Free Republic

This is a sermon from an audio link from The EWTN library. I transcribed it myself, so any errors are mine. Fr. Collins' Sermon As St. Francis of Assisi was going through his deeper conversion, he would often pray before a crucifix at a chapel called San Damiano just outside of Assisi. He desired to do the will of God, and he would often appeal to the Crucified One, “speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” On one particular day a voice came forth from that crucifix, a voice that Francis heard in his heart, and the voice said, “Now...

At the annual Red Mass this last weekend -- the mass so dubbed to symbolize the fire of the Holy Spirit -- Washington, D.C. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick spoke not of fearless truth-telling but of "civility." And what does he mean by civility? It would appear, judging by remarks he delivered at a Catholic University of America law school forum in September which featured King Abdullah II of Jordan, that civility means softpedaling Christian truth. While the text of McCarrick's talk was labeled "remarks," they were actually a "prayer" which followed an address by King Abdullah entitled, "Traditional Islam: The Path...

It happens every year in the late summer. We get to hear the Gospel account of the story of the loaves and fishes. It is one of the most familiar accounts in the New Testament. It is also one that liberal theologians are fond of — as they say — “demythologizing.” The Social Skill of Mocking God Admittedly, it is a scene difficult to envision. If you were a Hollywood producer you would know how to depict Jesus walking on water, healing the sick and the blind, raising Lazarus from the dead, the Resurrection and Ascension. But the best of...

WASHINGTON, August 23, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Catholic News Service has announced that Rome is set to start its long-awaited "apostolic visitation," or systematic investigation and evaluation of the formation offered to prospective priests in seminaries. With many bishops studiously ignoring what has become the ecclesiastical equivalent of the elephant in the drawing room, Rome may be planning to force the issue at last. The last Vatican-led visitation was seven years in duration beginning in 1981. The report given to Pope John Paul II, according to some observers, amounted to a whitewash in which the theological and moral dissent being taught...

A short review of André Frossard's Portrait of John Paul IIFolks, I've been rereading a precious little by French author André Frossard, entitled Portrait of Pope John Paul II. You may remember Monsieur Frossard as the co-author and partner in dialogue of Pope John Paul's Be Not Afraid: Pope John Paul II Speaks Out on His Life, His Beliefs, and His Inspiring Vision for Humanity and a Catholic convert from atheism with several other printed works to his credit, particularly, I have met Him: God exists, the narrative of his conversion. The Portrait of Pope John Paul II is a...

Bishop Matthew Clark took over my home diocese of Rochester, New York, in 1978 when I was about ten years old. So fixed is his name in my memory that regardless of where I attend Mass, during the liturgy of the Eucharist I half expect the priest to say "Matthew our bishop" despite the fact that I haven't lived in Rochester for almost twenty years. A Visit Home The controversy surrounding the renovation of Sacred Heart Cathedral is something I've followed off and on since the bishop announced his intentions in 2000. Clark’s plan was to "update" the small 1928...

Donald Kagan:          (excerpts) ...The training of the intellect was meant to produce an intrinsic pleasure and satisfaction but it also had practical goals of importance to the individual and the entire community, to make the humanistically trained individual eloquent and wise, to know what is good and to practice virtue, both in private and public life. Such was the understanding of the ancient Greeks and of the Renaissance humanists but not, I fear of many teachers of the humanities today, who deny the possibility of knowing anything with confidence, of the reality of such concepts as truth and virtue, who...

There is an old saying to the effect that history is written by the victors. The idea is that after a war has been fought, those, who, by emerging as the winners, succeed in controlling the present, can, in a certain sense, control the past as well. They can ensure that the dominant communications media will present the history of the recent conflict from their own viewpoint, depicting themselves, naturally, as the heroes, and the vanquished opposition as the villains. Indeed, it often turns out to be deliciously easy for the all-powerful victors to rewrite that history in such a...

Forget about whether Pope Benedict XVI will soften his attitude toward the role of women in the church or discover a more pastoral approach to homosexuals or heed the pleas of manpower-poor bishops for an experiment with married priests. For many Catholics, there is only one question about the new pope's intentions: Will he turn the altars around? Certainly it's the question my grandmother, Catherine Doherty Murray, would ask the new pope if she were alive. Like many communicants at Sacred Heart Church in Pittsburgh, she was traumatized by the liturgical innovations spawned by Vatican II. Most wrenching for parishioners...

As I have noted in several brief commentaries in the past three weeks since the election of Pope Benedict XVI, each Catholic must pray fervently for the Successor of Saint Peter. We are neither pessimists (sad idiots) or optimists (happy idiots). Catholics are called to grow in the Supernatural Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity with every beat of their hearts, consecrated as they must be to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Although we must be concerned about the state of the Church in her human elements at present, we have to understand that...

Modernist architecture is the architecture of Relativist space. By adopting the Modernist style, the Church has incorporated Relativism into its very fabric. The fact that so many contemporary church buildings are banal and uninspiring is bad enough. Far worse is the fact that the Modernist style of architecture has given us church buildings that are barely churches at all. Instead they are temples to the spirit of the age, which is Relativism. It has been said that the Modern Age began in 1915 with the publication of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The theories were an answer to the already...

My father, a psychologist, once attended a public lecture by a student of Freud named Dr. Reich. The presentation was to grapple with the peculiar fact that every major culture has in its historical record a facsimile of the Biblical Flood story. All recount a deluge that shrunk the Earth's inhabitants into a very small cadre of survivors who then rebuilt. Reich hypothesized that there is a deep-seated fear of global annihilation that undermines humanity's confidence in its own existence. People then project backwards to fashion a mythology mirroring their insecurity. Dad raised his hand and offered an alternative solution...

Now that the mourning for John Paul II has ended and he has been laid to rest in St. Peter's, it is time to consider the state of the church he led for 27 years. For, despite his extraordinary life, his holiness and his critical role in bringing an end to communist rule in Eastern Europe, the condition of the church is grave. Two years ago, Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis pulled together a slim book he titled "Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II." As that church council ended 40 years ago this year, what...

ROME - As throngs of pilgrims converged on St. Peter's Square this Holy Week, a smaller number sought out a chapel in the city's center for a service very different from the pomp and ceremony of the Vatican. Inside the 17th century Oratory of St. Francis Xavier, at Via Caravita 7, American Jesuit priests conduct Masses that seem straight out of the Vatican II era of reforms.

THE NEW PHILOSOPHY OF MAURICE BLONDEL Let is now take a look at the "holy fathers" of this new theology. The first step they take in their liberation from traditional Catholic theology and dogma is by abandoning scholastic philosophy. It is thus hardly surprising to hear Urs von Balthasar stating, "Hell exists, but is empty!" Balthasar bases himself upon the philosopher Maurice Blondel - who occupies a small place in the history of philosophy, but a very important place in the history of this modernist new theology of the Church A GHOST-LIKE PHILOSOPHY Throughout his life (1861-1949), the Frenchman, Maurice...

POPE JOHN PAUL II's PONTIFICATE: A PERIOD OF GRAVEST TRIBULATION FOR THE CHURCH A TREMENDOUS ORDEAL And in the case where a "new theologian" should one day accede to the chair of St. Peter? In such a case, the Church undoubtedly suffers an unparalleled ordeal of stupendous gravity and proportions. And this for several reasons. First of all, since it is a question of neo-modernism, "They lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the Faith and its deepest fibers" (St. Pius X, Pascendi). Moreover, these theological errors are destined to...

THE MONTINI-DE LUBAC ALLIANCE: PAUL VI AND THE MASTERSTROKE OF SATAN The "new theology," as our readers who have followed us thus far have been able to discover, is not, as Pirandello would say, something to be taken seriously in itself. On the other hand, what is extremely serious is the fact that in order to force itself upon the Catholic world, it was and still is able to count on the strength of the one who is the successor of Peter in the Church. It is, therefore, of utmost importance to make a careful and close study of "Satan's...

They Think They've Won PART ONE: THE APPARENT VICTORY OF MODERNISM EXPOSED St. Pius X, in his encyclical Pascendi (1907) denounced those modernist "partisans of error" who concealed themselves "in the very womb and heart of the Church" insidiously spreading destruction "from within the Church itself...So that the danger today lies in the very heart and veins of the Church." This same saint added the pain of excommunication against anyone contradicting the encyclical Pascendi or the decree Lamentabili, which exposed and condemned Modernism. He also insisted that all bishops and religious superiors be on their guard against modernist infiltration, to...

The Suicide of Altering the Faith in the Liturgy by Father Paul Kramer Editor’s Note: This is an edited transcript of a speech given at the Fatima Peace Conference in October, 2001. Father Kramer was trained at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome (the Angelicum) under whom he describes as “the last group of traditional Dominicans,” which had lasted until the 1970s. It contains sobering points on the nature of the New Mass and the Catholic’s obligation, enshrined in the Tridentine Profession of Faith, to adhere to the “received and approved rites,” that is, the Traditional Mass....

Our Lady of the Roses and Cardinal Spellman against permanent deacons... "Why are you now planning to take married men, making them what you call deacons, to give the sanctity and holiness, the grace in marriage to My sheep? What right have you to change the rules and the direction?" - Jesus, May 23, 1979 Non-celibate deacons in the Roman Rite: a break with Tradition Fr. James McLucas explains that "The preparation for optional celibacy began with the introduction of the permanent diaconate following the Second Vatican Council." Although it was claimed that this change was nothing more than the...