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February 2025 Contents

Reflecting on Twenty-five Years of Tradition

Brian McCall

As we are now in the early days of 2025 as well as the Jubilee year, it is a good time to pause and take stock of what has happened in the Church in the last 25 years, since the last Jubilee. 

Tradition in 2000

What was the state of Tradition and the Church in the year 2000?  After the Y2K hoax was exposed as a non-event, the Traditionalist movement began the year 2000 with no sign that much would change.  John Paul II was still the pope.  The early expectations for his papacy that he would restore tradition and end the experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s had long been dispelled.  He had already performed a public violation of the First Commandment at the Assisi hootenanny and gave the nod for women and girl altar boys (or altar serviettes) at the Novus Ordo Mass.  He had refused to implement the conclusion of the Commission of Nine Cardinals that the Traditional Mass was not and could not be suppressed.  He allowed heretics and modernists to go unpunished (with only a few mild slaps on the wrist like in the case of Hans Kung)[i] but hurled a decree of excommunication at the 1988 Episcopal Consecrations. 

In the 12 years since Ecclesia Dei Adflicta there had been virtually no communication between the Roman authorities and the Society of St. Pius X.  The Vatican policy seemed to be a two-pronged approach: (1) ignore the existence of the SSPX and its continual growth in vocations and geographic reach and (2) place Ecclesia Dei Community priests next door to major SSPX centers to lure away the faithful (Post Falls Idaho and St. Mary’s Kansas being two of the first in the US). Given the nascent size of the Ecclesia Dei communities there were not enough to play this role and so the Vatican quietly encouraged diocesan bishops to use the language in the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei to set up indult Traditional Mass communities.  Technically Ecclesia Dei did not change any laws or rules about the Traditional Mass.  It simply asked the bishops to make a wide and generous application of the 1984 indult that required those using the Ancient Mass to affirm their acceptance of Vatican II and the New Mass.  Thus, in some dioceses, bishops permitted some Masses, but the effects were inconsistent around the world. 

The Ecclesia Dei communities (foremost of which is the Fraternity of St. Peter) had spent 12 years growing from their humble beginnings and setting up all the infrastructure they abandoned when they accepted recognition from Rome.  Yet, after 12 years, the tenuousness of their position had begun to be noticed.  The bishop promised to them in 1988 never materialized and they were told simply to rely on Conciliar bishops for the sacraments.  Most alarming, the Vatican intervened in 1999 to overturn the valid election of the Superior General of the FSSP (Father Josef Bisig, one of the priests who left the SSPX after the Consecrations) because he favored the wing of the FSSP priests who refused to use the new Mass or concelebrate with the diocesan bishop.  The Vatican imposed an unelected superior who both favored the 16 signatories to a letter to Rome complaining that they were not permitted to occasionally use the New Mass.  The imposed superior had also expressed his opinion that the minor orders no longer existed and the ceremonial conferring was simply play-acting. 

[i] Notwithstanding Kung’s continual teaching of heresy, all the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith did was tell him he could not teach on the Catholic faculty of the University of Tubingen.  Kung simply moved his office over to the secular side and continued to teach exactly the same errors as a priest in good standing.  A mild inconvenience at most is all that occurred. 

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Synods Through the Ages

By Phillip Campbell

Pope Francis certainly loves his synods. The year after he ascended the Chair of St. Peter, we saw the 2014 Synod on the Family, which produced Amoris Laetitia. The year 2018 saw the eminently forgettable Synod on the Youth, wherein an assemblage of finger-wagging octogenarians told the Church to “get with the times.” The following year was the Synod on the Amazon, the scandal of Pachamama, and the memorable tossing of the idol into the Tiber. Not content with his achievements thus far, Francis next launched the multi-year Synod on Synodality. Lasting from 2021 to 2024, this final synod seems destined to become history’s longest meeting about a meeting.

Of course, these general synods did not begin with Pope Francis. Benedict XVI held five synods; John Paul II presided over a whopping thirteen synods during his twenty-seven-year pontificate, some of which gave us memorable documents like Familiaris Consortio, the post-synodal exhortation of the 1980 synod. The permanent Papal Synod of Bishops has been a fixture of the Church since 1967, when the first Ordinary Synod of Bishops was summoned, calling for the revision of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. Since 1967, there has been an Ordinary Synod on average every three and a half years—not counting the three Extraordinary Synods held in 1969, 1985, and 2014. In 1959, Melkite Patriarch Maximos IV advocated for a permanent synod of bishops to surround the pope, a position he argued for at Vatican II when, in 1963, he proposed that “a relatively small group of bishops…with rotating membership would always be in session in Rome to assist the pope. They would work with the pope in collegial fashion.”[i] Paul VI would establish the Papal Synod of Bishops in 1965, an institution, he said, which was meant to be a continuation of the work of the Second Vatican Council:

It was also the Ecumenical Council that gave Us the idea of permanently establishing a special Council of bishops, with the aim of providing for a continuance after the Council of the great abundance of benefits that We have been so happy to see flow to the Christian people during the time of the Council as a result of Our close collaboration with the bishops.[ii]

Pope Francis is thus not wrong when he characterizes the post-Conciliar Church as “synodal,” for this was the vision of Paul VI in instituting the Synod of Bishops to begin with.

My guess is that most readers are sick and tired of hearing the word synod; I know I am. For the last decade, it has been little more than a euphemism for mischief. But the modern fad of synodality has little to do with the synods held from time to time throughout Church history, which were of very great benefit to the Church in former days. In this article, we will review the history of synods in the Catholic Church, studying their use in earlier centuries to understand how this valued institution was utilized in better days.

[i] John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA., 2010), 191

[ii] Paul VI, Apostolica sollicitudo, Introduction

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Taking Sides: The New Personnel of the Francis Pontificate

By Murray Rundus

“Personnel is policy”-Traditionalists are all too familiar with this quote, especially in the Francis Pontificate, and for good reason. The heart of the traditionalist message is profoundly realist as it recognizes that ideas only become tangible when brought into being by an agent, someone who acts. The traditionalist message does not confine its critiques to hypotheticals or interpretations of documents. Rather, it rests on a sharp critique of what the Church and State are here and now with clear precedents in mind as to what they should return to. Our adversaries also understand this, they are not interested in simply making Church teaching ambiguous so that they can merely speculate about their heterodox ideas in academic circles. No, instead the Progressivists seek to make their vision of Catholicism an undeniable reality, one that confronts our senses, asserts itself in law, and commands with authority. We still hear the dying gasps of the ‘Reform of the Reform’ and ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’ movements speaking with their messages that the Post-Conciliar Church canbe reconciled with Tradition, or that it might be in continuity with the past. This message is infinitely weaker than the firm statement that it is not, followed up by an implementation of the ‘New Pentecost’ at Vatican II which makes this fact undeniable. This is the context and vision with which we must view the new personnel decisions of the Francis Pontificate. 

Seeing through the Narratives: Two Bishops

Much of Church media exploded in a storm concerning the appointment of Cardinal McElroy to the Episcopal See of Washington DC, and the coinciding forced resignation of Bishop Dominique-Rey in the southern French diocese of Fréjus-Toulon. The narrative concerning Cardinal McElroy was that this was Pope Francis’ counter to President Trump’s immigration agenda, as Cardinal McElroy has been very pro-migrant in the past. The corresponding narrative concerning Bishop Dominique-Rey was that he was sacked for his allowance of the Traditional Mass. These narratives deserve closer examination.

Cardinal McElroy: A Company Man

Regarding Cardinal McElroy, it is true that he has been one of the most adamant supporters of the invasion of the United States, largely due to his time spent as Bishop of San Diego. In 2016 he said concerning Trump’s plans for the deportation of illegal aliens: “It is unthinkable that we will stand by while more than 10 percent of our flock is ripped from our midst and deported.”[i] We can certainly expect that Cardinal McElroy will be a major part of the USCCB’s effort to oppose any America First aspect of Trump’s Administration. However, we must be careful to avoid two artificial narratives that are often given by Catholic media either portraying Cardinal McElroy as being much more radical than the Pope whom the Pope was deceived into appointing; or portraying the Cardinal as being a mere strategic pawn for the Pope’s political machinations while the Pope stands unconcerned about the theological details. In one of our latest Weekly News Roundups, our Editor-in-Chief described the Cardinal as being simply a ‘company man.’ This, I believe gets to the heart of it, Cardinal McElroy is not part of a Liberal infiltration that is deceiving Pope Francis, or a mere pawn for political purposes, but is rather serving Pope Francis’ agenda perfectly. Cardinal McElroy was noted for having immediately implemented Traditionis Custodes, suppressing most of the Latin Mass in his diocese citing ‘Lex orandi, credendi!’[ii] On immigration itself, we can see the parallels between the two men. While there are some rare and vague comments from both about the possible necessity of sending some illegal migrants back,[iii] Francis, like McElroy, just recently spoke of Trump’s plan for deportations being a ‘disgrace.’[iv] But these two men are aligned on more than just immigration. On moral theology, both hierarchs draw from the same source and make similar defenses for the de-emphasis on sexual sins such as sodomy. Cardinal McElroy said in a recent article for the Jesuit Review: “The effect of the tradition that all sexual acts outside of marriage constitute objectively grave sin has been to focus the Christian moral life disproportionately upon sexual activity.”[v] Similarly, Pope Francis, speaking about his allowance for divorced and remarried couples to receive communion stated: “Sexual sins tend to cause more of an outcry from some people. But they are really not the most serious.”[vi] I believe much of this comes from a misunderstanding that sins of lust are some of the sins with the least malice, which is why Dante places them near the beginning of Hell in his Inferno. However, I believe the Cardinal and Pope Francis ought to be reminded that while these sins may have less malice, and ensnare the most people, they still earn one a place in Hell!

[i] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/27/us/houses-of-worship-poised-to-serve-as-trump-era-immigrant-sanctuaries.html

[ii] https://sdcatholic.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Latin-Rite-Letter.pdf

[iii] See both https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/261415/mass-deportations-incompatible-with-catholic-doctrine-cardinal-mcelroy-says-in-dc-debut and https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2024/05/20/what-pope-francis-said-about-closing-us-border-war/

[iv] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3292477/pope-francis-trump-deportation-plans-disgrace/

[v] https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/01/24/mcelroy-synodality-inclusion-244587

[vi] Pope Francis, Hope: A Memoir (Kindle ed.), 200.

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The Program of Christ Against the Plans of Satan | Part Two

By Father Denis Fahey, C.S. Sp.

Editor’s note: On March 1 and 2, 2025, we hope to see many of you our faithful readers in Florida for our conference on the global struggle between Christ and Satan.  Father Denis Fahey’s writings are replete with a description of the great plan of Christ for true social order and a diagnosis of the devil’s plans to undermine it. Our conference will examine all six aspects of Christ’s plan as explained by Father Fahey in works such as The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World. Father Fahey summarized these points in the following article. We hope reading it will prepare you to participate in our conference.  

Widespread Ownership of Private Property

The Divine Plan for order calls for wide diffusion of ownership of property, in order to facilitate families in procuring the sufficiency of material goods required for the virtuous life of their members as human persons, and for Unions of owners and workers in Guilds or Corporations, reflecting the solidarity of the Mystical Body in economic organization.

“The law therefore should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible to become owners” [i]

“As in the conflict of interests and most of all in the struggle against unjust forces, a man’s virtue does not always suffice to assure him his daily bread, and as the social machinery ought to be so organized as by its natural action to paralyze the efforts of the wicked, and to render accessible to every man of goodwill his legitimate share of temporal happiness, We earnestly desire that you should take an active share in organizing society for that purpose … The Church has no need to disown her past; it is enough for her, with the co-operation of the real workmen of social organization, to take up again the organizations [the Guilds] shattered by the Revolution and in the same Christian spirit which inspired them, to adapt them to the new environment created by the material evolution of contemporary society, for the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators, but men of tradition” [ii]

“Agriculture is the first and most important of all arts; so it is also the first and true riches of States … To render onerous the conditions of the tiller of the soil tends to restrict his activities and to cripple rural industry”[iii]

“Because sociability is one of man’s natural requirements and since it is legitimate to promote, by common effort, decent livelihood, it is not possible without injustice, to deny or to limit, either to the producers or to the laboring and farming classes, the free faculty of uniting in associations, by means of which they may defend their proper rights and secure the betterment of the goods of soul and body, as well as the honest comforts of life. But to unions of this kind, which in past centuries have procured immortal glory for Christianity and for the professions an untarnishable splendor, one cannot everywhere impose an identical discipline and structure, which, therefore, can be varied to meet the different temperament of the people and the diverse circumstances of time. But let the unions in question draw their vital force from principles of wholesome liberty, let them take their form from the lofty rules of justice and of honesty and conforming themselves to those norms, let them act in such a manner that, in their care for the interests of their class, they violate no one’s rights, let them continue to strive for harmony and respect the common weal of civil society” [iv]

“If private resources do not suffice, it is the duty of the public authority to supply for the insufficient forces of individual effort, particularly in a matter which is of such importance to the common weal, namely, the maintenance of the family and married people. If families, particularly those in which there are many children, have not suitable dwellings; if the husband cannot find employment and means of livelihood; if the necessities of life cannot be purchased except at exorbitant prices; if even the mother of the family, to the great harm of the home, is compelled to go forth and seek a living by her own labor; if she, too, in the ordinary or even extraordinary labors of childbirth is deprived of proper food, medicine, and the assistance of a skilled physician, it is patent to all to what an extent married people may lose heart, and how home life and the observance of God’s commands are rendered difficult for them; indeed, it is obvious how great a peril can arise to the public security and to the welfare and very life of civil society itself when such men are reduced to that condition of desperation that, having nothing which they fear to lose, they are emboldened to hope for chance advantage from the upheaval of the State and of established order” [v]

Satan Enslaves Man By Attacking Private Property

Satan aims at the concentration of property in the hands of a few, either nominally in those of the State, that is, in those of the party in power, or in those of the money-manipulators. He knows that, given fallen human nature, this will lead to the subordination of men to production of material goods and to the treatment of all those not in power as mere individuals, not as persons. For this he favored Liberalism or Individualism and now favors the reaction against Individualism — Collectivism and Communism.

Satan saw with pleasure the ruin of souls resulting from unbridled Individualism. “Even on Sundays and Holy days, labor shifts were given no time to attend to their essential religious duties. No one thought of building churches within convenient distances of factories or of facilitating the work of the priest. On the contrary, laicism was actively and persistently promoted, with the result that we are now reaping the fruits of the errors so often denounced by Our Predecessors and by Ourselves. It can surprise no one that the Communistic fallacy should be spreading in a world already to a large extent estranged from Christianity” [vi]

“Very many employers treated their workmen as mere tools, without any concern for the welfare of their souls, indeed without the slightest thought of higher interests. The mind shudders if we consider the frightful perils to which the morals of workers (of boys and young men particularly), the virtue of girls and women, are exposed in modern factories; if we recall how the present economic regime and, above all, the disagreeable housing conditions prove obstacles to the family tie and family life; if we remember the insuperable difficulties placed in the way of a proper observance of Holy days … Dead matter leaves the factory ennobled and transformed, while human beings are corrupted and degraded” [vii]

On the other hand, satan fans the flames of the Communist reaction and urges on the revolt against God, Our Loving Father. “In the beginning, Communism showed itself for what it was in all its perversity; but very soon it realized that it was thus alienating the people. It has therefore changed its tactics, and strives to entice the multitudes by trickery of various forms … Thus, aware of the universal desire for peace, the leaders of Communism pretend to be the most zealous promoters and propagandists of the movement for world amity. Yet at the same time they stir up a class warfare which causes rivers of blood to flow, and, realizing that their system offers no internal guarantee of peace, they have recourse to unlimited armaments … They try perfidiously to worm their way even into professedly Catholic and religious organizations … See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may give it assistance in any undertaking whatsoever”[viii]

“They (the Communists) carry out the diabolical program of wresting from the hearts of all, even of children, all religious sentiment … Thus we see today, what was never before seen in history, the satanical banners of war against God and against religion brazenly unfurled to the winds in the midst of all peoples and in all parts of the earth”[ix]

Christ’s Monetary System is a Servant of Man

The Divine Plan for order calls for a monetary system so arranged as to facilitate the production and exchange of material goods in view of the virtuous life of the Members of Christ in happy families.

“The ancient workingmen’s guilds were abolished in the last [18th] century, and no other organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws themselves have set aside the ancestral religion. Hence by degrees, it has come to pass that workingmen have been surrendered, all isolated and helpless, to the hard-heartedness of employers and the greed of unbridled competition. The evil has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless under a different guise but with the like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added the uprise of powerful monopolies, controlling enterprises worked by contract and all branches of commerce; so that a very small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the proletariat a yoke little better than that of slavery itself”[x]

“It is patent that in our days not alone is wealth accumulated, but immense power and despotic economic domination are concentrated in the hands of a few … This domination is most powerfully exercised by those who, because they hold and control money, also govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the life-blood to the entire economic body and grasping in their hands, as it were, the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will … At the time when the new social order was beginning, the doctrines of rationalism had already taken firm hold of large numbers, and an economic science, alien to the true moral law, had quickly arisen, whence it followed that free rein was given to human avarice” [xi]

The Catholic Church condemns the sin of birth-prevention: “Within these sacred precincts (of the Christian family), children are considered not heavy burdens but sweet pledges of love: no reprehensible motive of convenience, no seeking after sterile pleasure bring about the frustration of the gift of life, nor cause to fall into disuse the sweet names of brother and sister”[xii]

But the Catholic Church insists also that social organization must aid married people to fulfill their sacred obligations. “Since it is no rare thing to find that the perfect observance of God’s commands and conjugal integrity encounter difficulties by reason of the fact that the husband and wife are in straitened circumstances, their necessities must be relieved as far as possible. And, in the first place, every effort must be made to bring about that which Our Predecessor, Leo XIII of happy memory, has already insisted upon, namely, that in the State such economic and social methods should be adopted as will enable every head of a family, to earn as much as, according to his station in life, is necessary for himself, his wife, and for the rearing of his children, for the ‘laborer is worthy of his hire’ (St. Luke, 10:7). To deny this or to make light of what is equitable is a grave injustice and is placed among the greatest sins by Holy Writ (Deut. 24:14,15); nor is it lawful to fix such a scanty wage as will be insufficient for the upkeep of the family in the circumstances in which it is placed.

“Care, however, must be taken that the parties themselves, for a considerable time before entering upon the married life, should strive to dispose of or at least to diminish the material obstacles in their way … Provision must be made also, in the case of those who are not self-supporting, for joint aid by private or public guilds”[xiii]

[i] (Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter, Rerum Novarum, On the Condition of the Working Classes).

[ii] (Pius X, Letter, On the Subject of the Sillon).

[iii] (Pius VII, Motu Proprio, Sept. 15, 1802).

[iv] (Pius XII, Letter to the American Hierarchy, Nov. 1, 1939).

[v] (Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Letter, Casti Connubii, On Christian Marriage).

[vi] (Pius XI, Encyclical Letter, Divini Redemptoris, On Atheistic Communism).

[vii] (Pius XI, Encyclical Letter, Quadragesimo Anno, On the Social Order).

[viii]  (Pius XI, Encyclical Letter, Divini Redemptoris, On Atheistic Communism).

[ix] (Pius XI, Caritate Christi Compulsi, On the Troubles of Our Time).

[x] (Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter, Rerum Novarum, On the Condition of the Working Classes).

[xi] (Pius XI, Encyclical Letter, Quadragesima Anno, On the Social Order).

[xii]  (Pius XII, Letter to the American Hierarchy, Nov. 1, 1939).

[xiii] (Pius XI, Encyclical Letter, Casti Connubii, On Christian Marriage).

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