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September 2024 Contents
The Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit: A Case Study
By. Anthony Stine, Ph.D
Traditionally-minded Catholics have been focused on reports based on rumors that a follow-up document to Traditionis Custodes was going to be imposed by Rome on July 16, 2024. That date came and went without such a document being signed by Pope Francis, yet rumors persist that the document does exist and that Pope Francis has yet to be convinced to sign and implement the document. Reportedly, that document would ban the Traditional Latin Mass at the diocesan level, leaving the preconciliar form of the Mass and sacraments in the hands of the former Ecclesia Dei organizations and religious communities.
While Catholic attention has been on that document, and on the persistent rumors and debates on the Traditional Latin Mass, since at least the election of Pope Francis in 2013 there has been a quiet yet relentless suppression of individual religious communities dedicated to traditional charisms associated with their founders and the traditional, preconciliar liturgy, sacraments, and faith. There are too many of these organizations that have been suppressed or corrupted since 2013 to list here, but recently while the Catholic world was watching and waiting for a new Vatican decree crippling the Traditional Mass at the diocesan level, a traditional Dominican order of women religious were forced to begin surrendering their traditional sacraments and charisms.
Dominican Sisters and Vatican Pressures
The order in question is the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit, located in France. The Dominican Sisters are a Society of apostolic life of pontifical right of consecrated virgins, living in common, within the Order of Saint Dominic, dedicated to docile fidelity to the Church, which their website describes as “the very substance of their institute.” On July 25, 2024, the Dominican Sisters published a press release describing changes to their liturgical practice. In 2023, the Vatican (presumably the Dicastery for Consecrated Life) “invited us to reflect on how to demonstrate, in our convent life too, and not only on a few external occasions, that we do not exclude the missal according to the novus ordo.” According to the sisters, this “invitation” was made without any demands of the sisters giving up the vetus ordo. Upon reflection, perhaps in this spirit of docile fidelity, the sisters announced that starting December 1, at the “invitation” of the Vatican, the sisters will begin offering the Novus Ordo Missae in addition to the Traditional Latin Mass. “The Holy See asks us to follow the liturgical calendar currently in force in the universal Church for the Roman rite; He also asks that in our different houses, the Mass be celebrated according to the novus ordo one week per month, with the exception of Sundays, the vetus ordo remaining in use for the other three weeks and every Sunday. He specifies that the readings of the Mass will be, for each day, those of the current Roman lectionary and that all the prefaces of the Missal of Paul VI will be used during the Masses according to the vetus ordo.”
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Church History: Our Glorious Past
Ave Crux Spes Unica
‘Hail to the Cross, Our Only Hope’
“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: by Whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.” — Galatians 6:14
By Phillip Campbell
Every September 14, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This is a celebration rich in meaning and symbolism, with various layers of historical and theological connotation.
Finding the True Cross
On the most fundamental level, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross calls to mind the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the Cross for the sins of mankind. This, of course, is already celebrated during Holy Week, especially on Good Friday, but a distinct feast first began to emerge in the fourth century with a special emphasis on the Cross itself as the instrument of salvation. This was in light of the finding of the True Cross by St. Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, in the year 325. The finding of the True Cross is narrated by the early fifth-century historian Socrates Scholasticus in his Historia Ecclesiastica, Chapter XVII, which merits being quoted at length:
“Helena, the emperor’s mother … being divinely directed by dreams went to Jerusalem. Finding that which was once Jerusalem, ‘desolate as a Preserve for autumnal fruits,’ according to the prophet (Isa. 1:8), she sought carefully the sepulchre of Christ, from which He arose after His burial; and after much difficulty, by God’s help she discovered it. What the cause of the difficulty was I will explain in a few words.
Those who embraced the Christian faith, after the period of His Passion, greatly venerated this tomb; but those who hated Christianity, having covered the spot with a mound of earth, erected on it a temple to Venus, and set up her image there, not caring for the memory of the place. This succeeded for a long time; and it became known to the emperor’s mother. Accordingly she, having caused the statue to be thrown down, the earth to be removed, and the ground entirely cleared, found three crosses in the sepulchre: one of these was that blessed cross on which Christ had hung, the other two were those on which the two thieves that were crucified with Him had died. With these was also found the tablet of Pilate, on which he had inscribed in various characters, that the Christ Who was crucified was King of the Jews. Since, however, it was doubtful which was the cross they were in search of, the emperor’s mother was not a little distressed; but from this trouble the bishop of Jerusalem, Macarius, shortly relieved her. And he solved the doubt by faith, for he sought a sign from God and obtained it.
The sign was this: a certain woman of the neighborhood, who had been long afflicted with disease, was now just at the point of death; the bishop therefore arranged it so that each of the crosses should be brought to the dying woman, believing that she would be healed on touching the precious cross. Nor was he disappointed in his expectation: for the two crosses having been applied which were not the Lord’s, the woman still continued in a dying state; but when the third, which was the true cross, touched her, she was immediately healed, and recovered her former strength. In this manner, then, was the genuine cross discovered.”
The finding of the Cross is said to have taken place on May 3; this date was once commemorated with a feast called the Invention of the Holy Cross (from Latin invenire, to find or come upon). A decade after St. Helena’s discovery, a splendid church was dedicated on the site of the finding. Socrates Scholasticus recounts:
“The emperor’s mother erected over the place of the sepulchre a magnificent church, and named it New Jerusalem, having built it facing that old and deserted city. There she left a portion of the Cross, enclosed in a silver case, as a memorial to those who might wish to see it: the other part she sent to the emperor, who being persuaded that the city would be perfectly secure where that relic should be preserved, privately enclosed it in his own statue, which stands on a large column of porphyry in the forum called Constantine’s at Constantinople.”
Dedication of the “New Jerusalem”
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was dedicated on the 13th and 14th of September and was an occasion of great pomp and solemnity. This event was commemorated on September 14th and known as the Feast of the Encnia, that is, “dedication.” This is an interesting phrase, calling to mind the Greek word used by Old Testament Jews to refer to the dedication of the temple at Hanukkah (cf. John 10:22). St. Augustine says in his gloss on the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John, “Encnia is the feast of the dedication of the temple; from the Greek word signifying new. The dedication of anything new was called encnia.”[iii] Evoking such strong temple imagery and calling the church “New Jerusalem” beautifully demonstrates the continuity the Church saw between the Old Testament types and their New Testament fulfillments brought about by Christ’s death and Resurrection.
The New Political Order Part I: Passing the Trumpian Torch
By Murray Rundus
It is often said in politics that the Vice-Presidential selection is largely insignificant in regard to the election and the Presidential Administration itself. To some extent, this is true. For example, President Kennedy managed to enact his agenda despite personally despising and being ideologically opposed to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and very few people have even heard of FDR’s Vice President John Nance Garner or Nixon’s Spiro Agnew. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that the Vice President does not play much of a role in swaying voters. As Kennedy once said shortly after announcing his run in 1960, “I don’t recall a single case where a vice-presidential candidate contributed an electoral vote.”
However, the office of the Vice President wields significant influence in shaping the future direction of a party, especially during times of significant ideological shifts. This is true not only for the Republican Party, which has undergone a profound transformation since Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 but also for the Democratic Party, which has faced its own internal struggles and evolving identity in recent years. Both parties now find themselves at a crossroads, where the selection of a Vice-Presidential candidate is not just about electoral strategy but about defining the party’s identity and future. The Vice-Presidential pick can allow a party to choose a direction for its future and develop a future presidential candidate, as seen with Kamala Harris. It also serves as a way to unify certain dissident elements within the party, though this is met with varying degrees of success, as illustrated by President Trump’s Evangelical Neoconservative Mike Pence and his betrayal of the president in the events surrounding January 6th.
In the upcoming series of articles, we will delve into the profiles of the two men vying for the Vice-Presidential position and the potential implications of their respective administrations for the United States.
The Trump Vacuum
The selection of J.D. Vance as the Vice-Presidential nominee underscores the ongoing transformation within the Republican Party—a transformation that began with Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016. Trump’s win shattered the old establishment, leaving a void that the party has been scrambling to fill. As a result, the GOP has been compelled to embrace new ideas and fresh faces, distancing itself from figures like the Bush family, whose absence at the 2020 RNC marked a symbolic end to their influence. Vance, a product of this new Republican order, represents the party’s endeavor to redefine itself in a post-Trump era, where the Vice Presidency is not just a role but a signal of the party’s future direction.
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Cultivating Vocations: Advice to Parents
By Brian McCall
As I mentioned in our Weekly News Roundup recently, my wife and our oldest son, a priest stationed in Saõ Paolo, Brazil, visited Fanjeaux, France to attend the first profession of our oldest daughter as a Teaching Dominican Sister. As we watched our daughter kneeling to profess her first year of vows, my mind poured over the events of her life. How did she get to this point to be open to God’s will for her? What role did my wife and I play in this event? I will try to share some of my reflections. In doing so, I will provide some advice for parents of young children on how you can encourage, and more importantly, not be an obstacle to, your children’s potential vocations. In doing so I will have the opportunity to comment on how the Novus Ordo Mass and Vatican II changes to religious life have produced the vocations crisis.
We Love Only What We Know
It is necessarily true that we cannot choose or love what we do not know. To love is an act of the will, but every act of the will is preceded by an act of the intellect. The intellect presents what it knows to be good to the will for the will to choose. Thus, the first step in nurturing a possible vocation is to provide opportunities for your children to know the priestly and religious life. Many secular parents bring their children to work or encourage them to visit a family member in a law office or a medical practice. They understand that children cannot choose a career about which they know nothing. The same is true for vocations. They cannot choose to answer God’s call if they are ignorant of the possibilities to which they might be called.
As part of this program, it is important that children understand that priests and religious are still human beings. It is easy for children to see a priest only in his august role at the altar. The Church rightly surrounds the priest during this role with great dignity and respect. Yet, if that is the only context in which children see priests, they will think that they are not able to pursue such a vocation because they are unworthy. They are,in fact, unworthy. Every priest is unworthy of the dignity of the priesthood because priests do not become priests by earning it. Priests receive their character not due to merit but the election by God. Yet, if children do not see priests in everyday settings, they may not understand this point. They may think priests are elevated in the sanctuary 24 hours a day and think “I could never do that.” Thus, invite priests to your homes for dinner as often as you can. One good suggestion is to ask priests to share holidays and holydays with your family. When everyone retreats to their family homes to celebrate Christmas, the priests who, due to their ministry, may not be able to go to their own parents’ homes, may be forgotten. Let children see that men of all different sentiments and personalities are priests. There are serious priests, sanguine priests, storytelling priests, priests who like play games, priests who like to play music, etc. The Church rightly obscures the personality of the priest during the Mass and Sacraments as he acts in persona Christi but children who never spend time with priests may think therefore all priests are the same in temperament. Seeing the variety of the types of people who are priests will help your children to understand that God can call any type of person.
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Catholic Principles and American Democracy Part I:
The History and Philosophy Behind the U.S. Constitution
Editor’s Note: This is the first article in a multi-author series preceding the upcoming American election. This series examines the principles behind American Democracy, beginning with this article, which summarizes and analyzes the history and philosophy of the various interpretative schools behind the U.S. Constitution.
By Joseph Apuzzo
History and philosophy are indelibly linked. What is history but the actualization of ideas by men of action in the world? The failure to see this link is one of the great errors of our time, which tells itself that philosophy is nothing more than abstract ideas, never applicable to the modern actions of men but relevant only for the speculation of academics detached from the real world. History is very much a reality, a testing ground for philosophies to prove their worth. Throughout history we have seen few events illustrate this point better than the composition and subsequent interpretation of the American Constitution. The background of its composition, ratification, and subsequent interpretation is a subject that cannot be properly studied without reference to the relevant historical context informing the respective motivations of Constitutionalists and anti-Constitutionalists over time. There is an element of historical continuity to contemporary national discourse that is imperative for the informed American citizen to understand in order that he may think clearly about his ideas and those of his countrymen. To this end, we venture to examine the intersection of philosophy and historical events in three major eras of American history: the period from the Founding to the Civil War, the Progressive Era, and the current neoliberal order.
Jefferson’s Eloquent Statement of Philosophical Truth
The importance of this relationship is implicit in the very Founding of our nation. Thomas Jefferson begins the Declaration of Independence with an eloquent statement of the philosophical truth that the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” have endowed all men with natural rights which are the duty of any just government to secure. This universal principle once established, Jefferson proceeds to list particular violations committed against it by the unjust government of King George III. Jefferson makes clear that these are the “causes which impel” the colonists to declare separation from England and their reasons for doing so. The particular historical circumstance of British tyranny, therefore, led directly to the formulation of a universal philosophical creed, though one expressed somewhat ambiguously and one open to erroneous interpretation due to its detachment from the fullness of Catholic truth. The Declaration contained ideas which would in turn have an impact on history even more powerful than the forces which inspired them. It would not be long before yet another war was fought in their defense, this one much more traumatic than the Revolution.
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From Olympic Flame to Hellfire: The Catholic Reaction to Paris 2024
By Stephen Kokx
Although I am not yet 40 years old, I remember when the opening ceremony at the Olympics sought to uplift the common good of society.
In 1992, the “Dream Team,” led by Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird, made history as they beat country after country on their way to capturing the gold medal. At that year’s ceremony in Barcelona, Spanish Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo dramatically lit the Olympic cauldron by sending a flaming arrow some 230 feet in the air. It was a can’t-miss shot — one that Rebollo practiced 700 times — and he nailed it when it counted most. It’s hard not to get emotional re-watching that on YouTube all these years later.
In 1996, American speedster Michael Johnson set two world records in Atlanta. Donning gold-covered Nike shoes, Johnson blew away the competition in his 200m and 400m races. But the opening ceremony was equally memorable. Boxing legend Muhammad Ali “shocked the world” one final time as he emerged at the last moment to light the flame. Visibly shaking from the side effects of Parkinson’s disease, Ali even stunned the NBC broadcasting team. “Ohh my!” legendary anchor Dick Enberg thundered as neither he nor co-host Bob Costas were aware Ali was the final torch bearer.
Such is the power of sports. It can move us to tears — sometimes tears of joy but other times sadness in the wake of defeat.
Whether you have ever played organized sports, there is something undeniable about how athletics can inspire us for the better. Hoosiers and Rudy are two classic movies that can do precisely that.
Of course, as Catholics we must condemn the way in which sports is idolatrously glorified today. We all know that sinister forces use the allure of fame and fortune to misdirect the aspirations of young people so they will spurn religious life and set their dreams on playing in the NBA, NFL, or some other league.
At the same time, it is fine to admit — at least it seems to me — that once upon a time, the opening ceremony at the Olympics was of a wholesome nature, or at least better than it is now (despite its pagan roots), and that when it is properly done, it can help promote the social fabric of nations.
Regrettably, the complete opposite of that was accomplished at this year’s opening ceremony, which was closer to a Satanic ritual that reflected a civilization, and world, on the verge of collapse.
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Fr. Mueller’s Masterpiece on the Mass
By Matthew Plese
Holy Mass Series
Fr. Mueller’s Masterpiece on the Mass
The Wonderful Effects of the Blessed Sacrament in Nicola Aubry
By Matthew Plese
The Conflict of our Lord with the Devil
Chapter six of “The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass” by Father Michael Mueller is a continuation of the incredible testimony to the Real Presence as expressed through the exorcism of Nicola Aubry. As such, Father Mueller opens the sixth chapter of his seminal work with the following remarks:
“The preceding chapter may lead the reader to think it strange that although satan was repeatedly expelled by the Presence of our divine Savior in the Sacred Host, nevertheless, it appeared as if our Savior was forced to yield to satan, when he again took possession of Nicola’s body. Why this struggle between Our Lord and satan, since our divine Savior is his Lord and Master?”
This is a critical question every Catholic should be able to understand. If God is truly omnipotent, how and why would He permit the devil any authority over His Church or any baptized soul? Does this make God less than omnipotent? Father Mueller immediately answers:
“It is true that our Lord is the Master of satan; and yet we read in the Gospel how He permitted the devil to touch Him and carry Him up to the pinnacle of the Temple and to the top of a high mountain. Of these occasions it must be remarked that He suffered Himself to be touched by the devil only, when, and as long as He gave him permission to do so. As soon as Our Lord said to him: ‘Begone, satan,’ he took to flight. In like manner did He permit satan to take possession of Nicola’s body, sometimes even for a considerable time, not only to sanctify this innocent woman, but also to confirm, by these repeated miracles, the Catholics in their faith in His Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, and to convert or confound the Protestants, who denied that Real Presence and committed so many shocking outrages on His Sacred Person. For this reason also did Our Lord force satan to make a public profession of his faith in the Real Presence, not once only but on several occasions, and in several places, in presence of thousands of Catholics and Protestants.”
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