Free Republic

(Hymn at the link.) With everyone so urgent about who is Pope Leo XIV, we may want to pull back and think about who he will seem to be in a year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, after his death, after the next Pope. When God sends the people a scourge because they dispise his blessings, and they are trying to understand why bad things are happening to supposedly good people, you can't just look at the punishment, you need to examine those who are the punished. The punishment for our faithlessness was a Dictator Pope who deliberately promoted...

Spanish bishop laments widespread loss of Catholic faith in his countrySpain has seen a dramatic fall in numbers of people identifying as Catholic as part of a wider stagnation of the Catholic faith across Europe.Spain is no longer a de facto Catholic country, the nation’s leading Catholic prelate has stated, with numbers of Catholics falling and the hierarchy also mired in a controversy to sell off Church assets.“The time has passed, settled for centuries, when we said: I’m Catholic because I was born in Spain,” said Archbishop Luis Argüello last week. The Archbishop of Valladolid was speaking at the recent...

[Catholic Caucus] Archbishop Aguer: Our vocations crisis must be addressed. Here is what I proposeCareful reflection and a variety of experience enable me at this point in my life to attempt a synthesis on priestly formation and propose ways to overcome our present vocations crisis. Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a multi-part series addressing the decline in the number of Catholic priests and seminarians worldwide.(LifeSiteNews) — On numerous occasions I have referred to a crucial issue for the Church: the formation of candidates for the priesthood. Today I take it up again, without pretending, of course, to exhaust...

Vatican II and the Most Wicked Swindle Since Satan Tempted Eve in the GardenIn the name of a fraudulent unity based on appeasing Protestants, Cardinal Bea managed to deceive the apparent leadership of the Catholic Church into abandoning the Great Commission. It was the greatest swindle in salvation history since Satan tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden.To set the stage for understanding the second greatest swindle in salvation history, it is useful to consider which of the following two statements would sound most correct to the ostensible leaders of the Catholic Church today:Membership in the Church is necessary for...

[Catholic Caucus] Irony Alert: Postconciliar Iconoclasts Arrive at the Feast of St John Damascene and Smash ItSo much to observe about today's confluence in the Roman Rite, on this Thursday of the third week of Lent, with a commemoration of St. John Damascene.First, the ancient Roman liturgy keeps a station today at a church in honor of the physician brothers and martyrs Cosmas and Damian. Obviously the Gospel about the healing of Peter's mother-in-law fits right in; the propers also mention "salus," whose basic meaning is "health" although it takes on the supernatural meaning of "salvation."The TLM, by remembering Cosmas...

EXPOSED: Inside the anti-Catholic agenda of the parish hymn industryWho controls the 'hymnal industrial complex'? The people reaping the profits are not just business executives. They are ideologues with a mission to reshape Catholic worship. Since the 1960s, the ancient chants and beautiful hymns that once elevated the Mass have been discarded in favor of a more “modern” sound. Organs and choirs have given way to guitars, pianos, and tambourines, a shift many faithful Catholics find deeply inappropriate. Yet few realize that this transformation is not just a matter of musical preference – it is rooted in a deliberate, anti-Catholic...

[Catholic Caucus] Attendance at Mass and How to Fix ItIn October of every year, my diocese, the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, conducts a “head count” in order to determine average Mass attendance. The results of the 2024 count were published in the diocesan newspaper, The Arlington Catholic Herald, in the Jan. 30 – Feb. 12, 2025 edition. Out of an estimated 433,000 registered Catholics in the diocese, approximately 28.8% attended “weekend” Mass in October, 2024.The article compared this result to national attendance rates, citing a Gallup survey in 2024 that showed 23% weekly Mass attendance and a Georgetown University survey...

The Post-Conciliar Ecumenism and the Great DiscontinuityThere is no other error (or, rather, sum of errors) as specifically (neo)modernist as the so-called “ecumenism.” This is why rejecting it and the relativism and indifferentism it generates is absolutely necessary.One of the most debatable directions inaugurated by the Second Vatican Council is that in favor of ecumenism. In blatant contradiction to the Church’s constant Magisterial position regarding the positive reception of religious pluralism, this new teaching has become the dominant feature of post-conciliar Catholicism. Things have gone so far that, in addition to the formation of a special dicastery for the “promotion...

[Catholic Caucus] Vatican II and the Hermeneutic of God Allowing Us to Learn Painful LessonsIf we simply look at these three realities from the first days of the Council — abandoning the practice of condemning errors; appointing heterodox theologians as experts; and allowing the progressives to hijack the Council — it should be obvious that Vatican II began by betraying God and His truth.“The Holy Spirit does not always prevent the necessary consequences of our negligence.” (Fr. Alvaro Calderon, Prometheus: The Religion of Man)Among faithful Catholics who truly seek to understand the ongoing crisis in the Church, serious disagreements frequently...

Remember the Springtime in the Church: Reality is Demographic Winter!It's bad news for Catholics from a PEW Survey on Religion in America, the first since 2014. For every 100 new Catholics entering the Church, 800 leave. This from Eric Sammons at Crisis Magazine:No other religion has nearly as bad of a join/leave ratio. For every 100 people that become Protestant, 180 leave. That’s bad, but it’s not Catholic bad. Conversely, for every 100 people who leave the religious “nones” (i.e., they join a religion), a full 590 become part of that irreligious cohort. Where are the former Catholics going? Of...

[Catholic Caucus] HISTORY'S VERDICT: After 60 Years, Vatican II Was a DisasterIs the Catholic Church better off today than it was in 1965? Back in 2013, Pope Benedict XVI admitted that the Second Vatican Council had been co-opted and made into what he called the "Council of the Media," which led to "so many calamities, seminaries closed, convents closed, and the liturgy was banalized." So, what really happened and why must every Catholic on earth remain forever loyal and true to Vatican II? And, for that matter, WHICH Vatican II -- the real one, or Benedict's "Council of the Media"...

Cardinal Roche: ‘Nothing wrong’ with Latin Mass but Church needed to ‘move away’ from itCardinal Arthur Roche, a leading enforcer of Pope Francis’ restrictions on the Latin Mass, has said there is ‘nothing wrong’ with the traditional liturgy but insists the Church deliberately moved ‘away from’ it for ‘very good reasons.’After vigorously implementing Pope Francis restrictions on the traditional Mass, Cardinal Arthur Roche has said there is “nothing wrong” with the Latin Mass but that the Church wished to “move away from what had become an overly elaborate form of celebrating the Mass.”Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and...

[Catholic Caucus] Pius X’s 1903 call to ‘restore all things in Christ’ is even more relevant todaySt. Pius X knew there would come a time when God’s enemies would believe they had triumphed. Paradoxically, it is at that moment that God’s victory is near: 'the victory will ever be with God — nay, defeat is at hand at the moment when man, under the delusion of his triumph, rises up with most audacity.'In the first encyclical of his papacy, E Supreme Apostolatus, St. Pius X emphasized the pressing need to restore all things in Christ. As he saw it in...

The Charismatic Cardinal Suenens Architect of the Vatican II RevolutionEditors Note: We are happy to republish this previously ‘lost’ (unpublished since 1997) article in conjunction with a history of the CCR with Kennedy Hall on our YouTube Channel. The late John Vennari was a crusader for Catholic orthodoxy and our former Editor-in-Chief.Part I Recap:Part I of this article (October 1997) explained that Charismatics gained “legitimacy” within the Catholic Church primarily due to the efforts of the late Cardinal Leon Joseph Suenens of Belgium. It was demonstrated that since Suenens was one of the most liberal Cardinals of this century, it...

The Council’s Origins: Heaven or Hell?As reported by Catholic News Agency (CNA), Catholic University of Valencia recently gave an honorary doctorate to Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Lunacy.This is the department that is charged with carrying out the conciliar church’s ecumenical operation, specifically, by propagating and implementing Unitatis Redintegratio of Vatican II.In his acceptance speech, Koch said:For the Council, fidelity to its origins and conformity to the times were not opposed to each other. Rather, the council wanted to proclaim the Catholic faith in a way that was both faithful to its origins and appropriate...

Sacrificing Catholics for EcumenismIt’s no secret that the Catholic Church is bleeding members. According to Pew Research, those who have left Catholicism outnumber those who have joined the Catholic Church by nearly a four-to-one margin. As such statistics continue to worsen, the emphasis on evangelization grows. Yet, few can state what that ought to look like. So much of the focus has been upon reaching “across the aisle” and attempting to assimilate with Protestants. A recent case of a Catholic young adult group chat that was admonished by clergy for sharing memes with a jocular approach to Protestant themes serves...

<p>One of the most devastating casualties in the period after Vatican II has been the practical elimination of the distinction between objective redemption and subjective redemption. This has contributed to various evils, ranging from mass apostasy to the Vatican’s persecution of those Catholics who believe what the Church has always taught. Indeed, in one way or another, almost every aspect of the ongoing crisis in the Church relates to the effective elimination of the concept of subjective redemption.</p>

Trad Godfathers at Vatican II: Lefebvre on the Eve of the CouncilTowards a Better Understanding of the Second Vatican Council: The Importance of studying the Cœtus Internationalis Patrum. Read part I The Coetus: Trad Godfathers at Vatican IIPart II: What Did the Leading Members of Coetus Want Vatican II to Address?The Case of Archbishop Marcel LefebvreWhen the progressives won their first procedural victory at Vatican II on November 21, 1962 (John XXIII withdrew the schema on Revelation that had been prepared before the council), a conservative resistance formed around Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre throughout the rest of that first conciliar session....

“Once a Catholic Always a Catholic”? Not Necessarily.Many Catholics casually say the following line to ex-Catholics in order to get them back into a Church building: “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.” It sounds welcoming, but it’s theologically wrong.This is because the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and the Church Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Popes all taught: A bad Catholic never ceases to be a Catholic, provided his failure be not faith-based but morality-based (and also provided those moral failures be not excommunicable.) On the other hand, a baptized person who has purposely rejected even one tenet of...

The Charismatic Cardinal Suenens | Part 1Editors Note: We are happy to republish this previously ‘lost’ (unpublished since 1997) article in conjunction with a history of the CCR with Kennedy Hall on our YouTube Channel. The late John Vennari was a crusader for Catholic orthodoxy and our former Editor-in-Chief.Part 2 will be published soon.The August 1997 issue of Catholic Family News featured the article “A ‘Catholic’ Charismatic Extravaganza” which contained a report on the Charismatic’s 30th Anniversary conference in Pittsburgh. The article also catalogued a brief summary of the most serious problems with “Catholic” pentecostalism as being radically opposed to...