditty, a parody of Peter, Paul and Mary's once beloved ballad, "If I Had a Hammer":

Hill had a hammer,
She hammered in the morning,
She hammered in the evening,
Avoided taking the stand;
She hammered out evidence,
She hammered out guilt,
She hammered out the lawlessness between,
Her cash for access with Dictators and Sheiks
All over all land.

If I had a bell,
I'd put it on that cow,
It'd ring it in the evening
, All over this land,
It'd ring out danger,
I'td ring out a warning,
It'd ring out love between,
Conspirators and collectivists,
All over all land.

If I had a song
I'd sing it in the morning
I'd sing it in the evening
all over this land
I'd sing out danger
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out a conspiracy between Commies
and the libs all over all land

Well, Hill’s got a hammer
Hill's got a bell
and she had access to sell
all over all lands;
It's the hammer of no jail
It's the bell of more cash;
It's a song about access deals between State
and dictators

in forlorn foreign lands

President Helter Skelter commutes sentences of 111 Federal inmates (total now: 562)

Gangsta-in-Chief, President Barack Hussein Obama has now raised the total number of sentences he's commuted for convicted felons to 562. His motive is reportedly 'compassion' for the mostly black families of offenders sentenced for non-violent charges of drug dealing -- families who, he says, need their fathers home. Oh really? You don't think you have some idea of how that's going to play out? Do you suppose, for a moment, that it's intended to quell the tensions of racial violence sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement? Think again. One suspects that as a lame duck president, since he has nothing more to lose, this president of surprises will have many more such 'gifts' to pass on to his beloved America.

[Many sources. Here's one.]