Bad and Good Catholic Art
The top-left picture was drawn by Fr. Mario Rupnik SJ. The top-right is an icon I snapped at the Greek Catholic Church in Athens earlier this year. National Catholic Register wrote about the Jesuit who drew the above left picture: "Father Rupnik, a priest and artist, has been accused of spiritual, psychological, and sexual abuse of religious sisters. He was removed from the Jesuits last June." Even the Knights of Columbus wanted his removed from the National Basilica in DC as Detroit Catholic reported. It's unfortunate that "art" which mocks Our Lord and Our Lady and the saints is asked to be removed only once "the artist" is found to [...]
More Reasons for Kids Not to Have Cell Phones
Many conservative and traditional Catholic parents know the dangers of kids having cell phones. These dangers include inappropriate images and bullying. But most good Catholic parents somehow still think their children are beyond the reach of predators because they have relatively-obedient children. In this article, you're going see why that's you need to put away that pipe-dream forever. Ex-SEAL Shawn Ryan now has over 2.5M subscribers on his YouTube channel alone, not to mention many more listeners on other forums. He's a conservative podcaster who recently became a Christian. A year ago, he twice had on his show a 30 year old man named Ryan Montgomery who is known as [...]
Flow-Chart For Salvation-Emergencies
What do you do if you come across a dying person? Should you prioritize getting a paramedic or a priest? What can a lay person do for a dying person who is baptized or unbaptized? What should a priest do for a dying person who is baptized or unbaptized? The traditional answers are relatively simple. They come from what the Bible and Catholic Church has always taught. The following Flow-Chart For Salvation-Emergencies is going to focus on the faith-aspects of helping people die. As an ex-paramedic who has come across a lot of emergencies even as a priest (and I wrote about one here) one needs to consider both the [...]
St. Catherine’s Letter to Cardinals Under an Antipope
These days, St. Catherine of Siena is frequently quoted in her love of the pope of her day (as well she should be.) However, she is less frequently quoted in what she had to say about the antipope of her day. There have been 20-40 antipopes in history, so a discussion on this topic is not “anti-Catholic," or "schismatic," as the following account of St. Catherine clearly demonstrates. The website Virgo Sacrata reads: “In 1378, after the election of Pope Urban VI, the majority of Cardinals, Prelates and the people recognized Clement VIl as pope, even though he was in reality an antipope. Thirteen out of sixteen cardinals questioned the [...]
Discernment Rules on Secular Decisions
Last year I wrote an article titled, Why Do Rad-Trads Keep “Guessing” Everything Right? In it, I explained it was not a coincidence that traditional Catholics were accurate on everything from resisting "the covid vaccine" to seeing the current Church crisis accurately. Why is this? It wasn't because my Google-button worked better than the priests that were ordained before me. It wasn't because I wanted to save lives by avoiding an mRNA gene therapy injection while other more lukewarm Catholics wanted their loved-ones to die. The reason was not physical. Rather, it was spiritual. We all might have good-wills, but we were informed by different beings. If Rad-Trads Guessing was [...]
Should Those Who Commit Abortion Be Punished?
In the more righteous days of Christendom, Catholic countries did indeed reserve the death penalty for men or women who had killed children. This is seen in the fact that in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Church Fathers and the Popes held that the death penalty was not only for safety for society, but it was a just punishment upon the guilty. This was especially true when the guilty killed even one innocent person (like an unborn baby.) In case you think the Catholic Church has changed her teaching on the death penalty, just realize that such a notion is impossible. The dogma of the Catholic [...]
Hope For America in the Heartland
Riding my bike around Denver as a 12 year old boy, I got good at maps. These were obviously the days before cell-phones and GPS, so I studied my maps as a hobby. I studied city maps of Denver and Chicago, state maps of Colorado and the Eisenhower Interstate System. I would look at globes for hours, memorizing countries all over the world. For me, my map study was always about both location and meaning. The current return to tradition that Catholics are making across the globe is strong, especially places like France and the United States. As I mentioned above, for people obsessed with geography like me, I [...]
When the Priest Decided Which Parishioners Could Receive the Eucharist
Last week in Florida, a woman demanded Holy Communion from a 66 year old priest named Fr. Rodriguez. When he quietly informed her in that Communion line that she had to be a practicing Catholic, she grabbed numerous hosts (the body of Jesus Christ) in his ciborium. As she crushed them in her hand, he had no arms to push her away, so he lunged at her and bit her forearm to defend the Holy Eucharist. I do not believe he broke the skin, but it appears he was still charged by police. The question of a priest physically repelling a lay-assailant upon a ciborium or chalice is essentially [...]
Did Christ’s Nature Change at His Baptism?
One of the more common heresies over the last 50 years goes something like, "Jesus discovered His vocation at His baptism." Of course, that denies the Divinity of Christ. But a reader recently told me about the opposite heresy she came across. She saw that I recently said on social media that I do not read Private Messages (PM) or Direct Messages (DM.) So, she saw my email is on my Donate page. She wrote: Hello Father Nix. I enjoy your posts and podcasts I just saw your recent Facebook post regarding social media messages. I had sent you the following message on April 26. I’d like your input because [...]
Three Broken Canons in the New Code
Just as in the days of Christ, it was the scribes and Pharisees (obsessed with the law instead of the Gospel) who crucified Christ. So also today, canon lawyers now crucify the Catholic Church by legalism. It's not that Canon Law is the problem. Canon Law was originally set up to be at the service of the Gospel, not a replacement of it. But it is being manipulated by corrupt bishops to promote an anti-Gospel in many American dioceses. We will look at three of the worst abuses of the new Code of Canon Law after it was promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1983. There are better [...]