Articles

Pope Leo XIV faces a crucial litmus test for international diplomacy and moral leadership as he inherits the Vatican’s controversial bilateral ties with Communist China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The contentious and clandestine 2018 Sino-Vatican deal wasrenewed most recently for another four years in November 2024, permiting the Vatican and Chinese authorities to jointly oversee episcopal appointments in China’s state-sanctioned church.

As Diane Montagna highlighted in her report on Francis’s fraudulent promulgation of Traditionis Custodes, Rome’s battle over the Traditional Latin Mass continues to hinge on the question of whether Traditional Catholics “reject the Second Vatican Council”. The Vatican II passages below did not “cause” the crisis in the Church, but they and others like them have been used by the Church’s enemies to offend God, lead souls to hell, and cause inestimable harm in the world.

In this episode of The Underground, Michael J. Matt discuses yet another massive scandal inside the Catholic Church. Even the Associated Press has now picked up Diane Montagna’s bombshell report that the Vatican plot to cancel the Latin Mass (Traditionis custodes) was based on fake news invented by the Vatican itself.

The respective demise and election of Popes Francis and Leo XIV saw the secular mainstream Western media leading the global charge to peer inside the Catholic Church, whose workings on such occasions rivet world attention. While revealing much about the Church, these attempts at understanding often fall fundamentally short in grasping the heart of what drives her.

The New England Rally for God, Family, and Country Conference 1965 — Walter L. Matt (Michael Matt’s father) speaks on the “Challenge of Our Times”.

A major exposé on Traditionis Custodes leaked a confidential Vatican document summarizing the 2020 global survey of bishops—a document that allegedly influenced Pope Francis’s controversial decision to restrict the Traditional Latin Mass. According to the leaked findings, the majority of bishops did not support limiting the Latin Mass and even warned that such restrictions could worsen tensions within the Catholic Church.

On July 1, the feast of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus (in the 1962 Liturgical calendar), Rome-based journalist Diane Montagna published a bombshell report disclosing that most bishops were not in favor of the suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) under “Traditionis Custodes”. Rather, these bishops felt that amending Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum” (that liberalized the celebration of the Tridentine Mass according to the 1962 Missal) would do “more harm than good.”

If Pope Leo XIV actually applied the words of the Council as set forth below, he could use Vatican II to justify the complete overturn of the Vatican II revolution that has plagued the Church and world for six decades. Here’s how that could be accomplished:

Burke, along with Dolan, was one of the key popemakers of the last Conclave. The US Catholic traditionalist and the conservative wings joined forces and, in utmost secrecy, pulled the name Prevost out of the hat—a name which, as is now well known, immediately attracted convergence even from the more progressive cardinals.

In this episode of The Underground, Michael J. Matt appeals to the clans to stand together against secular politicians and reckless Christian Zionists.

Peter Comensoli, Archbishop of Melbourne, recently met with the new Pope in Rome. However, he chose not to gift the pontiff with a relic of our only saint, Mary of the Cross, but instead opted to present Pope Leo with a pagan artefact known as a “message stick”. If Archbishop Comensoli wanted to give a ‘message’ to the new pope, the message is that the mainstream Church has yielded to the currents of political correctness and has embraced the pagan errors from which Christ came to liberate the world.

“You see, you’re too young to know the Catholic atmosphere before the Second Vatican Council. It was an austere atmosphere—like entering a particular order, a special discipline. Catholicism brought liturgical stability, epistemological and rational certainties. Well, the relaxations promoted by the Second Vatican Council were, for a large mass of Catholics, a welcome opening—but, curiously, they made Catholicism as a whole less appealing to outsiders. It became more similar to other branches of Christianity.” – Professor Virgil Nemoianu

Cardinal Zen’s public celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass was courageous on two fronts, given the ongoing suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass (using “Traditionis Custodes” as a pretext) in many dioceses worldwide, and with the long arm of CCP authorities stretching to once British-ruled Hong Kong all the way from Beijing, punishing dissenters like outspoken Catholic and anti-Communist advocate Jimmy Lai and even murdering others over the decades.

Editor’s Note: Since this article was penned, the situation has escalated and then, astonishingly, resolved in a tentative ceasefire. “Tentative” because all the major powers involved are volatile and unpredictable. But, a ceasefire nonetheless, and I’ll take it! Resistance is NOT futile! The current resolution was achieved because of massive MAGA resistance, such as Angeline Tan demonstrates in the article below, and such as I presented in this RTV video, along with the voices of Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, Marjorie Taylor Green, Dave Smith, etc., who are just a few of the “MAGA elite” dead set against America being dragged into Israel’s war on Iran. So, read on! MJM

The Third World War no longer appears in fragments, but as a unified whole. A war to be seen as the inevitable continuation of the Cold War, which in truth never ended, contrary to what geopolitical scholars have taught for decades.

In this episode of The Underground, Michael J. Matt goes deep on Donald Trump’s decision to invade Iran on Israel’s behalf – a move which has fractured the MAGA movement and delighted Neocons from Senator Lindsey Graham to Bibi Netanyahu.

On June 20, the majority of British lawmakers in the House of Commons voted 314 to 291 in favor of the contentious anti-life “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill” to legalize assisted suicide for “terminally ill” adults. The bill will now go to the unelected House of Lords for further evaluation. In essence, this anti-life bill permits mentally competent adults, diagnosed with a terminal illness and speculated to live less than six months (though such diagnoses are never fully fool-proof), to request lethal medication to end their lives through the National Health Service (NHS).

Every single ambiguity of Vatican II tended to undermine Catholic teaching in precisely the way against which the pre-Vatican II popes emphatically warned. This is not mere coincidence. Moreover, the presence of so much ambiguity fundamentally undermines the Catholic Church’s role as truth-teller. The Church obviously knew how to speak clearly and unambiguously on all of the matters that have become so contentious after the Council.

It is by now common knowledge that Pope Leo XIV has made another highly inappropriate episcopal appointment in the person of Shane Mackinlay, currently Bishop of Sandhurst. To rub salt into the wounds of faithful Catholics, this new appointment will include Mackinlay’s promotion to the rank of Archbishop, as he takes over the Archdiocese of Brisbane, Queensland.

Students across the educational spectrum are outsourcing their work to Artificial Intelligence (AI), according to The Wall Street Journal. In other words, cheating is more widespread than ever. To counter this underhanded academic revolution, the professoriate is taking a page, or more appropriately, pages – from their analog days to solve an ongoing digital problem.

The Holy Eucharist seems like an accessible mystery. I say this because I have met people who, even though they were not Catholic, had seen that the faithful attending a Mass in the Netherlands were receiving “a kind of biscuit.” Indeed, this is what a non-Catholic told me, someone who had attended the Holy Liturgy out of curiosity. Despite such unintentional trivializations, there is no mystery as simple and complex, as profound and complete, as the Holy Eucharist.

In a tragic vote on June 17, the British Parliament opted to decriminalize abortion to prevent women in England and Wales from being prosecuted for killing their unborn children. This decision, signifying the largest change to abortion laws for almost six decades, was described by LifeSiteNews as “a move all but guaranteed to open the floodgates to unlimited abortion-on-demand”.

Drawing from his own experiences under Soviet persecution, Bishop Schneider encouraged Catholics to be willing to suffer and persevere for the sake of the Catholic Faith and the traditional liturgy (pre-Vatican 2), despite facing “liturgical exile” or persecution within the Church. Strikingly, the prelate’s message was one of hope and joy, exhorting the audience to suffer for the Catholic Faith with joy, confidence, and zeal. After all, we have not entered the Barque of Peter “to escape out of it” but to keep the faith under the banner of Christ the King.

Most of the time, the criticisms brought by Protestants and Neoprotestants against Catholic teachings are based on an incorrect description of them. In other words, they are presented in such a way that no educated person, with a minimum level of intellectual discernment, could accept them without falling into irrationality. It is understandable that after such presentations, which distort the teachings of the Catholic Religion, the rejection of “dogmas”—such as the one concerning infallibility—can only be a natural consequence.