31 March 2025
Florida Bishop Preserves Thriving Latin Mass Community by Establishing Shrine
Good on His Lordship! He found a way to circumvent the restrictions placed on Tradition by the modernist Vatican.
From LifeSiteNews
By Antonino Cambria
Bishop Gregory Parkes said the new Latin Mass shrine in Tampa Bay will be a ‘place of pilgrimage for those throughout the Diocese devoted to the liturgical fruits of the antecedent liturgy.’
A Florida bishop has announced that a growing parish with a strong devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) will become a diocesan shrine and be placed under the pastoral care of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP).
Bishop Gregory Parkes of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida, announced on March 25 that the Epiphany of Our Lord Church in Tampa Bay will become the Epiphany of Our Lord Shrine this Summer and will be placed under the patronage of the ICKSP. The move ensures the stability of the TLM in the diocese, amid the restrictions placed on the ancient Roman rite by Traditionis Custodes.
The announcement emphasized that the community at Epiphany of Our Lord, with the support of their pastor, Father Edwin Palka, had sought to ensure the stability of the TLM while also adhering to the Francis’ wishes outlined in Traditionis Custodes.
“After careful study of Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and having prayerfully reflected on spiritual needs expressed by the faithful in the Diocese devoted to the Roman Rite celebrated according to the Roman Missal of 1962, the canonical status of Epiphany of Our Lord Catholic Church, in Tampa, Florida, will be converted from a parochial church to a diocesan shrine,” the announcement read.
The shrine will be a “place of pilgrimage for those throughout the Diocese devoted to the liturgical fruits of the antecedent liturgy and the incarnational spirituality of the Epiphany when the Heavenly Father manifested through signs and wonders the newborn Christ as a light to the nations.”
Pope Francis promulgated the controversial motu proprio Traditionis Custodes in July 2021. The document abrogated the universal permission for the celebration of the TLM granted by Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum and gave the bishops the power to restrict its celebration within their dioceses.
While the motu proprio bars Latin Masses from being celebrated in “parochial” churches, the restrictions notably do not apply to shrines.
Since the initial promulgation of Traditionis Custodes, the Vatican has implemented further restrictive measures on the ancient liturgy. In December 2021, the Vatican issued a responsa stating that diocesan clergy are barred from celebrating old Rite sacraments and must be willing to concelebrate the Novus Ordo. In February 2023, Francis issued a rescript restricting bishops’ ability to dispense priests from the restrictions of Traditionis Custodes.
Scholar Dr. Peter Kwasniewski celebrated Bishop Gregory Parkes’ announcement and praised the bishop in a Facebook post. “[T]his strikes me as very good news indeed. A bishop who cares for his flock and is willing to provide for them!” he wrote.
The transition of the parish into a shrine will be effective on July 1, and the ICKSP will assume control of the shrine on September 1, according to the announcement. In addition to the newly established shrine, two parishes in the diocese will continue to offer the TLM.
Bishop Strickland: Novus Ordo Mass, Priestly Formation Have Led to Problems in the Church
I've said for years that NO clergy are no longer Priests offering Sacrifice but celibate social workers in collars, which is one of the reasons for the push for a married Priesthood.
From LifeSiteNews
By Raymond Wolfe
Bishop Joseph Strickland said the ‘more comfortable’ Novus Ordo Mass has shifted priests toward acting like ‘social workers’ and declared that the Latin Mass ‘will stay with us’ in a recent interview.
Bishop Joseph Strickland said that the shift to the Novus Ordo Mass from the Traditional Latin Mass has led to a decline in the priesthood and called out the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for pushing bishops to “forget that they’re successors of the Apostles.”
The former bishop of Tyler, Texas, who was removed from his diocese by Pope Francis in 2023 after criticizing the pope’s heterodoxy, faulted the more “comfortable” and less “sacral” approach of the Novus Ordo Mass in a more than three-hour interview on March 20 with Conor Gallagher, the CEO of traditional Catholic publisher TAN Books.
In the interview, Bishop Strickland recounted his upbringing in the small, overwhelmingly Protestant town of Atlanta in east Texas, where he attended Mass as a child at a mission church that his parents helped establish.
When he had “time in town to kill,” he said, “I just went to the church and prayed. Nobody told me that’s a good thing to do, I just knew, you know, because being Catholic was the best thing we had as a family.”
Bishop Strickland noted in the interview that he begins each day with one hour of Eucharistic adoration and did as many as three hours a day as bishop of Tyler. He credited adoration and the Holy Rosary with giving him the strength to “stand up against” corrupt Church authorities and to say, “Well, okay, if you have to remove me, that’s what will happen, but I’m not going to backpedal on the truth that I believe Christ is telling us to teach and to share.”
The Texas bishop also shared his vocation story and how he attended an “orthodox” seminary after the Second Vatican Council where he nevertheless had “no exposure” to the Traditional Latin Mass and “wasn’t taught” about the centrality of the Eucharist for the priesthood.
Novus Ordo Mass, priestly formation have led to problems in Church
Bishop Strickland attributed the crisis in the modern Church to the desacralization of the Mass and to formation that envisions priests as social workers.
The problems in the Church “really are rooted in many ways in the formation of priests to be active, out there, doing good things, setting up food pantries, and doing all this stuff, and having this program and that program and another program,” he said.
However, Bishop Strickland revealed that he came to understand through a deepening of his prayer life “that being a priest primarily happens at the Eucharistic altar.”
“That is the core, that is the lifeblood, that is the epicenter of a priest’s life,” he stressed, though he “wasn’t taught that.”
“It wasn’t really the emphasis. It was, you know, kind of a Church that had been desacralized in many ways,” he lamented, including with the abandonment of the Traditional Latin Mass.
Bishop Strickland’s comments echo Venerable Pope Pius XII, who said, “There are indeed many forms of activity that a priest can exercise for the salvation of the modern world; but only one of them is without a doubt the most worthy, the most effective, and the most lasting in its effects: to act as dispenser of the Holy Eucharist, after first nourishing himself abundantly.”
“His work would not be that of a priest, if he, even through zeal for souls, put his Eucharistic vocation second,” the pontiff stated.
Bishop Strickland said that, in the wake of Second Vatican Council and the introduction of the Novus Ordo Mass, “I think all of that really began to shift the priesthood more into being a social worker, a good man, and doing good things but not being a priest of Jesus Christ.”
“There are lots of factors, but I think that one of the critical is, you know, the liturgy was not as sacral,” he said. “That was the objective: make it simpler, make it more something comfortable with this world.”
“It’s not this mystical event every Sunday that it really is, but that was the emphasis, and I think that’s bled into what do priests do, what do bishops do,” he observed.
Bishop Strickland explained that he “was trained very much as a Novus Ordo priest,” describing the new Mass as a “barebones Eucharistic sacrifice, and even sacrifice wasn’t emphasized, it was the communal gathering.”
He also related how he began celebrating the Latin Mass in 2020, more than 30 years after being ordained as a priest. His first Latin Mass was a “profound experience,” Bishop Strickland said. “I remember the actual consecration, I mean, you’re only whispering anyway, but I could hardly get the words out. It was very emotional.”
“The Traditional Latin Mass will stay with us,” he declared and predicted that “those who want to totally eliminate it” will fail, citing the “supernatural focus” of the traditional liturgy.
“I try to celebrate the Novus Ordo Mass with great reverence and great focus on the supernatural but the Traditional Latin Mass, in my experience, you’d almost have to fight against it being supernatural, you know, it’s just the way it is,” with its many genuflections, signs of the cross, bows, and other signs, the prelate said.
READ: New DC Cardinal McElroy has long record of promoting LGBT ideology, downplaying abortion
USCCB pushes bishops to ‘forget that they are successor of the Apostles’
In the interview with Gallagher, Bishop Strickland additionally discussed how bishops are trained to be “managers” and “businessmen.”
He recalled a moment around December 2016, after having been the bishop of Tyler for four years, when he decided to reject the “management-style” approach and commit speaking the truth, regardless of the consequences.
“I really remember sitting in my office and saying, ‘Are you going to be the management-style bishop, you know, that I was witnessing – go to meetings, get on committees, do all this stuff – or are you going to teach the truth?’” he said.
“More and more what the truth means to me is a person, is Jesus Christ, Truth Incarnate, so I really feel like I was answering a call to speak for Christ in a very clear way, willing to make whatever sacrifices to speak His truth,” Bishop Strickland stated.
“And so I did make that decision, and, as I’ve said to people, you know, it’s been hell on wheels in some ways ever since then, because opposition, and it’s like, ‘Wait a minute, you’re getting out of line here, you’re not following the plan, you’re not being a good manager,’” he continued.
The Texas prelate said that he was accused of “lack of fraternity” toward other bishops because he was “saying things that were not comfortable.”
He noted that pushback from the “institutional Church” against him started “really ramping up” after the USCCB’s November 2018 meeting, which followed explosive homosexual abuse revelations about now-former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
During the meeting, Bishop Strickland denounced the promotion of LGBT activist Jesuit priest James Martin, who has criticized Catholic teaching about homosexuality, encouraged homosexual relationships, and organized heterodox, pro-LGBT conferences.
Several bishops, including Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the former archbishop of Atlanta and Washington, D.C., have invited Martin to speak in their dioceses. Cardinal Robert McElroy, the current archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, have also strongly praised his LGBT activism.
“Do we believe the doctrine of the Church or not?” Bishop Strickland questioned fellow bishops at the meeting.
Unfortunately, bishops are “encouraged to be part of the Texas Catholic Conference, to be part of the USCCB, and to kind of forget that they’re successors of the Apostles,” Bishop Strickland said in the Thursday interview.
Boldly declaring the truth is “a very different path of being a bishop in the 21st century than most bishops are on and, frankly, [a] different path than the Church encourages” due to “the structure of the USCCB.”
“And I’ve heard bishops say, ‘Well, you know, I’m not going to make a statement. What did the USCCB put out about this?’” It’s like, you’re the apostle of your diocese, you should know better than anyone what your flock needs, and that to me that’s not been the focus,” Bishop Strickland said.
“I was accused of not being fraternal then,” he added, “but … as a bishop I’m supposed to just go against what I believe in principle is the right thing and, frankly, with some of these things I think I was proven to be on the right side, but that’s not the way the management school wanted it to work.”
Bishop Strickland notably clashed with the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, for example, when they publicly opposed a mother’s efforts to save her disabled baby daughter, whom doctors had determined to remove from life support because of her “quality of life.”
The Tyler bishop, however, urged the Texas Supreme Court to protect the girl, Tinslee Lewis, who was eventually released from the hospital in 2022.
Bishop Strickland’s case is similar to that of Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres of Puerto Rico, another outspoken defender of Catholic teaching who was removed by Pope Francis in 2022 with no official explanation, reportedly due to his support for conscience objections to COVID shots and because he was insufficiently “fraternal.”
Pope Francis’ nuncio pressured Bishop Strickland to be quiet
Bishop Strickland told Gallagher that he faced pressure from Pope Francis’ nuncio to the U.S., Cardinal Christophe Pierre, and USCCB leadership to stop speaking out.
“I had a few phone calls from the nuncio saying, ‘Bishop Strickland, you know, you need to cool it,’” he recounted. “It’s like, well, if it’s the truth, I don’t know that I can cool it.”
He added that his removal was due to allegations that he was “disrespectful to Pope Francis” and “wasn’t fraternal.” Bishop Strickland has previously accused Francis of “undermining the Deposit of Faith” and criticized his heterodox initiatives, like the Synod on Synodality.
The prelate said in the interview that Pope Francis “seems to have gone beyond ambiguity to really challenging what the truth of the Church teaches,” citing his endorsement of homosexual “blessings” and how he “writes friendly notes” to James Martin.
He described the Church under Francis as “like a family with an alcoholic father,” pointing out that “we’re respectful” to human authority but that “obedience ultimately is to God.”
“I ultimately made that choice. I have to be obedient to the truth that is Christ,” he said.
“There wasn’t any specific quote” cited as the reason for his removal, Bishop Strickland said, “but I would say, in general, I was speaking out in ways that were they found disruptive.”
“For the manager side, you don’t want to be disruptive.”
Bishop Strickland said that he thinks his ousting “was orchestrated to send signals to the other bishops, because they were meeting the day after it was announced that I was removed or relieved.”
“I can’t be told to quit teaching Truth Incarnate because it doesn’t fit the synodal model in the modern Church,” he insisted. “I was directly told to quit talking about it, ‘Quit talking about the Deposit of Faith.’ It’s like, ‘Quit doing my job.’”
“But to me I can’t understand how someone who is saying the Deposit of Faith needs to be changed, and this word needs to be taken out of the Catechism, we need to change all this, we need to totally reinterpret Sacred Scripture that we’ve known for centuries, I can’t understand,” Bishop Strickland said.
Cupich, McElroy, Tobin, and Martin have all suggested that the Catechism should be changed to no longer say that homosexuality is “disordered.”
“They don’t know the Jesus Christ that I know,” Bishop Strickland said. “I guess I can put it that way. What He says is in conflict with that.”
“Je Suis Marine”: Lawfare Bars Le Pen From 2027 Presidential Bid
If the Spanish Reds are trying to restart the Civil War, it's beginning to look like the Left in France is trying to go for Revolution number four!
From The European Conservative
By Tamás Orbán
“Today, it is not only Marine Le Pen who is being unjustly condemned: it is French democracy that is being executed,” National Rally Chairman Jordan Bardella concluded.
In a move reminiscent of all that’s been going on in Romania, Germany, and elsewhere in Western ‘democracies’, on Monday, March 31st, a Paris court found Marine Le Pen—the leader of France’s largest and most popular party, the National Rally—guilty of misappropriation of public funds along with eight other MPs, charges that the party has been consistently denying.
For Le Pen, prosecutors originally asked for five years in prison, €300,000 in fines, and well as five years of ineligibility for holding or running for public office.
In the end, the court sentenced the party leader and likely 2027 frontrunner to four years in prison (two compulsory and two suspended), €100,000 in fines, and the full five years of ineligibility, which is to be executed immediately, even before she can appeal.
With this, Le Pen is barred from entering the 2027 presidential race—the one she is projected to win, after reaching second place in 2017 and 2022.
Another co-defendant, Perpignan mayor and National Rally Vice President Louis Aliot, was sentenced to six months in prison and three years of ineligibility, but not immediately executed, which means he can keep his position during the appeals process.
The party itself was also fined an unprecedented €2 million, including the €1million already seized during the investigation.
The National Rally is accused of ‘embezzling’ up to €6.8 million from EU funds meant to pay European Parliamentary assistants, who were found to have engaged in domestic activities as well as working in Brussels. Le Pen’s defense appealed to common sense throughout the trial, saying EU parliamentary rules do not precisely define the scope of tasks allowed for assistants, and since appearing in their home countries is an “integral part” of the work of MEPs, their assistants should also be able to help their work back home too.
Despite the absurdity of the charges, the court apparently took the ‘maximalist option,’ clearly intended to strip Le Pen of the ability to run for president. The move immediately split France in half and will likely trigger widespread protests in the coming days and weeks. As National Rally President Jordan Bardella wrote:
Today, it is not only Marine Le Pen who is being unjustly condemned: it is French democracy that is being executed.
The obvious lawfare was questioned even by some mainstream political figures, such as the center-right Republican leader Eric Ciotti, who wrote “Is France still a democracy?” in an X post. He then went on in a second post:
The democratic destiny of our nation has been confiscated by an unworthy judicial cabal. The favorite candidate in the presidential election was prevented from running.
This is not a simple malfunction, it is a system of power capture that systematically excludes any candidate too far to the right who is capable of winning
Le Pen’s international allies also took to social media to condemn the move and express support for Le Pen.
Italy’s deputy PM, Matteo Salvini—who also had his fair share of lawfare until being acquitted of bogus charges late last year—called the verdict “a declaration of war from Brussels” against national conservatives, and likened the situation to Romania, where the EU also had a hand in canceling last year’s election and banning the nationalist frontrunner.
Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán referenced the social support movement for the Charlie Hebdo victims by stating on X “Je suis Marine” (‘I am Marine’), while Dutch PVV leader Geert Wilders said he “trust[s] she will win the appeal and become President of France.”
The right-wing populist National Rally is the largest party in the French parliament, and currently polling at 32%, ahead of the joint leftist electoral coalition New Popular Front (26%) as well as Macron’s liberal centrist Ensemble coalition (23%).
As for presidential polling, Le Pen has been confidently leading in first-round voting intentions with 38%, far ahead of the runners-up, former prime ministers Edouard Philippe (26%) and Gabriel Attal (20%). In late last year, 61% of respondents in France said they believed that Le Pen would become the next president, regardless of whether they support her.
However, if Le Pen’s appeal is rejected and the ban is upheld, the National Rally will need to look for a replacement. The most likely candidate is the party president, Jordan Bardella, who still polls at first place in this hypothetical scenario, although with slightly lesser numbers (34%). The problem is that at 29, Bardella may be considered too young to win the second round, and the party has always planned for him to become prime minister eventually.
Thousands Defy Secularization at Valley of the Fallen Mass
Are the PSOE and Sánchez trying to restart the Civil War? And where is the Vatican as the Reds try to "desacralise" a Basilica and a monastery?
By Javier Villamor
The Spanish government’s intention to desacralize the Civil War monument is viewed by many as another affront to Christians.
On Sunday, March 30th, thousands of Spaniards gathered at the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen in Madrid to celebrate Mass in support of the monument, defying the recent attempts by the Pedro Sánchez government to “resignify” the emblematic place.
Built from 1940–1959 with Republican POW labor under Franco’s directive post-Spanish Civil War, the monument aims to honor all victims and foster reconciliation. It holds 33,000 remains from both sides and features a Benedictine abbey active for over 60 years.
The call to attend the Mass, posted on social networks with the slogan “El Valle no se toca” (The Valley is not to be touched), was heeded by an unexpected number of Spaniards. What was initially planned as a single ceremony at 11 a.m. had to be doubled with another at 1 p.m. due to the massive influx of attendees.
This mobilization is in response to an agreement reached on February 25th seeking to force the departure of Father Santiago Cantera, prior of the Benedictine community of the Valley, described by the Sánchez government as “Francoist,” and to transform up to 90% of the monumental complex, including the biggest cross in the world, a symbol that for many represents a space of memory and reconciliation.
Photo: Contrainformacion.es
Many Spanish Catholics believe the Church let them down by signing on to the agreement with the socialist government. The lukewarm attitude of institutions such as the Episcopal Conference and the Vatican has generated controversy, with the faithful viewing these actions as exploiting the memory of the Civil War for political purposes, in line with the so-called Law of Democratic Memory.
Luis Felipe Utrera-Molina, a lawyer committed to the defense of the current form of the Valley, told europeanconservative.com that the memorial place could be designated as an “asset of cultural interest” which by Spanish law would mean “not a single stone could be moved”, but there is no political will to do so.
Utrera-Molina is also critical of the church for yielding to pressure from the government. “That the church agrees that a sacred place is allowed to succumb to socialist propaganda is intolerable,” he says, describing the Vatican’s behavior as “cowardly.”
Sunday’s Mass was not only a liturgical act but a declaration of principles in the face of what many see as an ideological attack on a sacred and symbolic place. The battle, both in the courts and in the collective consciousness, is far from over.
Queen Isabel and the Granada War - Part 1: The Dream of the Queen
In the mid-fifteenth century, two monarchs arose who would dramatically alter Spanish history. On October 19, 1469, Fernando II, heir to the crown of Aragon, married Isabel I, heiress to the crown of Castile. From her girlhood, Isabel was conscious of her family’s crusading past. Among her ancestors were many of Castile’s conquering kings, including Fernando III, who had taken Córdoba and Seville from the taifa emirs and the Almohads. It was Isabel’s dream to complete this work of her forefathers, by conquering the final Moorish emirate based in Granada.
Lent Is the Time To Visit the Divine Physician
We are required to receive Holy Communion at Easter and we should not approach Our Lord with sin on our soul. Go to Confession!!!
From Aleteia
By Philip Kosloski
God wants to heal us but unfortunately, too often we don't go to him with our spiritual sickness in order to be healed. We stay instead in the darkness.There exist numerous home remedies for the most common illnesses, but there is one sickness that can not be healed through our own efforts.
That sickness is the life of sin we are currently in and the many times we walk away from God.
No matter how hard we may try to achieve inner healing through our own mental experiments, only God can heal us and bring us lasting peace through the forgiveness of sins.
What we need to do is to fly to the Divine Physician and to show him all of our ailments.
Spiritual healing
Pope Benedict XVI reflected on this spiritual truth during an Angelus message on the Fourth Sunday of Lent in 2012.
St Augustine comments: “So far, then, as it lies with the physician, he has come to heal the sick. He that will not observe the orders of the physician destroys himself. He has come a Savior to the world... You will not be saved by him; you shall be judged of yourself”.
In this quote, St. Augustine is explaining how Jesus, the Divine Physician, wants to heal us, but he can only heal us if we want healing.
Pope Benedict XVI continues his reflection by expanding on this reality, linking it to the sacrament of confession:
Therefore, if the merciful love of God — who went so far as to give his only Son to redeem our life — is infinite, we have a great responsibility: each one of us, in fact, must recognize that he is sick in order to be healed. Each one must confess his sin so that God’s forgiveness, already granted on the Cross, may have an effect in his heart and in his life.
He further explains how, "it is only by opening oneself to the light and only by sincerely confessing one’s sins to God that one finds true peace and true joy. It is therefore important to receive the Sacrament of Penance regularly, especially during Lent, in order to receive the Lord’s forgiveness and to intensify our process of conversion."
Sometimes it can be more convenient to ignore our sins and to hide them from God, or even from ourselves. We bury them deep within our soul, not letting them be exposed to the light of Christ.
However, if we do that, we will never experience healing. This happens whenever we go to the doctor and don't tell him something that is ailing us.
Our doctor can't heal something that he doesn't know about. While its true that the Divine Physician knows everything, he wants us to recognize our spiritual sickness and to bring it to him of our own free will.
God wants to heal us and to bring us back to spiritual health. What we need to do is to let him and we can do that by going to confession and opening ourselves up to the healing power of mercy that Jesus grants through the ministry of the priest.
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