Dear Tom:

When we wrote The Great Façade together back in 2002, I was one of the most ardent supporters of your work. Indeed, I saw you as a big part of the future of the “traditionalist” movement in America. But I did not anticipate your public dissent from the Church’s social teaching in favor of the radically laissez faire “Austrian school” of economics, whose pretensions range far beyond economics to a comprehensive “philosophy of liberty” that cannot be reconciled with the teaching of the Magisterium on the duties of men and societies toward Christ and His Church, or even the duties of men toward each other on the level of natural justice. Nor did I anticipate that you would become a “scholar in residence” for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a radical libertarian cult dedicated to the thought of von Mises and his “anarcho-capitalist” disciple, Murray Rothbard, both agnostic liberals who utterly rejected the role of the Church and the Gospel in the constitution of social order....More>>>

A Liberated Christian

in Another 'Tolerant' Society
Old Christendom has long since abandoned the City of God in a vain attempt to build the City of Man, a soulless Potemkin village on a grand scale. Like all the hubristic, grandiose and narcissistic extravaganzas beginning with the Tower of Babel, it was foreordained to failure. We have on this earth no lasting home, in the mournful lyric of Brahms’s A German Requiem.

The towers of the modern day City of Man are beginning to show cracks in their showy but shoddy façades. Their shallow foundations tremble. Cities show increasing signs of strain, and there are those who believe they are soon to come apart at the seams. So it shall always be so long as societies worship themselves...More>>>

Church Arian, Church Evolutionist

As St. Jerome put it, “The Church wakened to find itself Arian”. Today the Church has wakened to find itself Evolutionist. And today’s heresy — or body of heresies — is a much more radical thing than the adherence to the single Arian heresy; for the present error, though it is presented as Theistic Evolution, draws upon the fundamental atheistic or pantheistic explanation of the universe: the universe creating itself by its own processes....More>>>

A Visit to Konnersreuth

When I was a child, a frequent guest in my father’s home was the late Trappist priest, Father Urban Snyder. One of the original “men in black”, Fr. Snyder had refused to offer the New Mass after Vatican II, determining instead to travel the world offering the old Mass and spreading the traditionalist doctrine.  He was a close friend of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and, for a time, served as the Archbishop’s confessor.

A deeply spiritual man of exceedingly high intellect, Fr. Snyder prepared priests, seminarians and Catholic families around the world for the years of trial and tribulation that would follow the Second Vatican Council. He was a man of vision and tremendous foresight. I’ll always remember something he said while “holding court” one evening in our home in the early 1970’s: “It’s not Communism that should be our chief concern in the West…not really. It is Islam. Most of us will not live to see the rise of global, militant Islam but that young man over there [pointing directly at me] certainly will.” This was at the height of the “Cold War”-- a full thirty years before the so-called “War on Terror”....More>>>

From the Pill, to Catholic “Divorce” to the Apocalypse

Chaos in the Church

Nobody who wants to see can ignore that the Church is going through moments of great confusion. The Spirit of Darkness has worked so adroitly and efficiently that he has succeeded in spreading a dark cloak over the minds of multitudes of the Faithful.

Consequently, many Christians feel themselves confused about what they must do. It can be said straightforwardly that they are divided. On the one hand, we have the clear, categorical, and still in force norm. On the other, there is the daily, absolutely contrary practice: Shepherds tolerating ways of behavior – sometimes, even advising them – which are foreign and even totally opposite to the norm. It is not surprising that many sheep of the Flock of Christ feel themselves disoriented; worse yet, they have ended up abandoning the norm and consigning it to oblivion....More>>>

Fr. Rueda's Last Mass

I hadn’t heard from Fr. Rueda in at least two months when an email message, forwarded multiple times, showed up in my inbox last month indicating he’d died.  In time, I would learn there was some rather bizarre news associated with that of Father’s passing.

Fr. Enrique Tomas Rueda was a native of Havana, Cuba.  In fact, he’d spent some time in a Cuban jail following the Bay of Pigs invasion before coming to the U.S. as a seminarian.  He graduated from Catholic University in Washington as a chemical engineer and then completed his theological training at Fordham University and Dunwoodie Seminary before being ordained by Terence Cardinal Cooke on June 1^st, 1968...More>>>

A Catholic Declaration Is Desperately Needed

Pope Benedict XV

by Christopher A. Ferrara

Two months after World War I began, with Christmas approaching, Pope Benedict XV, in his encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum (1914), echoed the judgment of both of his immediate predecessors on the state of what the French political philosopher Pierre Manent has rather mordantly described as “the new world of human liberty.” And Pope Benedict wanted to be clear that “it was not the present sanguinary strife alone” that had prompted him to continue in the line of papal pessimism about political modernity. “There is another evil raging in the very inmost heart of human society,” he wrote, “a source of dread to all who really think, inasmuch as it has already brought, and will bring, many misfortunes upon nations, and may rightly be considered to be the root cause of the present awful war.”...More>>>

Though World War I had been raging for only four months, it was already proving to be one of the bloodiest wars in history. Soldiers on both sides were trapped in trenches, exposed to the cold and wet winter weather, covered in mud, and extremely careful of sniper shots. Machines guns had proven their worth in war, bringing new meaning to the word "slaughter."

In a place where bloodshed was nearly commonplace and mud and the enemy were fought with equal vigor, something surprising occurred on the front for Christmas in 1914. The men who lay shivering in the trenches embraced the Christmas spirit. In one of the truest acts of peace to men of goodwill, soldiers from both sides in the southern portion of the Ypres Salient set aside their weapons and hatred, if only temporarily, and met in No Man's Land...More>>>

Barbarism Rising

The Black Hole Where Piety Used to Be

It is mid-Lent sometime in the 1950’s. Deep within a large Eastern city early morning Mass is about to begin. The sanctuary bell rings and the priest enters with two altar boys. He places the sacred vessels on the altar and gets right down to business. There is no greeting of the people, never any eye contact. His movements are practiced, precise and quick. Those in the front pews can hear the whispered Latin phrases...More>>>

The Pilgrimage to Chartres

Thousands to return to France in May 2010 

by Michael J. Matt

US Coordinator

Notre Dame de Chrétienté

The Remnant Tours will again be organizing the American Chapter on the 2010 Notre Dame de Chrétienté Pilgrimage to Chartres, France.  As there’s been a great deal of new interest in the famous “Chartres Pilgrimage” on the part of visitors to this site over the past few days, we’ve decided to reproduce a 2005 report on the Pilgrimage that conveys some sense of what it is like to walk the 70-mile, 3-day pilgrimage across France. If you are interested in making the Chartres Pilgrimage, please click here for more information. MJM

There’s no feeling quite like standing outside a Paris hotel in the pre-dawn gloom and looking up at a bank of black clouds rolling over the city.  Only those who’ve previously walked the 70-mile Pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres can appreciate what those clouds can mean for pilgrims.  In a word: misery...More>>>

This will be the fourth Christmas since my father passed away.  I suppose everyone misses deceased family members most this time of year; I know I do.  My father loved Christmas! I sometimes wonder, in fact, what impact his larger-than-life celebrations of the birth of Christ had on the faith of his nine children, each of whom continues to practice the old Faith to this day.  He believed that, just as Advent—the “mini-Lent”—was to be kept well, with plenty of spiritual and corporal works of mercy, so too should Christmas be fêted with all the merrymaking and gusto that a Catholic family could muster....More>>>

Brain Dead?

For 23 years, Rom Houben, a car crash victim in 1983, was presumed to be in a “vegetative state” from which he would never recover.  In truth, he was conscious the whole time and could hear everything being said about him.  Then a state-of-the-art brain scan discovered—oops—that Houben had a functional brain. 

Today, the “vegetable” is communicating with the help of a keyboard connected to his wheelchair, on which he types with the assistance of his nurse.  Using that keyboard he told CNN: “At some moments it was terribly lonely but I knew my family was believing in me… I simply want to enjoy life. I notice a big difference now I’m back in contact with the world.” (CNN International, November 24, 2009)

George Weigel and the People Who Know

Are George Weigel and the Conciliar Illuminati Staging a

 Preemptive Strike on the Vatican-SSPX Discussions?

 Mr. Weigel, one who knows

by Christopher A. Ferrara

The gnostics of the early Christian era were, as the Catholic Encyclopedia puts it, “the people who knew,” the people who possessed the gnosis, an ineffable spiritual insight, inaccessible and incommunicable to others, which “constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know.”...More>>>

 Pro-Abortion "Catholic" Politicians

What About a Little Old-Fashioned Excommunication?

Yet Another 'Catholic' Kennedy

MSNBC’s “Hardball” used to be an occasionally amusing program whose front man, Chris Matthews, made a name for himself by poking fun at puffed-up politicians. But Matthews also likes to refer to himself as an enlightened “Catholic” (whatever!) when in fact it would be far more accurate to describe him as a rank Cafeteria Catholic.  The Second Vatican Council itself is far too traditional for guys like Matthews, who call themselves “Catholic” even though they’ve detached themselves from much of any obligation to follow Catholic teachings with which they happen to disagree.  Liberation, anyone?...More>>>

A Vatican/SSPX Discussion

Can Vatican II's Teaching on Religious Liberty

Be Reconciled with Tradition?

Pope Benedict, Cardinal Hoyos, Bishop Fellay

(Aug. 2005)

As the long-awaited dialogue between the Vatican and the Society of Saint Pius X gets underway, one of the more contentious issues that will be on the table is the Second Vatican Council's teaching on religious liberty found in Dignitatis Humanae (DH). 

Following is a brief critique of DH in light of the traditional teachings of the Church. The fact that volumes have been written evaluating whether DH is compatible with tradition demonstrates that the document is prima facie ambiguous, if not problematic. Never before in the history of the Catholic Church has a conciliar document caused so much angst and confusion. That being said, any attempts to reconcile DH with pre-conciliar teaching must ultimately be resolved by the pope who is our final authority on earth. We pray that Pope Benedict XVI's efforts to restore the Church to her traditions will include a clarification of this most confusing document...More>>>

The Significance of the Chapel Veil

Since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council many ancient traditions of the Catholic Church have simply vanished.  The Mantilla, or chapel veil, worn by women while visiting a church or assisting at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, has virtually disappeared in the modern age.  However, in examining both the history and symbolism behind the chapel veil, it begs reconsideration on the part of all Catholic women who wish to uphold Mary-like modesty and true womanhood....More>>>

De-Christianizing Europe?

Italy vs. the Cross

Banned in Europe?

by Neil Addison (Barrister)
 

RemnantNewspaper.com has been considering the implications of the Italian Crucifix case of Latusi v Italy, and I’d like to add some brief words of perspective here from our side of the Atlantic.

As several press articles on this case have pointed out, the court did not expressly order the school to remove its Crucifix but this is only because the court does not have the power to make such orders.  It does, however, have the power to find a violation of the European Convention, which then forces the Italian government to report back to the Council of Europe exactly what it proposes to do in order to implement the court ruling, which, in this case, will mean removing crucifixes from classrooms, courts, public buildings etc....More>>>

Ireland Falls Into the Sea

The Treaty of Lisbon Debacle in Retrospect

“Ireland Backs EU’s Lisbon Treaty” screamed the BBC headline back on October 3, 2009. The Irish surrendered, the one-world crowd was ecstatic, and Tony Blair could actually become the first President of Europe. Hilaire Belloc must be turning in his grave....More>>>

What was all the fuss about?

Springtime in Buffalo...

Even City Council/Historical Society Question Diocese's Reckless Antics

Exposing the Dangerous

Premises of Economic Liberals

The central assumption underlying all of Liberal Economic Thought (in contrast to Catholic Economic Thought) is greed. Now Economic Liberals (“E Libs”) do not always use that word; they may call it “profit motive” or “self-interest” or “wealth maximization,” but all of these terms boil down to the same thing...More>>>

"For many" vs. "For all"

In his ongoing effort to restore the Church to her infallible, ecclesiastical traditions, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI at the end of 2006 ordered the world’s episcopal conferences to remedy erroneous vernacular translations of the Novus Ordo Mass. Chief among the plethora of errors was the ICEL’s deplorable translation of the Latin pro multis (literally, “for many”) as “for all” (which, incidentally, is pro omnibus) in the consecration formula for the wine...More>>>

To Fly from the Cross:

A History of Dark Disorder in the Catholic Church

by Jean Ousset

Remnant Editor’s Note: Back in February of 1973, the late, great French thinker, Jean Ousset—author of Action, the definitive guide to Catholic action—wrote a letter to a Catholic who having witnessed the auto-demolition of the Church in France, had lost his Faith. Originally written in French, Ousset’s letter was translated into English by Michael Davies who noted at the time that Ousset “depicts the current dark disorder as a call to action rather than a cause for despair.”...More>>>

Listening for Mater Ecclesia:

On the Eve of the SSPX Negotiations

In the run-up to the long-anticipated talks between the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) and the Holy See much useless chatter has been generated in the press by those who are less than receptive to the idea of reconciliation. Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, for example, recently stated that the SSPX must accept the whole of Vatican II—including religious liberty, religious freedom, ecumenism and interfaith dialogue.  Rather than headlining these remarks as the personal opinions of Cardinal Schönborn the press presented them as a statement from the Vatican itself....More>>>

Traditional Catholicism Rising

The Latin Mass Movement in Hungary

Catholic Allies in Hungary

I am writing this article shortly before Pentecost and thinking of the dozens of Americans who are en route to Paris for the Chartres pilgrimage. I remember well my first pilgrimage to France and subsequent trip to Austria in 2002 with Remnant Tours. At 19 I had never been to Europe before, but was always fascinated by its history, knowing that Europe’s history was mine also, and interested and encouraged by books such as Michael Davies' For Altar and Throne and Jamie Bogle's A Heart for Europe. At that time, I didn't know if I would ever go back to Europe. If I could have seen the future, I don't think I would have believed it: not only was I able to go on a second pilgrimage to Chartres, but I am now preparing for my seventh trip across the Atlantic...More>>>

Fr. Antony Sumich, FSSP

Nestled among the lush green vegetation, the crops of yam, cassava, plantain, papapya and pineapple, and beneath the extreme heat of the year round tropical sun, the summer downpours and the choking dust of the dry season—sits the Nne Enyemaka Shrine in the centre of Igboland in Southern Nigeria.

Not just another one of many small chapels in the mainly Catholic heartland of Nigeria’s greenbelt, this is an oasis of Catholic Tradition in a land tragically succumbing to the desertification of liturgical inculturation in Africa. The Shrine is the only personal parish for the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) on the continent, a generous parting gift to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP) from the then departing ordinary of the Orlu Diocese, His Lordship Gregory Ochiaga...More>>>

1969 – 2009

Forty Years of Helter Skelter Smelter

Charles Manson

(March 18, 2009)

Forty years ago last month, two events occurred that exposed in Christendom a “generation gap” that might better have been described as an abysm. First, on August 9^th and 10^th, the so-called “Manson Family” committed demented multiple murders in Los Angeles; second, a week later on the other coast, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair—“An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music”—was held from Aug 15^th through the 18^th in an upstate New York dairy farm where approximately half a million young people—among them this writer—had assembled for an event that these many years later for some reason calls to mind the infamous Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” in all its pagan emotionality...More>>>

Where Madness Lies

FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter, Oh My!

Finite man is made for the infinite God. And he cannot escape this purpose; he can only frustrate its attainment. I say “cannot escape” not because he should want to–what is more flattering than being made for the infinite?–but because he is so often trying to. For some, there is an outright and desperate effort to find ultimate satisfaction in something less than God; for others, a constant stopping short of God to lollygag around with creatures....More>>>