Serious stuff, including some surprises at the end . . .
Summer Storms
“It’s dark on the Left now. They’ve reached that predictable moment where inflicting pain is all they have left.“ — Sasha Stone
Theories on the Epstein mess fly around like a murmuration of starlings wheeling across an angry summer sky. The birds are just birds. They are not the storm clouds in the background. Mark the difference.
You can rightly say that Mr. Trump has handled this Epstein business rather awkwardly — especially last Wednesday’s little show of vexation in the cabinet meeting, barking, nothing to see. . . just move along. What? You’ve been watching the Epstein psychodrama unspool for nearly twenty years, so how can it possibly come to this?
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Blessings for Sin, Stoles for Heretics, and Silence for Tradition: Leo XIV’s Church Is Francis’s Church
From Spain to San Diego, Leo XIV’s episcopal appointments and silent toleration of sacrilege reveal a Church that blesses sin, imitates heresy, and buries tradition, while calling it pastoral care.
Let’s start in Spain. On June 27, Pope Leo XIV appointed Bishop José Antonio Satué Huerto to the Diocese of Málaga. Satué is no stranger to ecclesial bureaucracy. He’s worked in the Congregation for Clergy, been close to Cardinal Omella, and played inquisitor in the Gaztelueta case. But his most notable credential is this: he was an enthusiastic supporter of Fiducia Supplicans, the 2023 Vatican document that authorized blessings for homosexual “couples.
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Old Rite That Francis Forbade to Be Published. Because They Went Against His Will
In early July, in different ways but almost concurrently, two expert vaticanistas, the American Diane Montagna and the Italian Saverio Gaeta, made public for the first time the main results of a survey ordered by Pope Francis in 2020 in dioceses around the world on the celebration of the Mass in the old rite.
Vatican says leaked documents were only part of information Pope Francis used to restrict Latin Mass
Updated 6:28 AM CDT, July 3, 2025
ROME (AP) — Leaked documents seemingly undermining Pope Francis’ stated reason for restricting the old Latin Mass provided an incomplete reconstruction of the evidence that informed his 2021 decision to crack down on the spread of the ancient liturgy, the Vatican said Thursday.
New Evidence Confirms CDF Report, Erodes Vatican Narrative on Traditional Latin Mass Restrictions
A response to the Vatican’s July 3 statement on the newly released documentation concerning Traditionis Custodes
Diane Montagna Jul 10, 2025
Previously undisclosed documents raise serious questions about the stated rationale for Pope Francis’ 2021 decree restricting the Traditional Latin Mass.
VATICAN CITY, July 10, 2025 — More evidence has come to light confirming the authenticity of the sections I published last week from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s final report on its 2020 survey of bishops concerning the implementation of Summorum Pontificum, Benedict XVI’s 2007 apostolic letter liberalizing the traditional Roman liturgy.
The sections I published on July 1 comprised the CDF report’s overall assessment of the survey results and a collection of quotations from bishops that were meant to give Pope Francis an overall representation of their responses.
Since publishing that story, I have obtained the Vatican protocol number for the CDF final report. Additionally, I have obtained the introduction to its Second Part, which confirms that the overall assessment constituted the official “opinion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” to which Pope Francis refers in Traditionis Custodes.
When Wolves Wear Vestments: The Synodal Siege Within the Church
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
There are moments in the Church’s history when the sheep must look up – not because of storms from the world, but because the shepherds themselves have fallen silent … or worse, have joined the wolves.
St Paul once warned the Church in Ephesus with piercing clarity:
“I know that, after my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock” (Acts 20:29).
And those wolves have come. They wear vestments. They speak of mercy, but they mock truth. They preach inclusion, but they exclude fidelity to the Deposit of Faith. They bless what God has called sin.
We are living through a siege – not from without, but from within. This is the hour of betrayal not unlike the garden of Gethsemane. But this time the betrayers wear miters and carry croziers. . . . .
Report on McCarrick Scandal Hit a Wall of Silence
July 10, 2025 Sexual Abuse from National Catholic Reporter by Peter Feuerherd
It was a story that got away from the National Catholic Reporter.
NCR tried and was unable to confirm the long-rumored abuse allegations against Theodore McCarrick, then a cardinal and archbishop of Washington, D.C., before they became national news.
One of the reporters who investigated was my late brother, Joe Feuerherd, former editor and publisher of National Catholic Reporter.
This is the story behind that story.
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No More Lavender Mafia!
Jul 10, 2025
With the appointment of Fr. Thomas Hennen, bishop-elect, as bishop of Baker, Oregon, we face a troubling reality: instead of correcting the trajectory set by Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV is doubling down on it – deepening the ambiguity that has plagued the Church.
Fr. Hennen is not merely a well-meaning pastor – he was intimately involved in drafting pastoral guidelines that blur the clear lines of Catholic teaching on sexuality and gender.
His work with Davenport’s LGBTQ+ directive may carry the veneer of welcoming language, but in substance it echoes the rhetorical strategies of gender ideology, undermining Catholic clarity and weakening the call to chastity. When who we are as men and women becomes negotiable, the Gospel becomes negotiable.
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Hokay, now come the blockbusters. Remember, you read it here . . . .
Diocese Banishes Latin Mass to Undersea Cave Accessible Only by Scuba Gear
Bishop Brown Also Considered Coal Mine and on a Plane’s Wings for Single TLM Location
James R. Green and Everett Polinski Jan 30, 2025
Charlotte, NC – Bishop Sam Brown of the Diocese of Charlotte placed new restrictions on the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass within his diocese today.
While it will be allowed to continue once a week for now at one location within his diocese, as Bishop Brown commented on the diocese’s website today, it will be moved from its current location in a gym in the most rural part of his diocese: “I will extend the courtesy of allowing the celebration of the Extraordinary Form for one more year, it will only be allowed in one location each Sunday, in an undersea cave off of the Atlantic coast accessible only by scuba gear.
“It’s only two hundred feet underwater, a very very generously easy location to swim to, and while the priest and all attendees will have to wear scuba gear to attend the TLM, Traditionalists should be thankful that we didn’t decide to put the diocesan-approved Latin Mass at the bottom of the Marianas Trench,” Bishop Brown added. “We’re being very generous here, and I want to be clear that I want no complaints about this location. Ok?”
Traditionalist Catholics are mixed about the Bishop’s announcement. While most are glad that Bishop Brown, known for his close friendship with leftist German Cardinal Gunter Schuster, is still allowing the Latin Mass within his diocese, some have “concerns” over the practicality of them bringing their families to the new weekly Latin Mass. “I can’t buy scuba gear for my six-month-old baby,” said one concerned father of fifteen whom IIT interviewed from Charlotte, NC (he asked us to keep his name anonymous).
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To Alleviate Bishops’ Scrutiny, Traditionalists Rebrand TLMs as “Undocumented Masses”
No Mass is Illegal
Everett Polinski Jul 13, 2025
As we’ve been at the forefront of reporting here on Irkutsk Ice Truckers, bishops have been cracking down both on Latin Masses as well as any other instances of tradition they’ve found within their dioceses under the heavy hand of Traditiones Custodes. But some people within the diocese of one of the largest enemies of tradition, Bishop Martin’s Charlotte, think they have a solution.
Liberal bishops like Martin, who feel threatened by tradition, are usually great friends of mass migration, happy to look the other way at illegal immigration, fight the construction of Trump’s border wall, and protest I.C.E. Following the stereotypical liberal lines, no one is illegal, they say, only “undocumented.”
Mr. Pius Tentherson of Charlotte, NC, father of twenty-one, a professional cribbage player, and an expert on medieval horticultural astronomy, thinks that this gives traditionalists like him an opening.
“If Traditiones Custodes has to be the ‘law’ and if strictly implemented, it takes away the ability for Latin Masses, why don’t we just ask priests to keep saying them but call them ‘undocumented Masses’ and our parishes ‘marginalized undocumented communities’? Surely Bishop Martin will stand up for those like us on the margins of the Church and give us access to ‘spiritually-reproductive health services’?”
Fr. Matthias VonSchaffer, Tentherson’s pastor at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church, whose TLM is due to be shut down by the bishop within a few months under the regulation, isn’t fully convinced, but thinks it’s an idea worth looking into.
“We would have to somehow equate Bugnini and the liturgical revolutionaries with I.C.E. and start violently protesting in the streets to get enough attention to get Martin to support us, but if Tentherson can get enough of his friends to do this, I’d support him. I just can’t be seen as the one launching the movement, or I’ll be banished to the hinterlands of the diocese.”
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Bp. Martin and Cdl. Roche Claim Parish is Two Weeks Away from Acquiring an Altar Rail
Everett Polinski Jun 28
In a major warning to the leftist Church establishment, Cardinal Roche, the head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship warned that spies for Charlotte’s Bishop Martin have uncovered dangerous plans that one of his parishes, St. Ann Catholic Church in Charlotte is “two weeks away from acquiring and weaponizing an altar rail” and dozens of others are pondering similar steps.
Although the Bishop tried to pre-emptively strike the production facility in the church’s parish hall, traditionalists resisted the attack and saved most of their work, and remain 90% of the way through the wood enrichment and polishing process, leaving them only “days away from installing the deadly (to modernism) device should they wish to go ahead with completing it.”
Read full story
To Prevent “Disunity” in His Diocese, Bishop Will Ban Catholicism
“Catholicism is Divisive” He Complains
Everett Polinski May 28, 2025
Bishop Sam Brown of the Diocese of Charlotte, N.C., has had terrible issues with disunity among the Catholics in his diocese. Unfortunately, many of the people of his diocese aren’t terribly onboard with the bishop on the latest trends in liturgical dance, “pride Masses”, and inculturation.
The problem, from the perspective of the bishop, runs deep. It appears that many people in his diocese don’t like the latest trends and instead prefer something called “Catholicism” and attending things called “sacraments.”
These innovations from Chicago, for example, are not popular amongst the “divisive” people in his diocese:
“These are dangerous, divisive people and they are destroying the peace and harmony of our beautiful synodal community here in our diocese,” Bishop Martin told his priests in a memo issued today.
“In order to keep our diocese safe from a dangerous spread of tradition, we’re going to have to ban this thing called ‘Catholicism’ and especially these things called ‘Sacraments.’ Definitely the ‘Mass.’ That’s really really dangerous and divisive. It might make people think of a really divisive Divine person who became man, Jesus Christ.”
— more to come (mostly) about the world of things Catholic —
Blithe Spirit 