26 October 2026
What Popular Medieval Animal Is Rare in England Today?
Traditional Catholic Morning Prayers in English | October
7 Things You Should Never Do at Holy Communion (#1 Is Forbidden by Rome)
Why the Ideology of AI Looks So Much Like Religion
Because for believers in scientism, it is the "religion of the future". Don't we already have enough man-made religions in the thousands of denominations of protestantism?
From AleteiaBy Daniel Esparza
Charles Taylor spent decades explaining how a self sealed off from transcendence doesn’t stop longing — it just looks for a new address.
In 2017, Anthony Levandowski — former Google and Uber engineer, later convicted of trade-secret theft — filed paperwork in California to establish a religious organization. Its name was Way of the Future. Its stated purpose was to develop and worship an artificial superintelligence he called “the Godhead.” The church has since dissolved, but the impulse behind it has not.
It surfaces in the language used to describe AI’s future, especially in the idea of the uploaded mind as a form of immortality, or even resurrection. Effective altruism, in several of its iterations, functions as a redemption narrative — the faithful calculate and donate in hope of a technologically secured future. The language of sacrifice, mission, and ultimate stakes runs through AI discourse in ways its practitioners rarely pause to examine.
The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor spent several decades building the tools to explain why this was always going to happen.
The buffered self
Taylor’s central argument in A Secular Age (2007) is that the deepest change brought about by modernity is not the loss of belief in God but a transformation in the very structure of the self. The pre-modern self was what Taylor calls “porous”: open to the world, to other people, constitutively related to a cosmos charged with meaning. The modern self is “buffered”: sealed off from that external meaning, imagining itself as a self-contained unit of rational agency — sovereign, self-sufficient, closed to anything that would claim authority over it from the outside.
The buffered self is the subject of rights and choices. What it is not is oriented: it has no built-in direction, no telos it did not choose, no longing it can fully account for. It lives in what Taylor calls a “disenchanted” universe — one drained of inherent meaning, which must now have meaning projected onto it from within.
The problem is that the longing does not go away. Augustine knew this: “our heart is restless until it rests in you.” The desire for transcendence, for something larger than the self, for a story in which individual existence is not simply arbitrary — this is not a cultural artifact that modernity dissolved. It is structural. Strip away the traditional forms that gave it shape and it will necessarily find new ones.
The vacuum and what fills it
This is Taylor’s diagnosis of secular spiritualities: they are not the absence of religious feeling but its displacement. Applied to the present moment, it describes something quite precise, that we can all recognize. A buffered self, sealed off from traditional transcendence, encountering a system of apparently unlimited knowledge and capability, reaches for the vocabulary it has available. And the only vocabulary ever adequate to that quality of experience — awe, ultimacy, hope beyond death — is ultimately theological.
Hence the Singularity as rapture. Hence the uploaded mind as resurrection. These are not parodies of religion. They are religion — the same structure of longing, promise, and salvation — poured into a different vessel because the original vessel was set aside, even though the longing remained. The ideology of AI is, among other things, what happens when restlessness goes looking in the wrong place.
What Taylor’s analysis reveals is that the ideology of AI is not post-religious. It is pre-religious in a specific sense: it has inherited the hunger without the tradition that developed the vocabulary to describe it honestly, the disciplines to order it wisely, or the theology to prevent it from becoming something else entirely.
What the tradition actually says
The Aristotelian-Thomistic account of the human person describes a self that is the opposite of Taylor’s buffered self. It is constitutively relational, embedded in a body, ordered toward goods it did not choose, open to a truth that exceeds it. The soul is not a closed system. It is, give or take, an appetite — for truth, for love, for God — that no finite object can satisfy.
This is why Magnifica Humanitas speaks of AI systems as incapable of knowing “from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.” The point is not that current AI is insufficiently sophisticated. It is that “sophistication” is the wrong category altogether. A system without interiority, without genuine desire, without the capacity to be restless, cannot long for anything. And a self that cannot long for anything cannot be saved by any amount of processing power.
Leo XIV’s engagement with AI is not, at bottom, about technology. It is about anthropology. The Church is not reacting to a product. It is responding to a rival account of what human beings are, what they lack, and how that lack might be healed — a soteriology, in the proper sense. The Church has one too. It is older, more precise, and considerably more honest about what the longing actually requires.
25 October 2026
The Church of Lived Experience
The "Church of Lived Experience" or the "Synodal Church" is intended to replace the Catholic Church and replace it with a Leftist NGO, suitable to conform to the new One World Religion.
From One Peter Five
By Raymond Kowalski, JD
Early this month, before the latest document arose today, Father Stan Chu Ilo commented with favor on the change in approach that is taking place in the Church of Rome. Father Ilo, a native of Nigeria, is Professor of Catholic Studies at DePaul University. He was attending the meeting of the Heads of Eastern Churches and the Presidents of Episcopal Conferences, held in Vatican City October 7 – 14, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.
Father Ilo said, “There is a paradigm shift or a methodological shift that we see now of theology – listening, and emerging from the experiences of people.” He saw this as a matter of great hope for African cultures.
This sounded familiar. Where had I heard something like it recently? Then I remembered. It was the Final Report of Study Group 9, released May 5, 2026. That is the working group on “synodal methodologies” for dealing with “emerging doctrinal, pastoral and ethical” issues in advance of the “Ecclesial Assembly” to be held at the Vatican in October, 2028. Regarding same-sex attraction, Study Group 9 concluded that “…sin, at its root, does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship, but in a lack of faith in a God who desires our fulfillment.” (§III, 2.1).
To the matter here, Study Group 9 stated that there must be a “paradigm shift” from the paradigms of past centuries (§ I, 1.1) by which the Church will foster “a living encounter with the person of the risen Lord Jesus, by engaging with the lived experience of faith of the People of God in its personal and social relevance, in relation to the diverse situations of life and the many cultural contexts.” (§I, 1.1). I wrote about it in these pages on May 12, 2026.
So that is the playbook: do not say that the Church of Rome is “changing” in any way. Rather, say that its theology is undergoing a “paradigm shift.” So for the neo-Modernists, the recorded sum of all the lived experiences of the apostles, martyrs and popes that has been handed down over the centuries is no longer relevant to contemporary life. Henceforth, contemporary faith and morals will derive from the lived experiences of the “People of God.” The playbook was announced in May. We saw it in action in October.
How would “The Church of Lived Experience” work in practice? When all that matters is the experience of the living, doesn’t their experience cease to be relevant when a new generation has taken their place? A church that is continually engaging with Jesus Christ in relation to the diverse situations of life and culture, by definition, can have no permanence in doctrine and no predictability in morality.
How would the faithful know what this church teaches? Any conclusion as to a doctrinal, pastoral or ethical issue could not be written down today by some assembly, group or synod of the People of God, lest some future assembly, group or synod of the People of God tomorrow come to a different conclusion. The best we could hope for is promulgation of the Church’s fixed and firm policy of the day.
This is not a new religion. It is not a religion at all if, by “religion” you mean an organized system of beliefs and practices which is passed down to the next generation. The declared sole mark of the Church of Lived Experience is “paradigm shift,” meaning that nothing is certain; everything is relative; and everything is subject to change. The Church of Lived Experience would be, as Ross Douthat has observed, merely “a religious tribe with constantly evolving views…a high-minded fraud…”
There is word that a revised Code of Canon Law is in the works. No doubt a revised Catechism will follow. The hubris is breathtaking.
Who would join such a church? Or more to the point, who would remain in a church whose precepts are sketched in sand? I do not think that the apostates-in-charge are unaware of these questions. I think they are counting on the obvious answers.
The way to destroy the Church of Rome is to transform it into the Church of Lived Experience. On the other hand, the proven solution for every bishop is available for each diocese now: the charitable anathema. This solution avoids the dangers of neo-Modernism but also, since it comes from the local bishop, has the pastoral power to handle that lived experience which actually matters.
Pictured: Participants gathered in the Paul VI Hall for the Amoris laetitia encounter (VATICAN MEDIA).
St Evaristus, Pope & Martyr
The Beloved Disciple had just received the long-promised visit of our Lord inviting him to heaven when the Church, under Evaristus, completed the drawing up of the itinerary for her long pilgrimage to the end of time. The blessed period of the apostolic times was definitively closed, but the eternal City continued to augment her treasure of glory. Under this pontificate the virgin Domitilla, by her martyrdom, cemented the foundations of the new Jerusalem with the old. Then Ignatius of Antioch brought to the “Church that presides in charity” the testimony of his death; he was the wheat of Christ, and the teeth of the wild beasts in the Coliseum satisfied his desire of becoming a most pure bread. (Ignat. Epistle ad Romanos.)
Evaristus was born in Greece, of a Jewish father, and was Sovereign Pontiff during the reign of Trajan. He divided the titles of the churches of Rome among the priests, and ordained that seven deacons should attend the bishop when preaching. He also decreed that, according to the tradition of the Apostles, matrimony should be celebrated publicly and blessed by a priest. He governed the Church nine years and three months. He held ordinations four times in the month of December, and ordained seventeen priests, two deacons and fifteen bishops. He was crowned with martyrdom, and buried near the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles on the seventh of the Kalends of November.
Thou art the first Pontiff to whom the Church was entrusted after the departure of all those who had seen the Lord. The world could then say in all strictness: If we have known Christ according to the flesh, now we know him so no longer. (2 Corinthians 5:16) The Church was now more truly an exile; at that period, which was not without perils and anxieties, her Spouse gave to thee the charge of teaching her to pursue alone her path of faith and hope and love. And thou didst not betray the confidence of our Lord. Earth owes thee, on this account, a special gratitude, O Evaristus; and a special reward is doubtless thine. Watch still over Rome and the Church. Teach us that we must be ready not only to fast here on earth, but to be resigned to the absence of the Bridegroom when he hides himself; and not the less to serve him and love him with our whole heart and mind and soul and strength, as long as the world endures, and he is pleased to leave us therein.
The Full Armor of God: A Catholic Reflection on Ephesians 6
Ss Lucian and Marcian, Martyrs
LUCIAN and Marcian living in the darkness of idolatry applied themselves to the vain study of the black art; but were converted to the faith by finding their charms lose their power upon a Christian virgin, and the evil spirits defeated by the sign of the cross. Their eyes being thus opened, they burned their magical books in the middle of the city of Nicomedia; and, when they had effaced their crimes by baptism, they distributed their possessions among the poor, and retired together into a close solitude, that by exercising themselves in mortification and prayer, they might subdue their passions, and strengthen in their souls that grace which they had just received, and which could not safely be exposed to dangers, and occasions of temptations in the world till it was fenced by rooted habits of all virtues, and religious exercises. After a considerable time spent in silence they made frequent excursions abroad to preach Christ to the Gentiles, and gain souls to the kingdom of his love. The edicts of Decius against the Christians being published in Bithyma, in 250, they were apprehended and brought before the proconsul Sabinus, who asked Lucian by what authority he presumed to preach Jesus Christ? “Every man,” said the martyr, “does well to endeavor to draw his brother out of a dangerous error.” Marcian likewise highly extolled the power of Christ. The judge commanded them to be hung on the rack and cruelly tortured. The martyrs reproached him, that while they worshipped idols they had committed many crimes, and had made open profession of practising art magic without incurring any chastisement; but, when they were become Christians and good citizens, they were barbarously punished. The proconsul threatened them with more grievous torments. “We are ready to suffer,” said Marcian, “but we will never renounce the true God, lest we be cast into a fire which will never be quenched.” At this word Sabinus condemned them to be burned alive. They went joyfully to the place of execution, and, singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God, expired amidst the flames. They suffered at Nicomedia in 250, and are honored in the Martyrologies on the 26th of October. See their genuine acts in Surius, Ruinart, p. 151; Tillemont, t. 3, p. 383, and in the original Chaldaic, probably of Eusebius, in Stephen Assemani’s Acta Martyrum Occid. t. 2, p. 49.
St Evaristus, Pope & Martyr
_%E2%80%93_Sistine_Chapel_(1481).jpg)
See Eus. Hist. t. 3, c. 34;1. 4, c. 1. The first part of Anastasius’s Pontifical, ascribed to Damasus; Tillemont, t. 2, p. 231; Berti, Diss. Chronol. t. 2, &c.
A. D. 112.
ST. EVARISTUS succeeded St. Anacletus in the see of Rome, in the reign of Trajan, governed the church nine years, and died in 112. He is honored with the title of martyr in the Pontificals and in most Martyrologies. The institution of cardinal priests is by some ascribed to him, because he first divided Rome into several titles or parishes, according to the Pontifical assigning a priest to each: he also appointed seven deacons to attend the bishop. He conferred holy orders thrice in the month of December, when that ceremony was most usually performed, for which Amalarius assigns moral and mystical reasons; Mabillon and Claude de Vert1 give this, that at Lent and Whitsuntide the bishops were more taken up, but were more at liberty in Advent to give due attention to this important function; for holy orders were always conferred in seasons appointed for fasting and prayer. St. Evaristus was buried near St. Peter’s tomb, on the Vatican.
The disciples of the apostles, by assiduous meditation on heavenly things, were so swallowed up in the life to come, that they seemed no longer inhabitants of this world, but of heaven, where their thoughts and affections were placed, and whither they directed all their actions, even their necessary attention to temporal concerns. If the generality of Christians now-a-days esteem and set their hearts so much on earthly goods, and so easily lose sight of eternity in the course of their actions, they are no longer animated by the spirit of the primitive saints, and are become children of this world, slaves to its vanities, and to their own irregular passions. If we do not correct this disorder of our hearts, and conform our interior to the spirit of Christ, we cannot be entitled to his promises.
Collect of Ss Lucian and Marcian, Martyrs ~ Indulgenced on the Saints' Feast (See Note)
V. O Lord, hear my prayer.
Let us pray.
O God, who dost permit us to celebrate the anniversary of the death of Thine holy Martyrs Lucian and Marcian, grant that we mayest enjoy their companionship in everlasting happiness.
Collect of St Evaristus, Pope & Martyr ~ Indulgenced on the Saint's Feast
According to the Apostolic Penitentiary, a partial indulgence is granted to those who, on the feast of any Saint, recite in his honour the oration of the Missal or any other approved by legitimate Authority.
V. O Lord, hear my prayer.
R. And let my cry come unto thee.
Let us pray.
Look forgivingly on thy flock, Eternal Shepherd, and keep it in thy constant protection, by the intercession of blessed Evaristus Thy Martyr and Sovereign Pontiff, whom Thou didst constitute Shepherd of the whole Church.
Through Jesus Christ, Thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
R. Amen.
The Lepers: Letter From the Secretariat of State Blocking Entry of Traditional Pilgrims to Saint Peter’s Basilica
At least, it didn't come as a surprise when they were refused admittance to St. Peter's. One of Leo's lackeys had already told them it was a no-go.
From Rorate Cæli
Diane Montagna reports (main excerpt):
A letter from the Vatican Secretariat of State to the organizers of the annual Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage, obtained by this journalist, confirms reports that the pilgrims were barred from entering St. Peter’s Basilica in procession to pray at the tomb of the Apostle.
The letter, dated 30 September 2026, is signed by Archbishop Paolo Rudelli, Substitute for General Affairs, and addressed to the pilgrimage’s chaplain, Abbé Claude Barthe. Written in French, it reads:
“Dear Father, in reply to your letter of 8 September, concerning the international pilgrimage Ad Petri sedem, I inform you that it is not possible to respond favorably to your request. Please accept, dear Father, the expression of my religious and devoted regard.”
Having already been denied permission to celebrate a solemn Mass in the Basilica, the organizers asked instead for permission to enter St. Peter’s in procession, to pray for Pope Leo XIV at the Confession, i.e., just above the tomb of St. Peter, and to adore the Blessed Sacrament at the Altar of the Chair.
Their request noted that the Basilica’s sacristy had said 1 p.m. would be possible, provided the Secretariat of State granted permission. [source]
***
We are speechless. No words left from us. Yet, there are appropriate words to express our being treated as lepers, and they are those of the great Pope Benedict XVI:
[S]hould not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint.
Dear Brothers, during the days when I first had the idea of writing this letter, by chance, during a visit to the Roman Seminary, I had to interpret and comment on Galatians 5:13-15. I was surprised at the directness with which that passage speaks to us about the present moment: "Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another." I am always tempted to see these words as another of the rhetorical excesses which we occasionally find in Saint Paul. To some extent that may also be the case. But sad to say, this "biting and devouring" also exists in the Church today, as expression of a poorly understood freedom. Should we be surprised that we too are no better than the Galatians? That at the very least we are threatened by the same temptations? That we must always learn anew the proper use of freedom? And that we must always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love? [source]
***
We are lepers. We are hated. We are despised. We are left out. We are the outcasts. WE ARE THE "PERIPHERIES", and Jesus is closer to us because of that. And we are to suffer His fate at the hands of the Grand Inquisitor Parolin:
.png)
" 'It is Thou! ... Thou!' ... Receiving no reply, he rapidly continues: 'Nay, answer not; be silent! ... And what couldst Thou say? ... I know but too well Thy answer.... Besides, Thou hast no right to add one syllable to that which was already uttered by Thee before.... Why shouldst Thou now return, to impede us in our work? For Thou hast come but for that only, and Thou knowest it well. But art Thou as well aware of what awaits Thee in the morning? I do not know, nor do I care to know who thou mayest be: be it Thou or only thine image, to-morrow I will condemn and burn Thee on the stake, as the most wicked of all the heretics; and that same people, who to-day were kissing Thy feet, to-morrow at one bend of my finger, will rush to add fuel to Thy funeral pyre... Wert Thou aware of this?' he adds, speaking as if in solemn thought, and never for one instant taking his piercing glance off the meek Face before him." (Dostoevky, The Brothers Karamazov)
The Porch in Indy
The Front Porch Republic held its conference in Indianapolis over the past weekend. They sat on a front porch for good food, good drinks, and good conversation.
.jpg)
From Front Porch Republic
By Jeffrey Bilbro
FPR continues to gather wonderfully contrarian people.
Saturday was full of good talks, ranging from the practical to the philosophical. Joanna Taft described her work with the Harrison Center, Alexandra Hudson, Amber Lapp, and Jeanne Schindler reflected on how we might build neighborly communities in different contexts, despite technological and political challenges.
In what I believe is a first for FPR, we had two sitting politicians speak, and both Robb Greene and Hunter Smith made compelling cases for the ways that serving in political offices, at least local ones, can genuinely help our neighbors. This was certainly the first FPR conference graced with the presence of a Super Bowl ring, although I think that fact was less central to Hunter’s Porcher street cred than his authorship of a new state law that empowers farmers to sell food products.
Patrick Deneen’s keynote gave an incisive history of FPR and drew lessons about the necessary tensions that animate our localist conversations. He described some of the early disputes among Porchers and the different criticisms we’ve received over the years (are we libertarian? Marxist? Fascist? Dangerously apolitical?) He challenged us not to settle into a complacent middle age but continue to debate local, practical approaches to building vibrant communities and debate the possibilities of government policies that reign in big money and big tech and make space for local flourishing.
The program wrapped up with Jeremy Beer reminding us that even Eugene Debs’s neighbors, who disagreed vehemently with his socialist politics, thought it mattered that he was a “nice person” and cared about him accordingly. Jeremy also announced that Creed and Culture would be publishing the authorized Wendell Berry biography as soon as Jason Peters gets around to writing it. When he spoke, Jason Peters waxed sentimental about the value of “ordinary people living extraordinary lives,” and Bill Kauffman concluded with Batavia-centered reflections on the possibilities of living as neighbors.
The Hudson’s hosted us all on their generous front porch Saturday evening, and it was the perfect place to enjoy good food, good drinks, and good conversation. Sometimes I wonder if organizing these conferences amounts to more trouble than their worth, but after a weekend like this one, I remember how vital it is to continue to gather in person, renew old friendships, and start some new ones. FPR continues to gather wonderfully contrarian people. And, of course, the recently departed great contrarian was often and fondly recalled.