23 October 2026
Cardinal Fernández Issues Document That Opens the Door for Paganized Mass
Fernández admits his document is purposefully ambiguous, which celebrates his new DDF personnel helping him determine how to include pagan elements in the Mass and broader inclusion of women in Church leadership.
Knights on the Battlefield What Do They Do?
From Modern History TV
Join Jason Kingsley, CBE, the Modern Knight, as he prepares for the battlefield, showing what a knight actually does when summoned. This video explores the practicalities of a medieval warrior on horseback, demonstrating battle tactics with a lance. Discover the realities of medieval history and the preparations involved for a medieval army.
Once a knight had made the journey from his home to the distant battlefield on which his lord had ordered him to fight, what did he do? In earlier episodes, Jason has looked at the knight’s weapons, but what were his battle tactics? How did he approach the enemy battle lines and what did he do when he got there? Jason talks about his own experiences with the lance and fighting from horseback.
Explore the techniques of mounted combat as Modern History TV demonstrates how knights used lances and trained with the quintain. Discover the strategies for charging in formation and the specific dangers posed by ranged weapons on the medieval battlefield.
Traditional Catholic Morning Prayers in English | October
Did Isaiah Name China? What the Dead Sea Scrolls Reveal
From Totus Catholica
Did Isaiah name China more than 2,000 years ago? One mysterious word in Isaiah 49:12, the land of Sinim, has been linked to China centuries before the first Chinese empire. The honest answer is that the identification is disputed, and this video will not present it as a proven prediction, because a resemblance between names is a starting point for investigation, not a conclusion. What is at stake is bigger than one place name: it is how we speak about Scripture. A claim intended to strengthen faith can weaken trust the moment a viewer discovers the evidence was oversold. So here is the distinction to hold throughout: the place name is disputed. The promise is not.
Following the evidence honestly takes you somewhere better than a headline. From the oldest complete Isaiah scroll, found at Qumran in 1947, to the ancient translations that answered Persia and the southern land, to the Jewish community documented at Elephantine in the fifth century before Christ. Then outward, because Isaiah 49:6 will not stay local: God's salvation reaches to the ends of the earth, and in Acts 13:47 the apostles apply those words to the nations explicitly. The Church has long heard Malachi's pure offering among the nations as a prophecy of the Mass, where the same Christ gathers his people from every language into one single sacrifice. So read Isaiah 49 slowly this week. China does not need a disputed place name to matter to God. His promise already reaches the ends of the earth, and so do you.
In this video:
• The one word at stake: Sinim occurs only once in the entire Hebrew Bible
• The scroll a thousand years older than the usual manuscripts, and what it says instead
• Persians, the southern land, Syene: the ancient translations never say China
• A serious peer-reviewed case for China exists, and this video gives it a fair hearing
• The place name is disputed. The promise is not: salvation to the ends of the earth
⏱ CHAPTERS
0:00 Did Isaiah Name China
1:33 The Verse and the Promise (Isaiah 49)
2:10 What the Ancient Translations Say
2:38 The Great Isaiah Scroll at Qumran
4:30 Where the China Reading Came From
6:59 Acts 13:47: The Apostles Read It Outward
9:36 Malachi's Pure Offering and the Mass
📖 SCRIPTURE REFERENCED
• Isaiah 49:12: from the north and the west, and from the land of Sinim, the name that occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible.
• Isaiah 49:6: the servant's mission runs beyond restoring Israel, salvation to the ends of the earth.
• Isaiah 49:16: upon the palms of my hands I have engraved you, spoken to Zion, contemplated in the wounded hands of Jesus.
• Acts 13:47: Paul and Barnabas quote Isaiah 49 for the mission to the Gentiles, a light to the nations.
• Luke 1:31 with Isaiah 49:1: called from the womb and given his name, a resonance with the Annunciation, honestly a Christian reading.
• Malachi 1:11: a pure offering among the nations from sunrise to sunset, long read as a prophecy of the Mass.
⛪ FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS & THE CATECHISM
• St. Justin Martyr (2nd century), Dialogue with Trypho 122: what then is Christ's inheritance? Is it not the nations?
• CCC 762: Israel's election prepares for the gathering of God's people, and Israel is the sign of the future gathering of all nations.
• The Catechism's pattern: the sacrifice of the cross and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice, made present sacramentally.
📜 SOURCES & FURTHER READING
• The Great Isaiah Scroll (Qumran, 1947, copied in the second century BC): at this verse it preserves a form commonly understood as Syene, modern Aswan.
• The ancient translations and the ground evidence: the Septuagint says the land of the Persians, the Vulgate the southern land, and fifth century BC papyri show Jews living at Elephantine beside Syene.
• The China reading is no internet invention: influential since the 19th century, and defended in the peer-reviewed journal Vetus Testamentum (2024) by a Bar-Ilan scholar who acknowledges scholarship generally favors Aswan.
• China's own evidence: a Christian presence documented from 635, the stele of 781, belonging to the Church of the East, and martyrs like Augustine Zhao Rong.
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A Prayer to St Anthony Mary Claret for Someone Dying of Cancer
Today is his Feast Day. I need to bookmark this prayer. I have several friends with cancer. Hopefully, I won't need it any time soon. St Anthony Mary Claret, pray for us.
From Aleteia
We ask St. Anthony to "speak a word for me to the Immaculate Heart of Mary."
St Anthony was born in Spain in 1807. Ordained a priest in 1835, he worked as a mission and retreat director throughout Catalonia. To help in this work, he founded a new religious community: the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (commonly known as the Claretians). You can find out more about him here.
Below is the prayer for someone dying of cancer.
St. Anthony Mary Claret, during your life on earth you often comforted the afflicted and showed such tender love and compassion for the sick and sinful.
Intercede for me now that you rejoice in the reward of your virtues in heavenly glory.
Look with pity on me [or on the person for whom you are praying] and grant my prayer, if such be the will of God.
Make my troubles your own.
Speak a word for me to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to obtain by her powerful intercession the grace I yearn for so ardently, and a blessing to strengthen me during life, assist me at the hour of death, and lead me to a happy eternity. Amen.
22 October 2026
On the Twentieth Anniversary of The God Delusion: Has the New Atheism Unraveled?
Dr Ventureyra, a philosopher, deconstructs the "New Atheism" of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.
From Crisis
By Scott Ventureyra, PhD
Twenty years after The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins is still trotting out the same tired arguments. Meanwhile, philosophy, science, and a wave of conversions have shown that God was never so easily explained away.
On Oct. 2, 2006, Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion, a book that would function as something akin to a manifesto for a new era of atheism. Alongside Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett (whom I hold in high regard as a philosopher, despite disagreeing with his conclusions, as his arguments are considerably more sophisticated and well thought out), Dawkins became one of the celebrated “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism and a prominent figure among the self-proclaimed “brights” (a rather self-congratulatory term adopted by some neo-atheists). What these men had in common was their promise to expose the irrationality of religious belief and, more specifically, the alleged intellectual bankruptcy of theism.
My first real engagement with Dawkins came when I returned to university to study philosophy and theology, following my earlier studies in economics, and read The Selfish Gene (1976) and The Blind Watchmaker (1986). I always admired Dawkins’s literary gifts, especially his ability to explain complex ideas in evolutionary biology and connect them to his atheistic worldview. But the more I reflected on his arguments, the more I began to question whether his worldview could really withstand philosophical scrutiny, let alone be lived out consistently. After all, what are we to make of a universe supposedly devoid of ultimate purpose, governed by nothing more than blind, impersonal forces? How do we reconcile such a picture with our capacity to reason, make moral judgments, seek truth, appreciate beauty, and recognize the inherent dignity of human beings? This led me to write my first article in 2014 for Crisis Magazine, titled “Dawkins’ Unholy Trinity: Incoherency, Hypocrisy and Bigotry.” It was an early attempt to expose what I regarded as the philosophical inconsistencies and rhetorical excesses of Dawkins’s increasingly militant atheism. Now, I ask myself, 12 years later, and 20 years after The God Delusion: Has anything fundamentally changed?
The Philosophical Poverty of the New Atheism
One of the most ironic characteristics of the New Atheism was how little of it was really new. Its novelty lay primarily in its rhetorical approach and the considerable media attention it attracted. In contrast, sophisticated philosophical atheist thinkers such as A.J. Ayer, Antony Flew, Theodore Drange, Kai Nielsen, and Thomas Nagel grappled seriously with questions concerning metaphysics, epistemology, consciousness, and morality. Similarly, more recent atheist philosophers such as Graham Oppy and J.L. Schellenberg have continued in a similar direction.
Upon closer examination, the arguments advanced by Dawkins were often remarkably weak, particularly when he ventured beyond his own domain of evolutionary biology into philosophy and theology. Although Dawkins attempted to refute several traditional arguments for God’s existence, his treatment of them attracted criticism from a formidable array of thinkers. William Lane Craig challenged his philosophical reasoning, particularly his treatment of the design argument and the alleged improbability of God. Alvin Plantinga identified significant weaknesses in Dawkins’s philosophical reasoning, going so far as to suggest that many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class. Another valuable and complementary critique can be found in The Dawkins Delusion (2007), written by former atheist Alister McGrath, together with his wife Joanna Collicutt McGrath, which exposes the weaknesses in Dawkins’s understanding of religion and the relationship between science and faith.
Probably the most interesting criticism came from intellectuals who did not share theistic commitments. The agnostic mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski, notably in The Devil’s Delusion (2008), challenged the sweeping metaphysical conclusions drawn from modern science. The breadth of these criticisms clearly demonstrates that one need not be a believer to recognize the philosophical and theological shortcomings of the New Atheism.
Interestingly, despite the initial popularity of the New Atheism, analytic philosophy of religion has really blossomed in the past 20 years. Thus, far from disappearing, philosophical arguments concerning God’s existence, divine attributes, rationality, morality, and the ultimate explanation of reality underwent extensive development. The same is true of the interdisciplinary work that has continued to develop between science and theology.
The Scientific Questions That Refuse to Disappear
Let us take into consideration developments in molecular biology, origin-of-life research, and consciousness studies over the past 20 years. Far from favoring Dawkins’s scientific materialism, advancements in these fields have raised new questions and strengthened old difficulties. In Return of the God Hypothesis (2021), Stephen C. Meyer, for instance, examines discoveries in cosmology, physics, and molecular biology, particularly the remarkable functional information encoded in DNA. He forcefully argues intelligent design provides a better explanation for these phenomena than the materialist alternatives like Dawkins’s.
In my own book, On the Origin of Consciousness (2018), I take up what I regard as one of the most formidable challenges to atheism: consciousness itself. How do subjective experience, intentionality, rational thought, and self-awareness arise in a universe supposedly governed by nothing more than impersonal physical processes? These are hardly trivial questions, and despite considerable advances in neuroscience and cognitive science, they remain deeply contested. Indeed, the more we investigate these mysteries, the more apparent it becomes that the philosophical questions surrounding them cannot simply be brushed aside. Yet these are precisely the kinds of questions that received remarkably little serious attention from the leading New Atheists.
Twenty years later, Dawkins continues to proclaim the alleged intellectual bankruptcy of religious belief while trotting out the same old tired and refuted arguments.Twenty Years Later: The Same Old Arguments
On Oct. 2, 2026, Dawkins published a commemorative essay in The Telegraph, titled “Twenty years since I wrote the book, the God Delusion won’t die.” What surprised me was not that Dawkins maintained his atheism, but that his central arguments remained unchanged. He continued to invoke Darwin against biological design, revisited familiar objections to the theistic interpretation of cosmic fine-tuning, including arguments advanced by physicists such as the late atheist Victor Stenger, questioned the explanatory value of invoking God, and reiterated his contention that God would have to be more complex than the universe He supposedly explains.
I wondered to myself: Where was the serious engagement with Plantinga’s epistemology or his evolutionary argument against naturalism? Where was the sustained treatment of Craig’s cosmological reasoning, Swinburne’s probabilistic arguments, or contemporary challenges to materialism, such as Stephen Meyer’s work on the origin of biological information?
Even the classical doctrine of divine simplicity was treated more as an occasion for ridicule than as a serious metaphysical position worthy of careful philosophical examination. Dawkins continued to project the complexity of finite minds onto the divine intellect, without seriously engaging the classical understanding of God as a simple, non-composite being.
It is difficult to ignore the irony here. Twenty years later, Dawkins continues to proclaim the alleged intellectual bankruptcy of religious belief while trotting out the same old tired and refuted arguments, despite the rich and rigorous literature defending theism.
The Unintended Legacy of the New Atheism
There is another irony worth considering, one with far-reaching consequences. In recent years, Dawkins has expressed growing concern about contemporary progressive ideologies, particularly those associated with identity politics, gender, and what is commonly called wokeism. But can some of these developments be connected to the very scientific materialism he spent much of his intellectual life promoting? In his 2024 essay, “The Enabling of Richard Dawkins,” mathematician and philosopher William Dembski argues that Dawkins, in spite of himself, has facilitated the undermining of the very foundations of reason, truth, merit, and free inquiry that he now publicly defends. As Dembski provocatively states: “Woke ideology is not a betrayal of scientific materialism but its logical conclusion.” Even though atheism does not necessarily entail wokeism, and many atheists vigorously oppose it, Dembski’s incisive observation raises an important question about the philosophical and cultural consequences of scientific materialism.
Dawkins’s public embracing of cultural Christianity drives this point home. Even though he appreciates aspects of the civilization Christianity helped create, he still rejects its supernatural foundations, which are indispensable to the faith itself. Recently on X, Edward Feser observed that the West cannot adequately confront its civilizational challenges through secular liberalism, Enlightenment ideals, or cultural nostalgia alone; it must recover the Christian faith that shaped it. The challenges posed by woke ideology and political Islamism, particularly amid Europe’s growing cultural and religious tensions, cannot be understood exclusively in political or sociological terms. At their deepest level, they also involve competing theological and metaphysical visions of human nature, freedom, and the moral order. As Feser makes clear, Islamist movements recognize this religious dimension in ways that many Western secularists fail to acknowledge. Thus, Christianity’s theological foundations cannot be discarded. The question then inevitably arises: how can one preserve the fruits of a tree indefinitely after completely uprooting it?
What Became of the Four Horsemen?
Two decades later, the intellectual and cultural terrain of the New Atheism has changed dramatically. Of the original so-called Four Horsemen, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett have died (in 2011 and 2024), leaving two surviving members: Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Harris has gone deeper into his exploration of spirituality and questions of consciousness, meditation, and Buddhist contemplative practice. The more unexpected development, however, has been the public conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, sometimes described as a “fifth horseman” of the movement. In 2023 she embraced Christianity, citing, among other reasons, its role in sustaining Western civilization and in facing the pressures of secular nihilism and political Islamism. The contrast with Dawkins is sharp: where he wishes to keep the civilizational inheritance of Christianity without its theological claims, Hirsi Ali has turned toward Christianity itself as a response to the West’s spiritual and cultural difficulties. We should take into consideration the rising numbers of conversions to Catholicism, particularly among younger people, which is dismantling the New Atheists’ earlier confidence that religious decline was inevitable. In France, for example, 13,234 adults were baptized into the Catholic Church at Easter 2026, representing a 28 percent increase over the previous year, with those aged 18–25 forming the largest group. The numbers are quite astonishing. To be clear, this is not a refutation of atheism, but it does undercut the cultural triumphalism that has often marked the New Atheism.
Beauty, Consciousness, and the Mystery of Existence
Today, I find myself in southern Spain, visiting my parents, reflecting on the profound mystery of existence and creation. As I walk through the magnificent gardens of their residential complex, surrounded by beautiful vegetation, flowering plants, flowing water, a variety of little animals, and birdsong, I am inevitably overcome by the sheer beauty and majesty of Creation. The warmth of the Mediterranean sun, the beautiful, clear blue sky, the gentle breeze against my skin, and the fragrances carried through the air create an almost paradisiacal atmosphere.
All the while, as I walk listening to music on my iPhone, the experience can be rather overwhelming and moving. There are moments when I find myself moved to tears. Not out of sadness or melancholy, but out of sheer gratitude and reverence for the extraordinary gift of existence and the privilege of participating in God’s creation.
I cannot help but think of St. Augustine, who reflected on the beauty of creation as a way of contemplating its Creator. In his Confessions, he describes the wonders of the earth, the sea, and the heavens, recognizing that their beauty points beyond themselves to the ultimate source of all beauty.
But there is something else here that has always fascinated me, particularly in my own philosophical work on consciousness. The most remarkable aspect of it all is that I am conscious of the beauty and harmony surrounding me. There is an unmistakable first-person dimension to all of this, involving what philosophers refer to as qualia, the subjective qualities of conscious experience. Why should a universe of supposedly blind, impersonal forces give rise to beings capable of experiencing and appreciating its beauty in the first place? For me, consciousness, beauty, intelligibility, and love point toward something much deeper, an ultimate ground of reality that transcends the physical world.
However, recognizing the beauty and goodness of existence does not mean that I always live in accordance with what I recognize to be good. I have my own rebellious impulses, Dionysian temptations, and the perennial struggle between what I know to be good and what I sometimes desire. Perhaps, I think to myself, this is what may make my gratitude all the more profound. Despite all of my shortcomings, I continue to encounter a world overflowing with gifts I have neither earned nor created.
And at the center of it all, I believe, is not blind, pitiless indifference, as Dawkins would have us believe, but the source of all being, beauty, goodness, and love. But Christianity delves even deeper. It makes the bold claim that this ultimate source has not remained distant or inaccessible, but rather, through the person of Jesus Christ, the eternal Logos has entered, some may say “invaded,” our universe, bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between finite creatures and the infinite ground of all being. For this extraordinary gift of existence, for the capacity to experience its beauty, and above all for the love that lies at its ultimate source, I give thanks every day.
Twenty years after The God Delusion, I find myself not less receptive to the mystery of God, but immeasurably more so. Perhaps the greatest irony of the New Atheism is that, two decades after confidently proclaiming theism’s intellectual demise, the questions it sought to dismiss remain as profound and urgent as ever.
It turns out that God, much to the chagrin of Dawkins, was never quite so easily explained away.
St Anthony Mary Claret, Bishop
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From Catholic Tradition
The well-liked Spanish priest Anthony Claret was the fifth of eleven children. His family was poor but hard working at the family trade of weaving. Anthony's earliest memories of home were the family's praying the Rosary and going to church which imbued him with a deep love and devotion to Jesus and Mary.
By age twenty-one Anthony had been educated and was in much demand for his skill as a weaver. At one time he suffered because of poor health, and during the days of recovery he imagined himself as a Carthusian monk. Anthony went to the bishop for advice. The bishop suggested that he first go to the diocesan seminary and then, if he wished, leave and become a monk. Anthony followed this advice and enjoyed seminary life. He was ordained two years earlier than usual because of a civil war in Spain.
Anthony finally realized that his health would prevent him from being a monk or a Jesuit missionary. He was sent to a small mountain village where he studied medicine and helped many of the sick. He discovered his power to read hearts and his ability to understand people.
Anthony began a busy schedule of preaching throughout Spain. His gentle faith and great courage in spreading devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and in reviving devotion to the Eucharist made him a popular preacher. He also published a catechism that led the bishop of the Canary Islands to invite him to preach there for a year, fulfilling Anthony's dream to be a missionary.
When Anthony returned to Spain, he founded a congregation called the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary [Claretians]. Then he was assigned as archbishop of Cuba. Not having had an archbishop for fourteen years, the island was in need of renewal. Anthony reorganized the seminary training, preached in all the churches, heard confessions, and guided people to Christ. He worked for updated farm methods and credit unions. He wanted the people to own their own farms, knowing that this would improve family life. He made enemies by teaching black slaves. Fifteen times people tried to assassinate him. Once a man stabbed him and was given a death sentence, but Anthony had this changed to a prison sentence.
After eight years, Anthony was called to Spain to be Queen Isabella II's confessor: he would not live at the palace but come only to hear her confession and instruct the children. This freed him to open a religious publishing house and write more than two hundred books and pamphlets. In 1886 a revolution took place, and those associated with the court were accused of treason. Anthony fled to Rome where Vatican Council I was in session. There he defended the infallibility of the pope. Then he retired to a Cistercian monastery in France where he stayed in solitude until his death. His Feast Day is October 23.
St Anthony Mary Claret: Generosity in Responding to God's Graces
A sermon for today. Please remember to say 3 Hail Marys for the Priest.
St Romanus, Archbishop of Rouen, Confessor
From Fr Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints:
HE was born of an illustrious and virtuous French family, brought up in the practice of piety, and placed young in the court of Clotaire II., the third French king who was master of the whole monarchy. He was referendary or chancellor to that prince, when, in 626, upon the death of Hidulphus, he was chosen archbishop of Rouen, and compelled to receive episcopal consecration. The remains of idolatry in that diocese excited his zeal; he converted the unbelievers, and destroyed a famous temple of Venus at Rouen, and three others in the diocese dedicated to Mercury, Jupiter, and Apollo. Amongst many miracles which he wrought, it is related that the Seine having overflowed a considerable part of the city, the saint, who happened then to be at the court of Dagobert for certain affairs of his church, upon hearing this melancholy news, made haste to comfort and succor his afflicted flock; and kneeling down to pray on the side of the water with a crucifix in his hand, the water retired gently within the banks of the river.* If the miracles of this holy prelate raise our admiration, the eminent virtues which he practised ought still more to fix our attention. He macerated his body with continual austerities, and after the fatigues of his ministry, passed almost whole nights in prayer. By his indefatigable zeal he banished vice and superstition, and watched over the souls of all his flocks as over his own. He had discharged all the duties of an apostolic pastor thirteen years, when God made known to him that the time was come in which he was to be called to receive his recompense. Romanus, whose whole life had been an earnest preparation for that hour, received the summons with joy; and redoubling the fervor of his penance, prayers, and other good works, disposed himself for that happy moment, in which he entered the joy of his Lord on the 23d of October, 639. St. Owen was his successor Romanus was interred in the church of St. Godard, one of his predecessors; but, in the eleventh age, his body was removed into our Lady’s, which is the cathedral. The first shrine having been impoverished, the archbishop Rotrou, in 1179, caused a very rich one to be made, which is known by the name of La fierta-saint-Romain. See Le Cointe, Ann. Franc. au. 626, 635, 638, and the Life of St. Romanus written in Leonine verses, by a clergyman or monk of Rouen, before the reign of Charlemagne, brought to light by the Maurist monks Martenne and Durand, in 1717. (Thesaur. Nov. Anecdot. p. 1651.) This poem was compiled from a life of this saint which was more ancient, (Rivet, Hist. Lit. t. 4, p. 73, et Contin. t. 8, p. 376.) St. Romanus’s life was again composed by Gerard, dean of St. Medard’s at Soissons in the tenth age; also by Fulbert, the learned archdeacon of Rouen, in 1091, (not by the second Fulbert, who flourished in 1130.) This last piece was published by Rigaltius with dissertations and notes.
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