RIP: Benedict XVI

His Holiness Benedict XVI, Supreme Pontiff Emeritus, died today at 9:34 AM Central European Time (UTC+1) at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in Vatican City. The Vatican has announced that his body will lie in the St. Peter's Basilica starting on 2 January and that his funeral will take place on 5 January in St. Peter's Basilica.

"Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the Faithful departed rest in peace. Amen."

RIP: Vatican Watcher

My beloved brother Jacob passed away this morning. While he was not able to post on the blog regularly for a number of years, his interest in the Vatican and the Church, as well as his faith in God, were as strong as ever to the end. This morning I have come across a string of emails dating back to 2016 detailing Jacob's attempts to arrange a Requiem Mass for himself. Because Jacob was pretty much homebound for his final year, he spent months arranging for the Sacrament of Penance here at home. Thankfully, he received absolution only a short while ago.

"Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his souls and the souls of all the Faithful departed rest in peace. Amen."

A church building in need

A lady with whom I am acquainted at a Catholic web forum moved with her husband to Michigan awhile ago and dropped out of sight.  It has come to my attention that she is not doing too well.  Please say a prayer for Carleen.

I also learned that her husband has purchased an old Catholic church building.  He is quoted in this article, “I came by and saw the for sale sign in front of the church and inquired and realized I’d probably have to take a mortgage out on it so that’s what I did[.]”

There is a GoFundMe fundraiser for Mr. Price's efforts.  Check it out.  Pictures and a Youtube interview are posted along with updates.  Please say a prayer for Bill and Carleen and the restoration efforts and give something if you are a fan of old church buildings like me.

More from Archbishop Viganò

With Election Day past and its aftermath continuing to play out with several states' vote counting being contested, Archbishop Viganò has a new message to the people of the United States.  After a recapitulation of the situation and how it came to pass, the archbishop calls upon faithful Christians to pray the Rosary.

In these hours, while the gates of Hell seem to prevail, allow me to address myself to you with an appeal, which I trust that you will respond to promptly and with generosity. I ask you to make an act of trust in God, an act of humility and filial devotion to The Lord of Armies. I ask that all of you pray the Holy Rosary, if possible in your families or with your dear ones, your friends, your brothers and sisters, your colleagues, your fellow soldiers. Pray with the abandonment of children who know how to have recourse to their Most Holy Mother to ask her to intercede before the throne of the Divine Majesty. Pray with a sincere soul, with a pure heart, in the certainty of being heard and answered. Ask her – she who is the Help of Christians, Auxilium Christianorum – to defeat the forces of the Enemy; ask her – she who is terrible as an army set in battle array (Song 6:10) – to grant the victory to the forces of Good and to inflict a humiliating defeat on the forces of Evil.

He goes on to further this call for prayer and concludes by reminding his readers that those who pray to the King of Kings will have their faith rewarded.  “Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you” (Lk 11:9)

A new letter from Archbishop Viganò

Archbishop Viganò has sent another open letter (pdf) to the president of the United States ahead of the coming election on November 3.  The letter is dated October 25, the Feast of Christ the King according to the old calendar.  For those of you unfamiliar with the archbishop, the article on him at Wikipedia has a summary of his career.

The context of all this is Archbishop Viganò's description of the corrupt forces within the Church and the world at large, especially in light of quarantines and lockdowns ordered under the pretext of the COVID-19 virus, but according to Viganò efforts to control and overthrow the old order in favor of the New World Order.

The letter's theme is clear:

[I]t is necessary that all people of good will be persuaded of the epochal importance of the imminent election: not so much for the sake of this or that political program, but because of the general inspiration of your action that best embodies – in this particular historical context – that world, our world, which they want to cancel by means of the lockdown. Your adversary is also our adversary: it is the Enemy of the human race, he who is “a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44).

The description of the current pontiff's place in current events is stark:

In Sacred Scripture, Saint Paul speaks to us of “the one who opposes” the manifestation of the mystery of iniquity, the kathèkon (2 Thess 2:6-7). In the religious sphere, this obstacle to evil is the Church, and in particular the papacy; in the political sphere, it is those who impede the establishment of the New World Order.

As is now clear, the one who occupies the Chair of Peter has betrayed his role from the very beginning in order to defend and promote the globalist ideology, supporting the agenda of the deep church, who chose him from its ranks.

Here is a reverse chronological archive of all of Archbishop Viganò's letters, articles, and interviews.

It has happened to me

Longtime readers will remember this post from 2016 where I talked about plans to deal with the declining Catholic population of my hometown.  This last year, I found out things had happened over the last few years.  I don't make it home much due to health difficulties and unless I ask specific questions, my parents don't volunteer much info from home as they are more interested in me.  So I discovered that plans had indeed gone forward with the construction of a new church building.  And on social media, friends from home posted pictures of one of the church buildings as Mass was being said within for the last time before demolition.  Now there is only the church in which I was baptized many years ago.  I don't know what the endgame is for that building; I assume it too will be demolished once the new building is completed.  Oh...

Judging by the architect's drawings and plans, the new church isn't terrible.  On the outside it looks more or less like a church.  The inside has many of the usual defects of a post-conciliar worship space.  Many items were saved from the church that was demolished and more will be from the other, so time will tell how it all turns out.

Ave Maria and Francis

Hello, readers.  For those of you who keep up on Catholic news, you are no doubt aware of what's been going on with the McCarrick affair followed by the Pennsylvania grand jury report and then the Vigano memorandum and the fallout from each.  There are plenty of Catholic news sites and blogs that are following things with daily updates.  Aside from the Daily Readings in the sidebar, I would like to recommend Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.  He has been on top of things and I have been following him every day.

On August 29, in support of Pope Francis, the president of Ave Maria University James Towey issued a statement that has since been edited to remove its gratuitous comments. (Edited statement, 8/30 clarification.)  This CNA article has excerpts from the original version of the statement, which gives a taste of what was removed, specifically comments directed at Archbishop Vigano's motives and at Cardinal Burke for the dubia.  (Here is a comment that has the original version of the statement.)

Those since-removed comments had provoked a strong backlash.  One example is from the combox at a piece at One Peter Five:

Can you believe it?
This gentleman is drinking the same juice as Wuerl, McCarrick, Cupich, Maradiaga and Tobin – to cite only a few representatives of the core of corruption. His statement is not only erroneous in its essence, but
pejorative and would appear libelous.
Towey served as an assistant to George W. Bush (2002-2006) and as
Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. Dig deep into
that and you find the pragmatist.
As President of St. Vincent’s College, Latrobe – Rembert Weakland’s
home monastic community.
And he is a Knight of Columbus – financial sponsors of “Crux.”
You don’t have to scratch too far to find what is operative with this character. He likes his security blanket.
How did Ave Maria’s search committee determine this one a match?
Another one bites the dust..

I replied with the following:

Don't be confused by the fact that AMU has had this facade of "traditional" all this time and is suddenly breaking away. Ave Maria has always been a brand that Tom Monaghan knew he could sell to Catholics if it looked good and holy. But underneath the surface, there's always been some form of scandal, from how he got AMU from MI to FL to the medical complex they tried to build next to the university funded by a major stem cell researching company.

The reply back:

Believe me, I am confused no longer. This was a bitter eye opener.

My comment wasn't very charitable towards AMU.  I have mentioned the past of AM before in comboxes when the university or the law school have been brought up and alumni have replied, saying that things have changed since Mr. Monaghan's involvement has decreased.  Taking those people at face value and reading Mr. Towey's clarification, it puts Ave Maria in the mainstream of Neo-Catholicism with its strict adherence to the ultramontanist position: fidelity to Rome above all else.  Obviously, Roman Catholics are in communion with Rome, but in the wake of the Council, it has become "Rome, right or wrong," even when the wrong seems to be the enabling of heresy and sexual depravity.

People smarter than I am are wrestling with this question.

FSSPX and a prelature

In case you missed it, the folks at Rorate Caeli ran an online poll asking the question, "If Francis offers a Prelature to Society of St Pius X (SSPX), should they accept it?"

The results:  Out of 1,093 respondents, 77% voted yes and 34% voted no.

No doubt there are a lot of people out there who think that getting the FSSPX into the formal structures of the Church will be a great boon to orthodoxy while setting aside the distractions of questions regarding schism and jurisdiction and all that.  Though I would normally agree (though I've read and agree with many who've argued a prelature according to the Opus Dei model is the wrong way of doing it), we are not presently in normal times.

After following the tragedy of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate and now reading more about the new MP dealing with women religious, it's clear enough the Holy Father and his coterie are not to be trusted.

Bishop Felley and those around him really need to consider what their options are at this point.  If they make a deal, once that bell has been rung, they won't be able to unring it by walking out if the deal goes bad.

From the pen of Benedict XVI?

The previous pontiff, Benedict XVI, otherwise known as Joseph Ratzinger, has said and written a few things over the years since he resigned that have given me pause as they didn't match up quite with what the man had said and done when he was out and about as prefect of CDF and then pope.

Now he has reportedly said a few more things in an interview ahead of a biography soon to be released that are downright weird considering the man we thought we knew (Vox Cantoris has links to it all).

The long and the short of it for me is this: how much of what comes out of that monastery is real and how much is filtered through (or comes whole cloth from) the former pope's handlers?  Doesn't matter.  Just ignore it and move on.

News from China II

Sandro Magister at www.chiesa has chimed in with his usual excellent work.  Aside from his usual links to the primary sources, he provides a nice summary of the latest happenings in the relationship between the ChiComs and the Holy See including this description of the genesis of the recent agreement:

That day, [Francis'] touchdown in New York on his way to Philadelphia coincided with the landing of Chinese president Xi Jinping, who was expected at the United Nations. Everything had been calculated for the two to cross paths “accidentally” at the airport and exchange a greeting. Xi was aware of this ardent desire of the pope, but in the end he let it drop and the meeting did not take place.

From that moment on, however, the secret contacts between the Vatican and Beijing underwent an acceleration. In October and then in January a delegation of six representatives of the Holy See went to the Chinese capital. And in April of this year, the two sides set up a joint working group that now seems to have come to an understanding over a point that the Vatican takes very seriously: the appointment of bishops.

Read it all for details on the excommunicated bishops of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and their being brought into the fold under the deal.

Magister notes:

The example that is brought up most often is that of Vietnam, where the candidate for bishop is proposed by the Vatican but the government can veto him, and then on to other candidates until the government approves one of them.

But for China, the solution of which Cardinal Tong appears to have knowledge sees the roles reversed. The candidate will be selected and proposed to the Vatican by the Chinese episcopal conference. Only that this conference is a creature of the communist party, completely at the beck and call the regime, devoid of “underground” bishops and with one of the excommunicated eight as its president.

Let us pray for our Chinese brethren as they enter this brave new world created by the Holy Father.