PRESS RELEASE FROM "SUPPORT FOR MARRIAGE LETTER" COORDINATOR

In a dramatic turn of events, nearly 500 priests from England and Wales have written a letter in defence of the ‘traditional teaching on marriage and human sexuality’ in anticipation of the forthcoming Vatican Synod on the family. This letter comes at a time when a growing number of Catholics are concerned that the gathering of Church leaders in Rome, scheduled for October 2015, will seek to re-think Gospel teaching on marriage, sexuality, repentance and grace. Some Cardinals, particularly from Germany, have suggested that Holy Communion could be received by those in second and non-marital unions, or that active homosexual relationships could receive some positive recognition.

Whatever happened to Catholic nuns? Whatever happened to Catholic schools? Whatever happened to the Catholic Mass? Why is Pope Francis giving us the 'thumbs-up' when the Catholic Church is crashing down all around us?

Michael Matt and Christopher Ferrara discuss. . .

Dear fellow friends of The Remnant,

Greetings once again from Fr. Jonathan Romanoski, FSSP, in Guadalajara, México. I would like to give you an update on our apostolate down here in the land of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Empress of the Americas.

We moved two years ago from the Church of St. Peter where we had been for four years, to an historic church in the center of town dedicated to the oldest Marian title in all of Christendom - Our Lady of the Pillar. The oldest church indeed as it was begun by Our Lady herself during her lifetime around the year AD 40 when she visited the apostle St. James who was sent to evangelize the land of what is now Spain.

Arriving at Zaragoza, St. James had made but few converts and was tempted by sadness to despair when Our Lady appeared to him, descending from the clouds upon a pillar, which she left planted there, asking him to build a shrine in her honor, which she promised would remain till the end of time and which would be the source of grace for the conversion of that land which was to become a great nation.

 At 6:00 PM Rome time this evening (March 7, 2015), Pope Francis celebrated a special Mass of commemoration of the first vernacular Mass of Pope Paul VI.

The celebration took place at the Church of All Saints, Via Appia Nuova--the very same church where, fifty years ago today, Pope Paul VI offered a prototype of the New Mass in the vernacular. His homily aptly began with, “Today we inaugurate the new form of liturgy in all the parishes and churches of the world.”

It was March 7, 1965, a date which will live in infamy.  There is a commemorative plaque on the wall at the Church of All Saints, which reads:

“At this place His Holiness Paul VI, as the liturgical reform decreed by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council was beginning, was pleased to celebrate in this church the first Mass in Italian, amid the excited exultation of an entire people.”

But one reason the plaque now rests so high above the table/altar is because it was vandalized several times by members of the “entire people”, many of whom were infuriated by Bugnini’s attempted destruction of the Roman Rite over which Pope Paul VI dutifully presided. It was necessary, finally, to put the plaque out of the reach of faithful who couldn’t resist the urge to spit at it as they passed by, some even attempting to physically deface it. 

Everybody’s favorite whipping boy these days, the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), is evidently not in schism after all—at least according to a recent EWTN report featuring a Vatican bishop (Mons. Juan Ignacio Arrieta, of the Pont. Council for Legislative Texts) admitting what The Remnant has maintained for two decades—that the SSPX is not in schism. “We can say that the problem with the SSPX is only a problem of trust,” said Arrieta, “because they are people who pray, people who believe the same things we believe in…they have their heart in Rome. I can assure you of that since I know them well.”

EWTN reported this? Yes, and kudos to them for having the courage to say what needs to be said about a difficult and most complex question.

Scripture relates about Satan the following: “Now the serpent (Satan) was the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord had made…But the Serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she gave some to her husband…Then the eyes of both were opened and they realized they were naked.”

We have here the Head of Satan, with its fangs of hatred of God and man, stripping Adam and Eve and the whole human race of the wedding garment of Sanctifying Grace and leaving us all in the nakedness of sin, in the death of the soul, in the nothingness of damnation as enemies of God.

During what I have called the Benedictine Respite, the traditionalist movement achieved a long overdue measure of justice from the Roman Pontiff. Benedict XVI liberated the Latin Mass from its forty-year-long false imprisonment, lifted the always dubious “excommunications” of the four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), and ordered critical corrections to defects in the vernacular translations of the Novus Ordo Missae that traditionalists had long protested—first and foremost what Msgr. Klaus Gamber (with the future Pope’s approval) rightly called the “truly scandalous” alteration of Our Lord’s words during the first Mass from “for many” to “for all.”

It was Pope Benedict himself who noted with dismay the furious resentment he had provoked within the Church merely by doing justice to the SSPX. As he wrote in his letter to the world’s bishops explaining why he had lifted the excommunications: