29 12, 2022

How to Learn the Low Mass

By |2022-12-28T14:27:18+00:00December 29th, 2022|Theology|

Nota Bene: The beginning of January was going to be for silent retreat, but I'm visiting a family member in the hospital. So, either way, there will be few blogs or podcasts for a little while. Please pray for us. Many people think I'm some traditional liturgy expert, but as you probably heard me say on previous podcasts, I learned French and Spanish and Portuguese in seminary because I just wanted to be a good Novus Ordo missionary priest one day.  In other words, I got into the priesthood for the salvation of souls, not to make a stink on liturgy debates.  As I've written before, it was only a [...]

25 08, 2022

American Mass Attendance Before and After “the Council.”

By |2022-09-04T14:09:49+00:00August 25th, 2022|Theology|

Photo credit above:  Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. A new CARA study quoting Gallup polls has recently published statistics on current American Catholicism as seen above. We have all known for awhile that there were more ex-Catholics than Catholics in the USA, but the spread is enormous in the above numbers that just came out in 2022. In one graphic from CARA (above chart) see especially that there's almost 113 million US Catholics baptized but only about 53 million of them even attempt to attend yearly Mass at Christmas and Easter. Another study (above) came out a few years ago showing the striking comparisons between the faith-based practices of Catholics who currently go to [...]

5 08, 2022

Be Rarely Angry but Never Arrogant About the Church Crisis

By |2022-08-03T23:12:27+00:00August 5th, 2022|Theology|

In full transparency, I do not categorize traditionalists as "joyless" any more.  The truth is that I find more joy in traditional communities than I do the normy Catholic world.  In fact, I currently find some of the highest levels of joy, happiness and fraternal charity in traditional communities than nearly any other community to which I am frequently exposed in the United States.  I would consider evangelical Christians way up there, too, actually. But "joy" doesn't matter too much, especially as we consider the Scriptures and the official ascetical theology of the Catholic Church.  Both teach that "gifts of the Holy Spirit" are given by God and they are [...]

23 04, 2022

Mass Meditation

By |2023-09-08T02:36:23+00:00April 23rd, 2022|Theology|

p/c Cream City Catholic A few years ago, I had spliced in scenes of the Passion of the Christ into a video on Vimeo of my own low Mass with the words I had thought came from St. Francis De Sales.  However, a priest showed me the meditations did not come from De Sales.  I believe he said the meditation preceded him. Either way, you can use these words to meditate at each part of the Traditional Latin Mass: When the priest goes to the foot of the Altar: Jesus enters the garden. O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, Who wast pleased voluntarily to endure mortal terror [...]

7 10, 2021

To Banish the TLM to the Catacombs

By |2021-10-05T04:03:41+00:00October 7th, 2021|Theology|

Recently, I heard a middle-aged exorcist give a talk about how all the elderly exorcists in the world agree that something happened in 1963 that tanked the power of the Church in exorcisms.  The middle-aged exorcist did not say what this event was.  I asked his friend, and his friend suspected it was this event that happened in 1963, reported even [barely] by Wikipedia:  "Windswept House describes a satanic ritual – the enthronement of Lucifer – taking place at Saint-Paul's Chapel inside Vatican City, on June 29, 1963. The book gives a depiction of high-ranking churchmen, cardinals, archbishops and prelatees of the Roman curia, taking oaths signed with their own [...]

2 09, 2021

A Tale of Two Cities

By |2021-09-02T16:48:17+00:00September 2nd, 2021|Theology|

"One could say that the two Masses have built two cities: the Mass of All Times has built a Christian city; the New Mass seeks to build a humanist and secular city."—Fr. Pagliarani Earlier this week I took an RV retreat in Utah.  One of the things I listened to was Steve Cunningham's "Utah" episode on Sensus Fidelium on his new series, "How Catholicism Came to the United States."  Utah saw the dawn of the Catholic faith with two Franciscan priests (both named Fr. Francisco and both from Spain) who were here before the Mormons, fighting deserts and storms with little food, little provisions, little clothes and little hope of [...]

16 08, 2021

Mass of the Ages Documentary (Part 1 of 3)

By |2021-08-16T01:02:10+00:00August 16th, 2021|Theology|

I was honored to play a small part in this documentary on the resurgence of the Traditional Latin Mass in the United States.  In part one, you can hear me praying the prayers at the foot of the altar (Psalm 42) with B-roll overlays of beautiful Churches (and a quick glimpse into my hermitage at minute 10.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdbwNMYKhw0

14 07, 2021

How To Use a Layman’s Missal at the TLM

By |2021-07-21T19:43:43+00:00July 14th, 2021|Theology|

If you are new to the TLM, you will hopefully find this blog post very helpful. In late 2017, I taught a class at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Jacksonville, FL on how to use the layman's missal while attending the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM.)  People new to the TLM needed some help thumbing through their ribbons in their layman's missal.  Now, because of how many people came to the TLM last year, my friend recently suggested this that I do a re-post of  my five classes: TLM Class 1 TLM Class 2 TLM Class 3 TLM Class 4 TLM Class 5 Also, St. Francis De Sales wrote [...]

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