Dr. K's Weekly Roundup, January 10 Edition

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McElroy and madness

The biggest news this past week, of course, was the sickening announcement that San Diego’s Cardinal Robert McElroy, whom no less than Bishop Thomas Paprocki not-so-subtly accused of heresy about two years ago at First Things, has been appointed the new Archbishop of Washington DC, having the effect (as Eric Sammons dryly noted) of not so much exalting the man as reducing the reputation of the diocese forced to receive him.

In the words of Rorate Caeli’s announcement:

The bishop of San Diego, McCarrick alum and Cupich-named Cardinal Robert McElroy, will be the new Archbishop of Washington. It seems quite appropriate that the news comes as the District of Columbia is covered by the largest winter storm in a decade. Snow and ice blow from the west, as chilly winds bring the ultimate McCarrick insider to the capital of the United States.

When he was named Cardinal, in 2022, California Catholics couldn't believe their eyes, considering McElroy’s history of obfuscation, or worse, regarding the sordid story of former Cardinal “Uncle Ted” McCarrick, whose great seat of power was... Washington itself....

McElroy will probably try to be confrontational regarding the Administration — but with what credibility? As a McCarrick defender? The “vibe shift” in American life, and in American Catholicism, is real, and a tainted bishop will only increase the hostility of serious Catholics towards a dying breed of liberal clergy.

It’s the “old boys’ club” of McCarrick, Wuerl, Gregory, McElroy, Tobin, and the rest of them, all the way up to the top (let’s not forget McCarrick was instrumental in Bergoglio’s election).

A friend of mine wrote to me:

The current Curia in the Vatican are, effectively, tone deaf. Contrast this rewarding of a controversial modernist Archbishop with the cancelling of orthodox Bishop Strickland. They see President Trump is about to take office and, rather than appointing an Archbishop he can work with, they, instead, choose one that will most certainly work to “resist” him. The modernist heterodox in the Curia are doing everything they can to induce a formal schism in the Church while seeing to it that the blame is placed on orthodox. Anything they can do to stick a thumb in the eye of traditional/conservative Catholics to get them to react, they employ.

Our time is reminiscent of periods in history when heresiarchs ruled in Constantinople.

My advice to popesplainers: don’t even try. And if you’re tempted, let Anthony Esolen talk you out of it.

There remains the enormous scandal of a prelate who covered up sexual abuse — not just any old variety of it, but a particularly demented satanic ritual abuse — being promoted to a major See like this. If you know anything about what Rachel Maria Mastrogiacomo went through, and how complicit McElroy was in it, you will know why he should be rotting in a jail cell, not given a lofty position. But that’s how criminals reward one another: birds of a feather flock together. As Rachel said on social media, the Lord knows well how to humiliate the mighty and exalt the lowly, and history shows that He does this again and again, despite the plans of His enemies. This is in fact a “silver lining” on the dark cloud: the shortsightedness of the political maneuvering of our petty tyrants will in fact bring destruction on their heads.

In this vein, Kevin M. Tierney wrote on Facebook:

This is an appointment almost certain to end in disaster for reasons having nothing to do with ideology, and the end result will just be the Pope is further isolated from the American Church, his credibility is further diminished within the Church, and the Archdiocese of Washington DC simply matters less going forward to the American Church.

The only prelate, as far as I can tell, who had the courage to speak out boldly against the appointment was… you guessed it… Joseph Strickland:

Where are the others?

(Maybe they are quiet because of what happened to Strickland himself — and now, just this past week, to the longsuffering Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon, one of the few dioceses in France that had been flourishing with priestly and religious vocations, and which therefore had to be investigated by Rome for what might be going wrong there. His Excellency had already been humiliated by the imposition of a coadjutor bishop in spite of no evidence of actual wrongdoing, and now he has “been resigned” (as the saying goes), that is, forced into resignation, by the will of Francis the Merciful. For further analysis, see Guillaume de Thieulloy’s account.)

Getting back to the James-Martin-approved McElroy: I suppose it is no new revelation to say that Pope Francis and much of the USCCB doesn’t give a damn about sexual abuse, in spite of all the hypocritical lip-service. And we might add that some of our prelates also don’t seem to give a damn about Eucharistic Revival, since they busy themselves with scolding Catholics for kneeling before their Lord and for wishing to have a communion rail to separate the nave from the sanctuary and to kneel at. Here’s a nice piece of effrontery from the Archdiocese of New York (in cahoots with the Windy City?), along with Amy Welborn’s stinging comment:

God forbid we should try to establish any symbolic partition between the nave and the sanctuary, or suggest that there just might be some reason, for someone, someday, to kneel sometimes at the rail, before (you know) Someone who might just be really present…

It’s things like this that confirm me more than ever in the fundamental assertions of traditionalism. The “NuChurch” or “Neocatholicism” has chosen its own way to go, the broad way that leads to destruction. I will stick to the narrow way that the Lord in His Providence opened for the Church of the saints, the Church of all ages — yes, we might call it Eternal Rome, meaning simply, “the faith once handed down” by Holy Mother Church. She still exists and always will, in this world and in the world to come, but here her face is marred, like that of the Man of Sorrows. It is for us to show the face of her beauty, through our lives and in our worship.

Let’s talk for a moment about what works… and what doesn’t.

Here are two charts absolutely remarkable to look at and compare:

Then this one:

Now, in my experience, the reaction of conservatives (who already feel very defensive in general because they are beleagued by triumphalist trads on the one side and hegemonic progressives on the other side) to this contrast is to say: “Well, if things were so great before Vatican II, why did everything fall apart so rapidly? It must have been a great hollow shell.”

I think this reaction is facile (in both senses: easy and superficial). The reality is, the dividing line between fidelity and apostasy is always tissue-paper-thin, and what it takes to disrupt a whole population and throw it careening off-balance is far less than we would like to think, flattering ourselves. A healthy ecosystem requires pretty optimal conditions, and if enough of those conditions are shifted rapidly enough, the ecosystem will collapse.

So, yes, you can have a large, healthy system, but it can also be fragile and vulnerable. Such is fallen human nature. And therefore nothing could have been more foolish than to summon a council under the rubric of re-evaluating and updating everything, at a time when what was most needed was stability, constancy, and reasserted tradition in the face of neo-modernism and accelerating progressivism.

(The charts are taken from Dr. Ed Schaefer’s article “By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them.”)

Another “interesting” bit of news:

For the first time ever, a woman has been named Prefect of a Roman Dicastery: Sister Simona Brambilla, of the Missionary Sisters of the Consolata, who had been secretary of the Dicastery for Religious (“Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life”) since 2023, has been elevated to the position of Prefect.

The trouble with this is not that a woman, per se, is in charge of bishops and priests (charges of chauvinism are somewhat out of place). The problem is having a layperson in a position of governing authority over the clergy — for a religious, though under vows, is still lay and not clerical. I’m not a clericalist, by any means, but I am a hierarchicalist and a sacerdotalist, so this strikes me as theologically bonkers: the munera of teaching, ruling, and sanctifying belong together. I talk more about the problems created for governance in this article.

After this, we need some good news, I think. There isn’t as much of it this week as there’s been some others, but everything has its ups and downs…

Good News

The King of Woke resigns

Justin Trudeau announced his resignation — and there was great rejoicing across the country of Canada.

Recognize and Resist works

A year ago, Victor Manuel Fernandez came out with a press release that was meant to clarify Fiducia Supplicans (or to placate its numerous critics). Fiducia Supplicans had managed to be the most controversial Vatican document since Humanae Vitae, 55 years earlier. In fact, it was more controversial. The alleged clarification ended up ‘de facto’ annulling many key parts of Fiducia Supplicans itself. Now, a year later, the document has become largely a dead letter. What exactly happened?

For the answer, Serre Verweij’s superb article at Rorate Caeli. As in the famous quip by Chesterton, R & R has been found difficult and left untried. The African bishops showed us that it could be tried successfully. More of us need to take that lesson to heart.

Lovely travel vestments

With reversible colors, from the Italian vestment-maker Ars Comacina. The kind of thing to get for a canceled priest who may be on the road supplying the TLM for communities violently deprived of it by the abuse of papal or episcopal power, or may simply no longer have access to a sacristy. More pictures and info here.

Liturgical Lessons

Setting the record straight

I’m sure most of my readers here know the work of Gregory DiPippo (I often share his articles), but for those who don’t know about him, Gregory is the long-time editor of the indispensable blog New Liturgical Movement and a walking encyclopedia of liturgy, languages, and history. He teaches Latin for Belmont Abbey College and the Veterum Sapientia Institute, sings as a cantor for the Byzantine liturgy, and has MC’s all ceremonies in the classical Roman Rite. He is that genuine rare bird, the autodidact who runs circles around the credentialed.

Back in December, the YouTube channel of Catholic Productions released a video by Dr. Brant Pitre on active participation in which, sadly, the eminent Scripture scholar made a number of erroneous and highly misleading statements about the history of the Roman liturgy and the manner in which the liturgical reform “fixed” the problems in it. Without for a moment questioning Dr. Pitre’s good intentions or the true things he says, Gregory DiPippo in a series at NLM indicates the significant errors Pitre falls into, and the false conclusions drawn from them.

The first two parts have come out and a third is on the way (I’ll share it next time). I strongly encourage you to read and share these articles:

• “Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation: A Response to Dr Brant Pitre (Part 1)”

• “Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation: A Response to Dr Brant Pitre (Part 2)”

I look forward to Dr. Pitre’s eventual public retraction of these errors, inasmuch as his video has already misled many thousands of sincere Catholic viewers who have learned to trust him (rightly) in scriptural matters, but who do not have the ability to evaluate his claims in the area of liturgy.

The backstory to Bugnini

This week at NLM, I talk about the bad ideas and influences that existed well before the Second Vatican Council:

It is understandable that many would see liturgical disaster as a unique product of the last Council, and particularly of the implementary body headed by Annibale Bugnini, the Consilium. Others who have read more widely will understand that it is linked to the gradual radicalization of the Liturgical Movement, as it went from the restorationist and educational model of Dom Guéranger to the pastoral utilitarianism of the postwar period. Relatively few, it seems to me, recognize that the roots of this disaster go far back to (in varying ways) the Protestant Revolt, the Enlightenment, and the age of industrialization. Lately, a number of fine studies have been published that help us to see these more remote pretexts and premises of the liturgical reform of the 1960s, when the program of the Synod of Pistoia finally entered every suburban parish.

The Christmas season (cont’d)

For some reason, this year it’s struck me with greater force than ever how wisely Holy Mother Church, in her organically developed Latin-rite calendar, unfolds the Christmas mystery, like a radiant sun whose rays reach ever further. The promised salvation first emerges in Bethlehem; the Old Law is fulfilled in the circumcision, and the Name given Him at that time, the Name above all names (God saves), is exalted; the Gentiles who are at last invited to join the people of God come to pay homage; the family in which Jesus spent His hidden years next receives attention; the opening to His public ministry, the baptism in the Jordan, is recalled; and finally, on the Second Sunday after Epiphany, the first miracle or sign, the beginning of “His Hour,” is remembered. It is magnificently orchestrated. Compared to this majestic unwrapping, the new calendar is like a box of toys spilled at random.

The Epiphany genuflection

We are still in the octave of Epiphany (or at least the ghost of its octave, in the ’62 missal). And that means, every day when the Gospel is read, we perform the gesture that never ceases to startle and grip the soul: the genuflection of all present at the words:

Et intrántes domum, invenérunt púerum cum María matre ejus, et procidéntes adoravérunt eum. (And entering into the house, they found the Child with Mary His mother, and falling down they adored Him.)

This total physical response underlines that the impetus of the Mass, like that of the Magi, is toward the adoration of God, the God who now appears unto us in Jesus Christ. One more reason to kneel for Holy Communion, every time: to be wise, like the wise men of old.

Excerpts from Morello

If you’ve been intrigued or perhaps puzzled by the title of Sebastian Morello’s recent book Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries: Recovering the Sacred Mystery at the Heart of Reality, you might find it beneficial and enjoyable to read a number of excerpts from it that I posted over at NLM: “Morello on Rationalism as Part of Modernity’s Anti-Liturgical Hex.” Here’s a taste:

The Church’s current hierarchical incumbents seem, generally speaking, to be neither elders themselves nor to love their elders. They appear as frustrated rascals who have undergone all the humane development and civilisational induction of Tolkien’s orcs.

Perhaps this ought not to surprise us. After all, the men who fill the Church’s higher offices today were all formed in the crucible of the Second Vatican Council’s progressive theology, and their intellectual habits were fashioned by daily exposure to the so- called liturgical “reform.” The “experts” who subjected the Church’s liturgical heritage to ongoing experimentation did so on the grounds that it was somehow legitimate to call into question—and redact or even reject altogether—huge swathes of prayer and mystical experience inherited from our ancestors in religion, the sum total of elder-wisdom in ritual form.

The very Council, then, that claimed power to renew the Church’s youth in fact emptied the churches, and by so doing it aged the Church rapidly, in turn aging the civilisation she once animated.... And this process of aging the Church, far from recovering her charism as the Great Elder of our civilisation, merely rendered her decrepit.

Morello’s book is full of incisive observations of this kind, as well as a compelling account of how we can get past this impasse.

“An unbearable lightness in sham Christianity”

Emily Finley’s latest Substack post is simply superb. Pardon a lengthy excerpt but I don’t want you to miss it:

Today, those who embrace this sham spirituality have gone a step further and tithe to secular “causes” in the form of paying more for consumer goods. This is a part of the general reinterpretation of Christ’s exhortation to love neighbor to mean “love humanity,” which can be done with little effort. In place of action is sentiment. In place of prayer and fasting is yoga and Fair-Trade coffee.

Much of the disorder in mainstream Catholicism today is a result of sham spirituality having infected the mind of the Church and the Church now being one of its purveyors.

We can recognize this pseudo-Christian faith for its romantic dreaminess, fixation on material ends, and general lack of seriousness. This doppelgänger of Christianity never inconveniences us. We are to “come as we are” and stay that way.

There is an unbearable lightness in sham Christianity.

And this is why many Protestant denominations and Novus Ordo Catholic parishes are finding that the younger generations would prefer to skip the Sunday kumbaya-singing and peace-be-with-yous and just go straight to the boozy brunch. We are entering a time in which people are turning one of two ways, either abandoning Christianity entirely or entering into it seriously. The halfway house of the last half-century is coming to an end it would seem. The Latin mass and Orthodox Christianity are growing while other denominations and many Novus Ordo parishes are dwindling.

The Mass sets the tone. If the holiest day of the week and the most holy hour of that day conveys to the minds of Catholics something that is not so very serious after all, then what are we to take seriously? The Eucharist? Our bodies? Our thoughts? Our marriages? Forming our children? How could any of it be very serious business if even the sacrifice of the Mass feels light, possibly perfunctory, and bookended with chatting, laughter, and a certain jocularity?

What is to set the standard for our conduct in life? It will not do to read the precepts of natural law, to rationally understand the deficiencies of the Novus Ordo liturgy, and even to recognize the inconsistencies, heresies, and blasphemies coming out of the Vatican. All of that is done on an intellectual level—and can, to be sure, help to convince and support the imagination. But alone it is not enough. We must witness with our eyes and imagination the performance of sacred rituals and the physical gestures that accompany them, including bowing, prostrations, kissing, looking toward heaven, chanting, silence, crossing ourselves, genuflecting, and all at the proper time and in the proper way.

Head over to read the rest.

In a way that complements Finley, Robert Lazu Kmita writes about the major difference between a sacred symbol, like a cross or crucifix, and a profane “symbol” (i.e., “an arbitrary sign”) like Luce.

Mistakes unacknowledged

Some of you may read the Adoremus Bulletin. They often publish fine essays, profound analyses... yet almost always without noting the implications for the botched liturgical reform. Thus, in his “Relevance of the Eucharistic Liturgy to Understanding the Written Gospels,” Matthew A. Tsakanikas writes, quite correctly:

There is a kind of “intertextuality” between the Gospels and Eucharistic liturgies. In their most primitive forms, the Eucharistic liturgies of the Apostles preceded the final written form of the Gospels (cf. Acts 2:42; Luke 1:1).

Yet nowhere is it mentioned that Paul VI modified the very form of the Roman consecrations of bread and wine to make them match Scriptural data (a sort of Protestant assumption that our worship should be templated off the NT), even though the likeliest explanation—given, in fact, by none other than St. Thomas Aquinas—is that the original formulas in the Roman Canon, which are found all the way back to the oldest extant manuscripts of antiquity, reflect unwritten apostolic tradition, predating NT accounts of the institution.

Offertory

As part of his ongoing series at NLM, Foley offers today a fine commentary on the “Suscipe, Sancte Pater” prayer of the Offertory.

Other articles enjoyed

• If you enjoy Beowulf, you won’t want to miss this fascinating comparison of three passages in four translations, with Robert Keim’s splendid (as usual) commentary.

• Sebastian Morello, “Myself, Me, and I: The Annoying Rise of Reflexive Pronouns”

• Julian Kwasniewski, “Living in a Fake World: A New Year’s Recognition”

• Jerry D. Salyer, “Dietrich von Hildebrand and the Latin Mass”

On illuminated manuscripts

From my friend Fr. Brian Harrison:

This six-minute video included by sacred art historian Hilary White in her latest posting impacted me greatly.

We all know books were hard to come by in the ages before paper and printing. But do we realize the incredible magnitude of the task, the thousands of man-hour labor, and thus, the staggering expense, of producing a single illuminated book? It could take up to two or three years, with a team of scribes and other technicians such as those who painstakingly produced the costly parchment, ink, and gold leaf, to produce a single illuminated Bible! Each such volume was worth a small fortune as soon as it was made!

And who on earth had the time and resources to do all that? Thank goodness there were plenty of monks in Europe! Along with scribes and artisans in royal palaces they were financed often by kings and aristocrats as well as by the monastery's agricultural resources.

So this video is a striking reminder of just what it cost to transmit Western civilization - and all our precious spiritual heritage of the Scriptures and traditions of the Fathers, Doctors, Councils and Popes — down through those bleak centuries when the barbarian and Viking invasions wiped out so much of our classical heritage from Athens, Rome and Jerusalem! Not to mention the priceless musical heritage handed down in the huge tomes of chant used by monastic scholae. Looking at this video, I thought, “This is a vital and often unrecognized part of the arduous means Jesus must have had in mind with his farewell promise to be with his disciples all days, even until the end of the world!”

On ecstasy

I’m very grateful to Robert Lazu Kmita for including a book of mine in his article “The Best Books I Read in 2024,” in the latest issue of The Remnant:

In a monograph developed from his doctoral research undertaken at the Catholic University of America, he offers one of the most compelling comprehensive interpretations of Aquinas’s work.

The title of his book is highly significant: The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Emmaus Academic, 2021). Scholars familiar with St. Thomas’s works might find such a title surprising, for reasons you can likely imagine. For most readers, the demands of rational thought—as perceived today under the influence of Enlightenment and Kantian rationalism—are considered distinct from, if not incompatible with, the seemingly “frivolous” theme of love. Exploited heavily by mass culture, particularly in its widespread cinematic forms, “love” is almost always understood as belonging to the realm of passion, incompatible with the “cold” activity of the intellect. While this perspective might sometimes hold, it is entirely inapplicable to an author who teaches that the goal of our lives is happiness, to which love contributes essentially.

To clarify such issues and free St. Thomas from the influence of strictly rationalist exegesis, Dr. Kwasniewski examines one of the most significant concepts in the history of Christian theological thought: ecstasy. (This concept, I assure you, is represented rather inappropriately, even erroneously, in Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.”) Father Michael Sherwin, O.P., captures the core of Kwasniewski’s contribution perfectly in his endorsement: “Studies of medieval theories of love have too often neglected or denigrated the ecstatic elements of love’s desire. This book offers an important corrective. It is quite simply the best extended treatment of Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of ecstasy.”

Personally, I have never read anything like it. Dr. Kwasniewski’s book not only opens a specific perspective on St. Thomas’s works but also proposes an interpretive framework that completely reshapes how we understand and receive his monumental philosophical and theological writings. This is why I consider this book an absolute must-have for the library of any educated Catholic seeking to properly engage with the work of the Angelic Doctor. »

Those who are interested in this book may find it at Emmaus Academic, at Os Justi Press, or at Amazon (among other places online).

Elsewhere, Kathleen Alford reviewed my book True Obedience in the Church.

A coffee-lover’s postscript

We had the whole family home for the Christmas holidays. And therefore, the whole family of dutiful moka pots came out to meet them in their time of sorest need, and woke them up each day:

Just look at the can-do attitude reflected in those flexing black handles, solid metal flanks, pressure-release valves, and courteous black caps! Having tried the elixir of vigilance prepared with just about every method, I can’t find any serious competition to the moka pot. All you need is an electric burner (I use an external one since my stove uses gas) and you’re in business.

If you’d like to contribute to the cause, please consider “buying me a coffee”!

I drink to your health in 2025!

Thank you for reading, and may God bless you.