Whatever Happened to Lent?
A New Idea of Lent has invaded the entire Church. A gauzy altruism has taken the place of a rigorous program of penance and prayer.
A New Idea of Lent has invaded the entire Church. A gauzy altruism has taken the place of a rigorous program of penance and prayer.
Our Faith is about swords, not hand-holding. Those swords are first directed at our sins, and then directed at the evils in the world and in our Church.
What is absent in enthusiasm is a humility before the example of the saints, who never prayed with external display or manic delirium but always with a calm and chastened manner.
The traditional Latin Mass held at the U.S. Capitol last week was a Jericho-Walls-crumbling moment.
Last year’s Synod on Synodality was a moment of Magical Thinking, bearing no resemblance to historic Christianity.
For all of its fearfulness, the Church never cheated her children of death’s sublime, albeit mournful, reality.
Not only do nations have the right to enact laws that limit immigration but also nations have as their principal obligation to first assure the common welfare of its own citizens.
“Cheery religion” can’t produce Edith Steins. Only the Old Faith can do that. The Old Faith, unafraid of the Cross.
You see, Jesus does not love us just the way we are. He pities the way we are.
By strongly condemning the growing anti-Catholicism around us, Archbishop Cordileone also rebukes the tepid response of many Catholic leaders and ordinary Catholics to this evil.
Because dissemblers like the Paulist Fathers have been busy at their work, most Catholics today have only the leanest idea of what being a Catholic means.
Easter is the unleashing of the Revolution of the Cross. It should be unsettling, like an earthquake. Wondrous, as the explosion of galaxies. Penetrating, as the sound of a thousand marching armies.
Our Lord does not see rich or poor, privileged or unfortunate, low class or high. He sees only fallen men and women whom He loves.
It must seem to the decent Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass that a kind of Berlin Wall is closing in upon them.
This past half-century or so has seen the word love dragged through the mud. Once a queen; now a harlot.
Four simple changes to how we receive Communion will do far more to create a Eucharistic revival than any multi-million dollar program.
With all due respect to the Second Vatican Council, it does not meet the demands of a secular world. For that we need a virile, unequivocal, and full-throated Catholicism.
When Catholics in a typical parish are served lounge music instead of sacred music, their souls suffer a kind of dry rot. They experience not the “fear and trembling” of Calvary but only the wispy breezes of the musical theater.
The Jesuits used to be God’s Marines. They have become God’s embarrassment.
The Church’s divine mission is to give humanity a contemplative gaze into the Most Holy Trinity, not to embrace the secular causes du jour or sterile programs of self-realization.