Remnant Articles
American Mommies in Combat
Back in December, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that the military would open all combat jobs—from the infantry to special-operations forces—to women. In January 2016, all branches of the military were required to submit their plans to the Defense Department for the gender integration of combat units. And just like that, America put the world on notice: We've lost our mind, lost our heart, lost our soul.
There she sat, a beautiful little child, peering into the camera with wide, almond eyes; her skin was olive-colored and her hair was a deep brown. Her eyes were tearless, which was surprising considering why this little one was being featured in a nightly news story. Her mommy was going away, you see, for a long time; and no one could tell her when her world would be restored. Blank and empty was the expression she wore on her face; she didn’t understand, she couldn’t understand.
Pope Pius XII defined, as an article of Faith, that the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed bodily into heaven
On December 8, 1854, in the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus, Bl. Pope Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Many non-Catholics mistakenly believe the Immaculate Conception refers to the virginal conception of Jesus Christ in the womb of His mother. In reality, the term refers to the conception of the Virgin Mary in the womb of her mother, St. Anne. Through the merits of Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary received the singular privilege of being exempt from the universal law of sin from the moment of her conception. The dogmatic definition reads as follows: “ the most Blessed Virgin Mary … in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin".
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a little known privilege she received Featured
Written by Robert J. Siscoe
Simone Arianne Biles was born March 14, 1997. The other night she became the 2016 Olympic individual all-around champion. But this little dynamo is no stranger to winning. She is a three-time world all-around champion, three-time world floor champion, two-time world balance beam champion, four-time US national all-around champion, and a member of the gold medal-winning American teams at the 2014, the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
More importantly from our perspective, Simone Biles is a Roman Catholic home-schooler who might have been a victim of abortion had her birth mother been someone other than Shannon Biles who suffered from drug and alcohol addiction but, rather than aborting her baby, gave Simone up for adoption.
Olympic Gold for Catholic Homeschooler Featured
Written by Michael J. Matt | Editor“Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.” - J.R.R. Tolkien
T-O-R-T-U-R-E
(What Did Jesus Say to Jeremiah Denton in the "Hanoi Hilton"?)
In his 1956 article, I Found God in Soviet Russia, concentration camp survivor John Noble writes: “I have seen Christianity under the most terrible persecution it has suffered since the days of Nero, and I have seen abundant proof that faith in Christ, the Saviour, is still alive in Russia today in the very places where the Communists have tried hardest to stamp it out, the concentration camps. It is triumphant testimony I have to give… and I am convinced it was God’s will that I be a member of that persecuted Church for several years in order to testify that God is with it and is sustaining it.” Reminiscent of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s account of how he found God in the atheistic darkness of the Gulag—a place which he defines as a direct manifestation of man's abandonment of God—this extraordinary testimony of one who lived through the worst kind of physical persecution should give us pause. For inasmuch as today’s faithful Catholics face perhaps more universal afflictions of the soul than our forefathers faced at any time in history, it is nevertheless true that we have much for which to be grateful and, for the moment, even the time and opportunity needed to fight for that which we hold most sacred and which everywhere today is under attack.
“There is some good in this world," Tolkien also writes, "and it's worth fighting for.” We’re not in prison…yet.
Don't Stop Believing (A Little Reminder from The Remnant) Featured
Written by Michael J. Matt | Editor
Perhaps, the decades of investigating and searching for missing and abducted children around the world provided me insight into the dangers to children. Perhaps, knowing the tactics and stories of sexual predators heightens my concern over naive and gullible adults, who place children and teens in dangerous and compromising situations.
Walking fearlessly alone and among the poor, Cardinal Bergoglio drinks mate, the traditional Argentine beverage, in Buenos Aires on March 3, 2013, ten days before his election as Pope. (Did this man ever do anything without the cameras rolling?)
When Jorge Bergoglio was elected as pope, there was surprisingly little information either released by the Vatican or available online from his long tenure as head of the Church in Buenos Aires or as a leading figure in the South American Society of Jesus. It was there if you knew how to dig hard enough. In fact, the Spanish and Portuguese language news sites and blogs are full of interesting photos of his holiness as a cardinal posing with his good friends in all the Marxist-inspired “social movements”.
But it’s a funny thing, even though the whole world knew five minutes after the 2005 election that Ratzinger had once been drafted into the Hitler Youth as a child, Bergoglio’s ties with these leftist extremist organisations has remained pretty much unknown in the English language press. In fact, to this day, next to nothing about his history or about the fate of the archdiocese of Buenos Aires is known to the general Catholic world.
Bergoglio and the Institute of the Incarnate Word: Hints of Things to Come? Featured
Written by Hilary White
Regarding the “Catholic” Apotheosis of Luther
Final Session of the 24th Annual Roman Forum Summer Symposium
Feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius
July 7th, 2016
Our civilization is so sick that even the best efforts to prop up its few tottering remnants manifest the pathetic illness that has step by step brought the entire structure crumbling down. The disease in question is a willful, prideful, irrational, and ignorant obsession with “freedom”. But this is a malady that gained its initial effective entry into Christendom in union with the concept of the natural world as the realm of “total depravity”.
The Lake Garda Statement: Regarding the 'Catholic' Apotheosis of Luther Featured
Written by John Rao | Remnant Columnist, New York
The admonishment is stated so often in discussions about inner Church workings that many people treat it as axiomatic: Do not view the Church through a political lens, the Church is different.
Yes, the Church is different. You cannot view the Church as simply aligning with your local political situation, but the Church is inherently political. Where there are people involved, there is politics. And I venture to say that not only is this current period no exception, it is quickly setting new levels.
A fair amount of ink has been spilled in recent weeks over the controversy that erupted after Cardinal Sarah's London speech suggesting that priests might want to check out ad orientem worship this coming advent.
Why Would Rome’s ‘Doctors of the Law’ Want the SSPX Regularized?
Written by Patrick Archbold
The pope has issued “new guidelines” for contemplative nuns, and it has set off every one of my alarms, long, loud and terrifying as an air raid siren. It is possibly one of the most sinister things I've seen coming from Bergoglio thus far, but I think few people will understand how serious it is or could be.
Hardly anyone gives a moment’s thought to cloistered nuns. Once they’re inside, the world forgets about them. But contemplative religious life is like the mitochondria of the Church. The power source of the cell that makes all the other systems function. The mitochondria are the most unobtrusive and hidden of the organelles of the body, and for a very long time their purpose was not fully understood. But now we know our lives depend on the health of this tiny, secret and hidden little thing. And mitochondrial disease – when the mitochondria fail to function – is devastating.
Springtime’s Over, Ladies: Francis’ Plans for the “New Conservative” Religious Orders
Written by Hilary White
INTRODUCTION
There were 54 Rites of Mass composed by the apostles according to the language and custom of the countries they evangelized. In this essay all comments are centered on the Roman Rite.
Why select the Roman Rite to comment on, if it is just one among many? Is it because it is said in Latin? No, in fact, the original language that it was written in was Syro-Chaldaic, composed by St. Peter in Antioch. It was the language used by the people of Judea at the time of Christ. It is divine providence that chose Latin, soon to be ‘non-vernacular’, as the language of the Church. This ‘dead language’ for the Church was to be a sign of Her unity in ‘Her Liturgy’ and to protect the meaning of ‘Her dogmas’ (for the meanings of words in any vernacular language tend to change over time – in a dead language the meanings of words never change).
The importance of the Latin Roman Rite is that it is the Rite of some 95 percent of all Catholics. It is the Latin Roman Rite that St. Paul spread throughout his missionary expeditions.