Surrender to Jesus prayer — some everyday thoughts about what might just be a good idea . . .

Consider trying a novena. Open up new possibilities for yourself. Give it a shot . . .

It’s one of many on this site.

Has dozens to pick from.

This one I am liking very much. It starts with this prayer, which makes its point early on, of course.

Jesus speaking, as told by Fr. Dolingo Ruotolo, an Italian priest:

Why do you confuse yourselves by worrying? Leave the care of your affairs to me and everything will be peaceful. I say to you in truth that every act of true, blind, complete surrender to me produces the effect that you desire and resolves all difficult situations.

Time to be as a little kid, right? The stance called for to be fit for heaven, as the Savior said, right?

And then the follow-through:

O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

Something there is refreshing about the language, no? Different prayer each of  the nine days. Stay tuned.

And while you’re at it, give faith, hope and charity a chance . . .

Start with a sort of modernized (gulp) version of these three “cardinal virtues.” Make it for your prayer a slight change from this standard translation of the Latin’s Fides, Spes, and Caritas, while you’re at that, change the case, from nouns to verbs:

Believe God, Trust Him, Respect Him.

One, believe what He says, in the Bible’s two testaments, old and new, and what He has infused in the earliest thinking by his Apostles and the church they founded . . .

Next, trust Him to do the best for you and endorse it 101% , whatever it turns out to be.

Finally, respect Him, show what you think of Him and act it out, as a first small step towards reverence, allowing you to ease up on that prayer-wise.

Hiraeth In Exile continues his dissection of Pope Leo . . .

Yesterday:

Leo XIV’s August 20 general audience on Judas reads like a sentimental Hallmark meditation. He extols Jesus offering the morsel of bread to the betrayer as proof that “true forgiveness does not await repentance, but offers itself first.” The problem is that this is not Catholic doctrine but modernist therapy-speak.

Gulp.

The Catholic faith teaches that forgiveness is tied to repentance. Our Lord told the Apostles: “If thy brother sin against thee, rebuke him: and if he do penance, forgive him” (Lk 17:3).

Clear enough.

Grace is not license, and mercy does not negate justice. Yet Leo twists the scene of Judas into a parable of unconditional acceptance, suggesting God’s love frees the sinner even when he persists in betrayal.

Does he know what he is doing?

This is the same logic that has justified Communion for the divorced and “blessings” for same-sex couples.

Judas is rehabilitated as the patron saint of Vatican II pastoral theology.

From this we gather:

Leo’s “catechesis” is . . .  a sermon without the Cross. Evil is acknowledged only as a backdrop for love’s triumph, not as an objective rupture requiring conversion. It is Christ as life coach, not Christ as Judge.

Saints preserve us!

4 days ago:

His Aug, 17  sermon?

. . . Our Lord speaks . . . of division, fire, contradiction . . . [what] His coming brings . . .  But instead of affirming that Christ came to separate truth from error and sheep from goats, Leo transformed the passage into yet another warm meditation on being “good people” misunderstood by the world.

Martyrs died for the eternal truth of the matter? No, they “simply bore witness to ‘love’ when they shed their blood.”

Parents say “no” to their children, teachers labor honestly, politicians act with integrity: all noble but natural virtues that could be preached by any civic leader.

That’s good people for you.

Leo . . .

. . .  manages to evade the entire scandal of the Gospel: Christ came to divide, not to harmonize, to pit truth against falsehood, to call down fire that purges and judges.

In Leo’s gloss, the fire becomes little more than moral perseverance dressed up with a pious bow.

No. Big. Deal.

He had lunch.

After Mass in Albano Laziale, Leo hosted lunch with the poor and Caritas volunteers. Waiters in pressed white shirts served vegetable lasagna, veal, and fruit salad beneath awnings in the papal gardens. The message was simple: break bread, see God’s image in every person, live fraternity.

No Catholic would deny the duty of charity or the dignity of the poor. But here, once again, the supernatural is flattened into sociological pleasantries.

Like a civic leader, he’s allergic to things supernatural.

“To be together is to live with God,” he declared. But grace does not flow from fellowship, but from the altar of sacrifice . . . baptismal regeneration, objective channels instituted by Christ.

It’s as if he’s loath to lay on the papal part, or so it seems . . .

What’s cooking on the Pope Leo front, marked by a frequent follower/objector. 3 homilies show Leo as preacher to and for a low common denominator of holders to the supernatural . . .

With a view to his being a Francis in nice-guy clothing . . .

Leo the secular pope who aims to please . . .

The Pope Of Attraction     Posted by

Mundabor starts with Hope, the theological virtue . The Catechism, he says, quoting Google,

“. . . defines hope as a theological virtue by which individuals desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as their ultimate happiness, placing their trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on their own strength, but on the grace of the Holy Spirit”.

Even Google knows, he says. But does Pope Leo? “I think he does,” says Mundabor, but adds that Francis “probably didn’t,” referring to his describing Hope as “the desire and expectation of good things to come despite or not knowing what the future may bring,” which hardly did it justice.

In any case, Mundabor asks readers to “focus not on the single phrase, but on the whole context of what Pope Leo said” in his recent speech to a Knights of Columbus convention, after reading which “you will realize how absolutely worldly the man’s thinking is.” [Emphasis author’s throughout]

He quotes Jesus far more than Francis, but “twists the message so that it is not supernatural and can be adapted to non-Catholics, and even to non-Christians.” [Italics author’s throughout]

His hope is “not a robust confidence in the Final Repentance [or] a humble, but humbly optimistic confidence in Divine Grace.”

No, it is the “feeling” that “good worldly things will be happening to you. . . . confidence that you will get the job, not . . . that you will get Salvation.

“You see . . . how, ignoring the things of heaven . . . the ‘message’ can be applied to . . . everything and everyone, fully detached from any religious meaning.”

The good Knight of Columbus is the one, Leo clearly thinks, that encourages everybody to hope that the job will come, the bills will be paid, the baseball team will win the game.

The author unloads.

Oh, what a great message of insipid, plasticky, worldly “hope”! And how well can this plasticky minimum common denominator be applied to everyone!

You can give your message of “hope” to a Jew, a Muslim, even an Atheist without offending him in the least with that most uncomfortable Individual, Christ, and with that most uncomfortable of places, hell! Can you see how everybody feels oh so good as they encourage each others to have “hope”?

At a Rotary meeting?

“What we have here is an extremely superficial, plasticky, courage-free ‘Pope of good and easy feelings,’ . . .

“This . . .  falls short of proper Catholicism, because Catholicism isn’t a feel-good exercise.

If I say to you that I find my joy in Christ, but don’t follow up with what Christ said (examples: the Four Last Things and the role of the Church in the economy of salvation), I am giving off a worldly, relativistic message in which some like chocolate, some strawberry and some vanilla, but it’s ok because the important thing is that we can all celebrate that we like spending time together eating ice cream.

Winding up . . .

This is Christianity without Christian message . . .

This papacy will, I am still extremely confident, never fall to the lows of Francis; but I am . . .  afraid . . .  it will degenerate into a . . .  collection of platitudes and easy good feelings, with any idea of promotion of Catholic thinking and living sacrificed to the imperative of not offending anyone.

And his roaring finish . . .

It’s an improvement, but I can’t avoid hoping for a funeral and another roll of the Providential Dice as is. [!] [Emphasis mine]

 

Mass the other day at my Latin mass church which also has not-Latin ones but oh the difference from your average non-Latin mass where it’s kept up with the latest in non-Latin ways . . .

Sunday morning, it was . . .

This mass not a fun time full of bon homie culminating in delicious hand-waving delights before shuffling up to the wait stand where one or more priestly presiders wait to hand over the sacred host. In the hand or on the tongue, your choice, but stay on your feet, don’t kneel so you don’t distract from the procession element.

The usual event opens with the request that worshipers turn and say hello to the one another, introducing yourself if necessary. Point made: this is a gathering of the faithful to rejoice in each other’s presence and heighten their realization of being performers every bit as much as the presider up front.

Ah yes, the one ordained to consecrate and be upfront and be heard almost every syllable so they pay attention. He’s the chief, star performer, microphone-equipped, impossible to miss. Here’s looking at you, he might be saying, purveyor of thoughts for the day, clearly the Mister Big — even if a good priest. He was taught all this, after all.

Point isn’t he, anyhow, nor, God save the mark, my fellow worshipers. Point is what’s happened. I write stunned by comparing today’s latest ordo as done in most places with the rare find, a new ordo mass that captures the moment, deserving and getting the attention it deserves, sans priest facing the people, sans sign of peace, sans communion standing in the hand, sans everything that, bless me, distracts.

I’m thanking God for that.

=============

While I’m at it, let me drop a message from The Surrender Novena, suggested to me a few weeks back by a confessor to whom I had laid out my crimes against Hope (Trust) which led to my worrying about things.

The first day of which had this for its offering, in words of Jesus as recorded by Father Dolindo Ruotolo (1882-1970):

Why do you confuse yourselves by worrying? Leave the care of your affairs to me and everything will be peaceful. I say to you in truth that every act of true, blind, complete surrender to me produces the effect that you desire and resolves all difficult situations.

To be followed, every day of the nine, this aspiration, to be repeated ten times:

O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!

Yes.

Vatican state no piker when it comes to protecting its borders. Holy exclusivity!

Its up there with the toughest.

Vatican City’s immigration law is one of the strictest in Europe.

Vatican citizenship is a rare status, tightly controlled and highly coveted. According to official records, only 618 individuals hold Vatican citizenship, making it the most exclusive in the world.

Regulations a-plenty.

(ZENIT News / Rome, 08.30.2024).- The Vatican City, though best known as the spiritual and administrative heart of the Roman Catholic Church, is also a unique sovereign state governed by its own civil laws.

Despite its small size and population, this city-state is rigorously safeguarded, both physically and legally, under a set of stringent regulations that define its borders, citizenship, and residency.

It’s been cracking down this year.

The Vatican City State has toughened sanctions for those who try to illegally enter its territory in areas where free access is not allowed.

In a decree issued last month by the Holy See, the monetary sanctions and prison sentences for those who violate the strict security regulations of Vatican City have been considerably increased.

Much?

The document, signed by Cardinal Fernando Vérguez Alzaga, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, provides for monetary fines ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 euros (about $10,200 to $25,700) and prison sentences ranging from one to four years.

These fines will apply especially to those who enter by means of violence, threats, or deception, bypassing border controls or security systems. In addition, those who enter with expired permits or do not meet the established requirements will receive administrative sanctions ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 euros (about $2,060 to $5,145).

Did Pope Francis know about this?

The Pope’s unconditional welcome for migrants does not apply to his own state.

While Pope Francis in his media appearances is constantly urging Catholics to open their arms ever wider to migrants, the Vatican papal state has just issued a decree to drastically protect its borders.

He saw it as their duty.

As is the case every twenty-five years, 2025 will be a jubilee year for the Catholic Church, which means that huge numbers of pilgrims will flock to Rome for the occasion.

A few days before Christmas, the Vatican issued designed to impose severe penalties on anyone attempting to enter the world’s smallest state illegally. The existence of this decree was only revealed on January 12th.

Didn’t anyone tell him?

Will his successor, Leo 14, maybe slow down a bit in his criticism of the U.S.?  Or at least explain  his (holier-than-thou?) stance? Ya gotta wonder.

The new mass: a Protestantizing of Catholic worship . . .

Its architect was explicit on the point.

The Novus Ordo Missae [New Order mass] was introduced in April 1969 by Pope Paul VI. From the start, this new rite was intended to have an ecumenical nature as declared by its chief architect, Fr. Annibale Bugnini in 1965 . . . 

.  . . who made no bones about his slash-and-burn philosophy.

“We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren-that is, for the Protestants.”

From which we gain an idea of where we stand with this general-in-charge of the century’s liturgical wrecking crew.

Pope Paul VI reportedly adopted the Bugnini view:

. . .  the intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to . . . the Mass was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy . . .  there was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic, in the traditional sense, in the Mass and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist service  . . .

This is from “an intimate friend” of the pope,  Jean Guitton, referenced in October 1994, in Christian Order.  Paul VI had 116 of Guitton’s books and had made marginal study notes in 17 of them.

Along with mass-Protestantizing came belief changes, argues Michael Davies, prolific traditionalist writer and defender of the Tridentine Latin mass.

When I began work on this trilogy [Liturgical Revolution] I was concerned at the extent to which the Catholic liturgy was being Protestantized. The more detailed my study of the Revolution, the more evident it has become that it has by-passed Protestantism and its final goal is humanism.

Fighting words, to be sure.

Oh me Oh my-o on the buy-o, gimme space and I will make a tiny effort to tell you . . . What happens at weekday mass . . .

7-17-25 What caught the eye, if not body and soul of yours truly on this day of days when the end has not yet come and various of you might find helpful and if not thought-provoking then provocative. Give reportage a chance is my point, which I trust is ok with you or most of you . . . Maybe not?

Let’s start with Father Bux interviewed by . . .

MiL: Father Bux, you describe the post-conciliar liturgical reform as a clear deviation from the genuine intentions of Vatican II and Sacrosanctum Concilium. In your opinion, what was the gravest mistake in implementing the reform?

Assuming Father Bux is one who should know and have opinions in the matter, we listen.

FR BUX: Placing the participation of the faithful—now seen as a “right”—above the rights of God, who by His Presence makes it possible for us to enter into relationship with Him.

This is divine worship, cultivating our relationship with the Lord. The liturgy is “sacred” for this reason; otherwise it becomes mere public ceremony, subject to display, spectacle, or entertainment—what in America is called “litur-tainment.”

Pew-sitters come first! Meet their needs, using God as jet plane to comfort, achieve relaxation, calming of nerves and other good things.

This seems a problem, to go by the Novus Ordo readings of the other day:

Matthew 10:34—11:1

Jesus said to his Apostles:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.
I have come to bring not peace but the sword.
For I have come to set
a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s enemies will be those of his household.

How that fits into worship for the worshiper rather than God, God only knows, especially in view of the next words graph out of the Savior’s mouth:

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Preacher who handles that has a challenge, to be sure.

So what of the operation that ruled Father Bux’s opinions not fit for consumption? As in this headline:

The Cancelled Interview of Father Bux

Published on the ‘Messa in Latino’ blog and mainly about his new book, the interview was abruptly taken down by Google along with the blog. . .

Edward Pentin Jul 16, 2025

By Google no less! To whom we turn for info on everything under the sun.

On July 11 Google’s Blogger.com platform removed — without giving any warning or specific reason — the traditional Italian Catholic blog Messa in Latino after Blogger.com had received a complaint about the site.

Now who might that be who complained? Go ahead, guess.

Start with a minion of the successor to the man who shot down Traditional Latin Mass, our current throne-occupier who has made token moves toward tolerating TLM but has held off getting serious about it. We may at least suspect the complaint came from leftovers from Francis, none of whom can have found ought in this time of Leo to make them uncomfortable.

So this . . .

. . . Messa in Latino blog, the most widely read traditional site of its kind in Italy, was taken down shortly after posting an interview with Father Bux, an expert liturgist and former consulter to the then-Congregations for the Doctrine of the Faith, Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and the Causes of Saints.

Oh.

Father Bux is on the other side in the war about liturgy, and the current pontiff’s people, knowing what he feels about the matter — as do many — knew what to do: cancel him!

Lock stock etc. The blog and all it contained!

We are not to take their current leader’s friendly manner for anything pacific when it comes to key issues. He cares!

We should have known this without a doubt when we saw the look on Chicago’s Cupich’s face when he accompanied the newly crowned Francis, I mean Leo, in his victory appearance on the porch, along with others.

Cupich offered the world a magnificent ear-to-ear grin which if it were wider would have required medical attention.

As for erasing the Google blog, our above offering tells not the half of it.

From Zenit, the World Seen From Rome:

Google cancels major Catholic blog: closure of traditionalist website sparks widespread debate on digital censorship

which gives us a story behind the story:

In a statement on X, Luigi Casalini, the journalist behind the site, lamented what he called a “grave violation” of free speech. He indicated that legal action is forthcoming, invoking Article 21 of the Italian Constitution, which guarantees the right to freely express opinions and explicitly prohibits censorship.

That, for our purposes, is the story. Behind it?

The sudden disappearance of a long-standing Italian Catholic blog has ignited concerns across Europe about freedom of expression in digital spaces—particularly when religious content becomes entangled with platform policies on hate speech.

Plot thickens?

Early on Saturday, July 12, visitors to «messainlatino.it» (MiL), a prominent website known for defending the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass and for its critical tone toward modern theological trends, were met with a brief and cryptic message: “Blog removed.”

Pow!

The blog, hosted on Google’s Blogger platform since 2007, is now inaccessible, its archive of over 22,000 posts abruptly erased from public view. No detailed explanation has been offered by Google, aside from a general reference to its community guidelines concerning hate speech.

Oh.

For many Catholics in Italy and beyond, «Messainlatino» had become more than a niche website. It was a liturgical chronicle, a rallying point for those seeking to preserve the Tridentine rite, and a place where conservative theological perspectives were given unapologetic voice.

A sort of Magna Carta in progress.

In June 2025 alone, as anticipation grew around potential liturgical reforms under the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, the blog drew over a million visits—a clear sign of its reach and resonance.

People were encouraged.

Now, critics are questioning whether this removal was a measured response to policy violations, or a troubling instance of ideological gatekeeping under the guise of content moderation.

Getting out of hand, you know.

In a statement on X, Luigi Casalini, the journalist behind the site, lamented what he called a “grave violation” of free speech.

He indicated that legal action is forthcoming, invoking Article 21 of the Italian Constitution, which guarantees the right to freely express opinions and explicitly prohibits censorship.

There’s hope.

Casalini is not alone in his outrage. Catholic intellectuals and journalists have described the shutdown as a significant blow—not only to traditionalist Catholics, but to pluralism within the Church.

Something honored in the breach under Francis, who ruled like born with a silver shovel in his hands, the better to get rid of nay-sayers.

Stefano Fontana, writing for the International Observatory Cardinal Van Thuân, emphasized the scale of the loss: this was not a temporary suspension, but a digital erasure.

Down with the nay-sayers. One complaint and the blog and its material, highly regarded as a Traditionalist voice, made to disappear. Something fishy here.

Fontana argued that «Messainlatino» had served as a consistent voice in Vatican reporting and was an important outlet for commentary on papal documents such as «Traditionis Custodes», which restricted the celebration of the older liturgical form.

More to come, we must expect.

Meanwhile, on another scene, from a former avant-garde liberation theologian, Father Clodovis Boff, came An Open Letter to the Bishops of Latin America which has had “a high resonance.”

Former liberation theology leader calls on Latin American bishops to focus on Christ

By Monasa Narjara Sao Paulo, Brazil, Jul 12, 2025

Friar Clodovis Boff has written an open letter to the bishops of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops’ Council (CELAM, by its Spanish acronym), who recently met in assembly, asking: “What good news did I read there? Forgive my frankness: None. You, bishops of CELAM, always repeat the same old story: social issues, social issues, and social issues. And this has been going on for more than 50 years.”

He’s had it.

“Dear older brothers, don’t you see that this music is getting old?” asked the priest, who belongs to the Order of the Servants of Mary (Servites), in reaction to the final document of the 40th Ordinary General Assembly of CELAM, held at the end of May in the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He socks it to them.

“When will you give us good news about God, Christ, and his Spirit? About grace and salvation? About conversion of heart and meditating on the Word? About prayer and adoration, devotion to the mother of the Lord, and other such themes? In short, when will you send us a truly religious, spiritual message?”

Nicely said indeed.

We note that he’s been there, done that and knows whereof he speaks. We note also, if we may, that he gets at the heart of the new (approach to) religion promoted by the likes of the late Pope Francis, if not of his successor.

His is a shot at more than his South and Central American brothers, but also to pushers of the social gospel syndrome in Europe and North America.

How the cookie crumbled on the 14th of July, year of Our Lord 2025, an embarrassment of riches and then some . .

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

James Howard Kunstler

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?

. . . .

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.

Chris Jackson

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.

. . . .

 

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

By NICOLE WINFIELD

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.

Diane Montagna

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

Bishop Joseph Strickland

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.

. . . .

No More Lavender Mafia!

Bishop Joseph Strickland

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.

. . . .

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).

. . . .

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.”

. . . .

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.”

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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.”

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— more to come (mostly) about the world of things Catholic —