The Marriage of Faith and Reason
The collect in the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) for St. Albert the Great today reads: O God, Who made blessed Albert, Your Bishop and Doctor, eminent in the submission of human wisdom to divine faith, grant us, we beseech You, so to follow the path of his teaching that we may enjoy perfect light in heaven. This is such a beautiful prayer because it captures what a genius St. Albert was in matters of both human wisdom (called humána sapiéntia in the TLM collect today, now called "science") as well as matters of divine faith (called divínæ fídei in the TLM today, also called Divine Revelation.) As you know in 2021, [...]
How Hard Is It To Avoid Heresy?
Consider a putatively-conservative Roman Catholic archbishop who invites his priests to pray with Lutherans in a Lutheran community building. This really happened. But because this bishop is "pro-life," he is considered "conservative" by most of his laity. Thus, most mainstream Catholics will pretty quickly forgive a bishop inviting their own Catholic priests to a Lutheran prayer service. That is, if they even think there's anything to forgive in that. I think the attitude among most of the laity today is basically: Well, I make mistakes in my vocation, so I can't judge my superiors who make mistakes in their vocations. Fair enough. There's some humility in that attitude. But there's [...]
St. Vincent of Lerins on how to Navigate a Church Crisis
Many Catholics think that "Catholic" means "universal," and they are correct, but they make the mistake of thinking this is universal not through history but just today in this current Church crisis. We look to the great saint and doctor of the Church of the 5th century, St. Vincent of Lerins, for how to navigate a Church crisis when many bishops believe and teach different things. St. Vincent of Lerins was one of the very, very few bishops who fought against the global 5th century heresy of Arianism believed by 99% of the bishops of his day. We will see below in his writings why "Catholic" does not mean [...]
Thoughts on “The Restrainer”
And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of His mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and [...]
No Feasting Without Fasting
by Andromeda “I say to you: but unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish.” Luke 13:3 The novel idea which claimed, and still claims, that modern man is exempt from the precepts of the Gospel, ‘because times have changed,’ entered into, and firmly established itself in the Catholic ethos during the post conciliar period of the Church. We were, it was proclaimed, to enter into a new Springtime, throwing off the dark and dowdy ways of thinking and being, and by so inaugurating a new human fraternity which would bring about a heaven right here on earth. It followed as a natural consequence of this happy hypothesis, [...]
The Great Ones Part 3 of 3
by Guest Writer “And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’” - Luke 23:34 I’ll admit that I’ve long harbored an idea, albeit subconsciously, that only God could forgive heroically. What I mean is that only an infinite God of infinite magnanimity towards the most treacherous of His creatures could speak words of forgiveness while wasting away on the cross. For the rest of us finite humans, there has to be a limit. It’s the same mentality that St. Peter had when he thought he hit it out of the park with his question of forgiving a brother who sins against him seven times. In [...]
The Great Ones Part 2 of 3
Above top left is my friend, Msgr. Philip J. Reilly, a priest of the diocese of Brooklyn who has saved tens of thousands of babies from abortion. Above top right is a man who he helped convert, Dr. Bernard Nathanson MD who killed 75,000 babies before being baptized a Catholic. The good news of the blog post will eventually get to these two men. But first, I want to admit that I was going to write a blog post on these two men. The top left (second set of pictures) is Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele. Wikipedia says of him that he was "known as the Angel of Death (German: Todesengel), [...]
The Great Ones Part 1 of 3
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to Him with her sons, and kneeling before Him she asked Him for something. And He said to her, “What do you want?” She said to Him, “Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at Your right hand and one at Your left, in Your kingdom.” Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will drink My cup, but to sit at My right hand and at My left is [...]
Are Diocesan Priests “Self-Employed”?
There's a lot of talk of bishops being the "spiritual fathers" to their priests. I like that idea a lot, but let's see if it's true. In 1997 in Connecticut, there was a priestly scandal in Bridgeport that was brought to light several years before the "summer of shame" in the nearly-neighboring Archdiocese of Boston. The Hartfort Courant ran the story of an accused priest titled The Priest as Independent Contractor and I'll include the first 135 words here: More should be expected from a man of the cloth than Bridgeport Roman Catholic Bishop Edward M. Egan delivered earlier this month at a federal trial in New Haven. Bishop [...]
A “different” church is a “false” church
We traditionalists often use the term "Remnant Church" to refer to other traditionalist Catholics. Similarly, we may use terms against the modernists like "parallel church" or "false church" or "eclipsed church" or "counterfeit church." Of course, we all know that at the end of the day, that there can be only one Church, for Christ can have only one spouse, the Catholic Church: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the Church to Himself in splendor."—Eph 5:25-27a. Archbishop Viganò uses [...]