Between Pachamama and Freemasonry.
We lack nothing. A Vatican representative and two bishops took part in a Pachamama ritual in Peru, preparing for the visit of Pope Leo XIV with cocoa leaves, food offerings, and an altar to Mother Earth. Meanwhile, the Pope appointed historian Umberto Longo, identified as a ninth-degree Freemason, to the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. Faith and Reason maintains that these events are evidence of infiltration and a departure from Catholic doctrine. Historically, the Church has condemned both Freemasonry and pagan worship. However, under the pontificate of Leo XIV, both are tolerated and even celebrated. Traditional practices are restricted, while pagan rituals and Masonic appointments are normalized. The faithful wonder what the Church is becoming and whether those who defend the faith will be the next to be silenced.
Protestants and relics.
Parolin attended the coronation of Saint Agatha in Catania, Sicily, this week, to commemorate the 900 years since the relics of the third-century martyr were returned to the city where she was martyred; several Protestant users on X reacted in recent days to the ceremony, calling it “witchcraft” and “idolatry.” While it would be idolatrous to worship these relics as if they were God or to treat contact with a relic with superstition—practices the Church has condemned—venerating the bones or other remains of a saint like Saint Agatha is precisely to show honor to a great servant of God in order, ultimately, to draw closer to Him. Saint Jerome: “We do not adore, we do not venerate, for fear of bowing before the creature instead of the Creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order to adore better Him of whom they are martyrs.” The practice of venerating relics dates back to the time of the Apostles and even to the Old Testament.
The Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome.
A new video series on the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome, produced by the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin; Cardinal Raymond Burke addressed the tensions surrounding the papal office while affirming its enduring divine foundation. The series, featuring Cardinal Burke alongside Father Chad Ripperger and Sean Pilcher, with narration by David Bates of “Pints with Jack,” explores the ancient devotion popularized by Saint Philip Neri in the sixteenth century. The first episode focuses on St. Peter’s Basilica and draws lessons from the Apostle’s own human frailty. Cardinal Burke addressed the delicate question of the confusion that can arise among the faithful because of certain statements made by the Pope, the successor of Saint Peter: “There has been considerable controversy surrounding certain statements and actions of the Pope, of the Roman Pontiff.” “And some people were confused because they objected, for example, to some statement or action of the Pope, which was lawful.” “Sometimes the Pope speaks as a man, and other times he speaks as the Vicar of Christ on earth. If the Pope makes a spontaneous comment to some journalist or something like that, that is not a doctrine of the faith. And one could legitimately object to something the Pope has said.” “In the past, popes were very reluctant to speak. They spoke very little because they did not want the faithful to be confused between their personal ideas and opinions and what they, as head of the Apostolic College, would proclaim.” “I think this is so important for us today that, even if we object to something a particular pope has said or done, this is not the first time it has happened in the history of the Church, as we well know.”
In 1998, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: “The Roman Pontiff—like all the faithful—is subject to the Word of God, to the Catholic faith, and is the guarantor of the Church’s obedience; in this sense, he is servus servorum Dei. He does not make arbitrary decisions, but is the spokesman of the Lord’s will, which speaks to man in the Scriptures lived and interpreted by Tradition; in other words, the episcopate of the primacy has limits established by divine law and by the divine and inviolable constitution of the Church, which is found in Revelation. The Successor of Peter is the rock that guarantees rigorous fidelity to the Word of God in the face of arbitrariness and conformism: hence the martyrological character of his primacy.”
Cardinal Burke further affirmed that any necessary objection, whether private or public, to the Pope’s statements must never undermine respect for the office itself. “We must never lose respect for the office of Saint Peter, the office conferred by Christ Himself. Christ willed it so. It is the divine will for the life of the Church that Saint Peter be that firm and principal foundation of the Church’s unity.” “Even if there have been popes who did not carry out their ministry worthily. Nevertheless, the office of Vicar of Christ on earth remains and will always remain in the Catholic Church.”
Imagining the Catholic Church.
In 1995, Benedictine monk Ghislain Lafont questioned the centralized form of Church government that had been maintained for centuries. His proposal addressed the relationship between the Pope and the bishops, the election of parish priests, the Roman Curia, and the presence of papal representatives. Almost thirty years later, many of the issues raised in “Imagining the Catholic Church” coincide directly with those in “Praedicate Evangelium.” It examines the foundation of the Petrine primacy and the concept of vicarious power, which finds a particularly explicit formulation in Praedicate Evangelium, including the interpretation proposed in recent years by Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda. It analyzes the diocesan bishop, to whom canon 381 recognizes “all ordinary, proper, and immediate power” necessary for the governance of the particular Church, except when the law or the Roman Pontiff reserves it to another authority. The problem lies in the effective scope left to episcopal power when the Roman reservation is expanded and the vicarious authority of the central see has more effective tools than those of the local parish priest.
Euthanasia and palliative care.
The macabre paradox of New York: in a short time, one arranges one’s own death while requests for palliative care are rejected for months. As of August 5, New York has a new law on state euthanasia that allows adults with terminal illnesses, capable of understanding and with a life expectancy of no more than six months, to request medications to end their lives. New York is the fourteenth U.S. state to allow this form of physician-assisted suicide. The Dominican nuns of Hawthorne have challenged the legislation, arguing that it forces their centers to participate, even indirectly, in the death procedure of patients. A federal judge ruled in their favor, temporarily preventing the state from requiring them to comply with such obligations. The Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Benedictine Sisters of the St. Joseph Home for the Aged, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre joined the lawsuit. The story recently told by Canadian Colleen De Vos demonstrates the macabre paradox that assisted suicide is more accessible than the care intended to accompany the patient. In 2023, her father, an 85-year-old Catholic, suffered from a terminal lung disease, and the family sought palliative care in a hospice or at home for him. However, on two occasions, the request was denied because his diagnosis was deemed insufficient for him to receive help, and a nurse spoke to him about the possibility of assisted suicide. Obtaining palliative care had been “very difficult,” while assisted suicide had been “very simple.” The necessary medications even arrived by mail, in a cardboard box. On the day of his death: just then, the family was informed that there was a place available in a nursing home.
The euthanasia and the Archbishop of Paris.
The Archbishop of Paris stated that the adoption of assisted suicide in France “does not mean the end of the fight,” “nothing should force us to make it a reality in our lives.” The new law legalizing this practice was promulgated by French President Emmanuel Macron on August 19. “Today, tomorrow, and in the future, we will undoubtedly have to make courageous decisions, perhaps against the current, starting with those we make for ourselves. Therefore, it is up to us, first and foremost, to choose not to demand to benefit from this new ‘right.’”
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.
The Rule of Saint Benedict exhorts the abbot to “serve the various personalities,” and Bernard’s life demonstrates how the monastic vocation can take different forms. For the Cistercian family, August 20, the feast of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux according to the Roman calendar, is a solemn celebration. It is especially important to remember these great saints when some abbots begin to frequent monasteries, chapters, meetings, and communities with the belief that they possess a kind of universal manual for good monks, offering advice to abbesses and abbots on how they should govern, form, pray, work, welcome vocations, and organize their community. Psychological and conscience abuses proliferate more easily.
Today the news that had been taken for granted for weeks has been confirmed: the Abbot of Heiligenkreuz has resigned. After a long process and the pressure exerted by Rome on his position, Lepori finally achieved his goal: the abbot’s resignation. In this case, too, it would be too easy to attribute everything to health problems; the pattern is repeated in different settings, with the same objective of re-educating communities and individuals according to a specific conception of religious life.
In the second chapter of the Rule of Saint Benedict, describing the abbot, he writes that he assumes a “difficult and arduous” task: governing souls and serving the souls of many. He must address one with gentleness, rebuke another, persuade yet another. The conclusion is even more interesting: secundum uniuscuiusque qualitatem vel intellegentiam, ita se omnibus conformet et aptet. In other words, the abbot must conform and adapt to each one according to his nature and capacity for understanding. The abbot does not have the task of creating replicas of himself. He must know the men under his charge well enough to understand that what helps one may be harmful to another, that the same vocation may be necessary for one monk and useless for the one living in the neighboring cell.
Bernard longs for contemplation, the Pope writes, but he does not remain locked in his cell when the interests of God and the Church are at stake: “I consider nothing that concerns God to be foreign to me.” Benedict XVI, on August 20, 2006, recalled the saint’s efforts to “master his impetuous temperament” and the humility with which he recognized “his own limitations and defects.” The problem arises when personal experience becomes a criterion for judging the lives of others, and when a particular monastic sensibility is presented as the only mature, serious, or authentic form of monasticism.
The Mass of Torrelavega.
It is sad to be news for this grotesque spectacle, while Pope Leo calls for respect for the liturgy, even the post-conciliar one, which some pass over according to their whims, the old and the new. The fact is that the celebration was broadcast on regional television and that gave it visibility; how many aberrations remain unknown, this one does not. The parish of Our Lady of the Assumption in Torrelavega—the church its faithful call “our cathedral” and for which the Bishop of Santander requests from Rome the title of Parish Basilica—celebrated this year a significant date: the 125th anniversary of its inauguration on August 15, 1901. The Solemn Mass of the feast of the Great Virgin, presided over by parish priest Juan Carlos Rodríguez del Pozo and concelebrated by the Amigonian friars Félix Martínez and Juan Manuel González. The parish priest, ignorant or heretical, or both: “Mary, today we celebrate your ascension into heaven in body and soul. Obviously, we must not take this literally. No human being will ascend into heaven in body and soul. Heaven is not a physical place. Heaven is a state of the soul, of fullness, of happiness.”
On November 1, 1950, Pius XII, in the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus, exercising supreme pontifical magisterium, “declared and defined as a dogma of faith divinely revealed that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” And the same document warns: “If anyone, God forbid, dares to deny or deliberately call into question what we have defined, let him know that he has shipwrecked in the divine and Catholic faith.” The case of the parish priest of Torrelavega who, not content, adorns himself further: “God chose Mary, a humble woman, a woman of the people. Mythology has greatly exalted and glorified her, granting her many necklaces, many crowns, many privileges, many titles, because sometimes we must resort to mythology to speak of earthly realities […] they are worldly realities that we find difficult to express in words, and therefore we must resort to mythology.”
As if the parish priest’s outbursts were not enough, he solemnly announced: “Now we will contemplate the contemplative dance group of the parish […] which will pay homage to us on this 125th anniversary. We will see many colors that symbolize the rose window […] colors, diversity, joy […] They will dance in a circle. The circle is perfection […] Around the table of the Eucharist, no one is out of place […] So, with these keys, let us enjoy this for a moment. They have the images; we save the description. And as if that were not enough, the second dance presentation was by the Nuestra Señora de las Nieves Dance Group of Tanos, celebrating its centenary, where the group “danced a jota and a pericote and said goodbye with the picayo dance.” The Bishop of Santander, who we assume was informed, for now remains silent as the dead, a custom very typical of contemporary mitred bishops. He does not clarify whether he knew and authorized what happened and, above all, whether he considers such a parish priest compatible with the Catholic faith. The faithful have the right—a right, not an aesthetic preference—to have the liturgy celebrated in accordance with the norms of the Church and to be preached the faith of the Church, not the opinions of the celebrant.
What to do with unused churches.
The Reformed Church is closing.
The saints of the left.
Nicolás Márquez puts the magnifying glass on several iconic figures of modern progressivism and contrasts documented historical truth with the sweetened readings of today. Frida Kahlo, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Maradona, Pope Francis, Hugo Chávez, Michel Foucault, Salvador Allende, and Eva Perón are the ones chosen by Márquez to analyze in their complexity. (PanAm Post). Current progressivism defends figures from the past in political debate from a sweetened perspective tailored to modern times, which does not reflect historical truth. Even though these individuals defended by the left have signed with their own hand many positions that would scandalize their supporters today, there are not a few naive people who buy the distorted myths.
The Moors in Rome.
Something that should not be forgotten. The Muslims, called Saracens, sacked St. Peter’s Basilica in the year 846 A.D. Pope Leo IV repaired the Roman churches that had been damaged during the Moorish incursion against the Romans. Leo IV is especially known for having built the Leonine Wall around the Vatican Hill to protect the city and prevent the invasion from being repeated. In addition, he organized a league of Italian cities that fought and won the naval battle of Ostia against the Saracens. Today it seems that we do the opposite and are not able to see the problem we have in front of our houses and churches. Let us hope that we react before it is too late.
What is the principal commandment of the Law?
Good reading.