Catholic Counterrevolution: Garda, THE Encyclical, a new video on the Chartres Pilgrimage -- THE answer to all that is going wrong today.

Cardinals Pell and Burke endorse the Traditional Catholic symposium at Lake Garda.

Powerful Catholic blowback against the new encyclical and the alliance between the Church and the UN-led new world order.

Since my buddy Chris Ferrara has, perhaps before anyone else in the English speaking world, done a thorough examination of the pope’s environment encyclical, “Laudato Si,” I will confine myself here to some observations of a different sort and to proposing a few questions for consideration – to talking around it, so to speak.

A great many people, long before the document was issued yesterday, have been asking whether it should have been written at all. Is this appropriate for a pope? Why was it necessary? Why, of all the possible topics, did Pope Francis choose this one? Has he stepped outside the proper bounds of papal authority? Aren’t there more pressing matters for the head of the Catholic Church to think about? (Does anyone know how many Chaldean Catholics are still alive in Mosul, Iraq, for instance?)

 

In keeping with the evolutionary eschatology of Teilhard de Chardin, Pope Francis attempts to fashion yet another post-conciliar novelty in the Church: a call to “ecological conversion,” which requires a subtle demotion of man to merely a part of the natural world.

The final, official, fully corrected, this-is-really-it version of Laudato Si’ (LS) has just been formally presented to the world by the triumvirate of emcees Francis handpicked for the Big Reveal: Cardinal Turkson, hailed by Vatican Insider for “defend[ing] gays against unfavourable Ugandan law,” the climate change Nazi Hans Joachim Schellnhube, just appointed by Francis to the Pontifical Academy of Atheists—I mean, Sciences—and an Orthodox Archbishop by the name of John Zizioulas, representing the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, who—don’t you know?—is very big on environmentalism.

On Monday Pope Francis addressed representatives of the Hussite Czechoslovak Church and of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, who were in Rome to celebrate, at the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul, a Liturgy of Reconciliation on the occasion of the 600^th anniversary of the death of John Huss. During this address Pope Francis stated, in relevant part:

Six centuries have passed since the day that the renowned preacher and Rector of the University of Prague, Jan Hus, died tragically. Already in 1999, Saint John Paul II, intervening in an International Symposium dedicated to this memorable figure, expressed his “profound regret for the cruel death inflicted [on him],” and he numbered him among the Reformers of the Church. In the light of this approach, the study must continue on the person and activity of Jan Hus, who for a long time was the subject of contention among Christians, while today he has become a reason for dialogue…

“Locke: dry, cold, languid, and wearisome, will live forever” -J. Bentham

Walking the Chartres Pilgrimage always puts me back on the straight and narrow path. It does so by the simple expedient of making me feel as though I am dying; as though I am a condemned prisoner undergoing a peculiar form of execution that will continue—slowly, torturously, and unabated—for almost three entire days.

Of course experience assures me that this particular misery will actually end in happiness, and that all I really need to do for the moment is add my bit to maintaining the joviality crucial to keeping the moveable pilgrim gibbet on the road.

Still, that part of me that really, really hurts—namely, every bone and muscle in my body—brings the reality of pain, death, and the meaning of it all to center stage in a way that nothing else I do during the year—at least up until now—has yet matched. And that honing in on the dreadful effects of Original Sin never fails to confirm commitment to the central Catholic teaching that is only through an ever deeper surrender to the knowledge, love, and service of God that the purpose of our lives, with all their pains and joys, can be clarified.

A very personal announcement from Michael Matt.

The Sexual Revolution and the Liturgical Revolution of Vatican II: What's the connection?

In a recent  meeting with the pastor of our Church, the term "special interest" came up in our discussion about the Traditional Latin Mass. Part of my responsibility as a parish member and lobbyist for the TLM is to oversee the logistics of our recently granted Sunday celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass at the city's oldest and most beautiful Catholic Church. My new pastor, an able and dedicated man, with a true affection for the old liturgy, is also typical in some respects as one who grew up during all the ecumenical trends launched after of Vatican II.  

A point made in the meeting was the need to regularize the "special interest" groups, like the TLM and the Spanish congregation, into the parish fold. For the last twenty-five years my family has attended the Traditional Latin Mass, the Mass of my early youth. Over the years more and more weathered stalwarts among the TLM's devotees began exhibiting traits of Post-Traumatic Stress.