Progressive Catholicism Is Not Prophetic Catholicism – “Staying in tune with a liberal society that has no clear idea of what it is moving forward to, doesn’t necessarily constitute being prophetic.” The Psychological Makeup of the Catholic Liberal (What We Need Now)
Declining to Pause – “This period of American religious history is not so much a reversal of the large seismic shifts the country has been experiencing since the 1990s, but rather a brief pause.” Is Christianity No Longer in Decline? (First Things)
The Thin State of the Culture – “Culture is the ultimate source of everything happening now. Even political change is the result of cultural shifts.” The World Was Flat. Now It’s Flattened (The Honest Broker)
Lifestyle Apps – “Over the last ten years, lifestyle apps have come to play a major role in our culture.” Optimizing for Holiness: App Culture and Catholic Spirituality (Public Discourse)
China: One Country, Two Systems – “The story of Jimmy Lai, a 77-year-old Hong Kong businessman turned human rights activist and convert to Catholicism, is unfolding at the intersection of politics and religion between China, the Vatican, and the US.” America and the Vatican Must Confront China on Human Rights, Starting with Jimmy Lai (Providence)
The Vatican and María Valtorta’s Visions – “In a statement published March 4 but dated February 22, the DDF said that Valtorta’s ‘alleged ‘visions’, ‘revelations,’ and ‘messages’’ cannot be considered to have a supernatural origin.” Under new norms, DDF weighs in on alleged mystic (The Pillar)
Cardinal Roche Celebrates Latin? – “In this exclusive interview, marking the Golden Jubilee of his ordination, Cardinal Roche reflects on his five decades of priesthood and distinguished service to the Church.” EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Cardinal Arthur Roche – ‘If they only knew that most days I celebrate Mass in Latin’ (Catholic Herald)
Real Totalitarianism – “The American Left’s discourse is replete with comparisons of President Donald J. Trump to Adolf Hitler and constant evocations of a dangerous “fascist” threat to democracy supposedly coming from an altogether illiberal Right.” Hitler All the Way Down (The American Mind)
A Christian Administration? – “From what I’ve seen, the president’s team is earnestly striving to apply the precepts of our faith to the policies that govern America.” The Trump Administration: More Catholic Than You Know (National Catholic Register)
Wholesome Literature Wanted – “There is a real need for more Catholic literature for young (and not so young) people. But the reality is that in comparison with the past, relatively few books aimed at Catholic teenage and young adult readers are being published.” Our children need better Catholic fiction to help solidify their formation in the faith (Catholic Herald)
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As to the Catholic Herald’s marketing campaign for Cardinal Roche of the UK, Damian Thompson (formerly of the Herald, who left it because their preference to serve as PR for the Church establishment, and in particular their refusal to report on corruption in the Church establishment) has reported that “Eminence” Roche (ER) is a fraud who has cruelly persecuted faithful Catholic people who revere the Extraordinary Form of The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
“If ‘they’ only knew I say the Mass in Latin.” Sounds like McCarrick-grooming-speak.
I have read ER’s own words in rejection of the traditional Roman Rite, outlawing it because he rejects “the theology” of the traditional Roman Rite. I take him at his word, and understand him to be dog-whistling his apostasy while “virtue-signaling” the same to his CEO the Pontiff Francis. Likely among these are the apostasy that Jesus didn’t die for our sins, as the Cardinals counterparts in Germany have declared. And likely, that bowing in prayer before Pachamama is not an offense against God’s 1st Commandment. So many more to ponder…
In news not written in the Catholic Herald, it’s the words of the Sacrifice of The Mass that indicate a person’s faith, persons like my parents and grandparents), and NOT the language adorning the words.
Righteous, Chris.
I could not finish the article on Roche. Someone’s been stoned or hit over the head by Roche’s rock.
The second paragraph describes Roche’s ‘service’ to the church as ‘distinguished.’ I had to check to see whether the bees of Babylon had satirized the ugly raw truth.
Next, ‘liturgical formation’ ‘challenges’ are ‘pressing’ in the ‘contemporary context.’
The eminence need not bother. The faithful have no need nor will we heed one more fly on the dung heap.
Where has Damian Thompson fled?
@Cardinal Roche Celebrates Latin
In these abbreviated comments on Pope’ Francis’ [Desiderio Desideravi] we read how the Church’s liturgy “should be undertaken by the community as a great act of love for the Lord.” Yes, as culminating in the doxology of Christ’s (!) triune love for the Father, and of ourselves as “through, with, and in Him…”
BUT, still unaddressed in this interview is the root tension between the extraordinary and ordinary forms of the one Latin Rite, now reduced to simply the language used: “If they only knew that most days I celebrate Mass [Novus Ordo] in Latin.”
HOW to participate as the Church as “assembled” in the whole Mass—as more fully retained in St. John Paul II’s “Prayer Before Mass”, as the “unbloody RENEWAL AND EXTENSION of Christ’s Sacrifice [!] on the Cross” through the hands of an ordained priesthood? Meaning, the Church assembly as more than a “community” because meaning “love” as firstly the self-donation of the incarnate Christ within the mystery of the Triune One.
HOW to “do” (?) all of this without reducing the Mass to “Project Church” (“The Ratzinger Report,” 1985). That is, without either (a) confusing the perennial Real Presence (CCC 1374) with what Roche understands as “an overly elaborate” form of the Rite, OR (b) with what others understand as an underly defined “community” (resembling too much the substituted Lutheran form?).
SUMMARY: about this historic, unresolved, and real tension between form and content—at the altar, we read of Roche’s possibly selective “listening”—at the “synod” or now community roundtables.
@ The Vatican and María Valtorta’s Visions
DDF theologians had an obligation to avoid the popular acceptance of a perceived 5th Gospel in contrast to the 4 Traditionally confirmed by the Church as divinely revealed. What may be argued is that The Poem of the Man God is spiritually inspired to promote devotion in the reader.
Re: Progressive Catholicism Is Not Prophetic Catholicism – “Staying in tune with a liberal society that has no clear idea of what it is moving forward to, doesn’t necessarily constitute being prophetic.” The Psychological Makeup of the Catholic Liberal (What We Need Now)
A progressive Catholicism in no way derives from ‘prophecy.’ Unless ‘progress’ is a repentance-conversion-reversion-return TO the Immutable Lord and His Church.
The prophets of the OT were not future-tellers. Rather, the OT prophets spoke messages from God to men, and the dominant messages were to return to the Lord and His Ways. Grave and disastrous consequences would attend men who did not heed the prophecy to return to God.
Well, Father, if people get their devotional jollies from a whining mama’s boy Jesus who gleefully stomps a “lascivious caterpillar” and offers to snap off his genitalia as proof of his love, who am I to judge? Of course I did judge Valtorta’s monstrous masterpiece in these pages: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/09/14/a-monument-to-pseudo-religiosity-a-case-against-the-poem-of-the-man-god/ It’s a sick book set down in automatic writing by a disturbed woman.