Social Credit: Episode #1: What is the Purpose of the Economy?

In this video, we discuss the true purpose of economic association from the point of view of Douglas Social Credit theory: the delivery of the goods and services people require to survive and flourish, with the least amount of human labour and of resource consumption.

The Holy Rosary

Friday, the Sorrowful Mysteries, in Latin with Cardinal Burke.

How American Monarchy Would Have Worked

Alexander Hamilton had a plan to make America be ruled by kings in a monarchy system of government - with a catch.

Why is the Summa Theologiae Important?

With Fr Gregory Pine, OP,  BA, STL, Assistant Director for Campus Outreach at the Thomistic Institute.

Mass for 'Independence Day': Catholic Patriotism or Americanist Inculturation?

Dr Kwasniewski deconstructs the Americanist and heretical "Mass for Independence Day", made up after the Council as "inculturation".

From Catholicism.org

By Peter Kwasniewski, PhD

ON THE Fourth of July, citizens of the United States of America will observe “Independence Day,” a secular holiday if ever there was one, celebrating rebellion against political authority, a victory of Deism and Freemasonry over European tradition, and a culture of secularizing Protestantism. It may be fun to shoot off fireworks, enjoy barbecues with family and friends, and be proud of what our nation has accomplished (while not thinking too closely about how we have treated native Americans and countless other “inferiors” over the centuries), but one thing’s absolutely certain: it’s not a religious feast. This holiday is no holyday, although its observance is one of the few obligatory memorials in the USA.

And yet, not wishing to miss any opportunity for postconciliar “inculturation,” the U.S. version of the neo-Roman missal of Paul VI contains a “Mass for Independence Day.”

When I first learned of the existence of this Mass, I could not restrain my curiosity to see what it was like. As one who had been nourished on the sober words of Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae and Longinqua Oceani—where that great pope warns the American hierarchy not to over-celebrate aspects of the United States that are merely tolerable, not ideal, from a Catholic point of view, such as the “wall of separation” between Church and State, or the appetite for ecumenical ventures, or the tendency to exalt active and pragmatic approaches over contemplative and principled ones—I was eager to see how the prayers devised by the U.S. bishops would deftly embody the great social doctrine of Leo XIII, so that July 4th, for those who attended Mass, might become a moment of “formation,” as everyone likes to say nowadays: a time when our parochial patriotism could be expanded to embrace the social Kingship of Jesus Christ, the primacy of religion and the things of the spirit, and the unique vocation of American Catholics to convert and make disciples of their fellow citizens.

How naïve I was! The U.S. bishops devised a Mass of pan-Christian, flag-waving, self-glorifying sentimentalism.

The Collect:

Father of all nations and ages, we recall the day when our country claimed its place among the family of nations; for what has been achieved we give you thanks, for the work that still remains we ask your help, and as you have called us from many peoples to be one nation, grant that, under your providence, our country may share your blessings with all the peoples of the earth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ…

Manifest Destiny, anyone? Shades of Mormonism, and support for the Pentagon, which knows how to share the blessings of democracy and freedom—whether their recipients like it or not!

The prayer over the offerings:

Father, who have molded into one our nation, drawn from the peoples of many lands, grant, that as the grains of wheat become one bread and the many grapes one cup of wine, so we may before all others be instruments of your peace. Through Christ our Lord.

Should the unification of former British colonies under a Protestant-Deist constitutional regime be compared to the manufacturing of the bread and wine for the Eucharistic sacrifice? The phrase “before all others” is especially unfortunate, since it has a double meaning: “in the sight of others,” and “holding the primacy above others”—a view known as American exceptionalism. In this prayer, America is presented as the Eucharistic city on the hill offered to God to bring about peace in the world.

The preface:

It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord. He spoke to us a message of peace and taught us to live as brothers and sisters. His message took form in the vision of our founding fathers as they fashioned a nation where we might live as one. His message lives on in our midst as our task for today and a promise for tomorrow. And so, with hearts full of love, we join the angels today and every day of our lives, to sing your glory as we acclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts . . .

“His [Christ’s] message took form in the vision of our founding fathers as they fashioned a nation where we might live as one.” Are we so certain of that? Pope Leo XIII had his doubts, which he expressed on numerous occasions, about Enlightement social contract regimes and their understanding of liberty and secularity. The mystical language applied to old Israel and to the Church, new Israel, is now being applied to the Nation. “His message lives on in our midst as our task for today and a promise for tomorrow.” This sounds like the rhetoric found in ghostwritten State of the Union addresses.

The prayer after communion:

By showing us in this Eucharist, O Lord, a glimpse of the unity and joy of your people in heaven, deepen our unity and intensify our joy, that all who believe in you may work together to build the city of lasting peace. Through Christ our Lord.

What “city” is this referring to? If the heavenly Jerusalem, the prayer should be clearer. It is ambiguous, allowing “social justice warriors” to confuse the earthly city with the heavenly one, in the way familiar to the utopian and Marxist thought in vogue today in so many putatively Catholic quarters.

None of this is liturgical language. It has in fact nothing to do with the Sacrifice of the Mass and the worship of God. It is fluff and bilge.

The Mass for Independence Day even prescribes a Gloria—the great hymn of the angels and saints that the liturgical reform of 1969 excluded from nearly every feastday. But we must not neglect to sing it (or more probably, recite it) on a secular holiday.

This is not how Catholics in the United States of America should celebrate their nationhood or patriotism. We can do this far better by using traditional votive Masses: a Mass of thanksgiving for favors received; a Mass of reparation for sins committed; a Mass to beg for peace; a Mass for the conversion of the enemies of the Church. All of these are provided for in the traditional Missale Romanum and most still exist in the Pauline Missale Romanum. The Church always gives us appropriate ways to mark national holidays, without the need for recourse to a fabricated feastday with problematic propers.

A Sign Of Hope For The Future Of The Church

The Archdiocese of Arlington, Virginia, makes headlines in the secular media for its record ordinations that are contrary to established trends in recent decades, but fails to go into why they defied the trend. Anthony Stine provides context.

Vatican Tries To Stomp Out The Controversy Caused By The TLM Ban Leaks

The response could not have been more tone deaf!

The Once and Future Roman Rite: What We Lost from 1948 to 1962 and Why We Should Recover It Today

From Dr Peter Kwasniewski

This lecture was given at Most Precious Blood of Jesus parish in Pittsburgh, which is run by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. The topic is what the Roman rite lost between 1948 and 1962 and why we should recover it today. In order to impose reasonable limits, the focus is on the Mass, and, more particularly, Palm Sunday, the Easter Triduum, the Vigil of Pentecost, Corpus Christi, and the feast of the Holy Innocents, followed by five general features of Mass. Lastly, Dr. Kwasniewski turns to some practical and canonical issues, including the question of what kind of permission is necessary in order to recover these lost elements.

Why American Catholics Need To Get Weird Again

Weird like 'Dagger' John Hughes who said, ''Our mission [is] to convert ... the inhabitants of the United States – the people of the cities, and the people of the country, . . . the Legislatures, the Senate, the Cabinet, the President, and all!"

From Aleteia

By Theresa Civantos Barber

Catholics don't fit neatly on either side. Following Christ always looks weird to a world obsessed with power and picking sides.

“Did you know the Pope ate dinner there last year?” my friend said. 

I was out with a few friends when we walked past a restaurant where Pope Leo went last summer (perks of living in Chicago!). 

She laughed and added, “We should go in and press some rosaries against the walls!”

I noticed another friend who isn’t Catholic giving us a look. “You Catholics are so weird,” she said with an affectionate laugh.

We laughed too.

“It’s true,” I said. “We can’t deny it.” We Catholics are odd ducks in all kinds of ways, from our love for saints’ relics to our Saturday evening Mass “counting” for Sunday.

But in today’s America, it’s all too easy to forget that we aren’t supposed to fit in.

We used to be a lot weirder, and it’s time to reclaim that as a badge of honor.

Trying too hard to fit in

There was a time when being Catholic in America meant being really, really different. We knew we were children of a God who said, “You do not belong to the world. I have chosen you out of the world” (John 15:19). 

Our great-grandparents’ faith set them apart from the Protestant establishment. The WASP elite viewed them with suspicion and prejudice. (WASP is a 1960s acronym for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.)

Our grandparents' ultimate allegiance wasn't to American political machinery, but to something far more important and longer-lasting: the universal Church and her teachings.

And that wasn't easy.

There was a time when just being a Catholic priest in NYC was a criminal offense legally punishable by death. And if you haven't heard about the American Party, better known as “the Know-Nothings,” you're in for a discovery.

But somewhere along the way, we lost our nerve.

I think of the Irish immigrants who built Notre Dame's football dynasty. They weren't trying to blend in but proudly proclaimed their Catholic identity on the national stage. 

When the Fighting Irish took the field, they carried the hopes of every Catholic family who had been told they didn't belong in polite American society. They were weird, and they were winning.

Even John F. Kennedy, for all his political savvy, had to defend his Catholic “weirdness” during his presidential campaign. The fact that his Catholicism was seen as problematic reveals how distinct Catholic identity once was from mainstream American political thought, and not even that long ago.

We need to put our faith above our politics 

Somewhere between those defiant, even dangerous, early days and today, American Catholics became obsessed with fitting in. We wanted so desperately to prove we were just as American as our Protestant neighbors. 

So we began molding our faith to match our politics rather than the other way around. We traded in our complex but beautiful and true Catholic social teaching for the tidy partisan packages of America’s political parties.

The result? Today, many Catholics sound more like cable news pundits than disciples of Christ, cherry-picking which Church teachings align with our preferred political tribe while ignoring the rest. 

Both sides have forgotten that Catholic social teaching is a seamless garment, not a lunch buffet.

We belong to a 2,000-year-old global faith that transcends national borders and political parties. Our loyalty shouldn't be to red or blue, but to the timeless truths of the Gospel that often make both sides uncomfortable.

It's time to make Catholicism weird again. Not weird in a frivolous sense, but weird in this way: Authentic Christian witness always looks strange to a world obsessed with power and picking sides. 

The establishment didn’t trust our ancestors because their loyalty lay with something higher than American politics.

Maybe it's time we remembered that being viewed with a little suspicion by the political powers isn't a bug but a feature. When we're perfectly comfortable in a political party, we've compromised too much.

Let's embrace the fullness of our faith, which doesn’t map neatly onto either side of American politics, but calls both sides to reach for something better.

Let’s make Catholicism weird again.