“But this I have against you, that you have forgotten your first love.” (Apocalypse 2:3) When it is asked what the biggest problem in the Church is, people respond in a variety of ways. Various Catholics cite the loss of the sense of sin, loss of the dignity of the human person, the dictatorship of […]
“I praised the dead rather than the living, and I judged him happier than both that is not yet born, who has not seen the evils done under the sun.” (Eccl 4:4) In this statement, the Qoheleth offers much wisdom for todays Catholics, especially traditionalists. While at face value his words are a lamentation of […]
In today’s Church there is a growing success story which nobody is telling.
This Saturday Pope Francis called for a day of fasting and prayer for peace, especially for the rapidly escalating (or deteriorating) situation in Syria. Since these days are so seldom proclaimed, they present us a great opportunity to examine fasting in greater detail. In todays age where fasting and penance are almost non-existent (sadly enough […]
The only way to describe something is “great.” Babe Ruth was great at baseball and anything less than great simply wouldn’t do it justice. Likewise, if you describe the pontificate of Guiseppe Sarto as anything below “great”, you should probably have your head examined. By any possible metric, his pontificate was a success, and there is a reason he was the first Pope to be canonized a saint since the 16th century.
We may be mediocre, but with our gifts and the sacraments, we traditionalists look to rise above mediocrity. We only ask a chance a chance to let us do so.
If they really want to help with these misunderstandings, the first thing they must do is the thing they will be least inclined to do: drop the moniker “radical traditionalist” and “radtrad” entirely. At best the phrase is a relic of a time that is no longer relevant. At worst, the term is creating animosity and perpetuating a growing sense of tribalism within Catholicism, especially in America.
What Catholics typically call “the First Pentecost” was actually a New Pentecost itself.
In this column I have frequently referenced findings about the dismal way in which many Catholics look at the sacraments. I think the problem is more than just the usual ranting and ravings about a liberal church, how horrible things are after Vatican II, true as all these clichés are. Instead the problem stems from […]
By the time this column is published, this author will have participated in the sacrament of marriage. While I do not know what the future has in store for me, I do believe that the experiences I had in the past 14 months (our time of engagement) have been God preparing me for the married […]
Have you heard about how America is an evil nation, opposed to God, and destined to be judged? Or how about how rotten the majority of the Catholic Church is for its lack of fidelity to the Gospel, and how God will judge them for that?
Wrapping up our series on the sacrament of confession, I’d like to deal with what I feel to be are the two most important parts. Frequently two questions are asked with this sacrament: What should we confess, and how often should we confess it? Due to poor catechesis (or worse) there are some who advocate that you should […]
If we want to solve the crisis of the confessional, we need to begin actually teaching these principles, and begin applying them in our own confessions. In many cases, this will require a fundamentally new outlook in the way we approach this sacrament. Yet it is only fitting, as the sacrament provides us a new way to live our life.
One of the greatest obstacles to presenting the Sacrament of Confession is exposing perfectly good Catholics to a worldview they are completely unfamiliar with.
I would like to look at the matter from a different angle. I don’t really want to focus on a biblical rationale for every aspect of the sacrament of confession, not yet at least. Instead, I’d like for us to ponder why it is fitting that God chooses to use priests in the forgiveness of sins through the confessional.
In my last column, we began covering the sacrament of confession by stating that modern Catholicism suffers from a crisis of the confessional. Here on this site, on social media and in emails, readers have shared their thoughts with me on why this is so. According to the wisdom of the crowds, the biggest problem […]
Why did future saints like Blessed John Paul II go to confession on a weekly basis, sometimes even more frequently? Why did Archbishop Fulton Sheen recall with delight how the nuns whose confessions he heard did not spare their venial sins in the confessional, even though Church law only requires the confession of mortal sins?
When the sacrament of baptism is discussed, much attention is placed upon the fact that we share in Christ’s offices of Priest and Prophet. Little attention is paid (especially here in the land of democracy) to the third office we are enrolled in: that of King. This truth should be a source of great shame […]
Yet if the impulse is noble, then that means there’s a hint of truth to this. So why the emphasis on the smallest bits of liturgical discipline? Why nitpick? In short, we are trying to be like the just servants in the parable of the talents.
In addition to sharing in Christ’s priesthood in baptism, the Catechism also tells us that we share in Christ’s prophetic office. The purpose of a Prophet (and hence Christ’s Office of Prophet) is something that is frequently misunderstood within Christianity today. The average answer will be that a prophet is essentially a divine fortune teller […]
A very wise priest is fond of starting all his discussions on the sacraments with the following fundamental truth. When teaching on the sacraments, we must remember that nobody encounters God without being fundamentally changed. In the Old Testament the names of individuals were changed. Moses’ face became as bright as the sun, and Elijah […]
If there is one thing about the Holy Spirit, he loves to throw a curveball. When white smoke appeared, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and some wannabe pundit (whose name escapes me) were spending their time talking about how we were going to get a pope who was younger to help appeal to the masses. Or […]
When we consider the Sacrament of Baptism, two things become readily apparent. The first is how important baptism is in the Scriptures. Out of all the sacraments, none are foretold more than the sacrament of Baptism. (See Gen 1:2, Ez 36:25, 2 Kings 5:10-15, Is 1:16 to name but a few examples.) The other is […]
We understand the sacraments as “visible signs of an invisible reality.” While this is true, it really doesn’t tell us much about the sacraments. A visible sign of what? What is the reality? The questions (and answers!) contemporary Catholicism provides are clearly not satisfying.
