“What was sacred to previous generations remains sacred and great to us; it cannot suddenly be completely forbidden or even harmful.” —Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007 "The intentions of the new... legislation... are becoming increasingly clear: the traditional liturgy (and teaching, because that is what it is ultimately about) is to be made [...]
A brief letter on the terrible earthquake that occurred this morning in Turkey and Syria. It includes the text of the telegram of Pope Francis to each country, and a report from a priest in Aleppo, Syria, Father Bahjat Elia Karakach, a Franciscan friar of the Custody of the Holy Land and a Latin-rite parish priest [...]
"I can testify to the fact that [Cardinal Robert] McElroy’s language about inclusion, dialogue, welcoming, diversity, and radical openness are now, as they were then, a grand deception." —American Catholic writer Larry Chapp in a January 30 article entitled "Cardinal McElroy's Grand Deception" in Catholic World Report (link) "The substance of the question and answer [...]
Letter #39, 2023 Friday, February 3: Gagnon Greetings. I spoke for about one hour yesterday, February 2, with Fr. Charles Murr, 72, author of the book Murder in the 33rd Degree (link), about the death of Pope John Paul I in September 1978. Fr. Murr was a friend of the late Cardinal Edouard Gagnon (15 January [...]
Letter #38, 2023 Wednesday, February 1: Top Ten 2022, #1: One Man Remained: Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas Our choice for the #1 person of 2022 is Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, a Lithuanian-born diplomat of the Holy See who remained in Kiev when other ambassadors left after the war in Ukraine broke out on February 24. He is [...]
Letter #37, 2023 Tuesday, January 31: Top Ten 2022, #2: Fr. Peter Gumpel I will never forget the day, some 30 years ago, when I asked Fr. Peter Gumpel, the distinguished Jesuit scholar who passed away in October in Rome, if there was any truth to a rumor I had heard that he was descended [...]
Letter #36, 2023 Tuesday, January 31: Ratzinger Endless progress will be humanity's salvation, many today are saying. Their hope and their promise is this: that the continual advancement in our knowledge of our world, aided now by computers of colossal speed and memory storage, will bring, in the end, a true paradise, a blessed world [...]
The late Marie Czernin with Pope John Paul II after the Good Friday via Crucis (Way of the Cross) on March 29, 2002 in the Colosseum in Rome. Marie had written the meditation for the 14th Station of the Cross on that occasion (link, text of that meditation also below) A depiction of the 14th [...]
Letter #34, 2023 Thursday, January 26: Top Ten 2022, #4: Archbishop Timothy Broglio For our #4 "Person of the Year" we chose American Archbishop Timothy Broglio, 71, who in November was elected by his brother bishops the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). We chose Broglio in part because of the [...]
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 82. Below, three of his recent texts Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul Letter #33, 2023 Wednesday, January 25: Three powerful letters from Archbishop Viganò Here below are three letters from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in recent days. (1) The first is a homily for the Feast of [...]
