Free Republic

Why did Pope Pius XI, when he established the Feast of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ with his encyclical Quas Primas un 1925, not choose for it the last Sunday of the liturgical year (as Paul VI did later for his new mass), but rather the Last Sunday in October? The short answer is simple: Christ the King is the Anti-Luther. The Lord is not the king of this or that German princedom, changing doctrines according to the whim of the moment. He's the King of the Universe, unchanging and unchangeable. As a counter-feast of the "Reformation Sunday"...

Don't you HATE when this happens?? In 1962, as millions of Catholics languished behind the iron curtain and the Soviet Union worked to spread atheistic communism throughout the world, the Second Vatican Council was preparing to deliver an historic condemnation of Marxist and communist ideology, one that would involve a global strategy for its defeat. Vatican II’s preparatory commissions had created three different statements that would condemn Marxism as an “exceedingly grave and universal danger” and communism as “a false religion without God” that seeks to “to subvert the foundations of Christian civilization.” They also envisioned a massive and highly-coordinated...

Editor's note: The lost condemnations of communism prepared for the Second Vatican Council but later discarded and forgotten are now being made available to the public in an English translation for the first time by LifeSiteNews. The translations, by LifeSite's Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, are based on the drafts of documents contained in the official acts of the council’s preparatory commissions. The documents contain an extensive plan for a coordinated and global effort to counteract the influence of Marxism and communism worldwide and “shatter its audacity.” However, following the takeover of the council’s commissions by the ultra-liberal “Rhine group” bishops, the...

Seminarians, calling themselves The Dameans, set liturgical music to guitars in the 1970s. Photo credit: thecatholiccommentator.org What might be the repercussions of Pope Francis’ public letter to Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Vatican’s liturgy chief, correcting him for seeking to rein in the Pope’s new liturgical decentralization?  To gain perspective on the significance and potential impact of the Pope’s letter to the cardinal, we spoke with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, a prolific writer and international lecturer on the liturgy, as well as a cantor, conductor, and composer of sacred music. LifeSite: Dr. Kwasniewski, what in your view is the most significant...

“The real revolution there happened under John Paul II, not Francis, which hasn’t really yet been understood,” said Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.While apologists for recently canonized Pope John Paul II scramble to defend the late Pontiff for the apparent exploitation of the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family that bears his name, a closer look at their rationale is guaranteed to raise eyebrows. However, the stunned reaction might not be at the audacity of their claims, but the coherence of their explanations.Let’s unpack this.Archbishop Paglia taps into one of Pope John Paul II’s most ubiquitous themes: consciousness, or “awareness”...

We continue our conversation over tea with my curate friend from the local parish with the question of the Mass. With obvious pastoral concern, my friend asked me why I felt so strongly about the New Mass. Why was someone my age, who had never seen the Church before the changes, so “attached” to the older form? I think I rather surprised him when I passed over all questions of aesthetics and replied, “Because it represents a different religion.” He had agreed with my first premise that liturgy was a manifestation, in actions and words, of theology. Liturgy was theology...

With the publication of the Envirocylcical, Laudao Si’, many were shocked to discover that this represented the first time the once-condemned French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, was cited in a papal (if you will allow) encyclical. (Laudato Si’, footnote no. 53) In 1962, Teilhard was the subject of a monitum (warning) issued by the Holy Office which read in part:The most eminent and most revered Fathers of the Holy Office exhort all Ordinaries, as well as the superiors of Religious institutes, rectors of seminaries and presidents of universities, effectively to protect the minds, particularly of the youth, against the dangers...

If the grand altars, with all their gold and statues and size, are at their core outward signs of inward devotion, what does it say about plain altars that more resemble a table than a temple? For most of the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history, it has been known for its magnificent churches. In the popular psyche, the stereotypical Catholic church has high, arched ceilings, statues of saints, massive crucifixes, incense that seems to pour from the walls, and gilded, beautiful, and (sometimes) obnoxious altars.There is perhaps no better example of this than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Vatican itself,...

Something went wrong—seriously wrong—in the Catholic Church in the years after Vatican II. Can we all agree on that much? Leave aside, for now, the familiar debate about the causes of the problem; let’s begin with the agreement that there is, or at least certainly was, a problem. Eric Sammons makes the point in a provocative essay that appeared in Crisis last week: If an entirely objective social scientist were to study the Catholic Church in the second half of the twentieth century, he would see one fact staring him straight in the face: the Church experienced a precipitous decline...

Several years ago, when it was becoming increasingly common for adults to allege childhood sexual abuse long past based upon so-called repressed memories, one of the most esteemed pastors of a local diocese was accused of sexual abuse of a child while hearing his confession. The attorney representing the alleged victim did much grandstanding in the media in preparation for the trial, only to have the case thrown out of court when it was determined that the abuse alleged to have occurred decades ago would have been physically impossible, since confessionals physically isolated priest and penitent back then. The conventional...

Evangelization can be frustrating. After 25 years evangelizing in my personal life and in official roles with the Church, including as a diocesan Director of Evangelization, I know this well. Few Catholics, of course, would be surprised that evangelization can be arduous. They may be surprised, however, at the way censorship in the Church poses a threat to evangelization. The little-known truth is that certain viewpoints, even though compatible with Catholic theology, are censored both by the institutional Church as well as many orthodox Catholic organizations—viewpoints that directly impact the success of evangelization efforts.When the word “censorship” comes up,...

I always find it faintly amusing to see how “mainstream” Catholic commentators attempt to diagnose the obvious malaise of the Church that developed abruptly after the Second Vatican Council, at whose beginning Pope John XXIII was praising “the Church’s vitality.” Take this commentary, for example, which laments that “[f]ew religious publications are willing to delve into the issues facing the Catholic Church today when it comes to declining attendance. Most priests do not want to recognize the fact that churches are now emptier today than ever before and parochial schools are closing at an accelerating rate.”Why?  The author never really...

Rorate Caeli, Corrispondenza Romana and other Catholic news-outlets, carried a valuable intervention by Monsignor Athanasius Schneider on the “Interpretation of the Second Vatican Council and its relationship with the current crisis in the Church”. According to the auxiliary Bishop of Astana, Vatican II was a pastoral Council and its texts should be read and judged in the light of the perennial teaching of the Church. In fact “From an objective point of view, the statements of the Magisterium (Popes and councils) of definitive character, have more value and more weight compared with the statements of pastoral character, which have naturally...

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,...