29th Pilgrimage for Restoration in the footsteps of the martyrs returns to Our Blessed Lady’s Shrine of the Martyrs at Auriesville, NY, September 27-29 — Friday to Sunday!

The pilgrimage, now in its 29th year, is an journey of the faithful to Our Lady’s Shrine of the Martyrs in upstate New York, at Auriesville. Here, Jesuit Father Isaac Jogues and Companions were martyred, beginning with lay-brother René Goupîl and several Native American Converts in 1642, and later layman John de LaLande and Jogues himself in 1646.

Since 1996, pilgrims walk near and along the paths the saints followed as captives of the Iroquois. Their journey was hundreds of miles over 28 days under torture. Our journey, modeled on the ancient annual Pentecost Pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Chartres, France, is 62 miles over 3 days and, though penitential, is full of joy. Our purpose is to honor Christ Our King publicly, to pray for the restoration of His Kingship in the family and civil society, and to make reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Pilgrims return to pray the traditional Roman (Latin) Mass, to confess, and to receive counsel and teaching from priests of solid faith every day.

Register online at https://pilgrimage-for-restoration.org/registration/

Questions?    mail@pilgrimage-for-restoration.org    484/240-5797    http://pilgrimage-for-restoration.org/blog/

To register go to this link.

I recently heard that erstwhile Catholic writer Michael Warren Davis has joined the Orthodox Church. Now over the years I have had to take issue with articles by Davis that touched on Catholic traditionalism. I disputed Davis’s self-identification as a reactionary, even a “trad.”   For in these writings Davis took aim at Catholics of the past and present ( Triumph magazine, Joe Sobran, ordinary traditionalists in the pews) while displaying great understanding for secular and ecclesiastical  establishments (National Review, Archbishop Gregory,  Pope Francis).  1)

I also had a mixed reaction to Davis’s very latest article, a review of a book on the Jesuits.   Davis there takes some clever shots at the Jesuit order and the current papal regime. Yet he leads off with a serious misinterpretation of Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and his review features several startling errors (the latter,  of course, not necessarily Davis’s fault). A more substantial problem for the reader is the difficulty of separating Davis’s own views from those of the author of the book being reviewed. 2)

On YouTube Davis is now claiming he came to Catholicism from “theistic Luciferian Satanism.” And after Latin Rite Catholicism. he seems to have joined briefly the Melkite Catholic community before finally turning to Orthodoxy. Obviously, Davis is a man who unfortunately has experienced significant vicissitudes in his spiritual life. I hope he can find a degree of peace in Orthodoxy. On YouTube he does read a statement which makes a presentation of Orthodoxy more positive than those of some other Orthodox converts from Catholicism. 3)

Of course, Orthodoxy is not without its own issues. Certain representatives of major Orthodox churches in the United States, for example,  want to import into Orthodoxy features of Vatican II Catholicism and even of modern secular society. Outside the United States,  political issues wrack the Orthodoxy world(e.g., the ongoing ecclesiastical conflict in Ukraine).  Davis, however, seems to be well aware of those problems.4)

Is the conversion of Davis not another example of the crackup of conservative Catholicism? For despite his “trad” pretensions,  Davis really represented the conservative tendency within Catholicism: advocating aspects of traditional Catholic morality, faith and liturgy while simultaneously showing reverence for the hierarchy and the papacy. Under the current pope,  this balancing act became increasingly unsustainable. As the old song goes: ”Something’s got to give.”   

Undoubtedly,  many more Catholics are considering the step Michael Warren Davis has now taken.   The “fault” for this, however,  resides squarely with the pope, the Catholic hierarchy and the clergy. It is their outrageous and scandalous conduct that motivates some faithful to seek in Orthodoxy respect for Christian tradition, a reverent and beautiful liturgy and, above all, a focus on the spiritual, on the union of the individual and the community with God.  The Eastern Orthodox Church, which Davis has joined,  is not necessarily the answer  – much more should be said on this subject, pro and con. Orthodoxy will always remain an attraction for a minority. Yet,  at some point, on some issue and in some way we all may be forced to decide between loyalty to the clerical establishment or to the truth. And it is the leadership of Roman Catholic Church which has created such a situation  – making distinctly possible for everyone a previously unimaginable choice.

1. See, in sthughofcluny.org, , “Sobranistas without Sobran” (2/21/18); Sediziose Voci (6/14/21): Papal without a Pope: Recent Manifestations of Conservative Catholicism (10/21/22).
2. Davis, Michael Warren, “Jesuit Plots” at 55 The American Conservative (July/August 2024).
3. Barrel Aged Faith,  “Satanist to Orthodox Christian” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFnYUkfgSmk (accessed 7/12/2024);“Why this Catholic Writer became Orthodox” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jdGZH1HRQ (accessed 7/12/2024). For a book by another convert to the Eastern Church see “Orthodoxy?” at sthughofcluny.org (2/28/23)
4. Davis, Michael Warren, “The CIA’s Man in Constantinople” (The American Conservative, 4/23/24).

For Spanish speakers, a very nice recent article by Maricarmen Godoy about the current state of the Traditional Mass:

Misa Tradicional en latín atrae más

Even with a couple of minor mistakes, it eloquently attests to the continued and growing popularity of the Latin Mass.

This Thursday, May 30, is the Feast of Corpus Christi. The following churches will offer Traditional Masses.

Thursday, May 30

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT, 12:10 pm, Solemn Mass and Eucharistic procession. Mass for 4 Voices by William Byrd

Sacred Heart Oratory, Georgetown, CT, 6 pm, Solemn Mass with procession and Benediction

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, CT, 6 pm with procession of the Most Blessed Sacrament around the church building.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Bridgeport, CT, 6 pm, Solemn Mass and procession.

Holy Innocents Church, New York, NY, 6 pm, Missa Cantata followed by outdoor procession and triple Benediction

Most Holy Redeemer, New York, NY, 6 pm followed by Eucharistic procession to St. Brigid’s Church with Benediction.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, New York, NY, 7 pm Solemn Mass; 8 pm Outdoor procession; 8:30 pm Benediction.

St Josaphat, Bayside, Queens, 7pm Missa Cantata followed by procession

St. Paul the Apostle, Yonkers, 12 noon

St. Andrew Church, Ellenville, NY, 7pm Missa Cantata

Our Lady of Sorrows, Jersey City, 7 pm

Our Lady of Fatima, Pequannock, NJ, 7 am, 9 am, 7 pm

St. Athony of Padua Oratory, West Orange, NJ, 9 am, Low Mass, 7 pm High Mass and procession

St. John the Baptist, Allentown, NJ, 7:00p.m. Mass followed by Eucharistic procession. 

“Virtus Signaling,” The Lamp, April 5, 2024.

In 2020, I was dissatisfied by the initial offerings of the new Catholic magazine The Lamp. Too many contributors seemed focused on evading, instead of facing, the reality of the Catholic Church today. By 2022, however, a subset of that magazine’s writers – including its editor – had shaken off their initial noncommittal airs and started dealing frankly with major issues of the Church (especially Traditionis Custodes). Now, in the April issue of The Lamp, the magazine’s editor, Matthew Walther, in a devastating essay takes aim at one of the most offensive features of the contemporary Church in the US: mandatory Virtus “training” for all those involved in church functions. For those who don’t know it, Virtus is a program supposedly designed to prevent sexual abuse – it is the exact equivalent of corporate training videos on the evils of sexual harassment. Since I had given up my “office” in the Church (serving as an usher) years ago, I have lost touch with the Virtus and its mentality. Others in my family have not been so fortunate.

Walther skewers the mind-numbing blather of Virtus: “its all-encompassing banality is impossible to describe.” By working through preposterous scenarios, Virtus is supposed to enable trainees to recognize the signs of child abuse – and report them. The onus of eliminating child abuse is thus placed squarely on the laity. Yet Virtus dances around the main characteristic of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church – that overwhelmingly the clergy are the perpetrators of abuse.

Walther proceeds from a critique of the program to more profound reflections on the state of the Church. What are we to think when the Church, instead of “insisting on an older moral vocabulary – the language of iniquity, of enormity, of sacrilege in addition to rape” – on the one hand, and “the virtues of chastity, charity, prudence, (and) wisdom” on the other, with Virtus:

“substitutes compliance, bulletins, slides, training, risk aversion and mitigation, liability minimization (and) cost control?”

Is it not obvious that the Church sees child sexual abuse as primarily a problem of protecting its own financial resources? Is the Church then just “one more faceless business entity?”

Further, Virtus makes of the Church a “surveillance state” in which the laity are summoned to view each other – and the clergy too – as potential abusers. Informing is encouraged. Things like Virtus have contributed to this situation:

“(P)riests in the United States today are aloof, isolated in thier parishes or, increasingly, their parish “clusters’ or “collectives.”

Finally, Walther describes a pervasive “randomness and caprice” in the “secular security theater” world of Virtus:

“(S)uch inconsistency is essential to security theater. Far more effectively than any consistently defined regime, arbitrariness underlines the all-pervading quality of semi-occluded authorities while heightening the atmosphere of crisis.“

Walther’s observations resemble my own thoughts on the totalitarian ultramontanism of the Catholic Church under Pope Francis.

“Virtue Signaling” is essential reading!

…with one of her best posts:

Pope Francis, the Venice Biennale and the Vaccuum of Belief

Regarding patronage of the arts by the Roman Catholic Church, in the last few years attention had centered on the pseudo-Byzantine kitsch of the notorious Fr. Marko Rupnik. He is, by the way, still very active and in good standing, thanks to Pope Francis’s support. And his artwork is now and then still displayed prominently at official functions in Rome.

The Rupnik saga tended to overshadow another aspect of recent Church patronage: the attempts, mainly by the Vatican (Cardinal Ravasi!)and certain Western European prelates, to make a home in the Church for the “official” contemporary art of the West. We have posted on this site reviews of books on this art and sometimes of actual exhibitions of it, e..g.,

Siccardi, Cristina, The Art of God: Sacred Thoughts, Profane Ideas (2017)

The Art of the Council (Exhibition in 2012)

De Kerros, Aude, Sacré Art Contemporain: Evèques, Inspecteurs et Commissaires (2012)

Indeed, we have covered the main featured artist of the 2024 Vatican Pavilion:

Another Masterpiece of Modern Art (John Paul II hit by a meteorite)(2014)

In America, this type of artwork has had a more limited exposure in the Catholic Church (as opposed to the Episcopal church, the museums or the art galleries). Examples:

“Frenzy into Folly” at St Paul’s, New York (2013)

And especially:

Heavenly Bodies Part I; Heavenly Bodies Part II (2018)

Now Pope Francis has visited the Vatican Pavilion at the Venice Biennale which is a showpiece of such art. Maureen Mullarkey’s article shows us work of the artists featured there or favaobly mentioned by the Pope in an address. I hope you won’t be shocked by these images! For me, what is shocking is not the art – after all, they only create the same stupid things again and again – but the personal endorsement given it by the Bishop of Rome.

In a final bizarre and kitschy publicity stunt, the Vatican involved inmates of a womens’ prison in the preparation of the pavilion. So in Venice the Church combines toadying to the representatives of movements patronized by the rich, government bureaucracies and upscale art galleries with outreach to “victims” who I suspect haven’t the faintest idea what this “art” is about. The 2024 Vatican Pavilion is the latest demonstration (here, in art, but also in morality anfd finance)of the ever closer integration of the Catholic Church into the governing establishment of the West.

In the latest issue (May 2024) of his Catalyst Bill Donohue finally lowers the boom on Francis:

Pope’s Rating Tanking

Why are Catholics who are the most practicing also the least happy with Francis? We know from virtually every survey that these Catholics are mostly orthodox, and it is likely that they are also more attentive to what he has been doing. That may explain their relative dissatisfaction with him.

Bill Donohue seems to be one of those Catholics who has been attentive to what Pope Francis has been doing. He mentions in the article the papal protection of Rupnik and Zanchetta, the favor shown to Pelosi, the measures taken against Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Burke and the “severe restrictions” imposed on the Latin Mass, “alienating millions of Catholics.” I am sure a recent funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral (which is not mentioned) also helped Donohue to make up his mind regarding the current pontificate.

I feel sympathy for Bill Donohue and his Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. For decades Dohohue has defended the hierarchy and the Church – now and then perhaps in a misguided manner – against all manner of adversaries. Now this same Vatican and hierarchy have largely deserted the conservatives who have expended so much effort on the Church establishment’s behalf. But from such bitter experiences the truth emerges – and that is the most important thing. And I welcome Bill Donohue’s expression of sympathy for persecuted traditionalists. Could it even be that the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights will now turn its attention to combatting abuses of power within the Catholic Church itself?

Monday April 8 is the Feast of the Annunciation on this year’s calendar. Here are some of the churches that will offer the Traditional Mass.

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT, 8 am and 7 pm.

St. Pius X, Fairfield, CT, 7 pm

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Oratory, Bridgeport, CT, 7:45 am low Mass

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, CT: 8 a.m. low Mass

St. Martha Church, Enfield, CT: 7 p.m. low Mass

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, New York, NY, 7 AM Low Mass, 7:45 AM Low Mass, 3:00 PM Holy Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet, 6:00 PM Confessions, 7:00 PM Solemn Mass

Our Lady Queen of Peace, Staten Island, NY, Missa Cantata, 7 pm

St. Josaphat, Bayside, Queens, 7 pm

St. Paul the Apostle, Yonkers, NY, 12 noon

Annunciation Church, Crestwood, NY, patronal feastday, Solemn Mass, 7 pm

Sacred Heart, Esopus NY, 11:30 am, Low Mass.

St Mary / St Andrew, Ellenville NY, 7:00 pm, High Mass

Our Lady of Sorrows, Jersey City, 7:30 pm

Shrine Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, Raritan, NJ, 7 pm