During what I have called the Benedictine Respite, the traditionalist movement achieved a long overdue measure of justice from the Roman Pontiff. Benedict XVI liberated the Latin Mass from its forty-year-long false imprisonment, lifted the always dubious “excommunications” of the four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), and ordered critical corrections to defects in the vernacular translations of the Novus Ordo Missae that traditionalists had long protested—first and foremost what Msgr. Klaus Gamber (with the future Pope’s approval) rightly called the “truly scandalous” alteration of Our Lord’s words during the first Mass from “for many” to “for all.”

It was Pope Benedict himself who noted with dismay the furious resentment he had provoked within the Church merely by doing justice to the SSPX. As he wrote in his letter to the world’s bishops explaining why he had lifted the excommunications:

“But I have weighed you, says God, and I have not found you wanting.
O people who invented the cathedral, I have not found you wanting in the faith.
O people who invented the crusade, I have not found you wanting in charity.
As for hope, it might be better not to mention that, because they have taken all of it.”   ~Charles Péguy, God and France, (1912)


Would the brilliant French poet, Charles Pierre Péguy, still compose these imaginings uttered by God about France? How would the poetry of the devout Péguy capture the Catholic faith in post-modern France? Surely, Péguy would notice the empty cathedrals, the greying congregation, and the apathy of baptized, but lapsed Catholics and the grim reality of Catholicism supplanted by secularism.

Will the terrorist massacres of Charlie Hebdo bring France back to its knees?

Pope Francis’ homily for the latest consistory of cardinals meeting in Rome this week is being called a re-statement of his programme for his pontificate. Fr. Thomas Rosica, his English language spokesman, wrote on Twitter: “More than anything I’ve heard from (the pope) today’s homily is his mission statement.”

Let us assume for a moment that the pope knows the implications of what he is saying, and that the people closest to him are telling the truth when they say, repeatedly, that the things that are happening are happening at his behest, and examine what this “mission statement” has to say to the Church.

Francis is clearly signaling, again, his intentions for the Synod and the future envisioned at it by the Kasper faction. The question of Communion for the divorced and remarried is never named, but the terms describing the issue are unmistakable. And they are wholly on the side of the Kasperites, adhering without an iota of divergence from the basic presumption in Kasper’s proposal: that the law of God must be overturned or ignored for the sake of extending the mercy of God. A contradiction that is totally incompatible with all of Catholic theology, with logic and natural reason.

At first consideration, one might not think of "On the Waterfront" as a promising movie to portray Catholic values. The director, Elia Kazan, was of Greek heritage and born in Istanbul (old Constantinople) of Greek Orthodox parents in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.  Kazan turned his back on his faith as an adult. The producer, Sam Spiegel, was a Jew born in the later years of the Austria-Hungarian Empire in what is now southern Poland.  Screenwriter Budd Schulberg was Jewish-American, the son of a Hollywood producer.

The film’s musical score was written by Leonard Bernstein, a Jew who would become infamous for his notorious left-wing political views.  The film’s lead actor, Marlon Brando, was an irreligious method actor who would be conspicuous for his decadent life-style.  How did this non-Catholic group of individuals construct a film that was not only extraordinary in its power but Catholic in its values?

(Rome) In the month of January the traditional Roman calendar offers us two closely inter-related feast days: January 10th as the Feast of the Sacred Family and January 23rd as the Feast of the Espousal of the Virgin Mary with St Joseph. Although never on the general Calendar, the latter was kept by many religious orders, especially those with a particular devotion to the Virgin Mary, and on many local calendars.

In anticipation of the second feast at a later date, on Saturday, January 10th, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke celebrated a Solemn Pontifical Mass at the in the Extraordinary Form at the Faldstool in the ancient splendid Basilica di San Nicola in Carcere at 11.00 am. The Mass was celebrated ad orientem, in respect to the altar, but versus populum, due to the particular altar position of this ancient Basilica centrally located near the Teatro Marcello in Rome and built into a pre-existing temple in the ancient Greek zone. Where there were fora for oil and vegetables and, most notably, once the ferocity of the pagans sacrificed to idols, today a large number of faithful attended the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to contemplate with tenderness and love Jesus who gives himself every day in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity under the species of the Eucharist.

"The Mufti explained things very well to me, with such meekness, and using the Quran..."  - Pope Francis

“I went to Turkey as a pilgrim, not a tourist…when I entered the Mosque, I couldn’t say: ‘Now, I’m a tourist!’ No, it was completely religious. And I saw that wonder! The Mufti explained things very well to me, with such meekness, and using the Quran, which speaks of Mary and John the Baptist. He explained it all to me....At that moment I felt the need to pray. I asked him: ‘Shall we pray a little?’ To which her esponded: ‘Yes, yes’. I prayed for Turkey, for peace, for the Mufti, for everyone and for myself, as I need it… I prayed, sincerely....Most of all, I prayed for peace, and I said: ‘Lord, let’s put an end to these wars!’ Thus, it was a moment of sincere prayer.” …Pope Francis at his press conference on board the flight returning fromTurkey on November30, 2014.

“Certainly such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little, turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.” …Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos

Hello, Mr. Fry,

I see that over four million people have watched the

with Gay Byrne on the RTE One TV programme ‘The Meaning of Life’ on 1/2/2015. You are clearly angry with God, calling him a ‘capricious, mean-minded, stupid God’, an ‘utter maniac’ and ‘utterly monstrous’. I say that you are ‘angry with God’ but it is clear that you don’t actually believe in God at all; what you meant was that if God exists then he is a monstrous maniac because, as you see it, he has created a world of unnecessary suffering and pain, including bone cancer in children.

In the 1960s the rapid displacement of its ancient Latin liturgy within the Catholic Church, first vernacularised, then supplanted by a new rite in 1969, has ever since occasioned perennial conflict between those who call the process a reform and those who term it an anti-liturgical and unhistorical revolution replete with cultural illiteracy. One instance of this conflict, covertly conducted, is provided by the foundation and continuance of the annual Père Receveur Commemoration at La Perouse on the north headland of Botany Bay. This February event commemorates the death of an eighteenth century French naval chaplain and the inception of the Catholic Mass at Botany Bay during the initial weeks of the British First Settlement in Australia in 1788. The lengthy sojourn of the Laperouse Expedition in Botany Bay from 26th January to 10th March that year occasioned both.

(Translated by C. Flemming)

Este artículo es mi visión sobre el impacto que ha tenido el escándalo causado por la reciente conferencia de prensa en el avión que transportaba a Francisco de Manila a Roma. El titular, absolutamente predecible, rezaba: "El Papa Francisco: los Católicos No Tienen que Criar como Conejos." Que se abstengan los objetores de molestarme a mí o a este periódico, hablando de una "mala traducción" o de "todo el contexto" de las palabras del Papa, o con minucias como que "el Papa no dijo criar cono conejos, sino ser como conejos". He visto la entrevista entera en italiano, la he comparado con la transcripción proporcionada por la revista America, y puedo confirmar que el Papa dijo lo que dijo, y que su  "contexto" no sólo no disminuye, sino que empeora el escándalo que ha causado, una vez más por hablar de manera improvisada.

Latin must be retained because vernacular is always subjected to changes, would give rise to false interpretations, diminish reverence for the Most Holy Sacrifice, and might endanger the faith itself.

Editor’s Note: Knowing that many devout souls are trying to bring back the Latin Tridentine Mass, we are presenting an article written by Rev. Leonard Goffine over 200 years ago. Catholics who still love the Latin Mass will enjoy reading the part the priest plays as compared with Christ’s. By following the priest step by step in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice and seeing how the Mass is the reenactment of Christ’s last days on earth, many will gain a better and deeper understanding of the Mass and may come to realize why it is necessary to continue to preserve the Latin Tridentine Mass. May the Blessed Mother bestow her graces on all who seek to preserve the Holy Sacrifice.

Manner of Hearing Mass

In order to hear Mass profitably in the sense and spirit of the Church, we should know, in the first place, that the Mass is that sacrifice, which we should offer with our whole being, with all that we are or have, to Almighty God for His glory, in satisfaction for our sins, in thanksgiving for graces received and in supplication for those still necessary, a sacrifice which we ourselves, because of our wretched sinfulness, cannot offer and therefore Christ Himself offers for us; we should be united with God by the most intimate participation in the Sacrifice of Jesus, and we should understand that the Sacrifice of the Mass is also an unbloody renewal of the sacrifice on Calvary. Thus we must hear Mass in a three-fold manner.