De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Dr. Joseph Shaw, the LMS Chairman, has  been given sight of a letter of refusal from  the Dicastery of Divine Worship, which alone has the authority to permit priests ordained after  Traditionis custodes  to celebrate the Traditional Mass. It has become clear that the Dicastery is systematically refusing to do so, even though requests are coming not from individual priests, but their bishops.  Dr. Shaw posted a portion of the letter on his blog and at Rorate Caeli . He suspects any others would be substantially identical: …this Dicastery is of the opinion that this [permission] would not be an opportune decision. Therefore, we deny the request. The path established by the Holy Father in  Traditionis custodes  is quite clear and this has been underscored both in the “Letter to Bishops of the Whole World” which accompanied the Motu proprio and in the  Responsa ad dubia  of this Dicastery, which were personally approved by the Holy Father. In t...

  Writing  in Lifesite  yesterday, Dr. Joseph Shaw makes a point that cannot be over-stressed regarding Catholic education. As the deadline for the introduction of new PHSE legislation draws ever closer, Dr. Shaw is speaking out, having tried to discuss the matter with bishops and even instigating a prayer vigil outside Westminster Cathedral . As any of us who have tried to engage have come to expect, the only received responses were formulaic & patronising telling Shaw and his co-enquirers that everything would be fine. The incoming legislation is deeply problematic. As Dr. Shaw writes , this "legislation is imposing a program of “Personal, Health, and Sex Education” (PHSE) that demands that choosing not to kill the child in the womb is just one acceptable option among others, and that Christian marriage is just one lifestyle choice alongside same-sex unions and every other possibility. We know from the lesson plans, produced not only by the government, but by t...

In a recent post on Lifesite , Dr Joseph Shaw shares some incredibly important insights into the abuse crisis which has engulfed the Church and which continues to damage it. Catholic clerical sex abuse of minors has become a mainstream tenet of our society. A favourite "joke" for comedians like Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr, who seek to denigrate the faith. The perception for many outside the Church is that Catholicism is synonymous with abuse. How incredibly sad and damaging is that? I don't blame them, I blame the perpetrators and the men who allowed it to happen and still allow it to happen. In my personal experience, this is because, at best, they fear for what will happen to them if they tell the truth. They prefer not to cause a fuss and hope that it will all die down in time. In some instances they fear a witch hunt. At worst, they are complicit. In his blog , Dr Shaw distinguishes three layers to the problem: the cover-up; the refusal to face the sociological re...

Dr. Joseph Shaw has been reading 70's psychology and thinks he has figured out much of what informs Pope Francis' constant diatribes against "rigid" Catholics, just one of an ever growing collection of insults regularly launched at the faithful from the Holy Father, but certainly a favourite, often returned to. Dr. Shaw cites a passage by Peter Kelvin, The Bases of Social Behaviour , 1970, which he considers constitutes a concise characterisation of what progressives, in the Church and outside it, in the 1960s and 1970s, thought was wrong with their opponents. He also notes that "it also seems to match what Pope Francis has in mind when he talks about 'rigid' people. We don't have to imagine that he ever read Kelvin: these ideas which were widespread when the Holy Father was at an impressionable age." It is particularly interesting that the Holy Father seems very formed by a lot of these old "progressive" ideas from the 60...

Welcome to a new country... Dr Joseph Shaw draws our attention to this post  in Patheos by Dr Greg Popcak. Popcak is a bit of a blast from the past for me, because I bought his book on Catholic Parenting when I first became a dad and found it revelatory and a great help. The article is a huge slap down of all those who are pretending that everything is great with Pope Francis' Pontificate, there is no confusion and no questions which need answering. It particularly addresses Deacon Bill Ditewig, who has said that lay people, like me, who are genuinely confused as to how some of Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia squares with the previous teaching of the Church are not worth considering. We wouldn’t know pastoral practice if it hit us in the face because, apparently, we are just children who have never put out into the deep, who cower in our cave of rules and rigorism. He argues that people who claim to be “confused” about what Pope Francis’ writings mean and how they square w...

I thought this was an interesting article by Dr. Jeff Mirus at Catholic Culture . It is uneccesarily critical of the Correctio filialis , it seems to me, suggesting that, because there is nothing in any sense “official” or “canonical” about the filial appeal, it is a futile effort, in fact, just one of SIX corrections issued to Pope Francis so far as Edward Pentin reports : "This is the sixth major initiative in which both clergy and laity have expressed concerns about the Pope's teaching, particularly emanating from Amoris Laetitia . Despite the repeated pleas and warnings of chaos and confusion, Francis has refused to respond or acknowledge the initiatives which are as follows, in chronological order: In September 2015, just ahead of the second Synod on the Family, a petition of nearly 800,000 signatures from individuals and associations around the world including 202 prelates was presented to Pope Francis, calling on him to issue words of clarity on the Church...

Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth Diocese has issued a Pastoral Letter (14th May 2017) entitled God is Calling You . In it, he discusses vocation and challenges us all to pray for vocations, and offers some important questions which we can put to those who are seeking election to Parliament in June. I found an interesting correlation with this and Dr Joe Shaw's most recent post on Fatima  which talks about the potential of Catholic Social teaching, properly lived out, to fundamentally change the world for the better: As a former active and senior member of the Communist Party, both in the Spanish Civil War and in industrial Glasgow, Fraser was particularly interested in the connection with the conversion of Russia. He goes on to argue that, quite aside from any spectacular supernatural intervention, Russia's conversion would be inevitable if the Church's social teaching was manifested in the daily lives (including the work lives) of Catholics around the world. P149 I...

Joe Shaw, the LMS Chairman has a great post on Amoris Laetitia here . In it he lucidly draws the battle lines that have seemingly appeared between those who are saying the exhortation is "groundbreaking" and changes doctrine, and those who are decrying it as a complete disaster because the first lot are telling us that the Communion for the divorced and remarried is now allowed.  To these battle formations, he adds a third combatant, amid whose ranks he himself stands , along with Cardinal Raymond Burke the British Confraternity of Catholic Clergy  and the canonist Edward Peters . This third group are all arguing that, if you look carefully at the document, and in particular at the key passages that those who want change are appealing to, it turns out that it makes no attempt to establish new teaching, or even make formal changes to discipline, for example by changing Canon Law. I have been watching with some dismay as those who are concerned with f...

Joe Shaw has written a brilliant blog here which articulates my own concerns about the Synod perfectly. They are not that doctrine will change, but more concerned with the reality that popular piety seldom follows the mainstream of theology in any case. Especially in this media mad world, most people just hear the gist of a story and match their conclusions to suit their own prejudices. This has been the huge issue I have with the "messy" style of Pope Francis.  The problem as I see it, as someone who tries to preach the faith in my community, is when people contradict the revelation or the teaching of the Church, saying it doesn't matter or has been superseded somehow. I think the work of Evangelisation was greatly aided under Pope Benedict XVI in that everyone was pretty clear what we were about. That encouraged people to talk about it, to share it, and to study it more. Joe cites Vatican II as an example of the way the truth becomes distorted, as at that Counci...

In my opinion, one of the best blogs out there is Dr. Joseph Shaw's . He is erudite and academic, a committed Catholic and uses data extremely well in his posts. In this post from yesterday, he reports on a visit to London by Michael Voris. For those who don't know, Voris is the president and founder of Saint Michael's Media , a religious apostolate producing on-demand video programs on the website ChurchMilitant.com . Michael Voris underwent a "reversion", having been born and brought up a Catholic, after the death of his brother in 2003 and then his mother in 2004. At this point, he started to read much more deeply about the faith and to take what the Church teaches more seriously. I can really connect with that, I think that being confronted with the reality of our mortality and the mortality of those we love does make us ask serious questions about what we believe about the nature of life and death. I didn't experience the same journey personal...