11 02, 2024

The TLM Is Not the Place to Teach the TLM

By |2024-02-13T17:03:51+00:00February 11th, 2024|Life|

I only ski every three years, and this week was one of those years.  I did two days in a row up in Summit Co., CO.  My brother in law's parents were kind enough to let me use their home.  The above is a picture of my travel Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) kit set up in their home.  I was alone in that home most of the time there.  (One buddy who joined me one day for skiing attended one Mass in there, and did well in attending it even though he goes normally to both Masses.) I mention he "did well" because that is not something that just goes [...]

12 10, 2023

The Three Grades of the TLM

By |2023-10-13T16:13:57+00:00October 12th, 2023|Theology|

The three grades (so to speak) of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) are listed in order of ascending solemnity: Low Mass: In this Mass, a lay person will probably just hear the priest whisper the Roman Canon without a choir or any chanting.  The above featured-image is me offering Holy Mass at a side altar in Portugal.  Notice that I have a server in that picture, but I never have a server in my hermitage for my daily low Mass.  Only two candles are lit upon the altar, whether the priest has a server or not.  Of course, in a low Mass it is still God the Son offering Himself [...]

24 08, 2023

The Mass Was Never a Means of Evangelization

By |2023-08-24T10:40:29+00:00August 24th, 2023|Theology|

Thirty years ago this month, I attended World Youth Day (WYD) in Denver, CO with Pope John Paul II. It took place days before my 15th birthday. Some estimates believe one million people showed up to the events at the old Mile High Stadium (see above photo) and the final Mass at Cherry Creek Reservoir (see below photo.) My own mother was one of the chaperones for WYD '93 and my little brother (12 years old at the time) was one of thousands treated by Denver General Paramedics for dehydration at the final reservoir Mass. This was a special event for my family since Denver is where we were born [...]

15 08, 2023

The Roman Canon Is the Oldest Eucharistic Prayer

By |2023-08-15T13:50:42+00:00August 15th, 2023|Theology|

Really, the better title of this blog should be "The Roman Canon is the Oldest Eucharistic Prayer and those of the Eastern Liturgies."  What is excluded from this?  Obviously, the Novus Ordo's Eucharistic Prayer II, III and IV are all very new man-made prayers. They are not of Apostolic Origin.  But for some reason, that isn't so "obvious" to most Catholic educators today. One of the strangest modern-myths pushed in my mainstream-seminary years ago (and probably still today) was that "Eucharistic Prayer II is older than Eucharistic Prayer I."  (That sounds as silly as saying, "The New Mass is older than the Old Mass.")  As most of you know, what [...]

10 08, 2023

Modernism Always Includes Narcissism

By |2023-08-10T14:11:08+00:00August 10th, 2023|Theology|

When I first started finding all the corruption in the Catholic Church hierarchy, I actually bent-over backwards to blame everything except Vatican II.  (Yes, you read that correctly.)  I really didn't want to admit the entire Catholic Church on seven continents got overturned in the 1960s, so I started telling myself that the US bishops were bad... ah, but the rest of the world had implemented Vatican II in a much more conservative way! Of course, I soon found out in my travels that I was wrong.  The heresy of modernism came part-in-parcel with all the new sacraments and the new doctrine of ecumenism (read:  religious indifferentism) in every country [...]

23 05, 2023

How to Offer Yourself at Holy Mass

By |2023-05-20T01:18:49+00:00May 23rd, 2023|Theology|

As many of you know, the three parts of sacrifice as found in both the Old Testament and New Testament is 1) The offering and 2) The slaying and 3) the consummation of the victim. Regarding the second of those three, most of the Catholic world is unaware that the dual-consecration of the body and the blood entails the slaying. St. Gregory Nazianzus wrote, "The priest sunders with unbloody cut the body and blood of the Lord, using his voice as a sword." Keep in mind that St. Gregory was the Archbishop of Constantinople in the 4th century. That means he is very early and very Eastern in Church history, [...]

29 12, 2022

How to Learn the Low Mass

By |2022-12-28T14:27:18+00:00December 29th, 2022|Theology|

Nota Bene: The beginning of January was going to be for silent retreat, but I'm visiting a family member in the hospital. So, either way, there will be few blogs or podcasts for a little while. Please pray for us. Many people think I'm some traditional liturgy expert, but as you probably heard me say on previous podcasts, I learned French and Spanish and Portuguese in seminary because I just wanted to be a good Novus Ordo missionary priest one day.  In other words, I got into the priesthood for the salvation of souls, not to make a stink on liturgy debates.  As I've written before, it was only a [...]

25 08, 2022

American Mass Attendance Before and After “the Council.”

By |2022-09-04T14:09:49+00:00August 25th, 2022|Theology|

Photo credit above:  Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. A new CARA study quoting Gallup polls has recently published statistics on current American Catholicism as seen above. We have all known for awhile that there were more ex-Catholics than Catholics in the USA, but the spread is enormous in the above numbers that just came out in 2022. In one graphic from CARA (above chart) see especially that there's almost 113 million US Catholics baptized but only about 53 million of them even attempt to attend yearly Mass at Christmas and Easter. Another study (above) came out a few years ago showing the striking comparisons between the faith-based practices of Catholics who currently go to [...]

5 08, 2022

Be Rarely Angry but Never Arrogant About the Church Crisis

By |2022-08-03T23:12:27+00:00August 5th, 2022|Theology|

In full transparency, I do not categorize traditionalists as "joyless" any more.  The truth is that I find more joy in traditional communities than I do the normy Catholic world.  In fact, I currently find some of the highest levels of joy, happiness and fraternal charity in traditional communities than nearly any other community to which I am frequently exposed in the United States.  I would consider evangelical Christians way up there, too, actually. But "joy" doesn't matter too much, especially as we consider the Scriptures and the official ascetical theology of the Catholic Church.  Both teach that "gifts of the Holy Spirit" are given by God and they are [...]

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