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[Catholic Caucus] Italy faces catastrophic collapse of Catholic faith as Mass attendance falls to 10% or belowThe steady, even accelerating, decline in the practice of the Catholic faith among Italians is detailed in a new study published by Professor Luca Diotallevi of the University of Rome.Traditionally Catholic Italy is facing a catastrophic collapse of the faith as Mass attendance falls precipitously to 10 percent of the population and even less in some areas. The steady, even accelerating, decline in the practice of the Catholic faith among Italians is detailed in a new study published by Professor Luca Diotallevi of the...

Catholic Faith: The End of the Italian PrivilegeAlthough the title of ‘eldest daughter of the Church’ belongs to France, the beautiful land of Italy has always had a privileged relationship with the Catholic Church. It has produced more than 200 popes, and Rome’s central position on the peninsula and in the Catholic world has ensured that it has played a leading role for centuries. For the Italians, this supposedly universal Catholic Church was above all ‘their’ Church. But this privilege is being eroded, and the decline in practice, observed throughout the old world, is happening in places where it was...

[Catholic Caucus] St. Louis Archdiocese Closes Thriving Traditional Latin Mass ParishIt has been months since more than a dozen parishes in the St. Louis Archdiocese submitted appeals to the Vatican in the hopes of keeping their doors open, and now Rome has agreed to hear the appeal of two parishes: St. Elizabeth Mother of John the Baptist Parish and Sts. Philip and James Parish.Back in May, St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski announced that 178 individual parishes are being consolidated into 134. The archdiocese is also preparing to assess the future of nearly one-third of its elementary grade schools. The archdiocese...

[Catholic Caucus] Barcelona: One New SeminarianThe seminary of Barcelona Archdiocese (2M Catholics, 300 priests) will have a single admission for the coming academic year. Simultaneously, Francis is waging a war against the "conservative" party of the Novus Ordo Church (e.g. Opus Dei), which has provided the archdiocese with many seminarians. GerminansGerminavit.Blogspot (September 5) compares Monsignor Salvador Bacardit, 71, the rector of the seminary, to a chameleon who one day appears in shorts at a conference of anti-Catholic priests and the next day is seen in clericals surrounded by his seminarians but credits him with good manners and a conciliatory character...

[Catholic Caucus] Majority of religious sisters in US are now 80 or over; more are age 95+ than under 40» Continue to this story on USCCB CWN Editor's Note: Supplementing data made public earlier this week, the National Religious Retirement Office of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has published a statistical report. Page 4 presents a detailed age distribution of numbers of men and women religious in the US as of December 31, 2022. There are 380 women’s institutes with 24,965 members, and 126 men’s institutes with 7,270 members. Over half of women religious—13,621 out of 24,965—are 80...

The Ottaviani Intervention: A Critical Study of the New MassWritten by Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani and Antonio Cardinal Bacci and a Group of Roman Theologians Editor's Note: The New Order of Mass was introduced on April 4, 1969. On June 5, 1969 Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani of the Holy Office, and Antonio Cardinal Bacci, along with a group of Roman theologians, presented Pope Paul VI with a Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass. The Study contained a cover letter signed by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, which warned that the Novus Ordo, "represents both as a whole, and in its...

A Young Irishman Smiles at Traditionis CustodesI popped into my parish church today. I haven’t been there in quite some time; nearly a decade in fact.The church has a specific meaning to me; it’s where my family are buried, it’s where I was baptized and received the sacraments. Above the door stands a stone commemorating my great, great, great grandfather who, in 1818 paid for its construction; the first church where we could worship after the two centuries-long persecution of the Reformation.Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowFamily tradition says that he was awarded the honour of ringing the Angelus bell for...

[Catholic Caucus] Italy: “Francis Spring” Makes Excellent ProgressOver the last ten years, the number of seminarians in Italy went down by 28%.According to the Italian Bishops, today there are 1,804 seminarians while in 1970 – when the number of vocations had already dropped because of the failed Vatican II - there were 6,500.Father Marco d’Agostino, the rector of Cremona seminary told IlGiornale.it that seminarians are not “heroes against the tide,” rather “anything but that.”This may explain why so many priests are dead fish tossed around by the empty waves made by the oligarchs’ media.

[Catholic Caucus] Grading Francis and Ourselves on the Good Samaritan StandardAs Michael Matt described in a recent Remnant TV video, Francis has now decided that even Our Lord’s Good Samaritan parable can be distorted to advance the globalist agenda:“Do you know what comes to mind now when, together with popular movements, I think of the Good Samaritan? Do you know what comes to mind? The protests over the death of George Floyd. It is clear that this type of reaction against social, racial or macho injustice can be manipulated or exploited by political machinations or whatever, but the main thing...

The Principal Errors of Vatican II This document exposes the heresies (and other errors) found in following documents of Vatican II (or at least those statements which can be given a heretical interpretation): Unitatis Reintegratio - the Decree on Ecumenism Orientalium ecclesiarum - the Decree on Eastern Catholic Churches Lumen Gentium - Constitution on the ChurchDignitatis Humanae - Declaration on Religious LibertyAd Gentes - Decree on Missionary Activity Nostra Aetate - Decree on Non-Christian Religions Sacrosanctum Concilum - Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Gaudium et Spes - Constitution on the Church in the Modern World This document exposes the principal...

"The Council and the Eclipse of God" by Don Pietro Leone - Part XV:The Church and the State: Religious Liberty - part 2 of Chapter 4 The present installment concerns the Council's doctrine on Religious Liberty, which represents one of its most important departures from Tradition. The Church has always taught that Religious Liberty is the liberty of a Catholic to profess the one true religion; whereas the Council teaches that it is the liberty of any-one to profess and practice the religion he chooses. The Council bases its teaching on the excellence of man's freedom to which it...

Just After the Council, Lefebvre Responds to OttavianiThe Council had been over for less than a year. Catholics were excited and confused. Different moves towards implementation, sometimes contradictory, were rumored. Already Catholic liberals were hard at work to lead the Church in their direction. What was Rome to do? After fifty-five years, we know what Cardinal Ottaviani, one of Cardinal Ratzinger’s predecessors as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, decided to do: on July 24, 1966, he wrote to the Ordinaries of the world to sound the alarm. He had been receiving daily indications of a...

Cancelling Pope Benedict: Reflections on a recent article and the “hermeneutic of rupture” Rorate has received this excellent essay by “A Concerned Priest” and is pleased to share it with our readers. It is one of the best analyses to date of the impossible theological premises on which Pope Francis has enacted his campaign against the survival of the traditional rites of the Church.Professor Martin Madar has written in La Croix (August 9, 2021) a revealing article concerning the larger project represented by Traditionis Custodes. It bears the title “Pope Francis should correct his predecessor on another point.”[0] The...

'The Council and The Eclipse of God' by Don Pietro Leone - Part XIV: The Church and The State n Chapter 4, Don Pietro turns to consider the Council’s teaching on the Church and State. He explains how the Church has a duty not only to Her members, but also to the entire world. Her role in regard to the State is to guide Kings and governors to promote the best interests of their citizens, i.e. in the final analysis the attainment of eternal life in Heaven, such as has been the constant teaching of Holy Mother Church. Readers...

[Catholic Caucus] Vatican II Was Worst Spasm of Iconoclasm in HistoryFrancis is tearing the Church apart, Michael Brendan Dougherty, a writer at National Review and Roman Mass goer since 2001, writes on NYTimes.com (August 12).He says Traditionis Custodes will push the Roman Rite communities into the radicalism of their origine confirming their belief that the NO Eucharist “represents a new religion.”To stamp out the Mass, Francis is using the papacy in a way which progressives usually claim to deplore, Dougherty explains: centralism, usurpation of episcopal prerogatives, and micromanagement motivated by paranoia of disloyalty and heresy.Francis’ wish that Old Believers attend...

Moving Beyond Vatican IIHow do you solve a problem like Vatican II? While perhaps not as catchy as the classic Sound of Music tune, this question is far more complex than trying to marry off the future Baroness von Trapp. Catholics have been arguing over the council since before it even ended in 1965. While it was intended to usher the Church into the modern world, there’s no question that Vatican II and how to properly interpret it has been the most divisive issue in today’s Church—and the raging debate shows no signs of subsiding. Perhaps, though, it’s time to...

Establishment Churchmen Rush to Defend Vatican II after Viganò’s Remarks The Empire Strikes Back (1980) is generally regarded as one of the better, if not the best, Star Wars films. If you haven’t seen it already, the plot involves Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine (the “bad guys”) throwing down the hammer against the “rebel alliance,” a ragtag group of freedom fighters trying to bring justice to the galaxy, against all odds.The various responses made by establishment Catholics in recent days to the blunt but undoubtedly true remarks made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò about Vatican II mirror what played out...

[Catholic Caucus] WHETHER IT IS LICIT FOR A CATHOLIC TO QUESTION VATICAN II? Marco TosattiDear Stilumcuriali, Giuseppe Pellegrino, whom you know not only for his work as a translator for Stilum Curiae but also for his memory of the renunciation of Benedict XVI, has sent us a reflection of contribution to the open discussion in these days on the lawfulness or otherwise of discussing Vatican Council II. Enjoy your reading. Whether it is licit for a Catholic to question Vatican II?Objection 1. It would seem that it is not licit for a Catholic to question the teaching of Vatican II. For...

Time to stop making excuses for Vatican II and the New Mass Many good authors have told the tragic story well. Now it is time for clergy and laity both to do something about it. Editor’s note: The following article comes from an anonymous priest. June 30, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — In several recent statements, culminating in an interview with Philip Lawler, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has traced the evils that afflict the Church today back to their root within the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) and the New Order of the Mass (1969). In this he has rendered a service to...

[Catholic Caucus] (Archbishop Vigano's) Interview with Phil Lawler Lawler: First, what are you saying about Vatican II? That things have gone downhill fast since then is certainly true. But if the whole Council is a problem, how did that happen? How do we reconcile that with what we believe about the inerrancy of the magisterium? How were all the Council fathers deceived? Even if only some parts of the Council (e.g. Nostra Aetate, Dignitatis Humanae) are problematical, we still face the same questions. Many of us have been saying for years that the “spirit of Vatican II” is in error....