Free Republic

Kenneth Jones’ statistic research work first appeared in Latin Mass magazine in the Nineties. As a CPA working in the investments industry at that time, I was already immersed in charts, graphs and financial reports comparing projections and actual results. I knew the decline in the Church had been precipitous since the Sixties, but in page after page of simple bar charts awful truth sank in. A picture says a thousand words, good or bad. It occurred to me then that the quantitative approach to the charting the decline since Vatican II would make a good book someday, and that...

From the text of his holiness Pope John XXIII's address on the occasion of the opening of the 2nd Vatican Council. THE ORIGIN AND REASON FOR THE SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL As regards the initiative for the great event which gathers us here, it will suffice to repeat as historical documentation our personal account of the first sudden bringing up in our heart and lips of the simple words, "Ecumenical Council." We uttered those words in the presence of the Sacred College of Cardinals on that memorable January 25, 1959, the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, in the...