Letter #2, 2025, Thursday, January 16: Top Ten 2024 #9
In this letter, we speak of Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, whom we feel offers a model for bishops in this difficult time.
He is not arrogant or puffed-up, but he is a faithful steward of the Catholic faith in an age when the faith is a scandal to many.
In coming letters, we will have eight more of our “Top Ten” choices for the past year, plus reports on the Pope’s new autobiography and, in particular, what he says about the old liturgy; about the renewal of sacred music in Rome; about the possibility for peace in Ukraine and Gaza; about the new cardinals; and much more.
These letters are free, as are our podcasts — today’s podcast, with Iben Thranholm of Copenhagen, Denmark, will air on YouTube at 3 p.m. Eastern time in the United States, and tomorrow’s podcast, with Maestro Aurelio Porfiri, will air at 11 a.m. Eastern time in the U.S. (link).
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Happy New Year to all. —RM
With the aid, and in the hope, of Christ, believers can
overcome any difficulties…
Here are the testimonies of 10 of His people
Top Ten 2024
It was a difficult year. Around the world there were wars and rumors of wars; brutally contentious elections; assassinations and assassination attempts; deadly storms, earthquakes and mudslides. Conflicts within the Church — excommunications, criminal trials, continuing abuse allegations and the tug-of-war between modernism and tradition — were sometimes just as painful.
Yet the Church is — in a way the world is not — consecrated and filled with grace by her divine Spouse, the Lord Jesus, who ever and always “makes all things new.”
The grace and peace of Christ is available to all Christians of good will, and in 2024, as in every year, it was the antidote to the sickness of our modern age, and the leavening of our lives otherwise weighed down by the consequences of sin.
Jesus did indeed, in 2024, somehow renew us and bring us joy and strength, and one way He accomplished this was through the lives and testimonies of His people. We have chosen 10 of them for your reflection here.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, USA
The “Holy Goalie” Speaks Out for Catholic Tradition
Springfield, Illinois does not have quite the cachet that large American cities like New York and Chicago — and their Catholic archbishops — possess in the media. But that isn’t stopping Springfield’s bishop, Thomas Paprocki, 72, from entering into the national fray over issues impacting Catholics.
Nicknamed the “Holy Goalie” in the press for his lifelong love of hockey, Bishop Paprocki is the third of nine children and a native of Chicago, Illinois. He’s been an active voice of Catholic tradition since his appointment as Bishop of Springfield in 2010, when he immediately organized a conference on exorcism. In 2012 he was appointed as one of a three-bishop team to carry out a multi-year investigation of the progressive Leadership Council of Women Religious.
The same year, in response to concerns over government threats against religiously-informed acts of conscience, the American bishops instituted an annual two-week campaign promoting religious liberty. Bishop Paprocki coined the term “Fortnight for Freedom” as the name for the continuing campaign, which celebrates saints who died for their faith, like Thomas More.
After the release of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s controversial document Traditionis Custodes in 2021, Bishop Paprocki again garnered media attention for his defense of the Traditional Latin Mass. Two months after its publication, the Vatican’s liturgy head, Archbishop Arthur Roche, issued a “rescript,” stating that the local bishop no longer possessed the authority to grant dispensations from the prohibition of the TLM in his own diocese.
Because many dioceses already had thriving Latin Mass communities within parishes, some bishops, like Bishop Paprocki, offered dispensations, which had allowed those Masses to continue as before.
Bishop Paprocki publicly questioned the wisdom of the instructions, telling EWTN’s news anchor Raymond Arroyo that such judgments are best made by the bishop based on the principle of subsidiarity, which maintains that “decisions should be made at a local level” unless there’s an overriding reason.
“I’ve yet to see what that reason would be” in the case of these dispensations, Paprocki said.
Instead, he said, “you’ve got a prefect in Rome basically making decisions about what’s happening in the local diocese and the local parishes.”
In 2024, Bishop Paprocki made the news by calling out Catholic politicians’ support of abortion and repelling criticism of corporately saying the “St. Michael the Archangel prayer” at the end of Mass.
In April 2024, President Joe Biden, a Catholic, made the sign of the cross at an abortion rally in Florida, in apparent disapproval of Governor Ron De Santis’ efforts to enact new pro-life legislation.
Soon after, Bishop Paprocki criticized Biden’s action on both a YouTube video and his diocesan podcast, saying: “Making the sign of the cross is one of the most profound gestures a Catholic can make in showing reverence for Christ’s death on the cross and belief in the Holy Trinity.”
He explained that “mocking the gesture” of the sign of the cross was wrong because Biden was doing it “to promote something that was evil, and that’s what makes it sacrilegious.”
In October, Bishop Paprocki responded to a letter in the Wall Street Journal from a Cleveland priest objecting to the praying of the St. Michael prayer at the end of Mass, saying that the Vatican “suppressed this practice in 1964 because the prayer interferes with the integrity of the Mass.”
“The liturgy ends when the celebrant says, ‘Go forth, the Mass is ended,’ and the people reply, ‘Thanks be to God,’” said Bishop Paprocki. “The prayer, then, is recited after Mass, which the priest and people are free to do…we pray it will help to invoke the intercession of St. Michael to defend us in our spiritual battles.”
Following an 1884 vision of Satan “running riot” on the planet, Pope Leo XIII composed three prayers to St. Michael, the briefest of which he commanded should be prayed at the end of every Mass.
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