Dr. K’s Weekly Roundup, March 7, 2025

Roche's vibe shift – the Holy Land – contemplation – Africa – magic – demographics – Jansenism? – deleting Confession – ashes to ashes – chant to the rescue – papal updates & more

Welcome to another edition of the Weekly Roundup. I wish you all a blessed Lenten season, and a happy feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. (I hope that clergy out there have taken advantage of the CDF Decree Cum sanctissima of February 22, 2020, which allows the celebration of certain feastdays in the ’62 missal in precedence to Lenten ferias. Thus, the festal Masses of St. Thomas Aquinas on March 7, St. Patrick on March 17, St. Benedict of Nursia on March 21, and St. Gabriel Archangel on March 24, inter alia, could be said, with a Commemoration of the Lenten feria.)

Worth a Look

An author surely familiar to many of you, Charles Coulombe, one of our greatest living experts on the history and philosophy of monarchy (among other topics), has started his own Substack: Coulombe’s Company. In recognition of the many ways in which my readership would naturally overlap with his, he’s created a SPECIAL 30% OFF COUPON for all readers of Tradition & Sanity. Head over and have a look.

Good News

Cardinal Roche repudiates Traditionis Custodes

Okay, that sounds too good to be true, and I’m saying it tongue-in-cheek. But as Gregory DiPippo shows in my favorite article of the past week, the new interview with the Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship does, in fact, pull the carpet out from under that motu proprio — as if Roche were sniffing an upcoming conclave and trying to distance himself politely from the most distasteful aspects of TradCust. That’s not to say, of course, that he will stop persecuting the TLM. Anyone who has turned coat as many times as he has will never exhibit consistency. But it does show, more brightly than ever, that by now the rationale for TradCust has been totally undermined. Just head over and read Gregory’s piece: it’s a tour de force.

Kevin Tierney also helpfully weighs in on the Roche vibe shift.

San Damiano College for the Trades to open

I’ve mentioned here a couple of times a new school under development in Springfield, Illinois, that will combine hands-on acquisition of a trade with liberal arts and spiritual formation. San Damiano has announced that it’s opening a “San Damiano House of Formation” this fall for young men, offering a one-year integrated program. Read more here. This is a key step on the way to its full-scale opening and prospective degree program.

Close the Workshop off to a good start

For a week now, my newly released book from Angelico Press has been #1 in either the Ecclesiology or the Christian Rites & Ceremonies category over at Amazon. Pick up your copy today! (You can get it there, of course, but also from the publisher — or a signed copy from Os Justi Press.)

Beuronese art making a comeback?

If you’ve never heard of Beuronese art, don’t worry — that’s true for most Catholics. But it was a quite popular and intriguing art style developed in the late 19th century by Desiderius Lenz and adopted by quite a number artists decorating churches in the first half of the 20th century. Then, like so much else, it was torpedoed by the Liturgical Movement and sunk to the bottom after Vatican II. Painter Nicholas Markell is giving this style a new lease on life. Could it be the beginning of a revival? Read more at Liturgical Arts Journal.

Ah, Mont Saint Michel!

Thinking of a pilgrimage? Julia Houck offers an inspiring account of a recent SSPX pilgrimage to one of the loveliest sites in all Christendom. Only a Catholic civilization could make a gem like this — and Catholics should take advantage of the many opportunities for traditional pilgrimage that present themselves, in the USA and Canada, in Europe, in Australia, in South America. Speaking of which…

Holy Land with Dr. K in 2026

I’m pleased to announce here, for the first time, that I will be helping to lead a Holy Land Pilgrimage from November 30-December 10, 2026 (N.B.: that’s over 20 months from now), together with the incomparable John Sonnen of Regina Magazine and Liturgical Arts Journal, and chaplain Fr. Pablo Santa Maria, whom I accompanied to Greece & Turkey (you can see some pictures of our Masses here, for instance). It goes without saying that we will have a daily Traditional Latin Mass; indeed, we will chant the Mass everywhere we can!

To find out more, visit the dedicated page at St. Charles Catholic Pilgrimages.

Liturgical Lessons

Interior life and liturgical life belong together

David Torkington has written another beautiful essay, well worth reading: “Liturgy, Redemption, and Contemplation.” The overall picture he paints is certainly correct: unless we develop an interior life, the liturgy will tend to be like water off a duck’s back. I do, however, have a quibble that may not be minor: the author tends to bifurcate personal and liturgical too much (“inner and outer,” as he likes to say), not recognizing that the way the liturgy is offered, and the content of it, is either contributing to or obstructing a life of meditation and contemplative prayer.

Put it this way: both personal and liturgical prayer have “outer” and “inner” aspects, and there is a tight symbiotic relationship between public and private worship. The traditional liturgy itself helps form the interior life. I never knew what prayer, meditation, or contemplation were until I learned to pray at the old Mass, which opened those doors to me; I never knew what lectio divina meant until the old rite taught it to me by its immersive and playful approach to Scripture.

African Catholicism

In a review of Is African Catholicism a “Vatican II Success Story”?, Phillip Campbell writes:

Narratives are repeated but never demonstrated. They are invoked as evidence in other discussions, but are seldom the subject of their own discussion. Narratives are lazy, affording one the ease of certainty without having to work for it (truth, on the other hand, requires patience, diligence, and the careful sorting of detail). Narratives are often nested within one another like Russian matryoshka dolls, lesser narratives forming the building blocks of bigger narratives, the whole thing rising into one monumental edifice of fabrication, where constituent narratives mutually reinforce one another to keep the entire structure together.

Perhaps no event in Catholic history has generated narratives on par with the Second Vatican Council. From “the new lectionary has more Scripture” to “Eucharistic Prayer 2 is patristic,” decades of spin has been woven to justify the conciliar reforms while handily explaining away the corresponding demographic freefall. One such prevalent narrative has been, “Even though the Church in the West is in trouble, the conciliar reforms have been successful in Africa. Catholicism in Africa is thriving!” I’d been told this from the day I entered the Church; I even repeated it myself for years, until my guardian angel slapped me on the cheek and I realized that there was zero evidence for what I was asserting.

I was therefore thrilled to learn about Os Justi’s new book, Is African Catholicism a “Vatican II Success Story”? This concise little book does an excellent job casting doubt on this narrative with appeals to history, liturgy, and some common-sense investigative reporting.

Read the rest of the review at Unam Sanctam Catholicam.

“Altogether a unique and challenging book!”

That’s how Stuart Chessman thinks of Sebastian Morello’s Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries.

Like Dreher, Morello confronts the desacralization of the world and of the contemporary Church, both now almost totally suffocated by the rationalism and materialism of modernity. The mystic wellsprings of Christianity have been largely sealed off.... Throughout this book the author provides a critical review of the state of the Roman Catholic Church today. I have rarely read such a damning and accurate indictment....

“MMM summarizes some of the best arguments in favor of monasticism that you will encounter anywhere. For Morello, Western Christendom is Benedictine. (In contrast, he has reservations about the spirituality of the Society of Jesus.) He sees the revival of the Church (whenever that occurs) as the rising out of a renewed monastic spirituality.

MMM… This Morello cherry is that delicious!

“Finish your sacrament.”

That is what he said. “I will not let you go,” the knight continued, “until it is complete.” [The chronicle of Jean de Joinville continues:] “He pulled himself together, and performed the Sacrament, and sang his Mass all through. And he never sang service again.”

Read more in Robert Keim’s “The Triumph of Failure.”

Time to reverse the past 60 years

Drop everything (as soon as convenient) and read this article by Eric Sammons: “Catholics Are Rapidly Losing Ground.” It confirms in statistical spades everything trads have been saying about the “demographic collapse” and the need for a radical shift in policy. And while I agree with Eric that the traditional Latin Mass is not the “magic bullet” (i.e., the one and only thing needed for a reversal), I also agree with him that it is an indispensable part of the response that must be made to the evaporation of Catholic identity in the relentless assaults of Modernia (to use a Hilary White expression). What a wake-up call! Are there leaders in our Church who are willing and able to wake up? Are the Catholic conservatives ready to wake up at last? Or will they slumber all the way to doomsday?

I can’t help but think of Martin Mosebach’s observation:

[T]he turning-around of the altars . . . is the most palpably felt transgression against the tradition of prayer in the whole world. The priest should turn himself, along with the congregation, to the Crucified and to the Christ who will return from the east; he should direct his prayers, in common with the congregation, to the altar and to Christ. This change in the direction of prayer has caused greater harm in Europe and America than all of the relativizing, demythologizing, and humanizing theologies put together. It became patently clear to even the simple faithful that the prayers were directed, not to God, but rather to the congregation, which was to be put in the correct mood so as to celebrate itself as the “people of God.”

Concretely, I think it’d be fair to say that when the pope, or barring that, every bishop in the world, has restored worship ad orientem, leaving behind once and for all the exploded false theory that “this is how the early Christians worshiped” or, even more stupidly, “this is how the Last Supper was set up,” we will know that they are in earnest about setting the Church on a proper basis: versus Deum, toward GOD. Until then, the establishment is nothing but a hot air factory that deserves its well-earned demise.

Rehabilitating a condemned Jansenist local council

In “A Radical Forerunner of Vatican II?: The Synod of Pistoia’s Liturgical Texts,” Notre Dame professor Shaun Blanchard does his level best to rehabilitate Pistoia, arguing that the papal condemnations of it were misguided, and that its promotion of vernacularization, inculturation, simplification, “active participation,” etc. were perfectly fine ideas for which the Counter-Reformation Church was not yet ready. John XXIII’s commitment to ecumenism, Blanchard maintains, affirmed ways in which Catholics could and should look more like Protestants. I would say this kind of piece represents the cutting edge of the pro-Novus Ordo camp, so if you are interested in what its apologists are saying, check out the article. (One very helpful feature of the piece is a link to the author’s translation of Pistoia’s decrees on liturgy.)

• Blanchard’s logic: Vatican II endorsed key aspects of Pistoia that earlier popes had condemned; therefore Pistoia was prophetic and ahead of its time, and we should rejoice in the hip new rite in a thousand vernaculars and lots of par-ti-ci-pa-tion!

• Traditionalist’s logic: the vision of liturgy taught by Trent against the Protestants is true and, thus, Pistoia stands rightly condemned. Vatican II endorsed key aspects of Pistoia; to that extent, its reform likewise deserves to be rejected.

Why Confession nearly disappeared

An important series by Phillip Campbell continues at NLM. If you want to know why there was an absolute trainwreck with confession, such that now only 10% of Catholics who identify as Catholics go to confession at least once a year, this is the place to go. Here, in part 4 and part 5, Campbell dissects a particularly slimy 1971 article by Dominican theologian Jean-Marie Tillard, who with serpentine logic argues that mortal sins don’t have to be confessed before receiving Communion. No wonder the collapse was so rapid.

Having spent the better part of a year reading these Concilium essays, I am consistently shocked at the disdain which the authors have for basic Catholic truths, as well as the complexity they introduce into theological questions which are fairly cut and dry.

It is indeed very beneficial to read these old works from the ’60s and ’70s, because the authors there were EXPLICIT in telling you what they wanted to do, before their ideas became mainstream and the conservatives forgot why certain changes in rite, custom, and mentality took place.

Ashes to ashes…

Have a look at the traditional prayers for the blessing of ashes and then the ones that replaced them in the Novus Ordo. Comparisons like this never cease to astonish; they show what an absolute catastrophe the liturgical “reform” was, without the need for any endowments superior to consciousness and literacy.

A successor of the apostles who talks like it

I am always glad to hear what Archbishop Héctor Agüer has to say. Recently he wrote, in “What Is the Path Forward for the Church? The Church Lives by Her Tradition”:

The Church lives by Tradition, she must always return to it, especially when she has been indifferent to it or has distanced herself from it, fascinated by the worldly agenda. Tradition is not a mere repetition of the same thing, but a living reality that grows and develops. Many centuries ago, St. Vincent de Lerins enunciated his law: “In eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia”: that is, a development in which Tradition remains always identical, but always new. This is its richness. The Church of the coming years must return to the richness of Tradition. In many countries, the young have understood this, while their elders remain attached to passing novelties. This fact, which can be statistically proven, is paradoxical.

Against narrow-minded traditionalism

Write Stuart Chessman in “Two Faces of Catholic Traditionalism”:

It is not heterodox or “syncretistic” to find mysterious correspondences between the Faith and other religions throughout history. One may glance at the Sistine chapel with its prophets and sibyls. And what of the role that Vergil had in the Church early on as a supposed precursor of the Gospels? Despite Ricossa’s aspersions [against Cristina Campo], a Catholic may seek out the good in schools of thought not aligned with Christianity. Thomas Molnar, for example, cited authors like Mircea Eliade or Jung — and even, if less frequently, Guénon and Evola — for their insights into desacralization and the loss of the sacred in the West. Yet he in no way was their disciple; he even wrote a book against such currents of thought (The Pagan Temptation, 1987).

Chant to the rescue

A very beautiful, well-argued, and richly sourced article by Fr. Robert Johansen appeared at Adoremus, “Toward a Theology of Music: How Sacred Chant Clothes the Sacred Text.”

The natural expression of the group is sacramentalized in song, because the song makes present the heavenly reality of Christ’s voice praying in and through his Church in the liturgy. Aristotle expressed more than he even realized: liturgical music has the capacity to directly touch the soul in a supernatural way, because that music is the expression of the voice of Christ, who is the author of that soul and its redeemer.

Papal Updates

The pope’s condition remains stable, but the buzz behind the scenes is rising in volume, and you’d better bet that cardinals are talking and meeting all over the place. The preferred candidate of the progressives is almost certainly Parolin because he’s “in the center of things,” and has a (totally undeserved) reputation as a moderate or a centrist. He is anything but, as we can learn from an article at Rorate Caeli and another at The Remnant.

In “Geopolitics and Papal Elections,” Daniel B. Gallagher explains why it is perfectly legitimate for a conclave to have certain this-worldly considerations in mind, in addition to its (hopefully) more spiritual aspirations:

If you have any doubt that geopolitics should play a role in papal elections, think of this: while choosing someone to step into the shoes of the poor fisherman from Galilee, the cardinals are also electing the head of a sovereign, juridical entity under international law that actively participates in bilateral and multilateral international relations through the accreditation and reception of diplomatic representatives and the ratification of treaties. If you think the Holy See has lost its power to influence global affairs through that sovereign status, think again.

After several 43-car-pileups on Facebook concerning posts on Trump, Vance, Zelensky, and other such topics, I wrote the following.

“What I find extraordinary at this moment is that there seem to be only two accepted modes of thought and discourse about Trump: the hermeneutic of hatred or the hermeneutic of triumphalism. Few people seem willing to take him on a case-by-case basis, evaluating each of his major acts for its merits or demerits — the way we would do for most statesmen in history, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Muslim, whether predominantly virtuous or vicious. Moreover, it would seem a good exercise in epistemic humility to say ‘There are at least a couple of different ways to interpret this latest move; I personally incline towards A, but I can see why people might incline towards B.’ Instead, you see thundering and all-encompassing denunciations or equally knee-jerk apologias that verge on the comical. It’s almost enough to make a person despair of the possibility of rational discourse.”

A man whom I greatly respect challenged me: “Do we not do the same with the Holy Father?”

My reply:

“Not if he has given 12 years’ worth of reasons to distrust his orthodoxy and dispute his good intentions. I agree that polarization is an evil. However, Pope Francis is guilty of enormities next to which Trump is like a schoolchild, due to the nature of the pope’s office and the sphere of his influence. So, I don’t see a true parallel between Trump and Francis. Trump’s a mixed bag, Francis not so much (even the good he says/does is instrumental to his overall program). Put differently, at this point to say something positive about Francis is actually dangerous, because it perpetuates the illusion that he is a good pope and a good man, at a time when Catholics need to be awakened from their slumber.”

If you are wondering why I think Francis has been uniquely bad as a pope, the most succinct account would be “The Crimes and Heresies of Pope Francis, Their Causes and Effects, and the Action to Be Taken.”

Longtime readers of Tradition & Sanity will recall my series on Teilhard de Chardin, a modernist of extraordinary audacity. If you haven’t read these articles, you might find them eye-opening series:

Teilhard de Chardin: A Key to Understanding Our Jesuit Pope

Gilson, Maritain, Tresmontant, Journet, and von Hildebrand on Teilhard de Chardin

Teilhard’s Pseudo-Scientific Inversion of Christianity: Five Recent Writers

Sometimes Even the Brightest Sheen Can Lose Its Mettle: Teilhard’s Surprising Fan

Was Flannery O’Connor a Fan of Teilhard de Chardin? Setting the Record Straight

Well, from Gemelli Hospital, Teilhard’s ardent disciple continues to bang away:

Listening to the sciences continually offers us new knowledge. Consider what we are told about the structure of matter and the evolution of living beings: there emerges a far more dynamic view of nature compared to what was thought in Newton’s time…. We can cite as an example of this type of research Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and his attempt — certainly partial and unfinished, but daring and inspiring — to enter seriously into dialogue with the sciences, practising an exercise in trans-disciplinarity.

(“Trans-” something or other, that’s for sure; transgression?). Those were the words of Pope Francis in a February 26, 2025 Message to Participants in the General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life — the same academy he gutted of its orthodox members and filled with dissenters.

Meanwhile, an individual whom Pope Francis has treated contemptuously over the years — Cardinal Burke — has repeatedly stood outside Gemelli praying the rosary for him. Such nobility of spirit is obvious to everyone; but we never doubted it.

A priest on hand at these rosary vigils sent a report to Fr. Zuhlsdorf, who published it for us:

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, each night in St. Peter’s Square, a small schola has sung the “Oremus pro Pontifice” for the Holy Father. It’s a gesture that is simultaneously reverent and traditional, yet incredibly simple. For those of us in the know, however, the videos of the nightly chanting of this antiphon give a glimpse into the effects of the liturgical reform on the Church at large:

1. The Liturgical Movement was supposed to restore chant to its pride of place. Every night, the faithful, religious, and priests in attendance stare blankly at the schola, not really understanding the significance of the chant. On this point, if the Liturgical Movement had succeeded, then this would be a staple of the Catholic repertoire; a common chant sung regularly at parishes.

2. The majority of the cardinals, themselves, despite traditionally being models of Romanitas do not know how to sing this chant. They, too, stare blankly at the schola as they chant the antiphon. When they enter the conclave, will these men even know how to sing the Veni Creator, or the meaning of its poetry?

3. The only cardinals who do know how to chant the antiphon are the ones that you would expect, namely Burke and Arinze.

Other Favorite Articles or Videos

• Robert Keim, “The Most Perfect Expression of Being Alive”: « The Romans translated theoria as contemplatio, a word suggesting “to look at” or “to study, to consider,” and the equivalent Latinate terminology has generally been employed by English and French translators. Though I love the word “contemplation,” it gives an imperfect idea of theoria: “contemplation” in modern English is often a primarily intellectual or reflective activity, whereas Greek theoria is defined first as viewing or beholding, and secondarily as mental consideration.... Contemplation understood as theoria—that is, as a reflective, participatory beholding of reality—is integral to the full flowering of every human life and to the sanctification of every human soul. »

• Sebastian Morello, Nicholas Cavazos, and Timothy Flanders discuss the Platonic elements in St. Thomas. Here is a 17-minute segment open to the public. The remainder of the in-depth conversation can be viewed with a subscription either to Meaning of Catholic or to Tradition & Sanity (you’ll find that special link in last Monday’s post, “Emerging from the Liturgical Cave”).

Thank you for reading and may God bless you!

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