Remnant Articles
A Christmas Truce at the World War I Front
On December 7, 1914, Pope Benedict XV suggested a temporary hiatus of the war for the celebration of Christmas. Though Germany readily agreed, the other powers refused. |
(This article was published in The Remnant in 2006 after having first appeared on the Your Guide to 20th Century History website. It is reproduced here with the permission of the author. The original song by John McCutcheon is well worth listening to as you read this incredible story from a day and age not so very far removed from our own but, alas, fading in every way from the consciousness of "grown up" and "enlightened" men who've lost sight of God, Country and even who and what they are anymore-- much less the true meaning of Christmas. MJM)
Though World War I had been raging for only four months, it was already proving to be one of the bloodiest wars in history. Soldiers on both sides were trapped in trenches, exposed to the cold and wet winter weather, covered in mud, and extremely careful of sniper shots. Machines guns had proven their worth in war, bringing new meaning to the word "slaughter."
In a place where bloodshed was nearly commonplace and mud and the enemy were fought with equal vigor, something surprising occurred on the front for Christmas in 1914. The men who lay shivering in the trenches embraced the Christmas spirit. In one of the truest acts of peace to men of goodwill, soldiers from both sides in the southern portion of the Ypres Salient set aside their weapons and hatred, if only temporarily, and met in No Man's Land.
Christmas in the Trenches, The True Story
By: Jennifer Rosenberg | Guest ColumnistThe coming of the Savior brings not only joy but suffering. Christmas Day is immediately followed by the Feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr. Two days later we commemorate the Holy Innocents slain in place of the Holy Child. Herod, a usurper of the rightful authority in Judea, is filled with rage and anger when he hears of the possible arrival of the true authority within his dominion. He cannot find the Holy One so as to lay hands on Him and so he unleashes his fury on the Holy Innocents, those new to life and unable to defend themselves. All illegitimate tyrants eventually lash out in injustice for deep down they know their position is ultimately untenable.
A New Herod’s Offensive against the Children of the Immaculata
By: Brian McCall | Remnant ColumnistOn November 3rd, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi commented on reports that Pope Francis would name women Cardinals for the February consistory. Almost immediately, certain Neo-Catholic media pundits, as well as the secular press, began to spin the words of Lombardi to imply that he strongly opposed the idea of women Cardinals. Catholic Online chose the headline, “Pope Francis Will Not Appoint Women as Cardinals,” while the Irish Times went with, “Vatican dismisses reports of women cardinals.” Conservatives focused on the fact that Fr. Lombardi called the reports “nonsense” and that it is “…simply not a realistic possibility that Pope Francis will name women cardinals for the February consistory. “
The Neo-Catholic Road to Cardinalettes
By: Chris Jackson | Remnant ColumnistA Letter from a Recent Lutheran Convert
Dear Folks at The Remnant:
I've been a lurker to your website for a while, and a subscriber to your fine newspaper for a few months now. Your paper has been a continual source of clarity and....well, sanity.
You mentioned in a recent YouTube shtick (it was with Matt and Ferrara), that you were going to devote future YouTube conversations to the problem of the New Mass. It made me think of my own case.
“I was born poor, I have lived poor, I wish to die poor” ...Pope St. Pius X
In keeping with his vision of a Church “of the poor and for the poor” Pope Francis met with and suspended the Bishop of Limburg, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst last week. The bishop had been in the news for the better part of a month due to costly renovations of his residence totaling upwards of forty million dollars. The German Bishops’ Conference is currently conducting an investigation into the affair and no punishment will be permanently set until that time. However, Vatican observers are predicting that if the Bishop is found guilty, he will not be reinstated as the Bishop of Limburg.
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”
- Alice in Wonderland -
The CISP (International Coordination Summorum Pontificum) has announced that His Eminence Dario, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos will be celebrating Pontifical High Mass in St Peter’s Basilica on Saturday 26 October at 11 o’clock during the pilgrimage of the people of Summorum Pontificum to Rome.
Holy Mass on 26 October will allow Diocesan and Religious Priests, Seminarians, and the faithful among the people of Summorum Pontificum to show Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos their gratitude and affection for everything he has done in the service of the Church, especially at the time of the preparation of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, during which His Eminence was a witness and of which he is the living memory.
Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos to Celebrate Pontifical in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome
By: Alberto Carosa | Rome Reporter
“I have the humility and ambition to want to do something.”
-Pope Francis
Over the past several weeks we have watched, stunned, as Pope Francis conducts little short of a public jeremiad against Catholics he deems insufficiently in tune with Vatican II’s “dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualizing its message for today”—whatever that means—which he insists is “absolutely irreversible” even as the destruction from the failed conciliar aggiornamento continues to mount.
“The Syllabus in complete form is already in La Civiltà Cattolica in 1850. It is nothing other than the codification, the unconditional approval, the supreme papal sanction of those principles and doctrines that, already at the time of the definition of the Immaculate Conception, that periodical had assumed the task of promoting, and which for years and years it tenaciously supported.” (A. Dioscordi, “La rivoluzione italiana e la Civiltà Cattolica”, Atti del XXXII congresso del Risorgimento italiano, Rome, 1956, p. 94.)
The Catholic world has been shaken by the recent interview with Pope Francis appearing in the Jesuit journal, La Civiltà Cattolica [Italian for Catholic Civilization, it is a periodical published since 1850 without interruptions by the Jesuits in Rome. It is among the oldest of Catholic Italian periodicals and is directly revised by the Secretariat of State of the Holy See before being published.] Having done my doctoral dissertation on the first twenty years of that periodical’s history, I thought it might be interesting to Remnant readers to know that they can find in its original articles—and, in fact, in its very reason for existence—all the grounds necessary for a faithful critique of the pope’s words. For La Civiltà Cattolica was founded in 1850 precisely to combat the obvious Church weakness and surrender to willfulness that were the inevitable by-product of the kind of “open” approach to “diverse” modern men that the Holy Father is now once again promoting. Perhaps recalling this life-giving lesson from the journal’s past may inspire second thoughts tempering the truly deadening effect of the words found in its current pages.