De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Religion overthrowing Heresy & Hatred, by the Baroque master Pierre Le Gros "the Younger" (1666-1719) from the tomb of St Ignatius Loyola at The Gesu in Rome. The almost amusing attempts to pretend that there's no problem with the Church at the moment I spoke about yesterday look even more ridiculous in the context of these two excellent interviews from The Remnant . Granted, The Remnant is not best known for balanced and impartial reporting, it unreservedly has a traditionalist perspective, but these interviews with laymen familiar to English Catholics are very well conducted, gentle and balanced. It is certainly my experience that we all appear much more partisan in print than we might actually be in real life. Actual conversations always reveal much more of a person that the printed word where you are trying to convey a message often influenced by your passion and commitment. As Chesterton said, "You cannot love a thing without wanting to defend it...

Further to the recent comments of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna in Ireland, certain commentators have been spinning like crazy to make him look like some sort of orthodox heavyweight. Notably, old Catholic Voices collaborators Austen Ivereigh and Greg Daly are slagging off everyone from EWTN to The Spectator and The Catholic Herald and insisting "there's nothing to see here", utterly blind to their own hubris. They both seem to spend quite a lot of time these days attacking old friends and opposing anyone who has any questions about Pope Francis & his direction, even though Austen has been directly wrong footed by the Pope recently himself! It is certainly the case, like numerous other modern churchmen, Schönborn has written some good stuff and his intellect is not in question. I remember a while back Archbishop Rino Fisichella was due to speak at a conference I attended and indeed, the text of his address was very good and Catholic, but he has ...

Justine Greening, Equalities Minister and Education Secretary, has explicitly articulated the social engineering project being pushed out in the UK at the moment. In an interview with Sky News' Sophie Ridge, Greening said that major faiths should follow public opinion on the subject of same-sex "marriage". Greening, who "came out" herself last year, gave a surprisingly aggressive interview with Sky News' Sophie Ridge which demonstrated just how far the government are willing to go to push this agenda in society. "Should churches allow same-sex couples to marry inside them?" - @JustineGreening answers @SophyRidgeSky #Ridge pic.twitter.com/ECmzTPVj3U — SophyRidge On Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) July 23, 2017 “It is important that the church, in a way, keeps up and is part of a modern country,” she said. It seems to me that this attack takes place in a vacuum of teaching from the "major faiths" as to why they should not kee...

Michael Voris is well known for plain speaking, but I found this Vortex particularly hard-hitting & inspiring! Goodness me it says something doesn't it? It says something for the mealy-mouthed, effeminate nancy-boys who hate any conviction, any passion, any stomach for a fight! ...that pretty much sums up what you and the effeminate, feminized clergy currently running the show,  currently  running the show, don't like about muscular Catholicism. You all would much prefer to slink about in the shadows and issue vague, ponderous statements that no one knows exactly what they mean because that's how you can accomplish all your evil — through stealth and petty, behind-the-scenes politicking, like a bunch of mean high school girls. That's how you operate, always thinking of politics, always weighing what's to your advantage and what can help or derail the agenda of your anti-Church. Well, welcome to the sunlight! You guys hate open, confrontation because ...

Fr Ray Blake comments on the article in L'Osservatore Romano which I blogged about yesterday here.  The conclusion Fr Ray draws is thought provoking: If the L'Osservatore article is correct, and there is no reason to imagine that it is not, or that it is just reserved to Rome or Italy, it would seem that despite popular acclaim of journalists and those outside or the edge of the Church that the clergy as it says 'high and low' -and presumably the committed laity- will quickly forget Francis, most of them of course will still continue when Francis moulders silently in his tomb amongst his predecessors. 'In the end the Lord wins'. Read Fr Ray's full post here . Jeffrey Mirus has some more pertinent observations here . Whenever people speak or write in this way it is because they wish to justify some position or course of action which is likely to meet greater resistance if it is clearly articulated. For Catholics, it is always at least potentiall...

Pope Francis addresses priests of the Diocese of Rome during a meeting at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome March 2. (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano, handout) I have to say I found this very heartening today! The pro-Francis spin-meisters are clearly in overdrive and have pumped out another "scathing" article in the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano attacking a "large part" of the community of bishops & priests who it accuses of being resistant or positively hostile to Pope Francis direction of travel. This all feels wearily familiar now. The article, authored by Italian Father Giulio Cirignano, a native of Florence and a longtime Scripture scholar at the Theological Faculty of Central Italy, accuses clergy of being attached to outmoded traditions and suggests  “The clergy is holding the people back, who should instead be accompanied in this extraordinary moment,” This comes a little over a week after the publication o...

Today's Gospel reminded me of a theory a friend of mine often mentions regarding the current stormy waters in the Church. That is that, with the proliferation of what seems to me to be straight heresy, we get to see clearly who the good guys are. Much of the heresy may well be dressed up in sophistry and casuistry, but it is pretty straight insofar as mooted changes directly contradict Christ's very plain words in Scripture as well as the Church's consistent settled teaching on divorce, contraception, homosexuality, you name it really. For me, when the wind blows like this, we get to see who is who. Who changes with the political wind, and who stands with Christ and the Cross. Like the darnel and wheat we grow in an environment with people who seem to agree with us on important issues but often do not. Some will pretend to align themselves with the Church to gain power or advantage for themselves. Some are harbouring a dark secret that they will not renounce and w...

There has been a whirlwind of comment surround Pope Benedict's words at Cardinal Meisner's Requiem as I briefly reported here . One of the most interesting things from purely an English perspective, was that the Bishop of Lancaster made his own translation of the speech and posted it on his blog (I linked to it here ). One has to wonder why he did this? Some said it was a slightly softer translation, but if his idea was to soften the words of the Pope Emeritus, why bother to draw attention to the speech in such an overt way? Everyone latched on to the idea that the Pope Emeritus considered the Barque of Peter to be shipping too much water at present. Some prominent commentators, including the infamous @Pope_news anonymous Twitter account, accused Benedict XVI of a bit of back seat driving! But the account's main attack was directed at the Prefect for the Papal Household: Suggesting that Archbishop Gänswein is filtering and manipulating the Pop...

Great post today from Fr Hugh . One of those posts that really resonates and the key insight for me relates to the way that people of a progressive bent appear utterly blind to the obvious, factual folly of their situation. Ergo: In this doctrinaire assertion Fr Baldovin seems to have put to bed his undoubted critical faculties and let ideology do the talking. One might reasonably ask him in reply: how is it relevant that the young Catholics who prefer the old rite never experience its daily reality before the Council? The Catholics of the 1950s never experienced the daily reality of the liturgy of 1517. Or rather, they did. What, in reality, they did not experience was the socio-historical milieu of 1517. But the Roman rite of 1517 was substantially and essentially the same as that of 1950. The old rite no more supports the Middle Ages than it does the Renaissance or the period between the world wars… or today. It supports them all because it transcends them all. It offers persp...

In an extraordinary article posted today on the Archbishop Cranmer blog , perhaps the widest read and most respected Anglican blog on the internet, His Grace suggests that Pope Francis "is destroying the nature of the Church". He has been prompted to this statement by the decision yesterday of faithful Catholic Deacon Nick Donnelly, to change his handle from "Protect the Pope" to "Protect the Faith". Nick has been "Protect the Pope" since 2010, but following hammer blows to the Church under Pope Francis, and finally his appointing pro-abortion/euthanasia advocates to the Pontifical Academy for Life was the last straw for Nick. “ I set up Protect the Pope to defend Benedict XVI during his state visit to the UK ,” Nick tweeted earlier this week . “ Vicious attacks in the media. Now the media love Francis. ” His Grace comments: This destruction [of the Church by the Pope], Deacon Nick avers, is evidenced in the appointment of the pro-c...

So Pope Francis has has declared Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna to be the "authoritative interpreter" of ' Amoris Laetitia, '. Speaking in Ireland at the weekend, Schönborn revealed that when he met the Pope shortly after the presentation of Amoris , Francis thanked him, and asked him if the document was orthodox. “I said, ‘Holy Father, it is fully orthodox’,” Schönborn told us he told the pope, adding that a few days later he received from Francis a little note that said: “Thank you for that word. That gave me comfort.” Talk about the blind leading the blind! The pope, after the publication of a document which the CDF lodged a large number of corrections of before its publication “ not one of the corrections was accepted .”, then considers that a nod from one of his yes men is sufficient to guarantee orthodoxy. It makes you wonder if Pope Francis even read the document himself (let alone wrote it) given that he explicitly stated himself that he co...

I find myself shaking my head a lot these days and wondering, is it just me? Years ago, I started off defending Pope Francis' quirks, as did many people. But at this stage I have to admit I am bewildered by the constant stream of strangeness coming out of the Vatican. I am not alone though, it is not my imagination, and it is not just a few narrow minded Catholics who hate the pope (bizarre sentence in itself) or want to see the worst. It's pretty much anyone who has the courage to be honest about what is in front of their eyes. I recognise that many priests and bishops would want to defend the pope so as not to disturb the faithful. But the faithful (those who have any sort of clue, anyway,) are disturbed! Gentle, objective, faithful EWTN. Always careful to be balanced, always working to grow the faith and confirm the faithful, to the point where some other media outlets are highly critical of them. Look at what they are saying. Here is a good round up of the night...

Pope Francis accepts an issue of 'La Civilta Cattolica' from Father Antonio Spadaro, editor of the Jesuit-run magazine, during a Feb. 9 meeting with editors and staff. (Credit: CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano, handout.) Part of the problem with the Franciscan papacy are the clowns he seems to rely on. They are petty, ignorant and, far from the much lauded models of dialogue & accompaniment, seem intent on simply bullying anyone they disagree with. Who can forget this ridiculous episode?  Or this fiasco ? The latest cringe-making event has been co-authored by Francis' confidants, Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa, the editor-in-chief of the Argentinean edition of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano . It is this extraordinary essay on US religious politics published in the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica . Writing for Crux , Fr Raymond de Souza states: If Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro was not the editor of La Civiltà Cattolica , his recen...

This morning on BBC TV Sunday Morning Live there was a good debate inspired by Melinda Gates (who identifies as Catholic) comments about the pope potentially changing doctrine on contraception. The Catholic contributors were Fr Paddy McCafferty, Clare Short and Obianuju Ekeocha. I think they did really well. Uju's direction is very interesting and easily wrong foots those who want to impose western ideas of morality on Africans in an imperialistic way. Interesting that the presenter agrees with her on this. Fr Paddy gave a great account of his experience as a priest. He was compassionate, realistic and honest, while upholding the value and importance of the doctrine. Clare said she had experience of both ways and the Catholic way is better by far. I thought that was awesome! I especially liked her focus on equality and bringing the responsibility of both husband & wife into the discussion. Watch out for the bit where the other lady says "Pope Francis has ind...

Today at the Requiem Mass for Cardinal Meisner, the Pope Emeritus, Benedixt XVI made the extraordinary claim that the barque of Peter is a boat on the verge of capsizing: A full translation here from Bishop Campbell. Why has Bishop Campbell considered it worth while translating these comments? He is known to be one of the few good, loyal & faithful bishops we have in this country, along with Mark Davies, Alan Hopes and Philip Egan. His translation is somewhat softer than some of the others so it could be that he is saying there's nothing to see here, but then why bother translating it at all?

In the latest Holy Smoke Podcast, canon lawyer Dr Ed Condon suggests that Pope Francis style of governance is more akin to that of a Latin American dictator than the Supreme Bridge Builder (Pontifex Maximus). However, despite the scandals rolling out of the Vatican on an almost unprecedented basis, he reflects on the fact that the liberal media aren’t paying any attention. As Damian Thompson points out : Coverage in secular newspapers is patchy, biased and unreliable – The Times is perhaps the worst offender – while certain Catholic journalists who write about the Vatican appear to be taking dictation from a liberal faction in the Church that is trying to hijack this pontificate.   I say ‘hijack’, because the progressive churchmen who present themselves as Francis’s allies are pretending to be better connected than they are. The Pope frequently wrong-foots them by saying the opposite of what they expect. [case in point here is the terrible Charlie Gard affair] Dr Condo...

A couple of days ago 1 Peter 5 posted  this story , which reported that a source inside the Vatican had said that, before dismissing Cardinal Müller, Pope Francis asked five pointed and very controversial questions of the head of the CDF. It received a good deal of attention straight away on the internet as the exchange is quite extraordinary. The questions reported were as follows: Are you in favor of, or against, a female diaconate? “I am against it,” responded Cardinal Müller. Are you in favor of, or against, the repeal of celibacy? “Of course I am against it,” the cardinal responded. Are you in favor of, or against, female priests? “I am very decisively against it,” replied Cardinal Müller. Are you willing to defend Amoris Laetitia? “As far as it is possible for me,” the Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith replied: “there still exist ambiguities.” Are you willing to retract your complaint concerning the dismissal of three of your own employees? Cardinal Mül...

Some great news from Rorate Caeli here. Orders which hold to the Apostolic Tradition of the Church continue to thrive, while diocese with liberal bishops continue to struggle for vocations, and talk about closure and re-structure. Rorate Caeli report: The growth of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) has been well known. This year, however, was a record-setter for the Fraternity as it ordained 19 young men into the priesthood -- its' most ever in a single year. Some key takeaways, articles and photos: 1) First authorized traditional Latin Mass ordinations in the UK in decades by Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool on June 17: Catholic Herald's latest article Ordination Ceremony: Pictures & Video First Mass in Warrington by Fr Alex Stewart, FSSP First Mass in Ramsgate by Fr Krzysztof Sanetra, FSSP Solemn Vespers on Ordinations day First Corpus Christi Procession across Warrington 2) Cardinal Raymond Burke ordains 7 in Bavaria on July...

I've been a witness to an extraordinary exchange on Facebook this week. Bishop Mario Grech has a reputation for being a bully, see this report from 2015 . He also was reported to have threatened a priest with suspension for refusing to read the heretical guidelines issued in the wake of Amoris Laetitia, see the Catholic Herald article here . Bishop Grech has also refused to explain why he has protected priests who have been found guilty of abuse by the CDF see here  while Archbishop Charles Scicluna reiterates his commitment to ‘tackle’ every case of abuse. Although more recently a Gozitan priest has been convicted for molestation in the Maltese civil courts and he was reported to the police by +Grech. This is clearly an improvement, although common consensus on the islands is that it is too little too late when one considers the lack of action till then. Earlier this week, Bishop Grech confirmed this reputation as a bully by publicly attacking a faithful Maltese...