Upcoming talk in Fresno, CA
For those in the area:
Major Interview
Sebastian Morello interviewed me for The European Conservative, asking a series of tough questions about the May 2 statement calling for the pope’s resignation or deposition:
Why did you and the others involved feel that now was the right time for this call?
Why does Francis protect and promote corrupt men?
Why have ecclesial and secular leaders not spoken out more vehemently against the Rupnik scandal?
Do you expect the actions that you are calling for to be taken? If not, why bother issuing the call?
If Francis is guilty of the heresies you list, would he not have lost the papal office already?
Is the pope's behavior not partly a consequence of the papal office having swelled into something it was never meant to become? Is it time to rethink Latin ecclesiology in the light of the current papacy?
Doesn't papal resignation desacralize the office?
Read my responses here.
Sanctus Lectures
As you all know by now, I visited Sanctus Ranch in Texas in April, and gave two lectures there. The first I shared with a simple link, but the second only recently went up on my YouTube channel.
The first is “True Obedience in a Time of False Churchmen”:
The second is “When the Sunday Mass Obligation Binds and Ceases to Bind,” a topic of considerable practical importance in our times. In the first part, I summarize the views of preconciliar moral theologians. In the second part, I explain what the faithful should do in the case of irreverent Masses or the lack of availability of traditional Masses. In the third part, I address the question of whether or not the Novus Ordo should be avoided as a rule.
(In case you’re wondering, Michael Lofton gives this lecture two thumbs down!)
New books out from Os Justi Press
It’s been a busy springtime at the local publishing house!
Andrew Thornton-Norris’s The Spiritual History of English—that’s right, not “the English” but “English,” the language—is a fascinating and unique study. Here’s how the back cover sums it up:
Modernity might be defined as the age when Western man tried, for the first time, to do without the Church, then without Christ, and finally, without God. Yet cultural expression remained vibrantly alive, from the Renaissance to the Baroque, from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, and into the Modernist reaction—at least, for as long as the ancient echoes of Catholicism stirred the imagination. However, now that religion has been so effectively removed from our society, the impetus for high culture seems to have vanished; arts and letters are uninspired, uninteresting, and undignified, if not parasitical, ugly, banal, and empty. Postmodernism is the end of the line to nowhere.
In an ambitious critique ranging over 1,500 years of literary history, the poet Andrew Thornton-Norris argues that the demise of English literature reveals the heavy cost of rejecting objective moral standards and sacred realities. Only the Catholic Faith has power to prevail against the “dictatorship of relativism” in all its erosive manifestations and to provide once again those underlying norms of mind, behaviour, and workmanship on which civilization thrives. The Anglophone world will experience cultural rebirth when it embraces anew the divine religion it has tried to bury in successive waves of revolution.
Available in paperback, hardcover, or ebook from Os Justi Press or from Amazon.
Three reprints of interesting theological works:
Fr. Taymans d’Eypernon, SJ, The Blessed Trinity and the Sacraments
“Material or sense-perceptible elements, raised by grace to the rank of sacraments, become the channel of God’s presence and implant in man’s soul a ‘fountain springing up into eternal life.’ The sacraments are truly efficacious signs of grace. But the Divine Presence effected by the sacraments—and this is the central point of the present study—is not just the presence of the Divine Nature or of One Divine Person. It is the presence of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity.” In these words we see outlined the ambitious goal of Fr. Taymans d’Eypernon’s important study of the seven sacraments as revelations and actions of—and intimate participations in—the Triune God. First published in 1961 and quickly forgotten in the maelstrom that accompanied the Second Vatican Council, The Blessed Trinity and the Sacraments is ripe for rediscovery in our own times.
Available from the publisher or from Amazon.
Dom Aelred Graham, OSB, The Love of God: An Essay in Analysis
“If the religion of Christ be true, then the love of God to which it invites us is the most important thing in life…. That it is more important to love God than to know Him is one of the convictions which inspire these pages. Yet love presupposes knowledge. Not blindly must the Beloved be approached, but with enlightened understanding. Short of the experimental knowledge of the mystics, on which it would be presumptuous folly to rely, perhaps the means best calculated to ensure fulfilment of the greatest of the commandments lie in our trying to appreciate, however imperfectly, what God is, to discern thereby something of His innate lovableness; and, we may add, what man is, and how great his need for God…. The glass, so to say, through which revelation has been viewed [in this study] is that provided by the immortal Summa Theologica.”
Available from the publisher or from Amazon.
Fr. Clarence McAuliffe, SJ, Sacramental Theology: A Textbook for Advanced Students
“With the fullness of time (one of the early scholastics wrote), there came a time of fullness—a fullness of grace in Christ, a fullness to be communicated to the members of His Body. God’s ineffable wisdom has selected as channels of that grace seven dramatic, concrete, effective symbols: the sacraments…. Fr. McAuliffe’s volume does not present sacramental theology in pre-digested doses for the college student; it is purposely ‘a test of the student’s memory, ingenuity, ability to make distinctions, to think clearly and profoundly and reflectively.’ It is a judicious and altogether happy blend of positive and speculative doctrine” (from a reviewer in 1959). Fr. McAuliffe’s textbook brims with classic theological and apologetic arguments.
Available from the publisher or from Amazon.
Little Office
Over at NLM, I share images of a newly published edition of The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Julian’s poetry page
I think you will agree that Julian’s articles on music, art, and other topics are adding a great deal of interest to this Substack. If you appreciate his writing, I recommend that you go over and check out his “Buy Me a Coffee” page, where he is and will be publishing his own poetry. Add a tip to his jar. He will appreciate it as a budding author.
Butker
There’s a ton of controversy around Harrison Butker’s speech at Benedictine. The feminist and quasi-feminist Catholics are up in arms, but here’s all I have to say about that. Or rather, here’s what one of the founders of modern feminism, Simone de Beauvoir, mistress (well, one of the mistresses) of the nihilist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, had to say:
For a better “take” on Butker’s speech, I recommend Ann Burns’s “Harrison Butker’s Courageous Defense of Women.”
Favorite recent articles
DDF on Apparitions. Lots of people are asking me what I think about the latest Vatican document. There’s a lot that could be said… In short: it sounds fairly tame but theologically it is deeply problematic. The best critique of it so far is this one.
Russia. We often read about "the errors of Russia" in connection with the Fatima apparitions. But what exactly ARE these errors, how have they played out in the past 100+ years, and what is the form they currently take on? I recommend this excellent article by Maria Madise on the topic.
Atlantis. A fine review, by G.E. Schwarz at VoegelinView, of Robert Lazu Kmita’s novel The Island Without Seasons (together with a long meditation on the role of fantasy literature as an antidote to cynicism and skepticism).
Frassati. It’s good news indeed that Pier Giorgio Frassati is going to be canonized in 2025. He was an amazing figure and is a true role model: deeply devoted to the Holy Mass, Adoration, and the Rosary, but also to Catholic Social Teaching and aiding the poor, often at great inconvenience and expense to himself. Plus, he was an outdoorsman, played practical jokes on people, wasn't afraid of a fistfight, and smoked a pipe. Basically, he's got everything. He loved the old Mass (that’s all there was during his lifetime, but he certainly loved it for what it was!), he was manly, he was courageous, he was heterosexual, he was intellectually alive—basically all the things that the post-Vatican II church struggles with. His canonization will canonize the Old Faith, not the new one.
Hilary White. I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again: Hilary’s Substack is one of the few that you must subscribe to. From a recent piece:
As the world goes, so goes the Church, at least in our time. To understand what’s happening to Catholicism—why a malignant incubus like Marko Rupnik is blatantly protected by the pope, for example—we should examine the gargantuan effort of the Baby Boomer demographic cohort in the 1960s to trap the Church forever in the social revolution of the period. One question I’ve never found any “progressivist Catholic” willing to answer is, “Where are we progressing to? What does a sexually revolutionised Catholic Church look like?” What’s at the end of this road?
On Francis. Stuart Chessman always has interesting reflections:
A cursory review of the last eleven years reveals that Francis is a man consumed by a relentless drive for control and by a radical commitment to ideology. The fact that Francis was unable to achieve at a German institution the scholastic attainments of German intellectuals, does not at all mean that he is not an ideologue. His system of thought may be crude, but it is simple, short, and can be relentlessly repeated: we must go forward, not back, cannot be rigid, doctrine evolves, the Church must welcome everyone as he is, dialogue is essential, the unity of the Church “under Peter” must be preserved. These are ideological positions – an endlessly repeated litany that Francis hammers home on every occasion....
Elsewhere in the Church, Francis must contend with the fact that many Catholics believe that certain positions that have been accepted previously are articles of faith. It takes a while to bring these Catholics around to discarding that which they had only a few years ago held to be certain and holy. This explains the torturous preparation of Francis before he makes each of his moves: the synod on the family, the Amazonian synod, the Churchwide synodal path, the questionnaires regarding the status of traditionalism in the Church. These things may seem to an objective observer transparently dishonest, which is true, but Francis judges them necessary first steps in implementing progressive reform.
Feser. Ed Feser hits it out of the park in this essay-review at First Things, in which he explains what “development of doctrine” means (and doesn’t mean).
Holy Land. A really thoughtful article by Alan Fimister about the current conflict in the Middle East. In a rare way he managed to rise above the superficial talking points.
Latin-lovers, check this out.
Gregory Cook on the Martyrology, torture, and transgenderism, here.
From the mailbag…
I received the following message from a reader a couple of weeks ago. It’s always amazing to see how just one article can start off a chain reaction!
Your books and articles helped our family find the beautiful tradition of the Church. Your article years ago, "The Office of Workers and Fighters," really lit a fire for me to try out the traditional Divine Office—and that ignited a love for the sacred liturgies of the Church, which inspired a visit to Clear Creek Abbey, which led us to a new parish, had us eventually incorporate chanting the Little Office into our family prayer routine (which the children have really taken to heart), and has since rooted our family deep in the traditional sacramental life of the Church. So, once again, your voice in the Church is appreciated. Praised be Jesus Christ now and forever.
Another email came in yesterday from a young lady who will be entering religious life and therefore giving up the internet:
A blessed feast of Pentecost to you. I wanted to thank you for all that you do for the traditionalist community. There is certainly plenty to look forward to about no longer having internet access, but not being able to follow your writings is not included in that category. Your work has helped my family and me grow in our love for and confidence in our beautiful Roman heritage. Perhaps more effusive praise could be clumsily heaped up, but I believe you would consider no praise more pertinent than that.
As I will no longer be able to read anything of yours starting this fall, I have one small, maybe childish request. Would you be able to write about the Masoretic vs. Vulgate numbering of the Psalms this summer? I have always had an instinct that our Vulgate system was better, but I would really love to hear your perspective.
May our Lord always bless you and your family, strengthen you in the fight for truth, and bring you to eternal life.
God is good: glory to Him!
(And yes, I will try to get to that psalm numbering article this summer!)
I was glad to hear a realistic assessment of Pope Benedict in the first video. (I haven't watched second one.) It is disheartening to hear in some trad circles the damning (I don't think that's too strong a term) of Papa Ratzinger, even to the point of claiming he "was almost as bad as Francis." Those claims are vile slanders. Benedict fell short, as all men and all popes do. But his missteps were mostly of omission, not what he DID do. I have also heard/read you use JPII's good documents in arguments, which is only just. Francis has no good documents and it is easy to see why there is so much animus towards him. JPII did some manifestly bad things (Assisi, Koran kissing, etc.) and set bad precedents (Pope as rock star aura), but some things he wrote are excellent. I can't fathom the vitriol sometimes tossed at Benedict from erstwhile trads.
Off-topic, Dr. Kwasniewski, but I would like to know what your opinion is on the soon-to-be canonized Carlo Acutis? I know you are somewhat suspect of some of the canonizations which have happened after Vatican II, which makes me interested to know what you think of this new one?