A Successor for the St. Gallen Mafia?
Their positions sound eerily alike, as if Fernández is making Martini’s priorities for the Church come alive.
The St. Gallen Mafia and Orwellian Francis
With his new interview on the 2005 papal election, Francis is retelling an edited version of history promoted by the St. Gallen mafia.
Schismatic Synodality: Personal and Ideological Origins
Fr. Serafino Lanzetta has an excellent new book out called The Symphony of Truth. As a writer with a focus on the roots of Pope Francis’s pontificate, I found this book fascinating. From multiple angles, Fr. Lanzetta tells the backstories behind today’s ecclesial crisis. Often, we can trace the root of a current problem back…
Six Takeaways From Pope Francis’s War on the Latin Mass
When Pope Francis released the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, he dropped what Dr. Peter Kwasniewski calls an “atom bomb” on the traditional Latin Mass. Now, as the fallout accumulates and the rubble builds up, Kwasniewski has edited and released From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War, a collection of brilliant, clarifying essays on Francis’s militant act.…
The Weapon of the St. Gallen Mafia is Synodality
Cardinal Martini Lives on. This is a story about the origins of the “synod on synodality.” It is a story about dreams—and déjà vu. All his life, Carlo Maria Martini (pictured above left) was a dreamer. In the Italian documentary Vedete, Sono Uno di Voi, we hear Martini’s conviction that only dreams make reality bearable.…
The St. Gallen Mafia and the Latin Mass
About a decade ago, in a Southwestern church in a run-down part of town, I saw it for the first time. From a back pew, I glimpsed something beautiful, perfect. Seeing the priest celebrate it was like being plunged into some heavenly choreography from the Book of Revelation. That first Latin Mass surpassed my understanding,…
St. Jean Vianney versus the Counterfeit Priests
PREFACE: I shall not endeavor to explain how these two letters fell into my hands. I shall only note how curious their contents are in light of the debates surrounding the upcoming Amazon Synod. 1. My dear Wormwood: I am gravely troubled by your slackening efforts against priests. You proceed as if they are equal…
The Spirit of Paganism Looms over the Amazon Synod
Something ancient — paganism — is “struggling to be born” again. It’s slouching toward birth, like Yeats’s “rough beast,” laboring to arrive for its hour. It’s emerging amid the rise of what exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger ominously describes as the “sixth generation.”[i] According to Fr. Ripperger, specific “generational spirits” — demons — afflict different generations.…
The Amazon Synod’s Long Game Is More Radical Than You Think
It’s 2029, and, by necessity, you’re attending a “group-conducted” Mass celebrated by Jerry the bus driver, Charles the bank manager, and Josh the carpenter. You’re in the Church dreamed up by the Amazon synod’s radical muse, Bishop Fritz Lobinger. After Pope Francis hailed Lobinger’s work, you saw that 2019 synod clinch the ordination of married…
What I Didn’t Know about Bugnini and the Liturgy
As a Millennial who was weaned on the Novus Ordo Missae, I have been inescapably molded by its main architect, Abp. Annibale Bugnini. Yet there is so much that I didn’t know about Bugnini and his revolution of the liturgy. I didn’t know, growing up, that a man infamously alleged to have been a Freemason…
The Ave Maria of Notre Dame
It was a video that brought so many of us to tears: a crowd kneeling and singing “Ave Maria” while Notre Dame burned. “Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu,” they beautifully sang as the camera panned to a shot of raw fire. The juxtaposition between the two images was surreal: at the very moment when devastating…
