Editor's Note:This excellent article is a Remnant translation of "Défense du celibat sacerdotal" by the SSPX French District back in 2013 in its Lettre a nos freres pretres.  It can be read in French here. Our translator has not asked for credit but would very much appreciate your prayers for his intentions. MJM

Priestly celibacy, which the Catholic Church has kept for centuries like a sacred jewel, has been, for a number of years, the object of doubts, challenges, and even virulent attacks. The consciences of Catholics are troubled, while aspirants to the priesthood and priests are perplexed. It is therefore necessary to examine this question in the light of the Gospel and of the authentic Tradition of the Church.

Objections against priestly celibacy

Pope Francis published a new apostolic letter on July 11^th entitled , Greater Love Than This, On the Offering of Life. Currently there is no English translation of the letter. However, many news outlets have reported its contents. These reports state that Pope Francis has just added an unprecedented fourth route to becoming a Saint in the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis embraces Lutheran "Archbishop" Antje Jackelén in Lund, Sweden

At every stage in the ecclesial crisis that followed the Second Vatican Council, the Mensheviks of the Neo-Catholic Establishment (NCE) have been there to defend the Bolsheviks of the post-conciliar revolution as they foisted one destructive novelty after another upon the Church.  The NCE has found a way to defend or excuse the New Mass with all its officially approved abuses (including Communion in the hand and John Paul II’s approval of “altar girls”), the New Ecumenism, the New Dialogue, the New Interreligious Dialogue, the New Bishops’ Conferences, the New Collegiality, the New Seminaries, the New Convents, the New Ecclesial Movements, the New Evangelization, the New Synodal Church, and now, with Amoris Laetitia (AL), even the New Catholic Morality, which declares that God does not expect obedience to the negative precepts of the natural law, including the Sixth Commandment, if one feels unable to attain the “objective ideal” given the “concrete complexity of one’s limits” (cf. Amoris Laetitia, ¶ 303). 

New from RTV...A group of some 70 scholars, priests and theologians from all around the world issue a public correction of Pope Francis's seven heretical propositions as propagated in Amoris Laetitia. Michael Matt comments on this, Cardinal Burke's forthcoming formal correction, the ramifications of Bishop Bernard Fellay's signature on this correction, and the centenary of the founding of St. Maximilian Kolbe's Militia Immaculatae in Rome. What’s the connection? 

See Part I HERE

Can a Canonization Be Based on Dubiously-Miraculous “Miracles”?

Tomorrow, October 14, Pope Bergoglio, having already authorized Holy Communion for public adulterers and declared the death penalty immoral—flatly contradicting bimillennial Church teaching and practice in both cases—will declare that both Paul VI and Oscar Romero are saints the universal Church must venerate as such. Yet Paul VI unleashed an unprecedented liturgical debacle and the post-conciliar revolution in general, over which he spent the rest of his life weeping and wringing his hands while faith and discipline rapidly collapsed all around him. Whereas Romero, a complex figure one cannot honestly call a Marxist, was not assassinated on account of hatred of the Faith as such, but rather on account of his public agitation against the government of El Salvador, then in the midst of a civil war with Marxist revolutionaries. Nor has it ever been determined with certainty which side of the conflict was responsible for his murder, for which no one has ever been prosecuted or even identified definitively as a suspect.

We’re wearing out Ezekiel’s Trumpet.

“Son of man, speak to your people and tell them: ‘Suppose I bring the sword against a land, and the people of that land choose a man from among them, appointing him as their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against that land and blows his trumpet to warn the people. Then if anyone hears the sound of the trumpet but fails to heed the warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head…”

People who write about the crisis in the Church are saying the same thing; a lot of people are getting it at last. What we really need now is a plan of action.

The Remnant calls for worldwide support of all traditional Catholic priests

Pope Francis/Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

When a group of feminists in Argentina wanted to mark International Women’s Day a couple of years back, they dressed a woman up to look like the Mother of God and had her perform a mock (with fake blood) abortion on herself in front of Our Lady of the Incarnation Cathedral in the city of San Miguel de Tucuman. The photographs of this blasphemy are too vile to display again here.

Though the anemic post-conciliar Church in that once-Catholic country could do nothing to stop this, one Catholic priest, Father Leandro Bonnin, wrote an open letter on Facebook, arguing that this “blasphemy has exceeded all limits. A blasphemy with all the unmistakable signs of the diabolical: with his malice, his perversity, and above all with his hatred of Mary.”

When Pope Francis visited Japan in November, it marked the first time a supreme pontiff had alighted on Japanese soil since Pope John Paul II’s brief stay in February of 1981. Although Pope Francis’ visit included the same three cities as did John Paul II’s—namely, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo—there are glaring differences between the two visits, and the two papacies.

For one thing, while Pope John Paul II was unapologetically pro-life, Pope Francis has turned the phrase into its opposite through the skillful use of ambiguity.

Pope Francis’s Christmas address of December 21—the traditional feast of the doubting Thomas the Apostle and of the Ember Saturday of Advent—is exactly the antithesis of the famous “hermeneutic of continuity” address delivered by Pope Benedict XVI on December 22, 2005. In that speech, Ratzinger (successfully or unsuccessfully) tried to reconnect the postconciliar experiment with the 3,000-year history of the Church as God’s Israel.

Francis is saying, in effect: “Nope, not gonna happen. In fact, we need to ramp up the modernization efforts and leave behind that stale, rigid old past. If we want to keep Christianity, we have to change everything.”

New Year's Resolution from Remnant TV...

As Pope Francis’s popularity among practicing Catholic falls to new lows, RTV releases a New Year’s resolution video, vowing to resist him   

As Pope Francis’s popularity continues to plummet among faithful Catholics, he has managed to maintain popularity with one demographic: Pro-abortion “Catholic” Democrats. A Pew Research poll from last year revealed that the share of Catholics who have a favorable view of the pontiff is "22 points higher among Democrats than among Republicans.”

It remains to be seen by how much that number increased in 2019, when Pope Francis the Politician made it pretty clear that Trump the Wall Builder needs to be defeated in 2020.