For the past couple of years, many readers and friends have expressed their concern, telling me, “You need to take a long break from all of this.” And by “all of this,” they meant covering the crisis in the Church. It was hurting me, and they could see it. My response was always, “I know.…
For those who love the traditional Latin Mass, it’s been a rough few days. Pope Francis unleashed a new motu proprio last Friday — “Traditionis Custodes” — that overturned Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum and returned the TLM’s legal status to the days of the indult offered by Pope John Paul II. Except I think it’s fair…
Today, a new motu proprio letter was issued by Pope Francis imposing new (and in some respects brutal) suppressions on the usus antiquior of the Roman Rite. The truth is, we saw this coming. Rumors have been circulating for a while, and though the fact that we’ve heard similar things throughout this pontificate dulled our…
Ever since the new rite of Mass was introduced in 1969, battles over liturgy have ensued. But something has changed: we have reached a critical moment in Church history, namely, the widespread recognition that simply because a pope says or does something does not necessarily mean it is in the best interest of the Church…
Today, new comments have emerged from three high prelates — including Archbishop Arthur Roche, the new prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship — have added fuel to the speculation that an unwanted change is coming for those Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass. Rumors have been swirling for weeks that Pope Francis has…
It’s the middle of the month, and that means it’s time to take a look at the status of our fundraising effort for June, which is currently at only 30% of our goal. 1P5 is committed to continuing to bring you educational and inspiring Catholic content to help live your faith in challenging times. Our…
A couple weeks back, I announced that I was temporarily turning off our comment section as a desperate attempt to help keep my head above water. With an overwhelming amount of feedback from a couple of pieces I’d written still generating emails, direct messages, and comments, and a brand new baby in the house, along…
The past week has really been a wild ride. Last Tuesday, feeling I desperately needed to get some things off my chest, I published “Against Crippled Religion” at my tiny little Substack page, where I have been doing my more personal writing. I shared it a bunch of places and even linked to it from…
As some of you know, I have a personal blog, as it were, on the newsletter platform Substack. It’s where I go to air out my more personal and non-religious musings about the search for meaning, the pursuit of purpose, and other assorted interesting things about our sojourn in this universe. It’s a place, in…
This morning, I was very sad to learn of the death of Chuck Uhlenkott, the father of one of my best friends of the past 26 years and a singular figure in my own life. He passed away on May 13th. The funeral is today. In early 1997, the year I started college, I had…
Last month, Alexis McGill Johnson, the current president of Planned Parenthood, penned a New York Times Op-Ed in which she claimed, “We’re done making excuses for our founder.” That founder, of course, is the early 20th century racist eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who made contraception and abortion targeted at culling the “unfit” from society her life’s…
