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A HARVARD STUDENT SPEAKS OUT Why I Attend the Traditional Latin Mass June 2003By Francis X. Altiere IV Introibo ad altare Dei — “I will go unto the altar of God.” So begins the holy sacrifice of the Mass, as it has been celebrated in the Roman rite of the Church for well over a millennium. Contrary to the sincere wishes of the liturgical apparatus that has visited havoc upon orthodox Catholics for the past forty years, the traditional Latin liturgy still survives. Indeed, not only does it survive, but it is attracting new followers and exciting a profound piety...

Human Non-Person” Terri Schiavo, bioethics, and our future. By Wesley J. Smith My debate about Terri Schiavo’s case with Florida bioethicist Bill Allen on Court TV Online eventually got down to the nitty-gritty: Wesley Smith: Bill, do you think Terri is a person? Bill Allen: No, I do not. I think having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood. Even minimal awareness would support some criterion of personhood, but I don't think complete absence of awareness does. If you want to know how it became acceptable to remove tube-supplied food and water from people with profound cognitive disabilities, this exchange...

Are you being targeted for euthanasia? By Mary Therese Helmueller, R.N. In 1984, while working as charge nurse in the intensive care unit, a 20-year-old man asked, “Can you give my mother enough morphine to let her sleep away?” I was horrified. “I can not kill your mother,” I responded. That was only the beginning. Recently, an 80-year-old was admitted to the emergency room and the physician said, “LET’S DEHYDRATE HER”; one more patient was sentenced to die in hospice with NO TERMINAL DIAGNOSIS and once again, THE LIVING WILL determined the death of a 70-year-old man regardless of how...

November 2000 THE GREATEST CONSPIRACY THE EDITOR A few months back, during social chit-chat which turned with predictable concern to the modern plague of clerical apostasy, a venerable member of the Society of Jesus recounted various word of mouth histories of Communist infiltration of the Jesuits. These included two men sent to join the Society in Italy and Spain by their respective national Communist Parties - the former having left to return to the Party in the early 1950s after more than a dozen years of study and actual ordination; the latter leaving the Society before ordination a decade ago....

January 2003 VATICAN II IN THE DOCK THE EDITOR A recent article in the New York Times about the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the Church commented matter-of-factly: "The Council's documents, shaped by the bishops and their theological advisers in four two-month sessions held each fall from 1962 through 1965, offer more than enough compromises and ambiguities for conflicting interpretations." There is no doubt about it. As the most verbose Council in the history of the Church by at least a factor of six, it is the sheer volume of words that smothers a plain interpretation of many...

Introduction My copy of the Saint Joseph Edition of the New American Bible (hereafter NAB) is, quite frankly, gorgeous. It is bound in leather, with gold lettering, and contains several beautiful paintings of biblical events. Between pages 276 and 277, Elijah ascends into heaven on a chariot of fire, Job is counseled by his friends, an angel touches the lips of the prophet Isaiah with a burning coal, and a hand writes a mysterious message on the wall of the palace of King Belshazzar. Also of note are the illustrations of the fourteen Stations of the Cross and the original...