Worship Attendance – “Stable share of Americans have been participating in some way – either virtually or in person – during the pandemic, but in-person attendance is slightly lower than it was before COVID-19.” How the Pandemic Has Affected Attendance at U.S. Religious Services (Pew Research)
Rediscovering and Loving Doctrine – “Doctrine is at the heart of living a holy life, and it is the means of fostering such a life. Without doctrine, the Church’s entire faith and morality, founded on divine revelation, dissolves.” The Importance of Doctrine (What We Need Now)
Intelligence-Gathering Initiative – “As part of its effort to identify extremists in the Catholic Church, the FBI recruited at least one “undercover employee” to “develop sources among the clergy and church leadership,” Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) revealed Monday.” FBI Used Undercover Agent to Cultivate Sources among Catholic Clergy and Leadership, House Republicans Reveal (National Review)
“Saint Typical’s” – Many priests nowadays (including myself) are asking, “What if there’s deficient lex in the orandi? Won’t that diminish the credendi and vivendi?” What Many Priests No Longer Believe (Homiletic and Pastoral Review)
A Post-Christendom Faith –“In the long battle for the human soul, there are finally only two alternatives laid out long ago by God: life or death. What we need, theologian Philip Rolnick says, is ‘the gospel that has never ceased offering its life-giving alternative.’” The Middle of Every Human Heart (The Imaginative Conservative)
Undefining Masculinity – “Recently, an organization on my campus put together an event entitled ‘Undefining Masculinity.'” Wokeness’s war against sex and gender descends to clownish levels. (American Mind)
Society of Hollerich – “I was struck in particular by the interviewer’s observation that, as with Cardinal Hollerich himself, “More and more Jesuits surround the first Jesuit Pope in the Vatican.” More and More Jesuits (First Things)
Complex Issues – “Skeptics seeking to disparage the Bible and, with it, Judaism and Christianity, cite certain passages in the Bible that depict all-out warfare as mandated by God.” God’s Word? Concerning modern scholarship and those bloodthirsty Bible passages (Get Religion)
Canonically Illicit – “A new bishop was installed as the leader of the Shanghai diocese Tuesday, without public recognition from the Vatican.” China installs new bishop in Shanghai, despite local opposition (Pillar Catholic)
Sound Doctrine – “God reveals His saving words and deeds through the Catholic Church. The Apostles’ Creed, the Seven Sacraments, and the Ten Commandments express the firm certainties of the Catholic faith.” Catholicity, Complementarity, and Communion (Catholic Culture)
Dorothy Day – “One cannot understand the movement unless one understands how central the totality of Dorothy Day’s Catholic faith was to the entirety of her vision, and sadly the movement has lost sight of it.” Whither the Catholic Worker Movement? (National Catholic Register)
Matrons’ Moral Authority – “Earlier eras have seen mothers rallying to weightier causes, such as supporting the American Revolution, attaining women’s suffrage, or launching the temperance movement.” Moms on the Warpath (Law & Liberty)
Latin Mass Discord – “At the moment, the T.L.M. movement is still on the margins of the Church; to keep it there, paradoxically, Francis has to go to the margins and engage with it personally.” What’s Behind the Fight Between Pope Francis and the Latin Mass Movement? (The New Yorker)
Marx Is Asleep – “Wokeism arises out of the failure of liberalism, not out of the theory of Marxism.” Marx Was Not Woke (Chronicles)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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Latin Mass Discord
Back a year or two ago, when we had our “EWTN is SATAN!” liberal priest, the Bishop came to our parish to say Mass to cover for our Priest. When I went to Communion the Bishop stood in front of me with the host elevated and we just stood there looking at one another. Finally the Bishop looked down, shook a little, and said, “Oh!”. Obviously my conservative Catholic reputation had preceded me. The Bishop assumed that any and all Catholics who are not liberal Catholics must be like the TLM ‘extremists’ and receive Communion on the tongue.
Pope Francis is targeting the TLM to build a negative stereotype against any and all Catholics who are not liberal Catholics.
What is a TLM extremist, and what would the negative content be?
Hello Edward,
Jesus told us to love God through obedience to God’s Ten Commandments in order to go to heaven through Jesus Blood on the Cross. This is very clear to Conservative Catholics.
Liberal Catholics, out of ‘love’, ‘compassion’ and ‘pastoral care’ for the prideful unrepentant, want ‘radical inclusion’ of the unrepentant wicked into heaven as well. To do this, you can see how Liberal Catholics are going to have to make the TLM, and all Conservative Catholics, to be seen by the world in a negative extremist way.
John 14:15
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Catechism 2055 When someone asks him, “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” Jesus replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.” The Decalogue must be interpreted in light of this twofold yet single commandment of love, the fullness of the Law: The commandments: “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
John 15:22
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me also hates my Father. If I had not come to them and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; now, however, their sin cannot be excused. To hate me is to hate my Father. If I had not works among them that no one else ever did, they would not have sin; but as it is, they have seen and hated both me and my Father.
Catechism 2052 “Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” To the young man who asked this question, Jesus answers first by invoking the necessity to recognize God as the “One there is who is good,” as the supreme Good and the source of all good. Then Jesus tells him: “If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” And he cites for his questioner the precepts that concern love of neighbor: “You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.” Finally Jesus sums up these commandments positively: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
John 15:9
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love. You will live in my love if you keep my commandments, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and live in his love.
Catechism 2068 The Council of Trent teaches that the Ten Commandments are obligatory for Christians and that the justified man is still bound to keep them; The Second Vatican Council confirms: “The bishops, successors of the apostles, receive from the Lord . . . the mission of teaching all peoples, and of preaching the Gospel to every creature, so that all men may attain salvation through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments.”
John 5:27
“The Father has given over to him power to pass judgment because he is Son of Man; no need for you to be surprised at this, for an hour is coming in which all those in their tombs shall hear his voice and come forth. Those who have done right shall rise to live; the evildoers shall rise to be damned.”
Catechism 2083 Jesus summed up man’s duties toward God in this saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This immediately echoes the solemn call: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD.” God has loved us first. the love of the One God is recalled in the first of the “ten words.” the commandments then make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God.
1 John 5:3
For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome
Catechism of the Catholic Church; The Ten Commandments
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P78.HTM?
“At the moment, the T.L.M. movement is still on the margins of the Church; to keep it there, paradoxically, Francis has to go to the margins and engage with it personally. ♦”
*******
Leave it to the New Yorker to not see the forest for the trees. If current population trends continue, the entire Western Church will be at “the margins” in the future with the exception of traditional Catholics & those attending the TLM who actually reproduce themselves at sustainable rates.
@ Rediscovering and Loving Doctrine
Yes, and so, Hollerich, McElroy & Co. are either imposters, or pygmies beyond their depth, or simply and functionally illiterate (below)…
“The Church is no way [!] the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 95).
“Each of us knows how important is the teaching which represents the central theme of this encyclical and which today is being restated with the authority of the Successor of Peter. Each of us can see the seriousness of what is involved, not only for individuals but also for the whole of society, with the REAFFIRMATION OF THE UNIVERSALITY AND IMMUTABILITY OF THE MORAL COMMANDMENTS [italics], particularly those which prohibit always and without exception INTRINSICALLY EVIL ACTS [italics]” (n. 115).
“This is the first time [!], in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church [!] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this [‘moral’] teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial” (n. 115).
Latin Mass Discord – Irony of ironies. Pope Francis has done more than anyone to make the average Catholic aware of the TLM movement.
@ “Saint Typical’s”
Entertaining. After agreement with Fr McTeigue’s take on Lex orandi, that Lex is virtually vacant, and several paragraphs later I sensed I was reading a philosopher’s sarcasm on the sad foibles of church goers that afflict presbyters [though he certainly realizes not all since the faith debacle is largely the deficiency of priests’, bishops lack of faith].
McTeigue is too intelligent to believe that parishioner foibles aren’t first centered in lack of belief rather than practice. And sure enough he ends addressing the heart of the matter, the loss of faith, the absurdities of virtual believers that discourage priests. He confirms what I address above referring to “good priests”.
Aside from Lex orandi wording [historical research shows the emphasis is rather what we believe determines what we pray], belief and its retrieval is our mission. Fr McTeigue gives us the parish Mass setting that would engender faith and its expected participant posture. The rest is the fire of Christ’s sacrificial love that needs to be ignited in the hearts of clergy. Fire spreads.
Correction, “rather than practice”. Needless to say practice of the faith has everything to do with our faith. I meant to reference comportment at Mass.