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It is often voiced by conservatives disheartened by the changes in the Catholic Church that Vatican II was a good council, but that it was misinterpreted. If these good people were better informed as to what took place at the Council, they would never say any such thing. Though Vatican II started with the best resolves, it was hijacked in the opening session by rebel bishops because the pope had planned the Council without their advice and against their designs. We gather that Cardinal Tisserant, the key draftsman of the 1962 Moscow-Vatican Treaty who presided at the opening session, was...

Father Roger Thomas Calmel, "Receive without the risk of being deceived..."The True Mass! The Latin Mass:Receive without the risk of being deceived... On 27th November 1969, three days before the fateful day on which the Novus Ordo Missae came into effect, Fr. Calmel expressed his refusal with a declaration of exceptional importance, made public in the magazine Itinéraires. The first and last, as far as we know,of such clarity and most praiseworthy courage. I hold to the traditional Mass, that which was codified, but not fabricated, by St. Pius V, in the XVI Century, in conformity to a centuries old...

People are free to raise questions about certain teachings but should remember Peter is the rock of the Catholic faith, according to the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl. Wuerl was in Orlando for the July 1-4 “Convocation of Catholic Leaders,” and spoke with Crux about the impact of the pontificate of Pope Francis.“We are 50 years after the [Second Vatican] Council. What’s happening is all that Pentecostal energy that the Council unleashed is now, with this Holy Father, being felt,” Wuerl said. “It has taken a long time, but the Church moves very slowly solidifying, clarifying, reaffirming her teaching....

( Cameron Doody ) .- "Pope Francis is a prophet, he is bringing the Church where he has to be, he is purifying the Church." The Cardinal Archbishop of Quebec, Gérald Lacroix, bets so strongly on the figure of Pope Bergoglio. A man who is changing the Church "forever" , creating from it "a new world". Speaking to America after the ad limina visit last month of the Canadian Bishops, Lacroix explained that the current Pope has put his pontificate firmly in the footsteps of Vatican II. The Council "did many jobs, changed many things, and now Francis is taking...

Bishop Stephan Ackermann of the Diocese of Trier, in Germany, has announced that the diocese will be closing almost all of its parishes. From Gloria.tv: Trier diocese, the oldest in Germany, will dissolve its 903 parishes and reduce them to 35, liberal Bishop Stephan Ackermann (54) explained on Friday during an information meeting of the diocese in Trier. He spoke of a “crisis”.Ackermann admitted that the new parishes will have nothing in common with the traditional ones “but the name”. Trier is the birthplace of Karl Marx. A Feature, Not a BugFor most Catholics in the English-speaking world, there...

Ed. Note: This is the third in a three-part series on the Catholic Church and Islam. The first installment, “The Interfaith Delusion,” appeared in our April issue, and the second, “Dawah, Dislocation & the Hijacking of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue,” appeared in May. In a recent article at National Review Online, Fr. Benedict Kiely describes a visit he had with a Catholic priest in Iraq, the pastor of a ruined church in the empty Christian town of Karemlash, which has been ravaged by the Islamic State. “Surveying the horror and the eerily silent town, punctuated only by the distant thump of...

50 years on, a fascinating glimpse of how liturgical reform became a juggernaut by Joseph Shaw posted Thursday, 25 May 2017 A Mass facing the people, with the tabernacle attached to the altar: Eucharisticum Mysterium, issued on May 25 1967, shows the conflict between innovation and traditionToday is the 50th anniversary of the Instruction Eucharisticum Mysterium, signed by both the Prefect of the soon-to-be abolished Sacred Congregation of Rites, and the President of the Concilium, the temporary institution in charge of the liturgical reform. It now represents a fascinating snapshot of a fast-moving action sequence.In 1967 the Novus Ordo Missae,...

A prominent Islamic expert is comparing the bishops' silence on terrorism to sex abuse cover-up. Robert Spencer, an Islamic terror expert and author of 16 books on Islam, released an editorial Sunday excoriating the U.S. bishops' actions to punish clergy and schoolteachers who speak out against Islam, including Spencer himself.  "The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops moves actively and swiftly to silence and demonize voices that tell the truth about the Muslim persecution of Christians," Spencer noted, naming various bishops who've refused him, as well as other Muslim critics, a platform in their dioceses. The USCCB moves actively and swiftly to...

Many bishops protected priests who were child molesters for years, transferring them from parish to parish and allowing them to prey upon new children rather than turning them over to police. In the Catholic Church today, protecting the image of Islam appears to be job one: you can be a cleric who speaks out against the Church’s official positions (such as those on contraception and female priests) and in many quarters of the Church you’ll be hailed as a hero. But the highly dubious proposition that Islam is a religion of peace has become a kind of superdogma that the...

In his column of April 28, Phil Lawler notes that over the past fifty years — meaning since the end of the Second Vatican Council, 52 years ago — not a single new parish has opened in the Archdiocese of Boston, but on the contrary some 125 parishes have either closed or been consolidated with other parishes. During the same period, he further notes, the number of Catholic priests has fallen from 2,500 to 300 — a staggering drop of 90%! And most of those, I would add, are probably over the age of 60. Yet the Catholic population of...

Rate this item 12345 (3 votes) “We who are here together and in peace believe and hope in a fraternal world. We desire that men and women of different religions may everywhere gather and promote harmony, especially where there is conflict. Our future consists in living together. For this reason we are called to free ourselves from the heavy burdens of distrust, fundamentalism and hate. Believers should be artisans of peace in their prayers to God and in their actions for humanity! As religious leaders, we are duty bound to be strong bridges of dialogue, creative mediators of peace.  –...

How do we know that Pope Paul VI consulted with Saul Alinsky? In The Rite of Sodomy Randy Engel wrote that Saul Alinsky met Pope Paul VI while Pope Paul VI was still Archbishop of Milan: “It was said of the new Archbishop of Milan that he didn’t hear church bells, he heard factory whistles. “It is not surprising therefore that on one of his visits to the Archbishop’s residence, Jacques Maritain, the once great Thomastic philosopher, brought with him, Saul David Alinsky, the “Apostle of the Permanent Revolution.” Montini [then Archbishop of Milan, later Pope Paul VI] was so...

Reconnecting the church “with the energy of the Second Vatican Council,” may be the pope’s greatest achievement, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington said in an exclusive interview with America as the fourth anniversary of the pope’s election approaches on March 13. According to Cardinal Wuerl, the pope is changing the papacy and “completely refocusing the role of bishop.” He said Pope Francis has “picked up where we left off” on Vatican II themes of collegiality and synodality and has refocused the church on “a moral theology that rests on scripture and Jesus’ command to love” and on...

This month marks the second anniversary of the martyrdom of 21 Coptic Christians at the hands of Islamic terrorists. Their crime? Loving Christ enough to die for Him. Would Roman Catholics do the same? What motivates martyrs, if not love? Michael Matt asks the question: Is it because the New Order no longer speaks of Holy MOTHER Church that so few of her sons seem willing to die for her anymore? What have we lost? What was life in the Church like just 40 years ago? Growing up Catholic...and remembering what we lost. Scapulars. Meat-less Friday. Ember Days. Midnight Masses....

A new book by a priest who led the vanguard of dissent on birth control in Canada reveals for the first time his decades living as an active homosexual. Father Gregory Baum, a laicized priest married to a former nun for 30 years, admits in his forthcoming autobiography The Oil Has Not Run Dry that his wife did not mind the fact that he had a gay priest-lover on the side. "Shirley did not mind that, when we moved to Montreal in 1986, I met Normand, a former priest, with whom I fell in love," Baum writes in Chapter 32....

We can’t really say everything old is new again. It’s really just more of the same. But we can certainly look behind the headlines to a little bit of recent Catholic history and discover that most of the daily list of horrors coming out of the Vatican and upper levels of the episcopate are nothing new at all. They are, at most, natural developments of what has been going on for 50 years. One might say, the logical results of them

As the vast majority of readers of this space are perfectly well-aware, the current crisis in the Church concerning Francis in general, and Amoris Laetitia in particular, is part and parcel of the conciliar revolution. As I wrote in the previous post, the documents of the Council – by turning on its head the constant teaching of the Church on such matters as religious liberty, ecumenism, the Church’s relationship with the Jews, etc. – actually set the stage for Amoris Laetitia to do the same with regard to adultery, marriage and family, Holy Communion, and even the very concept of...

We begin the new year, as always filled with expectations. Along with these expectations we are also filled with fears, considering the rough waters of confusion we are now submerged in. Confusion, seeing as there is hardly anything left stable in the world and the situation is infinitely worse for us in the Church. At one time the confusion of the world was crushed against the rugged stability of the Church of God. Men need a steadfast rock to build upon and inside the Church they found that stable composedness which gave them the confidence necessary to brave the struggles...

Was it Cromwell that said, “It is time to investigate history and learn what is really at stake at this moment in time.” That being said, it is time to investigate relevant secular history and learn what is really at stake at this moment in time. You have to wonder what impact Saul David Alinsky had on Pope Paul VI, on the Second Vatican Council, and on contemporary modernist Catholicism – especially in the United States of America. Pope Paul VI, before being elected pope, spent two weeks consulting with Saul David Alinsky “on the Church’s relationship to local Communist...

Today, October 11, 2016, marks the 54th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. While regular readers of this space are well-versed in matters concerning Vatican II, the Council it remains a source of confusion for many if not most in the Church, and that includes any number of those in Catholic media. With this in mind, I’d like to take the opportunity to provide some basic but critically important information, in an easy-to-read Q&A format, for the benefit of those who are struggling to come to grips with the reality of the Council’s place in the life...