For the sake of maintaining the neo-Catholic position in defense of the ever-expanding post-conciliar regime of novelty, John Paul must decrease so that Francis may increase.

In The Great Façade (2002)—soon to be republished in a second edition with new chapters covering the past twelve years of the “regime of novelty”—I refuted the accusation of neo-Catholic polemicists that traditionalists are improperly “pitting one Pope against another” when they note the obvious: that the Popes since Vatican II have been saying and doing things every one of their predecessors, including even John XXIII, would have considered unthinkable.

In the neo-Catholic view of our situation this plain fact is inadmissible, for whatever the Pope or his delegates in the Holy See pronounce or approve is, for them, ispso facto consistent with both apostolic and ecclesiastical tradition.

In the autumn of 1990, I was assigned to the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See as Counselor to the U.S. Ambassador, the late Thomas Melady. It was one of the newer positions in our diplomatic service, for formal diplomatic relations between the U. S. and The Holy See had been established only six years earlier during the Reagan Administration. The assignment proved to be my most memorable, for it provided an insider's view not only of the workings within the Vatican, but the interior of Vatican City as well. How many people know, or would imagine, that there is a heliport within the Vatican?

 This is not how I am.  I have become comfortably numb.   – Pink Floyd     

Editor’s Note: I am happy to introduce our newest columnist, the eldest son of longtime Remnant columnist, Dr. John Rao, and a current freshman at Catholic University of America. Welcome aboard, Nicholas!  MJM 

I was anything but on guard against culture shock as I entered my sophomore year of high school and my first experience of studying alongside fellow Traditionalists in a classroom setting. Granted, they were virtual classrooms where I communicated online with my teachers and peers, but most of us enjoyed a lively rapport, the limitations of the medium notwithstanding.

It was a great experience overall, yet from the first I was disturbed by the artistic, and especially the musical, inclinations of my classmates. I distinctly remember one exchange in the context of which a classmate sent me a link to a song she liked. I don’t remember the name either of the song or the band, and Gmail searches for that link have, alas, proven futile, so I’ll have to rely on my memory…

“Indeed the Church has the right to separate herself from an heretical pope according to divine law. Consequently it has the right, by the same divine law, to use all means of themselves necessary for such separation…”

- John of St. Thomas

“The Church must render a judgment before the pope loses his office. Private judgment of the laity in this matter does not suffice.”

- Robert J. Siscoe

A recent article by Fr. James V. Schall S.J., which was re-posted as “the article of the week” on the popular Traditional Catholic website Rorate Caeli, has caused quite stir in some quarters. In the short article, which is titled On Heretical Popes, Fr. Schall briefly discusses the claims of heresy leveled against the post-Conciliar Popes, especially Pope Francis, and raises the question of whether a pope can fall into heresy, and, if so, how the Church would go about deposing him. The article was written in a very moderate tone, but the issues addressed were evidently too much for the extreme Left and their newly discovered Ultramontanism.

Cardinal Wuerl sits amongst the Pope's inner circle, responsible for the appointment of bishops worldwide and he has been named to direct the committee that will inform dioceses nationwide how to prepare for the Synod next October. What will this  mean to the Faithful?

In mid-October, The Washington Post's Lifestyle Section ran a front page story entitled, Drama. Ego. Protocol: Washington Dinners Have it All and that's just the seating chart, by Roxanne Roberts. The focus of the article was where to seat the invited guests, given their importance, at the table of an imaginary Washington dinner party, in this case one given in honor of the birthday of Virginia's Senator, Tim Kaine. The selected hosts for the evening were Wayne and Catherine Reynolds, known in the Washington Establishment's lexicon as "high rollers," that is, people with lots of money, and disproportionate influence.

May all you dead of the First World War rest in peace! May your death not have been in vain! Unfortunately, I fear that it was. You lived in a globe that could not accept the fact that God’s Creation is something other than a jungle ruled by the war of all against all.

November 11^th marks the 96^th anniversary of the end of what was simultaneously one of the most pathetic and yet most predictable conflicts in mankind’s tragic history. It was pathetic in the patent absurdity of its unfounded enthusiasms and goals, the unfathomable physical pain it inflicted, as well as its final wretched outcome. But it was all too predictable due to the logical development of a myriad of irrational principles that were Protestant in their origin, naturalist-Enlightenment in their maturation, and nationalist, racist, and class conscious in their specific emphases upon the way in which violent struggle would have a gloriously purgative and perfecting influence upon life.