Good Fruit of Francis’ Revolution – TLM Attendance Skyrocketing in US October 21, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, Christendom, fightback, FSSP, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, Latin Mass, Restoration, sanctity, the struggle for the Church, Tradition, Victory, Virtue.comments closed
+JMJ
Finally some hard numbers to put with the numerous anecdotes about rapidly increasing TLM attendance over the past few years. I know from surveys and speaking with many of the recent “converts” to the Traditional Latin Mass, many of these folks are seeking out sanity and good Catholic liturgy and doctrine directly as a result of the errors being taught in their former parishes, and the horrific example of Francis which is often cited in those former parishes as reasons for rejecting and contradicting the perennial belief and practice of the Church. Thus, in spite of himself, Francis and his cohort of aging hippies and Peronists are accomplishing much good in helping strengthen the Catholic counter-revolution.
The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter has put out some attendance numbers at a few representative parishes and they all show tremendous growth, whether very new or long and established. I do not have attendance numbers for the other Ecclesia Dei communities or diocesan TLMs, nor the SSPX, though on the latter I have had discussions with a half dozen or more people who frequent SSPX chapels who say they have seen solid growth in the past year or two.
Halfway through the FSSP’s annual October census, Fraternity parishes and chapels around the country report major increases in Sunday Mass attendance compared with last year.
Newer apostolates have seen dramatic growth, some doubling their numbers over the last year, such as Los Angeles, which went from 250 per Sunday to 500. The apostolate did not even have its own church until 2018, so finally settling down in a small church in San Fernando provided needed stability, contributing to the significant increase it saw this past year.
“The main obstacle right now is a lack of space,” said Fr. Federico Masutti, assistant pastor of St. Vitus, talking to the Missive over the summer. His words echo the sentiment of so many other FSSP apostolates that find themselves outgrowing their buildings, but it’s really a great problem to have.
“When we were at 200 people,” said pastor Fr. James Fryar, “we decided to add the fourth Mass, and just adding that one Mass, from one week to the next, another 200 people came.”
“The growth was amazing,” confirmed Fr. Masutti.
In Naples, Florida, the FSSP has been operating for less than two years, and is at nearly 400 people per Sunday, up over 20 percent from last year.
“A plethora of young families are coming, attracted by the sacred beauty and reverence of the Mass, the traditional catechesis and true parish family life,” said pastor Fr. Jonathan Romanoski…………
“It’s more than just the Latin Mass—they’re coming for the community life and all of the groups we have—for adults, for kids, for catechesis,” he said. “They come because we are two priests, we are a small community where everybody can get to know each other and the families can truly bond.”
Two new apostolates established last year—in the dioceses of Philadelphia and Providence, Rhode Island—have started off strong and now have 400 and 300 parishioners, respectively. Both locations have inherited magnificent churches that should accommodate their communities for a long time………..
……….Even apostolates that have been established for a long time (by FSSP standards) have seen significant increases, but most report constraints of space that inhibit their growth and they look forward to building or buying new churches.
St. Anne Parish, our apostolate in San Diego, for example, was established in 2008, and despite having a small church that can seat approximately 200 adults, had reached more than 800 parishioners by 2018 with three priests offering five Sunday Masses. Now, they are averaging over 1,000.
“At some of our Masses we will have as many as maybe 350 people and so not everyone fits and so people are actually sitting outside the doors looking in through open doors,” said pastor Fr. John Lyons.
Other long-established FSSP parishes that have seen strong growth include our first North American apostolate, Mater Dei in Dallas, established in 1991, which has seen its Sunday congregation grow 24 percent from 1250 to 1550 in the last year. [It’s way north of 1600 now and touching on 1800 some Sundays. It was about 200 in 2009.]
St. Joan of Arc Parish, our apostolate in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, has gone from 650 to 840 in the past two years, an increase of about 29 percent. Likewise, St. Francis de Sales in Atlanta, established in 1995, has grown 30 percent over the last year. In October of 2018, it averaged 460 people each Sunday; so far this month, it has over 600. +
Other established parishes like St. Rose Philippine in Kansas City have also grown a great deal.
Overall, it does seem the traditional Latin Mass continues to grow and thrive in virtually all locations where it has found a home. If you have news of your local TLM parish or diocesan parish offering a TLM, please share. This data is very helpful, and encourages others to seek out and experience the Mass of all ages. We’re not weird freaks! We have many good and devout souls and lots of normal and fun people! We’re all finding out way through this time of unprecedented darkness within and without Holy Mother Church as best we can. Most of all, we need to all get together and support each other, whether SSPX or ICRSS or FSSP or CMRI or whatever. Sure we may have differences, but what binds us together, and what threatens all of us, is much, much greater.
More to post later as I have time. Good news from Las Cruces which I hope to get to early this week, and a report on Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s spectacular Pontifical High Mass at Mater Dei in Irving on 19th Sunday after Pentecost, October 20 2019.
Notable Events: Blessed Karl Symposium in Dallas and Pontifical High Mass at Mater Dei October 15, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, Christendom, Dallas Diocese, episcopate, fightback, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, Latin Mass, Restoration, Society, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
The first Pontifical High Mass, of which I am aware, in Dallas for over 50 years is to be held this Sunday, October 20th at Mater Dei Latin Mass parish in Irving. The Mass is at 9am. The 11:30 high Mass is cancelled for this day. Principal celebrant of the Mass will be His Excellency the Auxiliary Bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, Athanasius Schneider. Seating will be very limited. Seating opens at the conclusion of the 7am Mass and will probably be filled within minutes. There is spillover seating in the hall and cry room. The Mass is projected to last approximately 3 hours.
The reason for Bishop Schneider’s visit is the Blessed Karl Symposium being held the previous day at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Dallas. This is an annual symposium which began last year and is attracting significant personages of the Church and the former imperial family. Bishop Schneider will be the keynote speaker at this symposium. The local man who has gone to great effort to begin these symposiums last year and greatly expand the one this year is to be greatly commended. This kind of work contributes significantly to the re-seeding of the great Catholic Tradition and the forgotten patrimony of the Church. It appears that tickets for this year’s symposium, like last’s, are sold out.
Nevertheless, details below.
Finally, a brief talk from Bishop Schneider, given at Rome very recently, and attended by Cardinals Muller, Burke, Arinze, and others. Michael Matt presents this as a budding “resistance movement” to the current pontificate. If so, I’m afraid it may be several years late, but better now than never, I suppose. The talk by Bishop Schneider makes clear that he, for one, sees grave theological delicts emanating from the current synod and rejects both its premises and its pre-determined outcomes (barring, of course, some dramatic divine intervention).
The Mass is likely to be crazy but I’ve never been to a pontifical high Mass and I wouldn’t miss this one! I will try to record the sermon and share it with you if the quality is passable. I have to think at least a little bit of Bishop Schneider’s talk below will wind up in the sermon we hear on Sunday, God willing.
Excellent Video Series on Antonio Salazar September 26, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, Christendom, General Catholic, Glory, history, Restoration, Society, the struggle for the Church, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was the leader, some would say dictator, of Portugal from 1934 until his death in 1968. Unlike Franco’s Spain, his Catholic corporatist Estado Novo (New State) survived him by several years, finally being wrecked by a coup of mid-grade hard leftist officers of Portugal’s military in 1974.
Salazar and the Estado Novo offer an interesting, and much more Catholic, alternative to what the predominant culture tells us are possible viable forms of government since the mid-20th century – hard leftism or liberal/libertine capitalism. I’ve never been fully on board with such corporatist/distributist economic systems as outlined by Chesterton and Belloc (among many others) in the first half of the 20th century, as they seemed a bit too utopian to be practical. But Salazar’s Portugal probably came the closest of any deliberately Catholic state (deliberate in the sense of being constructed to comport as closely as possible to the Church’s social and general magisterial beliefs up to that point in time) in achieving a reasonable mean – being Catholic, but also relatively prosperous, relatively free, and relatively non-tyrannical. Some of my primary complaints against distributism is that it seemed a fine system for the late 18th century, but probably not too well suited for the 21st century. Salazar’s Portugal serves as probably the best argument against that complaint.
Regarding a tyrannical state, Salazar’s Portugal was much less violent, as a government, than was the corollary next door in Franco’s Spain. Of course, the Estado Novo had the incalculable benefit of not being founded in the midst of a brutal civil war. Even still, however, there was a very powerful leftist faction in Portugal, which had held power several times in the decades preceding 1934, and remained a serious threat through much of Salazar’s time in power. However, by judicously practicing Catholic Doctrine, the Salazar regime only put about 5 souls to death throughout it’s nearly 40 year existence – a far cry from the tens of thousands that died, or were killed, in Spain, even after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Now, I’m quite sympathetic to Franco’s government and think its hand was forced by the radical, unyielding leftists it had to deal with – these leftists started the Civl War by attacking the Catholic Faith and massacring hundreds of priests and religious – but it is still an impressive achievement. Salazar had very nearly as divided and fractious a country to manage as did Franco, but managed to do so with far less bloodshed.
Unfortunately, the quite-detailed video series I post below is not complete. It only goes until about World War II. Many of Salazar’s greatest social achievements – the economic rebuilding of Portugal along Catholic corporatist lines – had to wait until after World War II. The author of the series promises that some new uploads will be coming this fall and winter – I will be sure to share those when they become available.
For now, you can learn a great deal about an important, but deliberately forgotten, leader on the world stage for much of the 20th century. I say he was deliberately forgotten, because Salazar’s Portugal, like (to varying degrees) Franco’s Spain, and Dolfuss’ and Schussnigg’s Austria, and a few other locales, truly do serve as contrary examples to what we are told was the “only sane choice” in the “inevitable” liberal capitalist state. Not just contrary examples, but examples that, in many ways, are more just, more moral, and – it can be argued – much more conducive to the good of souls than the decaying, decadent, corrupt states we find ourselves in throughout the West today. In terms of tyranny, how many people does the United States kill each year, either here at home or abroad? I’m no opponent of the death penalty, but it does make for an illuminating contrast.
I hope you enjoy these videos as much as I have. Since these videos are difficult to find on Youtube, and since, for some reason, many do not show up on the channel’s playlist, I post them all below. I knew comparitively little about Salazar’s Portugal before watching these, and most of what I had learned was harshly critical, so these videos will hopefully prove enlightening for you as well. I know you’ll think, there’s too many, it’ll take too long, history is boooring!!! Do yourself a favor and watch these, at one sitting or over several months, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, especially if you have any interest in Church history:
SSPX to Build Huge New Parish in St. Mary’s, Kansas July 14, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in Art and Architecture, awesomeness, Christendom, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, history, Latin Mass, Liturgy, Restoration, SSPX, Tradition.comments closed
Two things immediately come to mind after viewing this video on Rorate Caeli – 1. I’ll have to check this place out, I’ve never been to St. Mary’s, and 2., St. Mary’s is way, way bigger than Mater Dei. 6 Masses a day with one in a gymnasium seating what looks like close to 600 people, the video sort of vaguely mentions 4000 people attending St. Mary’s. I don’t know if that means every Sunday, but with Mater Dei averaging about 1500 on a Sunday St. Mary’s is much larger. And, I am not surprised, it is in a sense SSPX-town USA, and has been around 13 or 31 years longer than the FSSP parish in the Dallas Diocese. I had long suspected that if there was a TLM parish with higher attendance on Sunday than Mater Dei, it would be St. Mary’s.
Well, God bless them, and may He bless this work. Whatever one thinks of the SSPX – and I for one am very grateful for Archbishop Lefebvre and the priestly society he started and maintained, since without it the TLM and the entire traditional practice of the Faith would probably have been expunged from the Church – this is a huge step forward for the entire traditional movement. This is a cathedral-class building being built for the sole use of the Traditional Latin Mass and the traditional practice of the Faith. It’s a huge undertaking and requires at least $30 million (construction budgets have a tendency to go up as construction advances, but this crew looks like they are really focused on keeping a lid on expenses). And, I must say, it looks like this new church when built will be architecturally and artistically significant. I do pray it has outstanding stained glass and other aspects of liturgical art – there is a great deal available on the market these days, with so many ancient and beautiful churches being razed in Europe and parts of the US.
It looks less and less likely that we will have anything similar (certainly not on such a scale) locally. The funding just isn’t there. Well, a new church will happen in God’s good time. If you feel inspired to help bring a substantial new traditional Catholic parish to fruition, you can donate here.
Extraordinary Talk on Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus by Fr. Isaac Mary Relyea April 2, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, catachesis, Christendom, fightback, Four Last Things, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, Latin Mass, manhood, priests, religious, sanctity, Society, Spiritual Warfare, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
I really like Father Isaac Mary Relyea, and here he delivers an exceedingly entertaining and watchable 80 minute talk on perhaps the most neglected, misunderstood, and deliberately ignored doctrine in modern Church life, Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (EENS), or there is no salvation outside the Church. Father approaches the topic from its innumerable and unprecedentedly strong supports in the history of dogmatic theology, but also from a profoundly practical and pastoral -in the true sense of the word – standpoint.
Many faithful Catholics today have family members who are outside visible communion with Holy Mother Church. The doctrine of EENS causes those of us with most or all of our family outside the Church grave concern. But there are reasons to hope, and Father elucidates those. However, this is not the false hope of the modernists and indifferentists, who pretend that it makes no difference to God whether one exists inside the sole ark of salvation He instituted for men’s salvation. It is hope in the goodness and love of God, which is infinite, and in the power of prayer and pen ance, which exist and work outside of our narrow conceptions of time.
I pray you find this sermon as enjoyable and edifying as I did. Please pray for Father Isaac Mary Relyea and all good, faithful priests, they are under the most extreme attack and need our prayers and support.
There were other talks from The Fatima Center conference held in Houston last month that I hope to post later, including some from Father Michael Rodriguez. My esteem for The Fatima Center only continues to grow as I see the excellent work they are doing for the good of souls and the restoration of our Holy Mother the Church.
Rejection of Christianity at the Heart of the West’s Self-Loathing Death Wish August 15, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in Christendom, cultural marxism, disaster, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, Immigration, paganism, persecution, sadness, sickness, Society, unadulterated evil.comments closed
Not much commentary, I’ve covered all this before, but the author here makes some good points, and reaches the obvious conclusion – the reason the West is in such a state of moral confusion and is possessed of a seeming death wish, unable/unwilling to defend itself, see the threats it is bringing into its very heart (islam), is because it has turned its back on its very nature, which is Christian (Catholic-Christian, to be exact). Those who have rejected Christianity have tried every conceivable alternative, and all of them having failed, they would rather die, and see the whole construct die, than admit their failure and their adherence to a patently failed ideology.
For a quick addendum, see the video below, where Australian leftists (which the large majority are) express their horror at the idea of allowing persecuted whites into their country, and especially their revulsion at allowing Arab Christians from Syria in (see 1:28-35 below). They are ready to surrender, to give the keys over to someone else, someone who still has the courage of their convictions. Amazing, but true. That is how much their false ideology, their diabolical narcissism, means to them. They are ready to see millions die, including themselves, rather than give it up. And note, all the people in the vid below were attending a rally in Australia in favor of mass muslim immigration to Australia, under the guise of “refugee” resettling, which, as you can see, they care nothing for. They don’t give a rat’s rear end about refugees, they want to see Australia and the West remade into a muslim-dominated non-white state.
I do not know how to deal with such people. What do you do with the 10, or 20, or 50, or 80% turned traitor and destroyer in your midst?!? And bear in mind, these people may be fools, but they are by and large not dumb. They know what they want, and what they are calling for – destruction of the West, so long as they believe they can maintain their ease and comfort. They had no kids (speaking broadly), so damn the future.
Speaking of self-loathing death wishes, a reader sent me the cartoon below, and it’s quite apropos. Same crowd, different venue, they all want to see Christendom gone, ,since it doesn’t align with their diabolically informed ideology:
Islam is the State Religion of Britain, While the Secular Pagan Religion Increasingly Falls Apart April 23, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, catachesis, Christendom, disaster, Ecumenism, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, Immigration, persecution, Revolution, scandals, secularism, sickness, Society, unbelievable BS.comments closed
A couple of brief videos for you, one from a fairly unlikely source, a professor of physics at UC-San Diego who presents an argument that modern science’s attempt to explain all creation through natural processes absent God is becoming increasingly frayed and desperate. While it is not stated in the video, the key fact that is driving belief in the multi-verse is detailed study that has shown that for macro-evolution to work, and to have resulted in the diversity and advanced forms of life presently on earth, far, far more time would have to have elapsed than actually has, even by the enormous ages of “scientific time” (going back over 10 billion years) to have resulted through Darwinian “natural selection.” That is because the “evolution” that can be actually observed directly takes place so agonizingly slow (for the scienticians), and major variations like severe mutations are almost always evolutionary dead ends, not major breakthroughs.
So major public scientists like Steven Weinberg and Steven Hawking have opined that, since evolution must be true (it is the cardinal belief the God-denying scientists, basically taking the place of God in this mode of thinking), but not nearly enough time has passed for all the multivariate forms of life now found on earth, there must be an infinity of universes out there (existing so that every possibility that can occur in a given situation does occur in one universe or another – like Star Trek’s Mirror, Mirror episode), each one somehow invisibly interconnected with the other, so that there is now plenty of time – indeed, an infinity of time – for evolution to take place. Voila! Problem solved. But as the professor notes below, there is no way to prove these other universes exist, and thus, belief in the multiverse is just another article of faith for the God-denying sexular pagans (which, I would argue, evolution is, as well, since the “evidence” there is largely contrived, or fully explainable by other means):
In the next video, a young woman in Britain who has received numerous death threats for having the temerity to criticize islam (the invasion and subsequent conversion of Christendom by islam is far more advanced in Europe than here) is told by the state – in the form of the police – that it is acceptable to criticize Christianity but not islam. Mind, she has not been told this by one police official, but by several. Coupled with the state’s continued cover-up of muslim pedophile rape gangs that pray exclusively on non-muslim girls, general prohibition by cultural elites of any public criticism of islam as “hate speech,” and a growing kow-towing to islam in virtually every major sphere of life, it appears the successful devolution of Britain from “Our Lady’s Dowry” to muslim despotism is moving apace. Note that gutting of Christianity both in concept/meaning and unity through the protestant revolution was a central part of this process, since protestantism led to a self-serving conception of God/Christ and our relation to them, which led to collapse of belief, which led to rationalism/endarkenment values, which led to where we are today. Painting with a broad brush but I’ve written about this before.
Britain is simply ahead of the US by about 30 years, but the exact same process is at work, here. Why do the powers that be allow hundreds of thousands of muslims to emigrate to this country a year (mostly legally), while legal immigration from the same countries for Christians, or from Christian-majority nations, is extremely arduous? It’s all about replacing the native population, and, more importantly, the native culture, with a multi-culti dystopia. Given the paltry progress on the wall so far, this nation is going to be a disaster for our children and grandchildren to inhabit (sorry for the bare shoulders, it ends pretty quick):
This ascendance of fealty, perhaps obeisance is a better word, towards islam, is a classic case of seeing cultural suzerainty in action. Even though islam has grown at an explosive rate in Britain, it still constitutes a small minority. Muslims constitute barely 5% of the British population, but their political and especially cultural influence far outweighs their numbers. Why is this? It’s because few in the “Christian” majority have any kind of certainty in their beliefs, while the muslims are very convicted. Thus a small minority is dictating much of the cultural/societal norm to the vast majority, which, thus far, has gone rather sheepishly along with this, and has managed to completely co-opt the political class and cultural elites. In terms of actual numbers, there may be far more devout muslims in Britain today than there are devout Christians. Certainly, there are many muslims quite willing to impose their culture and their moral norms on Britain, and very few British willing to defend their rapidly deteriorating legacy culture.
Will the same happen in the United States? I think an argument can be built that it already is. Secularization and collapse of Christian belief and practice has not gone so far in the US as it has in Britain, Canada, and the rest of the West, but it is still occurring, and rapidly. Each generation becomes successively less Christian and, what is more, convicted in their beliefs. I fear the process in the US could be especially ugly, since there may be enough Christian conviction, defusely spread, in the country, to lead to much more open conflict with the implacable demands of islam, which asserts its cultural dominance wherever it gains enough numbers (and, as we see, those numbers are very far from requiring a majority). And Trump’s rise and election was due at least in part to resentment over the seeming flood of muslims into this country along with the unconstrained Hispanic immigration. But that, I fear, will just be the beginning. The elites seem determined to play this most massive social experiment in history out, even though all of history and ethnography shouts that diversity plus proximity virtually always equals conflict, and very bloody conflict.
Perhaps that’s the end goal after all. You can’t get to a “perfect” world population of 2 billion without breaking a few eggs, or heads.
By the way, on evolution, has anyone read Repairing the Breach? I got a copy for Christmas but it will be some time before I can devote the effort to reading it. It’s a massive book, really like a textbook, and some reviews claim it to be THE most thorough attack on evolution that has yet been written. I’m already pretty tied down in reading at the moment, trying to finish Solzhenitsyn, and that is no trivial task, in itself. I think I’ve brought this up before, but if anyone has read Repairing the Breach and would like to provide a review, I’d very much appreciate it.
Some Helpful Prayers to St. Joseph April 23, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, catachesis, Christendom, Domestic Church, family, General Catholic, Glory, Good St. Joseph, Grace, Interior Life, Saints, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
I try to read at least one book on Good St. Joseph every year, and this year I found a very good one at the Our Lady’s Army Conference in DFW last month. It’s The Divine Favors Granted to St. Joseph by Pere Binet. It’s a very nice little book, containing more than just the usual
history of devotion to St. Joseph or his small role in Scripture, but it is an extended examination of the divine favors he received as revealed through the revelations to various other Saints and the thoughts of many Church Fathers on the subject.
The book closes with a series of prayers to St. Joseph, some of which were new to me, at least, and I felt several of them deserved to be shared with a wider audience. I will repeat again, as I always do when mentioning St. Joseph, my full concurrence with the great Saint and Doctor Teresa of Avila, that St. Joseph is an unbelievably powerful intercessor and helper to souls in need (which, of course, is all of us), and is unwaveringly loyal in seeing our requests through to fruition, provided they are in accord with God’s Will. Just last night and today I had direct evidence of St. Joseph’s total effectiveness as an intercessor. He’s especially helpful for husbands and fathers, but he helps all souls, of course. He and Our Lady should be our first recourse when we have particular needs to offer up to Our Blessed Lord.
The first prayer is a prayer for the welfare of Holy Mother Church:
To thee, Blessed Joseph, do we have recourse in our tribulation, and having implored the help of thy thrice-holy Spouse, we confidently invoke thy patronage also. By that charity wherewith thou wast united to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, and by that fatherly affection with which thou didst embrace the Child Jesus, we beseech thee and we humbly pray, that thou wouldst look graciously upon the inheritance which Jesus Christ hath purchased by His Blood, and assist us in our needs by thy power and strength. Most watchful guardian of the Holy Family, protect the chosen people of Jesus Christ; keep far from us, most loving father, all blight of error and corruption; mercifully assist us from Heaven, most mighty defender, in his our conflict with the powers of darkness; and, even as of old thou didst rescue the Child Jesus from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity; keep us one and all under thy continual protection, that, supported by thine example and thine assistance, we may be enabled to lead a holy life, die a happy death, and come at least ot the possession of everlasting blessedness in Heaven. Amen.
Next, a Prayer for the Triumph of the Church. I can think of few prayers more needed in this time.
O glorious St. Joseph, chosen by God to be the foster-father of Jesus, the chaste spouse of Mary ever Virgin, and the head of the Holy Family, and then appointed by the Vicar of Christ to be the heavenly patron and defender of the Church founded by Jesus, most confidently do I 
implore thee at this moment thy powerful aid for all the Church Militant on earth. Do thou shield with thy truly paternal love especially the Supreme Pontiff and all the bishops and priests who are in union with the Holy See of Peter from all error, stain of corruption, and deviation from the Truth of Jesus Christ. Be the defender of all who labor for souls amidst the trials and tribulations of this life, and cause all the peoples of the earth to submit themselves in a docile spirit to that Church which is the sole ark of salvation for all men.
Be pleased also, dear St. Joseph, to accept this dedication of myself which I now make unto thee. I dedicate myself wholly to thee, that thou mayest ever be my father, my patron and may guide in the way of salvation. Obtain for me great purity of heart and a fervent devotion to the interior life. Grant that, following thine example, I may direct all my actions to the greater glory of God, in union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary and in union with thee. Finally, pray for me, that I may be a partaker in the peace and joy which were thine at the hour of thy holy death. Amen.
Prayer for a Happy Death. I’ve seen similar prayers before, but I found this one to be especially beautiful: 
O glorious St. Joseph, behold I choose thee today for my special patron in life and at the hour of my death. Preserve and increase in me the spirit of prayer and fervor in the service of God. Remove far from me every kind of sin; obtain for me that my death may not come upon me unawares, but that I may have time to confess my sins sacramentally and have access to all the aids Holy Mother Church makes available to souls departing this life. May I bewail all my sins with a most perfect understanding and a most sincere contrition, in order htat I may breathe forth my soul into the hands of Jesus and Mary. Amen.
Finally, and I think also so vital in this time, a prayer to St. Joseph for purity. No soul, saving except Our Lady, practiced purity and perfect continence so well as St. Joseph, who, though married, abstained from the marital bed and never engaged in acts suitable for the creation of new life. I pray that St. Joseph may intercede with Our Blessed Lord to raise up many more such souls in this time of mass lasciviousness:
Saint Joseph, father and guardian of virgins, into whose faithful keeping were entrusted Innocence Itself, Christ Jesus, and Mary, the Virgin of virgins and sinless Mother of God, I pray and beseech thee, through Jesus and Mary, those pledges so dear to thee, to intercede for me that I may be kept from all uncleanness, and to grant that my mind may be untainted, my heart pure and my body chaste; help me always to serve Jesus and Mary in perfect chastity. Amen.
———-End———–
I pray you find these prayers useful! As for me, I plan to make the Prayer for the Triumph of the Church a daily prayer of mine. It’s not about what’s good for the earthly glory of the Church, but what is good for souls.
Some Wonderful Bits of Catholic Culture April 4, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in Art and Architecture, awesomeness, Basics, catachesis, Christendom, Ecumenism, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, history, Latin Mass, sanctity, the struggle for the Church, Tradition, Virtue.comments closed
I’ve found a “new” channel on Youtube called Holy Faith TV. It’s not that new, it’s been around almost a year, but it’s new to me.
They’ve got a lot of great traditional Catholic content and some really outstanding history. How about this incredible color video of Venerable Pius XII:
And here is a video from what was then a mainstream educational film company on the jubilee year of 1950. Can you imagine Scholastic doing a reverential and respectful video on the Church today? How much, and how much for the worse, our society has changed since then.
“…….here lies a spiritual power that no godless philosophy may hope to vanquish.” Take it to heart, leftists!
If an audience featuring Pius XII wasn’t good enough, how about Mass from 1948, offered in St. Peter’s. Sadly it is in black and white:
And here you go, marking the end of glory and the beginning of the auto-demolition of the Faith, a film on the death of Pius XII and coronation of John XXIII, before the fanon and sede gestatoria were scrapped by John’s successor:
It’s not all from the 50s. There is content dating at least back to Saint Pius X. And some of it is more modern commentary, from a wide diversity of sources, from people known well to this blog like Fr. Michael Rodriguez and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, to more esoteric sources. I can’t say I’ve watched much of the commentary, but as for the historical stuff, I love it. So much more like that!
Apparently Youtube contains just part of the content, there is a website that ostensibly has more but I haven’t really had time to check it out. Perhaps you will, and if you do, feel free to share anything of interest you may find!
As always, of course my happiness at finding this channel is not necessarily an endorsement of everything on it. But I think there is quite a bit good to find there.
And it’s not all strictly Catholic. There’s actually quite a bit from the Orthodox Church on the channel. For an example, here is Patriarch Kirill, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, taking on the cultural masters in a way the last six popes have generally failed to do, with occasional exceptions from John Paul II and Benedict. In fact, he proclaims a truth that is readily apparent to most believing Christians of any Church, sect, or stripe: godless elites want to destroy Christianity:
Dr. Christopher Dawson on the Fundamental Anti-Christian Religious Nature of the Left February 22, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, catachesis, Christendom, cultural marxism, different religion, error, General Catholic, history, horror, persecution, Revolution, scandals, secularism, self-serving, Society, unadulterated evil.comments closed
Dr. Christopher Dawson was one of the greatest Catholic historians and sociologists of the modern era, a man capable of amassing voluminous knowledge and collating it down to a sensible, digestible whole that relatively educated masses could imbibe. He wrote a number of books, mostly now held by Ignatius (which makes me wonder the degree to which they have been edited for content uncomfortable to the post-conciliar zeitgeist) but there are other titles available from other sources, and you can still find pre-conciliar copies of his works every now and then.
One of the most interesting of his works was The Gods of Revolution, which argued that the French Revolution – the progenitor of the modern Left and all subsequent revolutionary movements – was primarily motivated by the desire to promulgate a new religion and moral order for society, both of which were antithetical to the hated religion and moral order of Catholicism and the Ancien Regime. Now this realization may be old hat to many readers, and Dawson was hardly the first to make this claim, but in an age where history and science are dealt with, especially in the academic sense, from an overwhelmingly materialist and rationalist perspective, Dawson’s analysis is both refreshing and helpful. I think there some gems in the excerpts below that may help you in your exchanges with the forces of revolution/post-modernism you may encounter.
Or, it was at least interesting to me, and interesting enough to post, so I shall make you suffer through it, if you read to the end. The excerpts below come from pages 65-66 and 84-85 of this short book (the excerpt starts rather abruptly, discussing the Jacobin Clubs, the focal point of French revolutionary ferment, as being also the religious center of that movement):
The clubs were in fact the churches of the new religion. “How was the Christian religion established?” asks a Jacobin writer. “By the preaching of the apostles of the Gospel. How can we firmly establish the [new French] Constitution? By the mission of the apostles of liberty and equality. Each [Jacobin club] should take charge of the neighboring country districts. It is enough to send an enlightened and zealous patriot with instructions which he will adapt to the locality; he should also provide himself with a copy of the Declaration of the Rights [of Man] , the Constitution, the Almanack du Pere Gerard [a scurrilous source of anti-Church calumnies], and a good tract against fanaticism, and a good model of a pike. [I’m sure you can imagine what that is for. But it might be helpful to ponder who the cult of liberty was spread in our own nation, and who the apostles were of that new religion, whether its founders intended it to be one or not, it has taken on many overtones of religion nonetheless.]
In many respects the clubs had inherited and absorbed the traditions of eighteenth century Freemasonry………[The clubs] possessed the same ideal of optimistic deism and claimed in the same way as the Freemasons to represent the fulfillment of the Christian ideals of fraternity, charity, and morality……….But the religion of the Jacobins was a far more definite and dogmatic theory than that of the Masons had ever been. From the first it possessed its creed in the Declaration of Rights and its scriptures on the Social Contract and it gradually developed a regular cultus and ritual centering round the Altar of the Fatherland, the Tree of Liberty, the Book of the Constitution, and addressed to deified abstractions like Reason, Liberty, Nature, and the Fatherland [Which were precisely the objects antichrist directed the false religion of satanic-dominated humankind in Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World]…….[[this new revolutionary religion] was a religion of human salvation, the salvation of the world by the power of man set free by Reason. The Cross has been replaced by the Tree of Liberty, the Grace of God by the Reason of Man, and Redemption by Revolution. [And here I think Dawson gives as good a description of the totality of the opposition of the new religion of sexular pagan leftism to Christianity as I’ve read. Benson does an excellent job of prognosticating how this new secular religion will move as it seeks to replace Christianity, and forecasts a sad and infinitely trying future for the Church and faithful souls. What Benson did not predict was that virtually the entire institutional Church might join the false cult of man.]
This creed was by no means peculiar to the Jacobins; it as common to all the liberal idealists from the Illuminati to Blake, and from Shelley to Victor Hugo. But with the Jacobin Society it acquired the external organization of a sect, with a strict discipline, a rigid standard of orthodoxy, and a fanatical intolerance to other creeds. From the first the Jacobins had thrown themselves into the persecution of the Church with the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and the resultant conflict with the nonjuring Catholics was largely responsible for the sectarian bitterness and persecuting spirit of the Jacobin Society. [today, that spirit has been taken up by the more leftward segments of the democrat party in this country and numerous other parties in the West in the various parliamentary democracies, with the same persecuting spirit and the same fanatical adherence to leftist orthodoxy. In fact, Leftism has continued a steady process of metastasizing, growing ever more extreme in belief and in the amoral society they wish to achieve.]
…………[Thus] the Revolution was no longer satisfied with the liberal Catholicism of the Constitutional Church [the false, heretical, Gallican state “church” set up with the help of apostate bishops and priests who feared men more than God, just as Francis seeks to support in China today], it had come to regard Christianity itself as a counter-revolutionary force which must be destroyed in order to make way for the new religion of humanity. As early as 26 September 1792 Fouche’ had announced at Nevers that he thought it was his mission “to substitute teh wroship of the Republic and natural morality for the superstitious cults to which the people still unfortunately adhere,” and in the following month at Lyons he staged an elaborate anti-Christian demonstration in which a donkey wearing a cope and mitre dragged a missal and the Gospels through the streets. During the autumn all the churches in Paris were closed, Notre Dame became the Temple of Reason, and the Constitutional “bishop” of Paris, Gobel, with his leading clergy, made a public renunciation of their ministry at the bar of the Convention………..
——–End Quote——
There is much more that is great in the book, but Dawson writes compactly and densely, making it difficult to pull out excerpts that make much sense on their own. I’ve read three books by Dawson now and have enjoyed them a great deal, but I am looking forward to something a bit more polemical in Coulombe. But that will be some months off, I have some other history to go through first, including a study of the man who set the entire rationalist/materialist/leftist train in motion, Luther.
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