One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic

“We should be introducing -- we were thinking -- in the Catechism of the Catholic Church the sin against ecology, ecological sin against the common home, because it is our duty.” So said Pope Francis in an off-the-cuff remark to a gathering of prosecutors and criminologists in Rome on November 15th.   According to the much-respected (among Modernists, anyway) America Magazine : Today's throwaway culture, as well as other "psycho-social phenomenon" pose threats to the common good while insidiously promoting a "culture of hate," he said. These threats, he added, often take the form of "symbols and actions that are typical of Nazism."... Chief among those crimes, he added, are acts that "can be considered as 'ecocide': the massive contamination of air, land and water resources, the large-scale destruction of flora and fauna, and any action capable of producing an ecological disaster or destroying an ecosystem." Pope Francis als...

This video from Dr. Anthony Stine of Return to Tradition will give you a pretty good summary:

Dr. Anthony Stine is a voice of sanity amidst the madness coming from Rome. Watch here .  https://youtu.be/AgKLdXhRuEQ

Hey there, friends!   I know you’re just counting the hours until the infamous Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon kicks off this week.   (If you’re not excited, then you simply haven’t been paying attention.)   This will be a game-changer for the Church.   If you’re a “Modern Catholic” type, this will be the big break you’ve been waiting for:   by approving lady deacons, married clergy, “eco theology,” and generally tapping into native pagan wisdom, we will accomplish many wonderful things: We’ll save the environment, and Mother Gaia will surely thank us for We’ll end the oppression of women because lady deacons will open the door for lady priestesses. Having elder married shamans saying Mass will allow them to impart ancient lost earth-wisdom on us.   The Church has been off-track from the beginning, don’t you know, and a little mysterious Amazon spirit-healing is just what the (witch)doctor ordered! Why, I can feel ...

No time to let up on our prayers...

Excerpt from remarks delivered by Michael Matt at the Voice of the Family conference in Rome, 4 October 2019. "We need to defend the doctrine of the Papacy.  We have to make sure in our resistance that, in our resistance to one pope that we do not do incalculable damage to the Papacy itself."

For anyone who might happen to be following the events leading up to the Amazon Synod (and there might not be too many; we Catholics can be a pretty complacent lot at times), I offer the following statement made by Cardinal Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider on 24 September. ------------------------------------------------------- A clarification about the meaning of fidelity to the Supreme Pontiff No honest person can anymore deny the almost general doctrinal confusion which is reigning in the life of the Church in our days. This is particularly due to ambiguities regarding the indissolubility of marriage, which is being relativized through the practice of the admittance of persons cohabitating in irregular unions to Holy Communion, due to the increasing approval of homosexual acts, which are intrinsically contrary to nature and contrary to the revealed will of God, due to errors regarding the uniqueness of the Our Lord Jesus Christ and His redemptive work, which is bein...

Are you praying about this? The Amazon Synod is something every Catholic should pay attention to...and pray about.

Hank Igitur just won't shut up.  A while back, he proposed a solution to the priest shortage described by the working document for the upcoming Amazon Synod. Well... that didn't go over so very well. Hank's received some feedback on his original video, which he shares with you here: It's important to view with profound gravity and concern the upcoming Synod on the Pan-Amazon... but ...sometimes a little bit of a different approach doesn't hurt either... The Amazon Synod:  Searching for Answers https://youtu.be/tMQmafL5N-M

The forty days of prayer and fasting for the Pan-Amazon Synod have begun.  I'm curious to know: Are any of the readers/participants/casual browsers here at OHCA participating in this prayer event? To what extent (if any) were you aware of the recommendations and goals put forth in the synod's working paper (the Instrumentum Laboris )? Are there any particular provisions in the working paper which you find particularly disturbing, or any provisions which sound like good ideas which should be explored further and eventually adopted/implemented? Is the Pan-Amazon Synod, in your opinion, a big deal, or is it one of those things where the bishops and participants will do what's best for the Church, and everything will work out? I really would like to know your opinions on the matter.  If you think I'm being shrill and unnecessarily alarmist, tell me.   Take a few moments to think about this synod.   I implore you, my fellow Catholics and readers at OHCA, to join ...

Great quote from the amazing G. K. Chesterton in his book Heretics … My objection to . . . the reassertors of the pagan ideal is, then, this. I accuse them of ignoring definite human discoveries in the moral world, discoveries as definite, though not as material, as the discovery of the circulation of the blood. We cannot go back to an ideal of reason and sanity. For mankind has discovered that reason does not lead to sanity. We cannot go back to an ideal of pride and enjoyment. For mankind has discovered that pride does not lead to enjoyment. . . . If they like, let them ignore these great historic mysteries—the mystery of charity, the mystery of faith. . . . But if we do pursue, as a society, the pagan ideal of a simple and rational self-completion we shall end where Paganism ended. I do not mean that we shall end in destruction. I mean that we shall end in Christianity.

J. R. R. Tolkien is for us Catholics what C. S. Lewis is for protestants: a master story teller who reveals the truths of the Faith through allegory and just darn good tales! In his works on Middle Earth (which are far vaster than The Hobbit and Ring Trilogy), there is the enduring theme of "the long defeat." During the course of this defeat which runs through thousands of years, there are tales of individual heroes who kept faith and were able to perform mighty deeds as a result. There's a lot of thoughtful comfort in his works to be found alongside the pure entertainment of it. I was delighted when Catholic apologist Matt Fradd posted an excerpt from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin, 1981). Here are some snippets, for those who enjoy snippet-browsing: ---------------------------------------------------- "You speak of 'sagging faith', however. That is quite another matter. In the last resort faith is an act of will, inspired by love. ...