The advocates of Catholic Lite, having lost the War of the Conciliar Succession theologically and needing a bogeyman to attack, now find it tactically useful to wildly exaggerate the number of conciliar rejectionists and their impact in the Church. Continue Reading »
The Holy Father says that he wants the Church to be a listening Church. If so, then he should be listening to a wide variety of voices in the U.S. before making claims that there are a significant number of Catholics in this country who reject Vatican II. Continue Reading »
René Guénon was one of the twentieth century’s most important traditionalist thinkers, as well as one of its strangest intellectual figures. In more than two dozen books, he claimed to reveal the hidden principles on which civilizations had rested since the dawn of humanity. His disclosure was . . . . Continue Reading »
In mid-July, Pope Francis issued Traditionis Custodes, a motu proprio concerning what’s popularly known as the Latin Mass. A motu proprio functions in papal administration much as do executive orders in our government. The aim of this papal directive is to curtail the . . . . Continue Reading »
If Reaganism as a political program is dead, then politically active religious conservatives must think about what new political coalition they might join with a view to defending their core principles and otherwise promoting the common good. Continue Reading »
Of all the initiatives taken by Pope Francis, the most surprising is his latest effort to reconcile with Traditionalist Catholics—especially given their relentless criticisms of him as a progressive and even a “Modernist.” But the Pope has a generous heart. In 2013, Francis gave a surprise . . . . Continue Reading »
A friend and I are arguing over the word traditionalist as applied to Catholics. He criticizes “traditionalists” but means only the “cranks,” he insists: No “sane person” would call himself a Catholic traditionalist; only cranks do that. When he writes “traditionalist,” my friend has in mind a careful definition that excludes the likes of Cardinal Burke and Pope Emeritus Benedict, but the word in general circulation has a broader range than that, and many gentle souls get caught in its net. Continue Reading »
In 1987, while I was still a Lutheran, I published a book titled The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World. There I argued that the Catholic Church is the leading and indispensable community in advancing the Christian movement in world history. In evangelization, in . . . . Continue Reading »
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