w/c 31/08/25

ORDO

Dies	31 SUN	01 MON	02 TUE	03 WED	04 THU	05 FRI	06 SAT	07 SUN
Officium	S. Raymundi Nonnati Confessoris	S. Ægidii Abbatis	S. Stephani Hungariæ Regis Confessoris	Feria IV infra Hebdomadam XII post Octavam Pentecostes	Feria V infra Hebdomadam XII post Octavam Pentecostes	S. Laurentii Justiniani Episcopi et Confessoris	Sanctæ Mariæ Sabbato	Dominica XIII Post Pentecosten
CLASSIS	Duplex	Simplex	Semiduplex	Simplex	Simplex	Semiduplex	Simplex	Semiduplex
Color	Albus	Albus	Albus	Viridis	Viridis	Albus	Albus	Viridis
MISSA	Os justi	Os justi	Os justi	Deus, in adjutórium	Deus, in adjutórium	In virtúte	Salve, sancta	Réspice, Dómine
Orationes	2a. Dominica XII Post Pentecosten	2a. Ss. Duodecim Fratrum Mm 3a. A cunctis	2a. A cunctis 3a. Ecclesiae	2a. A cunctis 3a. Ecclesiae	2a. A cunctis 3a. Ecclesiae	2a. A cunctis 3a. Ecclesiae	2a. Ad Spiritum Sanctum 3a. Ecclesiae	2a. A cunctis 3a. Ecclesiae
NOTAE	Gl. Cr. Pref. de sanctissima Trinitate Ev. propr. ad fin. Missae	Gl. Pref. de Communis	Gl. Pref. de Communis	no Gl. Pref. de Communis	no Gl. Pref. de Communis	Gl. Pref. de Communis	Gl. Pref. de Beata Maria Virgine	Gl. Cr. Pref. de sanctissima Trinitate
Nota Bene/Vel/Votiva	GB S. Aidanus Lindisfarnensis Missa “Státuit”	Missae votivae vel Requiem permittuntur	Missae votivae vel Requiem permittuntur	vel S. Pii X Papæ Confessoris Missa “Extuli”	Missae votivae vel Requiem permittuntur	Missae votivae vel Requiem permittuntur	Missae votivae vel Requiem permittuntur

Lex Fides

Lex Fides — Law and Faith: This motto declares that no law has force apart from the faith, and no faith endures apart from the divine law. It stands against the modernist perversion of justice and doctrine, affirming that true order in Church and society arises only where God’s law is upheld and the Catholic faith is confessed without compromise. 🔝

From the Primus

HE ✠Jerome OSJV, Titular Archbishop of Selsey

Carissimi, Beloved in Christ,

At the heart of this present age, with all its noise and confusion, the Church must remind herself of her first principle: Lex Fides — the Law of Faith. This is no invention of our own but the ancient conviction of the Apostles and Fathers, that the true law binding the people of God is the divine gift of faith, received, kept, and transmitted in all its purity. “The just man liveth by faith”¹ — and upon this foundation, the Christian life stands secure.

Throughout this edition of Nuntiatoria, we have looked upon the world’s trials and the Church’s wounds with the eyes of realism, and we have not turned away from hard truths. We have seen how modernism bends law into tyranny, how history is twisted to fit the dictates of ideology, how public institutions surrender to false compassion and popular causes, and how ecclesiastical voices confuse diplomacy with doctrine. Yet, through all of this, the faithful must not lose heart.

For if we are tempted to think that all is corruption, the Law of Faith calls us back to God’s constancy. The Old Romans know well that the faith does not belong to passing ages nor to fashionable philosophies; it belongs to Christ, “the same yesterday, and today, and forever”². It is precisely this constancy that frees us from despair. Laws may be bent, history miswritten, customs despised, but faith endures — and faith will judge every distortion.

In these pages, we have spoken of the danger of sentimentalism without doctrine, of ecumenical confusions that place man above God, of the peril of redefining human life and human rights, of ideological capture in schools, councils, and courts. We have recalled too the martyrs and confessors, from St. John the Baptist to St. Aidan, who bore witness against kings and powers. All of these testify to a single truth: that the Law of Faith cannot be silenced, even when contradicted by emperors, parliaments, or prelates. As St. Vincent of Lérins taught, the Catholic faith is “that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all”³ — and this remains our measure against every novelty.

Beloved, this is not only a matter for scholars and editors; it is the daily vocation of every Christian. Each time you confess the Creed, each time you kneel at the altar rail, each time you teach a child to make the sign of the Cross, you uphold Lex Fides. Each act of fidelity, each prayer of trust, each rejection of compromise is a small but mighty resistance against the floodtide of unbelief.

Therefore, I exhort you: live by this Law of Faith. Let it guide your speech in the public square, your discipline in the home, your worship in the sanctuary. When lies are broadcast as truth, repeat the Credo. When unjust laws are passed, remember that the true law is written by God upon the heart⁴ and upon His Church. When the shepherds falter, look to the eternal Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep⁵.

Let Lex Fides be upon your lips, not as a slogan, but as a covenant. It is the Church’s strength, the soul’s safeguard, the path of salvation. Let it be your compass in this age of confusion, so that you may endure steadfast, children of light, witnesses to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life⁶.

Commending you all to the intercession of Our Lady, Mother of the Church, and of the saints whose feasts these days recall, I bless you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 🔝

Titular Archbishop of Selsey
Primus of the Old Roman Apostolate

1. John 14:6 — “Ego sum via, et veritas, et vita.”
2. Romans 1:17 — “Justus autem ex fide vivit.”
3. Hebrews 13:8 — “Jesus Christus heri et hodie, ipse et in sæcula.”
4. St. Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, cap. II, 5: “Id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.”
5. Romans 2:15 — “They show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.”
6. John 10:11 — “Ego sum pastor bonus. Bonus pastor animam suam dat pro ovibus suis.”

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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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St Raymund Nonnatus (1204–1240): The Just Man Whose Lips Spoke Wisdom

Missa “Os justi”
The feast of St Raymond Nonnatus, confessor of the thirteenth century, employs the Common Mass of a Confessor not a Bishop, beginning with the introit Os justi meditabitur sapientiam (Ps. 36). In the Tridentine Missal, this formulary—rich with the language of virtue, wisdom, and righteousness—is given to saints who embodied heroic virtue in hidden, humble ways. St Raymund, a Mercedarian friar dedicated to ransoming captives and suffering for the faith, is aptly celebrated by this liturgy, for it reflects the qualities of a just man whose mouth “utters wisdom” and whose tongue “speaks right judgment.”

The Introit – Os justi
Dom Guéranger observes that the Os justi formulary “places on the lips of the just man the very words of the Psalter, which proclaim that righteousness is a fruit both of meditation and of action” (Liturgical Year, vol. XIII). The psalm verse—“The law of his God is in his heart, and his steps shall not be supplanted”—shows how the saint’s constancy arises not from outward strength but from interior conformity to divine law. St Raymund, born miraculously after his mother’s death and consecrated wholly to God, lived as one whose entire being was interiorly ordered to Christ, even to the point of his lips being padlocked by his captors to prevent him from preaching the Gospel. The irony becomes grace: the introit praises the saint’s mouth, which utters wisdom, while in life his fidelity made his silence itself eloquent.

The Epistle – Ecclesiasticus 31:8–11
“Blessed is the man that is found without blemish, and that hath not gone after gold.” Goffine remarks that this lesson “shows us the true measure of greatness—not wealth or worldly honours, but purity of life, charity for others, and fidelity to the commandments of God” (Explanation of the Epistles and Gospels, ad loc.). St Raymund’s life, dedicated to the redemption of Christian slaves from the Moors, exemplifies this renunciation of wealth and self for the salvation of souls. His merit lay not in possession, but in sacrifice.

The Gradual and Alleluia
The Gradual repeats the psalmic theme: “The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom… the law of his God is in his heart.” According to Baur, the repetition of these verses across the Mass “weaves together a tapestry of interior recollection and exterior confession—showing that sanctity is not an accident but the harmonious cooperation of grace and human fidelity” (Die heiligen Zeiten und Feste, vol. II). The Alleluia—“Blessed is the man who endureth temptation”—reminds the faithful that virtue is proved in trial. Raymund’s temptations included the weariness of captivity, the cruelty of enforced silence, and the sufferings he bore to ransom others.

The Gospel – Luke 12:35–40
The Gospel exhorts: “Let your loins be girt and lamps burning in your hands… Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching.” Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen comments that this Gospel “expresses the very essence of vigilance, which is not anxious nervousness but a continual state of readiness, springing from love” (Divine Intimacy, vol. II). Raymund’s life, marked by constant readiness to answer the cry of captives, shows him as a servant whose lamp was never extinguished. His watchfulness was not passive but active, expressed in ceaseless charity.

The Offertory – “The just man shall flourish like the palm tree” (Ps. 91)
Here the palm, symbol of victory, is joined with the cedar of Lebanon, symbol of strength. Guéranger notes that “the palm tree bends but does not break under the storm; so does the just man under persecution” (Liturgical Year). Raymund’s very name, nonnatus—“not born,” since he was delivered by Caesarean after his mother’s death—became a sign of resilience and life springing from apparent death. His ministry to the enslaved and his endurance under Moorish captivity gave him both palm and cedar: victory and steadfastness.

The Communion – “The just shall rejoice in the Lord” (Ps. 63:11)
In Holy Communion, the faithful taste the joy which filled the saint’s life. Baur remarks that “the Communion verse is the soul’s rest after struggle: as the just man rejoiced in his fidelity, so the faithful rejoice in partaking of Him who is their justice and strength” (Heiligen Zeiten).

Spiritual Reflection
The liturgy of Os justi presents the portrait of a saint whose justice is not abstract but concrete, embodied in acts of mercy and fidelity under trial. St Raymund Nonnatus, though silenced by his captors, yet speaks through the liturgy: his mouth utters wisdom in the Psalms, his endurance manifests the Alleluia, his vigilance fulfills the Gospel’s watchfulness. As Fr Gabriel teaches, “holiness is measured not by extraordinary works, but by continual correspondence to grace” (Divine Intimacy). Raymund’s hidden holiness, expressed in charity for captives and obedience to God’s law, shines forth in the liturgical mirror held up by the Tridentine rite.

In celebrating his feast with the Missa Os justi, the Church proposes not only his example but also the perennial model of sanctity: fidelity to God’s law, vigilance in charity, and joy in suffering. Through this liturgy, the faithful are invited to take his words into their hearts: “The law of God is in his heart, and his steps shall not be supplanted.” 🔝

Hagiography

St Raymund Nonnatus was born in 1204 at Portell in Catalonia. His surname Nonnatus (“not born”) comes from his extraordinary birth: his mother died in labour, and he was delivered by Caesarean section. From childhood, Raymund showed remarkable piety and a contemplative spirit, preferring prayer and study to worldly pursuits. His father intended him for secular life, but divine providence directed him to the newly founded Order of Mercy for the Redemption of Captives, established by St Peter Nolasco in 1218 to ransom Christians enslaved by Muslims.

Raymund entered the Mercedarian Order and was ordained priest. He soon distinguished himself for his zeal in rescuing captives, not only by negotiating and collecting alms but also by offering himself as a hostage when ransom money failed. In 1226, at Algiers, he was imprisoned after redeeming many Christians. There, he preached Christ with such fervour that his captors bored holes through his lips and fastened them with a padlock to silence him. He endured this cruelty for eight months until his ransom was paid.

Pope Gregory IX, recognising his holiness, created him cardinal in 1239. But Raymund never reached Rome. On his journey he fell ill at Cardona near Barcelona and died in 1240, aged only 36. His body was buried in the chapel of St Nicholas at Cardona, where miracles followed. Pope Alexander VII canonised him in 1657. He is invoked especially as patron of expectant mothers, the falsely accused, and for purity of speech. 🔝

The Witness of St Raymund Nonnatus

The life of St Raymund Nonnatus is itself a sermon of fidelity, sacrifice, and silence borne for Christ. Born miraculously after his mother’s death, he entered the world already marked by suffering and providence. His vocation in the Mercedarian Order taught him to spend himself for others, especially the enslaved. He lived not for comfort but for ransom—buying freedom with his poverty, and giving himself when money could not suffice.

The most striking moment of his witness came when his captors, enraged at his zeal for preaching Christ, sealed his lips with a padlock. What humiliation, to have the very gift of speech—the tongue consecrated for proclaiming the Gospel—made useless. Yet here lies the paradox of sanctity: in silence, he bore eloquent testimony. He preached by suffering. He proclaimed Christ by enduring what was inflicted on him for Christ’s sake. His locked mouth became a sign that nothing, not even violence, could extinguish the word of God already alive in his heart.

This is his lesson to us. We live in an age where speech is cheapened by endless chatter, slander, and noise. St Raymund shows us that Christian witness does not depend on multiplying words, but on the truth made flesh in our lives. His silence calls us to guard our tongues, to purify our speech, and to let charity be our truest eloquence.

He is also a model of courage. His willingness to risk captivity to redeem others reminds us that the Christian life is not self-preservation but self-offering. He teaches us to be vigilant servants, lamps burning with love, willing to lose ourselves so that others may find freedom in Christ.

Finally, his patronage of expectant mothers recalls the sanctity of life from its very beginning, even under peril. Just as he was brought forth from the womb of a dying mother, so he intercedes for the unborn and their mothers, reminding us that every life is providential, every birth a testimony of God’s gift.

The witness of St Raymund Nonnatus is therefore threefold:

• Charity that risks all for others.
• Silence that preaches Christ more loudly than words.
• Life received as a gift, defended even in weakness.

If we embrace these, our own lives—like his—will become a living Gospel, a word spoken to the world not only by our lips, but by the truth of our deeds. 🔝

Missalettes (St Raymond Nonnatus)

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The Liturgy of The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

The liturgy for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost presents us with the figure of the Good Samaritan and with St Paul’s affirmation that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. The Church, like a mother, wishes to impress upon us both the necessity of grace and the boundless mercy of Christ, so that we might recognise ourselves in the man who fell among robbers and rejoice in the love of Him who heals us.

Dom Prosper Guéranger, in his Liturgical Year, opens by showing that this Sunday continues the August meditations on the mercy of God: “The Church, in her Office of this Sunday, brings before us, under the form of a parable, the great mystery of our redemption. We were half-dead, by reason of our sins; the Law of God, given by Moses, was powerless to restore life into us; Jesus, the Good Samaritan, comes to us, pours oil and wine into our wounds, and entrusts us to His Church, that she may continue His work of healing.”¹

The Epistle (2 Cor. 3:4–9) contrasts the old covenant, engraved in stone, with the new covenant of the Spirit. Cornelius a Lapide explains that St Paul calls the Law a ministration of death because, although holy in itself, it could only convict of sin without imparting grace. Goffine, in his Instructional Epistles and Gospels, draws the pastoral conclusion: “The Mosaic law served only to convince men of sin, and, because it left them without grace, they could not be freed from it. But the New Law of Christ gives grace and the Spirit, and thus works true justice in man, giving life and joy.”²

The Gospel (Luke 10:23–37) is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here, the Fathers see a rich allegory of salvation. The man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho signifies humanity descending from the state of grace into sin. The robbers represent the devil and his angels, who wound the soul and strip it of supernatural life. The priest and Levite symbolise the insufficiency of the Old Testament priesthood and sacrifices to restore life. The Samaritan is Christ Himself, despised as a foreigner, who nonetheless binds up wounds with the sacraments—the oil of baptism and confirmation, the wine of the Eucharist and penance—and entrusts the wounded man to the inn, the Church, until His return at the end of time.

Fr. Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen comments in his Divine Intimacy: “The parable is an admirable picture of God’s mercy toward sinful humanity. We are that traveller, stripped and wounded; Christ is the merciful Samaritan who did not hesitate to stoop down to us, pour balm upon our wounds, and take us to a place of safety. His boundless charity has saved us, and His love continues to care for us in His Church, the inn where He has deposited us.”³

Fr. Leonard Goffine urges the faithful to see in this parable both their own healing and their duty to imitate Christ: “We must never forget that as Christ has had mercy on us, so we must exercise mercy toward our neighbour in his bodily and spiritual needs. For the same Judge who has promised life to the merciful has threatened condemnation to the hard of heart.”⁴

Baur, in his The Catholic Epistle and Gospel Book, stresses the eschatological element: “The Samaritan gives two denarii to the innkeeper, which the Fathers interpret as the twofold love of God and neighbour, or as the two Testaments, or as the price of the sacraments. Christ promises to repay all on His return: a reminder of the Last Judgment, when the Lord will render to each according to his works of mercy.”⁵

This Sunday’s liturgy therefore places before us both a doctrine and a practice. The doctrine is that the Law, though holy, could not justify, but grace in Christ brings true life. The practice is that those who have been healed must themselves become merciful. The collect of the Mass expresses it perfectly: “Almighty and merciful God, from Whose gift it cometh that the faithful do Thee worthy and laudable service, grant us, we beseech Thee, to run without stumbling to the attainment of Thy promises.”

In the words of Guéranger, the Church is urging us not only to admire the mercies of Christ but to walk in them: “The divine Samaritan has healed our wounds, He has confided us to the care of His Church, He has left with her all that was needed for our cure; we are not yet completely restored to health, but the help is at hand. Let us, then, be grateful for the unspeakable goodness which rescued us in our misery, and let us not render His solicitude useless by a careless relapse.”⁶ 🔝

1. Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, Vol. 11, “Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.”
2. Leonard Goffine, The Church’s Year: Instructions on the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays and Festivals (1871), Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.
3. Fr. Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, OCD, Divine Intimacy, Meditation 257.
4. Goffine, The Church’s Year.
5. A. Baur, The Catholic Epistle and Gospel Book (19th c.), commentary on the 12th Sunday after Pentecost.
6. Guéranger, Liturgical Year, Vol. 11.

Missalettes (Sunday XII Post Pentecost)

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Spiritual Reflection: for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

The Church today places before our eyes the parable of the Good Samaritan. In it, she wishes us to recognise our own condition and to contemplate the boundless charity of our Redeemer.

We are the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. By sin, we descend from the holy city of God into the low places of the world, leaving behind the security of grace. On that road we are stripped and wounded by the robbers—by the devil, by our own passions, by the spirit of the age. Left half-dead, we cannot raise ourselves up.

The priest and the Levite pass by, symbols of the Law and of human effort without grace. The Law convicts but cannot heal; discipline and philosophy can show the sickness but cannot give life. Only the despised Samaritan, Christ Himself, stoops down to us. He pours wine and oil into our wounds—the sharp medicine of penance, the soothing balm of His sacraments. He lifts us upon His own beast, bearing our burden in His body on the Cross. He carries us to the inn, which is His Church, where we are sheltered and nourished until He comes again.

Here lies the mystery of our salvation: Christ did not disdain to come near to us in our misery. He could have passed by, but instead He drew close, even making Himself poor, mocked, and rejected, in order to rescue us. Each time we come to confession, each time we approach the altar, He is once again binding up our wounds. His mercy is not a distant idea but a present, living reality that touches our wounds and restores our souls.

But the parable is also a command. “Go, and do thou in like manner.” If we have known the mercy of Christ, how can we close our hearts to those in need? The neighbour in this Gospel is not the one who happens to be near, nor the one who looks like us, but the one whom mercy makes ours. To love God and neighbour is not two separate loves but one charity flowing from His heart into ours.

Let us, then, see in every poor, broken, wounded person the image of ourselves, once lying on the roadside, and the image of Christ, who stooped to save us. Let us learn to look upon others with the same gaze of compassion. Mercy is not weakness but strength: the strength of love that refuses to abandon the fallen.

And so the liturgy teaches us today to live in gratitude and in imitation. Gratitude, because we have been lifted from the roadside and given new life in Christ. Imitation, because His mercy is to be made visible again in our words, our deeds, and our hearts. 🔝

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A sermon for Sunday

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

St. Raymond Nonnatus/Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Raymond Nonnatus, as well as commemorating the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost. There is some uncertainty about the historical facts concerning the life of St. Raymond. The traditional account is that he lived in the thirteenth century. He was given the name Nonnatus (meaning unborn) because his mother died in childbirth and he was taken from the womb of his mother after her death. He was from Catalonia and joined the newly established Mercedarians at Barcelona. This order had been founded to secure the release of those taken captive by the Moors of North Africa. He first went to Valencia, where he ransomed Christians from slavery. He later travelled to North Africa, where he ransomed further captives in Algiers, before being forced to surrender himself as a hostage at Tunis. He was later ransomed by his order and returned to Spain, where he subsequently died.

The Mercedarians were established in 1218 in Barcelona by St. Peter Nolasco under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Ransom. The aim of the order was to secure the release of captives taken by the Moors in Spain and the Mediterranean at that time. The charism of the order was similar to the Trinitarian order established twenty years earlier in the south of France by St. John of Matha and St. Felix of Valois. The establishment of new religious orders specifically devoted to the redemption of captives was all part of the process of the reconquest of areas that had been lost to the Moors in Spain and the Mediterranean. The Christian Visigothic kingdom of Spain that had arisen after the fall of the Roman empire had been conquered by the Moors, who became the Islamic rulers of Spain for many centuries. Though their further penetration into Europe was halted in a famous battle by Charles Martel in 732, they continued to hold sway in Spain and parts of the Mediterranean. There was intermittent warfare on both sides in which captives were taken.

In the eleventh century the reconquest of Spain finally gained momentum. The Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile gradually drove the Moors out of northern Spain. The reconquest was especially successful in the thirteenth century. One of the most prominent rulers in this reconquest was King James I of Aragon and it was he, along with St Peter Nolasco and St. Raymond of Penafuerte, who helped in the establishment of the Mercedarians under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Ransom. The order was a mendicant order that adopted the Augustinian rule of life. They sought donations to raise funds for the ransom of captives, especially on the frontier between the Kingdom of Aragon and the Moorish kingdom to the south. As the Christian rulers recovered more land from the Moors some of it was given to the Mercedarians. The availability of new land on the frontier for Christian settlement created an ideal environment for an order involved in the ransoming of captives. The order quickly expanded, assisted by the patronage of King James I of Aragon. The purpose of the order was defined as “to visit and to free Christians who are in captivity and in the power of the Saracens or other enemies of our Law…. By this work of mercy…. All the brothers of this order, as sons of true obedience, must always be gladly disposed to give up their lives, if it is necessary, as Jesus Christ gave up his life for us.” Though the order is most commonly associated with the reconquest of Spain, it continued to work for the ransom of captives in later centuries, and it still exists today.

The establishment of a new religious order to ransom Christian captives taken by the Moors in Spain in the early thirteenth century may not at first sight seem very relevant today. If we are tempted to think this it is important to remember that in parts of the Islamic world in Africa and in the Middle East Christians are still persecuted and enslaved for their faith. Hence, the need to ransom Christian captives is not just an antiquarian curiosity, but remains very much needed today. 

In his proclamation of the coming of the Kingdom of God in his own person and ministry Jesus proclaimed himself to be the anointed liberator of Isaiah. He said that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him to proclaim the redemption of those in captivity and the acceptable year of the Lord. While the final coming of the Kingdom, when God’s will would finally be done on earth as it is in heaven, was still to come, it was now being manifest in Jesus’ words and mighty works in which the eyes of the blind were opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped and those in captivity were redeemed. Since Jesus gave the redemption of those in captivity such a prominent role in his own ministry it is right that a religious order should have been established many centuries later especially devoted to this charism.

Though the theme of the redemption of those in captivity was part of Jesus’s proclamation of the coming of the Kingdom of God in his own person and ministry the Church in later centuries has at times been so preoccupied with focusing our attention on our final liberation from slavery to sin and death in the world to come that it has been tempted to neglect the liberation of those in need of ransoming from captivity in this world. People have sometimes been taught that there is no place for the actual liberation of those in captivity because their faith should be something wholly spiritual and other worldly. The agonies and sufferings of those in captivity in this world are seen as of little significance, for all our energies should be devoted to looking forward to the glories of the world to come.

In reaction to this error of making our faith so wholly spiritual that the actual physical needs of those in this world are neglected, at other times there has been a tendency to become so focused on the reform of unjust structures in this world that the need for our own personal salvation has been downplayed. But the problem with this approach is that the reason why there are corrupt and unjust structures in this world is precisely because of fallen human nature. If we only focus on reforming corrupt and unjust structured in this world, we may be tempted to forget that the problem lies not so much in man’s environment as in man. The danger with only devoting our attention to reforming unjust structures is that, even if they are successfully reformed, they will still be imperfect because they will be made up of fallen and sinful human beings. The final liberation from sin and death will only come in that new heaven and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

In contrast to the opposite errors of being either so spiritually minded that we pay no heed to social reform in this world, or so preoccupied with physical liberation in this world that we lose sight of our ultimate goal in the world to come, Jesus’ proclamation of the coming of the Kingdom of God involved both the healing and restoration of those in need in this world and also redemption from the deeper bondage to sin and death. After all, he said he had not come to abolish but to fulfil the Law and the prophets. The Law of Moses was intended to cover the whole of life and it was designed for a people who had themselves been ransomed from captivity. When the prophets summoned the Israelites to repent of their sins and turn to God they both denounced the unjust social structures of their age as well as exhorted the people to live holier lives. In proclaiming himself the anointed liberator of Isaiah Jesus brought the message of salvation to the whole person. He offered not simply good advice about social reform, but rather proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God. At the same time he did not neglect the concerns of those in need in this world.

The strength of the Mercedarian charism is that it is faithful to Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God. It is a religious order devoted to the love of God, but it is also fundamentally concerned with the love of neighbour and what better expression of this can there be than the actual ransoming of prisoners in this world. That was a vital part of Christian ministry and discipleship then and it should still be the same today.

Let us seek to help secure the release of those unjustly held in captivity in this world, but also remember that our ultimate liberation from the forces of sin and death that hold us in bondage in this present age can only finally come in that new heaven and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. 🔝

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

“Now if the ministration of death, engraven with letters upon stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which is made void: how shall the ministration of the spirit be rather in glory? For if the ministry of condemnation be glory, much more the administration of justice abound in glory” (2 Corinthians 3:7-9).

These words from St. Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians refer to what for the Jewish people was the supreme moment of divine revelation, the giving of the Law (the Ten Commandments written on tablets of stone) on Mount Sinai. Moses, according to the book of Deuteronomy, was the greatest figure in the history of Israel because to him God spoke face to face (Deuteronomy 34:10). The thirty fourth chapter of the Book of Exodus tells how what Moses saw on Mount Sinai was reflected in the glory that shone from his face. When he came down from the mountainside the children of Israel could not look on his face because of the glory that shone from it, so he had to cover his face with a veil (Exodus 34: 29-35).

In view of this, it seems strange at first sight that St. Paul should speak of this supreme moment in the history of Israel as “the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones”, and the “ministration of condemnation”. The reason lies not in the Law itself, which, as St. Paul explains in the Epistle to the Romans, is “holy and just and good”, but in human sin (Romans 7: 12). This means that the Ten Commandments, intended to provide a pattern for living in accordance with God’s will, become instead a ministration of death. The Law could not change fallen human nature, which from the beginning, had desired the better, but done the worse. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3: 23).

The prophet Jeremiah, writing at the time of the fall of the Jewish nation to the Babylonians, looked forward to a day when this would be dealt with, and there would be a new covenant between God and man, in which sins are forgiven, and the law would be written on the hearts of men. “Behold the days are come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, though I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31: 31-34). 

St. Paul declares that in Jesus this prophecy has now been fulfilled. Jesus in his own person is the full, final and definitive revealer of God’s will. He has not come to replace the Law and the Prophets, but rather to fulfil them. The Law of Christ given in the Sermon on the Mount is this new covenant written on the hearts of men, a righteousness surpassing that of the scribes. It is the ministration of the spirit, a glory that surpasses the glory revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. “For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Corinthians 3: 6).

St. Paul was confronted on the Damascus Road with the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, who is himself in his own person the embodiment of the divine glory which Moses saw on Mount Sinai. The Christian, with an unveiled face, can now behold the glory of the Lord and be changed into the same image from glory to glory. We can be transformed by following him who did for us what we could not do for ourselves, and so inaugurated the new covenant in which sins are forgiven. We are following not simply precepts written on tablets of stone, but a living person.

In this life, we still have this treasure in earthen vessels and none of us is able to fully realise this vision. St. Paul speaks elsewhere in the epistle of his own trials and tribulations which taught him of God’s power made perfect in weakness. We have no power of ourselves to help ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ. C. S. Lewis put it like this “Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him and with him everything else thrown in.” 🔝

St. Aidan/Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Aidan, as well as commemorating the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost. St. Aidan was born in Ireland in the sixth century. Nothing is known about his early life until he became a monk in St. Columba’s great monastery on Iona, an island off the coast of Scotland. The future king of Northumberland in northern England, St. Oswald, had been brought up  in the Irish Christian tradition when in exile. After he had defeated his opponents in battle and had himself become king of Northumberland St. Oswald desired that a bishop be chosen from among the monks of Iona to convert the people from paganism. There had been an earlier mission led by St. Paulinus (a disciple of St. Augustine of Canterbury) after a previous king of Northumberland, Edwin had accepted Christianity. It had collapsed after Edwin had been defeated and slain in battle by a rival pagan king and St. Paulinus had been forced to flee from Northumberland. Hence, when St. Oswald became king of Northumberland, the whole process of Christianisation had to be started again. He chose St. Aidan from among the monks of Iona to be bishop in his kingdom. Whereas St. Paulinus’ bishopric was at York, St. Aidan chose Lindisfarne, an island off the coast of Northumberland, to be the seat for his bishopric. This became the English equivalent of Iona. St. Aidan had no delusions of grandeur and continued to live an essentially monastic lifestyle. He worked closely with the king, St. Oswald, in evangelising the Northumbrian kingdom. He outlived St. Oswald, who was himself slain in battle, and died in 651 under his successor Oswin.

The great chronicler of the ecclesiastical history of the English people, St. Bede (who was himself a Northumbrian), thought very highly of St. Aidan. He wrote that St. Aidan “gave his clergy an inspiring example of self discipline and continence, and the highest recommendation of his teaching to all was that his followers lived as they taught. He never sought or cared for any worldly possessions, and loved to give away to the poor who chanced to meet him whatever he received from kings or wealthy folk. Whether in town or country he always travelled on foot, unless compelled by necessity to ride; and whatever people he met on his walks, whether high or low, he stopped and spoke to them. If they were heathen, he urged them to be baptised; and if they were Christians, he strengthened their faith, and inspired them by word and deed to live a good live and be generous to others…. He cultivated peace and love, purity and humility; he was above anger and greed, and despised pride and conceit; he set himself to keep as well as to teach the laws of God, and was diligent in study and prayer. He used his priestly authority to check the proud and the powerful; he tenderly comforted the sick; he relieved and protected the poor…. He took pains never to neglect anything that he had learned from the writings of the evangelists, apostles and prophets, and he set himself to carry them out with all his powers.”

However, there was one practice propagated by St. Aidan which St. Bede strongly disapproved. Whereas the mission led by St. Paulinus under King Edwin had followed the Roman usage for the dating of Easter, the mission led by St. Aidan under King Oswald had followed the Irish usage. By the time St. Bede was writing in the following century the Roman dating of Easter had long since prevailed over the Irish. At the Synod of Whitby in 664, the Northumbrian kingdom had decided to adopt the Roman as opposed to the Irish dating of Easter. Since Northumbria was the most powerful of the English kingdoms at the time this in effect ensured that from that time on England would follow the Roman rather than the Irish custom for the dating of Easter.

Why did the Irish missionaries follow a different practice over the dating of Easter from the Roman missionaries? The divergence came about as a consequence of the isolation of Irish Christianity from continental European Christianity. During the time when Britain was a part of the Roman empire Christianity had made little progress in the country. The mission to Ireland (which was never part of the Roman empire) led by St. Patrick had far greater success. After the Romans withdrew from Britain, Christianity was largely obliterated by pagan Anglo Saxon invaders who established tribal kingdoms. It retained hold in Wales, where the Anglo Saxon invaders had not penetrated and Christianity continued to flourish. 

The tribal nature of Irish and Welsh society meant that instead of having bishops based in towns as in the rest of Europe, they were based instead in monasteries. One of the monks was chosen to be a bishop, but to all intents and purposes he was still subject to the abbot in whose monastery he was based. This was appropriate for a society in which people lived in clans and there was no towns. The monastery formed the Christian equivalent of the clan and was the means by which the people were evangelised. This isolation from mainland Europe meant that the Irish monks continued to observe many practices that differed from elsewhere. It has sometimes been supposed that they formed a separate Celtic Church, more free spirited and independent than in mainland Europe. In many ways this is very far from being the case. If anything, the Irish monks were even more austere than their Roman counterparts, having much in common with the original desert fathers in Egypt and Syria. By contrast, the Roman monks generally followed the rule of St. Benedict, which was austere, but sought to place restrictions on excessive asceticism in the interests of building up stable  communities. This was the practice of the missionaries led by St. Augustine of Canterbury who were sent by St. Gregory the Great to evangelise England.

By contrast, since St. Aidan had been a monk on Iona (which had been founded by the great Irish missionary St. Columba as a base for evangelising Scotland), he followed the Irish usages. He based his episcopacy on an island off the coast of the mainland, Lindisfarne, where he had his monastery. He travelled on foot rather than horseback and continued to live as a monk. This clearly made an impression on the people and explains why he was a successful missionary.

However, in a more settled society the Irish model of episcopacy would come to seem too austere to  generate stable communities. It was designed for societies that were remote from civilisation and had little or no interaction with the outside world. This was entirely appropriate for remote places in   Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but less so in the gentler landscape of much of England. The Benedictine usage was more practical in building up stable communities in England as the tribal kingdoms gradually became Christianised. That being said, great Irish missionaries like St. Aidan continued to be revered for their sanctity and heroism, even if not all their practices were appropriate to a more settled and less heroic age. It is significant that St. Aidan’s later successor, St. Cuthbert, though he adhered to the Roman rather than the Irish dating of Easter, continued to follow the example of his great Irish predecessor, and retained an essentially monastic model of episcopacy based on Lindisfarne.

Hence, while it was right for the long term stability of Christianity in England that it followed the Roman Benedictine model of monastic life rather than the Irish, there is much that we can still learn from the heroism and sanctity of the great Irish missionaries like St. Aidan.

Let us pray that we will follow the example of St. Aidan in preaching the gospel, not only in word and in deed, in our own time and place. 🔝

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St Aidan of Lindisfarne (†651)

St Aidan, known as the Apostle of Northumbria, was an Irish monk of Iona, formed in the ascetic and missionary spirit of St Columba. Of his early life little is recorded, but he was noted for his learning, gentleness, and holiness. His true vocation was revealed when King Oswald of Northumbria, who had been exiled to Iona in his youth, returned to his throne and sought to bring his kingdom to the light of Christ.

Oswald requested missionaries from Iona to instruct his people. At first, one of Aidan’s brethren, a monk named Corman, was sent, but finding the Northumbrians “uncivilized and obstinate,” he despaired and returned. Aidan, however, spoke with charity of their hardness of heart, suggesting that they needed to be taught “with milk, not strong meat” — in gentleness and patience, rather than severity. Recognising his wisdom and spirit, the brethren appointed Aidan to the mission.

He was consecrated bishop around A.D. 635 and sent to Northumbria. King Oswald, himself fluent in both Irish and Old English, often accompanied Aidan as interpreter until the bishop learned the tongue. For his episcopal seat, Aidan chose the small tidal island of Lindisfarne, near Bamburgh, so that he might be close to the royal court and yet retain the monastic seclusion necessary for prayer. Lindisfarne, later called “Holy Island,” became the cradle of northern English Christianity.

Aidan governed with the simplicity and austerity of the Celtic monks. He travelled tirelessly on foot, preaching to the poor, visiting villages, and winning hearts by example as much as by word. He used the gifts given him by kings and nobles not for his own comfort, but to ransom captives and relieve the poor. His charity was such that, as Bede records, he would often give away even the horse he rode, preferring to walk humbly among the people.

His missionary work bore rich fruit. The schools he founded raised up disciples who would continue the work of evangelisation, including St Chad, St Cedd, and St Wilfrid. Monastic foundations multiplied, and through his teaching, the Faith spread through Northumbria and beyond.

Aidan’s episcopate was marked by his close bond with holy kings. With St Oswald, he rebuilt the Faith in a land devastated by heathen conquest. After Oswald’s martyrdom at Maserfield (642), he continued his mission with Oswin of Deira, another devout ruler. When Oswin was treacherously slain in 651, Aidan, struck with grief, survived only twelve days, dying peacefully on 31 August 651 at Bamburgh. Tradition holds that he breathed his last leaning against a wooden buttress of the church, which, venerated as a relic, was later preserved at Durham.

St Aidan’s sanctity was quickly acclaimed. The Venerable Bede, writing within a century of his death, praises him as a man of profound humility, charity, and zeal for the Gospel. His feast is kept on 31 August, and he is honoured as the founder of the See of Lindisfarne and one of the great evangelisers of England.

Through his meekness and burning charity, Aidan exemplified the true bishop, walking among his flock as shepherd and father, and laying the foundations of a Christian culture that would endure for centuries. 🔝

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Forgotten Rubrics: Kissing the Hand of the Priest

Rubric: It was once customary for the faithful, upon greeting a priest, to kiss his anointed hand, in reverence for the sacred office of the priesthood and the mysteries entrusted to it.

In many places it has all but vanished, yet the gesture of kissing a priest’s hand once expressed something profound and unmistakably Catholic. It was never about the man himself, but about Christ, whose priesthood he shares and through whose hands the sacraments are given.

At ordination, the priest’s hands are anointed with sacred chrism. From that moment forward, they are no longer merely human hands, but consecrated instruments of grace. Through them the Eucharist is consecrated, sins are absolved, the sick are anointed, and blessings are bestowed¹. To kiss such hands was a natural act of reverence: we honour not flesh and blood, but the dignity of Christ’s priesthood carried in fragile vessels².

The custom is deeply rooted in both East and West. Among the Orthodox, the faithful still approach clergy with the words, “Bless, Father,” kissing the hand that makes the sign of the Cross³. Among Catholics, it was long considered fitting to greet a newly ordained priest by kissing his anointed hands, and in some regions this remained a common courtesy among the faithful of all ages⁴. The gesture echoes older cultural traditions of respect, but is transformed by sacramental theology into an act of devotion.

Decline of the Practice
Why, then, did this visible act of devotion fade? Several factors converged in the modern era.

First, there was a cultural shift in Western society. Practices of hand-kissing, once common in aristocratic and familial settings, fell out of fashion by the mid-20th century⁵. As society abandoned external signs of deference, ecclesiastical expressions of respect also waned.

Second, the post-conciliar period saw a deliberate simplification of clerical customs. Gestures emphasising hierarchical distinction were often set aside in favour of a more egalitarian spirit. In many countries, seminarians were discouraged from accepting such reverence, fearing it could foster clericalism⁶. This attitude, however, often confused humility with the rejection of visible signs of sacred office.

Third, the wider desacralisation of Catholic life meant that tangible catechesis by way of gestures gave way to a largely verbal pedagogy. The priest was increasingly understood as a “presider” or community leader rather than as alter Christus. In such a context, kissing the priest’s hand seemed incongruous, even embarrassing.

Remembering What Was Lost
To recover this forgotten rubric is to recover a truth often obscured in modern times: that the priest is not simply a functionary, but alter Christus, another Christ. In reverencing his hands we reverence the mysteries they hold, and the High Priest who alone makes them efficacious⁷.

Perhaps it is time we remembered again that such visible signs of respect are themselves catechesis. By kissing the priest’s hand, we teach ourselves and our children that we love Christ’s sacraments, we love His Church, and we love the sacred office through which He comes to us. 🔝

¹ Pontificale Romanum, De Ordinatione Presbyteri, where the bishop anoints the priest’s hands with chrism, signifying their consecration for sacramental ministry.
² Cf. St. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood III, 4: “When the priest calls upon the Holy Spirit and offers the dread Sacrifice, who among men can still think he is the same as before?”
³ Orthodox Catechism of St. Philaret of Moscow, Q. 378–379, which explains the reverence shown to clergy as honour to Christ present in His priesthood.
⁴ EWTN, “Kissing the Hands of a New Priest” (1999), recalling the traditional custom still observed in parts of Europe.
⁵ See Hand-kissing entry in Encyclopedia of Etiquette and Social Customs (London: 1937), noting the decline of the gesture in modern Europe.
⁶ Yves Congar, Power and Poverty in the Church (Baltimore: Helicon, 1964), 183–185, where Congar critiques the disappearance of symbolic signs as contributing to the erosion of visible ecclesial identity.
⁷ Vatican II, Presbyterorum Ordinis §2: “Through the sacrament of Orders priests are configured to Christ the Priest so that they may act in the person of Christ the Head.”

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Lex Fides: Law and Faith

The motto Lex Fides holds before us two realities that can never be separated: the divine law and the gift of faith. Law without faith becomes tyranny, an empty letter imposed by power; faith without law dissolves into sentiment, a vague and shifting emotion that binds no one to God. But when joined, law and faith disclose the harmony of God’s will and man’s response, justice and love, truth and obedience.

From the beginning, God wrote His law upon the heart of man, inscribing in creation the eternal order of good and evil. This law was spoken on Sinai in fire and cloud, and fulfilled upon Calvary when Christ, the Lawgiver, bore the penalty of the lawbreaker. Yet the law by itself could not save. It is only in faith—faith in Christ who died and rose—that man can embrace the law not as a yoke of slavery, but as the rule of freedom. For the Apostle teaches: “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24).

In every age the Church is tempted to sunder these two. There are those who exalt law but hollow it of the faith, reducing the Gospel to bureaucracy or custom, a religion of rules without Spirit. And there are those who cry for faith without law, proclaiming freedom without obedience, a Christianity of feelings that blesses what God condemns. Both are lies. The true disciple walks in the narrow way where law and faith converge, where the commandments of God are fulfilled in the love of God.

Our times have seen law twisted by modernism to enshrine falsehood, and faith distorted into personal preference. Lex Fides is a summons to return: to recognise that divine law is not negation but liberation, and that true faith cannot contradict the order God has revealed. Christ Himself is Lex Fides, for He is the eternal Word through whom the law was given, and the author and finisher of our faith. In Him, obedience and belief become one.

For us, this motto must become a rule of life. To conform our hearts to God’s commandments, even when the world calls them harsh. To profess the faith whole and entire, even when modern voices deride it as outdated. To live so that law and faith together shine forth as witness—not only in our words but in the very pattern of our lives. For in this union lies the path of sanctity, the only way to the freedom of the children of God. 🔝

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Confession: The Supreme Exorcism of the Christian Life

The word exorcism conjures in the popular imagination a dramatic clash between priest and devil — the ritual prayers, the struggle of the possessed, the visible signs of demonic defeat. Yet the Church teaches that there is a far greater power against Satan, one accessible to every Catholic: the sacrament of confession. Saint John Paul II himself declared that “the sacrament of penance is more formidable for the devil than exorcism itself.” This striking statement is not exaggeration, but a theological truth at the very heart of Christian life.

Sin as the Devil’s Claim
Sacred Scripture teaches that the devil has no authority over man except through sin. Our first parents were not conquered by force, but by consent. As Saint Paul explains, “Know you not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are whom you obey, whether it be of sin unto death, or of obedience unto justice?” (Rom. 6:16). Origen echoes this teaching: “Each man becomes the servant of the one to whom he yields himself to obey.”¹ In every mortal sin, a man makes himself subject to the devil, handing over the key of his soul.

This is why the Fathers often describe sin in legal terms: it establishes a bond, a contract of slavery. Saint Augustine warns that “by yielding to sin, man places himself under the dominion of the devil, as a slave to his master.”² Thus the devil is rightly called “the accuser” (Rev. 12:10), for his power consists in pointing to the guilt of sinners before the judgment of God.

Confession as the Breaking of Chains
If sin gives the devil rights, absolution destroys them. In the tribunal of confession, the penitent does not merely express regret but submits himself to the judicial power of Christ, exercised through His priests. The words of absolution are not symbolic but performative: “I absolve you.” At that instant, the soul is washed in the Blood of Christ, the record of sin is blotted out, and the devil’s legal claim is annulled.

Herein lies the unique force of confession. Exorcism, in its liturgical form, can drive away demons from external oppression or possession; but if the soul remains in sin, the house is left open to their return (cf. Matt. 12:43–45). Confession, however, cleanses the very dwelling-place of the soul, sealing it against the enemy by sanctifying grace. Saint John Chrysostom affirms: “The devil does not so much fear fasting, nor vigils, nor almsgiving, as he does the confession of sins.”³

The Witness of the Saints
The saints understood confession as a continual warfare against the devil. Saint Ambrose wrote: “In confession there is pardon, in confession there is remission; the power of confession is great, for it delivers from death.”⁴ Saint Thomas Aquinas explained that the sacrament of penance not only forgives past sins but strengthens the soul against future temptations: “The sacrament of Penance produces grace and increases it, so that a man may be preserved from sin.”⁵

Saint Padre Pio, who spent long hours daily in the confessional, told his spiritual children that Satan fears confession more than anything else, because “it is there that the victory of Christ over the devil is applied individually to each soul.” His own life testified to this truth: while he endured violent attacks from the devil in his cell, he struck far deeper blows against hell in the confessional, where he freed countless souls from Satan’s grip.

Neglect of Confession: A Triumph of the Enemy
It is no coincidence that the decline of confession in the postconciliar decades coincided with a deep spiritual crisis in the Church. Where once Catholics confessed weekly or monthly, today many go years without absolution, often through ignorance or indifference. The devil rejoices at this neglect, for he knows that as long as Catholics avoid confession, his hold on their souls remains unchallenged.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church and patron of confessors, warned: “When a soul does not go to confession, the devil is not greatly troubled; but when she begins to confess frequently, he trembles.”⁶ Thus frequent confession is not a counsel of perfection but a weapon of survival in the spiritual combat.

A Call to Renewal
To say that confession is the best exorcism is to recover a forgotten truth. The Church does not need a multiplication of sensational exorcisms, but a revival of sacramental confession. If Catholics returned humbly and frequently to the confessional, the power of Satan would be broken not only in individual lives but in families, parishes, and nations.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent speaks with clarity: “The devil holds those only who are bound by the chains of sin. But when sins are forgiven, the devil loses his hold.”⁷ The sacrament of penance is thus not merely medicinal but militant: it wages war against the kingdom of darkness by reclaiming souls for the kingdom of Christ.

Let us therefore not underestimate this sacrament. Each absolution is an exorcism of the soul; each act of contrition sincerely offered is a victory over hell. Kneel often before the confessional grille, confess with sincerity, and you will rise not only pardoned but liberated. For in the end, the words of absolution echo the voice of Christ Himself, before whom every demon must flee: “Go, and sin no more.” (Jn. 8:11). 🔝

1. Origen, Commentary on Romans VI, PG 14, 1120.
2. St. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 63, PL 36, 769.
3. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Repentance, Homily VIII.
4. St. Ambrose, De Poenitentia II, 10.
5. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica III, q. 90, a. 1.
6. St. Alphonsus Liguori, Instructions for Confessors, ch. 1.
7. Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part II, Chapter 5.

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CURRENT AFFAIRS

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The Minneapolis Tragedy: Violence, Politics, and the Cry for Healing

The massacre at Annunciation Catholic School and Church in Minneapolis on 27 August 2025 has shaken both the city and the nation. What began as a morning Mass ended in horror when 23-year-old Robin Westman, a former pupil and child of a church staff member, opened fire into the congregation through stained-glass windows. Armed with multiple weapons, Westman killed two children—Fletcher Merkel (8) and Harper Moyski (10)—and wounded at least seventeen others, most of them fellow pupils and elderly parishioners¹. The attacker died by suicide in the school parking lot before police could intervene².

Investigators revealed that Westman had left behind hateful writings and manifestos, filled with anti-Catholic venom, racial animus, and obsessions with mass shooters³. Federal authorities are treating the crime as both a potential act of domestic terrorism and a hate-motivated assault on religion⁴.

The Church Desecrated
The setting of this massacre was not incidental. The shots rang out during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the very heart of Catholic worship. Survivors described the act as more than violence against children; it was an assault upon the altar, the Eucharist, and the faithful gathered in prayer.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St Paul and Minneapolis denounced the attack as an “unspeakable desecration of a holy place and the most vulnerable among us.” He called for fervent prayer, comfort for the wounded, and charity in the face of hatred⁵. Pope Leo XIV sent a message of condolence, commending the dead to God’s mercy as “innocent martyrs taken from the altar of Christ in their innocence,” and insisting that “hatred must never have the last word”⁶.

Across the Archdiocese, parishes and schools held Rosaries, vigils, and Eucharistic Adoration, while requiem Masses were celebrated for the two children slain. Many faithful have instinctively understood their deaths as a witness—a reminder that the blood of martyrs, even in our own time, remains the seed of the Church.

At a practical level, the Archdiocese has begun urgent security reviews of churches and schools, weighing the tension between the Church’s openness as a place of refuge and the need to safeguard those within her walls.

The Legislative Debate
The aftermath has swiftly reignited America’s long-standing conflict over firearms. Minnesota passed a red flag law in 2024, permitting courts to temporarily seize weapons from individuals flagged as dangerous. Yet despite Westman’s public expressions of violent fantasies, no such measures were taken. Critics have therefore called for better enforcement, awareness, and use of preventive mechanisms⁷.

At the city level, Mayor Jacob Frey dismissed the ritual of offering “thoughts and prayers” without reform, demanding bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines⁸. On Capitol Hill, Senator Amy Klobuchar voiced exhaustion with congressional paralysis: *“I am so tired of colleagues refusing even basic reforms while our children are being buried.”*⁹ Her calls centred on universal background checks and tighter purchase limits.

By contrast, House GOP Whip Tom Emmer insisted that the tragedy highlighted not the failure of gun laws but cultural confusion, linking the shooter’s transgender status to Minnesota’s trans refuge law. He urged its repeal, contending that the state had created instability by undermining parental authority¹⁰. The partisan rift has thus sharpened, with Democrats pointing to weapons access and Republicans to ideology and mental health.

Community Response and Healing
Even amidst grief, Minneapolis has displayed extraordinary resilience. Students at the school instinctively shielded their younger peers using a “buddy system,” a gesture of solidarity that likely prevented further loss¹¹. Vigils and memorials drew thousands: over 600 people gathered at the Academy of Holy Angels, joined by Archbishop Hebda, Governor Walz, Senator Klobuchar, and a message of condolence from Pope Leo XIV¹². Candlelight ceremonies filled Lynnhurst Park, where residents laid flowers and handwritten notes outside the shattered parish.

To support victims, the City of Minneapolis opened a Family Assistance Center, linking families with grief counselling, legal aid, and victim compensation¹³. The Minneapolis Foundation launched a text-to-donate campaign, while the Uvalde Foundation for Kids, scarred by its own tragedy, mobilised funds and school-safety initiatives in solidarity¹⁴. Federal offices for victims’ services also deployed recovery resources and toolkits for long-term trauma care.

Public officials stressed unity over scapegoating. Mayor Frey rejected attempts to stigmatise Minnesota’s transgender community, warning against “responses that compound hate instead of healing.”¹⁵ Governor Walz emphasised restoring safety to institutions meant for worship and education, declaring: “These are places of formation, of trust. We cannot let violence rewrite their meaning.”¹⁶

Conclusion
The tragedy in Minneapolis exposes once more the frailty of America’s social compact: a nation unable to shield its children at prayer, yet swift to weaponise their deaths in partisan rhetoric. For the Church, it has been a desecration of the altar and a reminder of the cost of discipleship. Calls for reform resound, vigils multiply, and communities gather in mourning. Yet the deeper wound remains—the violation of innocence and sanctuary. Whether genuine change can emerge from such grief, or whether it will be drowned in the familiar clash of ideology, remains the unanswered question. 🔝

1. Reuters, Shooter kills two Minneapolis school children in Catholic church, wounds 17 others, 28 Aug. 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Washington Post, Minneapolis grieves for young shooting victims as police investigate motive, 28 Aug. 2025.
4. Ibid.
5. Statement of Archbishop Bernard Hebda, Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis, 28 Aug. 2025.
6. Vatican News, Message of Pope Leo XIV to Minneapolis, 28 Aug. 2025.
7. ABC News, Minnesota’s red flag law under scrutiny after church shooting, 29 Aug. 2025.
8. Reuters, op. cit.
9. The Daily Beast, Klobuchar: “So tired” of colleagues refusing gun control, 29 Aug. 2025.
10. New York Post, House GOP Whip calls for repeal of Minnesota’s trans refuge law, 28 Aug. 2025.
11. New York Post, Middle schoolers shielded younger students during shooting, 29 Aug. 2025.
12. Wikipedia, Annunciation Catholic Church shooting, accessed 29 Aug. 2025.
13. City of Minneapolis, Official emergency response page, 28 Aug. 2025.
14. Wikipedia, op. cit.
15. Washington State Standard, Lawmakers reconsider rhetoric after Minnesota tragedy, 28 Aug. 2025.
16. CBS News Minnesota, Governor Walz reacts to Annunciation shooting, 28 Aug. 2025.

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Beyond Diplomacy: The Unconscionable Blessing of Adultery

The Telegraph has revealed that Pope Francis privately blessed the twentieth wedding anniversary of King Charles and Queen Camilla during their April audience at the Vatican.¹ What might seem to the world as a quaint gesture of goodwill is, in reality, a scandal of the gravest order. It is a papal endorsement of a union born of adultery, a humiliation of the See of Peter, and a desecration of Christian teaching on marriage. Both monarchy and papacy, once regarded as guardians of fidelity, here collude in a public act that trivialises vows, profanes oaths, and mocks divine law.

Marriage as Indissoluble
The Catholic Church has never wavered in teaching the indissolubility of marriage. Canon law is unambiguous: “A marriage that is ratified and consummated cannot be dissolved by any human power or by any cause other than death.”² Pope Leo XIII wrote in Arcanum divinae sapientiae that “the marriage bond is, by the will of God, so closely tied that it can in no way be loosened by man.”³ Pius XI in Casti connubii declared that Christian matrimony “can never be dissolved by any civil law.”⁴

By this measure, the situation of Queen Camilla is plain. Her first marriage, contracted in 1973 to Andrew Parker Bowles in a Catholic ceremony, was a sacramental bond presumed valid and indissoluble.⁵ Divorce did not dissolve it. The civil wedding of Charles and Camilla in 2005, followed by an Anglican service of prayer, therefore lacked sacramental character. While Charles, as a widower, was free to marry after Diana’s death, Camilla was not. To bless their anniversary was to bless what the Gospel calls adultery.

The Monarch’s Betrayal of Oaths
Charles’s personal infidelity was compounded by the solemn oaths he has sworn in public office. At his coronation he placed his hand on the Gospels and vowed to “maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel.”⁶ This came after a lifetime of disregard for the sanctity of marriage, of carrying on an adulterous liaison while wed to Diana, and of finally wedding his mistress in a civil ceremony. To stand before the Pope and receive a blessing on this anniversary was to make a mockery of the coronation oath and to reduce the monarchy to theatre—a pageant of sentiment rather than a symbol of fidelity.

The Corruption of Ceremony
The coronation of Charles III in Westminster Abbey compounded this hypocrisy. At the beginning of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, divorced persons were not permitted to be presented at Court, nor even to appear in the monarch’s presence at formal occasions.⁷ This prohibition reflected the seriousness with which society once regarded marriage. Yet at his coronation in 2023, Charles and Camilla—themselves emblematic of adultery—stood crowned in the Abbey of St Edward the Confessor, the saint-king whose fidelity and chastity had sanctified his throne.

The coronation liturgy retained the outward form of a Holy Communion service, but in a striking departure the King abstained from receiving the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.⁸ To wear the crown without first kneeling to receive the Bread of Heaven was to hollow out the rite of its deepest sacramental meaning. Historically, English coronations centred on this moment: Edward II in 1308, Henry VIII in 1509, and James II in 1685 all received Holy Communion at the altar, a visible testimony that their reigns must be nourished by divine grace.⁹ To omit this is to reduce the coronation to pageantry.

The liturgy was further shortened by the deliberate removal of the penitential rite, Archbishop Justin Welby cutting confession of sin in order to keep to television schedules.¹⁰ Thus, the King and nation entered a solemn act of worship without first humbling themselves before God. In the words of St Augustine, *“He only is a king who rules not by serving his own passions but by obeying God’s law.”*¹¹ To enthrone an unrepentant adulterer without penitence and without Communion is to enthrone not righteousness but rebellion. St Gregory the Great warned the Emperor Maurice that authority is safe only when subjected to the judgment of God: *“Power is then safe when he who exercises it subjects himself to the power of the Almighty Judge.”*¹² By abandoning penitence and sacrament, the modern coronation has severed kingship from its divine foundation.

The Pope’s Betrayal of Office
If the King betrayed his vows, the Pope betrayed his office. The task of the Roman Pontiff is to confirm the brethren in the truth (Luke 22:32) and to guard the indissolubility of marriage as Christ commanded: “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matt. 19:6). Yet Francis has hollowed the papal office into a vessel of ambiguity. His declaration Fiducia Supplicans (2023) reduced blessings to gestures of goodwill, detached from doctrine.¹³ The blessing of Charles and Camilla’s anniversary was not an accident, but the logical fruit of this relativism: a sentimental performance that comforted an adulterous union and confused the faithful.

Modernism’s Poison
This moment illustrates the very errors condemned by Pope St Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). Modernism, he warned, is “the synthesis of all heresies,” a system in which doctrines “are to be held only as long as they are practical” (§39), and truth is subordinated to “the needs of the believer” and the “impulse of the heart” (§7).¹⁴ Here modernism bore its fruit. Charles treats marriage vows as pliable to his personal fulfilment. Francis treats blessings as flexible to pastoral optics. Both reduce eternal law to circumstance and truth to emotion.

Emotionalism Above Propriety
What one expects of a pope in dealings with heads of state is diplomacy — the exercise of courtesy, the exchange of greetings, and the assurance of prayers for health and stability. Such gestures are legitimate; they belong to the realm of prudence and international relations. But what Pope Francis did in blessing the anniversary of King Charles and Queen Camilla went far beyond diplomacy. It was not a neutral act of goodwill but a moral endorsement of adultery, a gesture that confused the faithful and betrayed the clarity of Christ’s teaching. Courtesy can never justify complicity in sin. To conflate diplomatic politeness with sacramental blessing is to cross the line from pastoral sensitivity into pastoral treachery. It was, simply put, unconscionable.

What governed this act was not truth but emotionalism—the elevation of feeling over principle, sentiment over doctrine, optics over propriety. Charles sought public sympathy for his personal happiness. Francis sought to appear merciful and diplomatic. Both ignored the eternal command of Christ: “Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery” (Mark 10:11). Emotionalism triumphed; truth was silenced. The monarchy became spectacle, the papacy theatre.

The Collapse of Authority
Institutions that once embodied permanence now appear captive to fashion. The monarchy, once a symbol of continuity, is reduced to rehabilitating scandal by sentimental display. The papacy, once revered as the guardian of truth, is reduced to offering blessings emptied of meaning. Westminster Abbey, consecrated by faith, is profaned as a backdrop for hypocrisy. In the pursuit of sentiment, all is sacrificed: rationality, objectivity, morality. Oaths become mere ceremony, vows mere performance, blessings mere courtesies.

A Common Mockery
In this episode, throne and altar were united not in fidelity but in betrayal. The King mocked his vows; the Pope mocked his office. Both mocked Christ, whose teaching on marriage is unambiguous. What was heralded as a “historic moment” was in reality a humiliation of monarchy and papacy alike, a sign of how modernism and emotionalism hollow out institutions until nothing remains but spectacle.

The faithful are not bound to applaud such betrayals. They are bound to recognise them as warnings. Where oaths are treated as theatre and office as pageantry, the Gospel is silenced, the sacraments profaned, and Christ betrayed. 🔝

1. Hannah Furness, “Pope Francis blessed the King and Queen’s anniversary despite their divorces,” The Telegraph, 28 Aug. 2025.
2. Code of Canon Law, can. 1141.
3. Leo XIII, Arcanum divinae sapientiae (1880), §23.
4. Pius XI, Casti connubii (1930), §34.
5. People, “Who Is Andrew Parker Bowles? Queen Camilla’s First Husband,” May 1, 2023; cf. Wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles (2005).
6. Hugo Vickers, Royal Orders and Etiquette at Court (London: Collins, 1997), pp. 112–114.
7. The Coronation Order of Service, Westminster Abbey, 6 May 2023.
8. J. Wickham Legg (ed.), English Coronation Records (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1901), pp. 271–277; E. C. Dewick (ed.), Coronation Book of King Henry VIII (London: Roxburghe Club, 1902), pp. 45–49; Francis Sandford, The History of the Coronation of James II (London, 1687), pp. 112–118.
9. Harriet Sherwood, “Welby trims Coronation liturgy to suit television schedules,” The Guardian, 7 May 2023.
10. St Augustine, City of God, Book IV, ch. 4.
11. St Gregory the Great, Epistolae, XI, 64 (Letter to Emperor Maurice).
12. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fiducia Supplicans (18 Dec 2023), nn. 31, 38–40.
13. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), §§7, 13, 39.
14. Matt. 19:6; Mark 10:11–12; Luke 16:18 (Douay-Rheims).
15. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2384.

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The First One Hundred Days of Pope Leo XIV: Calm, Continuity, and Questions

The first one hundred days of a pontificate often set the tone for what follows. Pope St. John Paul II was already outlining a new evangelisation; Benedict XVI sought to restore the dignity of the liturgy; Francis projected himself as the pastor of the peripheries. The early months of Pope Leo XIV’s reign, by contrast, have been marked by restraint, sobriety, and what one commentator has described as a “listening papacy in the making.”¹

A return to papal sobriety
Where Francis was spontaneous and often unpredictable, Leo XIV has chosen a quieter and more traditional tone. His reintroduction of the mozzetta at official appearances and his solemn celebration of the Corpus Christi procession signal a deliberate restoration of papal formality. Raymond de Souza notes that Leo’s first months have been “less Robert, more Peter” — a reference to his birth name, Robert Francis Prevost — suggesting a conscious step back from personal charisma toward the dignity of the office itself.²

An Augustinian foundation
Observers have repeatedly highlighted Leo’s Christocentric and Augustinian spirituality. Robert P. Imbelli, writing in Public Discourse, discerned in these early months a theological depth rooted in Augustine’s vision of the Church as the City of God on pilgrimage through history.³ This influence explains the pope’s repeated emphasis on unity, interior renewal, and humility before divine truth. Such themes resonate powerfully in a year which anticipates the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.

Continuity with cautious change
The Associated Press reports that Leo has preserved many of Francis’ initiatives, particularly environmental projects like a solar farm in Vatican City, but with a more restrained rhetoric.⁴ Catholic News Service stresses that he has leaned into six Vatican II themes: the primacy of Christ, missionary conversion, collegiality and synodality, the sensus fidei, care for the marginalized, and dialogue with the modern world.⁵ Yet his style differs markedly: less noisy, more deliberative, and without early purges or radical appointments.

Public reception
A Gallup poll in July found that 57% of Americans view Leo XIV favorably, including 76% of Catholics.⁶ His calm tone has reassured many after years of controversy, though some traditional Catholics remain cautious, wary of whether continuity with Francis’ doctrinal ambiguities will persist. Zenit described his papacy so far as “sober and inclusive,” committed to peace, but critics fear inclusivity could mean doctrinal compromise.⁷

Traditionalist reflections
From a traditional Catholic perspective, Leo’s first hundred days leave crucial questions unresolved. He has shown sensitivity to liturgical dignity, but has yet to address the wounds inflicted by Traditionis Custodes on the faithful attached to the usus antiquior. Nor has he signalled whether he will reverse the postconciliar trajectory that has led to doctrinal confusion. The Old Roman Apostolate, like the Society of St. Pius X, watches closely: continuity with Vatican II’s ruptures cannot be papered over by solemn gestures or Augustinian quotations. A truly Augustinian papacy would defend truth uncompromisingly against error, as Augustine himself did in Hippo.

Conclusion
The first one hundred days of Pope Leo XIV show a man of prayer, dignity, and prudence. His sobriety contrasts with his predecessor’s populist style. Yet restraint alone will not heal the Church’s divisions nor resolve the doctrinal crises of the last sixty years. Traditional Catholics pray that Leo XIV’s Augustinian spirituality will lead him not only to listen, but also to act with clarity — defending perennial teaching, restoring the sacred liturgy, and governing the Church as a shepherd who knows the difference between true unity and false peace. 🔝

1. Religion Unplugged, “Pope Leo XIV’s First 100 Days: A Listening Papacy in the Making,” 16 August 2025.
2. Raymond J. de Souza, “Pope Leo’s First 100 Days: Less Robert, More Peter,” EWTN Vatican, 18 August 2025.
3. Robert P. Imbelli, “Pope Leo XIV’s Christ-Centered Spirituality,” Public Discourse, July 2025.
4. “100 days of Pope Leo XIV: A calm papacy that avoids polemics is coming into focus,” Associated Press, 16 August 2025.
5. Cindy Wooden, “Pope Leo’s First 100 Days: Leaning Into His New Role,” Catholic News Service, 20 August 2025.
6. Gallup Poll, “Papal Favorability in the United States,” July 2025.
7. “One Hundred Days of Pope Leo: An Approximation,” Zenit, 25 August 2025.

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The SSPX’s Jubilee Pilgrimage to Rome: Recognition and Rejection

In August 2025, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) undertook a high-profile pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee Year. Over three days, from 19–21 August, nearly eight thousand faithful from forty-four countries joined six hundred and eighty priests and religious in acts of devotion, processions, and Masses at the major basilicas of the Eternal City¹. The pilgrimage was presented by the Society as a gesture of fidelity to “Eternal Rome” and an expression of Catholic tradition in the heart of the Church.

Official Inclusion and Sudden Exclusion
The pilgrimage was initially listed on the Vatican’s official Jubilee calendar, a fact widely noted by both Catholic and secular media given the Society’s unresolved canonical status². For supporters of the SSPX, the inclusion suggested a subtle recognition by the Holy See that, despite its irregular situation, the Society represents a significant body of the faithful whose devotion cannot be ignored.

Yet shortly after the pilgrimage concluded, references to the event were quietly removed from the Jubilee website³. This deletion, seen by many as deliberate, drew sharp criticism. Traditionalist commentators described it as an act of “airbrushing” or “sending the SSPX pilgrimage down the memory hole,”⁴ raising questions about the Vatican’s willingness to acknowledge the presence of thousands of Catholics attached to the traditional liturgy.

Reactions Across the Catholic World
The Catholic Herald called the initial inclusion “notable” precisely because of the canonical dispute, while Catholic News Agency underscored the pilgrimage’s framing as an act of fidelity to the Faith of all time⁵. Within traditionalist circles, reactions ranged from disappointment to defiance. One lay voice captured the prevailing sentiment: “They’re validly ordained and not excommunicated.”⁶

The pilgrimage and its subsequent omission illustrated the divided perceptions of the SSPX: to some, an obstinate and irregular body, to others, a faithful witness to tradition sidelined by a modernist establishment.

The Broader Canonical Context
The SSPX was founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and remains in a canonically irregular position. While Pope Benedict XVI lifted the 1988 episcopal excommunications in 2009, the Society has not been canonically erected as a legitimate institute within the Church⁷. Pope Francis extended faculties for confession during the 2015–16 Jubilee, later granting them indefinitely, and allowed SSPX priests to witness marriages under certain conditions⁸. Yet full reconciliation remains elusive, with doctrinal disagreements—particularly concerning Vatican II and its reforms—continuing to impede progress.

A Sign of the Times
The episode encapsulates the ambiguity of Rome’s relationship with the Society: an unwillingness to ignore its vitality, coupled with a determination to withhold recognition. The thousands who gathered in Rome testified to the SSPX’s enduring appeal, especially among young families and clergy devoted to the traditional rites. But the quiet erasure from the Jubilee calendar confirmed that the Society remains, in the eyes of the Vatican, tolerated but unwelcome.

For Catholics attached to tradition, the pilgrimage may be remembered less as a snub than as a manifestation of fidelity in the very heart of the Church—a reminder that the sensus fidelium cannot be erased from an online calendar. 🔝

1. Aleteia, “Members of the Society of Saint Pius X in Rome for Jubilee,” 22 Aug 2025.
2. Catholic Herald, “SSPX pilgrimage for Jubilee endorsed by Vatican despite canonical dispute,” Aug 2025.
3. FSSPX News, “Vatican Jubilee website removes reference to SSPX pilgrimage,” 24 Aug 2025.
4. OnePeterFive, “Vatican Sends SSPX Pilgrimage Down the Memory Hole,” 24 Aug 2025.
5. Catholic News Agency, “Society of St. Pius X pilgrimage added to Vatican’s Jubilee Year calendar amid ongoing tensions,” 21 Aug 2025.
6. Reddit, r/TraditionalCatholics discussion thread, Aug 2025.
7. Benedict XVI, Decree remitting the excommunication of the bishops of the SSPX, 21 Jan 2009.
8. Francis, Misericordia et Misera (2016), n.12; Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, Letter to Ordinaries on SSPX marriages, 27 Mar 2017.

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Madrid Cardinal Embraces Heterodox LGBT Network: A Cardinal at Variance with Catholic Teaching

Cardinal José Cobo Cano, Archbishop of Madrid and vice-president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, has courted fresh controversy by addressing the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics (GNRC), a group that rejects Catholic moral teaching on sexuality. In a letter read at their assembly in Madrid, he called for a “culture of dialogue, accompaniment, and effective inclusion,” urging Catholic communities to avoid “all types of unjust discrimination” and to embrace “new pastoral attitudes.”¹

The cardinal stressed the “centrality of the person and their dignity” as normative for Christians, but omitted any reference to the Church’s perennial teaching that homosexual acts are gravely sinful and that the homosexual inclination itself is “objectively disordered.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear: homosexual acts are “contrary to the natural law” and “under no circumstances can they be approved” (CCC 2357).

GNRC: A Heterodox Umbrella
The GNRC serves as an international umbrella for dissident groups such as New Ways Ministry and DignityUSA.² Its co-presidents, Marianne Duddy-Burke and Christopher Vella, are both in same-sex relationships, and the movement openly campaigns for changes to Catholic teaching.³ At this year’s Madrid assembly, which gathered some 160 participants from five continents under the theme “Travelling together: rainbow challenges after the Synod,” attendees declared that “LGBTI rights are human rights and any Christian should defend that.”⁴

After a private meeting with Cobo before the conference, GNRC leaders announced with satisfaction that they would co-organise their next “World Assembly” in Madrid and that “we continue to build bridges towards a more inclusive Church.”⁵ In extending such courtesies, Cobo has placed the weight of his office behind those openly dissenting from Catholic doctrine.

The Spanish Context
Cardinal Cobo’s trajectory reflects a deliberate shift in the Spanish hierarchy under Pope Francis. Appointed Archbishop of Madrid in 2023 and created cardinal in the same year,⁶ he has consistently aligned himself with Francis’s pastoral line. In 2024 he vowed to “fully apply” Fiducia Supplicans, the papal document authorising blessings of homosexual couples, and warned that priests who resisted would face sanctions.⁷

Spanish society itself has been shaped by decades of aggressive secularisation. Since Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s government legalised same-sex unions in 2005, successive socialist administrations have pushed an agenda of cultural liberalisation. The Church, once a bulwark against such policies, has in recent years softened its public voice. Cobo’s intervention therefore signals not a correction of course, but a consolidation of Spain’s cultural drift into ecclesial policy.

Reactions Within the Church
Neither the Vatican nor the Spanish Bishops’ Conference has officially responded to Cobo’s intervention. His approach, however, aligns closely with Rome’s current emphasis on “inclusion” under Francis. It also resonates with recent comments by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, who has urged “a new pastoral attitude” towards LGBT Catholics.⁸

By contrast, sectors of the Spanish Church critical of Cobo’s stance have expressed unease in private, concerned that pastoral initiatives are being advanced without doctrinal clarity. The lack of explicit public correction underscores the degree to which heterodox pastoral practice is being normalised.

A Wider European Pattern
Cardinal Cobo is not an isolated case but part of a broader European trend. In Germany, bishops are sharply divided: dioceses such as Cologne, Augsburg, and Regensburg refuse to implement Fiducia Supplicans, while others, like Berlin and Essen, have endorsed blessings for same-sex couples.⁹ Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich has been one of the most vocal progressives, openly blessing homosexual couples and claiming that the Catechism “is not set in stone.”¹⁰

In Italy, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi has promoted dialogue and inclusion while remaining less confrontational, seeking to reconcile hospitality with traditional categories.¹¹ Cobo’s actions, however, go further than Zuppi’s more cautious approach: by publicly endorsing GNRC and welcoming its future world assembly, he has lent formal legitimacy to a network defined by open rejection of Catholic teaching.

Doctrinal Implications
The implications are grave. By lending his authority to GNRC, Cobo confirms dissenting Catholics in error rather than calling them to conversion. As St. Paul warned Timothy, “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but according to their own desires they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears” (2 Tim. 4:3). The true mission of the Church is not affirmation of sin but the proclamation of repentance and grace.

True inclusion means opening the door of mercy through conversion and sacramental grace. To promote “inclusion” without conversion is not pastoral sensitivity but doctrinal betrayal. In his pursuit of an “inclusive” Church, Cardinal Cobo risks reducing the Gospel to mere affirmation, hollowing out its power to transform sinners into saints. 🔝

¹ Katholisch.de English Service, “Cardinal in favour of more inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics in parishes,” 26 August 2025.
² LifeSiteNews, “Madrid’s cardinal welcomes dissident LGBT group prior to annual gathering,” 22 August 2025.
³ LifeSiteNews, “Any Christian should defend LGBTI rights, says dissident Catholic group,” 25 August 2025.
⁴ Katholisch.de English Service, “Cardinal in favour of more inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics in parishes,” 26 August 2025.
⁵ LifeSiteNews, “Madrid’s cardinal welcomes dissident LGBT group prior to annual gathering,” 22 August 2025.
⁶ Wikipedia, “José Cobo Cano,” updated August 2025.
⁷ LifeSiteNews, “Madrid’s cardinal welcomes dissident LGBT group prior to annual gathering,” 22 August 2025.
⁸ Associated Press, “Pope Francis sought to make LGBTQ+ people more welcome, but church doctrine didn’t change much,” 28 August 2025.
⁹ Catholic News Agency, “German bishops divided sharply over same-sex blessing guidelines,” 28 February 2025.
¹⁰ Wikipedia, “Reinhard Marx,” updated August 2025.
¹¹ Associated Press, “Pope Francis sought to make LGBTQ+ people more welcome, but church doctrine didn’t change much,” 28 August 2025.

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A Seminary in Turmoil: Detroit Archbishop Accused of Violating Civil and Canon Law

Seminary Faculty Sound Alarm
A leaked letter has accused Archbishop Edward Weisenburger of Detroit of breaking seminary statutes, violating legally binding contracts, and even disregarding civil law. Faculty members at Sacred Heart Major Seminary describe the result as a “climate of fear and uncertainty,” raising grave concerns for academic freedom and the institution’s future.

The Sudden Firings
In July 2025, three senior professors were abruptly dismissed: Dr. Ralph Martin, theologian and long-time teacher of evangelisation; Dr. Eduardo Echeverria, professor of philosophy and systematic theology; and Dr. Edward N. Peters, distinguished canonist. All three men had served for decades, their appointments stretching back to the early 2000s. The dismissals came without warning or explanation, save for vague references to “theological perspectives” at odds with the archbishop’s own views¹.

Each professor confirmed that no concrete charges were levelled. Martin noted that when he sought clarity, the archbishop declined to specify concerns. Echeverria was offered severance conditioned on a non-disclosure agreement, while Peters publicly stated he had “retained counsel”².

Handbook and Contractual Protections Ignored
The Faculty Handbook of Sacred Heart Major Seminary requires that dismissals be accompanied by written notice, documented grounds, and a peer review process before a three-member panel. None of these steps were taken in the present case³.

Moreover, seminary faculty contracts are issued in six-year terms, guaranteeing salary and position unless proper procedures are followed. The anonymous faculty letter asserts that the dismissals without cause constitute a breach of contract, leaving intact each professor’s right to salary for the remainder of his term. Instead, one year’s severance pay was offered, contingent upon silence⁴.

“While it is true that the Archbishop of Detroit has governing authority over the seminary, that authority must be exercised in a manner consistent with the seminary’s governing documents and faculty contracts in order to keep faith with the SHMS faculty,” the letter declares⁵.

A Climate of Fear
Faculty testimony describes the atmosphere left in the wake of the firings. One priest-professor wrote that the archbishop spoke for less than five minutes at a mid-August faculty meeting, refusing to elaborate on his decisions. He cited “conscience” as his motive, claiming that further explanation might violate non-disclosure agreements.

This reluctance, according to the email circulated to bishops and laity, left faculty “shocked and saddened,” feeling that they now live under constant threat of sudden removal. “By failing to give a clear explanation for what theological norms these professors violated, we are left in the dark. This has created a climate of fear and uncertainty,” the message warns⁶.

Institutional Consequences
The anonymous letter emphasises that the dismissals have already damaged morale, trust, and reputation. Bishops and religious communities who send seminarians to Detroit are reported to be “livid” at the manner of the firings, and some are reconsidering whether to entrust students to the seminary. Declining confidence could impact both enrolment and income in the coming year⁷.

Accreditation agencies have reportedly been notified, and complaints filed, raising the prospect of external review⁸.

A Wider Context
Archbishop Weisenburger, installed in Detroit in March 2025, has already courted controversy. He has sharply curtailed the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, reducing the number of churches offering it from ten to four. He has also banned the ancient ad orientem posture at Mass, going further than Pope Francis’ already restrictive motu proprio Traditionis Custodes⁹.

The dismissals of Martin, Peters, and Echeverria—well-known for their theological orthodoxy—suggest a deliberate attempt to shift the seminary’s direction away from its reputation for fidelity to tradition.

Conclusion
The affair reveals a disturbing tension between episcopal authority and the rights of faculty bound by written statutes and contracts. By acting without due process, Archbishop Weisenburger has provoked allegations of civil and canonical impropriety. The anonymous faculty letter concludes with a warning: if confidence is not restored, Sacred Heart Major Seminary risks not only its reputation but its very viability as a place of priestly formation. 🔝

1. Joshua J. McElwee, “Detroit archbishop fires 3 Sacred Heart seminary theologians who criticized Pope Francis,” National Catholic Reporter, July 24, 2025.
2. Ralph Martin and Edward Peters, quoted ibid.
3. J.D. Flynn, “What is Sacred Heart Seminary’s protocol for dismissing professors?” The Pillar, July 25, 2025.
4. “Leaked Letter Accuses Detroit Archbishop of Breaking Civil Law,” Stella Maris Media, Aug. 28, 2025.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. McElwee, National Catholic Reporter, July 24, 2025.

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Northern Ireland Launches Inquiry and Redress Bill for Victims of Mother and Baby Homes

Background
From 1922 until 1995, thousands of women and children in Northern Ireland passed through Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries, and Workhouses. Many suffered grave injustices: forced adoptions, degrading treatment, lack of medical care, and lifelong stigma. Calls for accountability intensified after the 2021 truth recovery design panel, commissioned following research by Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University, recommended a statutory inquiry and comprehensive redress scheme¹.

The Legislation
In June 2025 the Inquiry (Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses) and Redress Scheme Bill was introduced at Stormont². The Bill has two principal aims:

• To establish a statutory public inquiry into the operation of these institutions, with legal powers to compel evidence, guided by the PANEL principles of participation, accountability, non-discrimination, empowerment, and legality³.
• To create a redress scheme, beginning with a standardised payment of £10,000 for survivors, and £2,000 for each qualifying relative of those who died on or after 29 September 2011. A second phase of individually assessed payments will follow once the inquiry has concluded⁴.

The financial cost of the initiative is estimated at £80 million, including £58 million for survivor payments, £14 million for the inquiry, and £8 million for administration⁵.

Committee Stage and Consultation
The Bill passed its Second Stage on 24 June 2025 with strong cross-party support⁶. The Committee for the Executive Office, chaired by Paula Bradshaw MLA, is now scrutinising the text and has launched an international consultation. Survivors and relatives may submit their views until 29 September 2025. Familiarisation events are planned in Belfast and online in early September⁷.

Bradshaw emphasised: “This is a Bill to make provision relating to one of the most distressing and hurtful episodes in Northern Ireland’s history… Our role is to ensure that the inquiry and redress scheme are strong, robust, and fit for purpose.”

Concerns and Criticism
Survivor groups have raised serious concerns about the scheme’s design. The cut-off date for posthumous payments excludes many families whose relatives died before 2011, a restriction described as arbitrary and unjust⁸. The £10,000 flat rate has also been criticised as inadequate to address the scale of harm endured⁹. Others fear the eligibility criteria may leave behind those associated with workhouses, private nursing homes, or who emigrated abroad¹⁰.

Conclusion
The Bill represents a long-awaited step toward justice. Its ultimate credibility will depend upon whether survivors’ voices are genuinely heard during consultation and whether legislators act to correct the flaws already identified. For the victims and families who have waited decades, the coming months are decisive. 🔝

¹ Truth recovery panel and academic research, TheyWorkForYou, 24 June 2025; P.A. Duffy Solicitors, “Mother and Baby Homes in Northern Ireland”; Victims Service consultation notice; NI Assembly legislative background.
² NI Assembly, “Inquiry and Redress Scheme Bill,” 16 June 2025; The Executive Office, “Inquiry and Redress Scheme to be Established,” June 2025.
³ TheyWorkForYou, 24 June 2025 (debate record).
⁴ Executive Office statement, June 2025.
⁵ TheyWorkForYou, 24 June 2025 (costings debate).
⁶ NI Assembly debate record, 24 June 2025.
⁷ NI Assembly Committee for the Executive Office, consultation details; Victims Service notice, July 2025.
⁸ P.A. Duffy Solicitors, op. cit.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ TheyWorkForYou, 24 June 2025 (concerns raised during debate).

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IN OTHER NEWS…

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Reclaiming the Ordinary: England’s Flags and the Meaning of Public Symbols

The Controversy
Across England in the summer of 2025, national flags appeared in striking new prominence. The Cross of St George and the Union Flag were suddenly visible on lampposts, bridges, mini-roundabouts, and shopfronts. This surge was coordinated under the name Operation Raise the Colours, a grassroots campaign urging citizens to reclaim the ordinary presence of national flags in everyday life. Supporters stress that their aim is simple: to make national symbols as normal on the high street as they are at sporting events or civic commemorations.¹

Yet the display of flags has provoked a sharp backlash. Some councils have removed them from lampposts and street furniture, citing highway regulations and safety standards.² Certain media outlets and activist organisations have gone further, suggesting that the campaign is motivated by xenophobia or linked to extremist politics.³ This conflation is gravely unjust. To tar ordinary men and women with accusations of racism because they love their country’s flag is both defamatory and corrosive of civic trust.

The Legal Background
The law on flag-flying in England is clear. Under the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007, many national flags may be flown without planning permission, provided that conditions on size, placement, and number are met.⁴ Guidance issued by the Department for Levelling Up confirms that the Union Flag, St George’s Cross, the flags of Scotland and Wales, and certain others may be displayed freely on private property.⁵

Public lampposts, however, fall under the Highways Act 1980. Section 132 prohibits the unauthorised attachment of items to highway structures.⁶ Councils may therefore remove flags affixed to lampposts without consent. In practice, many authorities operate permit schemes for banners on pre-designated “banner columns” that have been structurally tested to bear wind-load stress.⁷ Temporary permissions are often granted for civic festivals, remembrance commemorations, or coronations.⁸ This explains why some installations have been removed: not because the flags were English, but because they were placed on street furniture without lawful approval.

The Motives of Raise the Colours
Supporters of Operation Raise the Colours emphasise that their purpose is neither political nor partisan. Their stated mission is to normalise patriotic display, to dispel the stigma that has grown around the Cross of St George, and to demonstrate unity rather than division.⁹ The campaign grew visibly after the widespread flag-waving during the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025, when English victory saw towns and cities festooned in red and white.¹⁰

Government ministers have echoed this reading. Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch publicly condemned councils that ordered removals of St George’s flags as “shameful,” affirming that national flags should be “flown proudly.”¹¹ Likewise, Robert Jenrick has insisted that there must not be double standards whereby English flags are torn down while political or international flags are permitted to fly without hindrance.¹²

Accusations and Exploitation
Despite these plainly expressed motives, certain campaigners and media voices have sought to link the flag-flying to the far right. Organisations such as Hope Not Hate and Stand Up to Racism allege that the campaign coincides with anti-immigration protests and risks intimidating minority communities.¹³ Reuters reported that in some areas, such as Tower Hamlets, members of immigrant communities expressed discomfort at the sudden proliferation of flags.¹⁴

It is true that notorious figures—among them Tommy Robinson and Britain First—have attempted to associate themselves with the campaign.¹⁵ But opportunistic endorsement by extremists does not establish that the movement itself is extremist. To suggest otherwise is to commit the fallacy of guilt by association. Such reasoning collapses legitimate expressions of civic pride into a caricature of nationalism, alienating thousands of ordinary citizens whose motives are innocent and inclusive.

Councils and Civic Equality
The real issue is one of equal treatment under neutral rules. Councils are entitled to enforce highway safety and planning law, but they must do so consistently. Citizens will naturally resent seeing national flags removed from lampposts while other symbols—whether for commercial promotions or political causes—are tolerated. The remedy is not selective suppression but transparent processes: clear permits for temporary civic displays, and equal application of rules regardless of the message or cause.

Conclusion: Patriotism without Apology
National flags belong to the whole people. They are not the property of any faction, still less of extremist groups. To love one’s country and to fly its symbols is natural, honourable, and unifying. Attempts to stigmatise patriotism as “racism” are profoundly damaging to civic life and sow needless division. Where rules of highway law are breached, flags may be removed or applications regularised. But to criminalise the affection of ordinary men and women for their nation’s banner is intolerable.

Operation Raise the Colours reminds us that symbols matter. They can be twisted by those who hate, but they can also bind together those who love. To deny a people their own flag is to deny them their own identity. The just and British answer is fair enforcement, open channels for permission, and above all, charity toward one’s neighbour. 🔝

¹ Reuters, “England flags spark pride and concern amid anti-immigration protests,” 27 Aug 2025.
² The Independent, “Councils remove unauthorised England flags from lampposts and street furniture,” 27 Aug 2025.
³ The Guardian, “Britain’s far right emboldened by migration and nationalism,” 24 Aug 2025.
⁴ Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007, SI 2007/783.
⁵ Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, Flying Flags: A Plain English Guide, updated 20 Jul 2021.
⁶ Highways Act 1980, s.132.
⁷ Hampshire County Council, Banner Consent Guidance, 2023.
⁸ Lancashire County Council, Street Lighting Column Attachments Policy, 2024.
⁹ Operation Raise the Colours statement of aims, cited in Wikipedia summary (accessed Aug 2025).
¹⁰ Reuters, op. cit.
¹¹ The Sun, “Kemi Badenoch blasts ‘shameful’ councils for ripping down St George’s flags,” 28 Aug 2025.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ The Guardian, op. cit.
¹⁴ Reuters, op. cit.
¹⁵ Wikipedia, Operation Raise the Colours, citing press reports Aug 2025.

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The Church of England’s Safeguarding Debacle: Failure upon Failure

The safeguarding failures of the Church of England continue to deepen, exposing not only past abuses but also ongoing incompetence in responding to survivors. Recent months have brought a fresh wave of scandals—from the conviction of abusive clergy and the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the mishandling of survivors’ personal details in the redress process. Together these incidents form a damning portrait of an institution unable—or unwilling—to reform itself.

Historic Abuses Re-exposed
The conviction in August 2025 of Chris Brain, former leader of the notorious Nine O’Clock Service in Sheffield, renewed focus on the Church’s complicity in his cult-like regime. Brain, hastily ordained despite warnings, was found guilty of seventeen counts of indecent assault against nine women. Survivors recounted how they were silenced by Church officials, discouraged from contacting police or media, lest the institution’s image be tarnished¹.

The scandal is not confined to the past. The 2024 Makin Review revealed that barrister John Smyth, a prominent figure in Church-linked youth camps, abused over a hundred boys and young men for decades while bishops and leaders failed to act². The report described a pattern of cover-up that implicated the highest levels of Church authority. In its wake, Archbishop Justin Welby resigned in January 2025, acknowledging his inadequate handling of the crisis³.

Resistance to Independent Safeguarding
Despite these revelations, the Church has resisted calls for radical reform. In February 2025 the General Synod rejected proposals for fully independent safeguarding, voting instead for a limited arrangement where only national staff would be overseen externally, while local safeguarding officers remained under diocesan control⁴. Critics, including Bishop Sarah Mullally of London, warned that such half-measures would never rebuild trust. Survivors’ groups have been even more forthright, calling the decision a betrayal.

The Redress Scheme Breach
Most recently, on 27 August 2025, the crisis took a grotesque new turn. Nearly two hundred survivors enrolled in the Church’s redress scheme had their personal email addresses exposed in a mass mailing error by Kennedys Law, the firm administering the programme⁵. Survivors described the breach as retraumatising, particularly for those whose abuse histories were still undisclosed to family or employers.

The advocacy group House of Survivors denounced the incident as emblematic of the very failures the redress scheme was meant to rectify. Lawyer David Greenwood, representing multiple claimants, said bluntly: *“I have a right to lifelong anonymity under the law. This protection has now been severely compromised through no choice of my own.”*⁶

Kennedys Law apologised, attributing the breach to “human error,” and reported it to regulators. But the explanations failed to quell outrage. Survivor advocate Andrew Graystone described the event as “deeply damaging and traumatising”⁷. One survivor’s blog captured the mood: *“Why did I ever trust this scheme? This leak only adds to our suffering, our mental health struggles, and our mistrust.”*⁸

A Culture of Clerical Careerism
Underlying these failures is what one commentator called the “careerism” of bishops, more concerned with protecting their own positions than with safeguarding the flock⁹. From the tolerance of cult-like abuses to the refusal of full independence in safeguarding, the pattern is unmistakable: image and authority consistently outweigh justice and truth.

Evaluation: A Church in Moral Bankruptcy
The trajectory of these scandals demonstrates that the Church of England has not learned from its history. The exposure of survivors’ details is not a minor bureaucratic slip but the latest sign that the institution cannot be trusted with the vulnerable. Partial reforms, belated apologies, and vague promises will not suffice.

If safeguarding is to mean anything, it must be fully independent, transparent, and accountable. More than that, however, the Church must undergo a deeper conversion. Until bishops abandon careerism and embrace humility, repentance, and the courage to tell the truth about their failures, the credibility of Anglican safeguarding will remain in ruins. 🔝

1. Reuters, Leader of ‘cult-like’ UK Christian group guilty of sexually abusing women (21 Aug 2025).
2. Makin Review, The Independent Review into the Abuse of John Smyth QC (Nov 2024).
3. People, Archbishop of Canterbury resigns over handling of child sex abuse scandal (Jan 2025).
4. The Guardian, General Synod votes against fully independent safeguarding (11 Feb 2025).
5. Reuters, Personal details of Church of England abuse victims leaked, say survivors (27 Aug 2025).
6. Ibid.
7. Premier Christian News, Law firm sorry for human error that led to CofE abuse survivors’ data breach (28 Aug 2025).
8. Retired Rector Blog, Church’s Major Data Breach (26 Aug 2025).
9. The Guardian, C of E bishops accused of ‘careerism’ over failure to condemn abuse cover-up (1 Dec 2024).

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Rylan Clark and the Illegal Immigration Debate: ITV, Outrage, and the Politics of Fairness

Introduction
Rylan Clark (born Ross Richard Clark in 1988) is a British television and radio presenter, singer, and media personality who first rose to fame as a flamboyant contestant on The X Factor in 2012 and later won Celebrity Big Brother in 2013. Known for his charisma and outspoken style, he has since become a fixture of UK broadcasting, from Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two to BBC Radio 2 and ITV’s This Morning. It was on the latter, in August 2025, that Clark delivered a passionate intervention on illegal immigration—framing it as a question of fairness between citizens and irregular arrivals—which ignited headlines, divided public opinion, and thrust him into the centre of a national debate.

The Main Thrust of His Comments
Clark’s intervention rested on three points:

1. Fairness Undermined: He painted a picture of asylum seekers given accommodation, meals, and amenities while ordinary Britons wait in long queues and struggle with bills. This, he argued, offends natural justice.
2. Loss of Control: Referring to small boat crossings, he insisted that the government has lost grip of the system, leaving the public with the sense of chaos.
3. Silenced Concerns: He suggested that anyone voicing such frustrations risks being caricatured as racist or far-right, and later reinforced on Instagram: “Stop putting everyone in a box.”

Social Media Reactions
The comments sparked immediate polarisation online. Supporters hailed him as “saying what the silent majority think,” while critics accused him of parroting Nigel Farage. Some worried he would be “cancelled” for “talking sense,” while others accused him of spreading “lies about refugees living in luxury.” The divide reflected a deeper cultural fracture: whether complaints about illegal immigration should be read as legitimate or as coded hostility.

The Loose Women Counterpoint
The following day, Loose Women tackled the subject. Nadia Sawalha warned that blaming “foreigners” for crime and social strain is racist, likening the rhetoric to Donald Trump’s scapegoating. Kaye Adams urged viewers to see beyond migrants to the structural failures of government services. Jane Moore acknowledged that most arrivals are young single men, raising community impact concerns, while Kelle Bryan warned voters to consider carefully the long-term implications of Reform UK’s promises. Their discussion embodied the counter-narrative: that Rylan’s words oversimplified a complex issue.

Political Commentary
Reaction from the press and pundit class mirrored this split:

• GB News highlighted the resonance of Clark’s fairness argument with ordinary frustrations.
• PinkNews and Yahoo! News fact-checked him, stressing inaccuracies around phones and luxury hotels.
• Dan Wootton framed the incident as symptomatic of an “ITV culture war” spilling onto daytime television.

Fact-Checking the Claims
Though his thrust was fairness, Clark’s supporting imagery was imprecise:

• Phones/iPads: No routine government issue; occasional basic handsets via charities, iPads unsubstantiated.
• Luxury Hotels: Some three- and four-star venues contracted, but conditions often de-branded and poor. “Luxury” not representative.
• Meals & Allowance: Three meals daily where catered, plus £9.95 weekly cash. Self-catered housing gives £49.18 weekly.
• Preferential Treatment: Asylum seekers are excluded from mainstream benefits and largely barred from work.

By June 2025, about 32,000 asylum seekers were still housed in hotels, a costly “contingency” arrangement that fuels public frustration even if the details differ from Rylan’s rhetoric.

Conclusion
The significance of Rylan Clark’s intervention lies not in its factual slips but in its moral appeal to fairness. His critics are correct that some claims were exaggerated; his supporters are correct that his sentiment resonates with the public’s lived sense of injustice. The controversy reveals both the fragility of Britain’s migration system and the peril of a media culture where celebrity voices can ignite debates more forcefully than policy briefings.

For Catholics and all concerned with justice, the challenge is to rise above slogans. The moral law commands both charity to the stranger and order in society. The State’s failure to secure lawful, orderly migration undermines both. Rylan Clark’s cry on This Morning was clumsy but captured a truth: without fairness, both citizens and migrants suffer. 🔝

1. Yahoo! News, “Rylan Clark responds to backlash over This Morning remarks,” August 2025.
2. PinkNews, “Rylan sparks immigration backlash,” August 2025.
3. Entertainment Daily, “Rylan Clark branded ‘mean’ and ‘spouting Farage’s lines’,” August 2025.
4. GB News, “Thomas Skinner supports Rylan Clark,” August 2025.
5. Entertainment Daily, “Loose Women debate Farage’s deportation plan,” August 2025.

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From Patients to Test Subjects: The Utilitarian Exploitation of the “Brain Dead”

The recent report in Nature Medicine describing the implantation of a pig lung into a “brain dead” man in China is only the latest instance of an alarming trend. For nine days, the 39-year-old patient absorbed oxygen, circulated blood, metabolised nutrients, produced antibodies, and maintained homeostasis before he was finally declared “dead” again¹. The contradiction is self-evident. If such a man can fight infection, reject a foreign organ, and sustain integrated bodily life, he is not a corpse. He is alive.

The Redefinition of Death
The classical definition of death, accepted across cultures and affirmed in Catholic theology, is the separation of the soul from the body. Traditionally, this was recognised in the irreversible cessation of breathing and heartbeat. In 1968, however, an ad hoc Harvard Medical School committee proposed “irreversible coma” or “brain death” as a new criterion². This innovation was not born from metaphysical reflection but from practical need: how to justify the extraction of vital organs from living patients without calling it killing.

As Dr. Alan Shewmon, former chief of neurology at UCLA, has demonstrated, brain-injured patients declared “brain dead” often continue to regulate temperature, fight infection, and even gestate children³. Their bodies remain living organisms, exhibiting precisely the integration that Catholic anthropology associates with the continued presence of the soul.

From Donors to Laboratory Subjects
Initially, “brain death” was presented as a means of reconciling organ transplantation with ethical norms. But the fiction has grown. In 2023, xenotransplant researchers at the University of Alabama and NYU Langone surgically implanted genetically modified pig kidneys into the abdomens of “brain dead” men, sustaining them on cardiopulmonary support like experimental animals⁴. In 2024, scientists in Chengdu placed a gene-edited pig liver into a ventilated patient, sustaining him for ten days before terminating the experiment⁵.

These episodes reveal that “brain death” has become a license for human experimentation. Those declared legally dead but biologically alive are reduced to mere test platforms, denied their dignity as persons.

The Ethical Abyss
Medical ethicist Joel Zivot has warned that this practice exposes “a series of moral choices, thus far unreported and unexamined,” including the legitimacy of brain death itself, the exploitation of the vulnerable, and the commodification of both human beings and animals⁶. When the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics addressed the question in 2008, it argued that continued support of the “brain dead” failed to respect the dignity of the dead⁷. Yet these latest experiments prove that such individuals are not dead at all, but treated as if they were, for the sake of utilitarian gain.

Catholic Teaching on the Integrity of the Human Person
The Church insists that the human person must always be treated as an end, never a means. Pope Pius XII, addressing anesthesiologists in 1957, affirmed that while medicine may pursue new techniques, “the right to life of every human being is prior to every medical or social consideration”⁸. To redefine death in order to harvest organs or conduct experiments is to instrumentalise man, contradicting the divine law.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent affirms that death is “the separation of the soul from the body,” a mystery beyond empirical measurement. The exact moment cannot be captured by neurological testing, but must be discerned with humility before the Creator. To arrogate to medicine the authority to declare a living human being “dead” is to usurp the sovereignty of God, Who alone gives and takes life.

The Soul and Bodily Integration
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the soul is the “form of the body,” the principle of its unity and organisation⁹. A body that continues to act as an integrated whole—regulating itself, resisting infection, and metabolising food—remains informed by its soul. This theological anthropology aligns with empirical evidence that so-called “brain dead” patients manifest the coordinated activity of living beings. Their humanity has not ceased; only their consciousness is gravely impaired.

The Temptation of Utilitarianism
Xenotransplantation itself raises further moral concerns. The use of genetically modified pigs—stripped of certain genes, injected with others, bred to be organ factories—reflects a technocratic vision of life as raw material. To then implant such organs into living but vulnerable humans dehumanises both creatures, reducing man to a laboratory and animal to a commodity.

Such utilitarianism, condemned repeatedly by the Magisterium, is the fruit of a culture that measures worth by productivity rather than inherent dignity. As Pope John Paul II warned in Evangelium Vitae, “when the sense of God is lost, the sense of man is also threatened and poisoned”¹⁰. Declaring the living to be dead is one of the most grotesque manifestations of this poisoning.

A Call to Reaffirm the Truth
It is time for Catholics—and all who care for human dignity—to expose the falsehood of brain death. We must reject the utilitarian calculus that treats men and women as organ banks or test animals. The way forward in medicine cannot be built on lies, but only on reverence for truth and respect for the human person.

The Church has long been the defender of the weak, the voiceless, and the vulnerable. Those on ventilators, falsely declared dead, are among the most vulnerable of all. Their silent resistance—hearts still beating, lungs still absorbing oxygen, bodies still rejecting alien tissue—cries out for recognition. They are not corpses. They are our brothers and sisters. And they deserve the dignity owed to every living soul. 🔝

1. Nature Medicine, “Lung xenotransplantation in a human recipient,” August 2025.
2. Harvard Medical School Ad Hoc Committee, “A Definition of Irreversible Coma,” JAMA, 1968.
3. Alan Shewmon, “The Brain and Somatic Integration,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 26:5 (2001), 457–478.
4. University of Alabama at Birmingham, “UAB xenotransplant research achieves significant breakthrough,” August 2023.
5. South China Morning Post, “China scientists transplant gene-edited pig liver into man,” March 2024.
6. Joel Zivot, quoted in MedPage Today, August 2023.
7. President’s Council on Bioethics, Controversies in the Determination of Death, December 2008.
8. Pope Pius XII, “The Prolongation of Life: Address to the International Congress of Anesthesiologists,” 24 Nov 1957.
9. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 76, a. 1.
10. Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (1995), §21.

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Gay Men Discriminated Against in Brighton for Gender-Critical Views

Introduction
In August 2025 the social group HumanGayMale, organising events for gay men who reject gender identity ideology, sought to hold its first meet-up in Brighton. A private room had been booked at a local pub, but on the morning of the event the booking was abruptly cancelled following complaints about the group’s beliefs. When the organiser, James Roberts, offered to host the group in the main bar instead, the pub refused service entirely. Roberts contends this is unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, which protects individuals from bias based on religion or belief. Legal action is now underway, with solicitor Peter Daly of Doyle Clayton—who previously represented Maya Forstater and Allison Bailey—at the helm.

Legal background
The case hinges on the legal recognition of gender-critical beliefs as protected philosophical beliefs. In Forstater v Centre for Global Development Europe (2021), the Employment Appeal Tribunal confirmed that belief in the immutability of biological sex constitutes a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act¹. Maya Forstater later won her full merits hearing in 2023, securing compensation for discrimination against that belief². Similar protections have been upheld in cases involving individuals like Allison Bailey in employment contexts³. However, tribunals have drawn a critical distinction between belief and its expression. In Mackereth v Department for Work and Pensions (2022), the Court of Appeal held that while the belief was protected, refusing to use a transgender person’s pronouns was not protected if it caused harm⁴.

The Brighton case
This action marks a departure from previous disputes, most of which occurred within workplaces or educational institutions. The HumanGayMale claim concerns service provision in a hospitality setting—and whether refusing service on belief grounds is permissible. The Equality Act extends beyond employment, covering goods and services. A successful ruling would set a precedent affirming that businesses cannot lawfully exclude individuals or groups because of their gender-critical beliefs.

FSU Brighton incident
This is not the first time Brighton has seen such controversy. In September 2024, a Free Speech Union (FSU)-associated group, Free Speech Brighton, was expelled from a local pub—the Southern Belle—during a talk by a retired teacher who argued that gender ideology should not be taught to schoolchildren as fact. The group had pre-booked a back room and set up a microphone and speaker. After a roughly 15-minute speech about safeguarding children, security staff entered and ordered the approximately fifty attendees to leave, citing a complaint. One guard reportedly tried to disconnect equipment and stated anyone refusing to leave would be trespassing⁵. FSU Director Toby Young condemned the eviction as unlawful discrimination: “From a legal point of view it’s no different to kicking someone out because they’re black or gay… It’s unlawful discrimination, plain and simple.” FSU threatened legal action unless the pub apologised and allowed the meeting to be rebooked⁶.

Legal action
HumanGayMale has launched a crowdfunding appeal seeking £2,500, to pay for a solicitor’s letter, claim preparation, and court filing. Solicitor Peter Daly, experienced in landmark gender-critical cases, assesses that the Brighton claim has strong prospects. A favourable outcome would confirm that belief-based protections extend into public social life and that expressing lawful beliefs—even controversial ones—cannot justify exclusion from services.

Conclusion
This case transcends a single cancelled booking. It presents a legal test of whether philosophical belief protection applies in everyday public settings, such as pubs. A ruling in favour of HumanGayMale would affirm that venues must not discriminate against individuals for their lawful beliefs, extending equality protection beyond employment into civic life. 🔝

1. Forstater v Centre for Global Development Europe [2021] UKEAT 0105_20_1006, EAT.
2. “Maya Forstater awarded compensation after landmark tribunal,” BBC News, 6 June 2023.
3. House of Commons Library, “Employment Tribunal rulings on gender-critical beliefs in the workplace,” Research Briefing, 13 January 2022.
4. Mackereth v Department for Work and Pensions [2022] EWCA Civ 23.
5. Free Speech Union, “Free Speech Union sister group kicked out of Brighton pub after saying children shouldn’t be taught trans ideology,” 19 September 2024.
6. Free Speech group ‘kicked out’ of Brighton pub during speeches about gender ideology in schools, LBC, 19 September 2024.

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The Alexanders and Ontario’s Mandated Ideology: A Case Study in Conscience and Control

In October 2023, Ontario teachers Matt and Nicole Alexander were dismissed by the Renfrew County District School Board after more than two decades of service. Their offense was not negligence or misconduct but a refusal to comply with directives requiring teachers to “celebrate and affirm” LGBT ideology in their classrooms. Matt, a Grade 7/8 teacher, had been suspended in April 2023 following complaints linked to his son Josh’s public opposition to gender-neutral bathroom policies, despite not having a social media presence himself. Nicole, a kindergarten teacher, was suspended in May after quietly removing a Pride poster taped to her classroom door without her consent. Within minutes she was summoned to the office, ordered to pack her belongings, and later dismissed alongside her husband when both refused to comply with the new requirements¹.

The ordeal of the Alexander family deepened as Josh himself had already been suspended and arrested for defending girls’ bathrooms against male intrusion under gender identity rules. At a rally in Pembroke in August 2025, Matt Alexander told parents, “This wasn’t a requirement to not discriminate. This was a requirement to celebrate and affirm”². The family’s refusal resulted in severe financial hardship; they were forced to sell their home to avoid foreclosure and are now pursuing legal action through the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, filing a human rights complaint against the school board for religious discrimination and a labour complaint against their union for failing to defend them³.

The policy framework in Ontario explains why their case became inevitable. Since 2009, Policy/Program Memorandum 119 has required all boards to adopt equity and inclusive education policies, explicitly naming sexual orientation and gender identity⁴. In 2012, the Education Act was amended to oblige schools to discipline homophobic and transphobic bullying with suspension or expulsion⁵. In 2015, the Wynne government introduced a revised sex-education curriculum, explicitly teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity across multiple grade levels. Although briefly rolled back in 2018, a revised 2019 framework retained much of this content, allowing only limited parental opt-outs⁶. The Accepting Schools Act of 2012 further mandated Gay–Straight Alliances in all publicly funded schools, Catholic or public, embedding advocacy around sexual and gender identities into the life of schools⁷.

Local boards and implementation went still further. The Toronto District School Board and the Avon Maitland District School Board established guidelines requiring staff to use preferred pronouns, to protect the confidentiality of disclosures, and to provide washroom and changing-room access according to gender identity⁸. In September 2022, the Renfrew County District School Board itself issued Gender Identity and Gender Expression Guidelines, mandating affirmation in athletics, field trips, and teaching practice⁹.

Oversight and professional regulation reinforce these expectations. The Ontario College of Teachers applies the Ontario Human Rights Code to all licensed teachers, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. In 2018, the College introduced gender-inclusive communication policies, including non-binary options on forms¹⁰. The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario has declared that “no one’s gender identity should be up for debate,” insisting on inclusive washrooms, pronoun recognition, and curriculum content¹¹. Yet in the Alexanders’ case, neither the College nor the union offered comment or support, leaving them isolated in the face of dismissal and compelled to seek redress in law.

The silence of institutions contrasts with their public rhetoric of inclusion and equity. The RCDSB has never publicly explained or defended its dismissal of the Alexanders, while the regulatory and union structures that champion affirmation failed to uphold conscience. The Alexanders’ case thus illustrates the trajectory of Ontario’s educational policy: what began as protection from bullying has developed into compulsory celebration. Where teachers resist on grounds of conscience or faith, the consequence is loss of employment and livelihood.

Conscience in Catholic teaching sheds light on the Alexanders’ resistance. Pope Leo XIII taught that “the divine and natural law is the rule and measure of all education” and that it is not lawful for the State to override the rights of conscience in parents and teachers (Libertas, 1888)¹². Pius XI, in Divini Illius Magistri, condemned any system of education that arrogates to the State the right to mould the souls of children against the convictions of the family and Church, insisting that “it is necessary to preserve the inviolable rights of the Christian conscience”¹³. The Alexanders’ dismissal for refusing to endorse falsehoods about the human person is precisely the kind of coercion these encyclicals warned against.

The rights of parents in education are not merely a Catholic claim, but recognised in international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares in Article 26(3) that “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”¹⁴. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights further requires States to respect the liberty of parents to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their convictions¹⁵. By compelling teachers to indoctrinate children against their conscience and by depriving parents of the right to shield their children from ideological coercion, Ontario’s education system violates not only the Catholic faith but also the very human rights instruments it claims to uphold.

The ideological character of celebration goes beyond tolerance. What the Alexanders refused was not the prohibition of bullying, which they accepted as common sense, but the compulsory affirmation of practices and lifestyles they believed contrary to natural law and divine revelation. Catholic teaching distinguishes between respect for persons and the endorsement of error. As St Augustine observed, “We must hate the sin, but love the sinner” (Letter 211)¹⁶. The modern school system has inverted this principle, making affirmation of the sin a condition for showing respect to the sinner.

The broader lesson for Catholics is clear. Where civil authorities attempt to compel what is against conscience, Christians are bound to resist, even at personal cost. The Alexanders have provided a witness to this principle, standing firm against coercion. Their ordeal is a reminder that fidelity to truth will increasingly require sacrifice in societies where error has become law. The challenge for the Church is to support families like theirs, to defend the rights of parents and teachers, and to proclaim once again that education belongs first to the family and ultimately to God, not to the State. 🔝

¹ Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, The Alexander Family: Punished for Standing by Their Beliefs (October 2023).
² Clare Marie Merkowsky, “Canadian teacher exposes school board’s LGBT indoctrination of young children,” LifeSiteNews, August 28, 2025.
³ Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, case summary (2023–25).
⁴ Ontario Ministry of Education, Policy/Program Memorandum No. 119: Developing and Implementing Equity and Inclusive Education Policies in Ontario Schools (2009).
⁵ Education Act, RSO 1990, c. E.2, amendments 2012, s. 301.
⁶ Ontario sex education curriculum controversy, Wikipedia summary (accessed August 2025).
⁷ Accepting Schools Act, 2012, S.O. 2012, c. 5, s. 9.
⁸ Toronto District School Board, Accommodation Guidelines for Transgender and Gender Diverse Students and Staff (2017); Avon Maitland DSB, Administrative Procedure 398: Transgender Students and Staff (2020).
⁹ Renfrew County District School Board, Gender Identity and Gender Expression Guideline (September 2022).
¹⁰ Ontario College of Teachers, “College Advances Diversity with New Policy,” OCT announcement (2018).
¹¹ Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, Policy Statements and Media Releases (2019–2023).
¹² Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum (1888), §§17–20.
¹³ Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri (1929), §§35–45.
¹⁴ United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Article 26(3).
¹⁵ United Nations, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), Article 13(3).
¹⁶ St Augustine, Letter 211, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 1.

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Angela Rayner’s Hypocrisy and the Shadow of Succession

The Image of Authenticity
Angela Rayner has carefully built an image as the authentic voice of Labour, the working-class woman who rose from care home cleaner to deputy leader of the party. Her appeal is rooted in plain-speaking defiance and a life story contrasting with the technocratic polish of her leader. Yet behind the performance lies a pattern of contradiction. Allegations of hypocrisy, together with the controversies of her housing role, now cast a long shadow over her credibility. The possibility of her replacing Sir Keir Starmer raises even deeper concerns.

The Second Homes Controversy
At the centre of the storm is Rayner’s property empire. She owns a constituency home in Ashton-under-Lyne, a seaside flat in Hove worth between £700,000 and £800,000, and a taxpayer-funded ministerial flat in Admiralty House, Whitehall. That London residence is classed as her “second home,” with its £2,034 annual council tax bill covered by the public¹. At the same time, her department has introduced measures allowing councils to impose a 100% premium on second homes, a policy aimed at curbing speculative ownership².

Her critics allege that this amounts to “staggering hypocrisy,” punishing others for practices she herself benefits from. More damaging still are reports that she declared the Hove flat as her “primary residence” in order to avoid approximately £40,000 in stamp duty surcharges³. Her allies insist she has complied with all legal obligations, including paying what was due⁴. But the law’s letter cannot erase the impression of double standards.

Housing Ambitions and Policy Strain
Rayner’s wider housing agenda as Secretary of State is no less controversial. She has committed to delivering 370,000 new homes annually, aiming for 1.5 million in Labour’s first five years in power. To achieve this, the government has promised sweeping planning reforms, shifting responsibility onto councils and fast-tracking local plans⁵. Yet analysts caution that such numbers cannot be achieved without major infrastructure investment. Water systems, sewers, and transport are already under strain; to build without planning for these is to invite future collapse⁶.

Centralisation compounds the concern. In Swale, Kent, Labour overruled local opposition to impose a vast garden village, sparking fears of government diktat riding roughshod over local democracy⁷. What is presented as ambition increasingly looks like imposition, widening the gap between Westminster and the communities it claims to serve.

Grassroots Appeal and Popularity
Among Labour’s grassroots, however, Rayner’s appeal remains strong. Polling earlier this year placed her alongside Ed Miliband as one of the most popular ministers in the Cabinet⁸. To younger and more progressive members, she embodies authenticity, defiance, and the promise of renewal. Even opponents admit that her housing rhetoric resonates powerfully with younger voters excluded from the market. Conservative commentators have admitted that her policies “terrify the Tories” for their potential to reset the housing debate⁹.

Yet popularity cannot dispel suspicion. Grassroots enthusiasm for her persona jars with the contradictions revealed in her own financial arrangements. A reformer who plays by the rules of privilege risks undermining her own crusade before it begins.

The Prospect of Succession
The question of succession casts a longer shadow still. Though Rayner declared in May 2025 that she would “never” seek to replace Keir Starmer¹⁰, speculation refuses to die. Her odds with bookmakers have narrowed to 4/1, making her the most likely successor in the eyes of political gamblers¹¹. Informal focus groups and strategic leaks suggest her allies are quietly testing the waters.

The danger is clear: Labour could find itself led by a woman admired for her blunt authenticity yet compromised by unresolved questions of trust. What terrifies the Conservatives may yet unsettle the country.

Conclusion
Angela Rayner embodies the central sickness of modern politics: a hunger for power masked by appeals to authenticity. Her policies are ambitious but built on sand; her rhetoric champions fairness while her private affairs betray advantage. If she inherits the Labour leadership, Britain would face not renewal but a new kind of cynicism, where hypocrisy is not exposed but enthroned. The danger is not simply that she may succeed Starmer. It is that, in doing so, she could normalise the very contradictions that have hollowed out political life itself. 🔝

1. The Times, “Rayner’s staggering hypocrisy as public pay council tax on her flat,” 24 August 2025.
2. The Times, “Angela Rayner buys third home for north of £700,000,” 22 August 2025.
3. The Times, “Angela Rayner avoided £40,000 stamp duty on new seaside flat,” 23 August 2025.
4. The Times, “Angela Rayner’s allies defend ‘hypocritical’ purchase of second home,” 24 August 2025.
5. Financial Times, “Measures to boost housebuilding in England risk being thwarted,” 21 August 2024.
6. The Guardian, “Cracks in Angela Rayner’s plan for a housing revolution,” 6 August 2024.
7. The Guardian, “In Kent, Labour has a fight on its hands – and a make-or-break test for its housing revolution,” 19 November 2024.
8. The Times, “Labour Cabinet poll approval ratings,” March 2025.
9. The Telegraph, “Angela Rayner’s housing reforms terrify the Tories,” 8 June 2024.
10. The Guardian, “Angela Rayner says she would never run to replace Keir Starmer,” 25 May 2025.
11. OLBG, “Next Labour leader odds: Angela Rayner new favourite to replace Starmer,” 28 August 2025.

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Reclaiming the Ordinary: England’s Flags and the Meaning of Public Symbols

The Controversy
Across England in the summer of 2025, national flags appeared in striking new prominence. The Cross of St George and the Union Flag were suddenly visible on lampposts, bridges, mini-roundabouts, and shopfronts. This surge was coordinated under the name Operation Raise the Colours, a grassroots campaign urging citizens to reclaim the ordinary presence of national flags in everyday life. Supporters stress that their aim is simple: to make national symbols as normal on the high street as they are at sporting events or civic commemorations.¹

Yet the display of flags has provoked a sharp backlash. Some councils have removed them from lampposts and street furniture, citing highway regulations and safety standards.² Certain media outlets and activist organisations have gone further, suggesting that the campaign is motivated by xenophobia or linked to extremist politics.³ This conflation is gravely unjust. To tar ordinary men and women with accusations of racism because they love their country’s flag is both defamatory and corrosive of civic trust.

The Legal Background
The law on flag-flying in England is clear. Under the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007, many national flags may be flown without planning permission, provided that conditions on size, placement, and number are met.⁴ Guidance issued by the Department for Levelling Up confirms that the Union Flag, St George’s Cross, the flags of Scotland and Wales, and certain others may be displayed freely on private property.⁵

Public lampposts, however, fall under the Highways Act 1980. Section 132 prohibits the unauthorised attachment of items to highway structures.⁶ Councils may therefore remove flags affixed to lampposts without consent. In practice, many authorities operate permit schemes for banners on pre-designated “banner columns” that have been structurally tested to bear wind-load stress.⁷ Temporary permissions are often granted for civic festivals, remembrance commemorations, or coronations.⁸ This explains why some installations have been removed: not because the flags were English, but because they were placed on street furniture without lawful approval.

The Motives of Raise the Colours
Supporters of Operation Raise the Colours emphasise that their purpose is neither political nor partisan. Their stated mission is to normalise patriotic display, to dispel the stigma that has grown around the Cross of St George, and to demonstrate unity rather than division.⁹ The campaign grew visibly after the widespread flag-waving during the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025, when English victory saw towns and cities festooned in red and white.¹⁰

Government ministers have echoed this reading. Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch publicly condemned councils that ordered removals of St George’s flags as “shameful,” affirming that national flags should be “flown proudly.”¹¹ Likewise, Robert Jenrick has insisted that there must not be double standards whereby English flags are torn down while political or international flags are permitted to fly without hindrance.¹²

Accusations and Exploitation
Despite these plainly expressed motives, certain campaigners and media voices have sought to link the flag-flying to the far right. Organisations such as Hope Not Hate and Stand Up to Racism allege that the campaign coincides with anti-immigration protests and risks intimidating minority communities.¹³ Reuters reported that in some areas, such as Tower Hamlets, members of immigrant communities expressed discomfort at the sudden proliferation of flags.¹⁴

It is true that notorious figures—among them Tommy Robinson and Britain First—have attempted to associate themselves with the campaign.¹⁵ But opportunistic endorsement by extremists does not establish that the movement itself is extremist. To suggest otherwise is to commit the fallacy of guilt by association. Such reasoning collapses legitimate expressions of civic pride into a caricature of nationalism, alienating thousands of ordinary citizens whose motives are innocent and inclusive.

Councils and Civic Equality
The real issue is one of equal treatment under neutral rules. Councils are entitled to enforce highway safety and planning law, but they must do so consistently. Citizens will naturally resent seeing national flags removed from lampposts while other symbols—whether for commercial promotions or political causes—are tolerated. The remedy is not selective suppression but transparent processes: clear permits for temporary civic displays, and equal application of rules regardless of the message or cause.

Conclusion: Patriotism without Apology
National flags belong to the whole people. They are not the property of any faction, still less of extremist groups. To love one’s country and to fly its symbols is natural, honourable, and unifying. Attempts to stigmatise patriotism as “racism” are profoundly damaging to civic life and sow needless division. Where rules of highway law are breached, flags may be removed or applications regularised. But to criminalise the affection of ordinary men and women for their nation’s banner is intolerable.

Operation Raise the Colours reminds us that symbols matter. They can be twisted by those who hate, but they can also bind together those who love. To deny a people their own flag is to deny them their own identity. The just and British answer is fair enforcement, open channels for permission, and above all, charity toward one’s neighbour. 🔝

¹ Reuters, “England flags spark pride and concern amid anti-immigration protests,” 27 Aug 2025.
² The Independent, “Councils remove unauthorised England flags from lampposts and street furniture,” 27 Aug 2025.
³ The Guardian, “Britain’s far right emboldened by migration and nationalism,” 24 Aug 2025.
⁴ Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007, SI 2007/783.
⁵ Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, Flying Flags: A Plain English Guide, updated 20 Jul 2021.
⁶ Highways Act 1980, s.132.
⁷ Hampshire County Council, Banner Consent Guidance, 2023.
⁸ Lancashire County Council, Street Lighting Column Attachments Policy, 2024.
⁹ Operation Raise the Colours statement of aims, cited in Wikipedia summary (accessed Aug 2025).
¹⁰ Reuters, op. cit.
¹¹ The Sun, “Kemi Badenoch blasts ‘shameful’ councils for ripping down St George’s flags,” 28 Aug 2025.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ The Guardian, op. cit.
¹⁴ Reuters, op. cit.
¹⁵ Wikipedia, Operation Raise the Colours, citing press reports Aug 2025.

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The Journalist as Target: Propaganda, Combatancy, and the Collapse of Distinction

The killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike has reignited one of the most fraught questions in modern conflict: under what conditions, if any, does a journalist transform into a legitimate military target?

Civilian Immunity and the Christian Tradition
The protection of civilians in war is not merely a modern innovation of the Geneva Conventions, but flows from the Christian just war tradition. St Augustine taught that war, though sometimes necessary, must always be ordered to peace and restrained by justice, forbidding cruelty against the innocent¹. St Thomas Aquinas likewise grounded the legitimacy of warfare in the principle of discrimination, insisting that acts of war must be directed only against combatants and not against those who take no part in the fight².

This principle was consistently upheld by the pre-conciliar papacy. Leo XIII, in Sapientiae Christianae (1890), insisted that the rights of nations are bounded by the moral law and that rulers are forbidden from transgressing natural justice, even under pretext of political necessity³. Benedict XV, writing amidst the horrors of the First World War, condemned modern warfare for “forgetting all the laws of humanity” and lamented the “massacre of countless innocent persons” as contrary to both divine and natural law⁴.

In continuity with this line, Pius XII declared in his 1944 Christmas Radio Message, delivered as the Second World War still raged, that “The right of nations to exist is not based on arms but on the moral law. Nothing can justify war directed against innocent populations or methods of destruction that make no distinction between the guilty and the innocent”⁵. These words reaffirm that even in the extremity of global war, the innocent retain immunity. Civilisation depends on such a principle, without which war descends into unrestrained barbarism.

The Empirical Case: Al-Sharif and the Al-Qassam Brigades
According to the Israel Defense Forces, al-Sharif was not simply a journalist but a commander within Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, paid by Hamas and involved in rocket operations against Israel⁶. Under the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), membership in an organised armed group engaged in hostilities constitutes a “continuous combat function,” and such individuals are lawful targets irrespective of their civilian cover⁷. In this narrow sense, his journalistic role was incidental; if proven, his militant status alone sufficed to remove his protection.

The Contested Case: Al Jazeera as an Instrument of War
More controversial is the broader argument, advanced by commentators such as Andrew Fox, that Al Jazeera itself is no longer a neutral outlet but an operational instrument of Qatar and Hamas, thus meeting the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) criteria for “direct participation in hostilities.” The ICRC stipulates that three conditions must be met⁸:

1. Threshold of harm — the act must negatively affect military operations.
2. Direct causation — there must be a proximate causal link between the act and the harm.
3. Belligerent nexus — the act must be designed to aid one belligerent and harm another.

Al Jazeera’s coverage has undeniably amplified Hamas narratives and generated political pressure on Israel, but whether this constitutes “direct causation” in the legal sense remains contested. Propaganda, however influential, does not usually meet the immediacy required under LOAC.

Historical Precedent: NATO’s Strike on RTS
The 1999 NATO bombing of Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) illustrates the dangers of stretching these categories. NATO claimed RTS was part of Serbia’s military command and propaganda apparatus, and thus a valid target. Yet the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia later cautioned that if the strike were justified solely on propaganda grounds, its legality would be widely questioned⁹.

Rights groups such as Amnesty International condemned the attack as unlawful¹⁰. But it must be remembered that Amnesty is not an impartial authority in such matters. Its record is deeply compromised by ideological commitments: it has openly campaigned for abortion rights worldwide, endorsed radical sexual agendas contrary to Christian moral teaching, and consistently adopted an adversarial stance toward Israel. These biases mean its denunciations, while influential in the press, cannot be taken as neutral judgments of law. Rather, they represent the political preferences of an organisation long aligned with the progressive zeitgeist, not the perennial norms of justice.

Biased Reporting: From WWII to Today
It is also important to observe that systematic bias in reporting is itself a modern phenomenon.

• During World War II, war correspondents such as Richard Dimbleby of the BBC, Ernie Pyle for American papers, and Reuters field reporters were often patriotic and partial, but their work was tied to verifiable observation. Their task was to report the war, not to manufacture narratives. They were sometimes censored, but they still sought to convey reality to domestic audiences, reinforcing morale while documenting events.
• Today’s journalism, by contrast, is structurally ideological. Entire outlets are ordered not toward truth but toward shaping social and political outcomes.

Examples abound:

• The Guardian has shifted from left-liberal journalism into advocacy for progressive causes such as climate activism, gender ideology, and pro-Palestinian narratives, often criticised for selective framing¹¹.
• The Observer, under the Guardian Media Group, has faced scrutiny for editorial decisions aligned more with activist priorities than neutral reporting¹¹.
• The Independent, while claiming impartiality, has been widely noted for its consistently liberal editorial line, especially on immigration and cultural issues.
• The BBC, still the UK’s most influential outlet, is repeatedly accused of systemic liberal bias despite its charter commitment to impartiality. The recent cancellation of Gaza: Doctors Under Attack—denounced by more than 100 former staff as cowardice—showed how even flagship institutions capitulate to political pressure¹².

This structural bias is particularly acute in state-aligned or ideologically driven outlets, which function not as reporters of truth but as amplifiers of policy or activism. Al Jazeera, as the media arm of Qatar, is the most extreme case of this phenomenon: not simply biased in the incidental way of individual journalists, but institutionally ordered to serve as an instrument of geopolitical influence.

The modern degradation of journalism reflects the wider collapse of truth in modernity: when truth is reduced to perspective, reporting becomes propaganda. But this decline, grave though it is, does not of itself erase the distinction between civilian and combatant.

International Reaction: Journalism Under Fire
The killing of al-Sharif, together with other Palestinian journalists, has provoked global outrage. Funerals in Gaza were marked by international condemnation, with critics warning of a “dangerous precedent” in treating reporters as combatants¹³. Media commentary has described these deaths as part of a “chilling assault” on the press, raising fears that protection for journalists is eroding in modern warfare¹⁴.

The Philosophical Dilemma
The dilemma is therefore stark. On the one hand, if a journalist is a militant in disguise, he may rightly be treated as a combatant. On the other, to redefine journalism itself as “hostility” is to collapse the very principle of civilian immunity, inviting every regime to kill reporters whose coverage it dislikes.

Catholic just war teaching insists that the pen and the sword are not the same. To conflate propaganda with weaponry risks not only the erosion of international law but also the rejection of natural law itself. As Augustine warned, unjust violence corrupts the victor more deeply than the vanquished¹. The collapse of truth in modernity—seen in both the relativism of journalism and the totalising logic of modern war—reveals how modernism dissolves the very categories that protect civilisation. Once truth is reduced to perspective, both journalism and warfare lose their moral boundaries. 🔝

1. St Augustine, Contra Faustum, XXII, 74.
2. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q.40, a.1.
3. Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae (1890), §§10–11.
4. Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum (1914).
5. Pius XII, Christmas Radio Message, 24 December 1944.
6. Times of Israel, “Amid global outcry, IDF says Al Jazeera reporter it killed was receiving Hamas salary” (Aug 2025).
7. International Committee of the Red Cross, Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities (May 2009).
8. Ibid., criteria for direct participation.
9. ICTY Committee, Review of the NATO Bombing Campaign (2000); see also Le Monde diplomatique, “Kosovo: NATO’s ‘humanitarian war’” (July 2000).
10. Amnesty International, RTS condemnation (1999).
11. The Guardian, “What does impartiality mean? BBC no-bias policy being pushed to limits” (Nov 2021).
12. The Guardian, “BBC Gaza film axed: more than 100 ex-staff condemn decision” (Jul 2025).
13. The Guardian, “Global outrage mounts as funeral held for five journalists killed by Israel” (Aug 2025).
14. The Week, “Journalists killed in Gaza: a chilling assault” (Aug 2025).

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Affirmation Without Treatment: A Danger to the Most Vulnerable

The bloodshed in Minneapolis has once again forced society to confront an uncomfortable truth: the most vulnerable—children at school, worshippers at Mass—are increasingly endangered not only by weapons but by a deeper refusal to address the roots of violence. When dangerous individuals are not guided toward authentic treatment but are instead affirmed in their confusion, the risk spills out into classrooms, sanctuaries, and communities.

The Culture of Affirmation
In recent years, mainstream policy has shifted decisively toward “affirmation” as the default response to mental distress. Identity struggles, sexual confusion, and emotional instability are met not with probing questions or therapeutic care, but with immediate validation. Legislatures and professional bodies enshrine affirmation as the gold standard, forbidding scrutiny of underlying causes. In practice, this often means that someone manifesting instability is told, in effect: you are right, you are whole, you are beyond question. Yet such hollow reassurance does nothing to heal the fractures of the human psyche.

The Neglected Wounds
Human beings are not healed by slogans. The restless soul requires truth, discipline, and—where illness or trauma is present—serious treatment. The pathologies that erupt in violence are rarely sudden; they are cultivated by long neglect, untreated wounds, and a refusal to face uncomfortable realities. St Augustine observed, “Charity is no substitute for truth, for if we love without truth, we love not God but a dream of Him.”¹ To affirm disorder without addressing it is not to love—it is to collude in falsehood.

Safety and the Common Good
The Catholic tradition insists that the common good requires both justice and charity. Justice demands that communities protect their weakest members; charity requires that we love the sinner enough to call them to truth. Pius XII warned against the counterfeit mercy that excuses sin rather than heals it: “The greatest sin of our age is that men have begun to lose all sense of sin.”² To affirm confusion without correction is to deepen the disorder, leaving the afflicted in their bondage and the innocent exposed to their turmoil.

From Denial to Renewal
The current crisis demands a recovery of realism. Mental illness must be treated, not masked by political slogans. Identity confusion must be met with pastoral clarity, not indulgence. Violence must be pre-empted by recognising red flags and refusing to excuse destructive behaviour under the guise of compassion. St Gregory the Great taught pastors that they must heal wounds by confronting them: “He who does not correct the sinner when he can, makes himself guilty of the other’s fault.”³

True compassion dares to heal; false compassion merely affirms until the wound festers. The tragedy in Minneapolis is not only a failure of security or policy, but a failure of moral vision. When affirmation is exalted above treatment, when denial replaces truth, society leaves its children defenceless. The sanctuary, once a place of peace, becomes a battlefield. To protect the vulnerable, we must resist the counterfeit mercy of affirmation and recover the hard but saving work of truth, healing, and responsibility.

The Martyrdom of Innocence at the Altar
For Catholics, the horror of Minneapolis carries a deeper, theological meaning. These children were struck down within the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, at the altar of Christ. Their deaths recall the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, whose blood testified silently to the hatred of Herod, and whom the Church venerates as martyrs by association with the Christ they never knew in life. In like manner, the two slain children of Annunciation died within the liturgy, as innocent lambs in the presence of the Lamb of God.

The Fathers of the Church remind us that martyrdom is not only the testimony of heroic saints, but sometimes of the smallest and weakest. St Cyprian wrote, “It is not the years that crown us, but the faith; it is not length of time, but strength of soul that wins the victory for Christ.”⁴ Their loss therefore becomes a seed of witness, calling the faithful to renewal, reminding us that innocence itself bears testimony when the world turns violent against the light.

The sanctuary defiled by gunfire becomes paradoxically sanctified by their blood. It calls us not to despair, but to purification: to defend the young, to uphold truth in love, and to confess with our lives that Christ is the true physician of souls. 🔝

1. St Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 7.8.
2. Pius XII, Radio Message to the United States National Catechetical Congress, Boston, 26 Oct. 1946.
3. St Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, Book II, ch. 4.
4. St Cyprian of Carthage, On the Lapsed, ch. 11.

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“It Is Not Lawful”: John the Baptist, Francis, and the Blessing of Adultery

When The Telegraph reported that Pope Francis had blessed the twentieth wedding anniversary of Charles and Camilla, the world greeted it as a charming gesture of goodwill. But for Catholics who still believe in the indissolubility of marriage, it was a moment of scandal. A pope may extend courtesies to rulers; he may wish them health and assure them of his prayers. But a blessing is no mere formality. It is a sacred invocation of divine favour. By bestowing it on the anniversary of an adulterous union, Francis crossed the line from diplomacy into betrayal. Courtesy belongs to protocol; blessing belongs to truth. By confusing the two, he sanctified sin, mocked the Gospel, and shamed the papal office.

The timing sharpened the outrage. As the Church recalled the Decollation of St John the Baptist, news broke of Francis’s gesture. John was beheaded because he dared to confront a king: “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife” (Mark 6:18). He died rather than compromise on the sanctity of marriage. Francis did the opposite. Where the prophet sealed truth with his blood, the pope squandered truth with flattery.

The contrast with Westminster Abbey is no less telling. Built by St Edward the Confessor, a king whose chastity and holiness sanctified his throne, it was last year the scene of a coronation that crowned adultery. The Communion rite was retained for show, but the King abstained from the Eucharist and Archbishop Welby cut the penitential rite to suit television schedules. What remained was theatre, not worship. Now Rome has matched London: a coronation without sacrament, a papal blessing without truth.

History makes the scandal clearer still. When Henry IV defied the Church, Gregory VII made him kneel barefoot in the snow at Canossa. When Philip Augustus cast off his wife, Innocent III placed France under interdict until he restored her. These were popes who rebuked kings in sin. They placed fidelity to Christ above fear of earthly thrones. Francis has reversed the order, flattering the powerful and betraying the faith.

This is modernism unveiled: the bending of truth to circumstance, the trading of morality for optics, the enthronement of sentiment over law. The zeitgeist demands sympathy over principle, relativism over reality, emotion over rationality — and Francis has obliged. But no gloss of diplomacy can disguise the reality: adultery was blessed, Christ was mocked, and the papal office was shamed.

One cannot bless adultery without blasphemy. One cannot confuse courtesy with doctrine without corruption. What John the Baptist died to oppose, Francis has dared to sanctify. His act was not charity, not prudence, not diplomacy. It was unconscionable. 🔝

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Safeguarding as a Byword for Betrayal

The latest safeguarding scandal in the Church of England is not an isolated mishap but part of a decades-long collapse. The conviction of Chris Brain, whose cult-like Nine O’Clock Service was tolerated and even fast-tracked by the hierarchy; the exposure of John Smyth’s serial abuses in the Makin Review; the resignation of Archbishop Justin Welby under the weight of his failures; and now the grotesque breach of nearly two hundred survivors’ personal details in a so-called “redress scheme”—these are not accidents. They are the visible fruits of an institution hollowed out by compromise.

Forgotten Duties of the Pastor
St Gregory the Great, in his Regula Pastoralis, wrote that the shepherd must “stand on the height of contemplation, but also walk in the valley of work,” lest he abandon the flock to the wolf. The C of E’s leaders have instead preferred the valley of reputation, where committees and procedures are worshipped but souls are neglected. The result has been predictable: victims silenced, survivors ignored, predators shielded, and scandals multiplied.

The Idolatry of Careerism
This is not uniquely Anglican. The Catholic Church, especially in the post-conciliar era, has staggered under the same weight of scandals. Bishops shuffled abusers, bureaucrats minimised complaints, and Rome issued apologies while protecting reputations. Pope St Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), warned of precisely this corruption: that modernist shepherds, no longer believing in sin or objective truth, would reduce faith to “sentiment” and thereby lose the very capacity to defend their flock. What was once prophetic now reads like a diagnosis.

The refusal of the Church of England’s General Synod to establish fully independent safeguarding, clinging instead to episcopal control even after so many betrayals, reveals the same disease. Bishops speak of healing but act to preserve their own authority. As one critic has put it, careerism has triumphed over conscience.

The Deeper Theological Collapse
The crisis cannot be solved by structures alone. It is theological. A Church that no longer trembles before divine judgment will never take earthly justice seriously. A Church that reduces doctrine to negotiation and worship to entertainment will inevitably treat victims as expendable. The safeguard of souls depends not on corporate training manuals but on fidelity to Christ the King.

Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), taught that only under the Kingship of Christ can societies be rightly ordered. That includes the Church herself. When bishops substitute public relations for truth, or legal indemnities for repentance, they reveal that they serve another master. Survivors, forced to relive their wounds in the latest data breach, know this better than anyone.

Conclusion: Betrayal and the Path Back
Both Canterbury and modern Rome stand condemned by their failures. Their apologies ring hollow while victims weep. Their procedures mean little while predators flourish. The lesson is simple: “safeguarding” without sanctity is betrayal. Only conversion—pastors who once more believe in sin, in judgment, in the Cross—can restore the credibility of shepherds. Until then, the wolves will continue to feed. 🔝

• St Gregory the Great, Regula Pastoralis, I.2.
• Pope St Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907).
• Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas (1925).
• Makin Review, Independent Review into the Abuse of John Smyth QC (Nov 2024).
• Reuters, Personal details of Church of England abuse victims leaked (27 Aug 2025).

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The Ban on Cousin Marriage: A Forgotten Civilizational Turning Point

In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory I issued a directive against marriages within the second degree of kinship—extending to first cousins—when advising Augustine of Canterbury. This marked one of the Church’s earliest formal interventions in Anglo-Saxon England¹. Over the following centuries, the ban was extended to six degrees of kinship. What began as a moral regulation became one of the most decisive interventions in European social history.

By compelling families to seek spouses beyond their clans, the Church undermined tribal structures, eroded patriarchal dominance, and promoted wider solidarities. Over time, this shift fostered individualism, trust between strangers, and the institutional foundations of the nation-state. Scholars such as Jack Goody and Joseph Henrich have argued that Europe’s break with tribalism was central to its later prosperity²³.

The Church did not impose these measures without resistance. Early medieval rulers and clans often resented prohibitions on close-kin marriage, viewing them as intrusive and destabilising to traditional loyalties. Yet it was precisely by confronting entrenched custom that the Church succeeded in transforming society. Though the ban was later relaxed—famously when Henry VII secured dispensation to marry his cousin Elizabeth of York—the transformation was already irreversible. Tribalism had been displaced by broader social bonds, and the nation-state began to eclipse clan loyalties.

Resurgence in the UK
In the modern era, first-cousin marriage has resurfaced within certain immigrant communities, particularly among British Pakistanis of Kashmiri origin. Studies have found that in parts of Bradford and Rochdale, more than half of Pakistani heritage couples were once married to cousins⁴. Medical evidence shows children born of such unions face double the baseline risk of congenital anomalies (from ~3% to ~6%)⁵. Research from the Born in Bradford project linked 20–40% of child deaths in some communities to genetic disorders caused by consanguinity⁶.

Beyond medical consequences, the practice reinforces clan structures and patriarchal control, sustaining social enclaves resistant to wider integration. As commentator Matthew Syed has argued, cousin marriage acts as a “mechanism of social sequestration”, cutting off younger generations from wider British society: “Cousin marriage has been a disaster for these communities—for the patriarchs that control them, and for the oppression of women”¹⁰.

The Parliamentary Debate
In January 2025, Conservative MP Richard Holden introduced a private member’s bill to ban marriage between cousins, arguing that it could reduce forced marriages and protect vulnerable women. Holden told The Times: “There are so many women who are forced into marriage in this country, and I think this bill would stop that from happening in a lot of cases… I think it is a vital safeguard”⁷.

Supporters welcomed the move, arguing that only a clear legal stance could dismantle entrenched clan structures. Yet opposition has been vocal. Professor Neil Small, an expert in community health, told The Guardian that the proposed law was both “damaging” and “unenforceable.” He argued: “Rates of cousin marriage are falling sharply already. If the aim is to empower women, then restricting marriage choices through criminalisation risks doing the opposite”⁸.

Evidence supports his point. The Born in Bradford study shows the practice in decline: among Pakistani-heritage mothers, first-cousin marriages fell from 62% (2007–10) to 28% among those under 25 in 2020⁷. Critics argue that education, genetic counselling, and community-led reform are more effective and less alienating than prohibition.

Yet Syed points out that such objections closely mirror the resistance faced by the medieval Church. Then as now, defenders of cousin marriage appealed to tradition, culture, and family rights. But as Syed explained in a recent interview: “Augustine of Canterbury came in the 6th century and the Church banned cousin marriage. That was a fundamental moment in human history. We dissolved the tribes and created a national identity… We were the first modern nation. Nepotism and corruption went into decline, and rule of law emerged”¹⁰.

The Historical Parallel
The reluctance of legislators to intervene today echoes the resistance of tribal chiefs in the early Middle Ages. Yet it was precisely the Church’s resolve that broke the cycle of insularity. Without it, Western Europe might never have developed the institutional trust, contractual freedom, and individual responsibility that underpin its civilisation.

Syed underscores the urgency of the parallel: “The greatest discrimination happening in Western civilisation today is discrimination against the future”¹⁰. By refusing to confront practices that entrench insularity, oppress women, and foster genetic disorders, Britain risks sacrificing long-term social cohesion for short-term cultural relativism.

Conclusion
The medieval ban on cousin marriage liberated Europe from tribal constraints and prepared the ground for national identity, rule of law, and innovation. Today, the persistence of the practice in pockets of Britain has reignited debate about health, integration, and cultural relativism. While some argue that cultural change is already underway, others contend that a clear legal prohibition—like the Church’s ancient ban—is the only way to secure integration and protect the vulnerable.

What is clear is that the question of cousin marriage is not merely a medical or cultural curiosity. It touches directly on the kind of society Britain wishes to be: tribal or national, relativist or principled, captive to enclaves or integrated in a common life. 🔝

1. Libellus responsionum (Gregory I to Augustine of Canterbury), discussed in American Reformer.
2. Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
3. Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).
4. Alison Shaw, Kinship and Continuity: Pakistani Families in Britain (Routledge, 2000).
5. BBC News, “Bradford’s Pakistani families face genetic risk,” 16 June 2011.
6. Born in Bradford Evidence Briefing: “Genes and Health” (2023).
7. The Times, “Ban on cousin weddings could end forced marriage in UK, says academic” (17 Jan 2025).
8. The Guardian, “Tory MP’s bill to ban marriage between cousins is ‘damaging’ and ‘unenforceable’” (17 Jan 2025).
9. Born in Bradford data as cited ibid.
10. Matthew Syed, interview on Trigonometry (August 2025).

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The Corruption of History by Modernist Relativism and Critical Ideology

The BBC’s recent drama King and Conqueror, together with its commentary in History Extra, illustrates how modernist relativism corrupts our understanding of the past. The Norman Conquest, remembered by medieval chroniclers as an act of providence, oath, and papal sanction, is reduced to melodrama and politics. Sacred kingship becomes weakness, sanctity becomes myth, and papal banners become propaganda. Even Saint Edward the Confessor is stripped of holiness and remade as neurotic.

This is the method of modernism. As St Pius X warned, modernist historians “write history only to justify their own prejudices,” dissolving truth into subjective experience¹.

From the Conquest to the Crusades
The distortion evident in King and Conqueror is not unique. The Crusades, undertaken as penitential pilgrimages under papal command, are now habitually recast as colonial wars driven by greed and xenophobia. Steven Runciman’s mid-twentieth-century history set the tone, and The Guardian has since echoed this view, warning against “conservatives rewriting the history of the Crusades for modern political ends”². Israeli historian Joshua Prawer went further, comparing the Crusader States to apartheid systems³. Such categories were foreign to the age itself, which saw liberation of the holy places as a spiritual duty.

Colonisation and Evangelisation
A similar reframing is applied to the Spanish missions in the Americas. Saints such as Toribio de Mogrovejo and Rose of Lima are largely forgotten, while evangelisation is retold as cultural erasure. Even medieval Europe is treated as a colony unto itself: the Reconquista is labelled “Islamophobia,” the Norman Conquest “ethnic displacement,” and Charlemagne’s Christendom “cultural imperialism.” These interpretations erase the categories of Christendom: oath, sacrament, and providence.

Feminism and Historical Femininity
The History Extra commentary highlights Emma of Normandy, Edith of Wessex, and Matilda of Flanders as “political actors in their own right.” While true, the framing is thoroughly modern. They are praised only insofar as they resemble today’s feminist ideal of wielding masculine power. Their actual roles — queenship, motherhood, intercession, and sanctity — are minimised. Contemporary scholarship reinforces this distortion: the British Library’s Medieval Women exhibition presented fifteenth-century women “leading armies and performing surgery,” celebrated because it mirrors modern feminist ideals⁴. But the Marian model of authority — exemplified by St Margaret of Scotland or Blanche of Castile — is ignored.

Critical Race and Identity Theories
Critical race theory extends this flattening further. Christendom, which transcended ethnicity in baptism, is reinterpreted as exclusionary. The Bayeux Tapestry is described not as a sacred record of divine judgement but merely as “propaganda for a conquering elite”⁵. Populist appropriations in the modern West show the same corruption from another direction: Pete Hegseth’s American Crusade, for example, exploits Crusader imagery for nationalist ends, which The Guardian rightly condemned as anti-Muslim distortion⁶. In both cases, history is bent to ideology.

The Reduction of Holiness
Most striking is the modern refusal to acknowledge sanctity as a real category in history. St Louis IX of France, canonised for piety and justice, becomes in modern writing a “fundamentalist.” St Junípero Serra, who defended indigenous converts, is condemned as an oppressor. Edward the Confessor, revered for chastity and holiness, is presented in the BBC drama as weak and feeble. Holiness itself is explained away as myth or propaganda.

The Catholic Understanding of History
Against such distortions, the Catholic tradition insists that history is not a meaningless flux of power but the theatre of divine providence. Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri declared that to remove God from education is to mutilate truth⁷. Medieval chroniclers bore the same conviction: Orderic Vitalis saw the Conquest as God’s judgement on perjury and ambition⁸, while William of Poitiers recorded papal sanction as decisive for William’s cause⁹.

Conclusion
From the Norman Conquest to the Crusades, from queenship to sainthood, the pattern is the same. Modernist relativism and critical justice theories deny sanctity, providence, and divine authority. They impose alien categories of race, gender, and power. The task of Christians is to resist these distortions, to recall that history bears witness not to ideology but to Christ the King, in whom all times and ages find their fulfilment. 🔝

1. Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis, 1907.
2. Jonathan Phillips, “The Conservatives’ rewriting of the history of the Crusades for modern political ends,” The Guardian, 7 February 2015.
3. Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages, 1972.
4. Alison Flood, “British Library exhibition shows 15th-century women led armies and performed surgery,” The Guardian, 24 October 2024.
5. “Emma of Normandy,” History Extra, 24 August 2025; cf. Independent, features on Bayeux Tapestry loan (2026).
6. Martin Pengelly, “Pete Hegseth’s book exploits Crusader imagery for anti-Muslim ends,” The Guardian, 28 November 2024.
7. Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, 1929.
8. Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, Book IV, c. 1125.
9. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, c. 1070.

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Ecumenism without Conversion: Leo XIV and the Illusion of Unity

Pope Leo XIV, addressing participants of 2025’s Ecumenical Week, drew striking parallels between the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325) and the 1925 Lutheran-led Ecumenical Conference in Stockholm. In his address, the pope referred to Catholics and Protestants as “fellow disciples of Christ,” declaring that “what unites us is far greater than what divides us.”

“Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has wholeheartedly embraced the ecumenical path,” Leo affirmed, casting his message as a continuation of the post-conciliar programme of dialogue and rapprochement. He extolled Archbishop Nathan Söderblom, the Lutheran primate of Uppsala and pioneer of the early ecumenical movement, who urged Christians to unite not in doctrine but in “practical Christianity.”

Such rhetoric, however, marks a profound departure from the perennial Catholic position. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Mortalium Animos (1928), issued an unambiguous prohibition: “The Apostolic See cannot on any terms take part in their assemblies, nor is it anyway lawful for Catholics either to support or to work for such enterprises; for if they do so they will be giving countenance to a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ.”¹

Pius XI insisted that true unity could only be secured “by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.”² By contrast, Leo XIV echoed the theological turn inaugurated at Vatican II, where Unitatis Redintegratio (1964) redefined unity as a gradual convergence through dialogue, worship “where possible,” and “shared witness.”³

The pope hailed ecumenical milestones such as John Paul II’s visit to Uppsala and Francis’s participation in the 2016 Reformation commemoration in Lund. Francis went so far as to praise Martin Luther’s emphasis on Scripture and justification, even describing his theological revolt as a “medicine for the Church.”⁴ Leo now builds upon this trajectory, proposing that the “unity signalled by Nicaea” finds a modern analogue in Söderblom’s Stockholm Conference.

But the comparison falters on every essential point. Nicaea defined the Creed and anathematised Arius, drawing lines of orthodoxy that preserved the Catholic faith.⁵ Stockholm, by contrast, explicitly set aside doctrine in favour of vague “practical Christianity,” affirming division rather than resolving it. To invoke Nicaea in such a context risks trivialising the very substance of Catholic unity: one faith, one baptism, one Church.

Traditional voices have raised the alarm. “If the Eucharist, papal primacy, Marian dogmas, and moral law are mere ‘divisions,’ then unity is reduced to vague good feelings,” noted Catholic commentator Chris Jackson, warning that ecumenism has become “an end in itself, a theology of horizontal fraternity in which truth is relativised.”⁶

Leo has also signalled his willingness to “tone down” papal primacy in order to placate Orthodox and Protestant interlocutors, cautioning against “vying for greatness” among the Sees. This diminishment of Rome’s divine prerogatives runs counter to Vatican I’s dogmatic teaching on the papacy, which defined the primacy of Peter’s successor as de fide: “If anyone thus speaks, that the Roman Pontiff has merely an office of inspection or direction, but not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church… let him be anathema.”⁷

The deeper concern is not fraternity but faith. The early popes and councils laboured to preserve unity by safeguarding the deposit of truth, condemning error and recalling the wayward to the fold. Today’s ecumenism, severed from the necessity of conversion, risks exchanging truth for sentiment. As Pius XI warned nearly a century ago, such endeavours “foster a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ.”⁸

The Old Roman Position
For the Old Roman Apostolate, the issue is clear. Christian unity cannot be founded upon compromise, nor upon the erasure of Catholic dogma in favour of broad fraternity. The Faith handed down from the Apostles requires both integrity and clarity. To speak of Protestants and Orthodox as “sister churches” or “fellow disciples” without conversion is to obscure the very nature of the Church as una, sancta, catholica et apostolica.

We recognise, with sorrow, that the modern Vatican has traded the supernatural mission of the Church for ecumenical diplomacy. As with the Society of St. Pius X, our position is not one of schism but of fidelity: we resist these novelties in the name of the Faith that cannot change. True unity remains possible—but only by the return of separated brethren to the one true fold of Christ, not by constructing a new ecclesial edifice of pluralism.

The lesson of Nicaea was not accommodation but clarity: the Creed, the anathemas, and the Church’s unwavering defence of divine truth. If Stockholm symbolised a turning to human compromise, then the task of faithful Catholics today is to turn back to the faith of the Fathers. 🔝

¹ Pius XI, Mortalium Animos (6 January 1928), §8.
² Ibid., §10.
³ Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio (21 November 1964), §4.
⁴ Pope Francis, Address at Joint Lutheran–Catholic Commemoration of the Reformation, Lund (31 October 2016).
⁵ Council of Nicaea I, Symbolum Nicaenum (325).
⁶ Chris Jackson, “Pope Leo XIV and the Stockholm Ecumenical Week,” Substack Commentary (2025).
⁷ Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus (18 July 1870), Chapter 3, Canon 3.
⁸ Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, §8.

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The Restoration We Have Refused: Islamism, Multiculturalism, and the Necessity of Christian Civilization

The Islamist Strategy
For more than two decades Western governments have congratulated themselves on victories against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, while failing to confront the deeper ideological threat: da’wah Islamism. This is not jihad with bombs and knives, but a slower, more corrosive project—capturing schools, mosques, universities, charities, and political platforms to advance the same goal by peaceful means: the replacement of Western order with sharia.

Politicians call it “religious expression.” In reality, it is sedition. To treat political Islam as simply another faith tradition is to mistake an openly totalitarian project for legitimate piety.

Multiculturalism and the Guilt of Elites
The dogma of multiculturalism, embraced by figures such as Tony Blair, Angela Merkel, and more recently Emmanuel Macron, has been to sacrifice truth for the idol of “diversity.” Assimilation was denounced as oppressive; parallel societies were permitted to flourish. The price is now visible in “sharia-lite” enclaves from Paris to Birmingham, Malmö to Brussels.

Behind this failure lies a paralysing guilt. European elites, obsessed with the Holocaust and colonialism, have persuaded themselves that to criticise Islamism is to repeat the sins of their grandfathers. Angela Merkel once declared multiculturalism a failure, yet pursued immigration policies that guaranteed its continuation. In Britain, successive governments, Labour and Conservative alike, hid behind “community cohesion” while allowing Islamist networks to dominate civic life.

But guilt is not repentance. It is cowardice disguised as virtue. Augustine long ago observed that “two loves have built two cities—the love of self to the contempt of God, and the love of God to the contempt of self”¹. By exalting the love of self—our own image as tolerant liberators—Western elites have abandoned God and imperilled civilization.

The Inversion of Justice
The case of Shamima Begum revealed the moral collapse of our ruling class. Debate centred on whether she should keep her passport. Almost no one dared to ask: who radicalised her? Who were the imams, the teachers, the parents who encouraged her departure?

Justice has been inverted: children are blamed, adults excused. Catholic moral theology recognises that culpability increases with authority. Yet the radicalisers are untouched, while the deceived minors bear the brunt of public punishment.

Constitutions as Suicide Pacts
Europe’s liberal constitutions—so often invoked by judges, journalists, and bishops—have become weapons against their own societies. Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights is routinely used to protect Islamist schools that indoctrinate children against the very nations funding them. In the Netherlands, in Germany, and in Britain, state money supports madrassas that denounce secular law as illegitimate.

This is what Leo XIII foresaw in Immortale Dei: liberty divorced from truth degenerates into “a most fatal liberty, that is, of perdition”². When freedom is reduced to license, it serves only the enemies of order.

The Shrinking Options of Civilization
Europe faces two possible futures: sharia by the ballot box, or chaos in the streets. In France, the growing Muslim electorate already swings elections. In Britain, the Green Party and Labour field candidates who openly shout “Allahu Akbar” in their victory speeches. In Germany, radical mosques form community blocs that wield more influence than elected councils.

The alternative future is no better: violent clashes between jihadists, far-right militants, and anarchist mobs, while the state—paralysed by political correctness—abandons the centre ground. In such chaos, Islamist movements often prevail, as they have in the Middle East and Africa.

The Complicity of the Church
Even more damning is the complicity of ecclesiastical leaders. Pope Francis, by blessing the adulterous union of Charles and Camilla and by praising Islam as “a religion of peace,” has blurred doctrine into diplomacy. Cardinal José Cobo of Madrid writes letters of “inclusion” to LGBT activists while ignoring the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries. Cardinal Mario Grech openly suggests laypeople could replace priests. These are not shepherds but hirelings, silent while the flock is devoured.

The modern Church’s embrace of relativism has left youth defenceless. Chesterton was right: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried”³.

The Failure of Secularism
The New Atheists—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris—promised emancipation from superstition. Instead they delivered a vacuum. A generation raised as “children of Dawkins” has found itself without meaning, without hope, and without community. Into that void has rushed Islamism, wokeness, and despair.

Benedict XVI, in his famous homily before the 2005 conclave, diagnosed this collapse: the dictatorship of relativism, where nothing is true and only power remains⁴. His warning was ignored by the very bishops who elected him.

The Necessity of Restoration
The only antidote to the cult of death—whether Islamist or woke—is the faith of life: Christianity. Islam proclaims paradise for those who kill and die; Christianity proclaims that Christ died so that man may live. The contrast is absolute.

To recover, we must restore what has been abandoned:

• the Christian family, grounded in fidelity and fruitfulness;
• the Christian state, recognising that liberty is ordered to truth, not license;
• the Christian Church, unashamed to preach the Gospel of life against all false religions.

Without this restoration, Europe will collapse, not by external conquest but by internal surrender. The Civitas Dei cannot be replaced by the idols of tolerance, diversity, or secular reason. Only a return to the Kingship of Christ can preserve our civilization. 🔝

1. Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Homily before Conclave, April 18, 2005.
2. Augustine, City of God, Book XIV, ch. 28.
3. Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei (1885), §31.
4. G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (1910), p. 48.

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The Peril of Rebellion Cloaked in Tradition

The renewal of priestly and religious vocations through the rediscovery of Tradition is one of the few bright signs in a Church otherwise beset by confusion. Young men and women, drawn by the beauty of the liturgy and the clarity of Catholic doctrine, sense a call to serve Christ and His Church in a way rooted in fidelity to the perennial faith. Yet alongside this good fruit, a hidden danger lurks: the temptation to mistake the embattled context of Tradition for a justification of rebelliousness, to conflate the courage of the saints with the self-will of the revolutionary.

Obedience and Fidelity, Not License
The Catholic Tradition, far from endorsing rebellion, teaches obedience as a foundational virtue. St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing at the dawn of the Church, exhorted: *“Do nothing without the bishop…be subject also to the presbytery as to the Apostles of Jesus Christ”*¹. St. Benedict’s Rule likewise defines the monastic life as a “school of the Lord’s service” marked by obedience even to the smallest precepts². And St. Thomas Aquinas makes clear that disobedience, insofar as it rejects rightful authority, is itself a mortal sin³.

The saints who resisted corruption or negligence—Athanasius against the Arians, Catherine of Siena before negligent popes—did not do so in the spirit of rebellion but in obedience to a higher order: fidelity to Christ and His Church. Their resistance was borne of humility and readiness to suffer, not of self-assertion or factionalism.

Tradition Misunderstood as Revolt
Today, the crisis of authority following Vatican II has formed many in the habit of suspicion. This environment breeds a temptation: to see Tradition as legitimising rebellion in principle. If the mainstream Church establishment has abandoned doctrine or corrupted the liturgy, so the logic runs, then any act of defiance against any authority is sanctified. But this is a distortion.

History provides sobering examples. Some groups, having begun in fidelity to Tradition, drifted into schism or sectarianism. Certain sedevacantist movements, born of legitimate resistance, hardened into a principle of rejection that denies the Church’s visible hierarchy altogether. Likewise, so-called “independent sacramental” bodies multiply jurisdictions without discipline, creating an appearance of Catholic form while sowing confusion and scandal. These breakaways demonstrate how zeal without obedience becomes sterile: they fracture the unity they claim to defend.

By contrast, authentic institutes of Tradition—whether the Priestly Society of St. Pius X, the Old Roman Apostolate, or others of similar spirit—must hold themselves accountable to the perennial discipline of the Church. Their legitimacy rests not on loud defiance, but on faithful witness: maintaining clerical discipline, reverent conformity to the sacred liturgy, and obedience to the laws of the Church as always understood.

The Liturgy as a School of Obedience
The Traditional Roman liturgy itself embodies submission and fidelity. The priest follows rubrics with precision, not as a legalism but as a school of humility. Pope Pius XII, in Mediator Dei, warned against liturgical arbitrariness, insisting that the liturgy is not a field for experimentation or self-expression but the “public worship which our Redeemer…rendered to the Father”⁴. Authentic Tradition is therefore a corrective to rebellion: it shapes the soul to embrace order, hierarchy, and self-sacrifice.

A Pastoral Challenge
For superiors and formators, this presents a serious discernment. Vocations arising from zeal for God and His truth are to be nurtured and guided. But those in which zeal masks pride or a spirit of perpetual opposition must be corrected. A priest formed in rebellion will become an ideologue rather than a shepherd, a critic rather than a father, and a partisan rather than a servant of Christ.

The Church has no need for rebels dressed in cassocks. She needs faithful sons who, by loving Tradition, learn true obedience to Christ. To embrace Tradition is not to exalt one’s own judgment against all authority, but to humble oneself under the authority of what has been handed down.

Conclusion
The saints remind us that fidelity requires both courage and humility. To resist error while remaining obedient to truth is the mark of authentic Tradition. Vocations imbued with rebellion threaten to reproduce within the sanctuary the very errors they were called to heal. It is only when zeal is tempered by obedience, and resistance by humility, that the priest of Tradition becomes what he is meant to be: not a rebel, but a servant of the eternal King. 🔝

1. St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians, 2.
2. St. Benedict, Rule, Prologue.
3. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II–II, q. 105, a. 2.
4. Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei (1947), §20.

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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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