What if you "went big" in your self-offering and petitions while suffering for being a traditionalist in the 21st century? Many of you already know the story of the Carmelite nuns who were executed in the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century.  On 17 July 1794, the enemies of the Church led to the guillotine eleven Discalced Carmelite Nuns, three lay sisters and two tertiaries. These holy nuns even went so far as to ask permission of their Mother Superior to die under obedience. They were granted their final request on earth. They offered up their martyrdoms for the Catholic Church and for the end of the [...]

Today, we are going to look at canonical due-process as executed by the 15th century Spanish Grand Inquisitor, Tomás De Torquemada (top left) versus that of Cardinal Tucho Fernandez (top-right.)  Tucho is the Cardinal who allegedly-excommunicated the SSPX recently on 2 July 2026.  (SSPX is the American abbreviation for FSSPX which stands for the Fraternity of the Priestly Society of Pope St. Pius X.) Although a heretic can’t excommunicate anyone (as explained here by the WM Review) we are going to suspend that obvious ecclesial reality in order to evaluate the difference in legal process between the 15th century Dominican and the porn-writer currently living in the Vatican. Fr. William [...]

My favorite assignment as a parish priest began in 2017 when I was on-loan to the diocese of St. Augustine in Florida.  I lived and offered the Traditional Latin Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Jacksonville.  The families who attended my Mass loved not only the Mass, but also the Catholic faith.  After Mass, a surprising amount of families would come to the basement of the Cathedral to talk to each other and attend my classes on how to use all the tassels of the layman's Missal for the old Mass.  I came to know many of these families.  They loved God, the faith, their [...]

At the farthest southwest reach of County Kerry (already the most southwest county in Ireland) jut-out into the Atlantic Ocean two crags collectively called Skellig Michael (see above, p/c Arian Zwegers) so remote and mysterious that Star Wars makers filmed parts of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi there. But more fascinating than this is the fact that the real Christian Jedi—some of the most ascetical monks in all of Catholic history—built their beehive dwellings on these remote islands between the 6th and 8th century.  The beehive huts of Catholic monks are called clocháin in Irish and bear a striking resemblance to the beehive huts of the Desert Fathers [...]

p/c NYT My mother's four grandparents came from Ireland to the United States. They settled in Chicago by way of New York City in the first half of the 20th century. But in the 19th century, the Irish immigrants were so involved in sex, violence and drink that their mortality rate in New York City was higher than African-Americans in either Chicago or Baltimore today. City Journal (a non-Catholic production out of NYC) paints a bleak picture about the first Irish immigrants who crossed the Atlantic to the United States: “In 1847 about 40,000 died making the voyage, a mortality rate much higher than that of slaves transported from Africa [...]

The Roman Martyrology is a definitive history of various Catholic saints listing about twenty martyrs a day from the early Church.  Each martyr receives about one sentence, so it only takes two minutes a day to read.  But Christmas Eve has a very unique beginning to its daily martyrs, as it also contains the history of the entire world leading up to the birth of Christ. These words are sung during Midnight Mass, as you will quickly recall: In the year, from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created heaven and earth, five thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine; from the flood, two thousand, nine hundred and [...]

In Archaeologism Part I, I demonstrated that Popes from 1786 to 1947 condemned the heretics projecting Protestant notions of liturgy onto the early Church under pretext of "archeology" or "Church history."  This modernist fad is also called "antiquarianism." Realize first that Pope Pius XII basically warned the faithful not to believe the Holy Spirit was less active in guiding the Church of the Middle Ages than the Church of the Primitive Ages.  Secondly, he wanted us to realize the Holy Spirit does not change His directives in liturgy or doctrine. But on top of this,  I personally believe the modernists executing "archaeologism" (saying the early Church had no complex rites, [...]

Before looking at the Synod of Pistoia, let's define Archaeologism (also called antiquarianism.)  Unam Sanctam defines it: Archaeologism is not so much a heresy as a fad, a certain approach to Catholic liturgy and practice. Its distinguishing characteristic is an excessive value placed on those Catholic practices which came earlier in historical-chronological succession. For the archaeologist, first is always best. A practice or prayer of the patristic Church is “better” or “purer” than a practice of the medieval Church. Consequently, the goal of any true liturgical renewal ought to be to return to the practice of the first Christians, inasmuch as possible. The modern Church ought to imitate the apostolic [...]

One of the most interesting arguments I hear against traditionalists these days goes something like this: "The lifestyle and liturgy of the early Christians was much more like that of modern charismatics than that of modern traditionalists." I too believed such silly arguments for a long time in my Catholic formation. Of course, there's mountains of evidence against such an assertion. The Roman Breviary for today's saints is just one such piece of evidence.  Pope Saint Soter was martyred around AD 174 or 177. Pope St. Pope Caius (aka Gaius) was martyred in AD 296. Notice what the old Roman Breviary says about today's saints, but also notice what it also [...]