St. Catherine of Siena on how to be a successful priest

Two excerpts from the latest issue of The New Oxford Review, in which David Mills writes, in his Last Things column:

It’s St. Catherine of Siena’s feast day as I write. She was famously critical of worldly clergy. In The Dialogue, she describes them as caring about “having grand horses, many gold and silver vessels, and well-adorned homes. They have and keep what they ought not, all with huge vanity. Their heart babbles out its disordered vanity, and their whole desire is feasting, making a god of their bellies.”

Inevitably, she says, they soon fall into sexual immorality. As a famous movie director said, the heart wants what it wants. We don’t easily say no to it. He who lets his heart have the horses and homes it wants, though he intends to remain chaste, eventually lets his heart have the body it wants.

Not surprisingly, the saint continues, these priests fail as pastors: “They leave behind my little sheep, whom I had entrusted to them, like sheep without a shepherd. Spiritually they do administer the sacraments of holy Church (the power of which sacraments can neither be taken away nor lessened by any sin of theirs) but they do not feed them with sincere prayers, with hungry longing for their salvation, with holy and honorable living, nor do they feed their poor subjects with temporal assistance.”

She writes pages and pages of this. She uses the word “filth” a lot. I wonder how often she’s read in seminaries.

Also from St. Catherine: The hierarchy “will never correct persons of any importance, even though they may be guilty of greater sin than more lowly people, for fear that these might retaliate by standing in their way or deprive them of their rank and their way of living. They will, however, correct the little people, because they are sure these cannot harm them or deprive them of their rank. Such injustice comes from their wretched selfish love for themselves.”

I saw this a lot in my experiences inside the religious world, as an Episcopalian as well as a Catholic, and it was one of the most disheartening things I saw. If you want a bishop’s attention, you would do well to have a lot of money, or the ability to get it for him. If, say, your priest makes a mess of the liturgy and preaches heresy from the pulpit, the bishop might listen to the rich man’s complaints, but the poor man from the small parish has no more hope of getting the bishop’s help than I do of playing center in the NBA.

I met a friend at the pub we favor, and started working after he left. A man about my age came over. “Are you religious?” he asked. I wanted to say no, but since most people mean “Do you go to church a lot?” I said, “Fairly.” He said, “No, I said are you a religious?” and explained he’d seen me there before with a priest friend. I said no. Then he asked, “Are you Irish?” No, I said.

When I told the priest this, he wrote back, “So was he raising the stakes or trying to make you feel better for having to answer negatively? That is, is being Irish a step up or down from being a religious?”

A Christmas Reflection - 2019

It's time to reconsider the reason for the season and the challenges offered by the drive-by "experts" of the day who intend to cast the entire Biblical narrative concerning the Blessed Nativity into doubt. Consider again the Biblical narrative:

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another,

Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pas, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. (The Gospel According to Luke, Chapter Two, Verses 13-20)

Here we are again, on the first day of the Christmas season. It has become something of a Christmas tradition for me to engage the following text by C.S. Lewis in connection with the above quoted Scriptures. The reason will be obvious.

Nearly every Christmas, it seems, NEWSWEEK or TIME or some television special will feature the "latest scholarship" questioning the "authenticity" of the Christmas story. I am not concerned with the question about whether the Nativity of our Lord occurred on December 25th. That's a matter of Church tradition and incidental to my concerns here. What concerns me is how the Biblical narrative itself is invariably called into question or even dismissed as mere "myth" -- the account of the shepherds, the Angelic host, the Christ Child in a manger, the Star and the Magi from the East, Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the flight of Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child into Egypt, etc.

The scholarly authorities typically interviewed, whether Catholic or Protestant, are consistently and incorrigibly one-sided, quite thoroughly corrupted by the Humean and Kantian philosophical presuppositions undergirding the historical-critical reading of the Biblical narrative. Typical is the About.com website, where Internet browsers frequent to learn "the facts" about this or that -- a site where one finds this sort of thinking gone to seed in an article by Austin Cline, "Nativity vs Gospels: Are the Gospels Reliable About Jesus' Birth?" (About.com), where the partisan skepticism of such historical critical assumptions is abundantly evident in his suggestions that all the key ingredients of the Nativity story in the Gospels were concocted fictions of various kinds.

The lack of critical circumspection, if not patent fantasy, in all of this would be amusing if it were not so destructive. The upshot is always the same: that the Gospel writers are unreliable and not to be trusted, and certainly not to be taken at face value. Just how ludicrous this all is, however, can be seen easily by anyone with a modicum of familiarity with literature, mythology, and history. One of the best examples of a powerful antedote to this kind of foolishness -- and one I keep using because it is simple -- is a little essay by C.S. Lewis entitled "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," which is available in a collection of essays by Lewis entitled Christian Reflections (1967; reprinted by Eerdmans, 1994). The following are some excerpts from Lewis' essay, which begins on p. 152 and contains four objections (or what he calls "bleats") about modern New Testament scholarship:

1. [If a scholar] tells me that something in a Gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends and romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavour...

I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one [of the stories in the Gospel of John, for example] is like this... Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative...

2. All theology of the liberal type involves at some point - and often involves throughout - the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by his followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars... The idea that any... writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance.

3. Thirdly, I find in these theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur... This is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon 'if miraculous, unhistorical' is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the Biblical critics in the world counts here for nothing.

4. My fourth bleat is my loudest and longest. Reviewers [of my own books, and of books by friends whose real history I knew] both friendly and hostile... will tell you what public events had directed the author's mind to this or that, what other authors influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why - and when - he did everything... My impression is that in the whole of my experience not one of these guesses has on any one point been right; the method shows a record of 100 per cent failure.

The 'assured results of modern scholarship', as to the way in which an old book was written, are 'assured', we may conclude, only because those who knew the facts are dead and can't blow the gaff... The Biblical critics, whatever reconstructions they devise, can never be crudely proved wrong. St. Mark is dead. When they meet St. Peter there will be more pressing matters to discuss.

However... we are not fundamentalists... Of course we agree that passages almost verbally identical cannot be independent. It is as we glide away from this into reconstructions of a subtler and more ambitious kind that our faith in the method wavers... The sort of statement that arouses our deepest scepticism is the statement that something in a Gospel cannot be historical because it shows a theology or an ecclesiology too developed for so early a date...

Such are the reactions of one bleating layman... Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the Vicar; he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more...

Lewis, of course, was hardly a naive ignoramus. He knew all the critical objections to Christianity because for the first part of his life he was himself a confirmed agnostic. He was anything but "soft-minded," to use the Jamesian idiom. He taught philosophy at Oxford briefly before going on to teach Medieval and Renaissance literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and conclude his prolific academic career teaching at Cambridge. An account of his conversion can be found in his Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life,in which we find the following quotation:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. (emphasis added)

Lewis, an Anglican, was a man of deep Catholic habit of mind, probably because of his immersion in medieval literature; and many have wondered why he never himself crossed the Tiber. Walker Percy even compared him to Moses, who led many others to the Promised Land, though never himself crossing over. A number of books have been written about this, like Joseph Pearce's C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church,and Christopher Derrick's C.S.Lewis and the Church of Rome.The most probable reason is cultural: his father was an Ulsterman. Whatever the reason, his common sense criticisms of those Biblical "experts" who attempt to dismantle the entire Biblical narrative under the influence of Enlightenment prejudices, can be accepted with gratitude.

For further reading:

• Jesus Seminar critically examined (edited by Pertinacious Papist)
• C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections,edited by Walter Hooper.
• If you're interested in reading the relevant chapter from Lewis's book online, click on: "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism" (Lewis on Biblical Criticism, posted June 10, 2005)
• Hurd Baruch, "The Crisis in Biblical Scholarship" (New Oxford Review, December 2014).
• Mark Giszczak, "The Early Responsa of the Pontifical Biblical Commission" (Catholic bible Student, March 20, 2008)

Merry Christmas everyone!

What French priests neglected to preach as the church in France collapsed

"A Crisis of the Four Last Things" (New Oxford Notes, July-August 2018)

NOR readers will be familiar with the stark reality that much of Europe is no longer Christian. That goes, too, for the eldest daughter of the Church, France, which boasts hundreds of renowned Gothic churches visited by the thousands each week, most not for purposes of religion. Think Notre Dame in Paris, or the cathedrals in Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, Strasbourg, and Beauvais. The list goes on and on. If only these churches were still honest representatives of a Catholic culture in France. If only that culture were as strong as the flying buttresses of its sacred houses. Alas, each of these cathedrals at this point in its history is little more than a monument to times past, a sepulcher for a once-flourishing religion and way of life. It is instructive to note that only 1.7 percent of Catholics regularly attend Mass in France — and according to Guillaume Cuchet, a professor at the University of Paris-Est Créteil who specializes in contemporary Church history, “regularly” isn’t even defined as meeting the Sunday obligation; it merely means “at least once a month.” Thousands of old French churches are no longer active places of worship; priests often have the care of 20 to 30 parishes and only celebrate regional Masses each week — and even those are attended by few. When Catholics die in France, chances are slim that a priest will be around to bury them.

There is certainly no shortage of hypotheses for the causes of the demise of the Church — the disappearance of Christians and the decline of the traditional Catholic way of life — in France. Popular fingers point to the old French Revolution, the newer sexual revolution, and the increasing influence of scientism, moral relativism, and other personal philosophies of life that have eclipsed the idea that piety, tradition, and doctrine provide a natural compass for faith and morals.

Recently, French Orthodox writer Jean-Claude Larchet reviewed Cuchet’s new book, How Our World Stopped Being Christian: Anatomy of a Collapse (OrthoChristian.com, May 29), a penetrating look at the spectacular decline of Catholicism in France. Some — though likely not most NOR readers — might be surprised at what Cuchet identifies as the root cause of this decline. Catholicism itself, says he, bears the heaviest responsibility in the de-Christianization of France. And yep, he specifically identifies the Second Vatican Council as the primary catalyst of it all. The Council, writes Larchet in his review, “proposed to face the challenges of the modern world,” and yet it “did nothing but adapt itself to the latter; thinking to bring the world to its side, it ended up giving in to the world, and despite wanting to be heard in the secular sphere, Catholicism has instead become secularized.” In other words, the Church in France (and elsewhere, of course) became impotent by its own hand.

Though this assertion is hardly groundbreaking, Cuchet gets into specifics that are worthy of serious consideration. This rupture in the Church, which he traces back to 1965, the year the Council closed, can be identified with the liturgical reforms, yes, but more precisely with the changing attitudes toward sin occasioned by both the Council and its liturgical reforms. In the area of piety, the abandonment of Latin and the change toward the reception of Communion in the hand played an important role, but Cuchet focuses more on the promulgation of a religious relativism that, if not written straight up in the documents of Vatican II, was the result of willful misinterpretation or misapplication of these summary documents. The Council’s documents seem to have been designed to allow for liberal interpretations, the kind that led to the secularization of Catholicism throughout France — a secularization that happened almost overnight. “A whole series of ‘truths’ suddenly fell into oblivion,” writes Larchet, “as if the clergy themselves had ceased to believe in them or did not know what to say about them after having spoken of them for so long as something essential.” More importantly, writes Cuchet in his book, “the Council paved the way for what might be called ‘a collective exit from the obligatory practice on pain of mortal sin.’”

Cuchet traces almost all the official and unofficial conciliar reforms to two fundamental crises: the crisis of the Sacrament of Penance and the crisis of not preaching on the Last Things. According to Cuchet, the massive abandonment in just a few years of the practice of confession had a profound impact on Catholic attitudes toward sin, and toward life in general. In 1952 51 percent of French Catholics went to confession at least the obligatory once per year. By 1983 that was down to just 14 percent. The concept of a personal conscience, misunderstood as it universally was, led to most Catholics rationalizing away the sins they had committed. Not only that, says Cuchet, the French clergy allowed them to do so. They abandoned the practice of confession (that is, hearing confessions frequently) just as had the so-called faithful.

Cuchet, in fact, lays most of the blame at the feet of the French clergy. They failed, he says, in their duty to preach about sin, to preach properly on the work of a well-formed conscience, and to preach about the importance of confession and penance. Thus, the usefulness of confession became less obvious, as did the connection between confession and Holy Communion. In a word, Communion was trivialized and confession nearly non-existent.

Cuchet also claims that the French clergy stopped preaching about the Four Last Things — death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell — “as if they had stopped believing in it themselves.” French priests, he says, in effect “paved the way to Heaven.” They gave the distinct impression that the path was no longer narrow and steep, but was now a wide, well-travelled thoroughfare. In a sense, wonders Cuchet, doesn’t that essentially mean the end of salvation? If one does not believe in sin, why the need for salvation? If there’s no need for salvation, why bother with Jesus Christ? If we needn’t bother with Jesus the Savior, why go to Mass? Why belong to the Church? Why identify as Christian? The rhetorical answer to those questions leads back to the astounding statistic that only 1.7 percent of French Catholics attend Mass even once a month.

Though Cuchet doesn’t provide a way out of the decline explicitly (and that is not his purpose as a historian), one can easily see the implicit solution: a strong Church made up of vibrant, faithful clergy who are not afraid to preach on sin or the effects of sin, and who promote the myriad spiritual, physical, and communal advantages of being a practicing member of the Church.

The foregoing article, "A Crisis of the Four Last Things" was originally published in the July-August 2018 issue of the New Oxford Review and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.

Manners in the presence of others and in the Real Presence: "Zeal for Your house ..."

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, May 6, 2018):

Zeal for Your house consumes Me.

Walking along outdoors on one of those fine sunny days of the past week, discreetly saying my rosary the while, I caught sight of a young woman approaching me from the opposite direction. Quickly letting go of the beads concealed in my pocket, I readied myself to tip my cap (visor worn forward, mind you) in a gesture of respect I had often seen my father make to women in similar circumstances. To no avail. The young lady, perhaps fearing an untoward glance, kept her eyes firmly riveted to the ground.

Many courtesies once commonplace are now passé. The aforementioned baseball cap reminds me how youth are generally unmindful of what a breech of good manners it is for men to wear hats indoors, a fortiori at the table. Equally vanishing from the scene are young couples walking together on the sidewalk with the male on the outside, that is, on the street side, indicating chivalrous protection of his consort. The drinking of water, in full view of others, from plastic bottles flared high, with one's throat strained crane-like towards the heavens is perhaps beyond the capability of people in our time to consider as discourteous, however so mildly it may be so. Discourtesies so ubiquitous as now to be regarded as benign if not fully accepted may include the public picking of one's teeth, cutting or painting the nails, the yawn full agape. Needless to add are certain bodily noises -- amongst which I confine myself to belching and spitting -- which are best discharges in private chambers or, at best, in the seclusion of familial quarters.

My subject matter is the coarsening of good manners as representing a diminishing respect for others. (Manners, let it be said, can be overdone, even unto a fastidious prissiness, unbecoming for a man -- dare I invoke the outmoded phrase, for a gentleman?). As desirable as it is for rational beings to cultivate good habits respecting the presence of one's fellows, yet my primary motivation in writing on this rare, perhaps indignifying subject, is not in the hope of rekindling polite conduct towards one's "fellow man" (a contrived, feminist faux pas) but rather to bring attention to the indifference if not ill-treatment by Catholics in our time towards His Majesty in the tabernacles of our churches. Vanishing is the genuflection, that posture whichuniquely evidences both faith in the Real Presence and adoration of Christ's divinity. Even the less satisfactory curtsy or nod of the head towards the place of His reposition has become scarce. The general rule is to disregard God sacramentally in-residence and to carry on coram sacratissimum Sacramentum (in the presence of the most holy Sacrament) as if He were not there. Whether this is do to malice, to disbelief, or to the wide-embracing ignorance of right doctrine and practice by Catholics is hard to determine. But the resulting insult to a God who did not disdain to endure the crucifixion for the salvation of mankind cannot be denied.

Recently I visited a Catholic church where people were gathered to hear a concert -- a thing permitted under certain conditions, among which is the removal of the Blessed Sacrament and Its telltale sign, the sanctuary lamp. These prescribed measures were, to all appearances, not observed. As a result, not only was there the ordinary, moderate-tones chitchat of the audience before a performance but even the inducement to chaos by the evening's MC, as is now the prevailing custom in many a parish church, that everyone should turn to greet his neighboring pewsters on all sides. I was heartbroken as I thought of the Lord in His self-induced imprisonment to beckon a voluntary profession of faith in and respect for His divine Presence. While surely not all attendees of the musical event were Catholics, yet by no outward sign of theirs was witness given of their belief in the Divine Presence. Or, is that the point, namely, that faith in the Real Presence of Christ -- Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Holy Sacrament -- is absent? Have we come to this state?

Zeal for Your house consumes Me," our Lord lamented, when He ousted the money-changers from the Temple (Jn 2), abridging words of the psalm (68:9) which adds, "and the insults of those who insult You have fallen on Me." I too have some of Christ's "zeal," and I feel embarrassment and sorrow that my Lord is treated dismissively by His own. "Be silent before the Lord, all flesh, for He has roused Himself from His holy dwelling place" (Zech. 2:13) -- that admonition was made in reference to God's rather vague manner of presence in the Jerusalem Temple. Yet what have we in our churches but the very Incarnate Son of God under sacramental signs?

I insist that in our parish church the Lord not be abused by "outrage, sacrilege, and indifference" (to quote the familiar prayer). Avoid talking to your neighbor in church or, if the matter warrants it, in a whisper. The Lord has "zeal" for the sanctity of His house.

"Be still before the Lord!" (Ps. 36, Vulgate).

Fr. Perrone

Fr. Z's amusing rant about the "choo-choo kiddie Mass"

It's about much more than the title suggests: "Communion in the hand. Wherein Fr. Z rants and provokes" (Fr. Z's Blog, March 10, 2018). Amusing, as almost always.

Tridentine Community News - Evangelizing with a Catholic vocabulary; Tridentine Masses this coming week

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News by Alex Begin (March 4, 2018):

March 4, 2018 – Third Sunday of Lent

Evangelizing with a Catholic Vocabulary

Catholic social media over the past few weeks has been awash with heretical and pushing-the-boundaries statements of progressive theologians, journalists, priests, and bishops. At face value, it can seem as though the Church were turning in an official new direction. Indeed, certain individuals have become famous for spouting what would have been roundly condemned by Church authorities just a few years ago. Many in the upper echelons of the Church are now silent in the face of this relatively small handful of outspoken, high-profile individuals. It’s enough to get one depressed, except ...

The scenario is all too reminiscent of something that happened to this writer in the secular world. Allow a personal note: For decades, I used to be in the business of selling small computer mainframe systems and software. These were reliable, proven systems, but with text-based, admittedly boring-looking screens. A significant portion of my competition was flashy, Windows-based systems with visually appealing screens. The salespeople for those systems had embraced a term designed to denigrate my offerings: they called them “legacy systems,” a backhanded way to maintain that they were outdated, old-looking, obsolete technology.


What my competitors failed to tell the potential customers was that their systems were pretty, all right, but their feature list was a small fraction of my offerings. Yes, my legacy systems in fact did a whole lot more than their relative quickly cobbled-together systems did, because mine had had many more years to have much more functionality and reliability built into them, thanks to the feedback of our customers [an analogy to Ordinary vs. Extraordinary Form is tempting]. So how to communicate this succinctly to the prospects? We needed our own vocabulary to counter the competition’s, and so we came up with our own term: The others were pushing “bimbo systems”: pretty, but they didn’t do a whole lot! And beware, what is considered attractive today may itself be considered “legacy” in a few years when standards change.

And so it is when traditionally-inclined Catholics are called rigid, clinging-to-the-past, out-of-touch, and whatever belittling term du jour is cast our way. We might benefit from developing our own term akin to the overused “hater”, which is often applied to anyone with sincerely held convictions. It would be useful to have a term which pejoratively refers to those too eager to embrace modern causes often juxtaposed to immemorial Church teachings. Something like, “she’s an amour”, meaning a person all too willing to swoon over the latest theological guru or fad.

Of course, we have a higher calling than battling with words. Evangelizing, or more specifically reaching out to those seeking a spiritual home, is more successfully done with love, with enthusiasm, with the carrot rather than the stick. We traditional Catholics really do have the advantage here: We can evangelize with beauty. Traditional sacred art, architecture, liturgy, and music can speak to the soul in ways that bland modern theology and liturgy cannot. Modernists appeal to the emotion and the desire to be free of restrictions. Little of what they are pushing will save the soul, and to their credit, rarely if ever do they maintain it will.

Their day-to-day vocabulary can make one shudder. Even if some of these terms did not originally have a modern connotation, when used in the context of progressive Catholic talk, there is no mistaking the orientation of the person or institution using them:

Narthex or vestibule vs. Gathering Space
Altar vs. Table of the Lord
Holy Communion vs. Eucharist
Congregation vs. Assembly
Pulpit vs. Ambo
Mass vs. Liturgy
Confession vs. Reconciliation
Extreme Unction vs. Sacrament of the Sick

“Legacy Catholics”, too, should make use of expressions that convey our mindset. Consider working traditional Catholic terminology into your own conversations. Use terms such as:

Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
Holy Ghost
Sacred Body
Precious Blood
Deo grátias

We’ll be better off taking the energy we put into reading and commenting about or to the high-profile heretics of the day into gently and steadily promoting all that we love, the full and undiluted Roman Catholic faith. For each dissenting Catholic that chooses to follow those celebrities of the moment, we should be able to attract at least as many sincere souls to the Truth.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Tue. 03/05 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor (Tuesday in the Third Week of Lent)
• Sat. 03/10 8:30 AM: Low Mass at Miles Christi (Saturday in the Third Week of Lent)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Albertus (Detroit), Academy of the Sacred Heart (Bloomfield Hills), and St. Alphonsus and Holy Name of Mary Churches (Windsor) bulletin inserts for March 4, 2018. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]

Why young people consider liturgical 'spontaneity' soOOOoooo YESTERDAY

Remember how the 1960s and 70s considered spontaneity the definition of "authenticity"? Well, times have changed and so has the meaning of "authenticity." For many, at least. The lines dividing the two sides of the generation gap today may surprise many of us. Those pushing "spontaneity" in worship seem to be increasingly greying members of the baby boomers who grew up in the 60s and 70s and still believe that that young people will find "cool" what they liked back in the 60s and 70s. But in an ironic turn of the tables, many today seem to regard partisans of liturgical spontaneity as tiresome bores, and are even looking to the Extraordinary Form as "something new." Check out the article. See what you think.

Kathleen Pluth, "The Liturgical Generation Gap and 'Authenticity'" (Chant Café, February 19, 2018):

The following article is reprinted from 2014.

Lately I've been giving a lot of thought to the fact that more formal worship styles appeal to a surprising demographic: the young.

While many youth liturgical outreaches continue to focus on the casual and the near-secular in order to attract young people, this type of pastoral programming seems to be doing less well in many cases than those using more traditional forms.

Not long ago I visited a parish that within a couple of years had built up a large group of young servers and a sizable youth schola for the traditional Mass--celebrated on a weekday evening. And this is hardly a unique case, just in the parishes I've personally visited.

There was a time, a naive time, when it seemed there was a desire among the young for an authenticity that had as its heart a certain casualness and spontaneity. In the 60s and 70s, it was the fashion to speak one's mind, follow one's heart, and go with the flow.

I believe that it is likely that today's young people are likewise interested in authenticity--but in authenticity that has a much different character. Spontaneity is wonderful, in its place. Casualness, chattiness, hanging out--these are activities as popular among young people as they have ever been. But there seems to be a growing sensibility that not every place is the same. Mass is not the place for relaxed, casual activities. The true liturgical joys can be found by going deeper, by being more quiet, and by experiencing more and richer beauty.

When I was young there was no leadership in the Church of my experience for this kind of liturgical experience, which leads to a second and more practical reason that young people are enjoying good liturgy: it is available. If a teenager would like to attend a polyphonic Mass on a given Sunday, and if s/he is willing to travel a bit, it is available. If a family has been singing chant at home and would like to join a schola to improve their skills, it is possible--not always at the local parish, but somewhere.

I sometimes wonder why there was this enormous temporal gap in leadership of the sacred liturgy. I suppose some of the reason was political, some was a misunderstanding about the aims of the Second Vatican Council, and some was a skill vacuum of a kind that we are thankfully not likely to see again soon, if all the young people now involved in liturgy continue to persevere and serve.

Are traditionalists insane, or do they just have more fun? Or is that a false dichotomy?

[Disclaimer: Rules ##7-9] See for yourself:

Exclusively EF Trappist Abbey shuttered by Vatican

"Mariawald Trappist Abbey Closed Down -- Summorum Undone by Current Vatican Regime" (Rorate Caeli, January 19, 2018):

The Trappist Monastery of Mariawald, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, was probably the only monastic house in the world to make use of the provision present in Article 3 of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum that allowed for the whole conversion of such a house to the exclusive use of the Traditional Rite.

...

Now, the inevitable outcome arrived: as GloriaTV reports, the old abbey is being closed and completely dismantled. What two world wars could not destroy, Bergoglianism could:

German Old-Rite Trappist Abbey Will Be Closed Down

The old-rite Trappist abbey of Mariawald, Germany, will be closed down. The Vatican, the Trappist order, and the Diocese of Aachen on whose territory the abbey is located, have announced this in Mariawald.

The monastery was inhabited by the Trappists since 1909. All employees lose their jobs. The monks will be transferred to other monasteries.

During this year, the monastery and all its possessions will be handed over to Aachen diocese. The monastery and church of Mariawald will probably remain closed forever.

In a letter dated November 21, 2008, Benedict XVI granted the abbey the privilege to return to the old usages of the Trappist Order in liturgy and monastic life. This concerned especially a return to the venerable Old Rite. The pope saw this project as a "renewal of the church in the spirit of tradition". Now this renewal is over before it could get off the ground.

Fr. Perrone on the ground of our hope and certitude

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, December 18, 2017)

No matter what some people might think of our parish, there is no regnant idea here of being the sole surviving remnant of true Catholicism, the last of the hardliners on Church doctrine -- theological and moral -- or on the liturgy. The truth is that we try merely to be faithful, as our Lord demands His disciples to be, of all He has given us. I like to think of this kind of conservatism as 'preservatism,' an appreciation and custody of what is most to be valued, rather than a stiff, desperate inflexibility. In fact, those who fit the ideal I believe directed by our faith are often (not always) the most reasonable, understanding, gracious, tolerant, and -- within limits -- accommodating people there are, liberal-minded people of a kind fast fading from the scene. There are, on the other hand, sternly rigid and harshly restrictive, dogmatically closed-minded folk of political correctness for whom there must be unbending conformity to the prevailing opinions of those who set the standard for culturally accepted norms. Those norms -- decidedly leftist -- will not admit disavowal by those upholding the perennial validity of an inherited body of intellectual truths and moral precepts.

There need not be an apology for wholeheartedly embracing the tradition of religious, philosophic, and moral truth. It is a precious inheritance which has been entrusted to our care, to be preserved for successive generations -- to Christians in particular. This legacy obliges those who recognize its worth to safeguard it from any who may dilute or abolish it. With regard to our parish, this means that we continue to teach doctrinal truths, that we covetously preserve our liturgical tradition, and that we insist on enduring moral truths (especially with regard to marriage and sexuality) which are of divine origin and which, for that reason, are irreformable.

What is it that is hapening in our beloved Catholic Church where many of our brethren seem eager to bow to the spirit of a rebellious age, dismissing past beliefs and ways as no longer tenable? More distressing perhaps is their silence in the face of creeping doctrinal novelties and liturgical caprice. Should there not be in a time of great confusion and moral obscurity, manifest clarity about what's true and right and decisive means put forth to preserve it? The mind and heart crave surety and stability rather than vagueness and diffidence, especially from our pope, bishops, and priests, those official guardians and expositors of the deposit of faith and heralds of Christ's Gospel.

There ought not to be doubt about the truths of faith, moral conduct, liturgical propriety and the worth of the apostolic tradition that has been bequeathed to us. It is a cause of wonderment that these certainties can be so readily discarded or adjusted to the spirit of the time -- a restless, ever shifting spirit which must soon forsake its devoted adherents for faddish novelties it has yet to propose.

In the meantime, while temporizing is condoned, those who insist on perennial truth and on tradition are dismissed, ridiculed, or hatefully regarded as enemies of progress. They ought not, however, to entertain doubts about what is right, good, true and beautiful. Confidence comes not from an egotistical estimation of being the measure of truth, but from Christ's indefectible Church which has weathered centuries of stormy controversy over what is true. It is the abiding presence in her of the divinely promised Spirit of Truth that is the foundation of certitude.

"God is our refuge and strength. Therefore we shall not fear even should the mountains tremble. The Lord of Hosts is with us" (Psalm 46). Being sure of God and of His promised fidelity is an anchoring, stabilizing, and healthy way of being a Catholic Christian. Saint Paul sounded a word of admonition to the Ephesians that would well be heeded in our day: "Be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the Head, into Christ" (4:14). I wish our parishioners to persevere in this age of anxiety and uncertainty as people who steadfastly 'speak the truth in love.' May you ive tranquilly in this often disconcerting, sometimes exasperating, manifestly troubled age.

Fr. Perrone

How trendy experiments in music and liturgy have led to the triumph of bad taste, banality, and a deflated sense of the sacred

Composer and Catholic James MacMillan writing in a recent issue of Standpoint:

In the 1970s many well-intentioned types thought that such 'folk' music and pop culture derivatives would appeal to teenagers and young people and get them more involved in the Church, when the exact opposite has happened. It is now thought that these trendy experiments in music and liturgy have contributed to the increasing risible irrelevance of liberal Christianity, and that liturgy as social engineering has repulsed many. Like most ideas shaped by 1960s Marxist ideology it has proved an utter failure. Its greatest tragedy is the willful disingenuous, de-poeticisation of Catholic worship. The Church has simply aped the secular West's obsession with 'accessibility,' 'inclusiveness,' 'democracy,' and anti-elitism, resulting in the triumph of bad taste, banality and a deflation of the sense of the sacred in the life of the church."

Maybe this is the sort of trendy banality he had in mind -- gone-to-seed, perhaps?




Well, the choreography of the latter is almost good enough to serve for the closing "Christmas-in-Heaven" performance in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, if that's not being overly generous. The horror of it all is just the philistine assumption that any of this belongs to the worship of Almighty God.

"St Anthony, St Anthony, please come around ..."

As a reader says, "if you do a quick online search for the mag. using Google's ‘ images’ filter, you get the vague sense from many covers that 'something’s been lost' for maybe too long now."


Dorothy Cummings McLean, writes, in "Major Catholic family magazine spotlights pro-LGBT priest in favorable interview" (LifeSiteNews, November 30, 2017):

Many faithful Catholics who read St. Anthony Messenger will likely be scandalized that a Catholic magazine that congratulates itself on its august past and popularity with Catholic families would give so much space to a high-profile critic of the Catholic Church and her doctrines without challenging either him or his ideas.

Liberal Tradition, Yes; Liberal Ideology, No?

In a provocative essay, R. R. Reno, "Liberal Tradition, Yes; Liberal Ideology, No" (First Things, December, 2017), responds to critics who regard him as shifting to a "mirror image of the anti-American, anti-capitalist left." This is, of course, not quite true, as Reno goes on to show. What interests me here, however, is his reference to Ryzard Legutko's The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, which Adrian Vermeule reviewed sympathetically in the January 2017 issue of First Things, in an article entitled "Liturgy of Liberalism."

As Reno notes, "Vermeule endorses Legutko's central claim, which is that the liberal consensus in the post-1989 West has taken on many of the attributes of the communism that dominated Poland when Legutko came of age. The countries in the West that promote liberal democracy are not islands of toleration, diversity, and free inquiry. Instead, Vermeule writes, echoing Legutko, they are dominated by “a spreading social, cultural, and ideological conformism.” Liberalism has become a religion. Those who dissent are heretics."

Of course, critics will regard this way of talking as hyperbolic and distorting -- like trying to equate perversions such as political correctness with Soviet gulags or Cambodian killing fields. But Reno responds:

But neither Legutko nor Vermeule is equating Berkeley with the closed city of Gorky. They are comparing them—and finding some telling similarities. Both places impose a rigid orthodoxy and stifle dissent. Gorky used secret police, while Berkeley relies on a suffocating climate of opinion. This is a crucial difference, as Ahmari points out. But it does not erase the similarities.

Legutko’s goal—my goal—is not to undermine “liberalism.” It is to clear away some of the blind dogmatism that has built up in the West, especially since 1989. It won’t do to label our efforts “illiberal” just because they call into question the dominant mentality of our time. In fact, that accusation reinforces the totalitarian atmosphere. Contemporary liberalism rarely answers critics. Instead, it silences dissent by labeling it “extremist,” “far-right,” “authoritarian,” and “illiberal.” We can’t come to grips with the problems we face in 2017 if we are constantly policed. And in any event, as Vermeule points out in our last issue (“A Christian Strategy”), our loyalty is to Christ, not to any particular political philosophy or tradition. This transcendent loyalty disenchants political ideologies, and freedom from the idolatry of politics is the soul of true liberalism.

I am not certain that Reno or Vermeule go far enough, in light of Christopher A. Ferrara's penetrating critique of the Liberal tradition itself in Liberty, the God that Failed (2012). But one can learn a great deal from their analysis, which is certainly illuminating as far as it goes.

I should also mention Timothy D. Lusch's exclusive interview with Ryszard Legutko, "A Demon-Haunted Europe: Democracy's Totalitarian Impulse" (New Oxford Review, October 2017), which we have reposted by permission of the publisher here. Lugtko is a professor of philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, a member of the European Parliament, and one of the more astute critics of the totalitarian impulses in contemporary western liberal democracies.

A Demon-Haunted Europe: Democracy’s Totalitarian Impulse

"An Exclusive Interview with Ryszard Lugutko" (New Oxford Review, October, 2017)

by Timothy D. Lusch

Timothy D. Lusch is an attorney and writer. His writing has appeared in Saint Austin Review, The University Bookman, Chronicles, and at CrisisMagazine.com and CatholicExchange.com. He blogs about books at PityItsPithy.com.

Ryszard Legutko is a professor of philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He is also a member of the European Parliament, a Polish politician, and an author. He has written one of the most consequential works on political philosophy to be published in recent years, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. In this profound and vital book, Legutko argues that liberal democracies — specifically in Europe — have much in common with communism. He traces the twin developments of liberalism and democracy and shows how, at their precise intersection, the totalitarian impulse rises. With grave implications for freedom in the West, and for traditional institutions like the Catholic Church, Legutko sounds a warning: either recognize the danger and defeat it, or be destroyed by it.

NOR: Professor Legutko, you have written a significant book with particular appeal for the people and institutions of the West. Following your thesis, the seed of slavery seems to be sewn into the fabric of liberal democracy. What implications does this have with respect to our understanding of freedom? Is our understanding of freedom undergoing a paradigmatic shift such that we will demand greater freedoms (e.g., determining our gender identity) and end up with less (e.g., enforcement of “gender identity” rights and language limiting the speech of dissenters)?

Legutko: I am not sure we demand greater freedom today. On the contrary, I think freedom has ceased to be a highly valued commodity. What is happening is that some groups demand certain privileges, often called “rights,” and other groups seem favorable to these demands because they see in them a vehicle for constructing a new society compatible with their outrageous ideologies. When we see, for example, privileges granted to homosexuals, including the right to marry and adopt children — rather unusual privileges, to be sure — we mistake it for the growth of freedom in general. But this is an erroneous conclusion.

Take gender. It is a strange concept, and rather absurd, because not only does it undermine the obvious biological differences on which the existence of the human race has depended from time immemorial, but it makes this strange concept an instrument to reconstruct the entire human culture, including the humanities, art, law, philosophy, even natural sciences and mathematics. Its aim is to restructure society and the human mind — to make a mental, political, social, and cultural revolution — not to enlarge our freedom. One can compare it to Marxism and its theory of class struggle, which some people in the past believed serves the cause of freedom while in fact it is a tool for a revolution, not only in social relations but also in the humanities, art, law, philosophy, natural sciences, and mathematics. (For instance, multi-valued logic was said to be correlated to the growth of imperialism, and the general theory of relativity allegedly contradicted the dialectics of nature.)

In the case of both Marxism and gender, we have an attempt to make a deep restructuring of society. Revolutions hardly ever enlarge our freedom, though the revolutionaries often include “freedom” among their slogans. In the early stages of a revolution, people are lured by such slogans — and, indeed, some kind of freedom is given to them following the breakdown of the existing rules and the ensuing chaos. But soon the revolutionaries tighten their grip on society and impose the new rules that are stricter and more humiliating than before. The world before the gender revolution certainly had more freedom than it has now. Laws were less intrusive, the humanities more open and diversified, philosophy less dogmatic, human relations less legalistic. Likewise, as a result of granting privileges to homosexuals, we have experienced significant encroachments on the freedom of speech and many other liberties, and, consequently, on liberty in general.

Christian defeatism?

Our underground news correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, recently sent me this:

There is widespread misgivings in every church about the increasing evidence of Christian defeatism. A monthly periodical created a sensation with an article entitled, “Have Christians lost Their Nerve?” Most of the bishops whom I met in Rome had read his article and none was inclined to dispute its depressing conclusions.... One feared that the ecumenical movement was taking what little was left of the fight out of the Church:

“Christ said ‘They will throw you out of the synagogues.’ Today we priests are being invited to preach in the synagogues. Too many of our Catholics are like the pale tepid lot who Dante said were not fit for Heaven and too cheap for Hell. He wasn’t going to bother to speak about them. Just look at them and pass on. The great word now is ‘Dialogue,' which means futile conversation between Christians of different communions, none of whom has any real belief in anything which he professes. Another popular word is ‘Encounter, which means meeting God rather less then half way.”

Arnold Lunn, 1968

Fr. Perrone: a father's worry over his children's spiritual future

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, October 29, 2017):

A priest is rightly called father because he has a spiritual progeny, his people, a family he was given through mother Church. Being a parent of sorts, the priest has duties toward his children, to provide for them in the things of the spirit. Dispensing the sacraments and imparting instruction through preaching and teaching are the most necessary of his duties. As parenting in its ordinary sense entials more than ensuring that basic necessities are met, so the priest-father has more to do than fulfillment of the fundamentals of pastoral care. Among these extras is his parental duty to worry. No parent worthy of the name passes his days without anxiety for the welfare of his children. Their good health, proper education, safety, and that personal security which makes for happiness are surely among things parents often worry about in regard to their children.

So do I, a spiritual father, worry about my parishioners' spiritual welfare. In particular, I have spiritual concern over what may happen to them in the times ahead. The present moment may be secure enough, but the prognosis is not good. Every good parent does his best to get his children off to a good start in the early years of his children's lives. The time inevitably comes when children become young adults and must fend for themselves in a highly troubled world and amidst "a crooked and perverse generation" (Phil 2:15). Looking ahead I do not see good days for the Church. While there are some signs of betterment for Christians in American society, these are tenuous and fragile. In our beloved Church, signs are less promising for a restoration of stability and clear doctrine. Moral permissiveness and equivocation in teaching seem to be getting the upper hand as the pope and many bishops, theologians, and a number of priests teach ambiguously or even outright falsely, giving grave scandal. It pains me even to mention this yet I'm aware that my people cannot be unmindful of at least some of what's been said and done due to professional and social media. Best efforts have been made to 'put a good spin' on what's been happening from the highest to the local parish levels of the Church. A time comes, however, when the obvious conclusions must be drawn and one must come to grips with the harsh reality of a Church already sharply divided over what is authentic Catholic teaching on moral living and ecclesiastical discipline. And here my parental worry kicks in. How will my parishioners fare if and when a schism (rupture) breaks out in the Church and one must make a declaration of where one stands? What principles will be employed in making that decision? Social pressure to conform? The measure of one's own evil tendencies? The bad example of some of the hierarchy? I think of the heartbreak of Christ when He asked: "Will you also leave Me?" or the foreboding in His rhetorical question: "When the Son of Man comes again will He find faith on earth?" Sadness grips me when I hear the blatant lies being spread about doctrine and right morals. My predecessors in this parish and I have tried to do our paternal duty towards our spiritual children in teaching the truth and encouraging our people to live by it. This must be an ongoing task for the priest, especially in view of the mighty leftist propaganda. The natural tendency in nature is towards dissolution rather than towards betterment, unless a counterforce is exerted. In other words, things by themselves don't get better and better but rather progressively worse when unattended. With the present weak leadership in the Church and the corruptive influence of the media, that needed force is not to be presumed.

The disciples once asked our Lord, "Will only few be saved?" Divine Wisdom did not give a direct answer. The incertitude over the outcome of salvation ought to stir up some salutary worry. While the true Church cannot die and while Christ will ever remain with it until time's end, there is no surety of any particular person being among the saved. And so, I will worry and pray for my parishioners.

I must set aside these dark ruminations to speak of some upcoming dates. Wednesday this week will be All Saints Day, a holy day of obligation. Masses will e at 6:30, 9:30, noon, and 7:00 p.m. Thursday is All Souls Day. Masses will be offered in the morning at 7:30, 8:15, 8:00, 10:00, 11:00, 11:30 and 7:00 p.m. Everybody should participate at Mass on that day -- or better, at several Masses, praying for the dead. (Communion may only be received up to two times per day, but one may assist at Mass without any limit.) Visits to the cemetery with prayers for the dead during the first eight days of November may gain aa plenary indulgence for them.

Get yourselves ready to engage in the annual parish Forty Hours Devotion,a time for the whole parish to adore the Blessed Sacrament. Every individual in the parish ought to spend at least an hour in the church during the time of November 10-11. More on this next week.

Fr. Perrone: Divorce

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, October 22, 2017):

This week's subject matter raised another issue upon examination of my relatives in terms of adherence to the Catholic faith. It has to do with the failure of marriages, what we have called, perhaps somewhat euphemistically, divorce. Once a rarely uttered word, like abortion in that remote past time of my life, divorce has inflicted my extended family as it has the general population. While I had intended to make a count of the number of divorces among my relatives I failed to do the needed calculations. Doesn't matter, really. The point is that this cancer has done its share of damage and created an uncomfortable family tension. There are "ex-" husbands and wives and their children who have suffered the consequences of their separated parents. There is the awkwardness of family gatherings, either on account of the missing spouse or else upon his unexpected presence. Most of all for me, there is the matter of the Catholic faith. For us, marriage is not only a lifelong pledged agreement of fidelity and commitment to a life lived in common, it is also a sacrament, a sacred union that derives its lifeblood from Christ. Every Catholic marriage failure is a manifestation of some personal sins, that is, of offenses against God's laws. To glibly ascribe divorce to 'irreconcilable differences' masks the transcendental meaning of divorce as sin. Unlike a so-called private sin, failed marriage does harm to at least one other person, and often to more, and this in the wider family relationships, in society generally, and in the Church specifically. We are a weaker, restive Church for prevalence of divorce since marriage is symbolically a reflection of the undivorceable marriage of Christ and the Church. Our Lord is always the faithful groom, and His people are collectively His bride. He pledged His life in sacrifice to win this spouse for Himself by His meritorious death. He will never retract His marital vows to her. The fidelity of the Church espoused to Christ is expressed in her adhesion to His teachings and in the refusal to prefer sin to His grace. The high incidence of divorce among Catholic spouses is symptomatic of the infidelity of many Catholic people to their baptismal marriage "vows" to Christ. Their total acceptance of Catholic belief (doctrine) and their determined abstention from a sinful manner of life have too often been set aside either for some other religion or for some other way of life. Divorce is only the outward sign of the internal marital infidelity of the Church membership to Christ.

Our familiarity with divorce can inure us to being mindful and sensitive to it symbolic significance in terms of the faith. The response to divorce among Catholic people must always be fidelity to Christ's doctrines and to His commandments. Instead of this only permissible solution, proposals to accommodate our Lord's teachings and His laws are being seriously considered by the pope, some bishops and priests, and by some desperately but deludedly hopeful divorced and re0cohabitating couples (I say not "remarried"). Behind this scandalous suggestion is the idea that if one cannot abide by the law (in this case, divine law) then the law itself should be abrogated, or at least adjusted to present circumstances. This is the most pernicious aspect of what's being advocated by the allowing divorced and re-"married" people (without Church annulment) to receive the sacraments without the necessary requirement of total continence (the non-use of the marital act). The reason why this is so grievous is that, if admitted, it would unravel the whole moral law of God and all the Church discipline concerning what is sacred. In brief, by it the whole Catholic and Christian faith would be cast away. All would be remade or readjusted, as if to force God into submission to man's weaknesses rather than insist on wek man's obedience to God. Thus one would have the triumph of man over God. The great 'divorce' would have been achieved and God's marriage to the church would be undone.

The rebellion against the traditional biblical and ecclesiastical understanding of marriage and the sacraments has seeds in the souls of everyone who regrets the binding force that God's natural law has upon him. It expresses an old resentment that God should make demands upon humanity, demands that defy man's beastly craving for limitless freedom from strictures. Those who decry the outrageous proposals for change in the church's laws governing marriage and the sacraments are those who are themselves beset with the disorder of original sin's residue; yet they rightly insist that God's laws are irrevocable, unreformable by anyone: pope, bishop, layman. In the still raging controversy over Catholic re-"marriage" and reception of the sacraments one ought to take a more inclusive, panoramic view of what this means. It is the preamble to a declaration of war of man against God, of human willfulness over obedience to Him, of a divorce and a riddance of the divine Groom who ever remains faithful despite His spouses' menacing threats of desertion.

Fr. Perrone

Truth Decay

Yet another angst-ridden message from our underground correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, this time arriving by bicycle courier in a large envelope. The hand-written message, with splotches of ink, made me wonder if Guy had used a quill pen to compose the missive. In the envelope I also found a pack of four Havana cigars. Nice.

Guy's message referenced a piece by Sandro Magister entitled "World's End Update ..." (Settimo Cielo, October 20, 2017), which I tracked down on the internet. Then followed his brief comments:

It's getting old. This new universalism has by now been so often suggested and homaged by so many recent popes that one could honestly argue it's part of the postconciliar development of doctrine. I no longer know what to say. Ralph Martin's "Who Will Be Saved?" offered a complete, Catholic, and biblical response to it. Trouble being, though, as Bishop Barron pointed out in his online debate over Martin's corrective, the conservatives' ballyhoooed Benedict XVI himself seems to support some sort of universalism in his encyclical on hope. We can laud tradition all we want, but at some point have to admit that postconciliarism is often an apology for, versus a friend of, Tradition. When the Four Last Things are shined up with new porcelain theological caps after receiving a Balthasarian root canal, Developmentalism is becoming the new orthodoxy, no matter how hard the forced smile from places like First Things. We are all Mormons now.

So it goes ...

David French: on consentual sex

The carrier pigeon didn't even land. It just dropped its little wad of a message like pigeon poop. But there it was at my feet. Guy Noir - Private Eye, again. My underground correspondent from God knows where: somewhere 'stealthy.'

"For some reason, David French — like Peggy Noonan and Elizabeth Scalia — often annoys. But here he is right on," he wrote, in what looked like quill point squiggly ink lines.

The link he included led to this: David French, "A morality based only on consent results in sexual oppression" (National Review, October 15, 2017). Amen to that.

Lifesite petition supporting the "filial correction" of Pope Francis for allowing the propagation of confusion and heterodoxy

In July of 2016, an international group of 45 scholars, academics and pastors petitioned Pope Francis for clarification on his Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. Later that year, four cardinals published their now well-known five questions, or "dubia" (Latin for "doubts") concerning Amoris Laetitia, after receiving no response from Pope Francis. In July of 2017, 62 scholars, pastors and others, sent Pope Francis a "filial correction" (or Correctio) accusing him of "propagating heresy" by equivocal passages in Amoris Laetitia and by "other words, deeds and ommissions." Again, after a month of waiting in vain for a response from Pope Francis, the authors of the Correctio have published their document.

The the document is over 25 pages long, some of it in untranslated Latin, and can be found online at various sites. Clear summaries can be found here and here.

Now I see that LifeSite has launched a PETITION where others can add their names to the signatories. I also see that, despite the Correctio's framer's original intention to voluntarily exclude bishops and cardinals, that Rene Henry Gracida, Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Corpus Christi, has sent in his name to be added to the original list of signatories. Others will probably follow suit.

Just one comment. The whole idea of sending a "correction" to the Pope sounds radical. Some have called it 'epochal.' Yet it may be important to bear in mind that the document does not accuse Pope Francis of formal heresy. Rather, it argues that the Pope has allowed heterodox opinions to proliferate by his silence when asked for clarification (as by the four cardinals last year), by his prolix and confusing declarations in interview, and his appointment to positions of influence within the Church men who publicly dissent from Catholic teaching on the sacraments. It is, in short, a filial cri de cœur directed to the Holy Father asking for him to raise the torch of truth and illumine the darkness amid the sea of benighted confusion in which so many feel as if they are drowning.

Please pray for His Holiness, Pope Francis, for the whole Church, and for all affected by the confusion abroad.