My Recent Column in The Remnant Newspaper

Please take a detour over to The Remnant Newspaper to read my recent column and contribution to the ongoing debate over the traditionalist critique of the Second Vatican Council. Here's a teaser:

...The equivocal nature of these pronouncements, far from encouraging analogical thought or enriching “the analogy of the faith”, succeeds only in sowing confusion and casting doubt on what has been infallibly pronounced previously. These kinds of novel and imprecise pronouncements are the very reason for the emergence of the hermeneutic of rupture. These “pastoral” pronouncements created opportunities for confusion that was conveniently embraced and used by the purveyors of that “hermeneutic of rupture”. Can we call it mere coincidence when the “rupturists”, themselves, were so intimately involved in the Council? The floodgates of Modernist doctrinal reconstruction were thrown open even before the Council was concluded. As Radaelli points out in the already mentioned article, this was due, not to a misinterpretation of the “rupturists” after the fact, but by the interpretation of the very periti who were responsible for much of the content of the documents. As it turns out, many of the authors of the Council were the “rupturists”! Is it possible, then, that perhaps the documents were interpreted as they were intended to be interpreted, as rupture, by those who worked behind the scenes at the Council?

The imprecision of the great “Pastoral” Council and the imprecision of the Magisterium ever since was not a healthy contribution to the polity wherein analogy has its proper and vaunted place. It was, to apply Ockham’s razor, just plain old equivocal. The damage that this equivocality has produced is more than evident, as the Church currently reels in the aftermath of the failed liberal experiment.

How can Fr. Cavalcoli honestly suggest that the Magisterium’s imprecision has enriched the faith when the Church is racked by doctrinal confusion, liturgical abuse, wrecked altars and sanctuaries, and a devastating priest-sex-abuse scandal and commensurate institutional cover-up? How can Fr. Cavalcoli happily go about trusting that a redefined Magisterium has been a success when kitsch has replaced sacred art and architecture, seminaries are closing for want of seminarians, pews are emptying, parishes are closing in the thousands, and there is widespread disobedience among priests and bishops? How can Fr. Cavalcoli consider it an improvement when bishops and priests actively promote homosexual marriage or challenge the male only priesthood? That is not a healthy state of affairs!...

(Please consider ordering a subscription to The Remnant Newspaper while you are over there.)

Here's a roundup of the on-line debate thus far:

Sandro Magister: High Up, Let Down by Pope Benedict
The Remnant: Traditionalists Attacked... Again
Sandro Magister: The Disappointed Have Spoken. The Vatican responds
Sandro Magister: Who's Betraying Tradition. The Grand Dispute
Sandro Magister: The Church Is Infallible, But Not Vatican II
Sandro Magister: Benedict XVI the "Reformist." The Prosecution Rests
The Remnant: Why Not the Univocal? A Response to Fr. Cavalcoli
Sandro Magister: Religious Freedom. Was the Church Also Right When It Condemned It?
The Remnant: Why Not Univocal Indeed! Italian Theologian Responds to Remnant's David Werling
Sandro Magister: Only Beauty Will Save Us
Sandro Magister: A "Disappointed Great" Breaks His Silence. With an Appeal to the Pope
Sandro Magister: Bologna Speaks: Tradition Is Also Made of "Ruptures"
Ars Orandi: Turning the Word Rupture Upside Down; A Response to Enrico Morini

What's a Traditional Catholic, Mr. Shea?

Ever since dropping the Friday night "TradNews Roundup" I've been posting news and blog items on the FaceBook fan page. I recently linked to an article by Mr. Mark Shea concerning the immorality of torture. A long time ago, and I doubt Mr. Shea remembers, I took issue with a derogatory comment he made about the Traditional Latin Mass; it was distasteful, to say the least. However, in all fairness Shea is right on more things Catholic than he is wrong. If only Shea had a love for the Traditional Latin Mass and its commensurate spirituality, I think he would be able to complete the symphony. In that spirit, and in all charity, I commented on the link, "praying that you become a traditional Catholic, Mark."

Mark Shea publicly replied to my comment with the following:

I am a Traditional Catholic. I believe everything the Church teaches. Or, oh! Wait! By "Tradiitional" do you mean a "real* Catholic as in "my particular subculture"? See, that's the thing. I don't believe in reducing the Church to one particular subculture within the Church.

Well, first, Shea's definition of a traditional Catholic as someone who believes everything the Church teaches is so nebulous that it fails to adequately identify a Catholic in general, let alone a traditional Catholic in particular.

Obviously, a person can believe everything the Church teaches without actually being a Catholic. There have been, as we are finding out everyday, numerous members of the Anglican Communion who believe everything the Catholic Church teaches (or so we have been assured, at least). In addition, I'm sure that there could be more than one or two Lutherans running around who might just happen to believe everything the Catholic Church teaches. Obviously, we hope that most, if not all, catechumens come to believe everything the Church teaches before they enter into communion with the Catholic Church.

Shea's definition lacks specificity in regards to Catholics in general mainly because it leaves out two very important elements, i.e. Baptism and visible communion with the institutional Church. Thus, since it fails to adequately define a Catholic in general, it certainly can't be an adequate definition for a particular sort of Catholic such as a traditional Catholic (or Byzantine Catholic, or Chaldean Catholic, etc.).

A traditional Catholic, as it is understood nearly everywhere in the sane world, is best defined as a Roman Catholic who is particularly attached to the Traditional Latin Mass, now known as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, and its commensurate spirituality. Granted, other well educated and smart people may define it a bit differently or may attach one or two caveats, but for general purposes this definition is specific enough to be meaningful, but general enough to allow a wide variety of positions and opinions regarding various matters, some more important than others.

Given this definition, Mark Shea is definitely no traditional Catholic. But why is it so important for him to identify himself as such? What is he trying to say? I think the tone of the rest of his reply gives us part of the answer. What Shea means to say is that every Catholic is naturally a traditional Catholic, and real traditional Catholics, like you and I, have no right to the title, and, I would imagine, he thinks that we don't have any right to exist either. You see? if he thought we did, he would have said something like: "No, all Catholics are naturally traditional Catholics; what you are is called a [fill in the blank] Catholic." Shea doesn't offer this correction, which ought to lead us to think the obvious.

At any rate, the question to ask Mark is this: If I were a Byzantine Catholic, and I said something like, “gee I wish you were a Byzantine—I’m going to pray that you come over to the East”, would Mark Shea respond with this comment? Would he have accused me of trying to reduce the entire Church into the Byzantine "subculture"? No, he wouldn’t—at least, I don’t think he would. Why? Because, simply, he doesn’t harbor a disdain for Byzantine Catholics that he does for traditional Catholics. There's a deeper psychology at work that has rendered Shea’s rhetoric illogical.

This brings us to the second part of Shea’s comment. Shea accuses me of saying that only traditional Catholics are "real" Catholics, and of reducing the Church to "my subculture", as though "my subculture" was something to be loathed. He makes this conjecture with an unmatched malevolence that is common to Mark Shea’s callous rhetorical bravura, and, I have to admit, I do enjoyed this bravura when it is directed at the enemies of Holy Mother Church. So if I had made such a claim, then his malevolent bravura is perhaps justified.

The problem is, I haven't and I wouldn't. Nowhere on this blog, or in anything I've written for The Remnant Newspaper, or on the Facebook fan page, have I ever made the claim that only traditional Catholics are "real" Catholics.

So where did Mark Shea get this idea? I suppose he could have heard it from any number of evil traditionalists, the likes of which everyone knows are found under every TLM stone! You know the kind? The trad that thinks everyone is going to hell except himself. They are everywhere! But, if you, like me, actually know many traditional Catholics, you will know that these evil trads are, well, as rarely found in our circle as they are in the mainstream, novus ordo crowd. No, I think there is probably another cause for Shea's fancy.

Let's go a little deeper into the psychology of Shea's comment. Why the word "real"? Of all the criticisms of the traditional Catholic community, Shea chooses to accuse me and all other traditional Catholics of thinking we are the only “real Catholics”. I'm no Freud (thank God!) but if I had to take a clinical stab at what is really eating Mark Shea, I would have to say it is insecurity.

And why not? Mark Shea is a smart guy. He knows Catholicism, and thus he has to know that the Mass of the traditional Catholic communities was the Mass of the vast majority of the saints in the Western Church; he knows that the Traditional Latin Mass, as codified after the Council of Trent, is the Roman liturgy that dates back to the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great, and contains the most ancient of liturgical formulas in the Roman Church. It's just a plain, simple, historical fact that the Traditional Latin Mass shaped the Roman Catholic Church, and Mark Shea is too smart to deny it. And this is what is most important for understanding the psychology of Mark Shea's comment: he has already expressed, in a rather tactless fashion, his disdain for this ancient liturgy that defined the Church he loves!

Allow this to resonate. He disdains the liturgy, which, he cannot objectively deny, has shaped the Church he loves. That’s quite a conundrum! He can be likened, in a way, to a person who hates his parents. Imagine the angst!

At one time Shea could take some consolation, along with Pete Vere and Patrick Madrid, in the “fact” that the Mass prior to the novus ordo had been abrogated (as they contended in the book More Catholic Than the Pope). The argument runs as follows: the promulgation of the novus ordo abrogated the Traditional Latin Mass; thus the novus ordo, as a development of the Traditional Latin Mass, is, in fact, the same Mass. Traditional Latin Mass became the novus ordo, so the novus ordo = the Traditional Latin Mass. It follows from this that to ask for the Traditional Latin Mass was superfluous because the novus ordo was the traditional Mass. It also follows that novus ordo conservatives (and only conservatives because the liberals weren't invited to Pete and Patrick's party) were traditional Catholics, and all those who were attached to the abrogated Mass were disobedient and disaffected at best, or schismatic at worse. This is where Shea gets his claim that he is a "traditional Catholic", because traditional Catholics, real traditional Catholics, attend the novus ordo!

Not surprisingly the traditionalist critics pounced on this laughably unsound logic. Really, the book was a flop. Everyone I know who read it, traditionalist or not, were left confused by the book's rhetoric and strange logic. However, that is now all completely beside the point.

It is now beside the point because Vere and Madrid's argument has fallen on the wrong side of history. The traditionalist critics of Vere and Madrid were correct! As it turns out, Pope Benedict XVI, in the motu propio, Summorum Pontificum, declared, in agreement with the traditionalists, that the liturgical books of 1962 had never been abrogated when the novus ordo was promulgated! What’s more, traditional Catholics had a right to the old Mass! However, to my knowledge Vere and Madrid didn’t even bother to correct their book, which still contains these errors along with a few other doozies. Nor were apologies forthcoming when the excommunications of the bishops of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X were lifted by the Holy Father. Now that prominent churchmen and theologians are taking seriously the traditionalist critique of the 20th century changes in the Church, as first formulated by thinkers such as Romano Amerio, it is becoming crystal clear that a place is being carved out for traditional Catholics in an emerging Church, just now starting on a reform in continuity with Tradition of the post-Vatican II errors. That place had been denied to traditional Catholics, not just by the liberals of the “hermeneutic of rupture”, but also by the mainstream, novus ordo conservatives such as Vere, Madrid, and, our friend, Mr. Mark Shea.

So the present situation that these novus ordo conservatives find themselves in after Summorum Pontificum is a rather uncomfortable one. They were so sure that the old liturgical books had been abrogated. Wrong! They were so sure that the novus ordo was the Traditional Latin Mass for the very reason that the old books had been abrogated. Wrong again! Because the old liturgical books were not abrogated, and because there are now two forms of the Roman Rite, the novus ordo is certainly distinct from the Traditional Latin Mass. They were so sure that there was no room in the Church for those disaffected traditionalists that were attached to the Traditional Latin Mass. Wrong again! We are to be welcomed and all generosity is to be shown to those who are attached to the Traditional Latin Mass. They were so sure that all those criticisms of Vatican II and the 20th Century changes were disobedience. Wrong again! The debate has been welcomed, and, according to the secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, the criticisms “make sense”!

So the conundrum for a smart guy like Mark Shea is the realization that he very well could be on the wrong side of history, and for a choleric like him, that is a vicious fortune, indeed.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like Mark Shea (and Pete Vere and Patrick Madrid, for that matter). As I said, he is right more often than not when comes to things Catholic. However, he’s a choleric, and that means he’s not going to change overnight, especially when he’s already barked boisterously to the contrary.

Dear Mr. Shea,

From one choleric to another, I know how hard it can be to admit when I’m wrong. But smart cholerics, like I know you are, eventually come around because the truth means too much to them. I’m also equally sure that your comment, “I can see why they changed it,” was hasty and uninformed.

So, if, as I suspect, you are beginning to feel like a fish out of water due to the sudden changes in the Church back toward Tradition, then I invite you, in all charity, to swallow that pride and just attend the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, maybe once a month. It is, after all, undeniably the liturgy that shaped the Church you love. Read St. Francis de Sales’ method for hearing the Mass, and try it out. Read Guéranger’s The Holy Mass, and maybe check out his Liturgical Year.

After all, Mark, you know that if I had been a Byzantine Catholic, and said I was praying that you go East, you would not have lashed out the way you did. You know that it was unreasonable, and I’m confident you will reconsider.

God bless!

(By the way, this post contained no criticism of the novus ordo… thus falls another old canard; we can make our case without it.)

Defending VCII by making "rupture" mean its opposite

Turning the Word Rupture Upside Down
A Response to Enrico Morini

(Please see Enrico Morini's essay at Sandro Magister's blog.)

The word "rupture" comes from the Latin rumpere, which means “to break”. In order to rupture something, that thing must be broken; violence is done to the thing being ruptured. This meaning is very different from a mere change or reform or shift in emphasis. To rupture something does not mean to just make a change; it means to change it by doing violence to it. It is not a change for the better, but for the worse. When a man’s spleen ruptures, his life is in danger. When a bone is ruptured the limb is rendered useless.

When the Holy Father mentioned the “hermeneutic of rupture”, he contrasted it not with a “hermeneutic of continuity”, as the popular parlance of that phrase would seem to suggest, but with the term, “hermeneutic of reform”. Pope Benedict XVI, by making this contrast, clearly indicates that he was using the word rupture in its proper sense. Reform does not do violence to its subject; rather it is intended to improve it or repair it. That is the opposite of rupturing.

When the post-Vatican II developments are styled as a “rupture” by the Holy Father, he means, quite clearly, that violence has been done to the subject, which is this case is the rather vast field of all things Catholics, including worship, discipline and canon law, theology, Catholic education, Church government, the role of the modern Magisterium, etc. This was, to say the least, a radical notion on the part of Pope Benedict XVI. He is the first post-Vatican II pope to admit in no uncertain terms that violence has been done to the Church militant since the Second Vatican Council.

However, this is certain to set at unease those who have promoted the innovations in the wake of Vatican II. The Holy Father has accused them of doing violence to the Church militant. There are two possible courses of action for the liberals: either disagree with the Holy Father, or justify the violence done as a necessary step in the development of Church discipline and Christian doctrine. In the debate at Sandro Magister’s site over the Second Vatican Council and the traditionalist critique, the liberals haven’t attempted the former, simply because it’s impossible to deny that there has been violence done to the Church. However, the latter has been used to various degrees.

An attempt to justify the violence done by the “hermeneutic of rupture” is contained subtly in Cavalcoli’s, Biffi’s, Rhonheimer’s, and Arzillo’s essays, but the historian Enrico Morini takes it to a new height, not by thankfully dismissing the arguments of the “rupturists” as one side of some sort of dialectic of doctrinal development (analogy?), but as something welcomed and necessary in order to recover the Catholicism of a bygone, but "happy time". We really shouldn’t expect anything less from someone who openly embraces the “Bolognese school”, the liberalism of which did the most rupturing to the Church in the modern age.

What is surprising is that Morini, to prove his point, attempts to redefine the meaning of the word “rupture”. Morini writes:

It is not true, in my view, that there are no ruptures in the tradition of the Church. There was one interruption, precisely at the passage from the first to the second millennium, with the transition imparted by the "Lorraine-Alsace" reformers (like Pope Leo IX, as also two of the three legates in Constantinople in the aforementioned 1054, Cardinal Umberto and Stefano di Lorena, a future pope) and by the "Gregorian" reform, and then by an eminently philosophical approach to theological truths and by the overwhelming interest in canon law (already lamented by Dante Alighieri), at the expense of Scripture and the Fathers, at the height of the Middle Ages. Not to mention the Tridentine reform, with the rigid dogmatization – even going beyond the presuppositions of the medieval Church – as well as the "confiscation" of Scripture from the ordinary faithful, up to the apotheosis of the pontifical "monarchy" in Vatican I, relegating even further to the background the profile of the undivided Church of the first millennium. This should not come as a surprise: precisely because the Church is a living organism, its tradition is subject to evolution, but also to involutions.

Yes, Morini is actually making the claim that the Clunaic, Gregorian and even the Tridentine reforms were “ruptures”. He makes shifts in theological emphasis into wholesale ruptures! If he is using the term in its proper sense, in the sense that the Holy Father uses the term, he is telling us that these reforms were anything but reforms, but in fact did violence to the Church. The reforms after the Council of Trent did violence to the Church? Such a claim is simply too absurd to give it any extended or serious attention. Suffice it to say that Morini has turned the word “rupture” upside down and has forced it to mean its exact opposite!

The object of doing so, though, is less absurd because it points to the real intentions of, not just the “rupturists” after the Council, but of those intimately involved in the Council, those working behind the scenes helping to draft the very documents, themselves. It is summed up by the word aggiornamento, which was aimed at the recovery of the Church of the first millennium, a “happy time” “because it was nourished by reciprocal communion among the Churches”. Morini assures us that it is not a return to an abstraction or a myth of the past, and admits that these abstractions and myths have caused heterodoxies. Morini tells us that the Church of the first millennium doesn’t have to be reduced to abstraction or myth because we already have an explanation of the first millennium Church in the works of the Church Fathers.

However, here’s the problem: Morini never bothers to provide a picture of the first millennium Church that isn’t an abstraction or a myth. He simply reduces the desired result of this aggiornamento as a return to unity, collegiality, pluralism and a reformed liturgy. He never tells us why the aberrant abstractions and myths followed on the heels of the Council. He never tells us why the desired return to this first millennium Church, which is apparently so clearly painted by the Church Fathers, didn't happen. If it is so easy to achieve this aggiornamento, based on the picture provided by the Church Fathers, why was there an emergence of these aberrant abstractions and myths, with their heterodoxies, after the Council? It doesn’t seem as though this question ever occurred to Morini.

At the root of Morini’s thought is the false and dangerous desire of aggiornamento, which ignores the fact that Christian doctrine and discipline progresses forward, from the less clear to the more clear. What is being denied by Morini and the “rupturists” is the principle of doctrinal development that was so well explained by Blessed John Henry Newman. The simple fact of the matter is that the Church has progressed from that “happy time” to a MORE happy time because there have been many reforms throughout the history of the Church. These reforms introduced changes that repaired misconceptions, corrected errors, clarified various doctrines contained in the deposit of faith, and deepened the sacerdotal lives of the faithful.

It is here that we perceive why it was necessary for Morini to turn the word “rupture” upside-down to mean the opposite. Since these reforms, that included the Clunaic, Gregorian and Tridentine, reformed rather than ruptured what came before, what came before is still contained, albeit changed for the better, in the subject reformed. Morini ignores the fact that the writings of the Church Fathers, his window into the first millennium church, were preserved, not because of a string of ruptures that if they were ruptures in the proper sense of the word would not have been capable of preserving anything of the subject intact, but because of a string of reforms that preserved them and made them available to contemporaries. What would have happened to the writings of Boethius if it hadn’t been for the twelfth century scholastic reform? What would have been the fate of the Rule of St. Benedict without the Clunaic Reform? What would have happened to the ancient codices if it weren’t for the Gregorian reform?

The reason why myths and abstractions, accompanied by heterodoxy, emerged after the Council, is because the purveyors of aggiornamento were looking for the first millenium Church where it did not exist. They were left with nothing but abstractions and myths because that is all their sources, the scholarship of historians and various experts, could provide. If they had only looked to the Church as the source, they would have discovered the first millenium Church as it has progressed, in the liturgy, doctrines and devotions that existed at the time. That source is a guaranteed source, because the guarantee is the efficacy of the Holy Ghost.

Aggiornamento makes the troublesome claim that a return to a former understanding or a former practice is something good and reasonable. What this amounts to is a denial of the work of the Holy Ghost, Who works through history to move man to a deeper and clearer understanding of Christian truth, and a deeper experience of the divine. Aggiornamento is a stuffy conservationism that denies the progress of Christianity. Traditionalists, and not the liberals, are the truly progressive Catholics!

Take, for example, Morini’s backhanded compliment of Summorum Pontificum as a welcomed return to the “liturgical pluralism” of the first millennium Church. If liturgical pluralism is the ideal to be achieved, why did the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost in the second millennium move toward liturgical uniformity in the Roman Rite? Even now, the idea of “mutual enrichment”, despite what traditionalists might think of the notion, proves that liturgical pluralism isn’t a principal inherent in the Holy Father’s thinking behind Summorum Pontificum. Morini would like the Extraordinary Form to remained encased in amber, and the ordinary form to stay away from any influences from it, lest it spoil his rosy liturgical pluralism. Morini is a stuffy liturgical conservationist who would rather see cobwebs encase the Church's various liturgies in order to retain the illusion of some kind of return to his "happy time".

If the changes in Christianity over the centuries are purely the products of human innovation, then it is understandable to observe and make the conclusion that some or many changes were mistakes. In this hypothetical, changes in the history of the Church could well be “ruptures” that ended a “happy time”. However, if the Church is guided, not just in the first millennium, but throughout the whole history of the Church, to include the second millennium as well, by the Holy Ghost, then can we speak of these changes and developments as being mistakes, or having done violence to what came before? Absolutely not! To say such a thing is blasphemy, for the Holy Ghost does not make mistakes. But this is what aggiornamento does! It posits that the Holy Ghost has not reformed the Church militant, but has led us to an unhappy time. It is not aberrant abstractions or myths that have given us the post-Vatican II heterodoxies; it was simply aggiornamento.

Comment moderation

Comment moderation has been enabled because Fr. Corapi followers are rather rabid.

Corapi announces that he is leaving the Church?

I was shocked to hear this self-righteous, prideful and downright deplorable announcement from John Corapi (at Mark Shea's blog).

Corapi apparently is throwing in the towel as regards the whole priesthood thing. However, he is not throwing in the towel as far as marketing himself. He has decided to go it without the Church. He is now the "Black Sheep Dog", an apparent source of truth, even though he admits quite audaciously that he has separated himself from the source of all truth, the Holy Catholic Church.

Now it could be argued that Corapi doesn't say, outright, "I'm leaving the Church." However, many of his comments, especially the comment that he is now going to speak to a wider audience, and that he is going to continue some sort of "ministry" without the sanction of the Church, indicates that he is practically separating himself from the Church. His rather self-aggrandizing statement that he's going to feed and guard the entire world sounds as though he's actually starting his own religion. What's more he is doing so while at the same time attacking the Church and Her bishops, and never indicates that he intends to stay loyal or obedient to the Church's Magisterium. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

There is also the behavior of his followers. The damage in this regard is already widespread and quite serious. A number of Corapi followers have announced on his Facebook fan page that they too are leaving the Catholic Church to stick with their idol as he begins a new phase of error and conceit. At the beginning of Lent I lamented the fact that John Corapi was attacking the Church, and I wrote that nothing good would come of it. Now we are seeing the fruits. People are leaving the Church to follow this little devil.

Once again, I reiterate my initial criticism of the EWTN, novus ordo Catholic, mindset that creates these celebrity priests, foists them on the faithful as pristine sources of spiritual and doctrinal guidance without thought to the real peril to souls such actions can initiate. There's little modern mainstream Catholics have, though, if they wish to deepen their faith. In the sacerdotal vacuum created after the Second Vatican Council, a vacuum created by the tossing out of our Catholic identity and Catholic Tradition, authentic spiritual enrichment has been lost. Modern Catholics are often left floundering in the desert of the novus ordo Church, with its bad liturgy, kitsch music and art, and the cult of priestly personality.

Isn't it time to give Tradition a try? A real and potent solution to the sacerdotal vacuum that has been created in the wake of Vatican II is Tradition. If mainstream Catholics attempt to fill this vacuum with the these celebrity priests, these counterfeits foisted on us by EWTN, not only will they not be satisfied, but they could very well be putting their souls in jeopardy. Imagine! People are leaving the Church to follow a man who styles himself the "Black Sheep Dog". Is there a clearer indication of how spiritually bankrupt the modern, mainstream Catholic has become?

On the other hand, the Traditional Latin Mass and its commensurate spirituality can satisfy the modern longing to live a devout Catholic faith. At the Traditional Latin Mass man turns toward the Person of Christ. Jesus Christ is not at the center, He is at the forefront, in an exalted position, as He should be, and man faces Him and adores Him. There is no "center". There is only God being worshiped by His creatures.

No, not all traditional Catholics are perfect. Many have fallen. But they have fallen in contradiction to their values, in contradiction to the principles at the heart of traditional Catholicism. The John Corapis of the world have fallen because they have taken the cult of man, that has been given a prominent position in the new order of the Mass and in the modern Church, to its logical conclusion. Those who follow the John Corapis of the world into perdition do so because they have not been fed, and can no longer distinguish the authentic from the counterfeit.

I will say a prayer for John Corapi, as I did at the beginning of Lent. I will also say a prayer for those who are following him to their destruction. And I will take this seriously, because, whether John Corapi likes it or not, there is no salvation outside the Church.

Pentecost Sunday in Kenosha, Wisconsin

The Vidi Aquam

Fr. Charles W. Johnson offered the Mass according to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite at St. Peter Catholic Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin this past Pentecost Sunday. Fr. Johnson has graciously provided these images of the Immortal Mass. Many thanks to Fr. Johnson, and the parishioners of St. Peter Catholic Church. Deo Gratias!

First Mass of Fr. Marek Grabowski, F.S.S.P. in Krakow, Poland

From The New Liturgical Movement, where more images can be viewed.

Bishop John M. D'Arcy to offer the Traditional Latin Mass on Pentecost

Please keep in your prayers the young men and women from the St. Mother Theodore Guerin Traditional Latin Mass Community of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend who will be confirmed this Sunday by Bishop John M. D'Arcy, bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.

The Confirmations will take place after the 11:30 am Traditional Latin Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Fort Wayne, Pentecost Sunday, 6/12/11. Bishop John D'Arcy will offer the Mass (Pontifical Low Mass), and the Confirmations according to the liturgical books of 1962 will immediately follow.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church
4643 Gaywood Dr.
Fort Wayne, IN 46806

Proof positive that Jesuits are living on a differnet planet

Jesuit Father Patrick Earl, whose plans to desecrate his parish church was thwarted, had this to say about the reasons for his desire to have the Koran read from the pulpit of a Catholic church:

"I've heard from Muslim imams about what they and their congregations have suffered just from the fear, the fear of what they call Islamophobia," Father Earl said. One recent instance was related to an Islamophobia conference held in Charlotte earlier in May. "Some of the clergy coming here had trouble flying here because of the fear of some of the pilots, and so they were late getting here," said the priest.

Fr. Earl's comments come only days after Zenit reported on a sociologist's findings that over 105,000 Christians are martyred every year, the vast majority suffering this martyrdom at the hands of Muslims. Whole Christian communities in the Middle East are simply disappearing due to persecution and fears of persecutions. Bombs are ignited outside of Nigerian churches, priest and worshipers are gunned down in cold blood by Islamist extremists, and Christian girls are kidnapped and forced into "marriages" with dirty old Muslims, and Fr. Earl is concerned about imams being waylaid at the airport?

Are Christians in the Middle East needlessly frightened by the growth of Islamism? Are Americans needlessly frightened of Muslim extremists who have in the past hijacked airplanes and used them as cruise missiles? Apparently, Fr. Earl thinks it's all in their heads, and all in our heads. After all, such fears are irrational, "Islamophobia."

Meanwhile, Fr. Earl thinks that those imams who fear Christians, Christians who aren't in the habit of strapping bombs onto their women and children, and don't regularly burn down mosques, and don't engage in kidnapping young Muslim girls for the purposes of rape and other sport, well those imams' fear of Christians is perfectly rational, not a phobia at all!

What planet is Fr. Earl living on? Well, he's living on the Planet Jesuit--a cold, dark world, far from our own, revolving around a white dwarf that is about to finally burn out.

Fr. Earl, who is representative of the vast majority of those who lay a counterfeit claim to being the spiritual sons of St. Ignatius of Loyola, demonstrates the destructive tendency of the modern Jesuits to ignore reality in order to maintain an ideology that has long since lost any reasonable justification for its existence. This inability to face reality, because they stubbornly cling to an ideology and modus operandi that have obviously failed, is the reason why the Jesuit order continues to spiral into a self-inflicted extinction.

Prayer for the SSPX During the Octave of Pentecost

If you follow the news feeds that I provide on the Ars Orandi Facebook fan page, then you probably already know about the hopeful signs as of late in overcoming the obstacles to granting the SSPX canonical recognition.

If not, you can read these items from our friends at Rorate Cæli:

Fellay Speaks
Pozzo Speaks

In light of these developments the administrators of the blogs Messa in Latino and Rorate Cæli have initiated a request for prayers during the Octave of Pentecost for the intention:

That the Fraternity of Saint Pius X may be granted an official position within the Church.

I think this is an excellent idea, and I ardently hope that those who visit Ars Orandi will also join us in this request.

While this blog is not affiliated with the SSPX, nor am I, personally, involved in the SSPX, all Catholic traditionalists desire that the society, which has done so much good over the years, will soon enjoy canonical recognition and an official position within the Church. In this way the members of the society might enjoy a full life within the Church, and the Church might benefit in a more profound way from the work, piety and prayers of the Society that have over the course of the last half century, been a guiding, albeit contested and often maligned, light for the restoration of the Church and a true renewal in continuity.

From Rorate Cæli:

For this intention, under the advice and with the approval of priests who collaborate with Messa in Latino, from Pentecost Sunday to Trinity Sunday, we ask all to say this prayer:

VENI, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende.	COME, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.
V. Emitte Spiritum tuum et creabuntur; R. Et renovabis faciem terrae.	V. Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created R. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
Oremus: DEUS, qui corda fidelium Sancti Spiritus illustratione docuisti: da nobis in eodem Spiritu recta sapere, et de eius semper consolatione gaudere. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.	Let us pray: O GOD, Who taught the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant that, by the gift of the same Spirit, we may be always truly wise, and ever rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

And to offer their daily rosary for this intention.

We invite Priests to please add this intention to their personal memento at Holy Mass.

TLM for Pentecost Sunday in Adelanto, California

There will be a Traditional Latin Mass offered for Pentecost Sunday in Adelanto, California at

Christ the Good Shepherd Catholic Church
17900 Jonathan Street
Adelanto, CA 92301
at 5 pm
(The Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is offered at Christ the Good Shepherd every second Sunday of the month at this time.)

The Immortal Mass will be offered by Fr. Stephen Porter STL KCHS. I would like to thank Fr. Porter for offering this Mass, and may God bless him in his priesthood and all holy endeavors!

Deo Gratias!

TLM for Pentecost Sunday in Kenosha, Wisconsin

It is with great pleasure that I'm passing on word that for Pentecost Sunday there will be a Traditional Latin Mass (Missa Cantata with the Vidi Aquam) offered at

St. Peter Catholic Church, Kenosha, Wisconsin
2224 30th Avenue
Kenosha, WI

Mass is at 3:00 pm,
and Confessions will begin at 2:15 pm

The Immortal Mass, God willing, will be offered by Fr. Charles W. Johnson, and he will be assisted by the parishioners of St. Peter Catholic Church, the members of the Latin Mass Society of Kenosha, and the Oriana Singers, a professional choir, that will sing the Gregorian Propers and also a polyphonic setting of the Ordinary.

A sincere thanks to Fr. Johnson, and everyone who assisted in making this Mass possible. Thanks be to God who gives to His children abundant gifts and rich spiritual food.