Patrick Archbold
That is what the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum” felt like in 2007. It seemed like a lifeline for Tradition and the traditional Mass. Suddenly we could breathe again and it seemed like Tradition was saved from certain death. We, understandably, felt relieved and grateful.
There is currently a fair bit of discussion going on in Catholic social media circles about the nature of this type of outreach.
I don’t intend any critique here of Matthew Kelly or his works, but rather a critique of the mindset that is hardly exclusive to Mr. Kelly.
Recently, I had to attend the One Eight Lifeteen confirmation preparation program for one of my sons. I had to sit through the mandatory several-hour session with my son. It was painful beyond belief. We had to sit through games and discussions and activities, none of which had anything to do with the sacrament of confirmation, let alone Catholicism. We played Family Feud.
We had to form groups to talk about family traditions. After several hours of this, they played a little video which talked about confirmation in very general ways as a sacrament. That was our allotment of Catholicism for the day.
I am friendly with the pastor, a very good man, and I needled him about the uselessness of the program. He responded back to me: “Honestly one eight is not for your family – it is for pre-catechetical families (most of which are the families in this and every parish). We start off silly to get their attention but eventually move them to solid material. It really does work – the teens eventually get it.
You come into the wall, you turn yourself upside down, blindly reach for the wall with your feet, push off, and hope you are headed in the right direction.
Flip Turns. I have dreaded flip turns for as long as I have been swimming, which is going over a dozen years now.
For most of those years, even though I swam 5 times a week at points, I never learned how to do flip turns. You know those cool turns that Olympic swimmers do and we watch on underwater cameras? They look so easy. They’re not.
The term neo-Catholicism actually has a meaning, even if that precise meaning is frequently ignored. Generally, the term refers to Catholics that take their faith seriously, but generally don’t have a problem with the Church of the last 50 years, even embracing changes that have proven themselves disastrous.
Those social commentators suspect that there is something about zombie lore that speaks to us in the modern era, that somehow amidst our comfort and prosperity, we have never been more fragile. They posit that somehow our golden lives, compared to every generation that came before, are more fragile, that something isn’t right and we know it. That the life we lead, like the zombies, gives the appearance of life, but is truly dead.
I think there might be something to this analysis (although not in the way they likely mean it.) Of all the zombie storytelling that has occurred these past decades, there is one zombie movie that stands out in my mind as social commentary, directly tapping into the vein. That one story that stands out above all the others, which should almost go without saying, is the slacker cinema classic “Shaun of the Dead.”
On September 23, 2017, we will see the constellation Virgo with the sun rise directly behind it (the woman clothed with the sun). These events transpire during the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of “the woman clothed in the sun,” Our Lady at Fatima in 1917. What does it mean?
[Editorial Note: In the following article, I intend to present a series of facts and observations from which I draw no definitive conclusion. Yet, these facts and observations are of such a nature, for no other reason than their observation and reporting, that lend themselves to misinterpretation. So let me be clear, in the following article, I predict nothing. I am offering my observations on some upcoming phenomena, both heavenly and man-made, potentially of great import, that people might find interesting and of which people should be aware.]
When completed in the 1930’s, these French military geniuses congratulated themselves on their foresight and sagacity, convinced that they had prevented another invasion from Germany from the east.
The Germans simply invaded France from the north. They simply went around the Maginot line. It seems the French military geniuses never thought of that.
A few weeks back, I happened upon an article from Catholic Answer’s own Karl Keating in which he speculated upon the possibility that Pope Francis might resign in a year or so in acceptance of his own limitations and suitability to the role. While that is certainly an interesting topic, it was not that part of the article that greatly interested me.
After making fair and respectful critique of Pope Francis’ communication style and general suitability to the role of Vicar of Christ, Mr. Keating makes the following remarks:
Catholics in Iraq have lost everything--their lives, their children, homes, businesses, personal effects, everything! Who's next?
Following the disastrous “gay marriage” decision of the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, all informed faithful Catholics understand that the time of persecution has begun. We now fully expect the merciless hands of runaway secularism, both governmental and societal, to treat Christians with every cruelty possible. What they may not realize is that there are other forms of persecution and persecutors that may well come for faithful Catholics, one of which is a persecution by the Church itself.
By now, those of us paying attention know that, using the gay marriage decision as the tip of the spear, militant secularists, atheists, and statists will do everything they can to force Christians to capitulate to the depraved zeitgeist or be driven from public life. We know that government cannot invent rights without taking away other real rights; in this case, the right to the free exercise of our religion.
If my social media is indicative of trends among friends, two themes pop up in my feed over and over again. The first is videos of rogue police violating the constitutional rights of citizens caught on camera as a consequence of the emergence of the video age. The other is hyperbolic criticisms of the SSPX, with the word schism thrown around like beers at a frat party.