SSPX Issue Statement on What Excommunication and Schism Really Are

Additionally, a key ally to Benedict XVI implores Leo to prevent divisions from festering in the Church. This can only be done by letting the SSPX have bishops and by punishing the Germans.

Medieval Builders Knew Something About Floors We Forgot

From Medieval Way

Medieval Way explores the construction techniques behind traditional earth and lime-ash floors, revealing their natural breathability and thermal properties. By contrasting these resilient, sustainable methods with modern cement flooring, the analysis highlights how contemporary materials can unintentionally trap moisture and damage the integrity of historic buildings.

Walk into an old English farmhouse while it is being gutted, and every so often you will catch a builder making the same discovery. They pry up a cold, cracked concrete floor poured in the 1960s, the kind that has been pulling damp into the walls and rotting the skirting boards for half a century. And sitting underneath it, they find another floor. Far older. A hard, dry surface that has been in the dark, doing its job, since before the building above it had its current name.

The modern floor failed in forty years. The one beneath it had already lasted five hundred, and it was made of dirt, lime, and ash.

We have been told that medieval floors were filthy. Packed mud and rotting straw, crawling with fleas, a hazard our ancestors put up with because they knew no better. That picture is mostly wrong, and the people who laid those floors understood things about moisture, heat, and the chemistry of a living building that we spent the last hundred years forgetting. This is the story of what was really under their feet, how they built it, and why we tore it out for something worse.

Traditional Catholic Morning Prayers in English | June

Traditional Catholic morning prayers to help start your day in a godly way! The month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. May our devotion to the mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus increase more and more each day. We've included the Memorare of the Sacred Heart and litany of the Sacred Heart. Begin your June with daily morning prayer. This video is a compilation of many traditional morning prayers Catholics say, and should not be considered a replacement for those who have an obligation to pray the Divine Office morning prayers.

The West's War on Christianity & Its Unintended Consequences

From Totus Catholica

For more than a century, the most powerful governments in the West set out to remove Christianity from public life. It keeps failing. In France, adult baptisms are breaking records. In Britain, church attendance is climbing among the young. In America, the long decline has levelled off. The ratchet turned out not to be a ratchet. The pattern is as old as Exodus 1;12: the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. Pharaoh prefigures every power that tries to stamp out the people of God. The bush burns but is not consumed. Tertullian watched Roman executions multiply believers and told the authorities plainly in 197 AD: the blood of Christians is seed. Augustine gave the reason in one sentence: you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you. You can ban the institutions of faith but you cannot legislate away the restlessness that produced them. CHAPTERS: 0:00 The Secular Project That Keeps Failing 1:32 The Stakes: Is the Desire for God Built In? 2:08 Exodus 1:12 and the Pattern of Multiplication 2:49 The Burning Bush and the People of God 3:08 Kahal, Ecclesia, and the Continuous Assembly 3:39 Acts of the Apostles: Persecution as Engine of Spread 3:52 John 12:24 and the Grain of Wheat 4:10 Tertullian and the Blood of Christians as Seed 4:42 Augustine and CCC 27: The Desire for God 5:25 France, Britain, and America: The Data 6:43 Protestant Objection: Matthew 16:18 7:07 Jewish Objection: The Maccabees Came First 🌍 Website: https://totuscatholica.org/ 📿 Rosary Guide: https://totuscatholica.org/rosary ✉️ Contact: https://totuscatholica.org/contact 🔍 Examination of Conscience: https://catholicexaminationofconscien... 📚 Free eBooks: https://buymeacoffee.com/totuscatholi... 👥 Become a Totus Insider: https://buymeacoffee.com/totuscatholi...

How Augustinians Rescued the Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The icon was saved by the Augustinians when the anti-Catholic Napoleon destroyed the Church in which it was enshrined.

From Aleteia

By Philip Kosloski

When Napoleon invaded Rome, the Augustinians (Pope Leo's religious order), saved the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help from destruction.

One of the most well-known and beloved icons in the Western Church is the icon of "Our Lady of Perpetual Help." It's featured in many Roman-rite Catholic churches, and many Catholics have a devotion to this "miracle" icon.

It has a fascinating history, one that involves its rescue from destruction by a group of Augustinian monks, the same religious order that Pope Leo XIV is a member of.

While the current church it is located in is staffed by the Redemptorists, previously it was kept in a church that was run for many centuries by Augustinians.

Saved from destruction

When Napoleon invaded Rome in 1812, he destroyed the church of San Matteo, which was between St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran. It was a church belonging to the Augustinian Order, and the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help had been venerated there for roughly 300 years.

To keep the icon from getting obliterated or stolen in the chaos, a few Augustinian monks took the icon from the church and hid it.

Here is an account of what happened, according to Fr. Michael Marchi, featured in the book Life of St. Alphonsus Ligouri:

"Between 1840 and 1853...I used to go and see an old lay brother named Austin Orsetti in the Augustinian monastery of Santa Maria in Posterula. He told me that when the church of St Matthew was destroyed the Augustinians had taken the Madonna of Perpetual Succour with them, to save it from profanation and had placed it, unknown to all, in the private oratory of their monastery. After the death of all the old Augustinian fathers, Brother Orsetti was the only witness of the past. Many a time he showed me the Madonna which had been venerated for ages at St. Matthew's saying, 'Never forget Michael, the miraculous Madonna of St Matthew's. Remember that it is here in this chapel.'"

What happened next is that the location of the miraculous icon was revealed to Pope Pius IX, who then ordered it to be placed in the church of the Redemptorists.

It was placed in their church as it was the only church remaining between St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran, and that location was favored by the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The icon was publicly venerated once again in 1866 and has remained in the custody of the Redemptorists ever since.

All of this was made possible by a few Augustinians who saved the icon from destruction.

Latin Mass in Africa: Michael Matt Interviews Missionary Priest

From The Remnant TV

On the Pilgrimage to Chartres, there is always a solemn high Latin Mass offered on Pentecost Sunday for 20,000 pilgrims in a field halfway between Paris and Chartres. This year, the Superior of the Missionaries of the Holy Cross in Tanzania (Africa) offered that Pentecost Sunday Latin Mass. His name is Father Antonius Maria. I caught up to Father Antonius in the shadow of the Chartres Cathedral on Pentecost Monday, and I hope our candid interview will give the RTV audience a feel for this amazing missionary priest and his massively successful work in Africa -- work which offers hope for the future of the Church not just in Africa, but throughout the entire world.

The Pope and a Communist Dictator

"Should we be surprised today that Liberation Theology and its leading figures, along with controversial ideas associated with Pachamama, have become influential within the Vatican?"

From One Peter Five

By Robert Lazu Kmita, PhD

Why can’t Nicolae Ceaușescu invite the Pope to Bucharest?

A Romanian joke from the time of the Communist dictatorship went like this:

Question: Why can’t Nicolae Ceaușescu invite the Pope to Bucharest?

Answer: Because the people greeting the guest upon his arrival would have to shout: “Ceaușescu, Papa!”

For those who do not know Romanian, the joke makes no sense. For Romanians, however, it carried bitter implications. The Romanian word “papa”—almost identical to “papă” (pope)—is a synonym for food used by parents when speaking to their children. When a mother asks her child, “Vrei papa?” (“Do you want pope?”), she is actually asking affectionately, “Do you want food?” Because of the similarity between the two words, if people had shouted “Ceaușescu, Papa!” upon the arrival of Pope Paul VI, the slogan could also have been interpreted as “Ceaușescu, (we want) food!”

The tragic reality of Romania in those days was that it was a country where not only freedom had become a memory, but even the most basic goods—above all food—were scarce. The empty shelves of Communist stores stood as a silent testimony to the results of a planned economy and the near-total abolition of private property. This explains the dark humor—the one thing Romanians never lacked—behind jokes such as the one mentioned above.

Actually this joke is connected to the meeting between Pope Paul VI and the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. Held on May 26, 1973, the discussion between the two heads of state had specific objectives. Grandiose and arrogant, like any dictator, Ceaușescu sought to strengthen his image as a great Communist leader, one capable of standing up to the Soviet Union when Russian tanks were expected to cross Romanian territory on their way to suppress the Prague Spring in 1968. Pope Paul VI was interested in the fate of the Greek Catholic Church (of the Byzantine rite), which had been abolished by the Communists in cooperation with the national Orthodox Church in 1948.

During their conversation, the Holy Father raised this delicate issue, following the Vatican’s controversial Ostpolitik. Ceaușescu’s response came as a cold shower for one of those popes who believed it was possible to negotiate with Mephistopheles:

Regarding the issue to which you referred specifically, however, I would like to declare that we consider it completely resolved. Romania’s history has been very turbulent, and it would be difficult for me to discuss it now. The struggle for national unity played an important role for centuries. The union of the two churches within the Orthodox Church we regard as a historical necessity, a necessity of national unity. And I must tell you frankly that in Romania no one discusses this issue anymore, nor wishes to discuss it.

The dictator, a slave to one of the most harmful ideologies of the modern world—nationalism—viewed churches merely as extensions of his political program. This is entirely possible in Eastern Christianity, where Orthodox churches are organized strictly along national lines and ethnic identities. Defined in strictly nationalist terms, all these Byzantine-rite Christian communities have been continually drawn into the turbulence of conflicts between the nations they represent.

Like all his predecessors, Communist or otherwise, Ceaușescu faithfully followed the guiding principles of an ultra-nationalist agenda that glorified the greatness of the Romanian people and their uninterrupted continuity from the time of the Dacians and Romans. The same perspective was behind his answer to Pope Paul VI: yes, we recognize fourteen denominations, but only on condition of strict subordination to nationalist principles. Since the Greek Catholics had allegedly betrayed this ideal by deliberately placing themselves under another head of state—the Pope—rather than under the authority of their own nation, they had no right to exist. The “national unity” invoked by Ceaușescu excluded any alternative.

A subtler but crucial point must also be emphasized: the underlying Marxist-Leninist idea that accompanied Ceaușescu’s nationalism was the strict subordination of religion to ideology. No characteristic is more representative of the Communist spirit. According to the directives of the one-party state, religion was to be destroyed when it refused to cooperate. If religious leaders obediently followed party directives, however, religion would be manipulated, controlled, and used to perpetuate the ideals of the Bolshevik pseudo-religion.

Personally, I believe that when the Blessed Virgin Mary referred at Fatima to the errors of Communist Russia, this is exactly what she meant: the manipulation of the Christian religion by an atheistic pseudo-religion. Those who experienced Communism from within understood this perfectly. Yet no one expressed it better than the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980. In The Captive Mind, he describes those Catholics who sought to reconcile Christian faith with Marxist-Leninist ideology. Called “patriot Christians” by the Communist party, they retained only the outward appearance of faith while emptying its words of their meaning. Having themselves become specters, their words were merely counterfeit copies of eternal truths.

The Party was pleased with such servants. Yet the Party also looked jealously upon the universality of the Catholic Church, which it wished to replace. At this point Miłosz explains—or perhaps prophesies—what would be the Party’s greatest achievement:

Without doubt, the greatest success of the Imperium would come if it could install a Party-line pope in the Vatican. A mass in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome performed by such a pope, with the assistance of dignitaries from those subjugated countries which are predominately Catholic, would be one of the most important steps toward the consolidation of the world empire.

As faithful Catholics, we may be shaken by such words. Yet even more troubling is the fact that despite direct supernatural requests—at Fátima and later at the convent of Tuy, where the Virgin Mary appeared to Sister Lucia in 1929—five successive popes refused to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Should we be surprised today that Liberation Theology and its leading figures, along with controversial ideas associated with Pachamama, have become influential within the Vatican?

Our Lady on Saturday

Today's Holy Mass from SSPX Australia. You may follow the Mass at Divinum Officium.

Fourth Day Within the Octave of St of John the Baptist ~ Dom Prosper Guéranger

Fourth Day Within the Octave of St John the Baptist

From Dom Prosper Guéranger's Liturgical Year:

The gladsome Octave of the Precursor has a still further increase of light in store for us. Let us imitate the Church, who once again concentrates her thoughts on the Friend of the Bridegroom; she knows well that hereby the Spouse Himself will be the better understood. For, according to the word of the best authorized princes of Christian doctrine: “the bonds which link together Jesus Christ and John the Baptist are so close, that the one cannot be known without the other; and if life eternal consists in knowing Jesus Christ, so also a part of our salvation consists in knowing Saint John.” (Bourdaloue, Sermon pour la fete de Saint Jean Baptiste)

The Precursor’s mission surpassed alone, as we have seen, that of all other Prophets and Apostles. But personally, who and what was this herald whose dignity was shown to us, on his feast-day, by the sublimity of the message that he bore unto the world? Did his private qualities, his personal sanctity, correspond with the eminence of the part allotted to him? That sovereign harmony which inspires the eternal decrees and presides over their execution, forbids us to doubt it. When the Most High resolved to unite his Word to human nature, he pledged himself to clothe this created Nature with qualities all divine, which would thereby permit him to treat with this New Adam as equal with equal, and to call him his Son. When, to this his Well-Beloved Son whom he wished to be, at the same time, Son of Man, he determined to give a Mother, the gift of a purity every way worthy of her august title, was from that moment, assured to this future Mother of God. Predestined before all ages to the most eminent service of the Son and the Mother, charged by the Eternal Father with the mission of first discovering the Word hidden within Our Lady’s womb, of accrediting the Man-God, of betrothing Him to the Bride; could it possibly be, that the holiness of John should, either in the designs of God or by his own fault, be less incomparably exalted than was his mission? Eternal Wisdom can never thus belie Itself; and that unparalleled eulogy which Jesus made of his Precursor, just before John’s death, (Matthew 11) sufficiently shows that the graces held in reserve for this soul, had there fructified in all plenitude.

Now, what must have been these graces which, at the very outset, show us John, three months previous to his birth, already established on summits of sanctity which the holiest persons scarce attain in a whole lifetime! He soars far above the range of sense and reason, which in him have not yet been called into play. With that intellectual gaze which is unsurpassed, save by the face to face vision of the Elect, he perceives his God present before him in the flesh; in an ecstasy of adoration and love, his first act emulates that of Seraphim. The being filled with the plenitude of the Holy Ghost became, from that moment, the portion of this child of Zachary and Elizabeth: a plenitude so overflowing, that at once the mother, and soon afterwards the father likewise, were themselves filled with the exuberance that brimmed over from their son. (Luke 1:15, 41, 67)

First then was he, after Our Lady, to recognize the Lamb of God, to give his love to the Bridegroom just come down from the eternal hills; first was he likewise, to penetrate the mystery of the divine and virginal maternity; without separating the Son from the Mother, he had, at one and the same time, both adored Jesus and honored Mary above all creatures. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb! (Luke 1:42) Unanimous tradition tells us, that when pronouncing these words, Elizabeth was but the organ and interpreter of her son. As witness of the Light, John begins with Mary, the first recipient of his testimony; unto her, is addressed, in praise and admiration, the first expression of the sentiments which animate him. Himself the Angel, as the Prophets style him, he takes up and completes Gabriel’s salutation to earth and heaven’s sweetest Lady. (Luke 1:28) It was the enthusiastic shout of his gratitude, fully illumined as to Mary’s part in the sanctification of the elect; the cry of his soul, on awaking to sanctity, at the first sound of the Virgin Mother’s voice. In fact, for his sake it was, that after the angel’s visit, she had crossed the mountains in great haste; but other favors yet has Our Lady for her John. Heretofore silent, before that Seraph by whom she was sure to be understood, — Mary now intones her divine Canticle, whereby unto God, is given glory, and unto John, the comprehension of the ineffable Mystery in all fullness. Just as she had sanctified her Son’s Precursor, so would the Mother of God, in a similar manner, next form and instruct him. The Magnificat is the first lesson taught to Elizabeth’s son: incomparable lesson of divine praise; a lesson which gives John the understanding of the whole Scriptures, the knowledge of the divine plan throughout ages. For the space of three months, this marvelous education is continued, in the angelic secrecy of still more hidden communications.

Oh! yes, indeed; well may we say, in our turn, and with more reason than did the Jews: What an one, think ye, shall this child be? (Luke 1:66) The dispensatrix of heavenly treasures, kept in reserve for John the first effusion of those floods of grace, of which she had become the divine reservoir. The river which maketh glad the City of God, (Psalm 45:5) shall no more stay its course, carrying to every soul, until the end of time, its countless streamlets; but its first impetuous outburst, in all the might of its buoyant gush, bore down at once upon John; the fullness of its yet undivided flood, rolled its vast waters to and fro over this one soul, as though they existed for no other. Who may measure these torrents? Who may tell their effect? Holy Church attempts not to describe it; but lost in admiration at the sight of the mysterious growth of John beneath the astonished gaze of angels, losing sight of the feebleness of that infant body, in face of the maturity of the soul which dwells within it, she exclaims on the glorious Birthday of the Precursor: “Great is the man whom Elizabeth hath brought forth! Elisabeth Zachariæ magnum virum genuit, Johannem Baptistam prcecursorem Domini.” (Ant. I in Laud. et 2 Vesp.)

That we may put these our thoughts into liturgical form, let us sing this sequence, the text of which is borrowed from the ancient Missal of Lyons of 1530. The filial homage paid by the Lyonese to Saint John the Baptist is well known. Their primatial Church has the holy Precursor for its Patron. In the year 1886 we beheld crowds as immense as in former times flocking to the famous jubilee granted by the Holy See to this “Rome of the Gauls,” for those years wherein the feast of Corpus Christi coincides with the titular solemnity of the 24th of June.

SEQUENCE

Elizabeth of Zachary, on this glorious day, hath given birth to a great man.

Who, a perfect vessel of virtues, holds the first place amongst all that are born of women.

Nor yet is he brought forth, when he perceives already the King who is about to be born, in a manner surpassing nature’s law, without man’s intercourse.

He perceives God here below, like the almond in the nut, hid within the Virgin.

Oh! how blessed is this newborn child, the Angel of the Redeemer, the voice and bearer of the Word made Flesh, that is given to us.

The Fruit doth not precede the flower, but, according to custom, the flower the fruit, yielding the odor of a fertile field to the minds of the Faithful.

He prepares and shows the way, wherein his foot will not stumble, who by faith embraceth the true Son of God.

Subjected to an austere rule of life, he abhors not wild honey with locusts for his food.

Clad in camel’s hair, how poor is he in the desert, yet how goodly did he appear!

Lo! the words of the Evangelist: “This one,” saith he, “was not the Light, but he was, to give testimony of the Light, unto thee Christ.”

He was not the Light, but the Lamp, showing the road towards heaven’s heights, unto those to whom eternal peace promises its joys.

Let us all contemplate him whom the crowd hoped to be the Christ, struck at the wonders they saw in him.

He, on the contrary, raised not his head, but deemed himself unworthy to loosen the latchets of the Lord’s shoes.

From this time forth, by gift divine, Heaven suffereth violence; and to violence together with fruits of penance, it is granted; yet not by right, but freely.

He whom the other prophets, under the Old Law, in darkness sing, that same Lord in the flesh, (figures being now at an end) this renowned Prophet points out with his very finger.

Oh! how holy, how luminous is he who baptized Christ, the Fount of living waters; and who laved in Jordan’s flood, Him who cleanseth all.

Christ, cleanse from their offences, those who celebrate the Birthday of the Precursor and Baptist: Hearken also to us sighing in this solitude.

After this dry and parched place, we ask, as our soul’s dower, a well-watered land. *

So that bearing our sheaves, we may come exultingly, unto perpetual peace.

Amen.

*(Translator note: This seems to be an allusion to Axa’s petition addressed to her father,Caleb at her husband’s suggestion, Judges 1:15)