A map of our world drawn in keeping with the geo-strategic theory of Sir Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947), a famous English geographer, academic and politician. Mackinder said: “Whoever rules Eastern Europe will rule the Heartland, whoever rules the Heartland will rule the World Island, and whoever rules the World Island will rule the world!”

    This thesis became known as “The Heartland Theory.”

    I will be discussing this theory in a new weekly podcast on geo-strategy with my son, Christopher, age 35, starting this Friday, January 31. The podcast will be entitled “Father and Son” (here is a link to our Urbi et Orbi Communications channel on Youtube, where you may join all of our podcasts for free)

    Sir Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947), whose theory of the “world island” and its central place in geo-strategy will constitute the starting point for our new podcast, “Father and Son”

    Letter #12, 2025, Tuesday, January 28: Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? Part 3    

    “Father and Son”

    First, I wish to announce that we will be launching a new weekly podcast entitled “Father and Son” in three days, on this coming Friday, January 31, which you will be able to view live on YouTube at 11 am Eastern time in the United States, and at 5 pm in Rome and most of Europe.

    I will be doing this podcast with my son, Christopher, age 35, and we will be discussing the Christian faith, the present predicament of modern man, the Catholic Church, prophecy, and geo-strategy, as well as our own relationship as father and son, along with many other topics.

    Christopher was born in Rome, Italy, in 1989, and in addition to English, speaks fluent Italian.

    He was baptized in the valley below Assisi, Italy, in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which is constructed above the Portiuncula, the ruined chapel of Our Lady of the Angels which was re-built by St. Francis of Assisi in about the year 1208. This is where St. Francis lived for the rest of his life, until his death on this spot on the night of October 3, in the year 1226, at the age of 45.     

    As a baby, during an evening Rosary in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Christopher was held and blessed by Pope St. John Paul II.

    As a toddler, while chasing pigeons in St. Peter’s Square, he was greeted by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.

    (Some people say, jokingly, that Christopher himself is a “second-class relic,” because he was held in the arms of a canonized saint, St. Pope John Paul II.)

    Besides English and Italian, Christopher is fluent in Spanish, German and also Russian. He also speaks some Korean and Chinese, because he taught English in both South Korea and China.

    The Heartland Theory

    Whoever rules the world island will rule the world.” —Sir Halford John Mackinder

    “Whoever rules the Eastern Europe will rule the Heartland, whoever rules the Heartland will rule the World Island, and whoever rules the World Island will rule the world!”

    This thesis became known, as “The Heartland Theory,” defined by Sir Halford John Mackinder, a famous English geographer, academic and politician.     

    The Heartland is a vast area of ​​central Asia located between the Carpathians in the west, the Hindukush mountain range in the south and the Altai Mountains in the east. In the north it is surrounded by the Baltic Sea.

    Mackinder is considered one of the founders of geopolitics and geo-strategy, who wrote a paper in the 1904 entitled “The Geographical Pivot of History,” where he presented this theory and became famous for it. (link)    

    This theory will become a point of departure for our discussion, because Christopher is currently living at the very heart of the “world island.”

    He is currently a full-time senior lecturer in linguistics at a university in Almaty, Kazakhstan (link), a city located at the precise “heart” of the “world island” — the combined continents of Europe and Asia — with the borders of China and Afghanistan just a few miles away.

    Here is a link to our Urbi et Orbi Communications channel on Youtube; if you go here, you can click on the button that says “join” and you will become a member for free, and receive a little note each time we are about to begin a podcast, so that you can join us live if you wish.

    Christopher tells me he feels a bit like American Catholic writer Walker Percy‘s “castaway on a desert island.”

    Percy’s castaway (link):

    “…Does not feel at home because he is not.     

    “In a world perfectly fashioned to suit every human and material need, he nevertheless feels quite lost: ‘He knows that something is dreadfully wrong… he suffers acutely, yet he does not know why. What is wrong? Does he not have all the goods of life?’

    “He is, in a word, a castaway, a stranger to himself who, notwithstanding every possible creature comfort, indeed, spending a lifetime of striving to be at home on the island, is as homeless now as he was the first day he found himself cast up on the beach.’

    “His home, if there is one, must lie somewhere across the sea…”

    Christopher tells me he feels a bit like this “castaway on a desert island” described by Percy (whom I met and knew), except that he is now a “castaway on the world island,” and he appreciates that we may have the chance, each week, to see each other on YouTube, and together address some of the great issues of our time, and get to know each other better. —RM

    Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? Part 3    

    Second, I want to again introduce this serial presentation of a lecture I gave almost 18 years ago, in the summer of 2007.

    On August 17, 2007, I gave a talk at a church in California, St. Cecilia Church in Tustin, near Los Angeles, on the decision of Pope Benedict XVI to issue on July 7, 2007, his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, granting wider use of the old liturgy throughout the world.

    The motu proprio had been published just 5 weeks before.

    So, at that time, in August 2007, it was entirely in keeping with the wishes of Rome, and of the Pope, to receive and to accept and to praise and to embrace that document.

    Pope Benedict had encouraged me to try to explain his intent in the pages of my magazine, Inside the Vatican, and in any talks I gave.

    So I felt “authorized” to try to give my interpretation of what he had done, and why, when I gave my first and only talk on the subject, in August 2007.

    I spoke without notes, and went on for about an hour. (It was recorded by Terry Barber of St. Joseph Radio — thank you, Terry!)

    Even as I gave the talk, I felt it was reasonably effective, but later people told me it was the best talk that I had ever given.

    I did speak from my heart, and from my memories as a child, and from my studies as a historian, and from my many conversations with Pope Benedict, in the 1980s and 1990s, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger.

    I tried to be clear, and fair, and reasonable, and faithful, to what I had lived and learned during those decades about the Catholic Mass.

    Later, people came up to me and told me that my talk had moved them and instructed them, and they thanked me.

    I put the talk onto a CD which was entitled Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? (To order a copy, please quick here)

    Now, almost 18 years have passed by, and the attitude of Rome, and perhaps also of the Catholic faithful in general, has changed over these nearly two decades. Indeed, in Rome, the current pontiff seems intent on restricting the celebration of the old Mass, for reasons he has set forth in two documents and in several interviews. (see this link from seven months ago).

    During December, one month ago, an old friend and reader of the magazine told me that my talk had influenced him deeply, and that he had taken to listening to the talk on his car CD player (I realize that many cars no longer have CD players!) while driving on long trips. “It is a great talk,” he told me. “I may have listed to it 12 times or more by now. I always find something new in it. Why don’t you share it again, make it available again?”

    So I decided to publish that talk here, and to make the CD available again. I will also soon be posting a downloadable audio file.

    I note again that, when this talk was give, in 2007, it was given in an attempt to explain and defend the reasoning of Pope Benedict, who had acted just 5 weeks before.

    The talk was therefore intended to offer my full support to the reigning pontiff, and to explain why he had taken the decision that he took.

     —RM

    P.S. Order the Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? CD here

    P.P.S. Subscribe to Inside the Vatican magazine here. (Each subscription is quite helpful to us!)    

    Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now?

    Part 3

    (Continued from previous letter)

    “Places and points of light against the incumbent darkness”

    By the 400s, the Roman Empire was falling apart.

    In the 500s culture had shifted. What remained of the Roman Empire really was only vibrant in Byzantium, in Constantinople, in the east. The Roman Popes presided in Italy over a country that had been invaded, been invaded by the Goths and the Lombards.

    Spain had been invaded by the Vandals. France had been invaded by the Franks. The whole Roman Empire in the West had fallen apart.

    There was a Pope named St. Pope Gregory the Great. He ruled from 590 to 604. And he’s famous for Gregorian chant. What he did was codify the Mass up to that time, and it remained “the Gregorian Mass,” the typical Latin liturgy of the West, from the time that he was Pope, around 600 A.D.

    Up until the 1500s, there were several other regional rites that were celebrated. One was in Milan, the Ambrosian Rite. But these were not very different from one another. There were different prayers, and somewhat different emphases, and somewhat different order in prayers, but the main structure was the same.

    During the following 900 years [after 600 A.D.], Europe slowly became Christian, and, by the way, one of the key elements of that was the Benedictine Order.

    Benedict of Nursia became a monk in the 500s.

    And the reason Pope Benedict chose the name, the reason Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, when he was elected Pope two and a half years ago [Note: his election was in April, 2005; remember, this talk was given in 2007], chose the name “Benedict XVI,” there were two reasons.

    One was Benedict of Nursia who had preserved Europe.

    Benedict, founding the Benedictine Order of Monks in isolated places all over Europe, created monasteries where people could come together and pray and work. Prayer and work was the motto of the Benedictines.

    And for 500 years, what we call, perhaps too simplistically, we call it the Dark Ages, the Benedictine monasteries were points of light around Europe.

    Now, Benedict may not believe we’re entering a new dark age, although perhaps we are in a certain way, which I can explain later. Maybe we are entering in some way a new dark age, but he chose the name “Benedict” because he wants to create places and points of light against the incumbent darkness, that is, immorality, that is, irrationality, that is, the collapse of a civilization and a culture worthy of men.

    Benedict took his name partly from that, and partly from Benedict XV, who was the Pope (1914-1922) at the time of the First World War (1914-1918), and who fought very hard to stop the First World War from occurring.

    And he [Benedict XVI] is very opposed. to the idea that we’re going to have an entire 21st century of warfare, where we have conflicts of cultures that will continue through the lives of ourselves and of our children and of our children’s children.

    He doesn’t want this to happen.     

    So, in the 1500s, there occurred something in Europe which was the Protestant Reformation.

    In reaction to the Protestant Reformation, there was a Council called the Council of Trent, which went on for about 23 years, from 1542 to 1565.

    Now, the 1500s were the time of Martin Luther, the time of John Calvin, the time of Sir Thomas More, St Thomas More. And the Catholics realized that they were losing all of the northern half of Europe.

    If you want to understand it by a type of shorthand, a little bit simplistically, every place where people drank beer, they became Protestant. And every place where they continued to drink wine, they remained Catholic.

    So the Scandinavian countries, Norway and Sweden, became Protestant. Northern Germany became Protestant. Holland became Protestant. England also became Protestant. France became half Protestant in the north, and in the south remained Catholic.

    And Spain remained Catholic, Italy remained Catholic, Austria and Bavaria in southern Germany remained Catholic.

    So Europe was split north and south, and the Church called a Council to say, let’s try to heal this split. Let’s try to re-energize and reform the Church, because maybe we have been corrupt, maybe we gave some reason for the Protestants, but let’s become less corrupt, and let’s renew the Church so that we can reunify Europe.

    And I say this because Benedict XVI has this very much in mind today.

    The Council of Trent ended in 1565, but in 1570, five years after Trent, Pope Paul V asked that the Mass be codified. And that is what we call the Tridentine Mass.

    Trent is Tridentine, the Mass from Trent. It was created. Not as a new Mass, but as a codification which could be then sent to Spain and to France and to everywhere.

    This is the Mass that Rome approves as part of the reform, as part of the counter-reformation against the Reformation, which is splitting the Church apart and which is denying, actually, the sacrifice of the Mass.

    So, the Tridentine Mass is an organic development of the Mass of the prior thousand years, codified after Trent under Pope Saint Pius V, and that’s why it’s called the Mass of Saint Pius V. He was the Pope in 1570.

    Now, that Mass was celebrated everywhere in the Catholic world in Latin for 400 years.

    Again, I repeat, it was not a new Mass. It was a precise, written-down version.

    Of course, you have to remember, we never had printing presses until the late 1400s. Gutenberg was 1453, the first book. (link)

    So, (prior to 1450) it was difficult to know and to have sacramentaries and lectionaries.

    You had to copy the entire Bible out by hand.

    You see, we forget how different things are today than how they were.

    So, they codified at Trent the Mass, and they said, this is the sacramentary, these are the readings that we’re going to have each Sunday of the year, this will be the cycle of readings, and this will be the Mass of the Latin Rite.

    [Part 4 to follow]

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