Patrick J. Buchanan's Aug. 9th column is excellent. Here's a snippet:

“Isolationists must not prevail in this new debate over foreign policy,” warns Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The consequences of a lasting American retreat from the world would be dire.”

To make his case against the “Isolationist Temptation,” Haass creates a caricature, a cartoon, of America First patriots, then thunders that we cannot become “a giant gated community.”

Understandably, Haass is upset. For the CFR has lost the country.

Why? It colluded in the blunders that have bled and near bankrupted America and that cost this country its unrivaled global preeminence at the end of the Cold War.

No, it was not “isolationists” who failed America. None came near to power. The guilty parties are the CFR crowd and their neocon collaborators, and liberal interventionists who set off to play empire after the Cold War and create a New World Order with themselves as Masters of the Universe. READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: What a bloody mess!  More proof of the chaotic nature of all things evil. Twenty-five years ago the CFR was an invincible juggernaut, feared by the Godly and worshipped by the Godless.  And today? The Council on Foreign? Who? Oh, you mean those idiot warmongers whose bumbling destabilized the world and launched ISIS?  

See how the mighty are falling. In the end, the New World Order itself will follow suit if, in fact, it ever manages to slither out of the sewer in which it was hatched. There is no order or unity in Hell, and the same endemic problem seems to plague the nutters who would create Hell on Earth by issuing yet another non serviam to the Creator of Heaven and Earth.  

God will not be mocked much longer.  Christ will reign long after these globalist goofballs make a fine mess of everything, just after they go the way all "scaaaary" would-be world-dominating villains go in the end--down the shoot, out the window, up in smoke, into the rubber room...whatever. 

Moving right along and, by the way, Viva Cristo Rey!

Mincing no words, French Cardinal André Vingt-Trois told the Christian faithful this week that jihadists “wrap themselves in the trappings of religion” while announcing a “God of death,” whom the prelate compared to the ancient pagan god “Moloch”—who demanded live human sacrifices as a tribute.

Earlier in the week from Brietbart: "The Cardinal, who serves as archbishop of Paris, pronounced these words during the homily at a memorial Mass Wednesday celebrated for the martyred priest Father Jacques Hamel, whose throat two Islamic radicals slit during morning Mass this past Tuesday.

“Those who wrap themselves in the trappings of religion to mask their deadly project,” Vingt-Trois said, “those who want to announce to us a God of death, a Moloch that would rejoice at the death of a man and promise paradise to those who kill while invoking him, these cannot expect humanity to yield to their delusion.”

Cardinal Vingt-Trois said that in the face of the despair preached by the Islamists, Christians must counter with the Gospel message of hope. “It is this hope that animated the ministry of Father Jacques Hamel when celebrating the Eucharist during which he was brutally executed,” the Cardinal said. “It is this hope that sustains Eastern Christians when they have to flee persecution and choose to leave everything rather than renounce their faith.”

The Cardinal also said that in the current social environment, fear becomes the driving force behind our choices, leaving people powerless to do good and resist evil. Political correctness imposes silence out of fear of offending, of stepping out of line with the way “proper” people think and speak.

This silence extends to parents, afraid to transmit values to their children, and extends to the “silence of the elite in the face of deviant behavior, and the legalization of deviance.”

This pressure not to offend others leads to cowardice and abdication of duty, the Cardinal suggested, and imposes an unhealthy conformism. READ ARTICLE HERE


REMNANT COMMENT:  His Eminence, not generally considered traditional-leaning, seems to be waking up.  And for that he is being attacked as a "dangerous homophobe" and "racist" in the French press. He was blasted in social media, by the Green Party, the Socialist Party and even a member of the Union for a Popular Movement, part of the EU's People's Party, for his sermon.

This short clip provides a sampling of the expressions of hate and outrage being leveled against the Cardinal after he'd warned not only against radical Islam and the jihad against Christian Europe, but also against the French secularist state's promotion of deviancy and, by implication, the legalization of homosexual marriage.

Cardinal Vingt-trois decries the "silence of the elite in the face of the perversion of morals and the legalization of deviant behavior."

"André Vingt-Trois Used the Tribute to Jacques Hamel Mass to Criticize Marriage for All?" screamed the headline question on the front page of "Le Huffington Post" and on and on it went, with the Cardinal being crucified for saying exactly what the Cardinal should have said, exactly what most bishops today are too terrified to say, and exactly what the Pope has thus far refused to say.

Rather than backing down, the Cardinal has held his ground, even authorizing Vincent Neymon, spokesman for the French Bishops' Conference, to release this statement to the press: "Cardinal Vingt-Trois had the courage to say what he thinks. The subsequent attack against him is further proof of the very point he was trying to make."

Perhaps I can be forgiven for hoping that Catholic Vingt-Trois has taken this couragous stand in part because of graces he received on the Pilgrimage to Chartres, France back in 2010. Here's what happened:

Michael Matt kisses the ring of Cardinal André Vingt-Trois
On the second night of the Pilgrimage, there was more excitement than I’d ever seen as the American chapter of some 65 pilgrims made its way down the steep embankment into the camp. Exhausted and parched after two days beneath a merciless sun, all we wanted to do really was find our tent and fall to the ground. But a throng of French pilgrims blocked our way, their jubilant song rising up before us like the tide at sea.

All at once I heard my own name being shouted by several Frenchmen just ahead. As leader of the U.S. chapter I was being summoned. But why?

I made my way through the bedlam and soon understood. The Cardinal Archbishop of Paris was standing at the gate, greeting each chapter as the miles-long column of pilgrims entered the camp. Head to toe in traditional red, His Eminence was being hailed like a victorious general by battle-weary troops.

Ju-bi-late Deo, jubi-la-te Deo, Al-le-lu-ia 

 as they surrounded their “general”, scrambling to kneel for his blessing as they passed.

A few moments later I found myself kneeling at the feet of André Armand Cardinal Vingt-Trois. As I kissed his ring, I recalled that His Eminence is not known  for being particularly supportive of the Traditionalist cause in France. But out of respect for his office and for the opportunity to show their shepherd the true face of Tradition, the organizers of the pilgrimage, Notre-Dame de Chrétienté, had invited the Cardinal to visit the camp that night and offer Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament for the pilgrims.

Graciously, the Cardinal had accepted the invitation, and there he was, not in the sanctuary of some elaborate cathedral, but standing in the tall grass beneath the blazing sun, smiling and blessing his dust-covered children.

As I briefly spoke to him about what the Pilgrimage means to American Catholics and how hundreds of us over the years have crossed the Atlantic to take part in this glorious event, he smiled warmly and gave me his blessing. Was it wishful thinking on my part or did I detect something in his eyes that bespoke a profound impact of what he saw unfolding before him. After all, only a faithless man with a heart of stone could have beheld that youthful army of Catholics, stretching back as far as the eye could see, their flags and banners snapping in the breeze, the heavy statues of Our Lady carried all the way from Paris on the shoulders of scouts—and not been moved by it. Cardinal Vingt-Trois didn’t strike me as either stonehearted or faithless. I believe what he saw that day made an impression that will not soon be forgotten.

Either way, as the sun set and shadows grew long over the Bivouac de Gas, a Prince of the Catholic Church parted a massive sea of pilgrims and made his way to a traditional altar erected beneath the stars. When he raised the monstrance a short while later and the consecration bells sounded across the encampment, ten thousand pilgrims crossed themselves and worshipped God in absolute silence.

For that moment at least Christus vincit and the Cardinal’s politics mattered not one iota. The pilgrim army had become little children again, praying at the feet of their father while swearing allegiance to their Mother and worshipping their God.

It was as if the revolution had never happened and the whole world was Catholic again. The Cardinal was no longer Vingt-Trois but rather he was Andrew, James, John, Thomas, Philip, Simon and Jude. And the Catholic heart leapt with joy.

And now Cardinal Vingt-Trois stands alone in Paris, buffetted by powerful enemies for saying and doing the Catholic thing in a world that is at war with all things Catholic. Any connection between this heroic stand and what happened that day on the Chartres Pilgrimage six years ago? Who can say for sure, but I think maybe there is. Such is the power of God's grace and Catholic Tradition. Let's continue to pray for them all, even and especially Pope Francis, recalling that in the end God will have the last word.

In a press conference Sunday, Pope Francis appeared to suggest that all religions are equally prone to violence and that Islam and Christianity are the same in this regard.

When asked by a journalist about the “barbarous assassination of Fr. Jacques Hamel” in northern France who was clearly “killed in the name of Islam” last Tuesday, the Pope replied that he doesn’t like speaking about Islamic violence because there is plenty of Christian violence as well.

In the brief press conference aboard the papal plane returning from Krakow, Poland, the Pope said that every day when he browses the newspapers, he sees violence in Italy perpetrated by Christians: “this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law… and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics!”

“If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence,” Francis said. “And no, not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there’s everything.” READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: He didn't just say that, did he? A "fruit salad"? Really?! One of his own priests just had his head cut off by a couple of Islamic nutters, and to the mind of Pope Francis this is no different than the random guy in the news who murdered his mother-in-law? I wish this man had been joking, but I know he wasn't.  

At this point, it seems safe to say that the Holy Father is either mentally impaired or actively working to destabilize the world -- an already dangerous world being made worse by the words, actions and inactions of the world's most powerful spiritual leader. 

One wonders who's giving this him his marching orders. Is he operating alone, solely on the ambition of his massive ego? Or there someone else--something else--that has commissioned this truly bizarre pope to wage a personal war on the Catholic Church?

The words of Our Lord to St. Peter in Matthew 16 come to mind with respect to Pope Francis:  "Go behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men."
 
Pray for Pope Francis that his faith does not fail him any more than it clearly already has.

In a press conference Sunday, Pope Francis appeared to suggest that all religions are equally prone to violence and that Islam and Christianity are the same in this regard.

When asked by a journalist about the “barbarous assassination of Fr. Jacques Hamel” in northern France who was clearly “killed in the name of Islam” last Tuesday, the Pope replied that he doesn’t like speaking about Islamic violence because there is plenty of Christian violence as well.

In the brief press conference aboard the papal plane returning from Krakow, Poland, the Pope said that every day when he browses the newspapers, he sees violence in Italy perpetrated by Christians: “this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law… and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics!”

“If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence,” Francis said. “And no, not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there’s everything.” READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: He didn't just say that, did he? A "fruit salad"?  One of his own priests just had his head ritually removed by a couple of Islamic "holy warriors" in the name of Allah and, to the mind of Pope Francis, this act of jihad is no different than the random Christian guy who murders his mother-in-law on the nightly news?  I wish our Holy Father had been joking, but he wasn't.  

At this point, it seems safe to say that the Holy Father must either be mentally impaired somehow, or he's actively working to destabilize the Church in an already dangerous world being made so much worse by the troubling words, confusing actions and now negligence of the world's most powerful spiritual leader. 

Assuming Pope Francis is still in possession of his wits, one can only speculate as to who it might be that is giving him these bizarre marching orders. Is he operating as a one-man papal wrecking ball solely on the ambition of his own massive ego? Or  is there someone else--something else--that has commissioned him to wage what amounts to an unholy war on the Church he himself heads up?

When following the Pope's efforts to 'make a mess' all over the world,  Our Lord's words to St. Peter in Matthew 16 come to mind:  "Go behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men."
 
Pray for Pope Francis that his faith does not fail him any more than it already has. God help us, Holy Father, please stop making messes.

How cool is THIS!

Editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal, Sohrab Ahmari, based in London, is converting to Catholicism in the wake of the murder of French Catholic priest, Father Jacques Hamel, at the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Welcome to the Catholic Church, Mr. Ahmari. God be praised!

Francois Hollande says France is at war with ISIS after two Islamist knifemen butchered a French priest and left a nun fighting for her life before they were both shot dead by police in Normandy.

One of the men who stormed into the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen during mass was a local man, who was being monitored by electronic tag after being jailed for trying to join fanatics in Syria.

The 84-year-old priest, named as Jacques Hamel, had his throats cut while a nun is critically injured in hospital following the raid which saw five people held hostage by ISIS assailants shouting 'Allahu Akbar'.

The two killers were 'neutralised' by  marksmen as they emerged from the building, which is now being searched for explosives. French president Hollande said France is 'at war' with ISIS while the terror group has claimed responsibility for the killing.

It comes as it emerged that the building was one of a number of Catholic churches on a terrorist 'hit list' found on a suspected ISIS extremist last April.

There are also reports that one of the attackers was a local resident who was under electronic tag surveillance having been jailed in France for trying to travel to Syria in 2015. His bail terms allowed him to be unsupervised between 8.30am and 12.30pm - the attack happened between 9am and 11am. READ MORE HERE 

REMNANT COMMENT: According to a CNS report, Pope Francis was informed of the execution of Father Hamel. "With pain and horror" for the "absurd violence," Pope Francis expressed his condemnation of "every form of hatred" and offered his prayers for all those involved.

"Every form of hatred"?  What a terribly safe thing to say!  What about this particular form of hatred, Your Holiness—the one that just led to the beheading of one of your own priests? Nothing? Just a heads-up on hatred in general? Really?!

I suppose the Pope wouldn't want to condemn by name the one form of hatred which is turning the cities of former Christendom into warzones. No, heaven forbid that the People's Pope would thunder an anathema against the violent defenders of the great Christian heresy that has the Islamic world  hell-bent on blowing everything up, raping women in the streets, downing aircraft and ripping the heads off Catholic priests. No, any sort condemnation like that--aside from being actually useful—would put the lie to Francis's painfully politically correct gibberish about Islam the "religion of peace."

Francis wants us to know that “all forms of hatred”—especially homophobia, of course—are bad. In fact, we can count on Francis to step right up every time and lead the cheer: "Hey hey, hell no, hatred's gotta go!"  

Maybe it's time to plant another tree or something.  But ever since the pope started planting his little trees, with all those cameras rolling, the world's been going up in flames, with mass graves filling fast with murdered Christians.  So aside from providing yet another symbol-over-substance photo op for Francis the Humble, what's the point of these self-promotional exercises in papal reforestation?

Maybe it's time for the Holy Father to stop planting trees, in fact, and get back to cultivating the mustard seed instead, perhaps even preaching the Kingdom of God and the Kingship of Christ--you know, the 'popey' stuff that actually matters.

For now, I guess it's just going to be more of this type of silliness:

 

Eternal rest grant unto, Father Hamel, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace.
 
 

Christophobia and the Springtime of Vatican II

Macy's has fired an employee because he is a practicing Catholic. The case is now before the New York State Division of Human Rights.

In May, Javier Chavez, senior store detective at the Macy's store in Flushing, New York, received a phone call stating that a male had entered the ladies room with a female companion. A female customer, and her daughter, were afraid to enter because of the male's presence. A security employee who reports to Chavez advised the man to leave and use the men's room. He left claiming to be a female. He then complained to store officials that he was asked to leave.

Chavez was subsequently told by an Assistant Store Manager that certain males can use the ladies restroom. This was news to him. A few days later, an assistant security manager told him that transgender persons can use the bathroom of their choice. He said he had just become aware of this policy, stating that it was contrary to his religion and the Bible. But he hastened to say that he would nonetheless enforce Macy's policy. Macy's would not leave this alone, and this is where it crossed the line.

Chavez was then summoned to meet with the Human Resources Manager, who suspended him. He was later terminated. READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT Macy’s today, wherever you work tomorrow. Here it comes--real persecution of Christians, and there's nothing any of us can do about it until the Catholic Church comes back from its ridiculous, self-imposed, half-century coffee break.  

Vatican II, the New Mass, the new orientation of the Church, the new churchmen--by default they all present a clear and present danger to anyone trying to follow Christ in the modern Christophobic world.   There is no moral authority left, thanks to them and, without that, it's just a lot of might makes right, survival of the fittest, politically correct hogwash. And since the Christian is called by God Himself to turn the other cheek, guess who's gonna be down and out in the brutal brave new America of the very near future.

Got to love that springtime of Vatican II.  

In case you missed this one from last month: June 21, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – “I am so mad, hot tears are about to stream down my face,” the well-known pro-life and motivational speaker Gianna Jessen posted on Facebook this week. And she tweeted, “I never thought a pope could make me cry and PLEASE don’t tell me I am really not reading what I am reading.”

Jessen was referring to Pope Francis’ remarks at a pastoral congress on the family for the Diocese of Rome on June 16 in which he said that some cohabiting couples are in a “real marriage,” receiving the grace of the Sacrament.

“I’ve seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a real marriage, they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity,” the pope said. The Vatican provided both video and a transcript of the remarks.

Commented an irate Jessen, who spends a good part of her waking hours motivating teenagers to live in celibacy and wait for what she calls “epic love” with partners who have done the same: “I have a question for Pope Francis. Is my virginity of no value? Does the extraordinary cost of fighting for Epic Love and being mocked for it, not matter in his mind[?]”

“I have paid a cost beyond words, for actual Faithfulness,” she continues. “But no, these folks have not walked the same route. And to act as if they have is a profound insult.”

Later Jessen told LifeSite, “I am a virgin at 39. I have honoured the Lord with my body.” Now the Pope has “flippantly” made “mockery of purity” not only with respect to single men and women still seeking partners who honour their celibacy, but of priests who vow lifelong sexual abstinence. “If I were a priest I would be outraged,” she said. READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: You know you're in trouble when your Pope offends one of the most beautiful and powerful advocates for life and God's rights on face of the earth:



Well played, Francis!  I'm sure George Clooney is very impressed with you now.

 

This brilliant parody from Catholic World Report should be sent to every bishop in the world.  Here's a sample:

A reporter: Your Holiness, I’m a bit puzzled about who has been saying the things that you say should no longer be said.  But leaving that aside, are you not concerned that making the well-known distinction about sin and guilt here might have the effect of watering down the Church’s teaching on the rights of workers? Pope Francis: No, no, no.  The Church’s teaching about fair wages remains.  The Catechism is still the Catechism! However, while it is certainly true that exploiting workers does not “correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel” (AL 303), “it is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual’s actions correspond to a general law or rule” (AL 304).  We must always look at the person rather than the rule.

Indeed, we may even say that sometimes it is impossible for an unjust employer to avoid doing wrong. 

A reporter: I beg your pardon?

Pope Francis: Yes, it’s true.  There may be no way for an unjust employer to avoid what is objectively sinful.  What Amoris Laetitia says about the divorced and remarried could be true of the employer.  He or she “may know full well the rule, yet . . . be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin (AL 301).” I will go even further, and say that it is possible for an employer to find, with the secure peace of a good conscience, the will of God in his current failure to stop cheating his workers. 

A reporter: Holy Father, how can that possibly be?

Pope Francis: Let me explain, with the help of Amoris Laetitia.

The conscience of an employer who pays his workers unfairly and yet struggles sincerely but unsuccessfully to overcome his injustice can certainly “do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel.  It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking” (AL 303).

A reporter: But would that not be a mistaken conscience?

Pope Francis: Ah, but who are we to judge consciences?  As I lamented in Amoris Laetita, we so often “find it hard to make room for the consciences of the faithful” (AL 37)!

Let us make room for consciences, even for the consciences of employers who unfortunately may be causing their workers misery.  Just as couples sometimes make marriage choices that do not attain the ideal, these employers “very often respond as best they can to the Gospel amid their limitations, and are capable of carrying out their own discernment in complex situations. We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them” (AL 37). READ HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: Francis's shtick has worn thin. Nobody's buying it anymore, except for those who want the free hall pass he's offering. Now for the next stage: To lead people to realize that Pope Francis is the ideal pope for the Church that the Spirit of Vatican II built. He's not an anomaly... he was inevitable.

This just in from LifeSiteNews — Monsignor Michel Schooyans, a top adviser to Pope St. John Paul II who was also close to Pope Benedict XVI, has issued a dire warning about the current trajectory in the Catholic Church. In a paper, published on LifeSiteNews, Professor Schooyans, a member of several Pontifical Academies and Councils, writes that “the Synod on the Family has revealed a profound malaise in the Church.”

The retired professor from Belgium, now 86, speaks of the “crisis” in the Church, saying, “it is futile to close our eyes: the Church is challenged in its very foundations.” READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: Yes, but the Holy Spirit controls everything the Pope does, and so the Pope can't be bad. Every Pope is a saint, in fact…it’s just a question of when to announce it.   Obviously, Monsignor Schooyans lacks faith. What he should be doing instead of warning the world that the human element of the Church has fallen into enemy hands, is rejoicing over how beautiful everything is and how great it is to be Catholic. I know that's what all the great defenders of the Catholic Faith did down through the ages, right? I mean, they just sat there and let the enemies of souls and truth run roughshod over the Church because...well, because to do anything to stop them would have been to sin against the virtue of faith. God's got this!

Let’s go over this one more time: The.Church.is.God’s.Church—not ours, and we need to let Him run the show.

The.Holy.Spirit.personally.chose.Bergoglio.to.be.pope.  To question him is to question Him, if you know what I mean.

This is what the neo-Catholic experts tell us all the time, and they should know. Heck, most of their leading pundits are converts.  (How cool is that, by the way.)

So the Neocats are being booed in Guam? God bless our brothers and sisters in Guam, then.

Back in June of 2008, we ran the following report on the insufferabel Neo-Catechumenal Way. Obviously, not much has changed, except the Neocats are stronger than ever under the funhouse Church that Francis is building. Please, God, raise up a saint among us to cast out the heretics, pagans and infidels who have taken control of your Church.

The Remnant, June 15, 2008: “The Catholic lay Neocatechumenal Way has received the Church's final approval of its statutes; the degree of recognition will be presented to the group's founders Friday,” reports Zenit (June 12, 2008). “Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, will give Kiko Argüello and Carmen Hernández the decree expressing the Church's approval of the groups organization and charism”:

According to the founders, the Way is a concrete response to numerous pastoral intuitions of Vatican II, such as, the rediscovery of the Easter Vigil, the laity's participation in evangelization. An example of this last principle is the novelty of sending "families on mission," in response to requests from local bishops to provide, together with a priest, an initial evangelization for those areas where the Church has not been established.

In 1990, Pope John Paul II wrote a letter acknowledging the Neo-Catechumenal Way (NCW) to Bishop Paul Josef Cordes, Vice-President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, in which John Paul wrote:

I too, as Bishop of Rome, have been able to verify the copious fruits of personal conversion and fruitful missionary impulse in the many meetings I have had in the Roman parishes with the Neocatechumenal Communities and their Pastors, as well as in my apostolic journeys in many nations..... I acknowledge the Neocatechumenal Way as an itinerary of Catholic formation, valid for our society and for our times.

In 2002, the NCW Statutes were given a five-year provisional (“ad experimentum”) approval, pending changes in the manner in which NCW communities celebrated their Eucharists. These Statutes are composed of 35 articles, expressing the nature of “The Way” (as it is called by its members), the “Spiritual Goods” resulting from it, and the manner in which “The Way” operates. 

One overriding idea comes across throughout the NCW Schema for Catechists (a training manual for NCW catechists). Namely, from the time of Constantine the Great up to the Second Vatican Council (a span of some 1600 years), the Catholic Church became detached from her spiritual roots, assumed a shallow, superstitious character, and came to rely on ritualism and dogmatism for their own sake. Kiko and Carmen teach their catechists that, instead of catechizing pagans, the post-Constantine Church was, in fact, herself catechized by the superstitious pagans who joined her. This primitivism of Kiko and Carmen views such things as the Traditional Latin Mass, the Sacrament of Penance, doctrines on salvation, etc. as compromised entities, puffed-up with unnecessary ritual, solemnity and dogmatism.

At this point in time, neither the Vatican nor the Holy Father can claim ignorance as to the true nature of the Neo-Catechumenal Way, for their teachings are not as secretive as they once were. The warped view of Church history, doctrine and the Sacraments presented by Kiko and Carmen can in no way be reconciled with sound theology or Catholic teaching. It is no wonder that Kiko and Carmen have such admiration for Martin Luther.

The announcement of the Holy See’s approval of the Statutes of the NCW comes right on the heels of a report that four bishops from Japan traveled to Rome to resolve a "serious problem" with the methods of the Neo-Catechumenal Way and its seminary in a Japanese diocese. An April 30, 2008 report by CathNews included the following quotation from one of these bishops, Archbishop Peter Takeo Okada of Tokyo, President of the Bishops' Conference:

In the small Catholic Church of Japan, the powerful sect-like activity of [Neo-Catechumenal] Way members is divisive and confrontational. It has caused sharp painful division and strife within the Church. We are struggling with all our strength to overcome the problem but feel that if a solution is to be found, the consideration of Your Holiness for the Church in Japan will be of the utmost importance and direly needed.

This is nothing new. In 1996, the Right Reverend Mervyn Alexander, Bishop of Clifton (UK), established a panel of inquiry to explore claims made by parishioners in at least three parishes that their parishes had been harmed by the activities of the Neo-Catechumenal Way. Not only did this panel conclude that the NCW failed to bring “new vitality to animate these parishes,” but it also noted that the presence of the NCW communities “conveys a sign of strong disunity.”

Unfortunately, the main focus of concern regarding the NCW and its official status within the Church has been purely liturgical. A December 1, 2005 letter of Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, to Kiko, Carmen and Fr. Mario Pezzi, cites such NCW practices as the giving of “admonitions” before Scripture readings, the kiss of peace, the manner of receiving Communion, etc. But what of doctrine? What of error? What of heretical teachings?

For the same Pope to free the Traditional Latin Mass from the shackles of the “indult” mentality AND approve the Statutes of the Neocatechumenal Way can only be regarded as a complete contradiction. Tradition and Novelty simply can not be treated as equals. Why is the Vatican pretending that serious criticisms of “The Way” – by those in the know – do not exist? No, we are not out of the woods yet, by any stretch of the imagination.

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