Philadelphia Chapter

David Clayton

I have been invited to speak at the International Institute for Culture in Philadelphia next Saturday evening, February 13th. The talk is entitled, What Do Catholic Believe About Icons?

Commonly described as “windows to heaven,” images painted in the iconographic style have enjoyed a growth in popularity in the western Catholic Church in the last 50 years, although the style is still associated most strongly with the Eastern Churches and Rites.

I will describe the theology of icons, what precisely makes them worthy of veneration, and where and when this theology was developed. Also, I will address the myths and the mystique that are associated with icons and consider their place in the Roman Rite. In doing so, I will compare and contrast beliefs about icons held by members of the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches. I will address some commonly asked questions such as: Is the icon superior to traditional Western forms of liturgical art such as the Baroque or the Gothic? Is the person depicted present in the icon in a way analogous to the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament? Does the artist “write” icons or does he “paint” them, or both? And, does the artist have to be a monk or have to fast and pray before working?

This is part of a series of lectures called In the Beauty of Holiness – Art, Architecture and the Transcendant, organized by the International Institute for Culture.

Hope to see some of you there.

For more information about this and other events organized by the IIC, visit their website at iiculture.org.

Priest: Rev. Fr. Harold B. McKale.

Mass Intention: James M. Herr (RIP) req. by Theresa Herr.

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SOCIAL TODAY : Today after Mass and the Blessing of Throats there will be light refreshments in the church vestibule near the front entrance on Snyder Avenue. Please come to say hello and chat for a few minutes.

Holy Water: There is holy water (w/blessed salt) available in the sacristy for those who desire it.

Scheduling: Please be advised that 2016 Masses and Liturgical Services are CANCELED for Ash Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday & Holy Saturday. Please adjust your schedules accordingly.

Taxes: If anyone needs verification of their donations for tax purposes, you will need to request it. Please realize it will take Fr. McKale some time so do not wait until the last minute.

Events: If anyone has pertinent information that would be appropriate for our bulletin, please e-mail it to Fr. McKale @ tlmcommunityofphila@gmail.com.

Mass Intentions: If anyone still has unfulfilled Mass intentions, Fr. McKale can pass them on to a priest that will satisfy the intention by offering a TLM or Divine Liturgy (Byzantine). Please specify if you have a preference. The donation is $10. If you would like a Mass card, please include an extra $5 for the card.

First Friday, February 5, A.D. 2016, Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) will be offered by Fr. Ronald Check, Priest in Residence of Resurrection of Our Lord Roman Catholic Church, at the Rectory Chapel of St. Albert The Great Parish, 212 Welsh Road, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006, (T) 215-947-3500, at 7:00 p.m. preceded by Confessions at 6:30 p.m. This TLM will be a Votive Mass of The Sacred Heart, offered in Reparation to The Sacred Heart of Jesus.

First Saturday, February 6, A.D. 2016, Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) will be offered by Fr. Harold B. Mc Kale, Parish Vicar of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church, at the Rectory Chapel of St. Albert The Great Parish, at 9 a.m.
, preceded by Confessions at 8:30 a.m. This TLM will be a Votive Mass of the Immaculate Heart, offered in Reparation to The Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The St. Albert The Great Rectory, also known as the Parish Center, is behind the Church, which fronts on Welsh Road.

Mark Matthews

SSPX; Women and foot washing; consecrating Russia; anti-pastoral bishops and much more.

Last week, Rorate Caeli interviewed His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider, one of the most visible prelates working on the restoration of the traditional Latin Mass and faith, on numerous topics.

In this wide-ranging interview, His Excellency thoughtfully expounded on issues critical to the Church in this great time of crisis. Read the entire interview so you don’t miss His Excellency’s thoughts on the current status of the SSPX, women’s participation in the Mass and the washing of women’s feet, whether Russia was ever truly consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Summorum Pontificum and anti-pastoral bishops and much, much more.

*NB: words in bold by Rorate for emphasis:

POST-SYNOD CHURCH & UNBELIEVERS IN THE HIERARCHY

POST-SYNOD CHURCH & UNBELIEVERS IN THE HIERARCHY

Rorate Caeli: In the recent Synod, we will not know the legal impact it will have on the Church for some time, as it’s up to Pope Francis to move next. Regardless of the eventual outcome, for all intent and purposes, is there already a schism in the Church? And, if so, what does it mean practically speaking? How will it manifest itself for typical Catholics in the pews?

H.E. Schneider: Schism means according to the definition of the Code of Canon Law, can. 751: The refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with those members of the Church who are submitted to the Supreme Pontiff. One has to distinguish the defect in belief or heresy from schism. The defect in belief or heresy is indeed a greater sin than schism, as Saint Thomas Aquinas said: “Unbelief is a sin committed against God Himself, according as He is Himself the First Truth, on which faith is founded; whereas schism is opposed to ecclesiastical unity, which is a lesser good than God Himself. Wherefore the sin of unbelief is generically more grievous than the sin of schism” (II-II, q. 39, a. 2 c).

The very crisis of the Church in our days consists in the ever growing phenomenon that those who don’t fully believe and profess the integrity of the Catholic faith frequently occupy strategic positions in the life of the Church, such as professors of theology, educators in seminaries, religious superiors, parish priests and even bishops and cardinals. And these people with their defective faith profess themselves as being submitted to the Pope.

The height of confusion and absurdity manifests itself when such semi-heretical clerics accuse those who defend the purity and integrity of the Catholic faith as being against the Pope – as being according to their opinion in some way schismatics. For simple Catholics in the pews, such a situation of confusion is a real challenge of their faith, in the indestructibility of the Church. They have to keep strong the integrity of their faith according to the immutable Catholic truths, which were handed over by our fore-fathers, and which we find in in the Traditional catechisms and in the works of the Fathers and of the Doctors of the Church.

Rorate Caeli: Speaking of typical Catholics, what will the typical parish priest face now that he didn’t face before the Synod began? What pressures, such as the washing of women’s feet on Maundy Thursday after the example of Francis, will burden the parish priest even more than he is burdened today?

H.E. Schneider: A typical Catholic parish priest should know well the perennial sense of the Catholic faith, the perennial sense as well of the laws of the Catholic liturgy and, knowing this, he should have an interior sureness and firmness. He should always remember the Catholic principle of discernment: “Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus”, i.e. “What has been always, everywhere and from all” believed and practiced.

The categories “always, everywhere, all” are not to be understood in an arithmetical, but in a moral sense. A concrete criterion for discernment is this: “Does this change in a doctrinal affirmation, in a pastoral or in a liturgical practice constitute a rupture with the centuries-old, or even with the millennial past? And does this innovation really make the faith shine clearer and brighter? Does this liturgical innovation bring to us closer the sanctity of God, or manifest deeper and more beautiful the Divine mysteries? Does this disciplinary innovation really increase a greater zeal for the holiness of life?”

As concretely to the innovation of washing the feet of women during the Holy Mass of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday: This Holy Mass celebrates the commemoration of the institution of the sacraments of the Eucharist and the Priesthood. Therefore, the foot washing of women along with the men not only distracts from the main focus on Eucharist and on Priesthood, but generates confusion regarding the historical symbolism of the “twelve” and of the apostles being of male sex. The universal tradition of the Church never allowed the foot washing during the Holy Mass, but instead outside of Mass, in a special ceremony.

By the way: the public washing and usually also kissing of the feet of women on the part of a man, in our case, of a priest or a bishop, is considered by every person of common sense in all cultures as being improper and even indecent. Thanks be to God no priest or bishop is obliged to wash publicly the feet of women on Holy Thursday, for there is no binding norm for it, and the foot washing itself is only facultative.

PRIESTLY FRATERNITY OF ST. PIUS X (SSPX)

Rorate Caeli: A non-typical situation in the church is the Priestly Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). Why does Your Excellency think that so many Catholics are afraid of the SSPX or anxious about any association with it? From what Your Excellency has seen, what gifts do you think the SSPX can bring to the mainstream Church?

H.E. Schneider: When someone or something is unimportant and weak, nobody has fear of it. Those who have fear of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X ultimately have fear of the perennial Catholic truths and of its demands in the moral and the liturgical domain.

When the SSPX tries to believe, to worship and to live morally the way our fore-fathers and the best-known Saints did during a millennial period, then one has to consider the life and the work of these Catholic priests and faithful of the SSPX as a gift for the Church in our days – even as one of the several instruments which the Divine Providence uses to remedy the enormity of the current general crisis of the faith, of the morals and of the liturgy inside the Church.

In some sectors of the SSPX there are, however, as it is the case in every human society some eccentric personalities. They have a method and a mindset which lack justice and charity and consequently the true “sentire cum ecclesia,” and there is the danger of an ecclesial autocephaly and to be the last judicial instance in the Church. However, to my knowledge, the healthier part corresponds to the major part of the SSPX and I consider their General Superior, His Excellency Monsignor Bernard Fellay, as an exemplarily and true Catholic bishop. There is some hope for a canonical recognition of the SPPX.

THE SYNOD AND PAPOTRY

Rorate Caeli: Back on the Synod, while focusing on tradition, does Your Excellency believe that the changes in the Roman liturgy post-Vatican II contributed to the current crisis in the Church, the crisis of marriage, the family and societal morality in general??

H.E. Schneider: I wouldn’t affirm this in such a way. Indeed the very source of the current crisis in the Church, the crisis of marriage, of the family and of the morality in general is not the liturgical reform, but the defects in faith, the doctrinal relativism, from which flows the moral and liturgical relativism. For, if I believe in a defective manner, I will live a defective moral life and I will worship in a defective, indifferent manner. It is necessary first to restore the clearness and firmness of the doctrine of faith and of morals in all levels and, from there, start to improve the liturgy. The integrity and the beauty of the faith demands the integrity and the beauty of one’s moral life and this demands the integrity and the beauty of the public worship.

Rorate Caeli: Still on the Synod, it is clear to those with eyes to see that Pope Francis caused confusion instead of clarity in the Synod process, and encouraged a turn toward rupture by elevating the role of Cardinals Kaspar and Danneels, Archbishop Cupich, etc. What is the proper attitude a Catholic should have towards the pope in these troubled times? Are Catholics obliged to make their views known and “resist” as Cardinal Burke said in an interview last year with us, even when their views are critical of the pope?

H.E. Schneider: For several past generations until our days there reigns in the life of the Church a kind of “pope-centrism” or a kind of “papolatria” which is undoubtedly excessive compared with the moderate and supernatural vision of the person of the Pope and his due veneration in the past times. Such an excessive attitude towards the person of the Pope generates in the practice an excessive and wrong theological meaning regarding the dogma of the Papal infallibility.

If the Pope would tell the entire church to do something, which would directly damage an unchangeable Divine truth or a Divine commandment, every Catholic would have the right to correct him in a due respectful form, moved out of reverence and love for the sacred office, and person of the Pope. The Church is not the private property of the Pope. The Pope can’t say “I am the Church,” as it did the French king Louis XIV, who said: “L’État c’est moi.” The Pope is only the Vicar, not the successor of Christ.

The concerns about the purity of the faith is ultimately a matter of all members of the Church, which is one, and a unique living body. In the ancient times before entrusting to someone the office of a priest and of a bishop, the faithful were asked if they can guarantee that the candidate had the right faith, and a high moral conduct. The old Pontificale Romanum says: “The captain of a ship and its passengers alike have reason to feel safe or else in danger on a voyage, therefore they ought to be of one mind in their common interests.” It was the Second Vatican Council, which very much encouraged the lay faithful to contribute to the authentic good of the Church, in strengthening the faith.

I think in a time in which a great part of the holders of the office of the Magisterium are negligent in their sacred duty, the Holy Spirit calls today, namely the faithful, to step into the breach and defend courageously with an authentic “sentire cum ecclesia” the Catholic faith.

TRADITION AND ITS ENEMIES FROM WITHIN

Rorate Caeli: Is the pope the measure of tradition, or is he measured by tradition? And should faithful Catholics pray for a traditional pope to arrive soon?

H.E. Schneider: The Pope is surely not the measure of tradition, but on the contrary. We must always bear in mind the following dogmatic teaching of the First Vatican Council: The office of the successors of Peter does not consist in making known some new doctrine, but in guarding and faithfully expounding the deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles (cf. Constitutio dogmatica Pastor aeternus, cap. 4).

In fulfilling one of his most important tasks, the Pope has to strive so that “the whole flock of Christ might be kept away from the poisonous food of error” (First Vatican Council, ibd.). The following expression which was in use since the first centuries of the Church, is one of the most striking definitions of the Papal office, and has to be in some sense a second nature of every Pope: “Faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith” (First Vatican Council, ibd.).

We must always pray that God provides His Church with traditional-minded Popes. However, we have to believe in these words: “It is not for you to have knowledge of the time and the order of events which the Father has kept in his control” (Acts 1: 7).

Rorate Caeli: We know there are many bishops and cardinals – possibly the majority – who want to change the Church’s doctrinal language and long-standing discipline, under the excuses of “development of doctrine” and “pastoral compassion.” What is wrong with their argument?

H.E. Schneider: Expressions like “development of doctrine” and “pastoral compassion” are in fact usually a pretext to change the teaching of Christ, and against its perennial sense and integrity, as the Apostles had transmitted it to the whole Church, and it was faithfully preserved through the Fathers of the Church, the dogmatic teachings of the Ecumenical Councils and of the Popes.

Ultimately, those clerics want another Church, and even another religion: A naturalistic religion, which is adapted to the spirit of the time. Such clerics are really wolves in sheep’s clothing, often flirting with the world. Not courageous shepherds – but rather cowardly rabbits.

ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE CHURCH

Rorate Caeli: We hear a lot about the role of women in the Church today – the so-called “feminine genius.” Women obviously have played a critical role in the Church since the beginning, starting with the Blessed Virgin Mary. But liturgically, Christ made His position crystal clear, as have pre-Conciliar popes. Does Your Excellency believe that female involvement in the liturgy, whether it’s women taking part in the Novus Ordo Mass or girl altar boys, has played a positive or negative role in the Church the last four decades?

H.E. Schneider: There is no doubt about the fact that the female involvement in the liturgical services at the altar (reading the lecture, serving at the altar, distributing Holy Communion) represents a radical rupture with the entire and universal tradition of the Church. Therefore, such a practice is against the Apostolic tradition.

Such a practice gave to the liturgy of the Holy Mass a clear Protestant shape and a characteristic of an informal prayer meeting or of a catechetical event. This practice is surely contrary to the intentions of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council and there is not in the least an indication for it in the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy.

THE TRADITIONAL LATIN MASS

Rorate Caeli: Your Excellency is well known for celebrating the traditional Latin Mass in many places around the world. What does Your Excellency find to be the deepest lessons learned from saying the Latin Mass, as a priest and as a bishop, that other priests and bishops may hope to gain by saying the traditional Mass themselves?

H.E. Schneider: The deepest lessons I learned from celebrating the traditional form of the Mass is this: I am only a poor instrument of a supernatural and utmost sacred action, whose principal celebrant is Christ, the Eternal High Priest. I feel that during the celebration of the Mass I lost in some sense my individual freedom, for the words and the gesture are prescribed even in their smallest details, and I am not able to dispose of them. I feel most deeply in my heart that I am only a servant and a minister who yet with free will, with faith and love, fulfill not my will, but the will of Another.

The traditional and more than millennial-old rite of the Holy Mass, which not even the Council of Trent changed, because the Ordo Missae before and after that Council was almost identical, proclaims and powerfully evangelizes the Incarnation and the Epiphany of the ineffably saintly and immense God, who in the liturgy as “God with us,” as “Emmanuel,” becomes so little and so close to us. The traditional rite of the Mass is a highly artfully and, at the same time, a powerful proclamation of the Gospel, realizing the work of our salvation.

Rorate Caeli: If Pope Benedict is correct in saying that the Roman Rite currently (if strangely) exists in two forms rather than one, why has it not yet happened that all seminarians are required to study and learn the traditional Latin Mass, as part of their seminary training? How can a parish priest of the Roman Church not know both forms of the one rite of his Church? And how can so many Catholics still be denied the traditional Mass and sacraments if it is an equal form?

H.E. Schneider: According to the intention of Pope Benedict XVI, and the clear norms of the Instruction “Universae Ecclesiae,” all Catholic seminarians have to know the traditional form of the Mass and be able to celebrate it. The same document says that this form of Mass is a treasure for the entire Church – thus it is for all of the faithful.

Pope John Paul II made an urgent appeal to all bishops to accommodate generously the wish of the faithful regarding the celebration of the traditional form of the Mass. When clerics and bishops obstruct or restrict the celebration of the traditional Mass, they don’t obey what the Holy Spirit says to the Church, and they are acting in a very anti-pastoral way. They behave as the possessors of the treasure of the liturgy, which does not belong to them, for they are only administrators.

In denying the celebration of the traditional Mass or in obstructing and discriminating against it, they behave like an unfaithful and capricious administrator who – contrary to the instructions of the house-father – keeps the pantry under lock or like a wicked stepmother who gives the children a meager fare. Perhaps such clerics have fear of the great power of the truth irradiating from the celebration of the traditional Mass. One can compare the traditional Mass with a lion: Let him free, and he will defend himself.

RUSSIA NOT YET EXPLICITLY CONSECRATED

Rorate Caeli: There are many Russian Orthodox where Your Excellency lives. Has Alexander of Astana or anyone else in the Moscow Patriarchate asked Your Excellency about the recent Synod or about what is happening to the Church under Francis? Do they even care at this point?

H.E. Schneider: Those Orthodox Prelates, with whom I have contact, generally are not well informed about the internal current disputes in the Catholic Church, or at least they had never spoken with me about such issues. Even though they don’t recognize the jurisdictional primacy of the Pope, they nevertheless look on the Pope as the first hierarchical office in the Church, from a point of view of the order of protocol.

Rorate Caeli: We are just a year away from the 100th anniversary of Fatima. Russia was arguably not consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and certainly not converted. The Church, while ever spotless, is in complete disarray – maybe worse than during the Arian Heresy. Will things get even worse before they get better and how should truly faithful Catholics prepare for what is coming?

H.E. Schneider: We have to believe firmly: The Church is not ours, nor the Pope’s. The Church is Christ’s and He alone holds and leads her indefectibly even through the darkest periods of crisis, as our current situation indeed is.

This is a demonstration of the Divine character of the Church. The Church is essentially a mystery, a supernatural mystery, and we cannot approach her as we approach a political party or a pure human society. At the same time, the Church is human and on her human level she is nowadays enduring a sorrowful passion, participating in the Passion of Christ.

One can think that the Church in our days is being flagellated as our Lord, is being denuded as was Our Lord, on the tenth Cross station. The Church, our mother, is being bound in cords not only by the enemies of Christ but also by some of their collaborators in the rank of the clergy, even sometimes of the high clergy.

All good children of Mother Church as courageous soldiers we have to try to free this mother – with the spiritual weapons of defending and proclaiming the truth, promoting the traditional liturgy, Eucharistic adoration, the crusade of the Holy Rosary, the battle against the sin in one’s private life and striving for holiness.

We have to pray that the Pope may soon consecrate explicitly Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, then She will win, as the Church prayed since the old times: “Rejoice O Virgin Mary, for thou alone have destroyed all heresies in the whole world” (Gaude, Maria Virgo, cunctas haereses sola interemisti in universo mundo).

CHANT WORKSHOP. The Association of Church Musicians in Philadelphia is sponsoring a “Winter Workshop 2016: Ever Ancient – Ever New: Introducing Chant into our Parish Repertoire” on Saturday, February 6th,in the Empress Room at Saint Helena Parish, 1489 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell, PA.

For further information contact Ronald Chancler, 267.679.6638 or events@acmpmusic.com or visit:
http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ebugzpdu5cc354f3&llr=v9zg7diab

Priest: Rev. Fr. Harold B. McKale.

Mass Intention: Michael Carney (RIP) req. by John Castiello.

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Holy Water: There is holy water (w/blessed salt) available in the sacristy for those who desire it.

Scheduling: Please be advised that 2016 Masses and Liturgical Services are CANCELED for Ash Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday & Holy Saturday. Please adjust your schedules accordingly.

Taxes: If anyone needs verification of their donations for tax purposes, you will need to request it. Please realize it will take Fr. McKale some time so do not wait until the last minute.

Upcoming Masses:
A) Solemn High Mass for Candlemas, February 2, 2016 at 7PM at the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter & Paul, Philadelphia, PA

Events: If anyone has pertinent information that would be appropriate for our bulletin, please e-mail it to Fr. McKale @ tlmcommunityofphila@gmail.com.

Mass Intentions: If anyone still has unfulfilled Mass intentions, Fr. McKale can pass them on to a priest that will satisfy the intention by offering a TLM or Divine Liturgy (Byzantine). Please specify if you have a preference. The donation is $10. If you would like a Mass card, please include an extra $5 for the card.

by Peter Kwasniewski.

Back in December, I posted a short review of a new book from Angelico Press, Roger Buck’s The Gentle Traditionalist. (Have a look at that review if you are interested in a more general description of the book.) At the time, I promised to follow up later on with a few specifically liturgical thoughts.

Some passages in the book struck me as highly pertinent to the plight of the sacred liturgy today. Early on, we discover that one of the characters, Anna, has abandoned the New Age movement for traditional Catholicism and a vocation to the religious life — to the bewilderment of her former lover, Geoffrey Peter Luxworthy, who is still very much in love with her. He muses at length about her inexplicable conversion:

Nor could I understand why she wanted to go to a Mass in a dead language. From what I understood, the Catholic Church had changed the Mass when it liberalised itself in the1960s. This liberalisation looked like a good thing to me. But Anna thought the changes in the Church were slowly killing it. Since the ’60s, she told me, there’d been massive declines in vocations — as well as Catholic baptisms, marriages, etc. People were abandoning the Church in droves. She was particularly worried that very few people bothered with Confession anymore. The new liturgy, according to her, was a major part of the problem. Apparently, a “mystic life-force” was being drained from the Church. (pp. 25-26).

As the story continues, Geoffrey (GPL) meets a mysterious character called the Gentle Traditionalist.

GPL: It is indeed odd to find you here. In fact, I’ve been wanting someone to help me understand the exact issues you describe: those which separate modern, liberal people, as you call them, from conservatives. I’ve met this conservative type — a woman. Really, I cannot understand half the things she’s talking about.
GT: Yes — your culture never provided you the means to understand.
GPL: Well, I don’t know about that….
GT: You’re intelligent, educated — and yet her different views are completely unintelligible to you. There must be a reason. Is it not possible you’ve been culturally denied the keys to understanding? (p. 38).

This phrase has haunted me ever since I read it: some people have been culturally denied the keys to understanding the Faith and its traditional practices. This is not to say that unbelievers have no personal responsibility, that all can be blamed on the surrounding culture. It is but a sobering acknowledgment that so many people, even within the Church, have never been given the basic “means to understand” what she is talking about in her doctrine, what she is doing in her rites. Very few (comparatively speaking) are deeply, intimately familiar with the teaching, life, and rituals of the Church in their preconciliar fullness and clarity. This is why reading older authors for the first time can bring us up short: “I cannot understand half the things she’s talking about … her views are completely unintelligible.” We see the dynamics of rupture and discontinuity at work.

GT: Well, the 1960s are just a handy approximation. Although some people are even more specific than that. They identify 1968 as the turning point. But think about what I’m saying: Wherever previous generations disagree with the post-1960s worldview — let’s call it that for short — previous generations are always wrong. Post-’60s is always right. At least, according to modern media and education.
Post-’60s says a woman has a so-called “right to choose.” Post-’60s must be right; everyone who felt differently, before the ’60s, is obviously wrong.
Or take freedom of speech. Only the other day, someone told me pornography was “the price we have to pay” for free speech. All kinds of people say that — now. Nobody ever said that before the ’60s. Westerners believed in freedom of speech in 1950, too. Still, they banned things like Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Literature was prohibited — to say nothing of pornography. But according to the post-’60s worldview, freedom of speech means pornography should be allowed everywhere. Why didn’t people ever think that before the ’60s? […].
If you belong to the New Secular Religion, the 1960s revelation is your creed, your Bible. Every generation of people before you, who believed differently, was wrong. In other words: wherever pre-’60s beliefs differ from post-’60s ones, post-’60s is always, always right. (p. 47).

Although at this juncture in the story the characters are talking about the wider problem of the modern creed of secular relativism, the observation here is strikingly applicable to the liturgical question. The 1960s marked a turning point, a watershed moment. Although there were liturgical modernists well before that decade, it was only then that the above-described mentality firmly entrenched itself — namely, that whatever in the realm of liturgy was said and done and believed before the 1960s is always wrong and that what is being said and done and believed now is always right. Everyone who felt or thought (or feels or thinks) differently is wrong: they are stuck in the past, they have not caught up with modernity and its new insights and requirements. Prior to the 1960s, there was a long line of Popes who spoke with great determination and seriousness about the normativity of Catholic tradition, the immense respect due to it, and the danger of innovation and experimentation. During and after the 1960s, tradition had become a bad word, respect for it a sign of spiritual regression or mental feebleness. Proponents of liturgical revolution were able to prevail based on a fundamental premise that was never allowed to be challenged.

Only the material world counts in the New Secular Religion. Either no other world exists or it if it does, it doesn’t matter. It counts for nothing. You have a materialist metaphysic — either de jure or de facto… It’s the same with all religions. Buddhists don’t believe in God. Inevitably, that helps form their ethics. Christians do believe in God — a personal God—and their ethics are formed by that. Secular Materialists don’t believe in an afterlife and that, likewise, shapes their ethics. (p. 51).

As many have noted, Catholics today, due to a powerful desire to accommodate themselves to the secular world, to be welcomed by it and “competitive” with it, run the serious risk of imbibing the materialist metaphysic, the New Secular Religion, and even reproducing and reinforcing it in and through their corporate acts. Sadly, we cannot exclude the causal influence of a worship that no longer confronts them with and immerses them in otherworldliness, the primacy of the invisible, inaudible, transcendent, as underlined by rich symbols of the sacred, hallowed chant, hidden ritual, and reservoirs of silence. If most Catholics in the contemporary West have the mentality of secular materalists, must we not resolutely and fearlessly look to the root causes of this debacle, and not be content with a superficial prognosis?

In this vein, the Gentle Traditionalist says to his interlocutor:

[T]he English often have the whole idea of the Church mixed-up. You think it’s a place where someone preaches a sermon, you sing some hymns, maybe say a prayer or two. Then come home again. For Catholics, that’s a travesty of the Church! I warned you this wouldn’t be PC — but it’s the tragedy of the English-speaking world. Millions and millions of English people — also Americans, Australians, etc. — they all think a church is somewhere you gather on Sundays for spiritual instruction. Rules! … The Reformation never took hold in most countries like it did in England. So this state of confusion doesn’t exist in Greece or Russia or Spain. Plus, in some countries, they use separate words for Protestant and Catholic sites of worship. But in English, it’s just one word — church — for two entirely different realities. To your ordinary American, a church is something like a meeting hall — an assembly room! To a Catholic, it’s a place where the most sublime ritual on Earth is enacted.

That the Mass itself has been reduced in the minds of many to a community gathering for songs and homilies — as evidenced by the relative emphasis given to each of the parts in many celebrations today — only sharpens the point Buck is making: the Protestant notion of “church” and “church service” has massively invaded the Catholic sphere, to the point where it is almost unknown that the Mass is primarily an oblation of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of the Most Holy Trinity, a propitiatory sacrifice on behalf of the living and the dead, and only secondarily an occasion for instruction and fellowship. One might put it this way: the Mass is pleasing to God and sanctifying for man because of its inherent nature as the unbloody renewal of the all-sufficient sacrifice of Calvary, the fruits of which we share in Holy Communion; its didactic and social functions are premised on that sacrifice, ordered to it, and derived from it.

But isn’t all this talk of blood, sacrifice, adoration, penance (one could easily add many other words to the list) redolent of an old-fashioned perspective that Modern Man, with all his progress and science, simply cannot share any more? Ah, that’s the whole problem in a nutshell. There is the truly Christian worldview and there is the distinctively modern worldview, and the two have nothing to do with each other. They are, in fact, totally opposed to each other, as opposed as Christ and Antichrist. Buck sees this opposition in terms of sacramental or non-sacramental, tradition or rationalism:

GT: … Clearly, I advocate Sacramental societies over non-Sacramental societies. If you study traditional Catholic cultures, capitalism does not develop so strongly. Likewise, you don’t see the same hyper-individualism, atomisation of society, breakdown of the family, social decay… Unfortunately, today’s Church doesn’t understand the power of its own Sacraments. Or sacramentals — like this Holy Water or the Rosary. This is the tragedy of the post-Vatican II Church. Large parts of it have surrendered to faith in rationalism, rather than keeping faith in tradition. The Church must recover her tradition. Only tradition understands the immense, healing power of the Sacraments. That power can save civilisation. If people returned to Confession, if people took the Mass seriously again, there’s no telling what would happen. But how can ordinary people take those things seriously, when the priests and bishops don’t either? (p. 161)

American Catholics are blessed with many priests and bishops who take the sacraments seriously, which might prompt one to think the Gentle Traditionalist guilty of exaggeration. If one looks to the dire European scene (as this book does), however, there is no question of exaggeration. One may indeed wonder if the Son of Man will find any faith left when He returns. Without a doubt, there are still the valiant who cling to the Church, her sacraments, and her sacramentals, but they can see their societies and their churches crumbling around them. In our times, to continue to be supernaturally hopeful and to persevere in the faith despite appearances and a lack of institutional support is a form of heroism that may well produce the great saints of the end times.

[T]he Church has been given the power to resurrect. Resurrection applies not only to individuals, but also society. The Sacramental Church has the power to resurrect society, but it must claim it once more. That’s why Benedict XVI — against considerable opposition — was working to restore the liturgy. (p. 162)

Exactly: the Church cannot take anything for granted; her earthly leaders must claim her power and use it, rather than being embarrassed or afraid or reticent or too sophisticated. I am reminded in this connection of something often stated and experienced by Juventutem groups: If only the Church’s leaders would bring forth the treasures of tradition with pride, joy, and generosity, spreading them as a banquet before the starving men and women of our profaned world, all would see their immense sanctifying and evangelizing potency. It can already be seen in the places where the “experiment of tradition” has been attempted without any artificial restrictions.

These are only a few snippets from the book, which again I recommend for its well-rounded and humorous treatment of the problem of modernity and the necessity of a “counterrevolutionary” response to it. Buck has shown convincingly, in the form of a dialogue of ideas, why a compromise with the anti-natural, anti-traditional, anti-sacramental spirit of modernity is impossible and has been, in fact, the root cause of our present malaise. It comes down to rationalism (the mental disease introduced by an era we would do well to call “the Endarkenment”) or tradition (which bears in itself the true enlightenment brought by Christ). Like water and oil, they can be blended with violence but they do not mix and must eventually separate.

Written by Michael Matt | Editor

Dear Remnant Family:

I am so very grateful to the many thousands of brothers and sisters in Christ around the world who were praying for my dear mother this week after she’d been stricken quite suddenly with a stroke last Tuesday.

I am happy to report that our prayers have been answered, for although she went to her eternal reward yesterday, January 17, 2016, it was only after several days of “recovery,” wherein it had appeared she would regain her physical health but never her cognitive function. It is my belief that the many prayers on her behalf led to a Divine assistance in removing this cross from her, despite the best efforts of medical experts to keep her body alive.

So now she’s gone on ahead, having died as she lived—in the Faith, in the loving embrace of her family and with the assistance of the Sacraments of the Church she loved so much. Before her passing, she was even blessed with the apostolic pardon. Indeed, hers was a happy death. (Thank you, St. Joseph)

But she took nothing for granted. Before she went into the surgery, for example, she told the surgeons that if they insisted on removing her scapular in order to prep for the procedure, she would simply cancel the surgery and go home. The old Faith really did mean more to her than life itself.

On the other hand, my mother would be the last person on earth to approve of anyone canonizing her on her death bed. Please pray for the repose of the soul of Marilyn Matt—a faithful Catholic who lived the Catholic thing to its fullest and who trusted in Divine Providence completely. When my father left The Wanderer back in 1967, for example, and was left with no job and 7 little children to raise, she was the one who said: “Well, let’s start another newspaper. If it’s God will, it will succeed.” And 50 years later, The Remnant is still going strong.

When she found out that the great Pilgrimage to Chartres France had never had an American contingent, it was she who said: “Well, let’s start one. If it’s God will, it will survive.” That was 25 years ago, and the chapter she started is still alive and well.

And when my father, a veteran of WWII who was still unmarried at 38, having decided that duty to family and The Wanderer made it impossible for him to have his own family, it was my mother (14 years his junior) who said: “Well, let me help you do both. If it’s God’s will, it will work.”

That union in holy Matrimony back in 1954, by the way, led to my mother’s proudest achievement—9 children, 39 grand-children and over 60 great grand-children—all 110 are still practicing traditional Catholics. Such was the example of joyfully living the Faith she’d given in this life.

She never intentionally missed Mass one Sunday or Holy Day of her entire life, she prayed the Rosary every day, and trusted in God and our Blessed Mother for everything in this life, with a strong devotion to the Infant of Prague. And she enjoyed life to the fullest, finding happiness in family, the beauties of nature, laughter, friends and a great sense of humor.

She was the sort of old-world woman that the old Catholic Church produced with some regularity, I suspect, generation after generation, but that today is not easy to find.

Even right up to the end, at 86 years old, she was working here at The Remnant, lived on her own, still driving herself to Mass or to run her little errands every day. That’s just the way she was, and we’ll never forget her indomitable spirit, never stop loving her, never cease being grateful to her for showing us how to live and now how to die as a Catholic.

In your charity, please pray for the repose of my mother’s soul.

Her Tridentine Requiem Mass will take place at 10:30 at St. Augustine Catholic Church in South St. Paul on Thursday January 21, and her wake will take place on Wednesday, January 20 from 4 to 8 pm at Willwerscheid Funeral Home (1167 Grand Ave, St. Paul MN).

Eternal Rest Grant Unto Her, O Lord, and Let Perpetual Light Shine Upon Her. May She Rest in Peace.

Written by Michael Matt

February 11, 2016 will mark the third anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s shocking declaration of his intention to abdicate on February 28, 2013.

What was behind that history-changing decision? We can all guess but nobody on this side of the Tiber really knows. That he was pressured in some way seems obvious. But, why? Two words: Summorum Pontificum.

At the end of the day and despite “the dossier”, the butler, vatileaks and everything else, it’s my opinion that Benedict incurred the wrath of hell itself when he restored the Traditional Latin Mass to the mainstream of the Catholic Church (even via a motu proprio which is deeply flawed), and that this ultimately led to his abdication.

It really was all about the Mass.

In his Protecting Us with the Traditional Latin Mass, Father Juan Manuel Rodríguez de la Rosa points out that:

“The Traditional Latin Mass is like an impregnable wall that keeps intact the faith, the living Word of God, which constantly speaks to us.

“The unassailable and impregnable wall of the Traditional Latin Mass is protecting us from heresy, from perverting the Catholic faith with the dirty waters of this world which infect and pollute wherever they go through, leaving a trail of sensuality and sin, a world that is given to carnal and sexual instincts.

“The Traditional Latin Mass is protecting us from the filth of the world, but above all protects the Blessed Body and Precious Blood of Our Redeemer, as the scourge of heresy will never stop trying in vain to break down that wall that was built and sustained by God the Father Almighty.

“Heaven is protecting us in every Traditional Latin Mass. The Eternal Father, the Lamb of God, the Divine Spirit, the Immaculate Conception, and the Heavenly Court, are looking after the Traditional Latin Mass from the moment it starts, and are witnessing with heavenly glory the development of the Sacrifice of the Agnus Dei.”

This article calls to mind our raison d’etre as traditional Catholics — the Traditional Latin Mass. Every Traditional Latin Mass restored in recent years is cause of jubilation among the Church Triumphant, entrance into paradise for members of the Church Suffering and renewed hope for the Church Militant.

Since the Mass matters most to the entire Church, I was dismayed to see some recent comments here on our site arguing that Pope Benedict XVI was essentially as bad or worse than Pope Francis. This in my opinion goes too far, if for no other reason than the resurgence of the Traditional Latin Mass that took place during his pontificate and after.

While it is certainly true that Pope Benedict was no traditionalist, it seems obvious that God did work through our conflicted 265th pope in ways history itself will be hard pressed to minimize. And as his friendship with the late, great Michael Davies proved, Ratzinger/Benedict certainly did not loathe traditional Catholics… as other popes do.

Even before he was pope, Cardinal Ratzinger was acting in a manner that proved a certain sensus Catholicus had managed to survive his tenure as peritus at Vatican II. Remember, for example, when he (as head of the CDF) withdrew Father Charlie Curran’s license to teach Catholic theology due to heretical dissent on an array of dogmas and the Church’s moral teachings on abortion, contraception and homosexuality?

Well, those days are gone forever.

Or how about when Cardinal Ratzinger hobbled the public heretic from Seattle, Raymond Archbishop Hunthausen, for allowing homosexuals to celebrate Mass at St. James Cathedral.

Who was he to judge, right?

And as pope (regardless of his motives), at the end of the day Pope Benedict XVI lifted the SSPX excommunications, corrected the fundamental lie at the heart of the New Mass (pro multis does indeed mean ‘for many’), corroborated one of traditionalism’s central and defining arguments (that the old Mass had never been abrogated and never can be), freed up the traditional Latin Mass so that any priest in the world can offer it with or without his bishop’s permission, and gave traditionalists in general enough papal backing to put the fear of the Lord back in the liberal establishment for a time. It was rather fun, remember?

And all of this Benedict did in a mere seven years!

But not everyone was a fan. A certain Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aries, for example—already known as a “sworn enemy of the traditional Latin Mass”—was less than enthusiastic about the pontificate of Pope Benedict. He was a liberal Jesuit who rejected the fundamentally Catholic notion that as Padre Rodriguez de la Rosa points out, “the future of the Church is in the Traditional Latin Mass, because it is the Truth of the Church and because it is the light that never goes out, illuminating the path of faith towards the heavenly fatherland.”

Here in Minnesota we can attest to this, as we’re still reaping the harvest of Summorum Pontificum (despite its obvious flaws), with the TLM having expanded rapidly since 2007, a new FSSP parish thriving in these precincts, several SSPX chapels (exonerated, no longer “excommunicated” and positively bursting with vocations), some ten TLM centers and counting, many diocesan priests saying the old Mass and not a few seminarians eager to make it even more widely available in future.

I’m sorry, but the TLM does matter! It’s not everything, true; but it matters more than anything else.

Surely, the situation in the Church universal today is beyond dire and without precedent, but there’s no harm in taking some modicum of comfort from the fact that Divine Providence has seen to it that the Traditional Latin Mass—the touchstone of the old Faith—survived a direct hit from Modernism’s atom bomb.

As Bishop Fellay noted at the time of Summorum Pontificum, “By right, the practical measures taken by the pope must enable the traditional liturgy – not only the Mass, but also the sacraments – to be celebrated normally. This is an immense spiritual benefit for the whole Church, for the priests and faithful who were hitherto paralyzed by the unjust authority of the bishops. However, in the coming months it remains to be seen how these measures will be applied in fact by the bishops and parish priests. For this reason, we will continue to pray for the pope so that he may remain firm following this courageous act.”

Does anyone seriously believe that Pope Francis would have performed that ‘courageous act’? Or is it more likely he would have been piloting the Enola Gay?

My intention here is not to lionize Pope Benedict XVI whose outrageous abdication continues to be a source of consternation for us all and whose hermeneutic of continuity—based on a stubborn refusal to acknowledge Vatican II for the disaster that it was (though he came close here)—proved to be so elusive that even he eventually abandoned all hope of finding it.

Nevertheless, does it really prove our traditionalist “cred” to argue that the Church would somehow be better off now had Papa Bergoglio gotten a head start back in 2005, or that it makes no difference either way?

What would life be like right now without the powerful spiritual bulwarks (and human consolation!) provided by hundreds of traditional Mass centers around the world, established as a direct result of SP?

How could anyone in his right mind contend that the escalating crisis in the Church today would not have been exponentially worse had the current pontificate begun seven years sooner?

If we answer the question honestly perhaps we can all agree that a conflicted Benedict need not be vilified quite so enthusiastically by traditionalists eager to demonstrate prowess at smelling out post-conciliar rats. It’s not quite that simple, and Ratzinger was never a Bergoglio, which is why he had so many enemies among radical liberals in the Church. He also had deeper Catholic roots than Bergoglio ever had, and in the end was up against all the powers of hell (including devils in cardinals’ robes), exactly as Our Lady of Fatima predicted he would be.

The reality is that the ranks of traditionalism throughout the world swelled dramatically during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. In fact, in hindsight it seems that God may have been granting His Church seven years to prepare for the worst pontificate in history, which is why we can be grateful that despite his own contamination by the modern ecclesial zeitgeist, Benedict nevertheless held out as long as he did against the wolves around him–wolves from which he would eventually flee.

Defining aspects of his pontificate made him the bane of the existence of modernists on steroids such as Kasper, Danneels and Satan himself. They got rid of him for a reason, which the St. Gallen Group now brazenly admits.

It’s all academic now, obviously, but if I had my druthers I’d certainly have taken an extension of the reign of Benedict XVI over the God forsaken free-for-all we’ve got going now. Given how the world hated Pope Benedict XVI and positively adores Pope Francis, I don’t understand how anyone could argue otherwise.

Of all the post-conciliar popes, Benedict was the one who finally blinked. And history may well reveal that the reign of Pope Benedict helped undermine the very Modernist revolution which, ironically enough, Benedict himself had had a hand in a half century earlier.

Yes, the Traditional Latin Mass is just that powerful—the Vendeans knew it, Campion and Southwell knew it, the English Catholics of the Western Uprising knew it, the Cristeros knew it and so do we.

This thing is not over yet.

Long live the Traditional Latin Mass of our Fathers, and thank God Pope Francis has reigned for only three years, rather than ten.

Hello everyone,

Due to the inclement weather and in an abundance of caution and practicality,
the Traditional Latin Mass at noon at St. Edmond Church
at 21st & Snyder, Phila, PA
this Sunday, January 24, 2016
is CANCELED

The intention will be satisfied by Fr. McKale with a private TLM.

Please spread the word…
This will be posted on the website & an e-mail blast will be sent to the mailing list on the website.

Fr. Harold McKale