Smoking ceremonies are not ‘inculturation’ … and it is irresponsible to suggest otherwise. A July 13 article from Pillar Catholic, which was presented as an ‘explainer’ of indigenous smoking ceremonies, completely missed the mark by failing to look behind the sympathetic facade to see the real harms being perpetrated by the use of pagan rituals. Particularly disappointing was the manner in which commentary from the emeritus Archbishop of Philadelphia, Archbishop Chaput, was used to sanction anti-Catholic ‘inculturation’.

“The Holy Spirit does not always prevent the necessary consequences of our negligence.” (Fr. Alvaro Calderon, Prometheus: The Religion of Man, p. 201)

Michael Matt's video address to the International Symposium held in Tokyo, the theme of which is "Counter-revolution, a medicine for our times."

Indeed, it is a medicine, agrees Michael, but it is also an honor borne out of love.

Those who love the true Catholic Faith know firsthand how lost we would be without it. Through the Catholic Church we have the salutary truths entrusted to it by Our Lord and the Sacraments He instituted. Nothing is more precious than this gift of the Faith that God has given us, and if we truly love another person we would want them to have the same gift.

New from Remnant TV...

“We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children” – that is what the LGBT folks are shouting in the streets of America. But when a woman in Minnesota tried to defend the children, they called her the hater.

Thirty years ago, Andres Serrano became infamous for photographing a crucifix in a jar of urine, but Pope Francis just invited him to the Vatican. The neo-Catholic useful idiots insist that Francis is just calling for “dialogue.”  What do you think?

Although the issue of modern art and beauty had in general disturbed me for many years, it came to focus in one of my travels to Peru a few years prior to the Covid “pandemic”, when I was invited to partake in what this Catholic group calls a “tertulia” (a gathering where literary or artistic topics are discussed).  The topic for discussion was art and beauty, just what the doctor ordered I thought, as I prepared myself for a treat.  

The things are getting serious. Very serious. If Tucker Carlson says in a video with more than 100 million views that there is physical evidence that could prove the existence of aliens is hidden by the US government,^[i] then the matter is truly serious, isn’t it? Furthermore, we cannot omit the fact that in recent years, more and more materials of the same kind have inundated the mass media. But what should we, as Catholics, think about such ‘revelations’?

Although the competition for most heretical and dangerous statements is fierce in the new document from the Synod on Synodality, Instrumentum Laboris, paragraph 20 offers this top contender:

“[A] synodal Church is founded on the recognition of a common dignity deriving from Baptism, which makes all who receive it sons and daughters of God, members of the family of God, and therefore brothers and sisters in Christ, inhabited by the one Spirit and sent to fulfil a common mission.”