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Welcome to Muck IslandThe sacking of Bishop Strickland brings to mind the sad plot of Brian Moore’s novella "Catholics".I watched the EWTN interview of Bishop Strickland last night and had nightmares while I slept. The bishop, articulate and, to my mind, innocent of all irony, recounted what had happened in his process of deposition and professed his recognition of the pope’s authority and his obedience to his removal from office. The sincerity of the man’s confusion about why he was singled out was piercing. Many sources have hinted at “administrative” reasons without any real evidence. The fact that the protocol...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Strickland: I have a duty before God to defend truth against the father of liesOn this week's episode of The Bishop Strickland Show, Bishop Joseph Strickland gives a summary of his talk at the Rome Life Forum and comments on a quote by Pope St. Pius X.Editor’s note: This episode was recorded prior to the announcement of Strickland’s removal as bishop of Tyler, Texas.(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of The Bishop Strickland Show, Bishop Joseph Strickland gives a summary of his talk at the Rome Life Forum and comments on a quote by Pope St. Pius...

[Catholic Caucus] The Heresy of Practice: Some Insights from Saint Bernard and Saint AlphonsusRecently used by Cardinal Müller,[i] the phrase “practical heresy” has been popularized in a couple of his latest articles by Timothy Flanders,[ii] the editor-in-chief of One Peter Five (1P5). Essentially, this concept refers to any religious practice that contradicts, through deeds and actions, a revealed doctrine. We will take the teaching on marriage as an example. Every well-formed Christian knows that in the Church founded by our Savior Jesus Christ, “the essential properties of Marriage are unity (monogamy) and indissolubility.”[iii] In practice, in the case of spouses...

An interview with John Gravino, author of "Confronting the Pope of Suspicion"Members and friends of the Roman Catholic Church around the world have watched with alarm as Pope Francis has used the recent Vatican “Synod” to promote radical changes in Catholic teaching and practice. For instance, “transgender” people and those in same-sex “marriages” are now eligible to serve as godparents at baptism; that is, as the sponsors and models of Christian living to new Christians. The Stream‘s John Zmirak interviewed an expert on Pope Francis, Catholic philosopher John Gravino, to find out what’s going on. Could you briefly explain what...

[Catholic Caucus] Calling "Mighty Shepherds"!"As one sees the power of the Antichrist spreading, one can only pray that the Lord will give us mighty shepherds to defend his Church against the power of evil in this hour of need."- Pope Benedict XVI(Letter to a longstanding correspondent) I have related before a telling episode in Father Crane's workaday life that captured the devilish essence of our post-conciliar times. It involved fierce criticism and great praise received in short order.First came a scathing missive from a fellow Jesuit who railed against the "scurrilous" work of Christian Order, demanding that Father cease and...

Archbishop Viganò: Every saint and Doctor of the Church would stand against today’s VaticanFor the first time in history, in this battle between the Church and the anti-church, the former is not only marginalized and persecuted, but also finds herself defrauded of the supreme authority of the Roman pontiff.We have just celebrated the feast of Saint Charles Borromeo, the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, a Confessor of the Faith, the patron saint of the city of Milan and of the Ambrosian Diocese. A saint who, like all the saints proclaimed by the Church before the conciliar revolution, today would be pointed...

Mass AttacksIf the current pontificate has set one thing in bold relief it is surely this: that the seemingly insane process of self-destruction triggered by Vatican II is not madness at all. Ultimately, the ever rising flood of suicidal novelties that has now swollen to a synodal tsunami is the demonic fruit of patient decades of infiltration of the Church by her myriad enemies. Most notably by Enemy #1: the Lodge and its communistic, modernistic, sodomitic subsets. Detailed in masonic plans exposed and published by popes a century before Paul VI himself decried the "self-destruction" and the allusive "smoke of...

[Catholic Caucus] El Tucho: Puppet from HellBefore Christ’s second coming.... The persecution [of the Church] will unveil the “mystery of iniquity”in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.- Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 675-676 "To achieve world government, it is necessaryto remove from the minds of men,... religious dogmas.- BROCK CHISHOLM, First Director General of the WHO On 1 July, Francis announced that 60-year-old Archbishop Víctor "Tucho" Fernández of La Plata, the notorious "kissing expert" and key contributor to heretical gems like Amoris Laetitia...

Schismality And if a house be divided against itself,that house cannot stand. - Mk 3: 24-25"It is not to be excluded that I will enter historyas the one who split the Catholic Church.” If Der Spiegel had attributed the sinister quote above to any pope other than the present one we would have laughed it off as far and away the most ludicrous hatchet job ever perpetrated by the corporate media against the Church and the papacy. Alas, in its 23 December 2016 edition the renowned German magazine alleged that the boast was made to a small group of his...

[Catholic Caucus] Nuchurch’s “Counter-Syllabus” of ErrorsWith providential foresight, Pope Pius IX (top left) saw in the 19th century the heresies that would come upon the Church in the 20th century. So, in 1864, he wrote the Syllabus of Errors. Over one hundred years later, Cardinal Ratzinger (top right, before he was Pope) unfortunately admitted that Vatican II was “a Counter-Syllabus” of Errors. By this, he meant Vatican II was good and the Syllabus’ condemnation of heresies was bad, or at least outdated. This is found in his book Principles of Catholic Theology. More specifically, Cardinal Ratzinger said Gaudium Et Spes...

[Catholic Caucus] New Response in the Same-Sex Blessing ControversyBack on September 30th, a few days before the new Dubia were released, Cardinal Tucho Fernández gave an interview to LifeSite News about Same-sex blessings which has now been published. But before we get to that, I want to go back to the 2021 document approved by the Holy Father which was meant to put to rest this dubium with the following clarity:TO THE QUESTION PROPOSED:Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?RESPONSE:Negative.The explanation goes into the fact that “Blessings belong to...

[All Catholic Caucus] When Living Tradition Turns Ugly: from Henri de Lubac to Francis’s Synod and Dubia Response“Living Tradition bobs along like a cork through the stream of evolving dogma. What a pleasant euphemism for the old heresy of dogmatic historicism.” (Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, One Hundred Years of Modernism) Many Traditional Catholics have likely heard the concept of “living tradition” in connection with John Paul II’s rebuke of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in the July 2, 1988 apostolic letter, Ecclesia Dei:“The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does...

[Catholic Caucus] Faithful Catholics resist the anti-Christian agenda coming from the VaticanOn October 30, Catholic leaders will present to the media condemnations of the Synod on Synodality’s departure from the teachings of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Holy Scriptures.ROME (LifeSiteNews) — African Catholic leaders from Uganda and Kenya are joining with LifeSiteNews and America’s best-known traditional Catholic Michael Matt, as well as traditional Catholic activists from around the world, in condemning the Synod on Synodality’s departure from the teachings of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Since 2013, the attempt to weaken Church doctrine on life, faith,...

[Catholic/Orthodox Caucus] Conference in Rome on “The Synodal Tower of Babel” the day before “Walking Together on Walking Togetherity”For years the Italian (and English) site La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana has been a daily go to. Last night they held a “launch” event at a Roman theatre very near to the place where the “Walking Togetherity” will commence. This was the launch of a new paper monthly. for the launch they had three speakers: my good friend Fr. Gerald Murray (who needs no intro), Stefano Fontana of the Cardinal Van Thuan Observatory, and Raymond Card. Burke (whom I believe you know).The...

[Catholic Caucus] Synodality (“Walking Togetherity”) and “tesserae”Looking at the Synod (“Walking Together: “W-T”) from as far as I can manage while being in Rome and as close as I need to be because I simply have to, the image that comes to mind is tied sack full of cats and parrots: something’s going on in there, alright, and it doesn’t sound very good. The sounds and the movements on the surface of the bag suggest that there are disagreeing participants in there and not a lot of organization.As I have been saying all along, whatever they might produce in some...

[Catholic Caucus] Why We Have Not Covered the Synod on SynodalityA reader e-mails us to ask why we have not covered the proceedings of this first session of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality (the second session will be in the autumn of 2024).First, of course, because because it is not a proper Synod (that is, a Synod OF BISHOPS), but a meeting of laity, religious men and women, priests, bishops, all with the right to vote. Its standing in a Church willed by God as hierarchical is doubtful at best.Second, because the whole idea is ridiculous: a "meeting on...

[Catholic Caucus] May a Bishop in Extraordinary Circumstances Ordain Another Bishop Without Papal Consent?That the Church of Christ is Apostolic and that among the Apostles the primacy belongs to Peter and to his successors is a truth clearly established in Scripture and Holy Tradition. Nevertheless, the exact content of such primacy is something the understanding of which has developed in history. It is when a special crisis arises that the Holy Spirit gives light to the Church so as to clearly distinguish what is true from what is false in this as in other matters.Right now we are enduring one...

[Catholic Caucus] Senior Synod theologian claims the Church is now in a ‘deeper phase’ of Vatican IIFr. Ormond Rush gave an address to the synod members at the start of their final week in Rome, urging them to draw on the arguments of Vatican II for their proceedings.VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Beginning their final week of the Synod on Synodality, members were told that the event “is a dialogue with God,” as a prominent Australian priest and outspoken advocate of the Second Vatican Council drew from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s 1960’s writings on “tradition” as understood at Vatican II.“Having listened to...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Francis gives Synod members Vatican II lobby group’s liberation theology textChurch historian Roberto de Mattei told LifeSiteNews that this hugely significant event is the 'last act of a process' beginning with Vatican II and culminating in Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality.VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) –– In a hugely significant move, participants of the Synod on Synodality were quietly given the text of a secretive pact – first composed by a group of liberal theologians during Vatican II – which is part of a relativistic and “egalitarian” plan embodied and enacted by Pope Francis to “change the identity of...

Pope: “The Church Has to Change”In a new interview, the Roman Pontiff has elaborated on the synodal dream of Cardinal Martini, taking place now in Rome. But before we get to that, we should be fair and say that he also said a few good things:We were all unexperienced young people once, and sometimes young boys and girls hold onto miracles, to a messiah, to things being solved in a messianic way. There is only one Messiah who saved us all. The rest are all clowns of messianism. None of them can promise a solution to conflicts, unless it’s emerging...