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Bishops defend Church teaching on birth control It is sad when the above headline is news.  Yet, it is almost impossible to find bishops (or priests) -- outside of traditional Latin Mass circles -- talking about this subject.  We commend the Kazakh bishops for issuing the following reaffirmation of Church teaching: Pastoral letter on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the encyclical Humanae vitae Praised be Our Lord Jesus Christ! Dear brothers and sisters in Christ! The current year is marked by the memorable event of the 50th anniversary of the encyclical Humanae vitae, in which Blessed Paul VI...

Yesterday, I received a letter from an eyewitness who recently heard Cardinal Walter Kasper speak about Pope Francis and the intercommunion debate. In this 10 May speech, Kasper called Protestant spouses of Catholics “fresh cells in the Body of Christ’s Church” without that they needed a prior conversion. Kasper, who resides in Rome, seems to be trying hard now to influence the German debate in favor of intercommunion.For example, just yesterday, on 15 May, La Stampa’s Vatican Insider published a lengthy interview with Cardinal Kasper in which the German cardinal tries to argue that there are several Church documents which...

(Rome) The fundamental theologian Alfredo Morselli, pastor of the Archdiocese of Bologna, who since his ordination in 1986, celebrates only in the immemorial Roman rite, wondered whether the admission of remarried divorcees who are in the state of serious sin because of their concubinage is in effect, a"Trojan Horse" to introduce inter-communion with the Protestants. The theologian is convinced of an inner connection between the controversial post-synodal writing Amoris laetitia and the now discussed inter-communion with the Protestants. At the center of the current discussion is a decision by the German Bishops' Conference last February to grant communion to Lutheran...

Priests are pleading with their bishops to end doctrinal chaos. Worldwide confusion over marriage and the sacraments has moved 15 priests from America and Europe to sign a plea April 22 titled A Pastoral Appeal to the Bishops for an Apostolic Reaffirmation of the Gospel. The appeal is now backed by more than 80 priests and one cardinal, Raymond Burke, former prefect of the Apostolic Signatura. In a May 3 interview, Cdl. Burke said he hopes bishops respond to the priests' appeal.  "The growing confusion and the resulting division in the Church is causing a tremendous suffering, most of all for priests," Cdl. Burke...

North Point Community Church Senior Pastor Andy Stanley has stated that Christians need to "unhitch" the Old Testament from their faith. In the final part of a recent sermon series, Stanley explained that while he believes that the Old Testament is "divinely inspired," it should not be "the go-to source regarding any behavior in the church." To justify this, Stanley preached last month about Acts 15, which described how the early church decided that Gentile converts did not need to strictly observe Jewish law to become Christians. "[First century] Church leaders unhitched the church from the worldview, value system, and...

Today, on the Fest of Our Lady of Fatima, the Bishops and Ordinaries of Kazakhstan issued a Pastoral Letter concerning the continued relevance of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae concerning matters of life. With this letter, the authors wish to confirm “the teaching of the constant Magisterium of the Church regarding the transmission of human life,” which they discussed during a recent meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The signatories — among them Bishop Athanasius Schneider — affirm “that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.” With reference to different papal statements,...

Pope Francis Has Hired the “Worst Heretics” The persecution of the Catholics inside the Church is growing stronger according to Monsignor Antonio Livi, a philosopher who served as a professor and dean at the Roman Lateran University. Talking to Gloria.tv, Livi points out that Pope Francis accuses of “heresy” those who are faithful to the doctrine and fight confusion. Livi added that Pope Francis has put at the top of the Church – quote – “the worst heretics” and that he has his encyclicals written by – quote – “the worst heretics”.

SERMON for the Feast of Saint Pius V, the Great Reformer - Fr. Cipolla Sermon for the Feast of St. Pius V Preached at the Lepanto Youth Rally Waterbury, Connecticut 5 May, 2018 There is a church in Rome not too far from the train station, Termini. Its exterior looks like many churches in Rome, white marble, baroque style.  The fame of this church is not because of its rather over the top late baroque interior that leaves nothing to the imagination.  It is famous because of the statue in one of its side chapels of St Teresa of Avila...

Okie Traditionalist Interviews: Bishop Rene' Gracida, of Corpus Christi, TX, about a Remedy for the Current Papal Crisis. His Excellency, Bishop Rene' Henry Gracida of Corpus Christi, Texas, gives clarification about an Article he posted on his blog last month on April 7th, which has since been circulated worldwide.  He is encouraging the Cardinals to take action to remedy the current papal crisis. You can read the Article:  HERE. Bishop Gracida was the first diocesan bishop to sign the "Filial Correction" presented to Pope Francis by Cardinal Raymond Burke and three other Cardinals, calling into question certain statements in the document Amoris Laetitia, in particular its...

ROME - The changes in canon law Pope Francis made to ensure that marriage annulment cases were handled more quickly, more pastorally and with less expense mean that some changes should be made in the way Church law is taught, said the Congregation for Catholic Education.The congregation published an instruction May 3 urging Catholic universities to strengthen their canon law programs and urging bishops to send more of their priests “and, if possible, laypeople” to Catholic universities to earn canon law degrees.The new rules, which go into effect for the 2019-2020 academic year, require all students in what is...

A group of priests has issued a plea to all the world’s bishops to “reaffirm Christ’s teaching” in the face of today’s “pastoral crisis” in the Catholic Church.  Fifteen American and European clergy, including Father Gerald Murray, a frequent guest on EWTN’s The World Over program, highlight a resurgence of “gravely harmful moral errors” regarding the feasibility of living Jesus’ teachings, the nature of conscience, and the role of the Church.  With measured and respectful words, A Pastoral Appeal to the Bishops for an Apostolic Reaffirmation of the Gospel expresses the hope that “much of the damage” caused by this trend “could be healed or mitigated” if...

God frees, ideas and ideologies do not: they make prisoners. From this axiom, clearly expressed in the Gospel of John and his reference to the doctors of the law, Pope Francis unfolds his homily during this morning mass in Casa Santa Marta before the C9 Cardinals, who until tomorrow will be attending their twenty-fourth meeting. Once again, the Pontiff warns against the risk of “rigidity”, which leads to placing oneself at the center and thus remain untouched before the works of the Holy Spirit and insensitive to new things.   The doctors of the law, in fact, were incapable of...

The Italian Catholic academician Massimo Borghesi has produced a book-length defense of Pope Francis entitled Jorge Mario Bergoglio: An Intellectual Biography.  As reported by National Catholic Register here, Borghesi argues that Francis is “an ‘original and profound’ thinker who has drawn on numerous Church thinkers of the 20th century to seek a ‘third position’ between conservatism and progressivism.”  According to Borghesi, Francis “has been influenced by thinkers who view the Church as ‘the complexio oppositorum, the point of contrasting unions that, on the natural level, do not find a solution.’”  He “‘is a mystic’ who sees his mission as resolving these...

Let us pick up here on a thought by Mundabor. In his post, No Rest for the Wicked, he writes; "Some FrancisShills have started to promote some sort of “truce” concerning the way this disgraceful Pontiff is treated by bloggers." I've seen these calls as well. No. not at all, no truce, no peace, no letting up on exposing the corruption of Jorge Bergoglio. There will be no relaxation on the reporting of the manipulation of his election, which may ultimately be invalidated and he declared an Antipope. No retreat on exposing his evil ideology of globalism, communism and Masonic...

Pope Francis's document Gaudete et Exsultate, which is supposed to be a call to holiness, has a lot of flowery religious Catholic language and even mentions prayer. This is why Dan Hitchens in First Things says of the document "there is an orthodox interpretation," but then writes: "But there is a different interpretation: that when someone says 'The Church teaches that X is intrinsically wrong,' he is probably a bit of a Pharisee. The history of Amoris Laetitia suggests that more expansive interpretation often gains the upper hand." (First Things, "An Ambiguous Exhortation," 4-12-18) Hitchens suggests that this papal document...

Lawler, Philip F. Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis Is Misleading His Flock. Washington, D.C. Regnery, 2018. xii + 203 pp. Available at Amazon.com. At times it appears difficult to keep up with Pope Francis. His words and his actions, both symbolic and sacramental, resemble the unpredictable trajectories of those steel balls on an old pinball machine — only there are no sides to make the ball stay in the playing field. Pope Francis has made it clear he doesn’t want to be pinned down. The Holy Father’s forays offer springboards of imagination to secular savants who welcome the collapse of...

The young Bergoglio is an assiduous reader of Fessard’s work La dialectique des “Exercices spirituels” de saint Ignace de Loyola. In it, the French Jesuit showed how Ignatian spirituality was determined by a polar tension between God and man, grace and freedom, the infinitely great and the infinitely small. From here rises the “tensioned thinking” of the future Pope. It is this thought that explains Bergoglio’s interest in the polar dialectic of Romano Guardini, when, in 1986, he went to Germany to do his doctoral thesis. Since then, Guardini has become his point of reference. This idea of polarity, which...

In May of last year, I posted a review of the Preparatory Document for the Synod of Bishops on “Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment,” which is set to take place in October 2018.At that time, based on the bitter experiences of 2014-2015, we considered the likelihood that the “God of Surprises” and his merry band of modernists already have an outcome in mind and, come Hell or high water, they aim to achieve it.As for precisely what we can expect, it bore mention that even though the Preparatory Document didn’t give us much in the way of...

In an apparent move to rebut conservative allegations that the pope has been denying tenets of the Faith—a crisis that culminated during Holy Week with the pope’s alleged denial of hell and the immortality of the soul—Pope Francis on April 8 issued his newest Apostolic Exhortation “Gaudete et Exsultate“ (Rejoice and Be Glad), in which he bewails the “defamation and slander” being spread online by traditional Roman Catholic journalists and bloggers. In this newest document, the pope repeatedly mentions Satan, but seemingly with the implication that tradition-minded journalists and clergy who challenge his ideas are guided by the devil. He...

Yesterday afternoon, the Jorge Bergoglio Show was filmed before a live audience at San Paolo della Croce parish in Rome. The truly sickening spectacle that took place there (a portion of which can be viewed in the video clip below) called to my mind the following words taken from the 1971 hit song, American Pie:Oh and as I watched him on the stage My hands were clenched in fists of rage No angel born in Hell Could break that Satan’s spell And as the flames climbed high into the night To light the sacrificial rite I saw Satan laughing...