The musings and meandering thoughts of a crotchety old man as he observes life in the world and in a small, rural town in South East Nebraska. I hope to help people get to Heaven by sharing prayers, meditations, the lives of the Saints, and news of Church happenings. My Pledge: Nulla dies sine linea ~ Not a day without a line.
Stand Alone Pages on 'Musings of an Old Curmudgeon'
Medieval Way explores the construction techniques, materials, and long-term durability of these historical walls. By examining the unique composite properties of the wattle and daub method, this deep dive reveals why this ancient building practice remained a standard across various global cultures and how it managed to withstand centuries of environmental wear.
There is a house in England, with people sleeping behind its walls tonight, that was finished before Columbus ever crossed the Atlantic. Walk past it on the street and you would guess the walls were stone, or thick plaster over brick. That is exactly what you are meant to assume. The truth is that those walls are mud and woven sticks. Wet dirt, pressed by hand around a cage of green wood, and left to harden in the open air. We have a word for that kind of building today. We call it primitive, a peasant's stopgap, the kind of thing people supposedly settled for because they did not know any better. And yet the wall is still standing six hundred years later, holding up a roof, keeping out the rain, while the concrete and brick we invented to replace it crack and crumble in a fraction of the time. This is the story of wattle and daub, the cheapest wall human beings ever built, and how it quietly outlasted nearly everything that came after it.
Traditional Catholic morning prayers to help start your day in a godly way! The month of July is dedicated to the Most Precious Blood of Jesus. May our devotion to the salvific action of the Precious Blood of Christ increase more fervently this month. We've included the Memorare of the Sacred Heart and litany of the Sacred Heart. Begin your July 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 communities that modernise the most are emptying the fastest. The ones the world calls outdated are full of 25-year-olds. The insane plan, it turns out, was never really insane. It is fidelity, fruitfulness, and endurance under fire, and it is older than the church itself.
The Hebrew word she'erit means the remnant, the surviving core through whom God carries the future. Elijah thought he was alone. God had kept 7,000 who never bowed. Isaiah promised a faithful core would survive and be restored. Paul in Romans 11 takes Elijah's 7,000 and says there is now a remnant chosen by grace. Jesus seals it in Matthew 16:18: the gates of the underworld will not prevail. Gates are defensive. The church is the one on the move. Persecution did not shrink her. Tertullian watched it happen and named the mechanism: the blood of Christians is seed.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 The Insane Survival Plan
1:35 What If They Are the Seed of the Next Forest
2:25 She'erit: The Hebrew Word for Remnant
2:46 Elijah and the Hidden 7,000
3:11 Isaiah 10 and the Remnant That Returns
3:27 Romans 11 and the Remnant Chosen by Grace
3:42 Matthew 16:18 and the Gates of Death
4:21 Tertullian: The Blood of Christians Is Seed
5:12 Worship as the Survival Mechanism
5:52 Genesis 1:28 and Fruitfulness as Blessing
7:05 Protestant Objection: Visible or Invisible Church
7:47 Jewish Objection: The Remnant Belongs to Israel First
8:19 The Danger of Pride in the Remnant
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On the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Pope Leo addressed a personal letter to the leader of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, which is planning a schismatic act on July 1.
The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX or SSPX) is planning an unauthorized ordination of bishops on July 1, which is “a schismatic act.” The pope has to approve the ordination of bishops, who are the successors of the apostles.
On June 30, 1988, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the FSSPX, illicitly consecrated four bishops in 脡c么ne, Switzerland, against the will of Rome. All the participating bishops incurred excommunication. In an attempt to bring about reconciliation, Benedict XVI lifted that excommunication some decades afterward.
Now, the group plans a new set of ordinations without papal approval.
Follow the history of this situation below. Most recently, on June 24, the group wrote an open letter to the Pope.
Now, Pope Leo, on the feast of two great patrons of Church unity, Sts. Peter and Paul, wrote a personal letter to the current leader of the SSPX.
LETTER OF POPE LEO XIV TO THE REVEREND DAVIDE PAGLIARANI SUPERIOR GENERAL OF THE PRIESTLY FRATERNITY OF SAINT PIUS X
With a paternal heart, and aware of the responsibility entrusted to me by the Lord as the Successor of the Apostle Peter, I address you and, through you, the bishops, priests, seminarians and faithful connected to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.
The Church recognizes the devotion to liturgical life, commitment to priestly formation, apostolic zeal and desire for fidelity to Tradition that characterize many people and communities connected to your Fraternity. This has motivated the attentive and generous attitude that my Predecessors have consistently shown to you.
In this spirit, and filled with Christian affection, I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back! I urge you to consider carefully the spiritual good of the faithful, because the schismatic act you are about to undertake would deprive them of the licit and, in some cases, even valid reception of the Sacraments, which they love and seek for their sanctification.
The Church is open to a path of dialogue and understanding that the Holy Spirit can make possible and fruitful.
I pray for you, because to tear the seamless garment of Christ is a sin of extreme gravity. May the Lord enlighten your consciences and awaken your hearts. With a sorrowful yet hopeful heart, I feel it is my duty, through the authority received from Christ, to ask you to desist from your intended act. I entrust these intentions to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Good Counsel.
Pope to heretics: "We are already one!" Pope to the SSPX: this is a "schismatic act."
Ec么ne Diary: Tuesday, 30th June, Commemoration of St Paul
Swiss wine may not be the first accompaniment one would turn to for a roast beef garni but the southern Canton of the Valais is the most notable wine region in the country. The deep Rh么ne Valley is sheltered by the surrounding Alps, creating one of Switzerland’s driest and sunniest climates – ideal for viticulture. The Valais merlot I enjoyed with my dinner on Monday evening had all the mellowness, and slight jamminess of summer red fruits, that one would look for in a red wine on a balmy evening. Unfortunately, Brazil were playing Japan in the football World Cup meanwhile and, seeing immodestly clad supporters of the former team dancing in the street after their team scored a goal (how could there be so many Brazilians in this Swiss valley?), this Catholic had the familiar experience of feeling like living in a completely different world to the secular crowds. Truly two cities.
Next morning began early for my train journey to the Ec么ne seminary. This feast day of the Commemoration of St Paul, the newly-ordained Society priests were each offering their first masses in the meadow tent, crypt and seminary church, respectively. I was able to attend the first mass of Fr Bunge in the church as the morning sun filled the spectacular valley.
Despite the early hour, the church was full to capacity and many other faithful, priests and seminarians were to be found on the seminary site. Fr Pagliarani, Superior General of the SSPX, gave the sermon in Italian.
Following Holy Mass, I went to visit the crypt of the church where the first Mass of Fr Gandia was to be offered. Here was the tomb of the founder of the Society, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre – a marble sarcophagus and a recumbent stone effigy in full episcopal garb.
The question presented itself: will this final resting place of the Archbishop, undoubtedly the central figure of the traditionalist “movement” in the postconciliar decades, become a future place of pilgrimage for Catholics from across the world?
For those Catholics who attend the Traditional Roman Rite offered by diocesan parishes or Ecclesia Dei communities, a strange tension is presented in the person of Archbishop Lefebvre. It is easy to condemn him as a schismatic, and many do, principally for what he did exactly thirty-eight years ago today and what the Society intends to repeat tomorrow. However, the uncomfortable fact that cannot be dismissed is that very few non-sedevacantist traditional Masses would be celebrated today were it not for this man.
The origins of the FSSP in splitting from the SSPX as a result of the 1988 consecrations are well known. There is also the Institute of the Good Shepherd, established by another breakaway group of Society priests in 2006. But the significance of both these ancestrally ‘Lefebvrist; congregations is superseded by the wider championing of the traditional liturgy that Archbishop Lefebvre represented and which led to a gradual series of concessions from Rome, culminating in the 2007 motu proprio of Benedict XVI.
Some Catholics point to other groups of priests who kept the Traditional Roman Rite alive like those English priests who were granted permission via the ‘Agatha Christie’ indult by Paul VI in 1971. Such priests, however, were always restricted in number, as they depended on the ordinary’s willingness to give permission in each case. As Pope Francis made clear, the intent of the liturgical reform was to replace the Traditional Roman Rite with the Novus Ordo Missae (already perfectly clear from the behaviour of the postconciliar hierarchy). Any concessions granted were intended, at least by the revolutionaries, to anaesthetise the withering away process.
In the revolutionary turmoil of the 1970s, the survival of the traditional Mass throughout the world was thus due to the actions of small groups of laity and priests erecting non-canonical chapels, without reference to their ordinaries, and continuing to practice the pre-Vatican II liturgy and Catholic life as peacefully as they could. More often than not, these small traditionalist chapels began to attach themselves to the growing Society of St Pius X.
As John Lane has pointed out, Catholics who today condemn Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society may be wont to argue that Providence would have arranged matters differently to ensure the survival of Tradition had everyone been holy and obedient, but the fact is this path of “disobedience” was the route by which the traditional mass was saved and Catholics were able to hold fast to that which they had received. To subsequently condemn those Catholics who took such measures, often at significant personal cost, and nearly always in the face of the hostility of their hierarchy, while simultaneously benefitting from the fruits of their stand, is to implicitly take the side of the Modernist persecutors and would represent a particularly egregious hypocrisy.
Sooner or later, all Catholics who today attend and love the traditional mass must ask: What was the right reaction to the de facto prohibition of this Mass in the 1970s? Perhaps this question would be one that comes to mind at the tomb of Archbishop Lefebvre.
Later in the day the news of Pope Leo’s warning letter to the Society, that the consecrations tomorrow will constitute ‘a schismatic act’, ‘tear the seamless garment of Christ’ and be ‘a sin of extreme gravity’ did not seem to disturb the serene atmosphere here at Ec么ne. Perhaps there is a sense that something like this was inevitable. Of course, Leo declined to meet with the Society in the preceding months and has left his response to the last minute. Older traditional Catholics will recall that Leo’s argument is essentially the same as that of Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI since the beginning of this agony of the Church – faithful Catholics must “obey” but manifest heretics like the German bishops remain in good standing with the Pope.
The contrast between Leo’s statement declaring himself “already one” with the schismatic-heretical pseudo-archbishop of Canterbury during a homily closing the 2026 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in January and today’s threatened excommunication (which effectively declares ‘we do not have unity with’) the SSPX couldn’t be clearer, if only Catholics care to remember.
How long the glaring irony of the modern Church’s subjectivist “medicine of mercy” conciliation towards false religions, Protestant sects and Eastern schismatic churches (not to mention Liberal and revolutionary secular groups) – while resorting to preconciliar objectivity and discipline solely towards faithful traditional Catholics (inside and outside the SSPX) – can continue before something gives, remains to be seen.
