Free Republic

[Catholic Caucus] Ratzinger, Tyconius, and Fatima: An Interpretive Key for the End Times. Dear friends and foes of Stilum Curiae, a scholar has sent us this short essay which we gladly offer for your attention, convinced that it may be of great interest. Happy reading. §§§ Ratzinger, Tyconius, and Fatima: An Interpretive Key for the End Times By A Marian Soul It is no easy task to understand the present crisis of evil within the Church, which at times may seem overwhelming. Benedict XVI has indicated that the theology of Tyconius can assist the Church in understanding how to expose...

[Catholic Caucus] Diocese in the Netherlands announces parishes will no longer offer Mass every Sunday'In many deaneries, it is simply no longer possible to find and maintain structured enough priests to celebrate the Eucharist every weekend in every church; other places are experiencing a shortage of priests.'ROERMOND, Netherlands (LifeSiteNews) – As Mass attendance continues to dwindle, the Diocese of Roermond in the Netherlands recently announced its parishes will no longer offer the Mass every Sunday.Citing a shortage of priests and volunteers as well as an increase in energy costs, Vicar General René Maessen wrote in a letter last month that...

[Catholic Caucus] Archbishop Weakland Stole More Than Money, He Stole the FaithSpeak only good things of the dead, the saying goes. The yoga division of The New York Times assumed a veritable Möbius strip of a position to attempt to write a laudable obituary for Rembert Weakland, the disgraced former archbishop of Milwaukee, who died the other day at the age of 95.It wasn’t entirely successful. The eulogist, one Robert D. McFadden, did have to mention that Weakland “paid” $450,000 as hush money to ward off a lawsuit by his former male lover, who accused him of sexual assault. I...

[Catholic Caucus] From Vatican II to Pregnant Men: Bounding Down the Path of Diabolical InsanityOne can imagine a world in which life simply became progressively worse without also becoming increasingly absurd, but such is not the world in which we live today. Our Church and world have gotten astonishingly worse since Francis introduced us to his blasphemous Pachamama in October 2019, and every single wicked development has also involved an aspect of phenomenal absurdity. We do not necessarily hear the demons laughing uproariously, but surely they are.Insanity did not originate with the Second Vatican Council, but there is a clear...

Michael Davies in 1976: “My Lord, this is not the action of a good shepherd but a bad bureaucrat” Now that current Church leaders have adopted the motto of “Back to the 1970s” (who is the “backwardist”?), it is worthwhile to take out and dust off some of the great writings from that period, such as this masterful letter penned by the premiere English apologist for the TLM, Michael Davies, in response to Bishop Donohoe of Fresno’s vitriolic letter against the traditional Mass. The letter was published in The Remnant on March 20, 1976. Below is a copy of...

American Mass Attendance Before and After “the Council.”Photo credit above: Dr. Peter Kwasniewski.A new CARA study quoting Gallup polls has recently published statistics on current American Catholicism as seen above. We have all known for awhile that there were more ex-Catholics than Catholics in the USA, but the spread is enormous in the above numbers that just came out in 2022. In one graphic from CARA (above chart) see especially that there’s almost 113 million US Catholics baptized but only about 53 million of them even attempt to attend yearly Mass at Christmas and Easter.Another study (above) came out a...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope hails post-Vatican II liturgical moves, calls for ‘dialogue’ to promote lay and female ministriesPope Francis called for discussions amongst the world’s bishops to further promote the changes to the Church promoted after Vatican II. His letter was described as pushing ‘a revolutionary process.’ANALYSISVATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has issued a message praising the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s abolition of the Catholic Church’s traditional minor orders, calling for further examination of the “richness” of this decision, and hinting at future actions that would undermine the ordained priesthood.

[Catholic Caucus] The “Latin Novus Ordo” Is Not the SolutionIn the wake of Traditionis Custodes, some have made the good-faith suggestion that a “solution” for a future depleted of traditional Latin Masses is “doing the Novus Ordo in Latin.”This is an absolute non-starter for several reasons.First, the missals are notably different. All you have to do is compare them to see that the Order of Mass and the Propers of the Mass are largely divergent. The classic article here is Matthew Hazell’s, demonstrating that only 13% of the orations of the old missal are found intact in the new one...

The Costs of Catholic Silence as the World Looks for AnswersAs Michael Matt highlighted in a recent Remnant Underground, some of the most persuasive thinkers in the secular world (most notably, Tucker Carlson) have started to describe today’s mounting worldwide crisis in terms of a spiritual battle. Such realizations of themselves do not necessarily lead souls to the truth, but they provide opportunities for Catholics to help more people see that the only path out of this crisis is to embrace the immutable Catholic Faith.Any such efforts to lead souls to the Catholic Church must overcome the fact that most...

Rehashed Protestantism: Francis' Eucharist Represents "Last Supper”José Antonio Ureta, a member of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) published on OnePeterFive.com (August 12) a 16-pages study on “theological deviations” in Desiderio Desideravi, Francis' attack against the Mass (below).In DD, Francis refers the Eucharist to the Last Supper, rather than to Christ's sacrifice on Calvary. DD 4 even claims that the “same Supper will be made present in the celebration of the Eucharist until he returns again.” Ureta notices that this is warmed-over Protestantism.Francis then alleges that "every man and woman" should eat the Eucharist suggesting a theological indifference which fits with...

“The Mass Is Not Ended” — A Review-Essay by Cleto Moroni A new book by Cristina Siccardi, That Mass So Battered and Persecuted, Yet So Alive! has been released [so far in Italian only], dedicated to the Mass that some call Vetus Ordo, others “the Mass of Ages.” The issue is as thorny as ever. The essay asks some inescapable and radical questions. What were the real goals of the conciliar liturgical reform? What were the results? Why is fidelity to the Mass so important to Catholics, now nearly one and a half billion worldwide?In the most unjust trial...

Liturgical Devastation: Is it due to Vatican II?The result [of the post-conciliar liturgical reform] has not been a reanimation, but devastation. In place of the liturgy, fruit of a continual development, they have placed a fabricated liturgy … a banal product of the moment.The above quote from Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Revue Theologisches, Vol. 20, Feb. 1990, pgs. 103-104) is familiar to all. But how did this happen? Was it due to the revolutionary force of Vatican II, or did it come about despite the Council’s best efforts? It is my opinion that even if the reformers had slavishly adhered to...

[Catholic Caucus] What Does “Full Communion” Mean? — Of Ecclesial Insults and Injuries This article appeared in French as Letter 878 of Paix Liturgique. It has been translated for Rorate Caeli.The ecumenism of Vatican II is based on the affirmation that our separated brothers and sisters are "in imperfect communion" with the Church and with Christ (Unitatis redintegratio, n. 3). This is a colossal novelty, for one is or is not in communion with Christ through faith, just as one is or is not in a state of grace through charity. By this subterfuge the separated become semi-Catholics, which...

[Catholic Caucus] The Terribly Simple Need to Go All-In For Christ“And Peter going down out of the boat, walked upon the water to come to Jesus. But seeing the wind strong, he was afraid: and when he began to sink, he cried out saying: Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretching forth His hand took hold of him, and said to him: O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt?” (Matthew 14:29-31)When Fr. Marie-Dominique Molinié, O.P. preached the 1953 retreat (to Dominican nuns) that forms the basis for his recently translated The Courage to Be Afraid, he did not...

'THE COUNCIL AND THE ECLIPSE OF GOD' by Don Pietro Leone - Chapter 9 - THEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS - part 1 - 40 HERESIES THEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS: 40 HERESIESTheological Analysis Let what we have written in Parts I and II of the book stand as a theological analysis of the individual conciliar texts. We shall content ourselves here with: 1. A Brief Summary of the Council’s Heterodoxy; 2. A Presentation of the Formal Principle of its Heterodoxy. 1. A Brief Summary of the Council’s Heterodoxy Here we present the Catholic doctrines that we have seen the Council explicitly or implicitly deny, or...

[Catholic Caucus] When Will Some Courageous Shepherds Just Say NO? The other night I watched, once again, the 1973 film, The Catholics, with Martin Sheen and Trevor Howard. The title was later changed to Conflict. If you want to understand where we're going, watch the movie. Brief synopsis: The Latin Mass has almost disappeared after Vatican IV. A group of Irish monks, however, continue to pray the Latin Mass and, to accommodate the crowds, they say it on a mountain that was once the scene of Masses during Cromwell's persecution. After a news broadcast about the Mass, pilgrims head...

[Catholic Caucus] The Liturgy Wars Have Become Doctrinal WarsMany Catholics over the past few decades have studiously avoided the “liturgy wars” within the Church and, frankly, I don’t blame them. Too often these battles involve a lot of heat and not a lot of light. Catholic against Catholic can become quite vicious and personal at times. Better to simply keep one’s head down, bear silently with any liturgical issues at your parish, and soldier on.Because of this prevailing attitude, many Catholics have also only been somewhat if at all interested in Pope Francis’s efforts to restrict and ultimately eliminate the...

[Catholic Caucus] How Goodwill Was Squandered This week our eyes were graced with the scandalous spectacle of Father Mattia Bernasconi, vicar of the pastoral care for young people of the parish of San Luigi Gonzaga in Milan, celebrating Mass on an air mattress in the water at the beach at Alfieri in Italy's Crotone region—for no reason save that "it was hot." The source for the story can be found here.I do not draw attention to this for the purposes of making another tired old "Look how bad the Novus Ordo is" post. We all know how bad the...

[Catholic Caucus] “To go back is to go forward, to be propelled by the river of the great Tradition”: Archbishop Aguer against Papal Progressivism Progressivism, which established itself a decade ago in Rome, decries a kind of reverse populism.The populist handbook indicates that one must win the trust and adhesion of young people. But it happens that young people nowadays are suspicious of deviations and progressive adventures; they prefer and love Tradition. Rome, then, scourges them by scornfully branding them as ones who would "go back to the past"; they look "back" and long to get "behind" [what came...

[Catholic Caucus] “Ecclesial Communion Is Not Something Decreed: The Vain Attempt of the Apostolic Letter Desiderio Desideravi” The following article was published by Paix Liturgique, Lettre 874, on July 13th (source).“Let us abandon our polemics to listen together to what the Spirit is saying to the Church, let us safeguard our communion”: these words from the conclusion of Desiderio desideravi (n. 61) are in fact the main — and vain — preoccupation of this Letter, as well as of the pontificate: to remake, one could say to replaster, a broken communion in the Christian people, a break to which...