Title

Author's Name
REMNANT COLUMNIST, State
 

Bearing the Cross

An Open Letter to Mel Gibson

It started out as a fairly routine news story. Actor and director Mel Gibson was arrested on suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in the early morning hours of July 28, 2006.

Forty-eight hours later, the episode had morphed into a tale of Homeric proportions after it was revealed that, during his arrest, Gibson launched into an anti-Jewish tirade, during which he accused the Jews of being “responsible for all the war in the world.” Suddenly, a run-of-the-mill newsflash became a full-blown tragedy, a woeful tale of a mighty hero fallen.....MORE>>>

 

A Word on the July Elections

Praying for the Best

It was disappointing to learn that one or two traditionalist websites wasted no time at all last month chastising those of us who’d welcomed as good news the recent election results out of the Society of St. Pius X and the Fraternity of St. Peter.   Cyber critics notwithstanding, the July 7th election of  American Fr. John Berg (36 years old) as the third Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter is welcome news indeed, especially since his reputation as a good and holy priest is well established. Father Berg, whose family resides here in Minnesota, has on several occasions offered the Traditional Mass at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church in So. St. Paul, and always left an exceedingly favorable impression on those in attendance.

He is generally regarded as a solid traditionalist who is not given to unjust compromise and reportedly enjoys a relatively congenial relationship with his brother priests in the SSPX. It is our belief that traditionalists can expect good things from the new Superior General of the FSSP, and we congratulate Fr. Berg on his election and wish him every blessing as he takes the reins of his important and difficult assignment.....MORE>>>

Searching for Bishop Su

Persecuted Chinese bishop gone but not forgotten

 

From the back seat of the gypsy cab, Ming-Chuan “Joseph” Kung watched Beijing blur by. Everything had been pre-arranged. Everything. As the hired driver steered through the streets of the capital city of the People’s Republic of China, the seven passengers – a small delegation of Americans in town for a human rights conference – rode mostly in silence. Only periodic, superficial chitchat and the heavy breathing of the car’s heater broke the stillness of that wintry January 8 in 1994.

Soon, the touristy section stacked with American-style hotels, designed for the comfort of Westerners spoiled by Capitalism, melted into the background. The well-lighted streets and sidewalks packed with people eating, drinking, laughing that Saturday evening gave way to another reality....MORE>>>

“Our Churches Will Empty”

Vatican secretary makes staggering admission

In a July 13th interview with I Media news agency in Rome, Archbishop Albert Malcom Ranjith Patabendige Don, the newly appointed Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, made a small remark of enormous import. After revealing that the Congregation daily receives letters from the people lamenting liturgical abuses in the New Mass, he said: “It is our duty to be vigilant… Because, in the end, the people will assist at the Tridentine Mass and our churches will empty.”1

There is a world of meaning in this statement.  Superficially, of course, it is a vindication of the entire traditionalist movement of conscientious abstention from the New Mass and adherence to the Church’s received and approved traditional Latin rite...MORE>>>

Movie Education

The last quarter century has given us in the movies another instructional agency.  It has given us an educational system which is alluring and cogent, and which involves all the youth of the country as completely and thoroughly as our long built up school system itself. The all-pervasive and permeating quality which the movies have evinced in the space of a single generation is itself proof of their universal appeal to mankind. 

Statistics reveal that motion pictures are shown to an American audience of at least 77,000,000 weekly.  Of this movie audience 37% are minors, that is, children from five to twenty years of age.  In fact, American children attend – on the average – a movie a week, or, fifty two movies a year (Editor's Note:....MORE>>>

 

Vatican II and the Narrow Limits of Infallibility

Objection: You maintain that there is only one subject (or holder) of infallibility. But mustn't we take into consideration the Second Vatican Council's teaching which gives us to understand (Constitution Lumen Gentium, # 22 and 25)  that there are two holders of  supreme power and infallibility in the Church: the Pope on the one hand, and on the other hand, the College of Bishops united with the Pope?

+  There is only one supreme power in the Church, that of the Pope

One must begin here in order to follow the course of the reasoning on the question of infallibility. That there can be only one supreme power in the Church is first of all a matter of common sense:  If there were two, neither of them would be supreme:.....MORE>>>

 

Presidential Errors

Having moved away from his true conservative base on so many important issues, President Bush now seems adrift, searching for that illusive "middle-ground" on every issue.  In apparent desperation, he is calling in equally-troubled foreign leaders of Britain, Israel, Germany—and even Mexico—in a vain effort to boost his image. Apparently, it is impossible for him to realize the enormity of his failed policies, and still more improbable to admit fatal mistakes. His White House handlers, spokesmen and speech writers are also adrift, searching for any "magic bullet" issue to restore some measure of credibility before Fall elections; and hope of a favorable legacy to decorate his eventual Presidential Library.......MORE>>>