The Chicago Sun-Times, March 13, 2013:

In the Chicago Archdiocese, there are 276,000 fewer Catholics than there were in 1980, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. This decline occurred despite overall population growth in the area of more than 200,000, along with a large influx of mostly Catholic Hispanics during the same period.

Our Sunday Visitor, September 17, 2014:

Since 1997, the Catholic population [in Chicago] has fallen by more than 150,000, and the number of priests has decreased by more than 300. There are 22 fewer parishes.

In the autumn of 1990, I was assigned to the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See as Counselor to the U.S. Ambassador, the late Thomas Melady. It was one of the newer positions in our diplomatic service, for formal diplomatic relations between the U. S. and The Holy See had been established only six years earlier during the Reagan Administration. The assignment proved to be my most memorable, for it provided an insider's view not only of the workings within the Vatican, but the interior of Vatican City as well. How many people know, or would imagine, that there is a heliport within the Vatican?

 This is not how I am.  I have become comfortably numb.   – Pink Floyd     

Editor’s Note: I am happy to introduce our newest columnist, the eldest son of longtime Remnant columnist, Dr. John Rao, and a current freshman at Catholic University of America. Welcome aboard, Nicholas!  MJM 

I was anything but on guard against culture shock as I entered my sophomore year of high school and my first experience of studying alongside fellow Traditionalists in a classroom setting. Granted, they were virtual classrooms where I communicated online with my teachers and peers, but most of us enjoyed a lively rapport, the limitations of the medium notwithstanding.

It was a great experience overall, yet from the first I was disturbed by the artistic, and especially the musical, inclinations of my classmates. I distinctly remember one exchange in the context of which a classmate sent me a link to a song she liked. I don’t remember the name either of the song or the band, and Gmail searches for that link have, alas, proven futile, so I’ll have to rely on my memory…

“Indeed the Church has the right to separate herself from an heretical pope according to divine law. Consequently it has the right, by the same divine law, to use all means of themselves necessary for such separation…”

- John of St. Thomas

“The Church must render a judgment before the pope loses his office. Private judgment of the laity in this matter does not suffice.”

- Robert J. Siscoe

A recent article by Fr. James V. Schall S.J., which was re-posted as “the article of the week” on the popular Traditional Catholic website Rorate Caeli, has caused quite stir in some quarters. In the short article, which is titled On Heretical Popes, Fr. Schall briefly discusses the claims of heresy leveled against the post-Conciliar Popes, especially Pope Francis, and raises the question of whether a pope can fall into heresy, and, if so, how the Church would go about deposing him. The article was written in a very moderate tone, but the issues addressed were evidently too much for the extreme Left and their newly discovered Ultramontanism.

Cardinal Wuerl sits amongst the Pope's inner circle, responsible for the appointment of bishops worldwide and he has been named to direct the committee that will inform dioceses nationwide how to prepare for the Synod next October. What will this  mean to the Faithful?

In mid-October, The Washington Post's Lifestyle Section ran a front page story entitled, Drama. Ego. Protocol: Washington Dinners Have it All and that's just the seating chart, by Roxanne Roberts. The focus of the article was where to seat the invited guests, given their importance, at the table of an imaginary Washington dinner party, in this case one given in honor of the birthday of Virginia's Senator, Tim Kaine. The selected hosts for the evening were Wayne and Catherine Reynolds, known in the Washington Establishment's lexicon as "high rollers," that is, people with lots of money, and disproportionate influence.

May all you dead of the First World War rest in peace! May your death not have been in vain! Unfortunately, I fear that it was. You lived in a globe that could not accept the fact that God’s Creation is something other than a jungle ruled by the war of all against all.

November 11^th marks the 96^th anniversary of the end of what was simultaneously one of the most pathetic and yet most predictable conflicts in mankind’s tragic history. It was pathetic in the patent absurdity of its unfounded enthusiasms and goals, the unfathomable physical pain it inflicted, as well as its final wretched outcome. But it was all too predictable due to the logical development of a myriad of irrational principles that were Protestant in their origin, naturalist-Enlightenment in their maturation, and nationalist, racist, and class conscious in their specific emphases upon the way in which violent struggle would have a gloriously purgative and perfecting influence upon life.

Vince Lombardi’s brilliance as a football coach was a direct result of his dedication to Catholicism

In the middle of winter, between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, a secular ritual of nearly fifty years has become part of the American cultural scene. It is called the Super Bowl, the championship game of the interminably long National Football League season. Two weeks of incessant television extravaganza lead up to the game itself, which ends with the winner being awarded the Lombardi Trophy named for a man now 44 years dead but still considered by many to be the greatest football coach in the history of the game.

LONDON 4 November 2014 – The International Una Voce Federation which seeks to promote the traditions, particularly the liturgical traditions, of the Roman Catholic Church, within the official structures of the Church, today questioned the legality of a “notification” dated 14 October 2014 of the Roman See of Albano, Italy, claiming to ex-communicate those who receive the sacraments from, or attend religious services of, the Society of St Pius X (SSPX).

The Federation questions the legality of a notification in similar terms of Bishop Óscar Sarlinga ofZárate-Campana in Argentina, issued on 3 November 2014.

From a Correspondent in Ireland...

Dear Mr. Matt:

Please find below a translation of the Italian SSPX District's response to Bishop Semeraro. This is not the same document published by sspx.org and Rorate Caeli a few days ago, but a translation of what the SSPX Italy website says here. This statement gives additional details than were contained in the statement posted by the other two websites.

Yours sincerely,
Peadar Walsh

In a notification from the 14^th October last, Monsignor Marcello Semeraro, who administers the Suburbican Diocese of Albano, thought himself able to declare that the SSPX is not “an institution of the Catholic Church” and that the faithful should not frequent it in order not to break communion with the Church.

This from a reader of The Remnant in England...

Thought I should share with The Remnant and its readership some liturgically historic news for the Catholic Church in England and, specifically, the Diocese of East Anglia.

Bishop Alan Hopes of the Diocese of East Anglia became the first bishop in England to celebrate a Pontifical High Mass at the throne in the Extraordinary Form since the introduction of the new rite.  The Mass was celebrated on the feast of All Saints (Nov. 1) in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Norwich, England.  It was also the first Pontifical High Mass celebrated by a bishop in his own cathedral in the Diocese of East Anglia since the Protestant Reformation.

Many of us were shocked to read the news headline, Mother Wins Case to Kill Her Disabled Daughter, which made the rounds just days ago. As LifeNews reported on October 29th:

Two and a half years ago, Dr. Phil advocated for the mercy killing of people with disabilities. Well, Dr. Phil would be happy to know that his dream has now become a reality — one mother successfully petitioned the court to kill her severely disabled daughter.

Nancy Fitzmaurice, born blind with hydrocephalus, meningitis and septicaemia, could not walk, talk, eat or drink, the Mirror reported.

Her health was so poor she required 24-hour care and was fed, watered and medicated by tube at London’s Great Ormand Street Hospital. Her health deteriorated and as she grew she would scream in agony for hours despite being given morphine and ketamine.