De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

  Prayer for the Synod on Synodality September 29, 2023  from  Twitter  by  Bishop Athanasius Schneider Lord Jesus Christ, Our God and Saviour, You are the Head of the Church, Your spotless Bride and Mystical Body. Look mercifully upon the profound distress to which Our Holy Mother Church has been subjected. Doctrinal confusion, moral abomination, and liturgical abuse have, in our day, reached an unprecedented height. “The heathens have come into your inheritance, having defiled your holy temple, and laid Jerusalem in ruins” (Ps 79:1). Churchmen who have lost the true Faith and become promoters of a worldly globalist agenda, are intent on changing Your truths and Commandments, the Divine Constitutions of the Church, and the Apostolic tradition. O Lord, with humble spirit and contrite heart we beseech you, prevent the enemies of the Church from exulting in a victory over the authentic Catholic Church obtained by imposing a counterfeit church under the guise of “s...

A phenomenon I find most interesting is the paradox between the "edifice" of the Catholic Church and what you might call "awake" Catholics. By the "edifice" of the Catholic Church I mean the bishops and the structures as well as the people who go to Mass on Sundays but don't engage with Catholic news. The Sunday Catholics or the cultural Catholics. Awake Catholics are the Catholics we all should really trying to be: Engaged with the process of Theosis; trying to be disciples. Catholics who pray at home with their children, Catholics who care passionately about the Blessed Sacrament as the source and summit of our faith. Catholics who read something other than The Tablet or the National Catholic Reporter .   Who engage with the faith as an antidote to the sickness we see in the secular culture. The edifice is crazy about Pope Francis in a way I've never seen with any previous Pope. If you look at their websites or Twitter feeds, they are drenched i...

A superbly written article  from Brendan Michael Dougherty at National Review  which shows real understanding of the subject matter as well as a flair for communication. Just one important point: The Papal Personality Cult began a little earlier than Vatican I. It started when Napoleon abducted Pius VII. The then Cardinal Secretary of State, Ercole Consalvi (pictured above - a deacon, never a priest or bishop, despite the ostentatious sartorial mode) had little cards with the Pope’s picture on it made and distributed all across Europe. So a tradition began. It accelerated after Garibaldi’s attack on the Papal States. As things tend to accelerate towards their end ( motus in fine velocior , as the Latin maxim has it), is what we see now is the end rapidly coming? "The First See is judged by no one", in other words, The Church has no mechanisms for dealing with a corrupt and heretical Pope. Will the real product of the Pontificate of Francis be a move towards a more colleg...

  At 78, Cardinal Nichols has been in post almost 3 years past his retirement date now. Over the ten years of this pontificate, Pope Francis has built a reputation for accepting the resignation of orthodox prelates immediately while letting friendly prelates linger on. (See this for example : a resignation accepted a mere month after being 75 years old is clearly meant to give a signal to other Bishops). Nichols was appointed a member of the Congregation for Bishops on 16 December 2013 by Pope Francis. On 19 February 2014 he was appointed a member of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. So he appears to get on quite well with the Pope. Nichols was Archbishop of Birmingham before being appointed Archbishop of Westminster by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. It was reported that Benedict XVI personally selected Nichols for the post after the Congregation for Bishops failed to reach a consensus, however he was passed over for the Cardinalate, reportedly because of his continued suppor...

 From The Remnant : The following letter in support of Bishop Strickland was sent to  The Remnant  by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. In it he stands in solidarity with his brother bishop and offers encouragement as Strickland faces the judgement of the Vatican  (more specifically from “Heal Me with Your Mouth” Cardinal-designate and new head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Víctor Manuel "Tucho" Fernández) , for "keeping the traditions of the Fathers" and "not silencing Truth" in the runup to the Synod on Synodality.   Praised be Jesus Christ! Your Excellency, Bishop Strickland, dear and esteemed brother in the episcopate! It is for me a privilege and a joy to express to you all my gratitude and appreciation for your intrepid dedication to uncompromisingly keep, transmit, and defend the Catholic faith, which the apostles handed over to the Church and with which all the generations of Catholics, especially our ancestors, our fathers a...

I have been looking forward to getting together with Gavin and Katherine to discuss some of the extraordinary developments in the Catholic world over the last couple of weeks and we managed to find some time on Saturday. We talked about Fr. Altman's claims that Pope Francis is not the Pope , the Vatican launching a very public attack on Bishop Joseph Strickland  and Cardinal Müller, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope Benedict XVI, who gave an interview to Spanish news website InfoVaticana last week - I posted an English translation here - in which he states (among other things): Q-What would happen if, for example, the Synod Assembly approved the blessing of homosexual couples, the change in sexual morality, the elimination of the obligation of priestly celibacy or allowing the female diaconate? Would you accept it? A-Priestly celibacy must be eliminated from this list, since the connection of the sacrament of Holy Orders with the charisma of vol...

Cardinal Müller, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope Benedict XVI, has given a characteristically frank interview to Spanish Catholic news website InfoVaticana, in which he expressed his grave concern about multiple aspects of the upcoming Synod Assembly on synodality and the current state of the Church. This is the text: The final phase of the Synod of Synodality is approaching, which will begin this coming October.  Among the 400 attendees (including cardinals, bishops, lay people and religious) will participate the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Cardinal Müller. Since the Vatican has announced that journalists will only have access to the information they themselves provide, we wanted to talk to the German cardinal about this upcoming ecclesial event that has a good part of the Church in suspense. As you will see throughout the interview (done in writing since the cardinal is in Poland this week) Müller address...