w/c 17/08/25

ORDO

Dies	17 SUN	18 MON	19 TUE	20 WED	21 THU	22 FRI	23 SAT	24 SUN
Officium	S. Joachim Confessoris, Patris B. M. V.	Quarta die infra Octavam S. Assumptionis Beatæ Mariæ Virginis	S. Joannis Eudes Confessoris	S. Bernardi Abbatis et Ecclesiæ Doctoris	S. Joannæ Franciscæ Frémiot de Chantal Viduæ	In Octava Assumptionis B.M.V.	S. Philippi Benitii Confessoris	S. Bartholomæi Apostoli
CLASSIS	Duplex II	Semiduplex	Duplex	Duplex	Duplex	Duplex maius	Duplex	Duplex II
Color*	Albus	Albus	Albus	Albus	Albus	Albus	Albus	Rubeum
MISSA	Dispérsit	Gaudeamus	Os justi	In médio	Cognóvi	Gaudeamus**	Justus	Mihi autem
Orationes	2a. Dominica X Post Pentecosten 3a. Tertia die infra Octavam Assumptionis B.M.V. 4a. In Octava S. Laurentii Martyris	2a. S. Agapiti Martyris	2a. Quinta die infra Octavam Assumptionis B.M.V	2a. Sexta die infra Octavam Assumptionis B.M.V.	2a. Septima die infra Octavam Assumptionis	2a. Ss. Timothei, Hippolyti et Symphoriani Martyres	2a. In Vigilia S.Bartholomæi Apostoli	2a. Dominica XI Post Pentecosten
NOTAE	Gl. Cr. Pref. de Trinitatis Ev. propr. ad fin. Missae	Gl. Cr. Pref. de B.M.V.	Gl. Cr. Pref. de B.M.V.	Gl. Cr. Pref. de B.M.V.	Gl. Cr. Pref. de B.M.V.	Gl. Cr. Pref. de B.M.V.	Gl. Pref. de Communis	Gl. Cr. Pref. de Apostolis Ev. propr. ad fin. Missae
Nota Bene/Vel/Votiva		Missae votivae vel Requiem permittuntur

Veritas Lucet

Veritas Lucet — Truth Shines — proclaims that no matter how deeply the world is shadowed by falsehood, the light of truth will inevitably pierce the darkness. It affirms the mission to bear witness boldly, confident that divine truth, once revealed, cannot be extinguished but will shine for all to see. 🔝

From the Primus

HE ✠Jerome OSJV, Titular Archbishop of Selsey

Carissimi, Beloved in Christ,

In these troubled days, when confusion reigns in both Church and society, our mission must be guided by a steadfast confidence: Veritas Lucet — Truth Shines. This conviction lies at the heart of our present labours, as reflected in the many works, writings, and commentaries gathered in this Nuntiatoria edition. From the defence of perennial Catholic doctrine against modernist innovations, to the unmasking of false narratives in public life, our efforts serve one singular purpose: to hold up the radiant lamp of truth where darkness threatens to engulf the faithful.

Providentially, this letter comes to you within the Octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when Holy Church celebrates the glory of the Mother of God assumed body and soul into heaven. In her, we see the perfect reflection of the Light of Truth—she who bore Him in her womb, pondered His words in her heart, and now reigns beside Him as Queen of Heaven. Just as her radiant holiness scatters the shadows of sin, so must we reflect the brightness of Christ’s truth in our own age. The Assumption reminds us that the destiny of the faithful is not decay and defeat, but glory and victory; likewise, the truth we defend is not a flickering ember but an unquenchable flame.

The articles you find here do not shy away from confronting error, whether it appears cloaked in theological ambiguity, liturgical irreverence, political deceit, or cultural decay. They bear witness to the Kingship of Christ, exposing the ideological idols of our time and reaffirming the immutable teachings of the Faith. This is no mere exercise in polemic—it is an act of charity. For to withhold the truth in the name of false peace is to abandon souls to the shadows; but to speak the truth with courage and clarity is to lead them toward the Light that cannot be overcome.

Veritas Lucet also reminds us that truth is not ours to invent or to adapt according to the temper of the times. Truth is revealed—entrusted by God to His Church for the salvation of souls. Therefore, our commentaries on liturgy, theology, and moral life draw deeply from the unbroken tradition of the saints, the Fathers, and the Magisterium, that the faithful may not be tossed to and fro by every new wind of doctrine.

This work is not purely defensive. It is also creative, forming communities and apostolates grounded in the timeless worship of God, the sanctity of life, and the restoration of Christian civilisation. It is pastoral, offering counsel to the young navigating hostile universities, to the faithful confronting doctrinal confusion, and to clergy persevering under unjust restrictions. It is missionary, speaking into the world’s debates with the voice of Christ and His Church, not as an echo of the age, but as a herald of the age to come.

The motto Veritas Lucet calls each of us to be mirrors of that Light. The truth shines not only from pulpits and pages, but from the quiet fidelity of those who keep the commandments, who suffer for righteousness’ sake, who uphold reverent worship, and who live as citizens of heaven while labouring on earth. And as the Octave of the Assumption reminds us, this shining is not merely for the present struggle, but for the eternal glory to which we are called in union with Our Lady and all the saints. Our prayer is that these pages strengthen you in that vocation, so that, when the world demands compromise, you may answer with the firmness of the Apostles: Non possumus non loqui quae vidimus et audivimus—“We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).

May the light of Christ’s truth guide your steps, guard your heart, and give you courage until that day when faith will give way to sight and the glory of God will illumine all.

With my Apostolic blessing, and In Christ the Truth, 🔝

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Recent Epistles & Conferences

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Liturgical Notes

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The Time after Pentecost in the Tridentine Rite
The Time after Pentecost in the Tridentine liturgical calendar, sometimes called the “Season after Pentecost,” corresponds to what is now known in the modern Roman Rite as “Ordinary Time.” Yet unlike the postconciliar terminology, the Tridentine designation is not “ordinary” in tone or theology. It is profoundly mystical, drawing the Church into a deepening participation in the life of the Holy Ghost poured out upon the Mystical Body at Pentecost.

A Season of Fulfilment and Mission
The Time after Pentecost is the longest of the liturgical seasons, extending from the Monday after the Octave of Pentecost to the final Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent. It represents the age of the Church — the time between the descent of the Holy Ghost and the Second Coming of Christ. Where Advent looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, and Easter celebrated His triumph, the Time after Pentecost lives out His indwelling. It is the season of sanctification, corresponding to the Holy Ghost in the economy of salvation, just as Advent and Christmas reflect the Father’s sending, and Lent and Easter the Son’s redeeming work.

Dom Prosper Guéranger writes that “the mystery of Pentecost embraces the whole duration of the Church’s existence” — a mystery of fruitfulness, guidance, and spiritual warfare. It is not a neutral stretch of ‘green vestments’ but a continuation of the supernatural drama of the Church militant, sustained by the fire of divine charity.

The Green of Growth — But Also of Struggle
Liturgically, green dominates this time, symbolising hope and spiritual renewal. Yet the Masses of the Sundays after Pentecost contain numerous reminders that the Christian life is not passive growth but an active battle. Readings from St. Paul’s epistles dominate, especially exhortations to moral purity, perseverance, and readiness for the day of judgment. The Gospels often feature Christ’s miracles, parables of the Kingdom, or calls to vigilance — all designed to awaken souls from spiritual sloth.

Fr. Pius Parsch notes that “the Sundays after Pentecost are dominated by two great thoughts: the growth of the Church and the interior life of the Christian.” These twin aspects — ecclesial expansion and individual sanctity — are ever present in the collects and readings, pointing to the fruit of Pentecost as the Church’s leavening power in the world.

The Numbering and Shape of the Season
In the Tridentine Missal, Sundays are numbered “after Pentecost,” beginning with the Sunday immediately following the octave day (Trinity Sunday stands apart). The exact number of these Sundays varies depending on the date of Easter. Since the final Sundays are taken from the “Sundays after Epiphany” not used earlier in the year, the readings and prayers of the last Sundays are drawn from both ends of the temporal cycle. This produces a subtle eschatological tone in the final weeks — especially from the 24th Sunday after Pentecost onward — anticipating the Second Coming and the Last Judgment.

In this way, the Time after Pentecost includes both the lived reality of the Church’s mission and the urgency of her final consummation. The Kingdom is already present, but not yet fully manifest.

The Role of Feasts and the Saints
The richness of the season is also punctuated by numerous feasts: of Our Lady (e.g., the Visitation, the Assumption), of the angels (e.g., St. Michael), of apostles and martyrs, confessors and virgins. Unlike Advent or Lent, which are penitential in tone, the Time after Pentecost includes joyful celebrations that model Christian holiness in diverse vocations. The saints are the mature fruit of Pentecost, witnesses to the Spirit’s indwelling.

As Dom Guéranger says, this season “is the longest of all in the liturgical year: its length admits of its being considered as the image of eternity.” It teaches that the gifts of the Holy Ghost are not given for a moment, but for a lifetime of growth in grace — and for the eternal life to come.

Conclusion: A Time of Interiorisation and Apostolic Zeal
The Time after Pentecost is not a liturgical afterthought, but the climax of the year — the age of the Church, the time in which we now live. Every soul is invited to be a continuation of the Incarnation through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. The sacraments, the Mass, and the feasts of the saints all nourish this divine life, which began in Baptism and is ordered to glory.

Thus, the Time after Pentecost is not simply the Church’s “green season,” but her most fruitful and missionary phase — a time of living in the Spirit, bearing His fruits, and hastening toward the return of the King. 🔝

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The Liturgy of the Tenth Sunday Post Pentecost

Missa: Dum clamarem ad Dominum
The Church, still resplendent with the joy of Pentecost and the light of the Holy Ghost, bids us today to unite humility with our prayer, for it is humility that makes our petitions acceptable before God. The Gospel of this Sunday, the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, is the key to the whole liturgy.

Dom Prosper Guéranger writes in The Liturgical Year: “Humility is the foundation of all justice, and it is especially necessary in prayer. God resists the proud and gives His grace to the humble. He hears the prayer of the humble man, but He turns away from the man who trusts in his own righteousness.”

The Introit—Dum clamarem ad Dominum—takes its words from Psalm 54, expressing the soul’s confident cry for divine help. Goffine remarks in The Church Year that these opening verses “set before us the very disposition required for today’s lesson: the humble and trusting voice lifted to God, without presumption, but full of childlike hope.”

The Collect implores God to guard His Church with “perpetual mercy,” recognising that human frailty is prone to fall. The humility of this prayer, as Fr. Pius Baur observes in The Light of the World, “aligns with the Publican’s prayer in the Gospel: a simple acknowledgment of our misery and a confident appeal to God’s mercy. Such prayer pierces the heavens because it begins in the truth of our condition.”

The Epistle (1 Corinthians 12:2–11) speaks of the diversity of spiritual gifts, all flowing from the same Spirit. Dom Guéranger notes that this variety in unity is possible only when “self is forgotten, and God alone is sought; the gifts are for the Church, not for self-exaltation.” Here too humility is the safeguard—without it, gifts become causes of pride rather than channels of grace.

The Gradual and Alleluia—both drawn from Psalms—continue the theme of trust in God’s mercy, lifting the soul from the acknowledgment of sin to the hope of pardon.

The Gospel (Luke 18:9–14) contrasts two men at prayer: the Pharisee, who boasts of his virtues, and the Publican, who beats his breast, saying, Deus, propitius esto mihi peccatori. Goffine remarks: “The Pharisee’s prayer is no prayer at all—it is a self-commendation in God’s presence. The Publican prays truly, for he confesses his misery and begs God’s mercy.”

Guéranger adds: “The Church, ever guided by the Spirit of truth, puts before us today the surest safeguard of our prayer—the deep conviction that we are sinners. The Pharisee’s fasting and tithes were not evil in themselves; it was his pride that made them hateful to God.”

Fr. Baur comments that the Publican’s posture—standing afar off, eyes cast down, striking his breast—is a “catechism in action” for the faithful: “It teaches that prayer is not merely words, but the outward expression of an interior reality—contrition, reverence, and the acknowledgement of God’s holiness.”

The Offertory verse (In te speravi, Domine) resumes the theme of confidence in God alone. As Goffine points out, here “the humble confession of need is wedded to the joyful hope of salvation; this is the Christian’s strength.”

The Secret and Postcommunion prayers continue the pattern: acknowledging human weakness, seeking God’s cleansing, and giving thanks for His mercy.

Dom Guéranger sees in today’s liturgy a complete school of prayer: “The Church gives us the very words, gestures, and dispositions that make our prayer acceptable. She tells us not merely to speak to God, but to speak as the Publican—aware of our nothingness, but confident in His mercy. It is thus that the sinner becomes just, the poor enriched, and the weak made strong.”

Thus, the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost is a summons to the interior virtue without which no exterior act avails. The moral is simple and searching: “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” In the words of Goffine: “If you wish to be justified, go down into the depths of your own misery, and God will raise you up to the heights of His grace.” 🔝

Missalettes (Sunday X Post Pentecost)

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St. Joachim, Confessor, Father of the Blessed Virgin Mary

August 17 – Confessor, Double Major
Liturgical Setting
In the Tridentine Missal, St. Joachim, Father of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Confessor (Sanctus Joachim, Pater Beatæ Mariæ Virginis, Confessor) is celebrated on August 17, the day following the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In older calendars, his feast had other dates—most notably March 20—before Pope St. Pius X fixed it after the Assumption in 1913 to honour his role in salvation history in close proximity to that of his daughter’s glorification in heaven. The feast is a Double Major, with white vestments, signifying joy and the purity of the saint’s life.

The Mass is proper, though parts are drawn from the Common of Confessors not Bishops. The Introit (“Gaudeamus omnes in Domino”) calls the faithful to rejoice in the Lord, celebrating the saint through whom the divine plan advanced toward the Incarnation. The Collect beseeches Almighty God, Who chose Blessed Joachim from among the just to be the father of the Mother of His Son, to grant that through his prayers we may obtain the salvation promised to mankind.

The Epistle (Ecclus. 31:8–11, as in the Common) extols the virtues of the just man whose memory shall be in blessing—a fitting praise for Joachim, whose name in Hebrew means “Yahweh prepares” or “Yahweh establishes,” and whose fidelity prepared the way for Mary and, through her, for Christ Himself.

The Gradual (“Beatus vir qui timet Dominum”) and Alleluia verse praise the man who fears the Lord and delights in His commandments, reflecting the pious tradition of Joachim’s life as one steeped in Temple worship, almsgiving, and the Law of God.

The Gospel (Matthew 1:1–16) is the genealogy of Christ according to St. Matthew, read here to emphasise Joachim’s place in the Messianic line from David. Though Scripture is silent on the details of his life, the Church, drawing from early Christian tradition and apocryphal sources like the Protoevangelium of James, presents Joachim as a man of steadfast faith, descended from King David through Nathan.

The Offertory (“Gloria et divitiae in domo ejus”) and Secret highlight the honour and glory of the just, asking that the sacrifice offered may bring us salvation through the saint’s intercession. The Communion verse (“Fidelis servus et prudens”) mirrors the Gospel theme of the watchful servant, and the Postcommunion prays that the feast may bring us heavenly protection and joy.

Dom Guéranger, in The Liturgical Year (Vol. XIII, August), emphasises the wisdom of placing St. Joachim’s feast in the radiance of the Assumption: “The glory of the daughter redounds upon her father; and as the Virgin was raised to the heavenly court, so is her father honoured on earth in a manner befitting his part in the mystery of the Incarnation.”

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Hagiography of St. Joachim

According to the ancient tradition preserved in the Protoevangelium of James, Joachim was a devout and wealthy man of the tribe of Judah, married to St. Anne. Their long years without children were endured with patience and prayer, until, after a period of penance in the desert, Joachim received the angelic message that Anne would conceive. Their daughter, Mary, would be the Immaculate Mother of the Redeemer.

The tradition tells us that Joachim was devoted to the Temple, bringing generous offerings to support its worship and the poor. His piety was so exemplary that he has been presented in Christian devotion as a model for fathers, for those who long for children, and for those who, like him, live in faithful expectation of God’s promises.

Joachim’s death is not recorded in detail, but the Church venerates him as having died in the peace of God before the public ministry of Christ. His cult spread widely in both East and West; the Byzantine calendar commemorates him on September 9 with St. Anne, while the West gave him his own day. His feast was extended to the universal Church by Pope Gregory XV in 1622, and in the Dominican Rite his Mass was celebrated with great solemnity.

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Spiritual Lessons
Fr. Leonard Goffine notes that Joachim’s life teaches holy expectation—a virtue that holds fast to God’s promises even in apparent barrenness. His faith mirrors that of Abraham, believing against hope that God would bless his lineage. Joachim’s role as father of the Mother of God situates him uniquely in the economy of salvation: through his fidelity, the royal line of David was kept in righteousness until it bore its perfect flower in the Virgin Mary.

Baur, in The Saints of the Catholic Church, remarks that St. Joachim’s greatness is chiefly in the hidden life—a quiet, persevering fidelity to God’s law. His sanctity shows that in the plan of redemption, heroic virtue is not only in martyrdom or public ministry, but also in enduring trials with constancy, raising a family in holiness, and preparing the way for God’s work. 🔝

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Spiritual Reflection: for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Today’s Gospel (Luke 18:9–14) is a mirror in which we see the truth of our souls. Two men stand in the Temple. Both pray to the same God, in the same holy place, at the same time. Yet one leaves justified, and the other condemned. The difference lies not in the externals of their prayer, but in the interior disposition of their hearts.

The Pharisee’s words are outwardly pious, but inwardly poisoned. He does not truly address God—he addresses himself in God’s presence, rehearsing his own merits, measuring his worth by comparing himself to others. His prayer begins with “I” and ends with “I.” He gives God no glory but claims it all for himself.

The Publican’s prayer is short, simple, and soaked in truth: Deus, propitius esto mihi peccatori—“O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” No self-defence, no excuses, no boasting—only an honest confession of need and a plea for mercy. He stands afar off, not daring to lift his eyes, striking his breast in sorrow. And because he humbles himself before God, God lifts him up.

The Pharisee represents the danger of pride in the religious life—trusting in our works, our piety, our orthodoxy, our service, as though these were our own possessions and not God’s gifts. The Publican shows us the gateway into God’s heart: humility and contrition. For as St. Augustine teaches, “He who humbles himself will be exalted, but he who exalts himself is only preparing his own fall.”

We must remember that humility is not denying the good God has done in us—it is recognising that it all comes from Him, and that apart from Him we are nothing. Humility does not keep us from serving God with zeal, but it purifies our zeal so that His glory, not ours, is the goal.

This Sunday calls us to examine not merely what we do, but how we do it. Do we fast, give alms, attend the sacred liturgy, keep the law—only to compare ourselves favourably with others? Or do we come before the Lord aware of our poverty, begging for His mercy, knowing that all good in us is His work?

The Pharisee prayed “with himself.” The Publican prayed with God. In our prayer, our work, our worship, we must choose which kind of prayer will be ours. The one is empty and leaves us hardened. The other is the path to justification, for “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

Let us, then, come to the altar this day with the Publican’s heart, confessing our sins, trusting God’s mercy, and receiving His grace with gratitude. Only then will we leave the temple justified. 🔝

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A sermon for Sunday

by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK

St. Joachim/Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Joachim, as well as commemorating the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost. St. Joachim was the husband of St. Anne (whose feast we recently celebrated on 26^th July) and father of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We are now in the Octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so it is fitting that we celebrate the feast of her own father, St. Joachim, today. Information about St. Joachim and St. Anne is not found in the canonical Gospels, but in a later document called the Protoevangelium of James. This tells the story of the birth of Mary to a hitherto childless couple, St. Joachim and St. Anne. Since the Protoevangelium of James is not part of the canonical Scriptures, it does not have the same authority for the Church as the canonical Gospels. However, the Church receives the Protoevangelium of James as valuable early Christian tradition which is why we celebrate the feast of St. Joachim today.

It is good for us to celebrate the feast of St. Joachim today because it reminds us that the background that precedes the coming of our Saviour into the world is rooted in the history of Israel at a particular time and place. Today’s Gospel is from St. Matthew and it gives the genealogy of St. Joseph. It begins with Abraham, the father of Israel, then follows the generations to David, the greatest king of Israel (whose descendants reigned as kings of Judah until the conquest of the nation by the Babylonians) and then from the time of the Babylonian conquest to the time of St. Joseph himself, the husband of Mary (whose own father St. Joachim we celebrate today).

But what does this antiquarian genealogical information have to do with the Christian faith? Should not religious truth be general and universal, rather than something rooted in the genealogy of a particular family at a particular time and place? Should we not rather follow the example of the ancient Greeks who sought to establish the truth through the study of philosophy and tried to look beyond the contingent particularities of human history to establish a truth that was general and universal? Surely what matters should be not the particular history of one time and place, but a universal philosophy? Much modern post-Enlightenment Western thought has followed the ancient Greeks in this respect and has contrasted the contingent facts of history (which are particular to one time and place) with the eternal truths of reason. Hence, from this perspective, the Bible is seen as crude and unsophisticated because it is focused on events, first in the history of Israel, then in the life of Jesus, that happened at one particular time and place in history. People find the so called “scandal of particularity” offensive. Surely everyone should be allowed to have their own private religious experience and we should shun the biblical worldview which attributes universal significance to the events of a particular time and place?

But what would we say to someone who said to us that we should take no interest in our own family history, because it is something that is particular to our own families rather than to humanity in general? We would probably say to them that we found their seeming rationalism in practice unreasonable, for it is only by being part of one particular human family that we can relate to any other human family. Here, at least, we find the so called scandal of particularity to be something that does not detract from our being part of humanity as a whole, but rather enhances it. It is only by telling the story of our own human family that we can show how we relate to humanity as a whole. It is not truth about abstract philosophy, but rather one of our own lived experience.

Now the biblical worldview also functions in this way. It is not about abstract philosophical truth of the type associated with the ancient Greek philosophers or post-Enlightenment Western rationalism, but rather about truth lived out in actual human experience. It tells the story of how God, the creator and redeemer of all, makes himself known, not through a philosophical system of abstract ideas, but in the history of one particular nation. It tells of the call of Abraham and the promise that in his seed all the nations of the earth would blessed, of the escape from bondage in Egypt under Moses and the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai to guide the life of the people. It tells of their struggles after their settlement in the land of Israel to live up to the standard given in the Law of Moses and how their failure ultimately led to the collapse of their nation. In the face of adversity in the present it still looks forward to final redemption, when the truth which they had experienced in the history of their own nation would be known universally.

When St. Matthew’s Gospel begins with the genealogy of Joseph, showing his descent from David and ultimately from Abraham, he is demonstrating how in the life of Jesus the hope of Israel for redemption and a new covenant between God and man has now been fulfilled. The Incarnation is all about the scandal of particularity, that when the fullness of time was come God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons. We can now become by grace what he is by nature. This is the fulfilment of the promise of God to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. If we belong to Christ, then we are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. In other words when we are baptised and become Christians we become part of that story and become heirs of the promises of salvation history.

This is why twelve prophecies from the history of Israel are recited in the Vigil on Holy Saturday, and when the Exsultet is sung it refers to the Exodus as “the night in which thou didst first cause our forefathers, the children of Israel, when brought out of Egypt, to pass through the Red Sea with dry feet.” That is why in the Canon of the Mass the priest refers to “the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham.” We can speak of the children of Israel as our forefathers because by faith we can become their heirs. The so called scandal of particularity is not an obstacle to our faith but is rather something that is fundamental to it. This is what the Eucharist, the Mass is all about, the re-presentation in liturgical action of events wrought out once for all in time and history, when we celebrate that types and shadows have their ending for the newer rite is here.

So it is right and fitting that St. Matthew’s Gospel begins with a genealogy, for our faith is not an abstract philosophical system of ideas divorced form the world of particular events, but is rooted in flesh and blood, in genealogy, in time and history and in lived experience. Grace does not abolish nature, but rather perfects it. In celebrating the feast of St. Joachim today we show that we are followers of him who did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but rather to fulfil them. 🔝

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

O God, who dost manifest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity; increase thy mercy towards us, that we, seeking the way of thy promises, may be made partakers of thy heavenly treasures.

Today’s collect speaks to us of God, who manifests his power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity. We pray that he increases his mercy towards us, so that we, seeking the way of his promises, may be made partakers of his heavenly treasures.

But why is the divine power manifested most chiefly in showing mercy and pity? It seems like a contradiction in terms. The world, both ancient and modern, looks up to those in positions of power,  who are usually noted for their ruthless determination to cling on to it at all costs. Those who show any signs of mercy and pity towards others usually find themselves excluded from positions of power, and looked down on as weak and feeble. The gods of the ancient pagan pantheon were also noted for their ruthlessness and unpredictability. They sustained a world in which the strong exercised power over the weak and were determined to keep it that way.

A different vision emerged in ancient Israel. The God of Israel was not only a national God, but also the God of the whole world. He had created the world because it is the nature of goodness to be expansive. God did not need to create, but did so out of love. He had created the human race in his image to reflect that love. Humanity had become infected by pride and had fallen into sin. God had not abandoned his creation but had chosen one people, the children of Israel, to bear witness to the truth about the need to worship him alone, and to renounce idolatry and self love. The people around them worshipped power, but he promised to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, for he was not a God of the rich and powerful, but of the weak and enslaved. He gave his people through Moses the Law which taught them to create a society that was different from the nations around them. Instead of worshipping power they were to show mercy on the stranger, the fatherless and the widow. Sadly, the Israelites were as fallen and sinful as the people around them, and when they entered the promised land their rulers themselves became corrupted by love of power. But whereas the kings exercised power, the prophets preached righteousness. They condemned those who joined house to house and field to field and neglected the poor and the outcast. They looked forward to a time when the wolf would finally dwell with the lamb, and God’s kingdom would finally come on earth as it is in heaven.

In the coming of the Saviour into the world the hope of the Kingdom of God, future in its fullness, was now being manifested in his words and mighty works. He had not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfil them. He declared his power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity. He blessed the meek, the peacemakers, the poor in spirit, those who mourn and those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. He healed the sick, gave comfort to the despairing and offered the social outcasts a new sense of dignity and hope. He taught a way of non-violence, of love for enemies, of doing good to those who hate us, and praying for those who persecute us.

His followers saw him as the anointed liberator of Israel, who would finally deliver the people from their pagan overlords. But he proclaimed that the world could not be won by the world’s own methods. His messianic destiny, enthronement and rule could only come about through reversal, repudiation, suffering and death. The kings of the nations exercised power ruthlessly over their subjects, but he showed to his followers a more excellent way, for the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. He would be despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, who bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors.

The time finally came when Jesus no longer taught, but acted and suffered. He was himself the embodiment of his message. He turned the other cheek, in his non resistance to his arrest and trial, saying that all who drew the sword would die by the sword. He walked the second mile, when he was compelled to carry his own cross to the place of execution. He took the evil of the world’s hatred upon himself and somehow subsumed it into good.

St. Paul wrote to the Philippians that, although the Saviour was in the form of God, he did not use his power as something to be grasped at, but rather took upon him the form of servant and was found in human likeness. He humbled himself, even to death on the cross. Wherefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every tongue every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

St. John penetrated even further when he said that the passion was not only the path to enthronement and exaltation, it was itself the supreme moment of glorification, the lifting up of the Saviour upon the cross being the means by which the world is judged, the divine self sacrificial love revealed and the humanity is redeemed. He reigns from the tree.

The self sacrificial love of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself is sometimes spoken of as  surrendering the divine attributes of power in order for the Saviour to become man and suffer and to die. But if we take to heart the words of today’s collect about the divine power being manifested most chiefly in showing mercy and pity we can see the Incarnation not as the abandonment of the divine power, but rather the most powerful manifestation of it. The only begotten Son did not abandon his divine power to become incarnate and suffer and die. Rather this expression of the divine love was the ultimate exemplification of it. The most supreme power is not ruthlessness and violence, of lording it over others, but rather of suffering and dying for them, of the divine charity that suffereth long and is kind, that vaunteth not itself, that seeketh not her own, that rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.

The poet Edward Shillitoe put it like this:

The other gods were strong, but thou wast weak;
They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds, only God’s wounds can speak
And not a God has wounds but thou alone.

The world is now just as filled with violence and ruthless manipulation and self seeking as it was then. But we are not called to follow the way of the world, but rather to make our own the words of today’s collect, for we worship a God whose power is made known most chiefly in showing mercy and pity. Let us pray that he will increase his mercy towards us, so that we, seeking the way of his promises, may be made partakers of his heavenly treasures. 🔝

Octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: but one thing is necessary, Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Today we celebrate the Octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Last week we considered the place of Mary in the history of our salvation, as the theotokos, the mother of the Word made flesh. Today we will consider the Gospel for this feast from St. Luke about the contrasting behaviour of Mary and Martha. It tells of how Jesus was received by Martha into her house. She also had a sister called Mary, who sat at Jesus’ feet, hearing his word. Martha was preoccupied with much serving, and asked Jesus to allow Mary to help her. But Jesus responded that Martha was troubled about many things, but it was Mary, who sat at his feet and heard his word, who had chosen the better part. We learn from St. John’s Gospel that Mary and Martha lived at Bethany and had a brother named Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. In that narrative, Martha is again the more seemingly active and assertive than her sister Mary. In other words, the characterisation of the two sisters is strikingly similar in both St. Luke and St. John.

The contrasting personalities of Martha and Mary have been interpreted throughout the history of the Church as representatives of the active and the contemplative life. The conclusion that has been drawn is that the life of contemplation (represented by Mary) is a higher calling than the life of action (represented by Martha). In more recent times this teaching has often been reversed and more emphasis has been placed by contemporary Western Christianity on the life of action rather than contemplation. We are inclined to agree with the protest of Martha and to see the life of contemplation as a distraction from active service in the world. The Church is seen more as a provider of a social service to the needs of the world, than as a repository of prayer and contemplation. We find it hard to understand why earlier generations placed so much emphasis on the life of prayer and contemplation and find it easier to identify with Martha than with Mary.

Why did earlier generations place so much more emphasis than we do on the life of prayer and contemplation? In one sense, this emphasis goes back to the earliest ages of the Church. Since the Church was operating in a hostile pagan environment the basic Christian message in the age of the martyrs was world renouncing, rather than world affirming. For a pagan Roman to become a Christian meant isolation from the rest of society. In the age of the martyrs, they were trained more for Christian dying than for Christian living. In one sense, this focus changed when the Empire adopted Christianity and the old pagan order was gradually Christianised. But there were always those who felt a higher calling to renounce the world in accordance with the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience. They went into the desert in Egypt and in Syria to pursue a life of prayer and contemplation. Initially, those who sought this life did so on an individual basis as hermits, but others pursued the life of prayer and contemplation in the context of a community, most notably John Cassian in the West and St. Basil in the East. 

However, it was above all the rule of St. Benedict that set down the pattern for Western monasticism. In an age in which civilised society had collapsed and the Roman empire in the West had been overwhelmed by barbarian tribes St. Benedict set down a rule of life of prayer and study. He certainly saw the life of contemplation as a higher calling than the life of action. And yet, though this was far from the primary purpose of the monks, it was they, more than anyone else, who preserved civilisation in an age when it had collapsed. The rulers of the tribes who replaced the empire in the West saw that the monks represented a higher civilisation than their own. They were literate. They kept accounts and planned ahead. The rulers of these tribes sought to adopt their faith. Under the influence of the monks histories were written. In our own country it was the Venerable Bede who first wrote the history of the English people. As G. K. Chesterton put it, it is not that the Church will take us back to the so called Dark Ages. The Church is the only thing that got us out of them.

The paradox of the situation is that the life of prayer and contemplation pursued by the monks did not divert the Church from performing an important social service. In fact, it was the monks themselves who performed the most important social service of all in preserving civilisation and learning in an age of social collapse. This continued in the Middle Ages with the age of the friars who sought to minister in the new towns of medieval Europe. In one sense, the friars were less focused on contemplation and more on action than the monks, but it was above all the life of prayer that sustained them. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of monasticism in the so called ages of Faith.

Since the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century there has been a tendency to repudiate monasticism as perpetuating a double standard for the Christian life. It has been said that the most important task for Christians is service in the world. Unfortunately, this has tended to lower the standard of the Christian life and reduce Christian morality to respectability rather than the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience. Subsequently, the Enlightenment secularised European society, not only Protestant countries, but Catholic ones as well. The loss of emphasis on prayer and contemplation has seriously affected Catholic Christianity itself. Probably, the root cause of the desire to suppress the traditional Roman rite has been the allegation that it is too focused on prayer and contemplation and does not sufficiently emphasise social service. But, as we have been examining, it was when the Church prayed and lived by the traditional liturgy that it actually made a bigger contribution in terms of social service than it does now.

Now that our society seems to be entering into a new dark age it may be that the most important role for the Church today is to return to a focus on prayer and contemplation. We can then appropriate in our own time and place Jesus’ words to Mary that in listening to his word at his feet, she has chosen the better part which shall not be taken away from her. 🔝

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This week’s Feasts

August 17 — St. Hyacinth, Confessor
The “Apostle of the North” reminds us that the glory of Our Lady’s Assumption is not meant to be admired only from afar but carried into the world with courage. St. Hyacinth bore the Blessed Sacrament and a statue of Our Lady through danger—an image of the Christian soul that clings to Christ and His Mother amidst the tempests of life. As the Octave unfolds, we too are called to safeguard the treasures of our faith against the tide of unbelief.

August 18 — St. Agapitus, Martyr
A boy of noble heart, St. Agapitus laid down his life for Christ at a tender age, showing that the light of the Assumption shines brightly in purity and fortitude. Our Lady’s glorification calls each of us, whatever our age or state, to a complete surrender to God’s will. Her heavenly crown is not for the faint of heart—it is for those who, like Agapitus, choose Christ over comfort.

August 19 — St. John Eudes, Confessor
St. John Eudes’ devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary shows us the beating centre of the Assumption mystery. Our Lady, assumed into heaven, has a heart entirely united to her Son, and from that union flows grace for the Church. In this Octave, we are urged to enter the school of her Heart, so that we might live and love as she did.

August 20 — St. Bernard, Abbot and Doctor
The mellifluous Doctor’s tender love for Mary fills his sermons with praise for the “Star of the Sea” who guides souls to Christ. In the Assumption’s light, St. Bernard teaches us that devotion to Our Lady is not sentimental ornament but a sure path to salvation. “Look to the star,” he says, “and call upon Mary,” for she reigns in heaven to lead us safely to her Son.

August 21 — St. Jane Frances de Chantal, Widow
In the humility and obedience of St. Jane Frances, we see the quiet splendour of Our Lady’s virtues, now crowned in glory. Jane Frances bore widowhood, trials, and loss with serene trust, mirroring the surrender of Mary at the foot of the Cross. The Assumption reminds us that such fidelity, hidden from the world’s applause, is precious in God’s sight and destined for eternal honour.

August 22 — Octave Day of the Assumption
On this final day of the Octave, the Church gathers all the graces of the week into one great act of Marian praise. The Queen assumed into heaven is the dawn that foretells the day of our resurrection. As she shines in splendour before the throne of God, she intercedes for her children on earth, that they may persevere in faith, purity, and hope until they share her glory.

August 23 — St. Philip Benizi, Confessor
Though the Octave has closed liturgically, its radiance spills over into the feast of St. Philip Benizi, the Servite who rekindled devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Mary. His humility and service remind us that the Assumption does not remove Our Lady from our side—rather, it perfects her nearness. She, crowned in heaven, bends low to guide her servants along the narrow way to Christ. 🔝

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Forgotten Rubrics: The Use of the Last Gospel and Its Suppression

Among the treasures of the Tridentine Mass, few are as instantly recognisable—and yet so often misunderstood—as the Last Gospel, the majestic Prologue of St. John (John 1:1–14). Heard at the conclusion of nearly every Mass from the 13ᵗʰ century onward, this final proclamation of “In the beginning was the Word” was not part of the earliest Roman rite but entered gradually, first as a private devotion of the priest, then as a fixed liturgical feature by the 1570 Missal of St. Pius V.

Its very position is significant. The faithful, having received the divine mysteries, are not simply dismissed but sent forth beneath the sound of a Gospel that is both a summary of salvation history and a shield for the soul. St. John’s Prologue is more than poetic overture—it is a theological synthesis of the Incarnation, the divinity of Christ, and the light that “shineth in darkness.” To hear it as one departs is to be re-clothed in these truths before stepping into the world.

A miniature “sending forth”
The Last Gospel acts almost as a second Ite, missa est. The formal dismissal is already given, but the Church, as a solicitous mother, offers one final word—not of farewell but of identity and mission. The Prologue reminds the communicant that the Word “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” and that this same Word has now entered them sacramentally. It is, in this sense, a “missioning” text, preparing the faithful to bear Christ into the marketplace, the home, the street—wherever the next act of their life will unfold.

Liturgically, it mirrors the structure of the Mass itself: proclamation of the Word, act of reverence, and blessing. The genuflection at Et Verbum caro factum est is not only an act of adoration of the Incarnation, but also a ritual sealing of the Mass’s grace. As Gueranger observes, “The Last Gospel… is the voice of the eagle soaring above the altar, crying to the faithful to keep the mystery they have received”¹.

A protection against the world
In a more apotropaic sense, the Last Gospel was historically regarded as a spiritual protection. Medieval piety often associated the words of St. John’s Prologue with safeguarding against temptation, evil spirits, and even physical dangers. It was common for the faithful to recite it when beginning journeys or before difficult undertakings. In this light, the priest’s recitation at the altar-door is a blessing that travels with the people. The Mass thus ends, not with an abrupt departure, but with the congregation encircled by the Word.

The loss in the post-Vatican II reforms
The post-1969 Ordo Missae eliminated the Last Gospel entirely, ostensibly for reasons of “simplification” and “avoiding duplication,” since the Gospel reading is already a standard part of the Liturgy of the Word. Yet this reasoning overlooks the Prologue’s distinct liturgical function. The Last Gospel is not merely “another Gospel” but an eschatological epilogue—standing at the Mass’s threshold between mystery and mission. Its removal severs a textual and theological arc in which the liturgy leads the soul from altar to world, wrapped in the mystery of the Incarnation.

Furthermore, the suppression reflects a broader postconciliar tendency toward truncating symbolic “afterwords” in the liturgy—removing not only repetitions but the layered devotions and scriptural resonances that centuries had built into the Mass. The modern rite dismisses with a utilitarian Go forth and nothing more, leaving the congregation without that final soaring proclamation of the divine identity of the Christ they have just received. What remains is functional, but not full; it sends the faithful away, but without the poetic, theological, and spiritual shield the older rite instinctively supplied.

Conclusion
The Last Gospel’s quiet endurance over centuries was no accident. It grew from the soil of devotion and matured into an integral liturgical expression of the Church’s love for the Incarnate Word. Its suppression has left the reformed liturgy not merely shorter but poorer, deprived of that final moment in which heaven’s light is declared over the people before they return to a darkened world. 🔝

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Veritas Lucet: To let the Truth Shine

Truth is not an abstract concept, nor merely a set of correct propositions—it is a Person, Jesus Christ, Who declared, Ego sum via, et veritas, et vita (John 14:6). To say Veritas Lucet is to confess that Christ Himself shines in the darkness of our age, unchanging and undefeated, even when the shadows seem to deepen. In every generation, the enemies of God have sought to obscure His light, twisting words, distorting doctrine, and seducing souls with the false comfort of error. Yet the Gospel assures us, et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt (John 1:5)—the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

This motto calls us not only to recognise the radiance of truth but to reflect it. A lamp does not burn for itself; it gives light for others. In the same way, Christians are called to live and speak in such a way that the splendour of Christ’s truth is made visible in our words, works, and witness. This requires courage, for the world prefers the comfort of shadows to the piercing clarity of light. But it also requires charity, for truth without love is a burning glare that blinds rather than guides.

In an age of moral confusion and spiritual deception, Veritas Lucet becomes both a reassurance and a commission: reassurance, that no lie can ultimately prevail; commission, that we must become bearers of that light into every corner of the world. And so the Church’s mission endures—to proclaim Christ the Truth, to shine with His glory, until the dawn of the eternal Day when shadows will be no more. 🔝

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The Five Precepts of the Church: to Confess One’s Sins at Least Once a Year

An Article Series for Catechists and Confessors: Fr. Paolo Miguel R. Cobangbang CDC

The third precept of the Church, to confess one’s sins at least once a year, is not an arbitrary human regulation, but a concrete application of divine law. Our Lord Himself entrusted to His Apostles the power to forgive sins when He said: “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” (John 20:23). The Sacrament of Penance is the ordinary means by which grave post-baptismal sins are remitted. This precept safeguards the faithful from spiritual negligence by setting a minimum frequency for receiving sacramental absolution, thus ensuring that no one who has fallen into mortal sin remains indefinitely without sanctifying grace.

Theological Foundation
The Catechism of the Council of Trent states clearly that the obligation to confess is grounded in Christ’s institution of the sacrament and applies to all the faithful who have reached the age of reason. Those conscious of mortal sin are bound by divine law to seek confession as soon as possible; the ecclesiastical precept merely establishes a minimum for those who might otherwise neglect their duty. The Baltimore Catechism teaches that this precept is closely tied to the worthy reception of Holy Communion, since anyone aware of grave sin must first be absolved before approaching the altar, lest they commit sacrilege (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:27–29).

Grave Obligation
According to moral theologians such as Tanquerey (Synopsis Theologiae Moralis et Pastoralis), Jone (Moral Theology), and St. Alphonsus Liguori (Homo Apostolicus), the obligation of annual confession binds under pain of mortal sin when omitted through one’s fault. It is fulfilled by one integral confession made within the prescribed time, even if the penitent has no mortal sins to confess, though in such cases the obligation is satisfied by confessing at least venial sins. Yet, the spirit of the law is not mere minimal compliance but the regular cultivation of the soul’s health. For this reason, the saints and spiritual writers advocate frequent confession, which not only restores grace but also imparts strength against temptation, deepens humility, and fosters a tender conscience.

Connection with the Easter Duty
The Church has traditionally linked the precept of annual confession with the “Easter Duty,” that is, the obligation to receive Holy Communion at least once a year during the Easter season. Since Holy Communion may not be received in the state of mortal sin, the obligation to confess beforehand is implicitly connected to this time.

In the universal Church, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) decreed that this Communion should take place “at least at Easter.” Later legislation defined a broader time frame, which in many regions begins with the First Sunday of Lent and ends on Low Sunday (the Sunday after Easter), or extends further to Ascension or Trinity Sunday.

• Tanquerey states that the common law period is from Palm Sunday to Low Sunday, but diocesan synods and particular law often enlarge it to allow for pastoral convenience, with Lent’s beginning as the earliest permissible start.
  
• Jone notes that in many places, especially in mission territories or rural dioceses, the period is extended from the First Sunday of Lent until Trinity Sunday to ensure that all can fulfill the duty.
  
• St. Alphonsus explains that the longer duration reflects the Church’s pastoral concern, accommodating those who, due to weather, travel, or scarcity of priests, could not confess or communicate during Holy Week or Easter itself.
  

In any case, confession within this period fulfills both the annual confession precept and the Easter Duty, provided Holy Communion is received worthily.

Excusing Causes and Moral Impossibility
Canon Law recognizes that physical or moral impossibility excuses from the annual confession precept. This includes circumstances such as serious illness, imprisonment, persecution, or the absence of any validly ordained priest with faculties. In such cases, the faithful are bound to make an act of perfect contrition, including the firm intention to confess when possible. However, moralists insist that such impossibility must be real and proportionate; mere negligence, indifference, or inconvenience does not excuse. The maxim of St. Alphonsus applies here: “God does not command what is impossible, but neither does He excuse when the possible is neglected.”

Pastoral Application
While the law sets a minimum, the life of grace flourishes when confession is made frequently—monthly or even weekly. Pope St. Pius X, in encouraging frequent Communion, also praised frequent confession, noting that it “fosters true Christian perfection.” For the devout, confession becomes not merely a remedy for sin but a school of virtue, a medicine for weakness, and an encounter with Christ the Good Shepherd. The faithful should therefore be taught to see confession not as a burdensome requirement but as a privileged meeting with the mercy of God, who restores, strengthens, and sends the soul forth renewed.

In fulfilling this precept, the Catholic acknowledges both the authority of the Church and the need for continual conversion. Going beyond it is the path of love, for “the just man falls seven times and rises again” (Proverbs 24:16), and in the confessional Christ Himself speaks: “Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee” (Matthew 9:2). 🔝

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CURRENT AFFAIRS

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Vatican Upholds Expulsion of Thriving Latin Mass Community in New Zealand

The Vatican has upheld Bishop Michael Gielen’s expulsion of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer (FSSR) from the Diocese of Christchurch, New Zealand, confirming the suppression of a flourishing traditional community without any public allegation of doctrinal error, moral scandal, or schism. This decision, announced on August 10 following the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life’s (CICLSAL) ruling against the FSSR’s appeal, is emblematic of the ongoing campaign against the Traditional Latin Mass and its adherents since the promulgation of Traditionis Custodes in 2021¹.

Bishop Gielen’s decree of July 2024 ordered the FSSR to cease public ministry within 24 hours and to vacate the diocese within 90 days, citing the “good of the Church and the faithful” but offering no public explanation for such an extreme measure². The FSSR — a community established in 2012 on Papa Stronsay, Scotland, with its New Zealand mission founded in 2014 — had been offering daily public celebration of the traditional rites, attracting vocations and drawing the faithful in numbers that contrasted starkly with the decline elsewhere in the diocese. In their place, Gielen permitted only a single weekly Sunday Mass in the older form, declaring that any other public celebration by the Sons would be “illicit.”³

The Vatican’s endorsement of the suppression — issued by a dicastery now led in part by a religious sister, with Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime as pro-prefect to provide canonical authority⁴ — reinforces the pattern seen in the treatment of other flourishing traditionalist institutes, such as the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate⁵ and the Institute of the Good Shepherd⁶. In each case, communities in full communion with Rome, faithful to the magisterium, and bearing demonstrable pastoral fruit have been curtailed or dismantled under pretexts of “unity” that mask a drive toward uniformity of postconciliar liturgical expression.

Such actions directly contradict the assurance given by Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum (2007) that “what earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful”⁷. The Church’s magisterium affirms that the faithful “have the right to worship God according to the provisions of their own rite approved by the lawful pastors of the Church” (Code of Canon Law, c. 214)⁸. The removal of that right, absent grave cause, constitutes an abuse of authority.

Historical precedent underscores the injustice. While the Church has, in the past, suppressed religious orders, these suppressions were justified either by doctrinal deviation — as in the case of the Templars in the early 14th century⁹ — or by moral and disciplinary collapse, such as the late medieval dissolutions of certain lax monasteries. Even politically motivated suppressions, like those under Joseph II or Napoleon, were recognised at the time as acts of secular overreach, not of ecclesiastical pastoral prudence¹⁰. The present suppression of communities like the FSSR bears none of these hallmarks; instead, it reflects an ideological drive to eradicate the preconciliar liturgical ethos from ordinary parish life.

This policy cannot be reconciled with the Church’s perennial teaching on liturgical tradition. St. Pius V, in Quo Primum (1570), enshrined the perpetuity of the Roman Missal, declaring that it could be used “for all time” by any priest of the Latin Church without fear of reprobation¹¹. While later pontiffs have legislated for legitimate liturgical reform, the wholesale suppression of a venerable and canonically approved rite constitutes a rupture, not a development.

The faithful in Christchurch — and Catholics worldwide — are being told that the very form of worship sanctified by centuries of saints, martyrs, and popes must now be treated as illicit in all but the most marginalised circumstances. This is not the work of a shepherd guarding his flock from danger, but of a regime seeking to erase a living link with the Church’s past. In this, the Vatican’s decision reveals less about the FSSR than it does about the priorities of those now entrusted with “unity” in the Church.

Unity without truth is false; unity without tradition is rootless; and unity without the freedom to worship according to the rites handed down to us is tyranny disguised as pastoral care. 🔝

¹ Traditionis Custodes, Apostolic Letter of Pope Francis, 16 July 2021.
² Bishop Michael Gielen, Decree of Removal, Diocese of Christchurch, July 2024.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Vatican Press Office, “Appointment of Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime as Pro-Prefect,” 2024.
⁵ Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, Decree on the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, 2013.
⁶ Congregation for the Clergy, Measures regarding the Institute of the Good Shepherd, 2016.
⁷ Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI, 7 July 2007, accompanying letter to bishops.
⁸ Code of Canon Law (1983), c. 214.
⁹ Barber, Malcolm, The Trial of the Templars, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
¹⁰ Aston, Nigel, Religion and Revolution in France, 1780–1804, Catholic University of America Press, 2000.
¹¹ Quo Primum Tempore, Pope St. Pius V, 14 July 1570.

Other Traditionalist Communities Targeted in the Last Decade

Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate (FFI)
In July 2013, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life imposed direct Vatican control over the FFI, appointing an apostolic commissioner and restricting the order’s ability to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass without explicit permission¹. The stated justification was “internal divisions” over the use of the 1962 Missal, but the measure effectively abolished the order’s founding charism of Marian-Franciscan life in the traditional rite. The restrictions remain in force, with vocations having collapsed and many friars dispersed.

Institute of the Good Shepherd (IBP)
Founded in 2006 with explicit permission to use the pre-1955 Holy Week rites and to offer “constructive criticism” of the Second Vatican Council, the IBP has faced increasing pressure since 2016². The Congregation for the Clergy intervened to limit its autonomy, citing “governance issues,” but the order’s priests have noted that diocesan bishops in France have systematically curtailed their public apostolates.

Diocese of Chicago – St. John Cantius Parish
In August 2022, Cardinal Blase Cupich restricted the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius from offering most public Traditional Latin Masses, allowing only one Sunday Mass in the older rite³. Cupich cited compliance with Traditionis Custodes, despite the parish’s thriving congregation and history of liturgical renewal rooted in the traditional form.

Carmelite Monastery of Philadelphia
In 2021, Archbishop Nelson Pérez implemented directives from the Vatican to cease public celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass at the Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Philadelphia⁴. The decision came despite the community’s cloistered nature and its long-standing use of the traditional rites.

Diocese of Savannah – Sacred Heart Parish
In May 2023, Bishop Stephen Parkes ordered the cessation of all Traditional Latin Masses at Sacred Heart Parish in Savannah⁵, displacing a stable group of faithful who had attended for over a decade. The stated rationale was compliance with new Vatican norms, but the faithful reported no consultation or pastoral provision for their spiritual needs.

Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) – Dijon, France
In June 2021, Archbishop Roland Minnerath expelled the FSSP from the parish of St. Bernard in Dijon after 23 years of service, citing their refusal to concelebrate the Chrism Mass⁶. The FSSP, while affirming their fidelity to the Church, maintained that concelebration is not obligatory under canon law.

Contextual Note
In each case, the communities removed or restricted were not guilty of doctrinal deviation or moral scandal but were targeted for their adherence to the Traditional Latin Mass and associated liturgical customs. The pattern is clear: post-Traditionis Custodes governance treats traditional worship as a tolerated concession to be progressively withdrawn, rather than as a legitimate, perennial form of the Roman rite protected by the Church’s own magisterial tradition⁷. 🔝

¹ Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, Decree on the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, 2013.
² Congregation for the Clergy, Measures regarding the Institute of the Good Shepherd, 2016.
³ Archdiocese of Chicago, Directives implementing Traditionis Custodes, August 2022.
⁴ Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Statement on the Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, 2021.
⁵ Diocese of Savannah, Bishop Stephen Parkes’ Letter to the Faithful, May 2023.
⁶ Archdiocese of Dijon, Press Release on the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, June 2021.
⁷ Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI, 7 July 2007; Code of Canon Law (1983), c. 214.

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The Jubilee of Youth and the Mirage of a “Different World”

Rome – On August 3, 2025, Pope Leo XIV addressed an estimated one million young people gathered at Tor Vergata Field for the closing Mass of the Jubilee of Youth, part of the broader Holy Year celebrations. In a scene reminiscent of World Youth Day spectacles, pilgrims from roughly 150 nations—many having camped overnight after a vigil—listened as the Pope told them: “You are the sign that a different world is possible. A world of fraternity and friendship, where conflicts are not resolved with weapons, but with dialogue.”¹

The message was one of optimism and universal solidarity, with the Pope urging youth to return home inspired, to “spread your enthusiasm and the witness of your faith,” and to “aspire to great things, to holiness.”² He offered words of closeness to those suffering in war zones, naming Gaza and Ukraine among those unable to attend. The next global youth gathering—World Youth Day—is scheduled for August 3–8, 2027, in Seoul, South Korea.³

A Gathering of Scale and Symbolism
The Vatican reported more than one million attendees, alongside 7,000 priests and 450 bishops.⁴ Such numbers underscore the attraction of large-scale Catholic events in an age when regular parish life and vocations have been in steep decline. The Holy Year itself is projected to draw over 32 million pilgrims,⁵ yet these headline figures mask the continuing crisis of participation in the Church’s sacramental life, particularly in the West.

It is worth noting that, despite the energy and emotional resonance of such gatherings, they are no substitute for the lived reality of Catholicism rooted in the parish, the family, and the local altar. The fervour of the crowd often dissipates on return home if it is not grounded in solid catechesis, the regular reception of the sacraments, and the discipline of daily prayer.⁶ St. John Chrysostom warned that enthusiasm without doctrine is like “a lamp without oil”⁷—bright for a moment, extinguished when the fuel is lacking.

A Different World—But Which One?
The phrase “a different world is possible” can be taken in two radically different ways. In the Catholic sense, the transformation of the world begins with conversion to Christ, the acceptance of the Cross, and the living of the moral law as revealed by God and taught infallibly by His Church. Yet in the modern idiom, such language can be easily co-opted by a secular utopianism—one that promises fraternity without the Fatherhood of God, peace without penance, and unity without truth.

The Catholic tradition does not imagine that war will cease merely by dialogue, for dialogue without conversion cannot reconcile man to God or man to man. As Pope Pius XI taught in Ubi Arcano Dei (1922), true peace “cannot be brought about without the return of men to the obedience of God’s law, and to the principles of Christ’s Gospel.”⁸ St. Augustine, in his City of God, observed that “peace is the tranquillity of order,”⁹ meaning the right ordering of human wills to God’s will. Without this, fraternity degenerates into sentimentalism, and peace into political expediency.

From Spectacle to Sanctification
If the youth who filled Tor Vergata are truly to be “the sign” of a better world, they must be formed in the Faith not as an inspirational ideal but as a binding and life-shaping reality. That requires bishops and priests to present them with the fullness of Catholic doctrine, undiluted by the demands of modern culture, and to offer them the Mass and sacraments in their most reverent and God-honouring form.¹⁰

Large gatherings can inspire, but the true test is whether they foster vocations, strengthen marriages, and produce a generation of Catholics willing to endure ridicule, persecution, and sacrifice for the sake of the Gospel. Without such fruits, the “different world” proclaimed will remain a mirage—momentarily dazzling, but vanishing in the desert of modern unbelief. As St. Ignatius of Antioch counselled, “It is better to be silent and be a Christian than to talk and not to be one”¹¹—reminding us that witness is proven in deeds, not crowds.

Conclusion
The Jubilee of Youth was undoubtedly a triumph of organisation and atmosphere, but the Catholic world must ask itself whether such events serve as points of conversion or as temporary spectacles. A truly different world will not come from human fraternity alone but from the Kingship of Christ, Who reigns through hearts and nations converted to His truth. Anything less is not the Kingdom of God, but a passing enthusiasm.¹² 🔝

¹ Politico, Pope tells 1 million Catholic youths they are ‘the sign a different world is possible’, 3 Aug 2025.
² Ibid.
³ AP News, Pope Leo XIV tells 1 million Catholic youths that they are ‘the sign a different world is possible’, 3 Aug 2025.
⁴ Reuters, Pope Leo exhorts crowd of million Catholic youth to spread their faith, 3 Aug 2025.
⁵ Politico, Pope tells 1 million Catholic youths…, 3 Aug 2025.
⁶ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1324–1327.
⁷ St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 43.
⁸ Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, §49, 23 Dec 1922.
⁹ St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei [City of God], XIX, 13.
¹⁰ Pope Pius X, Acerbo Nimis, §29, 15 Apr 1905.
¹¹ St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, 15.
¹² Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, §11, 11 Dec 1925.

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Persecution of Christians Intensifies in Key Global Hotspots: What the Faithful Must Know and Do

In 2025, the plight of Christians in several regions of the world has reached new levels of severity, with updated figures and reports painting a sobering picture of the global state of religious freedom. The most recent World Watch List from Open Doors places North Korea once again as the most dangerous country in which to be a Christian, followed closely by Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, and other unstable or authoritarian states¹.

North Korea: Faith as a Death Sentence
In the so-called “Hermit Kingdom,” the discovery of Christian belief is treated as treason. Believers risk execution, torture, and internment in brutal labor camps². Worship takes place in utmost secrecy, with family members often concealing their faith even from one another. Open Doors describes the country as “the most secretive and ruthless persecutor of Christians in the modern era”³.

Africa: Violent Extremism Targets the Church
Across sub-Saharan Africa, Islamist militancy and state weakness have combined to create deadly conditions for Christians.

• In Nigeria, armed groups—most infamously Boko Haram and Fulani extremists—have made Christian communities a primary target, with thousands killed and hundreds of churches burned or destroyed⁴.
• In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), aligned with ISIS, have massacred entire Christian congregations. In February 2025, one of the worst atrocities saw at least 70 believers decapitated inside a church during worship⁵.

Middle East: Restriction and Intimidation
Christians in the Middle East and North Africa face entrenched discrimination, state surveillance, and limits on public worship.

• In Palestinian territories, believers face shrinking freedoms. This Easter, Israeli restrictions sharply reduced access for Palestinian Christians to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, prompting outcry from Church leaders⁶.
• In Yemen, Libya, and Sudan, the collapse of governance has left Christians vulnerable to both state repression and jihadist violence⁷.

India: Nationalist Hostility
In the states of Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, radical Hindu nationalist groups have driven Christian families from their homes, often under the guise of anti-conversion laws⁸. Victims face destruction of property, public beatings, and coerced renunciations of faith.

A Call to Action
The Catholic response must be twofold:

1. Prayer and Solidarity — The faithful are urged to join in daily intercession for persecuted Christians, especially during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in the family Rosary. Prayer vigils, Holy Hours, and parish intentions should be dedicated to this cause.
2. Practical Support — Aid agencies such as Aid to the Church in Need, Open Doors, and International Christian Concern provide emergency relief, legal advocacy, and pastoral resources⁹. Financial contributions, lobbying for stronger protections in foreign policy, and raising awareness in media are crucial.

An Uncomfortable Truth
Reports from bodies such as the U.S. State Department and parliamentary research services confirm that the suppression of Christian freedoms is intensifying in many places, while global attention remains inconsistent¹⁰. Many governments prefer to overlook these abuses, particularly when economic or strategic alliances are at stake. The Church must resist this silence, speaking “with boldness” (Acts 4:31) for those “in bonds” (Heb. 13:3).

Conclusion
The persecution of Christians is not a distant historical memory—it is an immediate, lived reality for millions of our brothers and sisters. As members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we are bound to them in prayer, charity, and active witness. Silence and indifference, as history repeatedly shows, only embolden the persecutor. 🔝

¹ Open Doors World Watch List 2025, Open Doors South Africa.
² U.S. State Department, 2024 Report on International Religious Freedom: North Korea.
³ Open Doors International, Country Profile: North Korea, 2025.
⁴ Human Rights Without Frontiers, Nigeria: Massacres and Targeted Killings of Christians, 2024; New York Post, “Thousands of Christians deliberately targeted and killed in Nigeria: report,” 3 September 2024.
⁵ Kasanga Massacre, February 2025, reported in Wikipedia and The New American, “Silent Genocide: African ISIS Beheading Christians,” 19 February 2025.
⁶ The Guardian, “‘They are trying to make it unbearable’: Jerusalem Christians face Easter under Israeli crackdown,” 18 April 2025.
⁷ Open Doors World Watch List 2025, regional analysis for Yemen, Libya, and Sudan.
⁸ The Roys Report, “Christian Families in East-Central India Forced Out of Homes by Hindu Nationalists,” 2024.
⁹ Aid to the Church in Need International, Annual Report 2024; International Christian Concern, Persecution Reports.
¹⁰ U.S. State Department, 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: United Kingdom and Others; UK House of Commons Library, Research Briefing: Persecution of Religious Minorities, 2025.

The Best the Novus Ordo Can Offer? Virginia’s Record Ordinations Amid a Worsening Crisis

The Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, ordained twelve men to the priesthood on 27 June 2025—the second-largest class in its history and, by current standards, a national rarity.¹ The secular press has celebrated the event as a “sign of hope,” and in purely statistical terms, it is: in a Church where the number of priests in the United States has fallen by approximately forty percent since 1970,² any uptick seems welcome. Yet from the standpoint of Catholic Tradition, this ordination class is less a herald of renewal than an outlier in a continuing decline—a high-water mark in a shrinking sea.

A Statistical Anomaly in a Collapsing Landscape
Twelve priests in one year for a single diocese is remarkable when compared to the national average, but such figures mask the broader crisis. Across the United States, seminary enrolments remain far below the levels necessary to replace ageing clergy.³ Many dioceses report ordaining only one or two men annually—sometimes none at all—while closing parishes, merging communities, and importing foreign clergy to fill empty pulpits. The demographic cliff looms: the median age of priests in the U.S. is now over 60, and a generation formed in the post–Vatican II era is retiring without successors.⁴

The Arlington ordinations are thus a statistical exception, not evidence of systemic health. As one commentator put it bluntly: “If this is the best the Novus Ordo can offer after sixty years of renewal, it is not enough.”

Diversity of Background, Sameness of Formation
The secular coverage highlighted the varied backgrounds of four of the ordinandi: a Black American former coach, a Protestant convert and lawyer bound for Navy chaplaincy, a Peruvian-born engineer, and a former consultant from New York.⁵ From the vantage point of Tradition, such human interest profiles reveal zeal and personal sacrifice, but they cannot disguise the fact that their formation remains shaped by the postconciliar seminary ethos—a theological environment that has, for decades, produced priests ill-equipped to defend the faith against modern errors.

Pope Pius XI in Ad Catholici Sacerdotii warned that “nothing must be neglected which concerns the training of the clergy… for on them, to a great extent, depends the welfare of the Church.”⁶ When priestly formation is built on the shifting sands of pastoral relativism, ecumenical ambiguity, and a liturgical rite stripped of its sacrificial clarity, even the most zealous ordinand risks being set adrift.

The Vocations Winter Continues
Even with Arlington’s success, the underlying trends are bleak. In the past fifty years, Mass attendance, sacramental practice, and Catholic school enrolment have collapsed in parallel with the fall in vocations.⁷ The so-called “springtime of Vatican II” has yielded, in most places, barren fields. Only where the faith is taught in its fullness, discipline is maintained, and the liturgy is celebrated with reverence—often in communities attached to the Traditional Latin Mass—do vocations flourish. The data bear this out: traditionalist seminaries, though small in absolute numbers, often report steady growth and youthful candidates, while many diocesan seminaries stand half-empty.⁸

The Arlington ordinations are therefore less a sign of conciliar vitality than a testament to what even a Novus Ordo diocese can achieve when it avoids the worst excesses of postconciliar experimentation. The diocese has a reputation for relative liturgical sobriety, orthodox preaching, and clear expectations for seminarians—traits that, unsurprisingly, produce more vocations than dioceses steeped in doctrinal ambiguity and liturgical abuse.

Hope, But Not the Whole Answer
From a traditional Catholic perspective, the joy of seeing twelve new priests must be tempered by realism. Without a wholesale return to the perennial magisterium, the restoration of the Roman Rite in its integrity, and the rejection of modernist errors, the vocations crisis will not be reversed. The Arlington class, while commendable, cannot by itself offset the collapse elsewhere. As Our Lord warned, “The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few” (Matt. 9:37)—and in much of the Western Church, the harvest is rotting for lack of labourers willing and able to work according to the mind of the Church in every age.

In the end, this “success story” may be less a turning point than a final bright flare before the night deepens—unless, by the grace of God, it becomes the seed of a broader restoration. 🔝

¹ Associated Press, “A US diocese defies trends and ordains its largest class of Catholic priests in decades,” 27 June 2025.
² Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), “Frequently Requested Church Statistics,” 2024.
³ Ibid.; see also U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Ordinations Class of 2024 Survey.
⁴ CARA, “Age Distribution of Catholic Priests,” 2024.
⁵ Associated Press, “Meet the men who just became Catholic priests in Virginia,” 27 June 2025.
⁶ Pope Pius XI, Ad Catholici Sacerdotii, 20 December 1935, n. 60.
⁷ Pew Research Center, “U.S. Catholics Open to Non-Traditional Families,” 2015; Gallup Polling Data on Weekly Mass Attendance, 1970–2024.
⁸ Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, “Vocations from Tradition-Friendly Schools,” 2023.

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In Other News…

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Hamas’s Own Numbers Collapse the Civilian-Casualty Narrative — and Expose the Politics of Famine in Gaza

For much of the war, the Gaza Ministry of Health—an arm of Hamas—has been treated by much of the media and international bodies as the authoritative source for casualty figures. Its claim that “70% of the dead” were women and children became a central refrain in protests, headlines, and diplomatic condemnations. This figure was cited uncritically by those who either overlooked or disregarded the political and military control Hamas exercises over all official reporting in Gaza.

The April 2025 Revision
In April 2025, the Hamas-run ministry quietly issued a major revision to its casualty list, removing more than 3,400 names, including 1,080 previously classified as children¹. The change drew little mainstream attention but radically altered the demographic composition of the death toll. The corrected dataset revealed that 72% of the dead were men aged 13–55² — the demographic most likely to be active combatants in Gaza.

This undercut the prior narrative in two ways. First, it exposed that the “70% women and children” talking point was the product of manipulated classification. Second, it showed that even Hamas’s own records, stripped of propaganda framing, point to combat-aged men as the majority of the dead.

Multiple Analyses, Same Direction
Two independent reviews of the post-revision figures reached consistent conclusions:

• The Washington Institute for Near East Policy found ≈49% adult men, ≈19–20% adult women, and **≈31–32% children (<18)**³.
• An alternative reclassification by analyst S. Aizenberg, grouping all males aged 13–55 as “combat-age,” yielded a 72% share⁴.

While the totals differ due to differing age cut-offs, both point in the same direction: Hamas’s own data no longer supports its initial portrayal of mass indiscriminate killing of women and children.

August 2025: Totals Rise, Patterns Hold
By August 13, the MoH’s daily updates—still the only regular, named fatality lists available—placed total reported deaths above 61,000. Yet no new age or gender breakdown has replaced the July 31 list. Thus, the demographic patterns identified from the revised spring and summer datasets remain the most authoritative snapshot available.

The Geography of Famine
Alongside casualty statistics, accusations of “deliberate starvation” have become another weaponised talking point. Here, too, the reality is more complex. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification and humanitarian bulletins confirm that famine conditions are concentrated in northern Gaza and isolated enclaves not under sustained Israeli control⁵.

In contrast, central and southern sectors under IDF control or coordination receive regular aid convoys, with documented instances of Israel offering direct delivery into the north. UN agencies have repeatedly declined to accept such convoys under IDF escort, citing neutrality policies, thereby leaving Hamas-controlled distribution systems in place — systems that have been repeatedly accused of diversion and obstruction. The result is a selective humanitarian collapse: Israeli-secured zones receive food; Hamas-held areas experience severe shortages.

Media and Diplomatic Complicity
That these revisions and regional distinctions have not reshaped the international conversation points to a deeper problem: the willingness of major institutions to amplify Hamas-provided figures without rigorous verification. In casualty counts and famine claims alike, the framing has often mattered more than the underlying data.

Conclusion
The war in Gaza remains a tragedy, and each innocent life lost is grievous. But the duty to truth requires that statistics—especially those shaping global opinion—be treated with critical scrutiny. When Hamas’s own data shows a majority of combat-aged male deaths, and when famine is revealed to be geographically selective and politically mediated, the moral and strategic narratives built on the earlier figures collapse. 🔝

1. Euronews, “Hamas-Run Health Ministry Quietly Removes Thousands from Gaza Death Toll,” 3 April 2025.
2. HonestReporting / The Algemeiner, “Hamas Deletes Thousands from Gaza Death List,” 3 April 2025.
3. Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “Untangling the UN’s Gaza Fatality Data,” April 2025.
4. HonestReporting / S. Aizenberg, Data Analysis of MoH Revisions, March–April 2025.
5. IPC, “Gaza Strip Acute Food Insecurity Analysis,” June 2025.

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Practical Wisdom for a Confused Age: The Archbishop’s Advice to Young People

A Changing Landscape for Adulthood
The old cultural script was simple: finish school, go to university, find a career, buy a home, raise a family. For generations, this path was attainable, even expected, for anyone prepared to work hard. Today, however, that sequence often collapses under economic reality. Wages for young people have stagnated relative to living costs; house prices have risen far faster than incomes; and a university degree — once a near-guarantee of stable employment — can now be a debt-laden detour into underemployment.

In such a climate, following the “approved” route can leave a young adult entering their mid-twenties burdened with £50,000 or more in debt, earning little above the national average wage, and unable to afford the deposit for even the smallest starter home. In many cases, their qualifications prove irrelevant to the work they eventually find.

It is this hard reality that the Archbishop of Selsey addresses with his advice to young people: “Get a job, get a mortgage, and when qualifications become necessary or obvious for the career path, take them then. Rent out your house to cover the mortgage, and you’ll have credit history for loans if necessary. There’s no need to rush into anything.”

This is not a call to abandon education, but to reclaim the virtue of timing — to approach study as a strategic investment rather than a compulsory rite of passage.

The Economic Case for Early Earning
Statistics confirm the wisdom in this counsel. Graduates in England leave university with an average debt of £53,000¹. With interest rates on student loans now linked to inflation, many will repay for decades without ever clearing the balance. In the same years spent accruing this debt, a young person in work could be building savings, a deposit, and a credit history — the three keys to homeownership.

Meanwhile, the housing market has moved further out of reach. The average age of a first-time buyer is now 32 years and 7 months across the UK, rising to 34 years and 1 month in London². Those who buy early have the advantage of starting their mortgage clock sooner, potentially becoming mortgage-free before retirement — something increasingly rare among their peers.

The Archbishop’s approach flips the usual order: secure your financial footing first, then add qualifications when they will directly serve a clear career goal. This way, education becomes a tool for advancement rather than an expensive placeholder for indecision.

Universities in Crisis: Ideology over Education
But the Archbishop’s warning is not only economic — it is also intellectual and moral. Modern universities, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, have been deeply compromised by the capture of curricula by Critical Social Justice theory and its attendant orthodoxies on gender, race, and identity. Where the academy once prided itself on rigorous debate and pursuit of truth, it now too often enforces ideological conformity, punishes dissent, and substitutes activism for scholarship.

Employers repeatedly report that graduates lack the practical skills, adaptability, and interpersonal maturity needed in the workplace³. Instead, they arrive with fragile expectations and little tolerance for disagreement. This has made many degrees — especially in politically charged disciplines — not merely irrelevant but actively counterproductive to employment prospects.

ORA Formation Policy: Building Priests for Reality
These same concerns have shaped the Old Roman Apostolate’s approach to priestly formation. The Archbishop has directed episcopal administrators to exercise great caution with young men coming directly from university. “We are wary,” he has said, “of those who have been indoctrinated in institutions hostile to morality and faith. Too often they arrive with the intellectual and spiritual wounds of their environment still unhealed.”

Instead, the ORA favours the Formation House model. In these houses, candidates for the priesthood live together under a common rule, share in the liturgical life of the Church, and engage in regular work or study. This ensures they:

• Are not a financial burden to the faithful or the Apostolate.
• Gain practical work experience and economic self-sufficiency.
• Learn to pastor souls with an understanding of the daily realities — employment, budgeting, housing — faced by the people they will serve.

While a traditional residential seminary remains the ideal in theory, the Archbishop recognises that it is increasingly unsustainable in practice, especially when the majority of ORA missions cannot yet provide full-time stipends for clergy. The Formation House model ensures that priests are prepared both for the altar and for the world in which they minister.

Serving Families as Well as Vocations
This advice is not for seminarians alone. For parents, it offers a way to spare their children from years of unproductive study, debt, and disillusionment. A young person who stays at home, works, and contributes to the household while saving for their future provides immediate relief to family finances and long-term security for themselves.

In moral terms, this is an appeal to the virtue of prudence. In spiritual terms, it is a call to patient discernment. The Archbishop warns: “People make life-changing decisions far too quickly these days. Better to discern one’s calling with patience and prayer than to rush into commitments that may close more doors than they open.”

Countercultural Prudence in an Age of Haste
The modern economy rewards those who plan, who resist the pressure to conform to the debt-fuelled rush into adulthood. The Archbishop’s advice is not only financially astute but deeply pastoral. It calls young people to embrace responsibility in a way that will equip them for every path — whether to marriage, religious life, or the priesthood.

For a generation navigating economic instability, ideological hostility, and moral confusion, this may be the most radical — and the most sensible — counsel they will ever hear. 🔝

1. Office for Students, Student Loan Statistics 2024–25, June 2025.
2. Mojo Mortgages, Average Age of a First-Time Buyer UK 2025, July 2025.
3. Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Education and Skills Survey 2024.

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Weaponising Scripture? Vatican Newspaper Under Fire for Anti-Israel Op-Ed

An August 7, 2025 opinion piece in L’Osservatore Romano—the Vatican’s official daily—has ignited fierce criticism after accusing Israeli leaders of “weaponising” the Bible to justify the destruction of Gaza. The controversy was first brought to light by journalist Jules Gomes, whose reporting has exposed both the substance of the accusations and the deeper historical context of the paper’s editorial record.

The op-ed, written by Jesuit Fr David Neuhaus, a member of the Holy Land Catholic Church’s Justice and Peace Commission, alleges that former prime minister David Ben-Gurion and current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have invoked the conquest narratives in Deuteronomy and Joshua to legitimise war and even “extermination” of Palestinians. Neuhaus cites Ben-Gurion’s 1937 testimony to the Peel Commission—“the Bible is our Mandate”—as emblematic of this approach, interpreting it as an ideological basis for ethnic cleansing and entrenched discrimination.¹ He further claims that Netanyahu’s quotation of Deuteronomy 25:17 (“Remember what Amalec did to thee”)* (cf. Exod. 17:8-16)² at the start of the Gaza war is a modern echo of the biblical command to destroy Amalec, applied to contemporary enemies.

Scholarly Rebuttal: Distortion and Context Omitted
As Gomes reports, multiple scholars and analysts have rejected Neuhaus’s framing:

• Dr Gavin Fernandes (Hebrew Bible scholar, University of Pretoria) stresses that Netanyahu was offering a historical analogy for resilience in crisis, not transposing a divine mandate into present-day policy.³
• Prof Gerald McDermott (Jerusalem Seminary) calls Neuhaus’s reading a “reckless distortion,” noting that in the same Peel Commission testimony Ben-Gurion affirmed that the land was “their country” for Arabs, pledging “full rights” and promising that “nothing shall be taken away from them.” McDermott also denounces Neuhaus’s revival of the “starvation” accusation against Israel, contrasting it with evidence of extensive humanitarian aid deliveries and Hamas’s theft of supplies.³
• Andrew J. Nolte (Regent University’s Israel Institute) argues that Israel’s actions are governed by existential survival post-October 7, not by conquest narratives, and urges Christians to assess the conflict through the Just War tradition, particularly in light of Hamas’s repeated Geneva-Convention violations.³

A Pattern of Accusation and Historical Echoes
Gomes notes that this is not Neuhaus’s first L’Osservatore Romano column targeting Israel. In May 2025, Neuhaus published “Antisemitism and Palestine”, blaming Israel’s “ruthless war” for rising antisemitism and drawing a moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the Nakba—a comparison widely criticised for its historical and moral incoherence.³

In tracing the newspaper’s past, Gomes recalls that such polemics are consistent with L’Osservatore Romano’s late 19th-century editorial line. In 1898, a year after Dracula was published, the paper ran articles accusing Jews of being “vampires thirsting for Christian blood” and claiming “ALL JEWS need Christian blood every seven years.” In July 1892, during a German ritual-murder trial, it reported that “many unimpeachable witnesses have already established that Jews practice ritual homicides so that they can use Christian blood in making their Passover matzoh.” Even after acquittals, it asserted that “the judiciary is entirely in the synagogue’s control.”⁴

Israeli Diplomatic Pushback
Quoting from Gomes’s coverage, Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See Yaron Sideman responded that history is filled with examples of religious texts being twisted to justify atrocities—citing Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah as contemporary cases. He contrasted this with Israel’s decision-making, which he insists is rooted in concrete security assessments of existential threats, not in biblical interpretation. “Christian-Jewish religious polemics are neither needed nor relevant in this case,” Sideman stated.³

The Holy See Press Office has declined to comment on the matter. 🔝

1. Ben-Gurion’s statement to the Peel Commission (1937): “The Bible is our Mandate” (also rendered as “the Mandate is not our Bible but the Bible is our Mandate”), as cited in Gomes’s reporting on Neuhaus’s op-ed.
2. Deuteronomy 25:17: “Remember what Amalek did to thee…,” a text historically interpreted as recalling the enmity of Amalek (cf. Exodus 17:8–16).
3. Scholarly and diplomatic responses: Fernandes, McDermott, Nolte, and Sideman, as reported in Gomes’s August 13, 2025 article.
4. Historical antisemitism in L’Osservatore Romano: archival quotations from 1892 and 1898, documented in Gomes’s investigative account.

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Meta’s AI Rules Allow ‘Sensual’ Chats With Minors and False Medical Advice — Political Outcry Follows

A Reuters investigation has revealed that Meta’s internal generative AI content standards permitted conduct widely viewed as unsafe—particularly towards minors—while also authorising the dissemination of false medical and legal information. These disclosures have provoked strong condemnation from United States lawmakers, who are now calling for urgent legislative oversight.

The Internal Document
The more-than-200-page policy, GenAI: Content Risk Standards, was approved by Meta’s legal, public policy, and engineering leadership, including its chief ethicist. It contained examples that allowed AI chatbots to engage in “romantic or sensual” conversations with children. One cited example read: “Every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.” Meta has since admitted that this material was “erroneous” and “inconsistent” with official policy, but conceded that it had been present in the guidelines used to instruct AI behaviour¹.

The document also authorised AI systems to generate knowingly false medical or legal statements, provided a disclaimer accompanied them. This framework meant that a chatbot could produce misinformation—such as inaccurate health claims—so long as it labelled them as untrue². Despite a stated prohibition on hate speech, the policy also contained a carve-out for overtly demeaning racial claims, including assertions that Black people are “dumber than white people”³.

On violent content, the guidelines allowed depictions within certain thresholds—such as showing a man threatening a woman with a chainsaw—provided there was no visible gore. For sexually explicit prompts involving celebrities, moderators were instructed to “deflect” the request, for example by showing an image of Taylor Swift holding a fish⁴.

Meta’s Response
Meta confirmed the authenticity of the policy but maintained that the most contentious examples were “mistaken inclusions” and have now been removed. The company admitted, however, that enforcement of its rules had been inconsistent⁵.

Political Backlash
The revelations drew immediate political condemnation. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) called the policy “beyond reckless,” accusing Meta of “codifying predatory conduct into AI policy.” Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) demanded “a full congressional inquiry” and renewed calls to strengthen the Kids Online Safety Act⁶. Other lawmakers proposed limiting Section 230 protections for generative AI, thereby making companies directly liable for harmful outputs⁷.

Moral and Theological Implications
From a Catholic moral perspective, these provisions touch directly upon the Church’s teaching on the protection of children, the safeguarding of truth, and the moral responsibility of those in positions of technological power. The Catechism warns that “the right to the communication of the truth is not unconditional” and that information must always serve charity and the common good⁸. It is therefore morally illicit to design systems that can knowingly propagate falsehoods, even with disclaimers, when such content risks harm.

Equally, the inclusion—however unintended—of sexualised interaction with minors in an operational guideline for AI constitutes a grave scandal. Our Lord’s warning is clear: “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalise one of these little ones”⁹.

Finally, the permissibility of racially demeaning outputs contradicts the fundamental Christian teaching that all human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and the magisterial condemnations of racism issued by the Popes¹⁰.

Conclusion
This episode demonstrates not only the inadequacy of corporate self-regulation in the AI sector, but also the deeper moral hazard when technological development is divorced from immutable ethical principles. Legislative reform may mitigate certain risks, but the underlying problem is cultural: the willingness to trade moral integrity for operational convenience. For Catholics, it is a reminder that no technology is value-neutral, and that vigilance—rooted in faith and reason—is essential in safeguarding both truth and the most vulnerable. 🔝

Footnotes
¹ Reuters, Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids, offer false medical info, Aug. 14, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Reuters, US senators call for Meta probe after Reuters report on its AI policies, Aug. 14, 2025.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2488–2489.
⁹ Luke 17:2, Douay-Rheims.
¹⁰ Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge (1937), §8; John Paul II, Angelus Address, Aug. 26, 2001.

Safeguarding Lessons for the Church

The failings revealed in Meta’s AI standards are not unique to the corporate world. They reflect a broader human temptation to permit morally dangerous practices for the sake of operational flexibility, expediency, or public image.

For Catholic institutions, especially in the digital apostolate, several lessons emerge:

• Safeguarding is proactive, not reactive — Policies must be written and tested to prevent harm before it occurs. Merely removing objectionable material after exposure is not enough.
• Transparency builds trust — Internal guidelines that would shock the faithful if made public are, by definition, incompatible with the Church’s moral mission.
• No exemptions for the powerful — Just as corporations must be held to account for their leaders’ sign-off on harmful practices, the Church must apply the same moral scrutiny to all its ministers and projects, regardless of position.
• Formation precedes innovation — Any new technology used in Catholic work—whether for catechesis, pastoral care, or communication—must be developed within the framework of Catholic teaching, not adapted after launch to fit moral norms.
• The vulnerable come first — Children, the poor, and those in crisis must be the primary reference point for risk assessment. If a system could harm them, it is unfit for use.

As Pope Pius XII reminded the faithful, “the means of communication… must always be at the service of truth and morality, lest they become instruments of corruption”¹. 🔝

¹ Pius XII, Miranda Prorsus (1957), §6.

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From Calvary to Casual: The Crisis of Modern Worship

One of the most corrosive errors in modern liturgical practice is the assumption that worship must be “informal,” “accessible,” or “comfortable” in order to be genuine. This mindset—imported from Protestant culture and reinforced by post-Conciliar innovation—has reshaped Catholic worship, often replacing awe with ease, divine orientation with human-centred convenience, and obedience to God’s prescriptions with accommodation to contemporary taste.

Scripture’s Unbroken Witness to Reverence
From Genesis to Revelation, Sacred Scripture presents worship as something formal, ordered, and on God’s terms. In the Old Covenant, the Lord commanded Moses to establish precise rites, vestments, and sacrifices¹. The Psalms speak of entering the Lord’s presence “in holy attire”² and “bowing down in worship”³. These are not cultural embellishments but divine instructions for approaching the Holy One of Israel.

Our Lord Jesus Christ did not overturn this principle. On the contrary, He observed the appointed feasts⁴, attended synagogue “according to His custom”⁵, and defended the sanctity of the Temple by driving out the money changers⁶. His criticisms of the Pharisees were aimed at hypocrisy, not at formality in worship. Even as He fulfilled the ceremonial law in His Passion, He preserved the principle that worship is to be offered with dignity and order.

The Apostolic Church continued this pattern. The Acts of the Apostles depicts believers worshipping in the Temple⁷ and gathering for the “breaking of the bread” in an ordered way. St. Paul rebuked the Corinthians for irreverence at the Eucharistic assembly⁸ and commanded that “all things be done decently and in order”⁹. The heavenly liturgy revealed to St. John in the Apocalypse is filled with incense, prostrations, chanting, and ceremonial splendour¹⁰—hardly the image of a casual gathering.

One of the most corrosive errors in modern liturgical practice is to treat this biblical formality as an optional extra, rather than the norm God Himself has given.

The Fathers: Worship in Unity and Obedience
The early Fathers understood that true worship requires visible unity, hierarchy, and submission to the order established by Christ through His Apostles. St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the early second century, exhorted the Smyrnaeans:

“See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is administered either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude of the people also be; even as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”¹¹

For Ignatius, the Eucharist is not a private act or a platform for individual creativity. It is an act of the whole Church, under the bishop, in hierarchical and sacramental unity. This excludes the kind of self-styled, “democratised” worship that has become common today, where the personality of the celebrant or the tastes of the congregation take precedence over the objective demands of the liturgy.

Bishop Schneider: The Liturgical Exile
Bishop Athanasius Schneider has described our age as one of liturgical exile—a time when the Church’s public worship has been distorted to suit human tastes rather than divine worship. He laments the “careless and superficial—almost an entertainment style” now seen in too many places and insists that “you cannot change the liturgy by the tastes of the time; the liturgy is timeless.”¹²

Schneider also reminds us that concelebration, historically, was exceptional—normally at the Chrism Mass or ordinations under the presidency of the bishop. Today’s routine mass-concelebrations flatten the liturgy’s hierarchical structure and risk obscuring the sacrificial nature of the Mass itself. But this is only one symptom of the broader problem: a departure from the God-centred, tradition-rooted worship that nourished the saints.

Informality in Practice: A Symptom of Deeper Disorder
The corrosive mentality of “comfortable” worship is visible in many contexts, from parish liturgies to the grandest of public ceremonies. One striking example is found in certain large-scale papal liturgies.

These occasions should be the supreme manifestations of Catholic unity and reverence. Yet too often, processions lose their sacred focus, with clergy chatting, shuffling without order, or glancing around as though merely participating in a civic parade. Some concelebrants even raise mobile phones during sacred moments, turning what should be an act of worship into a photo opportunity. Vestments are sometimes mismatched, ill-kept, or worn carelessly. The distribution of Holy Communion—hurried, sometimes without proper reverence—can resemble logistical crowd management more than the dispensing of the Body of Christ.

These are not merely lapses in etiquette; they are the visible fruits of a deeper loss: the shift from God-centred worship to man-centred accommodation, where efficiency and approachability are treated as higher values than awe, mystery, and obedience.

One of the most corrosive errors in modern liturgical practice is the belief that such casualness fosters participation. In reality, it dulls the faithful’s awareness that they stand at Calvary.

The Magisterium: Guarding the Sacred from Novelty
The Church’s own teaching stands squarely against the reduction of worship to casual accessibility. Pius XII’s Mediator Dei warns against “a spirit of novelty” that “offends the dignity and beauty of the sacred ceremonies”¹³, reminding us that “the sacred liturgy … is the public worship which our Redeemer as Head of the Church renders to the Father”¹⁴. Participation, he teaches, must be “in complete accordance with the laws and rubrics”¹⁵, making casual deviation from them a violation of both reverence and obedience.

Even Sacrosanctum Concilium—often misquoted to justify informality—commands: “No other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority”¹⁶. It calls for “noble simplicity”¹⁷, which is not to be confused with informality or sloppiness.

Conclusion: Worship on God’s Terms
From Scripture to the Fathers, from the Magisterium to the testimony of faithful pastors, the message is constant: worship must be offered on God’s terms, not ours. The drive to make worship “comfortable” is not a harmless pastoral option; it is a direct challenge to the very nature of divine worship.

The Mass is not meant to mirror us; it is meant to conform us to Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary. To exchange the solemn for the casual is to step away from the foot of the Cross and toward the marketplace.

As the Epistle to the Hebrews commands: “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire”¹⁸. 🔝

1. Exodus 28–29; Leviticus 16.
2. Psalm 29:2, Douay-Rheims.
3. Psalm 95:6, Douay-Rheims.
4. John 7:14; John 10:22–23.
5. Luke 4:16.
6. Matthew 21:12–13.
7. Acts 3:1.
8. 1 Corinthians 11:17–34.
9. 1 Corinthians 14:40.
10. Revelation 4–5.
11. St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, ch. 8, in The Apostolic Fathers, ed. and trans. J. B. Lightfoot, public domain.
12. Athanasius Schneider, interview in Crux, 28 March 2022.
13. Pius XII, Mediator Dei, §59.
14. Ibid., §20.
15. Ibid., §108.
16. Sacrosanctum Concilium, §22.3.
17. Ibid., §34.
18. Hebrews 12:28–29.

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Engines of Grace: Why the Church’s Beating Heart Has Fallen Silent

The gravest threat to the Church in our time is not only the visible decline in Mass attendance or the collapse of catechesis—it is the absence of religious vocations, especially in the contemplative life. For centuries, monasteries and convents were the hidden engines of the Church’s mission, silently generating the supernatural power without which no apostolic work can endure. Without them, the Church resembles an army without supply lines: active, even valiant, yet unable to sustain the fight.

The tragedy is that so few today understand vocation as the selfless gift of one’s life to God. In our catechetical poverty, the very idea of kenosis—self-emptying in union with Calvary for the salvation of souls—has been replaced by the pursuit of self-realisation, personal fulfilment, and therapeutic “journeys of the self.” St. John of the Cross warned with prophetic bluntness: “If you do not learn to deny yourself, you can make no progress in perfection.”¹ In the climate of the modern West, that warning is not just ignored, but treated as harmful.

In a culture where everything is filtered through self-interest, the notion of vanishing behind monastery walls—never to be seen again—is utterly alien. When traditionalist communities attempt to revive this life, they are derided as extremist, cult-like, or suspicious. But this reaction reveals less about the integrity of these communities than about the spiritual amnesia of our age.

History tells us otherwise. It was precisely the contemplative houses—Benedictine abbeys, Carthusian hermitages, Carmelite convents—that kept the Church’s lifeblood flowing. Their daily Mass, unceasing psalmody, and hidden penances filled the Treasury of Grace, making reparation for the sins of others and, in the words of Pope St. Pius X, multiplying the Church’s “power for good” in proportion to their holiness.²

This was not passive withdrawal, but the most intense form of spiritual activity. Thomas Merton described contemplation as “life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive … a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source.”³ And Josef Pieper, interpreting St. Thomas Aquinas, observed that “contemplation… preserves in the midst of human society the truth which is the yardstick of every possible use… keeps the true end in sight, gives meaning to every practical act of life.”⁴

When the contemplative life flourishes, missionary work advances, sanctity increases, and Catholic civilisation is renewed. When it withers, the visible structures of the Church lose their vitality. Looking at the Church today, it is evident what is missing, what has been lost—and what must be restored if there is to be any true renewal.

This is why we should pray fervently for the traditionalist religious orders and the Old Roman apostolates and for every effort to revive religious life and authentic vocational discernment. We undertake this work for the sake of the Church, no matter the derision or calumny it attracts. Indeed, we are never more justified in our seeming separation from the spirit of the modern Church than when we are ridiculed for preserving what is proven, good, and true.

Structural reform will not save the Church. Only the restoration of her beating heart—the life of hidden prayer and sacrifice—will. As St. John of the Cross reminds us, “In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”⁵ To restore the contemplative vocation is to restore the wellspring from which the Church draws her life, power, and endurance in the battle against sin, the world, and the devil. 🔝

¹ St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, §72, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991).
² Pope St. Pius X, Haerent Animo (4 August 1908), §22.
³ Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), 1.
⁴ Josef Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 36.
⁵ St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, §57, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kavanaugh and Rodriguez.

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Britain’s Free Speech Backslide: A Wake-up Call from Washington

A Nation’s Repute at Stake
The U.S. State Department’s 2024 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: United Kingdom delivers an unvarnished assessment:

“The human rights situation worsened in the United Kingdom… credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression; and crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by antisemitism.” ¹

This is not the rhetoric of a partisan commentator but the formal judgment of an allied government. It stands in sharp contrast to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s proud assertions about Britain’s free speech tradition, signalling that our historic reputation as a bastion of open discourse has been damaged by coercive legal measures, selective enforcement, and growing intolerance for dissent.

Criminalising Prayer: When Thought Becomes Crime
Among the most striking examples of this deterioration are the “safe access zones” surrounding abortion clinics. The State Department notes these “could include prohibitions on efforts to influence… even through prayer or silent protests.” ²

In October 2024, army veteran Adam Smith-Connor was convicted at Poole Magistrates’ Court for standing silently in prayer within such a zone in Bournemouth. He neither obstructed nor engaged anyone. For this, he received a conditional discharge and was ordered to pay £9,000 in costs. ³ “Today, the court has decided that certain thoughts—silent thoughts—can be illegal in the United Kingdom,” he said afterwards. “That cannot be right.” ³

Religious liberty advocates have warned that such measures cross the line from regulating public behaviour into punishing private conscience. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom had already condemned similar arrests, such as that of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, as clear violations of peaceful religious expression.⁴ Although acquitted, her case underscores that in Britain today, one may be detained not for speech but for the suspicion of disfavoured thought.

Political Censorship in Crisis
The State Department also examines Britain’s handling of public commentary after the July 2024 Southport attack, noting that “the government intervened repeatedly to chill speech” and that “two-tier enforcement of these laws… [was] an especially grievous example of government censorship.” ⁵

This language is telling: it is not simply the content of speech but the political complexion of that speech which appears to determine enforcement. Individuals such as Lucy Connolly faced prosecution and custodial sentences for social media posts in the aftermath—punishments viewed by many as disproportionate and politically selective.⁶ As the report bluntly states: “Censorship of ordinary Britons was increasingly routine, often targeted at political speech.” ⁵

Digital Regulation: Safety or Suppression?
The Online Safety Act 2023—in force since 2024—is singled out for its potential to chill lawful expression. Ofcom now holds sweeping powers to demand the removal of “illegal” content, applying not only to UK-based services but to international platforms with significant British audiences.⁷

Digital rights organisations have described the legislation as “an extremely complex and incoherent piece of legislation” which risks undermining encryption, privacy, and online freedoms.⁸ X (formerly Twitter) accused lawmakers of making “a conscious decision to increase censorship in the name of online safety.” ⁹

The report further highlights “expansive and unclear restrictions” on reporting ongoing legal cases, citing the example of The New Yorker, which was forced to block UK access to an article about live proceedings due to contempt-of-court laws.⁵ The implication is clear: Britain’s legislative trajectory is prioritising risk-aversion over open justice and public accountability.

A Chilling Index
Britain’s global standing on freedom of expression has measurably declined. The State Department situates these trends within the wider context of the World Freedom of Expression Index, in which the UK has fallen from the “free” category to “less restricted.”¹⁰ U.S. Vice President JD Vance has publicly rebuked this backslide, declaring that democratic allies should not be prosecuting silent prayer.¹

Double Standards in Enforcement
Beyond speech regulation, the report draws attention to inconsistency in addressing human rights abuses by officials: “The government sometimes took credible steps to identify and punish officials… but prosecution and punishment… was inconsistent.” ¹ This undermines confidence not only in Britain’s rights protections but also in the impartiality of its institutions.

From Pride to Pretence
The national narrative has shifted from confident trust in juries, press, and public discourse to a paternalistic model of governance in which law enforcement routinely intervenes to suppress potentially unpopular expression. From buffer zones that encompass silent prayer, to digital regimes with global reach, to selective enforcement of hate speech laws, the evidence mounts of a system leaning toward restriction over liberty.

A Call to Restore Trust
If Britain is to recover its democratic credibility, three urgent measures are needed:

1. Reform safe access zone legislation to protect silent prayer, consensual conversations, and interior belief from criminal sanction.
2. Recalibrate the Online Safety Act to eliminate overreach, protect encryption, and guarantee that lawful political and journalistic content cannot be censored under the guise of harm reduction.
3. Mandate transparency in enforcement, especially for crisis-related online commentary, to ensure equal application of the law regardless of political viewpoint.

A Final Reckoning
In 2024, the United States ceased to treat Britain as a model of free expression. That fact, recorded in the State Department’s report, should trouble every citizen who values the liberties Britain once exported to the world. Unless our leaders act decisively, the erosion of speech, conscience, and press freedom will not merely continue—it will accelerate. 🔝

Footnotes
¹ U.S. Department of State, 2024 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: United Kingdom, quoted in The Times, 13 Aug. 2025.
² U.S. Department of State, 2024 Country Report, quoted in The Guardian, 13 Aug. 2025.
³ Alliance Defending Freedom International, “Army veteran convicted for silent prayer near abortion facility,” 17 Oct. 2024.
⁴ U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Annual Report 2024; ADF International, “USCIRF condemns UK arrest for silent prayer,” 3 Feb. 2024.
⁵ U.S. Department of State, 2024 Country Report, quoted in The Times, 13 Aug. 2025.
⁶ The Sun, “Trump slams Britain’s free speech censors,” 13 Aug. 2025.
⁷ Online Safety Act 2023, HM Government (legislation.gov.uk).
⁸ Article 19, “UK: Online Safety Act threatens free expression,” 25 Oct. 2023.
⁹ The Guardian, “X warns Online Safety Act will increase censorship,” 1 Aug. 2025.
¹⁰ World Freedom of Expression Index 2024, Reporters Without Borders.

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The Sleep of the Righteous: How Apathy Enables Apostasy and Civilisational Collapse

The gravest threat to the Church and to the moral order of society today is not merely the aggression of her enemies, but the slumber of her friends. In every age, the People of God have faced hostility, but the present moment is marked by an unprecedented paralysis among the faithful — a refusal to see, a reluctance to speak, and a resistance to act.

This apathy is not mere laziness; it is the cultivated condition of souls who have been lulled by comfort, distracted by noise, and tamed by fear. The destruction of the Church and the decay of civilisation advance step by step, each small breach in truth and morality presented as a minor accommodation to modernity. The faithful, rather than rallying to defend the citadel, are content to adjust their lives to the new normal. Thus the enemy advances without encountering resistance, confident that silence will always prevail over protest.

The Ease of Acquiescence
We live in an age of unprecedented material convenience. For many, the thought of risking social standing, professional security, or personal comfort for the sake of the Gospel is unthinkable. The culture of ease makes confrontation intolerable; the cost of discipleship seems excessive when weighed against the pleasure of being left in peace. As Tertullian warned, “Truth engenders hatred, and he who speaks it is himself hated”¹ — a reality from which modern Christians shrink.

This phenomenon is not unique to our century. In the decades before the Protestant Reformation, much of Catholic Europe had sunk into a complacent religiosity. The sacraments were still celebrated, churches still filled on feast days, but the moral vigour of the faithful had ebbed. Warnings from reforming saints like St. Catherine of Siena went largely unheeded; corruption in ecclesiastical life was tolerated because confronting it would require effort, sacrifice, and — perhaps most frightening — personal change. When the hammer blows of Luther’s revolt came, the laity were ill-prepared to defend the faith.

Similarly, on the eve of the French Revolution, Catholic France had largely reconciled itself to an uneasy co-existence with Enlightenment unbelief. The salons of Paris teemed with scepticism; Christian moral teaching was openly mocked in the name of progress. Yet few bishops or Catholic leaders were willing to confront the spirit of the age with the vigour of a Bossuet or a Fénelon. To do so risked the wrath of powerful patrons and the loss of courtly favour. The result was catastrophic: the Church was disestablished, priests were hunted, and the faithful were left shepherdless.

In our own time, modernism has taken deep root, not because it has persuaded the faithful through reasoned argument, but because it has met with very little determined opposition. Comfortable Christians would rather “go along to get along” than risk the label of “rigid” or “divisive.” The ease of acquiescence has created a silent majority that would rather live in the ruins of Christendom than bear the cost of rebuilding it.

The Fear of Seeing
Apathy often masquerades as the sober voice of realism: “Things have always been bad; the Church has always had problems; society will never be perfect.” Such platitudes dull the conscience. They suggest that evil is inevitable, that nothing truly can be done, and therefore that resistance is futile. But beneath this apparent resignation lies something more insidious: fear.

It is the fear of the burden that knowledge imposes. If the full scope of the Church’s crisis were admitted — the doctrinal confusion, the profanation of worship, the moral collapse within once-Christian societies — then the believer would be confronted with an inescapable choice: to act or to betray his conscience by inaction. And to act means to suffer. It means the possible rupture of friendships; the cold withdrawal of colleagues; the loss of positions and opportunities; the hostility of a world that does not tolerate contradiction.

Our Lord’s own words are plain: “You will be hated by all for My name’s sake” (Matt. 10:22). The comfortable Christian is deeply unsettled by that promise, for it unmasks the price of fidelity. This is why it is often easier to maintain a selective ignorance — to read the headlines but not the fine print, to glance at the rot but never to examine the foundation. As the prophet Jeremiah lamented of the leaders of Judah, “They have healed the wound of My people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14).

History shows that the refusal to see is a prelude to catastrophe. Before the Arian crisis engulfed the 4th-century Church, many bishops and laity alike dismissed the early warnings of St. Athanasius and other defenders of orthodoxy. They believed the controversies over Christ’s divinity to be a passing dispute that could be managed with compromise. By the time they recognised the full gravity of the heresy, it had entrenched itself so deeply that the vast majority of bishops had either embraced it or tolerated it.

The same dynamic reappeared in the years before the First World War. Many European leaders saw the political and cultural tensions rising but chose to downplay the danger — partly out of fear of the economic cost of preparation, partly out of dread that acknowledging the threat would commit them to decisive, risky action. The result was not peace but slaughter on a scale the world had never seen.

So too today, many in the Church avert their eyes from the magnitude of the present crisis because they fear the obligations that come with clarity. Yet the avoidance of truth does not spare us from its consequences; it only ensures that we will face them unarmed.

The Morality of the Crowd
The inertia of the majority does more than permit evil — it gives evil a cloak of legitimacy. When most people remain silent, the few who are determined to dismantle the Faith and reorder society encounter not open resistance but a passive field upon which they can advance at will. Public opinion then begins to shift, not because the majority has been persuaded, but because the absence of opposition creates the impression of consent.

History confirms that revolutions rarely require a popular mandate. The Bolsheviks who seized Russia in 1917 represented only a fraction of the population; the rest were either paralysed by uncertainty, exhausted by hardship, or simply unwilling to involve themselves. Similarly, during the rapid secularisation of Ireland in the early 21st century, referendums redefining marriage and permitting abortion were won not by overwhelming grassroots conviction but by the mobilisation of an activist minority while much of the population remained disengaged.

This is why St. Augustine’s warning remains prophetic: “Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it”². The moral law knows nothing of neutrality in the face of evil. A man who stands by while the house of God is desecrated or the moral order is overturned has not merely failed to act; he has, by his inaction, lent aid to the destroyers.

Crowd morality is also a subtle form of cowardice. It comforts itself with the thought: “If most others are silent, it must not be my duty to speak.” In truth, the responsibility grows precisely because others are silent. As the prophet Ezekiel was told, “If you do not warn the wicked… I will require his blood at your hand” (Ez. 3:18). When the crowd retreats into neutrality, the faithful remnant must become a prophetic minority, for in God’s judgment there will be no “bystanders” — only those who stood for truth and those who did not.

A Call to Vigilance and Action
The inertia that enthrals the general populace is not irreversible, but it will not be broken by accident. It requires a deliberate awakening — a conscious and sustained effort to re-form minds and hearts according to the truth of Christ. This awakening will not come from slogans, superficial activism, or the sentimental religion so common today. It must be rooted in three pillars:

First, the preaching of the whole truth without concession. The Gospel must be proclaimed as it truly is — the Good News of salvation through repentance, faith, and obedience — not diluted to accommodate the spirit of the age.

Second, the restoration of reverent worship that forms saints rather than spectators. Liturgy is not an optional aesthetic, but the primary school of faith. It is here that the soul learns humility before God, constancy in prayer, and courage to live as a disciple in a hostile world.

Third, the cultivation of holy courage in the face of worldly intimidation. This means accepting that fidelity to Christ will invite mockery, hostility, and even persecution. The enemy thrives when Christians calculate their witness according to social cost.

The choice before us is stark: we either shake ourselves from this slumber and take up the Cross, or we will live to see a Church emptied of faith and a civilisation stripped of virtue. The signs are already visible: in parishes that have become stages for banality rather than sanctuaries of grace; in governments that enshrine moral evils as rights; in schools that confuse children rather than educate them; in Catholics who openly contradict the faith and yet are welcomed at the altar without rebuke.

Yet history also teaches that such decline can be reversed when courage replaces apathy. In the 16th century, the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation saints — men like St. Charles Borromeo, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Francis de Sales — revived a Church torn by heresy and corruption. In the 20th century, the Polish Church resisted Communist tyranny through fearless preaching, clandestine catechesis, and public witness, producing a generation of believers who would not bow to the Party line.

These examples remind us: renewal is not the work of the lukewarm, but of the steadfast. It begins when ordinary believers resolve to live the faith without compromise, trusting that God will multiply their courage into a movement.

Our age needs the fortitude of the martyrs, the steadfastness of the confessors, and the unyielding witness of the saints. We must resist the temptation to wait for others to act first. There is no “someone else” — we are the ones entrusted with this hour. As St. Catherine of Siena declared, “Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear”³.

For silence now is not peace, but surrender — and surrender will not buy us safety, only the privilege of perishing last. 🔝

Footnotes
¹ Tertullian, Apologeticus, Ch. 50. Translation: Alexander Souter, Apology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917), p. 144.
² St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 6, On the Words of the Lord, in Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 42.
³ St. Catherine of Siena, Letter 16 to a Great Prelate, in The Letters of St. Catherine of Siena, trans. Vida Dutton Scudder (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1905), p. 36.

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Archbishop Mathew’s Prayer for Catholic Unity
Almighty and everlasting God, Whose only begotten Son, Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd, has said, “Other sheep I have that are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd”; let Thy rich and abundant blessing rest upon the Old Roman Apostolate, to the end that it may serve Thy purpose by gathering in the lost and straying sheep. Enlighten, sanctify, and quicken it by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, that suspicions and prejudices may be disarmed, and the other sheep being brought to hear and to know the voice of their true Shepherd thereby, all may be brought into full and perfect unity in the one fold of Thy Holy Catholic Church, under the wise and loving keeping of Thy Vicar, through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who with Thee and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth God, world without end. Amen.

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Old Roman TV

OLD ROMAN TV Daily Schedule Lent 2025: GMT 0600 Angelus 0605 Morning Prayers 0800 Daily Mass 1200 Angelus 1205 Bishop Challoner’s Daily Meditation 1700 Latin Rosary (live, 15 decades) 1800 Angelus 2100 Evening Prayers & Examen 🔝

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Litany of St Joseph

Lord, have mercy on us.	Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.	Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.	Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.	Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Father of heaven,	have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the World,	have mercy on us.
God the Holy Spirit,	have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God,	have mercy on us.
Holy Mary,	pray for us.
St. Joseph,	pray for us.
Renowned offspring of David,	pray for us.
Light of Patriarchs,	pray for us.
Spouse of the Mother of God,	pray for us.
Guardian of the Redeemer	pray for us.
Chaste guardian of the Virgin,	pray for us.
Foster father of the Son of God,	pray for us.
Diligent protector of Christ,	pray for us.
Servant of Christ	pray for us.
Minister of salvation	pray for us.
Head of the Holy Family,	pray for us.
Joseph most just,	pray for us.
Joseph most chaste,	pray for us.
Joseph most prudent,	pray for us.
Joseph most strong,	pray for us.
Joseph most obedient,	pray for us.
Joseph most faithful,	pray for us.
Mirror of patience,	pray for us.
Lover of poverty,	pray for us.
Model of workers,	pray for us.
Glory of family life,	pray for us.
Guardian of virgins,	pray for us.
Pillar of families,	pray for us.
Support in difficulties,	pray for us.
Solace of the wretched,	pray for us.
Hope of the sick,	pray for us.
Patron of exiles,	pray for us.
Patron of the afflicted,	pray for us.
Patron of the poor,	pray for us.
Patron of the dying,	pray for us.
Terror of demons,	pray for us.
Protector of Holy Church,	pray for us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,	spare us, O Jesus.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,	graciously hear us, O Jesus.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,	have mercy on us, O Jesus.
He made him the lord of his household	And prince over all his possessions.

Let us pray:
O God, in your ineffable providence you were pleased to choose Blessed Joseph to be the spouse of your most holy Mother; grant, we beg you, that we may be worthy to have him for our intercessor in heaven whom on earth we venerate as our Protector: You who live and reign forever and ever.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Note: Pope Francis added these titles to the Litany of St. Joseph in his “Lettera della Congregazione per il Culto Divino e la Disciplina dei Sacramenti ai Presidenti delle Conferenze dei Vescovi circa nuove invocazioni nelle Litanie in onore di San Giuseppe,” written on May 1, 2021:

Custos Redemptoris (Guardian of the Redeemer)Serve Christi (Servant of Christ)Minister salutis (Minister of salvation)Fulcimen in difficultatibus (Support in difficulties)Patrone exsulum (Patron of refugees)Patrone afflictorum (Patron of the suffering)
Patrone pauperum (Patron of the poor)

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