“Per Tempus Concussionis et Ventilationis”
a New Year Pastoral Epistle
To the clergy, religious, and faithful of the Old Roman Apostolate, and to all those who seek to preserve the Catholic faith in its integrity and fullness:
grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Carissimi
As we cross the threshold into the year of Our Lord 2026, I write to you not merely to observe the calendar’s turning, but to acknowledge what many of you already feel in your bones: that we are living through a season of shaking and sifting. Laws have been passed which strike at the very heart of human dignity; children are sacrificed to ideology in clinics and classrooms; the name of Christ is pushed to the margins of public life while false religions and false unities are courted and indulged. Within the Church, liturgy is bent to personalities, doctrine is “managed” as if it were policy, and ecumenical ceremonies are staged without any serious call to conversion.⁷
Faced with this, the temptation is either despair or distraction. But for Christians, neither is permitted. Our Lord did not promise us comfort; He promised us a Cross and His own abiding presence: “In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”¹
This epistle is therefore not a lament but a call to action. I want to speak plainly about what you, as ordinary faithful, can do in 2026 to stem, and by God’s grace begin to reverse, the tide that seems so strong against us. The work begins where it always has: at the altar, in the confessional, in the home, in the mind, in the public square, and in the daily formation we receive.
I. Christ First: Rebuilding from the Altar Outward
Every renewal in the history of the Church has started, not with strategies, but with worship. When Israel forgot the law, the prophets rebuilt the altar. When Christ came, He established, not a programme, but a Sacrifice. When the world grows darker, the first duty of the faithful is to ensure that somewhere, in their time and place, God is truly adored in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.²
For us, this means redoubling our love and reverence for the sacred liturgy in its traditional form. Where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered worthily and devoutly, according to the rites handed down, there the Kingship of Christ is already visibly proclaimed, whatever the politicians may legislate and whatever confusion may reign in chancelleries and dicasteries.⁸
In practical terms, I ask you in this new year:
Make Sunday Mass non-negotiable, even at real cost. Arrange your work, your travel, your family gatherings around the altar, not the altar around your convenience. Where you are able, sanctify at least one weekday each week by assisting at Mass. The world is not sustained by our activism but by the Blood of Christ made present on our altars. Examine your manner of assisting at Mass. Come early enough to recollect; dress as if you really believed you were going to Calvary; remain in thanksgiving after Mass rather than rushing away as soon as the last word is said. Recover Eucharistic adoration in our chapels wherever it is possible. Half an hour of silent adoration each week will do more to steady your soul and re-order your priorities than hours of anxious news-consumption.
If laws are now passed that permit abortion to birth, if children are experimented on in the name of “gender affirmation,” if public blasphemies are staged in parliaments and city squares, it is above all because Christ is not recognised as King.⁸ The most radical thing you can do in 2026 is to adore Him with faith and reverence in the Blessed Sacrament and to place the Mass at the centre of your week and your decisions.
II. Return to the Fountain: Confession, Conversion, and the Interior Life
We cannot hope to convert our culture if we ourselves will not be converted. The crisis “out there” is sustained, in part, by tepidity within the Church. The line between good and evil runs through every human heart, including mine and yours.
Therefore:
Seek regular confession. Do not content yourself with an annual visit to the confessional, as if you were renewing a licence. Make a firm decision now: monthly, or even fortnightly, you will kneel before Christ’s representative and accuse yourself humbly of your sins.³ Do this even if you must travel or wait. The sacrament of Penance is not a decorative extra; it is the instrument by which God renews His image in us and equips us with grace for the battles of our time.
Establish a rule of daily prayer. Many Catholics attempt to fight great cultural battles with almost no interior life. Decide on a daily minimum and hold to it firmly: morning offering, consciously uniting the day to God; at least fifteen minutes of mental prayer or meditative reading of Scripture; the daily Rosary, even if you must divide the decades through the day; nightly examination of conscience, however brief, with an act of contrition.
Without this, you will find your reactions shaped more by fear, anger, and the media cycle than by the Holy Ghost. With it, you will begin to discern where God is calling you to act and where He is calling you to be silent, to suffer, or to wait.
III. The Domestic Church: Guarding Children and Re-Christianising the Home
The enemies of Christ understand something many Catholics have forgotten: whoever forms the children, owns the future. It is no accident that so much pressure is placed on schools, media, and medicine to normalise grave sin, confuse identities, and sexualise the young. If we do not actively guard and form our children, others will gladly do it for us.⁴
For parents and grandparents, I therefore speak with urgency.
First, reclaim authority in the home. You are not the chaplains of the State; you are the first pastors of the souls entrusted to you. No government, school, or clinician has a greater right over a child than his or her parents acting in accordance with God’s law.⁴ If policies or programmes directly contradict the moral law or the teaching of the Church, you have not only the right but the duty to say “no.”
Second, reform the home around the family altar. Enthrone an image of the Sacred Heart; keep a crucifix prominently displayed; mark the feasts and fasts of the Church with visible signs — blessed candles, an Advent wreath, a simple family altar. Let the liturgical year be kept not only in the chapel but in the kitchen and living room. Children whose imaginations are formed by crucifixes, icons, and the Rosary will be less captivated by the glowing idols of the screen.
Third, be intentional about schooling and catechesis. If your children are in state schools, you must recognise that you are sending them into mission territory. Know what they are being taught about sex, gender, and religion. Read the policies. Ask questions. Withdraw them from sessions that contradict your faith and morals. If you can homeschool, or support genuinely Catholic schools that refuse ideological capture, seriously consider this sacrifice.⁵
Do not delegate catechesis. Teach your children the basics of the faith from solid sources — the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the Baltimore Catechism, the traditional prayers and devotions of the Church. Family catechism for half an hour each week will do more for their souls than a lifetime of vague “religious education.”⁵
Finally, guard their innocence in the digital sphere. Unfiltered smartphones and unguided internet access are among the most efficient tools for undoing everything you try to teach. Set limits. Use filters. Do not be afraid to be thought “old-fashioned.” Your duty is not to make your children fashionable but to help them reach Heaven.
IV. Formation of the Mind: Thinking with the Church in an Age of Confusion
Much of the present crisis is intellectual. Laws are passed, policies implemented, and ecumenical gestures staged on the basis of confused or deliberately distorted ideas about the human person, the Church, and God. Catholics who cannot think with the Church will be swept along, however orthodox their sentiments.
For this reason, I urge you in 2026 to make serious study of the faith part of your Christian life. This does not mean amassing internet arguments, but drinking from sound wells.
Choose one reliable catechism and read it through. The Catechism of Trent or the Baltimore Catechism are excellent foundations. Take a small section each day or each week, read it slowly, and discuss it in the family or parish group.⁵
Read Scripture with the mind of the Church. The Bible is not a weapon to be wielded for private interpretation; it is the book of the Church, to be read within Tradition. Consider choosing one Gospel and one Epistle this year and reading them meditatively, perhaps with a commentary from a trustworthy Father or Doctor, such as St Augustine, St John Chrysostom, or St Thomas Aquinas.
Be intentional in your media and news consumption. You do not need to know every outrage in real time. Choose a small number of sources that you know will not lie to you, and limit your intake. For the rest, do not be afraid to turn things off. A mind perpetually inflamed by outrage will not perceive where God is asking it to act.
On questions of sex, gender, and the body, acquaint yourself with the Church’s perennial teaching on creation, marriage, and the natural law. Understand why hormonal interventions on healthy children are wrong; why “assisted dying” is in truth assisted killing; why pornography is not merely a private vice but a grave injustice that deforms the soul and poisons society.⁶ Catholics who can explain these things calmly and clearly will be a rare and necessary leaven.¹⁴
V. Christian Action in the Public Square: Witness Without Illusion
Not every Catholic is called to stand in Parliament or to appear in the media. But every Catholic, by baptism and confirmation, is called to confess Christ before men in whatever station Providence has placed him.⁶
In 2026, this will demand both courage and prudence.
First, resolve never to cooperate in a lie. There will be increasing pressure in workplaces and institutions to affirm falsehoods about marriage, sex, and identity; to use words that deny reality; to treat abortion as healthcare and euthanasia as mercy. While there may be room for discretion and silence in some circumstances, there is never room for formal cooperation in error. Do not place your signature, your vote, or your voice behind statements that contradict the law of God. If policy demands that you affirm what you know to be false, seek advice and, if necessary, be ready to accept professional or financial loss rather than betray the truth.⁶
Second, support those on the front lines. Not everyone can bring legal challenges, stand for office, or lead campaigns. But many can write letters, sign petitions, attend peaceful vigils, support crisis-pregnancy centres, contribute to legal defence funds, or simply stand beside those who are being singled out for punishment because they have refused to compromise. In an age of official intimidation, honest men and women must know that they are not alone.
Third, exercise your duties as citizens. Vote when you can do so in good conscience. Make your representatives aware that their positions on life, family, and freedom are not marginal issues but decisive ones. Write respectfully but clearly. Where public consultations are opened on matters such as hate-speech legislation, “conversion therapy,” or restrictions on homeschooling, take the time to respond.
At the same time, do not allow politics to become your functional religion. The Kingdom of Christ is not tied to any party programme. When earthly parties or movements align more closely with the moral law, they may deserve your support; when they do not, withdraw it. Keep your ultimate loyalty for Christ and His Church.⁶ There is a fine line between rightful Christian engagement and idolatry of the political process; cross it, and you will find your spiritual life withers even as your activism increases.
VI. Building Small Strongholds: Communities of Faith, Charity, and Culture
We are too scattered. One of the devil’s most effective strategies has been to isolate faithful Catholics: each family thinking itself alone in its convictions, each priest imagining himself the last of his kind. This is not only emotionally draining; it is also strategically disastrous. Lone Christians are easier to intimidate than communities.
In 2026 I ask every chapel, mission, and group within the Old Roman Apostolate to take concrete steps toward forming small, sturdy communities of faith and friendship.
After Sunday Mass, do not rush away. Make a point of greeting those you do not yet know. Learn names. See who is standing alone. Over time, encourage the formation of guild-type groups: men’s confraternities, women’s sodalities, youth circles, study groups, practical mutual-aid networks.
Consider how your chapel can become a centre not only of worship but of Christian culture: catechism classes, talks, book groups, shared meals on feast days, practical workshops on living the liturgical year at home. The more the faithful know and love one another, the harder it will be for hostile structures to drive them into silence or compromise.⁹
Do not neglect works of mercy. The credibility of our witness depends in part on whether we actually care for the poor, the lonely, the sick, the unborn, the women in crisis pregnancies, the victims of abuse and neglect. Ask what your community can realistically do: perhaps supporting a local pro-life initiative, visiting the housebound, assisting a family in need of schooling help, or helping refugees who are genuinely fleeing persecution rather than exploiting systems. Start small, but start somewhere.⁹
VII. Standing Firm in the Church: Fidelity Without Servility
Some of you carry heavy burdens over the situation in the wider Church: the marginalisation of the traditional Mass, the confusion spread by ambiguous documents, the wounds of the abuse crisis, the sight of bishops hugging those who promote or live in public contradiction to the moral law while ignoring or disparaging those attached to Tradition. You ask: how can we remain obedient sons and daughters without endorsing manifest disorder?
The answer is the same as it has always been in times of crisis: cling to what the Church has always taught; love and receive the sacraments wherever they are validly and worthily celebrated; respect the office of the Pope and the bishops without imagining that every prudential decision or personal opinion they voice binds your conscience.
We in the Old Roman Apostolate have taken a particular path within this tension: neither abandoning the Roman See nor colluding in its present confusions; neither pretending that nothing is wrong nor declaring the See vacant; neither inventing a new Church nor accepting a new religion.¹¹ This position is not comfortable, but it is, I am convinced, the one that best preserves both the faith and the hope of eventual restoration.
You can assist this work by praying daily for the Pope, for the bishops, and for us who labour in this small portion of the Lord’s vineyard. Pray especially for holy priests and vocations. Encourage young men of faith and character to discern the priesthood; do not discourage them with your cynicism. Whatever else changes, the Church will always need altars, priests, and souls hungry for the sacraments.
VIII. Nuntiatoria and Old Roman TV: Daily Formation, News, and Worship
In this struggle for truth, you are not without companions and tools. One of the great dangers of our time is confusion: Catholics drinking from poisoned wells, relying on media that misrepresent the Church, and being formed more by partisan slogans than by the mind of Christ. It is therefore vital that you make use of sound, faithful resources.
For this reason, I commend to you in a particular way our own apostolate of word and image: Nuntiatoria and Old Roman TV.
Nuntiatoria exists to do three things for you.¹²
First, catechesis. Through essays, doctrinal reflections, and explanations of the liturgical year, Nuntiatoria aims to help you think with the perennial Magisterium of the Church, drawing especially on the Fathers, the traditional catechisms, and the pre-conciliar papal encyclicals. Make a habit of reading one substantial piece each week. Use it in family discussion, parish groups, or personal study. Let it sharpen your understanding and clarify your speech.
Second, informed news and analysis. We do not pretend to be encyclopaedic, but we strive to be honest: presenting key developments in Church and world through a Catholic lens neither captured by the secular left nor beholden to a merely political “right.” Many of you cannot spare hours to sift through partisan outlets. Let Nuntiatoria help you see what truly matters and why, so that you are neither naïve nor consumed by rage.
Third, orientation in the cultural battle. Our editorials on abortion, assisted dying, grooming gangs, Islamism, false ecumenism, academic freedom, policing, attacks on Christians, and the crisis in Rome are not meant merely to alarm you, but to arm you: with facts, principles, and language to speak the truth in your own circles.
Alongside Nuntiatoria, Old Roman TV — our daily online apostolate of worship and devotions — is there to sustain you when distance, illness, or circumstances prevent physical attendance at Mass or public devotions.¹³
Let me be clear: the livestreamed Mass does not fulfil your Sunday obligation when attendance is possible, and it can never replace the grace of sacramental Communion. But for the sick, the housebound, those too far from an Old Roman chapel, or those impeded on weekdays, the daily broadcast of the Holy Sacrifice, the Rosary, and other devotions can be a real consolation and a strong aid to prayer. Unite yourselves spiritually to the altar; make acts of spiritual communion; let the prayers and readings penetrate your heart.
I therefore encourage you: bookmark Nuntiatoria and consult it regularly for catechetical and news content; subscribe to our channels and share material judiciously with those who may benefit; when you cannot attend physically, join the streamed Mass or devotions with recollection, avoiding the temptation to treat holy things as background noise.
If we are to rebuild Christian civilisation from the altar outward, we must also rebuild a Catholic mind and imagination. Nuntiatoria and Old Roman TV are offered to you precisely for that purpose: to help you pray, to help you understand, and to help you stand.
IX. Hope That Does Not Lie: Looking to 2026 and Beyond
It would be easy, surveying the past year, to become paralysed. Abortion to birth, assisted dying, experimental treatments on children, open blasphemy, institutional cowardice before Islamism, false ecumenism that trades dogma for vague unity, the slow criminalisation of Christian speech — all these things are real, and we must not pretend otherwise.¹⁴
Yet despair is a sin because it denies either God’s power or His goodness.¹⁰ Christ remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. Grace is not weaker in the twenty-first century than it was in the first. The Holy Ghost has not retired. Divine Providence has chosen you to live in this time, with these particular challenges, because there are acts of faith, hope, and love that only you can perform: in your family, your workplace, your parish, your nation.
Our task is not to guarantee visible success. Our task is to be found faithful. If we adore Christ as King in the liturgy, if we confess our sins and strive for holiness, if we raise children who know that they are made male or female in the image of God and called to chastity and charity, if we refuse to lie on command, if we build small strongholds of Christian life, if we suffer rather than betray the truth — then we have already begun to reverse the tide, whether or not we live to see the full fruits.
Dearly beloved, I ask you this year to stop saying “someone ought to” and to begin asking, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” Then do that thing with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength, and all your love. Heaven does not measure the size of our sphere, but the depth of our fidelity within it.
May the Blessed Virgin Mary, who kept the faith beneath the Cross when all seemed lost, obtain for you the grace of persevering courage. May St Joseph guard your homes. May the martyrs and confessors of every age strengthen you to choose the hard right over the easy wrong. And may Christ, our King and High Priest, bless you, your families, and our whole Apostolate in this new year, and bring us at last to that Kingdom where no error can mislead, no sin can wound, and no tear remains un-wiped.
Given at the beginning of the year of Our Lord 2026,
in the Octave of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ,
Haec est via.
I.X.
Brichtelmestunensis
S. Silvestri Papæ et Confessoris A.D. MMXXV
Oremus
Deus, qui in commotione temporum fideles tuos non deseris: præsta, quæsumus, ut in huius sæculi concussionibus et ventilationibus
in veritate tuæ doctrinæ radicati et in caritate Christi firmati, in confessione sancti Nominis tui usque ad finem perseveremus. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum. Amen.
O God, who in times of turmoil dost not forsake Thy faithful: grant, we beseech Thee, that amid the shakings and siftings of this age, being rooted in the truth of Thy doctrine and strengthened in the charity of Christ, we may persevere unto the end in the confession of Thy holy Name. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
- Jn 16:33.
- Council of Trent, Session XXII, Doctrina de sanctissimo Missæ sacrificio, ch. 1–2.
- Council of Trent, Session XIV, Doctrina de sacramento Pœnitentiæ, ch. 1–2.
- Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 22, 36–40, on the family as “domestic Church” and parents as first educators.
- Catechismus ex decreto Concilii Tridentini (Roman Catechism), Part II, Baptism; The Baltimore Catechism, esp. Q. 585–606 on parents’ duties.
- Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 80; 95–99, on intrinsically evil acts and the duty not to cooperate in moral error.
- Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, on false irenicism and unity without conversion.
- Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, esp. 11–19, on the social Kingship of Christ and the consequences of excluding Him from public life.
- Acts 2:42–47; Heb 10:24–25, on the early Christian community, common life, and persevering assembly.
- St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ II–II, q.20, a.1–4; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2091–2092, on despair as a sin against hope.
- Old Roman Apostolate, foundational declarations and statements on ecclesial position and mission (cf. selsey.org; brightonoratory.org).
- Nuntiatoria: Old Roman online periodical for doctrine, culture, and commentary (nuntiatoria.org).
- Old Roman TV: daily online apostolate of the Old Roman Apostolate, broadcasting Mass and devotions since 2008 across digital platforms.
- Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (Cass Review), Final Report; relevant UK parliamentary debates on abortion decriminalisation and assisted dying (2025).
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