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[Catholic Caucus] Prof. de Mattei backs Fr. Murr’s claims about the 1978 Vatican investigation into Freemasonry'I know some of the facts and knew some of the main characters described in Don Murr’s book and can confirm the absolute historical accuracy of the events the author himself witnessed,' de Mattei wrote in the forward to Fr. Charles Murr's book.Professor Roberto de Mattei, a well-respected Italian historian and traditional Catholic, has written a preface (see full text below) to the Italian edition of Father Charles Murr’s book on the 1978 Vatican investigation into ecclesial freemasonry, confirming the essential elements of Murr’s account....

Surveying Cardinal Augustin Bea’s Path of Destruction: From Pius XII to the Synod and BeyondIn his February 25, 2019 address on the fiftieth anniversary of Cardinal Augustin Bea’s death, Francis praised Bea’s ability to foster unity among all people as well as his immense influence at Vatican II: “[The Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies], in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Center for the Study of Christianity in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is commemorating Cardinal Augustin Bea by a series of scholarly lectures marking the fiftieth anniversary of his...

[Catholic Caucus] “Thou Shalt Not Kneel”: Guest Article by Leo DarrochBackground to this guest article: As LifeSiteNews reported on October 7, 2023: “A Catholic family of eight was recently denied Holy Communion while kneeling while attending Mass at a church in the Diocese of Boise. Both the local priest and bishop refused to acknowledge that the denial of the sacrament was a grave violation of canon law. Scott Smith, a Catholic attorney, author, theologian, and father of six, was on vacation with his family in Idaho in August and went to Sunday Mass at St. Charles Borromeo in Hailey. ‘After...

New cardinal, expert on Vatican II says ideology has blocked council’s implementationROME – Cardinal Agostino Marchetto, considered one of the “honorary” cardinals created by Pope Francis because he’s already over 80 and thus ineligible to participate in the next conclave, and a famous historian of Vatican II, has said he believes the council has not been fully implemented and that ideology has gotten in the way of a true interpretation.Secretary emeritus of Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, Marchetto, 83, got his red hat from Pope Francis during Saturday’s consistory.Also known for his writings on the Second Vatican Council,...

Dominican Theologian Attacks Catholic Tradition (Part 3): Getting Our Dogmatic Facts Straight(See Part 1 and Part 2.)Third argument: the Novus Ordo is nothing other than a revised Roman riteFr. Donneaud writes:The missal of Paul VI is simply a revised and reformed version of the Roman rite that has always existed. The changes to the missal introduced by Paul VI were no more than a return to earlier features of the Roman rite. Dr. Kwasnieswki’s assertion that the missal in use prior to the missal of Paul VI cannot be suppressed because it contains the immemorial Roman Rite is therefore baseless,...

[Catholic Caucus] Dominican Theologian Attacks Catholic Tradition (Part 2): On the Novus Ordo as the “Sole Form” of the Roman Rite"One missal to rule them all..."(See Part 1.)(II) Fr. Donneaud on the Novus Ordo as the sole form of the Roman RiteIn addition to his general theological case against traditionalism, Fr. Donneaud argues in support of Pope Francis’s actions in Traditionis custodes and against Dr. Kwasniewski on the basis of specific factual assertions about the Novus Ordo. These arguments, which form a large part of his case, do not depend on his general theological position, and are very commonly made...

[Catholic Caucus] How Francis’s Synod Exploits the Errors of Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium to Redefine the ChurchThe Synod on Synodality’s Instrumentum Laboris includes a list of abbreviations for the sixteen documents cited in its text: two from John Paul II, two from the General Secretariat of the Synod, five from Francis, and seven from Vatican II. As we have come to expect, this list does not include any documents promulgated before Vatican II. Most of the Vatican II references in Instrumentum Laboris come from the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. One of the documents from the Synod on...

The ADL and the Latin MassIn recent days, the Anti Defamation League has attracted severe criticism online for their allegedly over zealous response to perceived anti Semitism. Twitter/X owner Elon Musk has even got in on the criticism, threatening to bring a lawsuit against the organisation for revenue lost due to their criticisms of the platform. In 2007, the organisation piled pressure on the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI after his landmark document Summorum Pontificum, which had loosened restrictions on the Latin Mass. The motu proprio led to a boom in young people returning to the faith as well as...

Archbishop defends giving Holy Communion to Muslim leader, citing Pope Francis and Vatican IIThe event, despite Archbishop Steinmetz’s defense, is in violation of Catholic teaching on a fundamental level.Abp. Steinmetz giving Holy Communion to Sheik MahairiCiting Pope Francis’ writings restricting the traditional liturgy, a Brazilian archbishop gave Holy Communion to a Muslim cleric at a funeral for a recently deceased cardinal.The news of a Muslim cleric receiving Holy Communion at the hands of a Catholic archbishop has sparked outrage. On August 28, Archbishop Geremias Steinmetz of the Archdiocese of Londrina in Brazil gave Holy Communion to Sheik Ahmad Saleh Mahairi....

Prelate Defends Giving Communion to Muslim SheikhBrazilian archbishop quotes Pope Francis and Vatican II's 'Nostra Aetate'A pro-LGBT Brazilian archbishop is invoking Pope Francis' apostolic letter on liturgical formation and the documents of Vatican II to justify his choice to administer Holy Communion to a Muslim sheikh at a funeral service. "Every reception of Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ was already desired by Him in the Last Supper," argues the archbishop of Londrina, Geremias Steinmetz, quoting Pope Francis in a clarification issued on the diocesan website on Aug. 30.Viral VideoA video of Abp. Steinmetz giving the Sacred Host...

Pope Francis urges Buddhists, Muslims, and Shamans to promote their religions during event in MongoliaSpeaking to Buddhist, Shinto, Shaman, Jewish, Muslim, and assorted Christian religious leaders, Pope Francis praised the assembled religions for being the continuation of 'ancient schools of wisdom.'Speaking as part of an ecumenical gathering during his trip to Mongolia, Pope Francis quoted from Buddhist texts while arguing that “every religious institution” has “the right to freely express what it is and what it believes.”He urged gathered non-Catholic religious leaders to promote their own religions, saying, “May it be so for us, as committed followers of our respective...

An Enemy Has Done This: Globalism, the Conciliar Church, and Crippled Consciences“There is only one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one can be saved.” (Innocent III and the Fourth Ecumenical Council of the Lateran, 1215) In his 1968 book about the aftermath of Vatican II, Is it the Same Church?, Frank Sheed described the way in which Catholic views on contraception changed in the 1960s:“Up to, say, 1960 it was assumed by everyone, inside the Church and outside, that the Church taught definitively and unchangeably that artificial contraception was a grave sin. Catholics who used it...

[Catholic Caucus] McCarrick’s Escape: An Allegory for our TimesSo, it looks like Uncle Ted McCarrick is going to walk away from the flaccid arm of the law scot-free. It has been announced that the charges against him have been dropped by the Massachusetts judge overseeing the case.In 2021, McCarrick pleaded not guilty to charges that he abused a boy at a wedding reception at Wellesley College in 1974. He was also charged in April with sexually assaulting an 18-year-old man in Wisconsin more than 45 years ago. An expert working for the court in Massachusetts argued that at 93 and...

[Catholic Caucus] The Future of the Catholic ChurchIn a radio address back in 1969, a young German theologian named Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, saw hard times ahead for the Catholic Church. It will “become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning,” he predicted, and the process would be painful. But though smaller, the Church of the future will have been “re-shaped by saints” to become a beacon for people seeking answers to questions of meaning, for which the arrogant secularism of those dark times will have no reply.While the saints whom...

TRENT, Italy, June, 1979, Address by Abp. Lefebvre: “The Second Vatican Council: what would the Fathers of the Council of Trent have to say about it?” An exclusive translation. Introductory remarks from the translatorThis is an excerpt from a long article in “La Tradizione Cattolica”( Year XXXIV – n°2 (124) – 2023). It is the transcript of an address the Archbishop gave in Trent on June 17th 1979. It was difficult to translate because as the Archbishop himself says in his introductory remarks: ‘First of all, please excuse my Italian, as I do not have complete command of the language,...

Why Do All the Bad Guys, and Some Good Guys, Still Defend Vatican II?“This is magisterium: the Council is the magisterium of the Church. Either you are with the Church and therefore you follow the Council, and if you do not follow the Council or you interpret it in your own way, as you wish, you are not with the Church. We must be demanding and strict on this point. The Council should not be negotiated in order to have more of these... No, the Council is as it is.” (Francis, January 30, 2021 Address) Why is it that men...

[Catholic Caucus] If You Like Your Conscience, Francis Wants You to Keep It... Unless It’s CatholicBlessed Pius IX’s words about “liberty of conscience and worship” from his 1864 encyclical, Quanta Cura, likely sound familiar to many faithful Catholics:"Liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society.” Can any rational Catholic deny the orthodoxy of such a statement? As it turns out, yes. Here is the quote from Quanta Cura in its expanded context:“For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not...

What Does the Asch Conformity Experiment Tell Us about Francis, the 2020 Election, and the Covid-19 Atrocities? While it has always been the case that fallen human beings are prone to both lying and believing lies, many of us have observed a remarkable increase in the propensity of seemingly intelligent people to believe preposterous lies in recent years. In many instances, those of us who have refused to believe those lies have been ostracized by family members, colleagues, and those we had considered friends. How, we must ask, do these otherwise normal people not only believe these preposterous lies but...

[Catholic Caucus] The Wheels Are Coming OffProphets are a pain. They bother us incessantly with the same somber warnings of doom. We don’t like prophets because we fear they will take away all the fun and pleasure of life. If you think that sin is fun, you would be right. But, because what we see is not all there is, because time flies and eternity await, because the way of all flesh is death and corruption, this world and the flesh must be submitted to other and higher, eternal considerations. The role of the prophet is to stand before others...

[Catholic Caucus] In This Wintertime, Only The Catholic Way Will Save UsChrist’s pilgrim Church has suddenly found itself in the late innings of, perhaps, transformation and schism, and few are around anymore to help save the day. But there is a Catholic Way forward.The Baltimore Orioles are winning (and will be for a long while), and on this humid August afternoon in Maryland, it might as well be a crisp day in early spring. I am a 10-year-old boy again and I’ve thrown off my jacket and gone into the side yard to play catch with my older brother, Danny....