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“The rich man also died and was buried and from the netherworld, where he was in torment ... [he cried out] I am suffering torment in these flames. ... warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.’ ” (St. Luke 16:19-31) |
“The Hell there isn’t!”
It is frighteningly odd. We no longer hear of
of Hell ... although we see it leaching into our lives and
the lives of those around us everywhere — it crouches, either
feeding on our malice and greed, or lurking in some obscure
corner of our lives that shrinks from the light.
Contrary to “progressive” theological speculation, Hell has not
been abolished ... nor has its rage abated. Look around you.
Like children fearing to invoke the very evil they fear through merely uttering it, we have somehow convinced ourselves that if we resolutely ignore Hell, it will go away; that if we pretend that there is no such place, then it will become a fiction and therefore we have nothing to fear ... and also nothing to avoid. It is — we are told, and therefore tell ourselves — a quaint vestige of pre-enlightened and distinctly medieval thought, of long gone days of dismal dogma; in fact a notion abolished after Vatican II as unkind, as severe, and therefore “unworthy” of God. This is not true.
But still, we whistle in the dark as we pass a
graveyard or a place of darkness fraught with a sense of looming evil. Odd. Very
odd.
Despite all that Christ has told us, all that Holy Mother the Church has taught
us, we will not hear of it ... we insist on our way. Christ knows this.
That is why He gives us the Parable of the Rich Man.1 Do you
doubt it?
Ask yourself this: have you ever (that is to say, even once) been to a funeral Mass where the bereaved are not told, indeed, completely assured, that their dead (who, like the rest of the congregation, had apparently never sinned) are already in Heaven smiling down benignly on our obsequies even as we utter them?
The real
illusion ... and it is not Hell
It matters not that “the departed” were cruel and miserly, utterly indifferent to the poor; that they profited from the pain, misery, sin and degradation of others, caring nothing for God and even less for men — and we know it! We knew it while yet they lived, and were ourselves often keenly aware of their selfishness, their lust, pride, and greed — even their open depravity. Unrepentant to the moment of that clap of thunder that ended the illusion of tomorrow, they went to death as they had lived — and we “celebrate their lives” ... instead of trembling before their death. In the lowest octave of our “celebration” we instinctively discern a deeply dissonant note that is discordant with our carefully revised narrative. It is deeper than the human voice, and more ancient still. We know that we “celebrate” a fiction of our own making to dispel the remorseless truth that stirs uneasily within us: that Heaven alone is not, after all, the abode of all our dead; that we have something to deeply lament, rather than celebrate; in fact something to fear rather than to rejoice in.
Incredibly, it became not just the same fiction but the narrative of Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis) — despite all that Christ said to the contrary!
Has the question, let alone the concern, of the dead’s urgent and utter need for every possible prayer ever once so much as arisen? Are we ever invited, urged, to so much as pray for our dead? * Are they not in need of our prayers? They were in life, yes? But somehow death appears to have abrogated this necessity. For all practical purposes and appearances, “being dead” is synonymous with “being canonized”. The dead, in every aspect of today’s liturgy, are, as it were, “by right” (and rite ...) — in virtue of the fact that they are dead — already “in the company of the Angels and Saints.”
Strangely enough, we acknowledge ourselves
to be sinners — if we acknowledge sin at all — but in a remarkable dispensation
that quite suddenly becomes concomitant with death, not the recently
departed ... who yesterday was “one among us”, that is to say, a sinner
also. What he needs most, the “celebrant” carefully contrives to conceal from
us: the need of our prayers. One day — perhaps this day
— I will need them ... and so will you.
We no longer pray for our dead
Why is this?
Praying for the dead is very closely connected
to a sober recognition of the reality of ... other alternatives than
Heaven. Lesser alternatives, frightening alternatives, even
everlasting alternatives. We wish to spare our dead either a measure of that
privative state of purgation preparatory to Heaven through the suffrage of our
prayers, or were it possible, the pains of Hell through an impassioned petition
to the Judge.2 In any event, the outcome at least admits of
doubt in terms of clearly distinguishable consignments.
Monuments and mirrors
For many years we could find the following
inscribed on tombstones both in Europe and America:
It was as much a reminder of the brevity of this life as an admonition to live our lives in recognition of realities that we cannot avoid, minimize, or simply wish away — and that these realities, moreover, will correspond with how we have lived.
Of two things we are certain: that we die, and that following our death we will either live forever or we will not.
If we do not live forever, we have nothing to hope for and nothing to fear. Whatever we are at the moment of our death, will be, as it were, the last syllable in an ill-stated premise of meaning that never purposed to attain to a coherent conclusion — because it could not. Without either hope or fear, then, we stare into the absence of being not as an eternal nothing, passively, if vacantly, witnessed in abstraction by a still inexplicable but nevertheless palpable consciousness aware of endless, unpunctuated, duration. we are an abstract argument against a plea for being. We are atheists which is a polite word for nihilists are atheists, and everything ultimately culminates in nothing. But if we are Catholics, we do — we have an abundance of the one or the other: either much to hope for — or much to fear.
We reject the first option offhand, that is to say, the notion that death brings total extinction. We are ... after all ... Catholics, and that flies in the face of everything Christ said and did.
But neither do we embrace the alternative (of either much to hope for or much to fear), at least in the eschatological terms enunciated by Christ Himself involving death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell.
We cannot have both.
Neither, then — in our preferential and subjective cosmology that accords with neither reason nor revelation — can we have a Heaven and a Hell. So we abolish Hell much in the way that we may succeed in abolishing Mount Aetna by our preferring to say that it is not there, despite persistent and troubling reports that it is.
Dives, the rich man in this parable, would
have a decidedly different opinion on the matter — were he present to offer it,
but Dives is being ... detained. Indefinitely. Even eternally. Or Christ is a
liar.
“Go to my brother”, he would importune us, as he did Abraham. Unfortunately, we
ourselves would tell him very much what Abraham told him: “It would be of no
avail.”
“They think you're in Heaven!”
The priest told them so; he assured them ... remember?
They think that you are looking down on them, having no clue that,
could you see, all that you would see of them would be the soles of their shoes!
It’s a hell of a situation: Priest, Rabbi, Minister, even their psychologists,
are all of one accord: there is no such thing as Hell. To which we respond:
“The Hell there isn’t!”
Ah, the price of constant gratification! Yes, such lies console the bereaved, but are a definite disservice to the dead who stand much in need of prayer and, could they tell you, would be eternally grateful for it.
But even if they did — like the rich
man in the parable — you would not believe them either ... would you?
_____________________________
* Of course, during the Mass the names of those who have died recently are, in fact, announced, and a perfunctory prayer is offered for them — but rarely with pleas for mercy since mercy presumes sin ... and the hope of forgiveness by God.
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
______________________________
1 “There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen; and feasted sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores, desiring to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table, and no one did give him; moreover the dogs came, and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell. And lifting up his eyes when he was in torments, he saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom: And he cried, and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame. And Abraham said to him: Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazareth evil things, but now he is comforted; and thou art tormented.
And besides all this, between us and you, there is fixed a great chaos: so that they who would pass from hence to you, cannot, nor from thence come hither. And he said: Then, father, I beseech thee, that thou wouldst send him to my father’s house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torments. And Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. But he said: No, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will do penance. And he said to him: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead.” (St. Luke 16.19-31)
2 Saint Luke 18.1-8
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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Is the Novus Ordo Mass Valid?
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Perhaps no other question is more routinely asked than this, and the answer is not as clear as you may think.
We will be plain:
with many misgivings, the Novus Ordo Mass is a valid Mass: Jesus Christ is truly present after Transubstantiation under the hands of the priest acting in persona Christi.The Novus Ordo Mass itself is, at least in most places within America (and most of Europe) quite nearly a travesty of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that had been celebrated for 2000 years (and briefly during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI — after whose death it had been ruthlessly abolished by Bergoglio (Pope Francis) in his infamous "Traditionis Custodes") and before that needless novelty we understand as “Vatican II.”
It is, too often, nearly blasphemous, and my heart sinks when I think of the shameful things to which Our Blessed Lord is often subjected prior to His coming to us in Holy Communion in such parishes.
If you are within a reasonable distance to a Traditional Latin Mass, or are among the fortunate few to have found a Novus Ordo parish with a priestly pastor who clearly understands and exercises the vertical dimension of his vocation (calling his flock to sanctity and to God; not to social justice, correctitude, and other irrelevant absurdities) I earnestly suggest avoiding the Novus Ordo Mass as an impediment, and often even a detriment, to your Faith and your life in Christ. It is such a sad but necessary statement to make.
However, for all the banality of the Novus Ordo Mass and its conspicuous lack of anything verging on sanctity, it is — at least for the 3-4 minutes when the Sacred Species are Confected into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ — He Himself ... Jesus Christ, present to us! He is there! ... in the Holy Eucharist! For those few minutes ... among the ungodly singing, the banging or trickling on the piano as though in a lounge, amid all the noise that the
“modern liturgy” demands to replace the sacred silence that should be there ... we find what we came to Mass for: Christ Himself — not the now tiresome meandering of the priest in aisle as he homilizes with a joke or two; not for the dismal and largely Protestant hymns that are sung; not for the virtuosity of the singer or the choir — and certainly not for the sacrilegious applause that sometimes intermingles with the Mass and always follows it (for soloist, pianist, choir, you understand): imagine clapping at the foot of the Cross!Disfigured and Unrecognizable
We must see Him very much as we would have seen Him on the Cross: disfigured, mocked, even unrecognizable in and through all that surrounds Him! But it is, nevertheless, He!
And for those 3-4 minutes we come face to face with our Lord and our God: we encounter Him … and in a crowd that sometimes does not appear to see Him or even know Him — He sees us!
Those who do know Him there are small in number: Mary His Holy Mother, Mary Magdalen, Saint John, Dismas, Longinus … and although we are not saints ... us! Yes, even us …. if only because we know Him and see Him in that happy crowd and in that bitter humiliation that was Calvary ... and that, in many ways, has largely become the Novus Ordo Mass.
Of course, t
his does not mean that we are saints and that we will go to Heaven. It simply means that we recognize the depths of our sinfulness and our unworthiness even to be counted among those who tormented Christ — for we do no less … each and every time we sin!But still He looks upon us at the moment of Transubstantiation! And at the very least … we know that He is there — and that He knows that we know that He is there.
Despite the present (and recent past) pontifical contempt for the Mass that nourished, consecrated, and sanctified 2000 years of saints, sinners, and martyrs, and still yet despite
their ... nothing less than sacrilegious ... efforts to effectively criminalize what was holy for two millennia — find the Tridentine Mass, the Most Holy Mass of 200 centuries, at all costs!But if you cannot because of the wiles of the Evil One and the complicity of evil men at the highest levels in the Church, go to Him where no one else seems to find Him, or even knows that He is there. Sit quietly in your pew and engage in none of the nonsense and noise that would call you away from Him. But when the time of Canon of the Mass comes, and even the most wicked priest cannot change the words of Institution to his own liking — then … then, kneel before our God, and tell Him that you have come for Him, and Him alone. He will know.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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The Excommunication of the
Faithful
I have prayed and worshipped as my father and my grandfather did — as I did as a child ... and today I am excommunicated for doing so.
What madness is this?
How can the form of worship, the language of prayer ... be the cause of my excommunication? These solemn and beautiful rites, this sacred Mass of 2000 years dwarfs in majesty the mere 63 years of endless and abusive liturgical experimentation.
The eternity of God is present upon these altars. A luminous gathering of angels surrounds it.
For a while we are transported to Heavenly realms thrown open to us by the Perfect Sacrifice that occurs on that altar.
We witness God.
And we are brought to our knees ...
It was this Church that baptized, sanctified, and buried the greatest Saints, and that converted the greatest sinners ... through holiness, through solemnity ... not silliness.
But banality, after all, is much easier and less work; it demands little of us and, in fact, few of us are prepared to give more.
The great Company of Martyrs are a curious lot to us: we cannot fathom their faith — and now as I reflect on it, it is likely because we cannot fathom their love. For Christ.
We love God too little ... and the world too much.
The Church of our fathers understood this and called us away ... but that once urgent voice has grown ever more docile and has become a mere whisper for that last 63 years.
And now those who hold fast to Faith of our Fathers — who pray and worship as the myriad martyrs did, who shed their blood for that Faith, are to be understood as separated from the Church by participating in what was sacred and holy for the 2000 years prior to that most unfortunate Council of a few decades ago that is still searching for what it cannot find?
I think not.
And for the record, our excommunication is for not conforming to changes never mandated in the the Vatican II documents themselves — changes, in fact, that are contradictory to the actual documents concerning the use of Latin, chant, the organ (not the piano!), solemnity — oh, and, yes, absolutely no reference to worshipping versus populum (facing the people, rather than God ... Who, not incidentally, is really present in the Tabernacle behind the altar). All that was fabricated through a contrived “spirit of Vatican II”— and not the documents themselves, was really the “spirit of” the 1960s era of unrestrained inhibition: freedom from every expression of limitation, restraint, and most especially abnegation. God no longer governed us: we governed how God governed us ... which is nothing more contemptible than the apotheosis of the self. See where it has brought us ...
Much more will follow this brief update.
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
July 2, 2026
Feast of St. Thomas
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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An Announcement
The 2004 Roman Martyrology is now
Translated into English
Now Available in Two Volumes at Amazon
Martyrology for
Today
An English Translation from the Latin
By Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor, Boston Catholic Journal
Feast of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary body and soul into Heaven — and to whom we dedicate this work —on Friday August 15, 2025 we have completed a task that we believe that God had placed before us under he guidance of Mary Most Holy: bringing to the English speaking world an English translation of the 2004 Roman Martyrology.After nearly two years of intense translation, comparative analysis, and a resolute focus on the actual text — as of today, the
We are very pleased to present the first complete Printed English translation of the 2004 Roman Martyrology from the original Latin promulgated nearly a quarter century ago by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in February of 2001 under the authority of Pope John Paul II, and printed in 2004 (by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana).
Such a document, finally embracing the last 70 years of a 2000 year history, is too precious a patrimony to leave the children of Holy Mother Church bereft of, with no accessibility to it’s imponderable depths, no glimpse into the blinding heights to which the martyrs’ love inexorably brought them through immeasurable pain. If their story is no longer compelling, no longer worth telling; if it has ceased to be urgent, then the Communion of Saints has been broken and we peer back through indecipherable runes to a hallowed past we no longer comprehend.
This translation is not merely one of names and dates only, but of the known details that culminated in their martyrdom. These details are both chilling and inspiring. They reveal, at one and the same time, the heights of sanctity to which men and women can rise — and the depths of depravity and evil into which they can descend. Sometimes the details are sparse and we must respect what God has veiled of their suffering.
For me, however, and for others in the Anglosphere who have been nourished, as it were, on the blood of the Martyrs as Tertullian might say, in our long and often painful journey to Christ, their story is in some measure inescapably our own. Their witness has sustained us in dark moments; we may even dare say that in studying them we have made many intercessors ... and even friends.
This meticulous translation, carefully compared with and curated through the original Latin text beginning December 2024, and is now available for the first time in English, and is a worthy and long-awaited addition to Catholic university libraries, seminaries, monasteries, and parish rectories, and is an inexhaustible source for your calendars at home, giving you easy access to the dates of Martyrs and Saints that fall upon the important dates in your life as Catholics. I hope that you will enjoy this two-volume set. If you cannot afford it, it is easily and freely accessed through our online version just to the left of this happy announcement.
Geoffrey K.
Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
May 21, 2026
Feast of Saints Christopher Magallanes, priest, and
companions, martyrs
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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A Line in the Sand
Editor’s
note: There are
5,430 Catholic bishops in the world as of this
writing.
In only two do we hear the voice of the first
Apostles:
Bishop Joseph Strickland and Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
If there are more, we do not hear them ...
Bishop Joseph Strickland
and the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X
the Vindication of Truth and the Perpetuation of Lies
[Bishop Strickland]:
“Every Texan knows this story:
Long before we knew about politics, before we knew the arguments, before we knew how to quibble over details, we were taught something in school that shaped our bones. At the Alamo, there came a moment when there were no more letters to send, no reinforcements coming, no negotiations left to try. The enemy was at the gates. Surrender had been demanded. And everyone knew what surrender would mean.
So the commander – William Barrett Travis – gathered his men – not to inspire them, not to give a pep talk, but to tell them the truth. He drew a line in the dirt. On one side of that line was safety – at least for the moment. On the other side was almost certain death. And he said, in effect: “Choose.” Only one man stepped back. The rest stepped forward.
That line in the sand was not drawn to start a rebellion. It was drawn to end illusions. Crossing it did not guarantee victory – it guaranteed fidelity. And whether we like it or not, that is where the Church stands right now.
The Church is in an emergency. Not an emergency invented by commentators, not a mood manufactured by social media, not hysteria.
A real emergency – measured not in feelings, but in facts. An emergency measured by silence where there must be answers. In tolerance where there must be correction. In shepherds who refuse to name wolves, while those who simply want to guard the flock are treated as a problem.
Let me be very clear: this is not about personalities. It is not about preferences. It is not about clinging to the past. It is about survival – not of an institution, but of the priesthood, the sacraments, and the Catholic Faith as it has been received, handed down, and guarded for centuries.
When men who openly contradict Catholic teaching are tolerated, promoted, even celebrated – while those who hold fast to tradition are restricted, sidelined, or ignored – something is upside down.
When confusion is
indulged and fidelity must beg to survive, authority has stopped
doing what authority exists to do.
And there comes a point when silence itself becomes an answer
When a crisis is acknowledged, when a plea is made soberly and respectfully, and when that plea is met with silence, delay becomes a decision. Inaction becomes a judgment. Refusal to act becomes abdication.
This is not theory. This is history.
The Church has faced moments like this before – moments when men were forced to act not because they wanted confrontation, but because the alternative was surrendering what had been entrusted to them. That is why the name Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre still provokes such strong reactions. Not because the moment was comfortable, but because it was clarifying.
No one claims those decisions were light. No one claims they were painless. But they were made under the conviction that necessity had arrived, that waiting longer would mean watching something essential die.
And today, we are standing in another moment of necessity.
This is not about one group. It is not about one society. It is not about one bishop, or one letter, or one unanswered request. It is about a pattern – a pattern where orthodoxy is treated as dangerous, tradition is treated as suspect, and fidelity is portrayed as rigidity while error is praised as pastoral sensitivity.
It is about a moment when the things the Church once defended without apology must now justify their existence. When the preservation of the priesthood is treated as optional. When the formation of priests is obstructed. When the ordinary means of apostolic continuity are quietly denied.
And at that point, the line is already being drawn. Not by agitators. Not by rebels. But by reality itself.
At the Alamo, one man stepped back. His name was Moses Rose. History does not mock him. It simply records the choice. That is what lines do. They do not condemn. They reveal. The line does not create courage or cowardice. It exposes it.
And the line the
Church faces today is not asking who is angry, who is loud, or who
is popular. It is asking who is willing to remain faithful when
fidelity costs something. Because there are things worse than
defeat. There are things worse than being crushed. There are things
worse than dying.
There is surrender
Our Lord did not
draw His line in sand. He drew it in blood. He stood silent before
Pilate not because truth was unclear, but because truth does not
negotiate with lies. He did not promise safety. He did not promise
comfort. He did not promise success.
He promised the Cross
And He warned his disciples plainly what fidelity would cost them.
So when we speak today about lines being drawn, we are not inventing something new. We are standing where Christians have always stood, when obedience to God and submission to confusion finally diverge.
Today, I am asking
who is honest. I am not asking who feels secure. I am asking who is
faithful.
Because the line is already there
It has been drawn by
silence. It has been drawn by inversion. It has been drawn by the
refusal to act when action is required. And the only question left –
the only honest question – is whether we are willing to cross it.
Not with triumphalism. Not with rebellion. But with fidelity.
The Church survives by saints
And saints have always known what to do when the line appears.
And now I am going to say some things plainly, because the hour for careful phrasing has passed.
There are people who will say that naming realities like this is divisive. They are wrong. What is divisive is tolerating error while punishing fidelity. What is divisive is demanding silence from those who believe what the Church has always taught, while applauding those who contradict her openly. What is divisive is calling confusion “pastoral,” and clarity “dangerous.”
And we have seen this pattern long enough now that pretending otherwise is no longer honest.
There are priests and bishops who publicly undermine Catholic teaching on marriage, on sexuality, on the uniqueness of Christ, on the necessity of repentance – and nothing happens. They are praised for their “accompaniment.” And we are told this is mercy.
But when priests want to offer the Mass as it was offered for centuries, when they want to be formed according to the mind of the Church that produced saints, when they want bishops so the priesthood itself does not die out – they are treated as a problem to be managed.
That is not mercy. That is inversion.
And when this inversion is brought directly to Rome – calmly, respectfully, without threats – and the response is silence, we are no longer dealing with misunderstanding. We are dealing with refusal.
I am speaking here of the Society of St. Pius X.
They are not asking for novelty. They are not asking for power. They are asking for bishops – because without bishops there are no priests, and without priests there are no sacraments, and without sacraments the Church does not survive in any meaningful way.
They asked. They waited. They received no answer that addressed the reality.
And I will say this plainly: when heresy is tolerated but tradition is strangled, something has gone terribly wrong. When those who break with doctrine are welcomed, and those who cling to doctrine are treated as suspect, authority has turned against its own purpose.
That is not rebellion speaking. That is fact.
Some will say, “But you must wait.”
Some will say, “But you must trust.”
Some will say, “But you must be patient.”
Patience is a virtue. But patience does not mean watching the priesthood die while those responsible refuse to act. Trust is necessary. But trust does not mean pretending silence is wisdom when it is not. Obedience is holy. But obedience has never meant cooperating in the erosion of the Faith.
There is a moment
when continuing to wait becomes a form of surrender.
That moment has arrived
And I know some
people will recoil when they hear that. They will say this language
is too strong. They will say it unsettles people.
Good
Because a Church that is never unsettled by truth is already asleep.
Our Lord unsettled people constantly. He overturned tables. He named hypocrisy. He warned shepherds who fed themselves instead of the flock. He did not speak gently to those who distorted the truth while claiming authority.
And I am not
interested in a peace that is purchased by silence. I am not
interested in unity that requires lying to ourselves. I am not
interested in stability that comes at the price of surrender.
The line has been drawn
It is being drawn every time a faithful priest is punished for doing what saints did. It is being drawn every time error is tolerated because correcting it would be uncomfortable. It is being drawn every time Rome chooses silence when clarity is required.
And here is the part that must be said out loud: lines like this are never drawn by those who want conflict. They are drawn by reality when authority refuses to act.
At the Alamo, the men who crossed the line did not think they would win. They knew they would likely lose. They crossed because surrender would have meant denying who they were and what they had been entrusted to defend.
That is the choice facing the Church now.
Not between victory and defeat.
But between fidelity and surrender.
Between truth and managed decline.
Between saints and administrators.
I am not calling for rebellion. I am calling for honesty. I am not calling for chaos. I am calling for courage. I am not calling anyone to abandon the Church. I am calling the Church to remember herself.
Because if we will not defend the priesthood, if we will not defend the sacraments, if we will not defend the Faith when it costs something – then we are already stepping back from the line.
And history will record that choice too.
The Church does not need more silence. She does not need more delay. She does not need more careful statements that say nothing. She needs men who will stand, speak, and if necessary, suffer – without illusions.
Because the line is
no longer theoretical.
It is here
And each of us – bishop, priest, layman – is already deciding where we stand.
And now I am going to stop explaining.
Because there comes a moment when explanation becomes avoidance, and words become a way of delaying obedience.
The line is no
longer in history books. It is no longer theoretical. It is no
longer something we debate at conferences or behind closed doors.
It is here
And it is not asking what position you hold, or how many followers you have, or how carefully you word your statements. It is asking one thing only: whether you will stand with the truth when standing costs you something.
Because this is what must finally be said without ornament or apology: a Church that will not defend her priesthood will not survive. A Church that treats fidelity as dangerous and error as pastoral has already begun to surrender. A Church that answers emergencies with silence is choosing decay over courage.
That is not an insult. That is not a threat. That is a diagnosis. And diagnoses are meant to wake people up and call people to action.
There is no neutral ground here. There is no safe middle space where one can quietly wait and hope someone else acts. Silence itself has become a position. Delay itself has become a decision.
The line is drawn every time truth is asked to wait. Every time error is excused. Every time courage is punished. Every time a shepherd looks away.
And the most
terrifying thing about moments like this is not that some will
choose wrongly. It is that many will choose quietly – and tell
themselves they chose nothing at all.
History will not
agree with them
Neither will Christ
Because our Lord does not ask whether we were comfortable. He asks whether we were faithful. He does not ask whether we preserved our standing. He asks whether we carried our cross. He does not ask whether we survived. He asks whether we loved the truth more than our own safety.
So I will end this where I must.
Not with a strategy.
Not with a program. Not with another conversation.
But with a call to kneel
If you are listening to this and your heart is unsettled, do not numb it. If you are angry, examine why. If you are afraid, admit it. And then pray – not for the Church to become easier, but for her to become holy again.
Pray for bishops who
will speak even when it costs them everything. Pray for priests who
will remain faithful even when abandoned. Pray for Rome – not that
it will manage this crisis, but that it will answer it.
And pray for yourself
Because the line is already there.
And when the noise
stops, and the chairs have finished hitting the floor, and there is
nothing left to hide behind, each of us will have to answer the only
question that matters:
Where were you standing?
May Almighty God bless you and keep you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Bishop Joseph E. Strickland
February 2026
Bishop Emeritus
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
___________________________________________________________________________
Our Holy Catholic Faith
Where is it and Who is Keeping it?
Has
the Post-Catholic
Conciliar
Church
Lost Custody of the Faith?
All indications are that is has ...
The “Dark Ages” — that disdainful term for the period in history following the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. until the 15th century (a period correctly described as the Middle Ages) is understood by the secular world to have lasted roughly 1000 years, beginning in Florence, Italy.
Within the post-Catholic Conciliar Church, however, it appears that the term extends well beyond the 15th century; indeed, some 500 years beyond it! According to contemporary Catholic thought articulated within the past five papacies, the “Dark Ages” really ended in 1965 at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. All the doctrines and teachings prior to that Council were only imperfectly, deficiently, and insufficiently articulated or defectively understood.
The 1000 Years of Darkness
Only the Second Vatican Council finally attained to enlightenment in the divine economy, and after 1,965 years of suspension, it alone has provided the final, sufficient, and correct understanding of God and Church, man and nature. Prior to that, according to post-Conciliar thought, Catholics had essentially lived in darkness, specifically the darkness of the “pre-Conciliar Dark Ages.” It may be said that where the Rational Enlightenment “saved the world from religion,” Vatican II saved the Church from Catholicism.
This argument — that God concealed the “real” truth from us for either 1500 years on the one hand (concerning Protestants) or for 2000 years on other (concerning Vatican II) does not, of course, speak well of God’s munificence, truth, or goodness — and that it is the very argument to be brought against Protestants by Catholics, is good to keep in mind. Why would a good, loving, and truthful God conceal the real nature of the Church, the Sacraments, and true worship from us for so long?
Pay No Attention
to What You See!
We are told so many times that what we see is no indication of what is real.
It is true in two venues: the political landscape, which really of no interest to us here except as a paradigm of our being told that what we perceive to be open anarchy in our streets, violent insurrection by carefully orchestrated Left-wing mobs, and the stifling of free speech on university campuses where indoctrination has replaced education ... is really an organic and benevolent expression of our noblest aspirations and deepest democratic instincts. We are simply not socially-enlightened enough (“woke” enough) to see it, you understand.
The other venue, of course, is the ecclesiastical landscape, specifically the Vatican, and more specifically the papacies of the Vatican II pontiffs and the various Dicasteries under them. Within this crumbling landscape we are told that all the dismantling, removal, renovation, and ultimately the detritus following Vatican II has resulted in a more beautiful, vibrant, healthy, and faithful Church, with pews filled at Sunday Masses; a Church brimming with baptisms, confirmations, marriages, vocations, ordinations … a chrysalis bursting in a renewal of all things holy and good! We are simply too “rigid,” too “backward,” not “progressive-enough” to see it — because we do not “walk in Accompaniment with the Spirit,” (and “Synodalism”) we are blind … you must understand.
From Pope Leo’s perspective — one nurtured on, and in complete alignment with, Bergoglio’s — “looking back (indietrismo) is useless,”1 and given Francis’s insolent treatment of those who worship as our forefathers did for 200 centuries, they are equally useless as well. Traditional Catholics (really, are there any other kind of Catholics? Were there, before Vatican II?) are impediments to this progressive agenda. To use Bergoglio’s infamous (and typically vulgar) words, they are “imbavagliando,” — “gagging” the Church.2
The aggressively Modernist agenda set in motion by Vatican II, apparently, is too far advanced for the possibility of retrenching. It is “useless” to even entertain the possibility of rapprochement with the Mass of the Ages and the 2000-year spirituality inseparable from it; a Mass within which we immediately find sanctity, solemnity, sacrality, holiness, heavenliness, beauty, spirituality, form, sobriety, chant, mystery, the choir of angels; in short, all that is egregiously absent within the bland, mundane, and very worldly Novus Ordo “Mass of Paul VI.”
What, Exactly, are We
to Understand by “Keeping — and Having Kept — the Catholic
Faith?”
The notions of Keeping, and having kept, the Catholic Faith can only be understood as retaining (keeping), and having preserved (kept), the one true holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith that has been kept and practiced for the 2000 years prior to Vatican II — even when the practice of that venerable Faith has been unjustly deprived through ecclesiastical duress. That unchanging and unchangeable Faith is kept in the unwavering allegiance to it despite persecution and even deprivation. It can be physically removed from us, but it cannot be taken away from us.
Indeed, why do we keep anything at all? We only keep what we want and value; what is good and beautiful. Understanding this, we must ask, is there anything more beautiful this side of Heaven than the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? … than the Faith bequeathed to us by our fathers, by the Saints, by the Martyrs — the Faith that has generated the greatest and most brilliant constellation of saints and martyrs in the history of the Church?
It cannot be the case that Faith of the Church for the 2000 years preceding December 8, 1965 (when the Second Vatican Council was formally concluded) is no longer the Faith of the Church now — for if the Faith is different then the Church, which is the embodiment of that Faith, is different, and if the Church is different, the Church is no more. This cannot be. Christ promised that this cannot be.
But it can be said that the teaching of the Church is now vastly different from the teaching of the Church for the 200 centuries prior to John XXIII and his five successors, and most especially in what are presented to us as the “Conciliar” documents of Vatican II, documents that vastly, even essentially, diverge from centuries of incontestably authoritative Catholic teaching.
So much so, in fact, that in its latest iteration under the papacy of Francis, we have begun to ask in earnest, perhaps for the first time in our lives, “has the post-Conciliar Catholic Church, or perhaps more accurately, the “Post-Catholic-Conciliar-Church” — an increasingly different Church that first emerged from Vatican II and has continued to diverge from it through every successive papacy until that rupture with the past has culminated in a Church, together with its hierarchy, largely lost custody of the Catholic Faith?
Loathsome
Since beginning this article some days ago, some alarming news has begun
to emerge from credible sources that has necessarily changed the tenor
of this discussion, one which, much to our consternation, now
concerns not simply the nature of the custody of the Faith vis-à-vis
the papacy of Francis and the disaffected ecclesiastical apparatus in
the Vatican under him, but concerning nothing less than the integrity*
of the Catholic Faith itself. It has come to our attention that under
the direction of Pope Francis, English Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect
of the Congregation for Divine Worship, together with other powerful
figures within the Roman Curia are preparing to completely abolish
— for all time — and with no possibility of reclaiming
— what they perceive as the threat posed by the celebration of the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass in Latin — in other words, The Latin Mass, TLM,
as it has been celebrated for 2000 years which must yield
to the Novus Ordo (New Order) “Mass of Paul VI”
exclusively — a Mass now barely half a century (54 years)
in the making … and still in the making. In order to accomplish
this with absolute, clinical exactitude, Leo, Francis & Friends have determined
to stamp out the Latin Mass as something loathsome.
Such fear of something holy! As though the Mass of 2000
years can be shackled and plunged into a dungeon of unfathomable depth,
hidden from sight, concealed as a destructive secret, and made irrecoverable
to memory! How can we begin to imagine such malice in the Church toward
those within the Church; how are we to begin to grasp the Church
promulgating such an evil law and with an iron fist as hateful
as the crushing fist of any petty dictator?
Too
Catholic (for Ecumenism)
The Latin Mass, however, must go: apart from the many contrived and ultimately superficial reasons for abolishing the Latin Mass, the principal reason is this: it is an impediment to Ecumenism, the very corner-stone of Vatican II. This is the real reason behind the vitriolic, almost pathological animosity exhibited toward the Latin Mass by the liberal, Modernist Church of Vatican II and its principal proponent, Jorge Bergoglio: The Latin Mass is not amenable to non-Catholics; it is … too Catholic, it bears within itself the history, the memory, the devotion, the filial love of two hundred centuries of generations of Catholics who cleaved to the Faith through persecution and hardship and for many, to the point of the shedding of their blood.
Dwindling participation on the Novus Ordo (Vernacular) Mass, and an alarming increase in participation in the (Latin) Mass, especially among young Catholics, appears to be the principal motivation behind this draconian measure. The belief that Traditional Catholics will become Vernacular “Paul VI Mass” Catholics by heavy-handed decree; that they will be forced into this free-form Mass by Procrustean measures, is nearly delusional. It will not happen. I do not know what will happen, but I am confident that this fiction will not occur. Schism may occur. Were this the case, it would appear from several informed sources that Francis himself would be the formal cause of schism, and hence the Schismatic. This is not a shocking possibility.
Of course, we
must ponder the question on everyone's mind: the fearful question that
wrenches our gut: where do Traditional Catholics go from here
— should the hammer fall on the Faithful?
Who is To Answer This?
Shall Canon Lawyers decide this … who are part of the very ecclesiastical apparatus that is prejudicial against the continued celebration of the Latin Mass? Even were Canon Lawyers able to answer this (they are not), it is not theirs to decide, for:
Ecclesiastical law derives its formal authority from the supreme legislator understood as the reigning Roman Pontiff who, in his person, “possesses the totality of legislative, executive, and judicial power.”
In other words, since there is no superior above the pope, 3 Francis is exempt from, and not subject to, Canon Law … and will do as he has ever done: whatever he wills — which, as a matter of record, has not always, or even often, been just, or even good.
Leo alone, then — temporally speaking — will determine where Traditional Catholics go from here, and given his clear ideological alignment with his beloved mentor and predecessor, Francis, whose outspoken animosity toward the Latin Mass was both vitriolic and undisguised, together with his even greater contempt for Traditional Catholics, it appears that Leo is prepared to offer us two options only:
Go to the Novus Ordo (New Order) “Mass of Paul VI.”
The second option is intended to be optimally coercive:
No Mass at all. Essentially, “Attend the Novus Ordo Mass or leave the Church.”
What crime, we must ask, have these Catholics committed in continuing to worship in Latin (that is, until Francis spitefully repealed Summorum Pontificum through his motu proprio Traditionis Custodes in 2021) as their Catholic Religion has always worshipped up to a mere 70 years ago? Is this the crime that will cause them to be expelled from the Church?
Who is prepared to call the Tridentine Mass — the worship of God in Latin — a crime? Is it the case that every other language is, through the Church, acceptable to God ... except Latin?
“Aboriginal Masses” 5 of the most exotic sort, including dancing with spears, are promoted, much like the so-called “Charismatic Renewal”, with its dramatic behavior and unrestrained emotional excess — but the quiet, recollected prayer of Traditional Catholics is not only frowned upon, but excoriated as unworthy of “modern day Catholics” — that is to say, not in keeping with the last 70 years of liturgical abuse and excess ... even if in keeping with 2000 years of sacred Church liturgy and practice.
What induced this madness? The answer, I believe, is manifestly evident and remarkably simple: that ecclesiastical aberration that we benevolently call “Vatican II” — which has been anything other than benevolent to the faithful and faithful to Holy Mother Church.
One thing, however, is clear in this contention between “modernity” and history: “This Missal (the Tridentine Mass), promulgated in Quo Primum 4 (Pope Pius V, 1570):
‘Grant[s] to all priests of the Latin Rite the right to celebrate the Roman Mass [of 1570] in perpetuity.”
There is as little equivocation about this word — from the Latin perpetuitatem: everlasting, unceasing, existing indefinitely, continuing forever in future time — as there is about the authority that made it so.
Whether or not matters come to such a destructive, divisive, and unimaginably ignominious a conclusion as that envisioned by Leo and his immediate predecessor remains to be seen, and likely very shortly.
However, given the tutelage of Leo XIV under so malformed and despotic a figure as Bergoglio, it appears to be all but a forgone conclusion.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
March 6, 2026
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
_________________________
*
integrity: the quality
or state of being complete, sound, unimpaired or undivided, uncompromised.
1
https://thedialog.org/vatican-news/pope-francis-reminds-u-s-catholics-being-backward-looking-is-useless/
2
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/06/14/pope-francis-traditionalist-gag-243151
3
“The First See is judged by no one” (#1404, The Code
of Canon Law of the Catholic Church, 1983).
4
“We require then that all men, everywhere, shall embrace and observe
the teachings of the sacred and holy Roman Church, mother and mistress
of other churches; and that at no time in the future should Mass be
sung or recited otherwise than according to the manner of the
missal which we have published, in any of the churches of
the provinces of Christendom, of Patriarchal, Cathedral, Collegiate
or parochial status, secular and regular belonging to any kind of order,
monasteries, both of men and women, also the military orders, and churches
without cure of souls or chapels, in which conventual Mass is customarily
celebrated or ought to be celebrated according to the rite of the Roman
Church, either aloud with a choir, or in a low voice.”
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius05/p5quopri.htm
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The Most Urgent Question of Our Time:
“When the Son of Man Comes, will He Find Faith on Earth?”
(St. Luke 18.8)
No
more stunning,
no more frightening, and perhaps no more ominously portentous
words are spoken in all the Gospels, in fact, in the entire
New Testament — perhaps even in the entirety of Sacred Scripture
itself; words that have become increasingly fraught with
significance with every passing year of the most unfortunate
papacy of Francis — a papacy not just likely … but
I believe with certainty … will be understood not simply
as among the worst … but the worst … the most destructive
to the Faith and to the Church in the annals of 2000 years
of Church history.
Indeed, with every generation following that devastating
Second Vatican Council — that scorched earth assault on
Tradition and historical Catholicism — the question increasingly
verges on an implied and obvious answer.
Indeed, we must wonder if the question that Christ poses
… “When the Son of Man comes will He find Faith on earth?”
… is, in fact, spoken of this generation, or of one soon
— very soon, to come.
As with so many of Christ’s teachings, this troubling question
is too often and too deftly explained away — especially
by the overwhelming number of the liberal theologians and
bishops who have proliferated and multiplied since 1962
— which is to say, by “the learned
and the wise”. If we heed them, it would appear that
either Christ does not know what He is saying, or
we do not know what He is saying — although we all
agree that He said something ... that sounds
suspiciously clear.
We must, however, pay careful attention to these twelve
words, …. perhaps more now than at any
other time in Church history.
“When the Son of Man comes
will He find Faith on earth?”
These are twelve words, however, to which we must pay careful attention, perhaps more now than at any other time in Church history.
However reluctant we are to take Christ at His word — which becomes increasingly inconvenient to us — we must recognize that Jesus never spoke idly: His words, His teachings — and yes, His Commandments — were always uttered to one explicit end: the salvation of souls — attaining to Heaven and everlasting happiness and to avoiding Hell and eternal misery.
The Jewish religious authorities — “the learned” of His own time — had scornfully dismissed Christ’s warning that not so much as stone would remain standing in the great Temple 1 ... the very Temple within which, 70 years later, these words were fulfilled when Rome laid waste in days what took 46 years to build.
We tend to view such alarming
statements made by Jesus — and there are many — with the
same scorn and disdain today.
Indeed ... what has become of the “Faith of our Fathers?”
A mere fifty years ago we ourselves would have instinctively replied “Of course He will find faith! There simply must be some deeper, some obscure and less evident meaning to this that we do not presently understand — and what He appears to be saying, He is not really saying at all. Surely the “learned” of our own day can deftly explain the answer to this troubling question. In the end, they will conclude, Jesus is really asking something entirely different from what He appears to be asking and that it has nothing to do with our very real defection from the Faith.”
It is likely that many Jews of Jesus’ time — both the learned and the unlearned — had replied in much the same way. In fact, they did.
In other words, to us, our faith, the Faith of the Catholic Church for two millennia, could no sooner disappear than ... well, the stones of the great Temple 2000 years ago!
If, however, we take a careful
inventory of our present and undeniably dismal and increasingly
scandalous situation in the Church — especially as it has
unfolded in the last five decades — Jesus does not quite
appear as ... “perplexing” ... as so many apparently make
Him to be.
Candidly
Ask yourself the following:
Has the Faith — the Catholic Faith — flourished in the last 50 years, or has it withered?
Are vocations to the Priesthood and Religious life growing or dwindling?
Are Catholics having more children or are they having fewer children?
Are Missionary efforts, to the end of (dare we say it?) “conversion” as mandated by Christ encouraged as intrinsic to Catholicism — or are they discouraged as impolite, obtrusive, culturally imperialistic and inherently inimical to the “Ecumenical spirit of Vatican II” — especially as interpreted by Pope Francis for whom “proselytism is solemn nonsense,” to use his own words, words that mock the sacrifices of countless missionary saints through the 2000 years preceding Vatican II’s “more enlightened” understanding of the Great Commission*?
Rather, we find that “conversion” to Christ and His Church is actively discouraged — that especially under Pope Francis it is no longer understood as a holy and inherently necessary endeavor — instead, it is disdained, even dismissed, as “socially and culturally incorrect” — indeed, we find that promoting our Catholic Faith — as Christ has commanded us to— has been forbidden by Francis and his “progressive” coterie of feckless and disaffected cardinals and bishops! What pope, prior to Vatican II, could ever have envisioned this?
Is our understanding of the Catholic Church, as an absolutely unique institution indispensable to the ordinary means of salvation, emphasized as urgently today (if it is emphasized at all) as it was a hundred years ago? Fifty years ago? Indeed, is the concept itself — of the singularity and indispensability of the Holy Catholic Church — still deemed an actual dogma and a viable concept at all?
For all our insolence and equivocation, we know the answers, and we are uncomfortable with them, for they fly in the face of Christ and all that He taught — to say nothing of Sacred Scripture, Holy Tradition, and the Sacred Deposit of the Faith entrusted to the Catholic Church by God Himself.
Indeed, Christ’s question
takes on a greater sense of urgency still, for the sheep
are scattered and confused as never before. The papacy of
Francis has been disastrous for the Church. Why? Precisely
because he has taken Vatican II to its logical conclusion:
the irrelevance of the Church.
Ubi est Pastor?
Where is the Shepherd? Who is earnestly addressing this spiritual malaise and religious decay due to the indolence and dereliction of the vast majority of American and European bishops who appear far more eager for secular plaudits than the now quaint and discredited notion of “the salvation of souls.” Pope Francis has effectively declared this mandate defunct in favor of the rehabilitation of bodies, societies, economies, and “the environment”. That the passing material environment of man is infinitely less important than the eternal abode of his soul, often appears to elude Francis. Indeed, it appears to elude most Catholics whose mantra increasingly coincides with the world’s: Social activism! ... not interior conversion away from this world ... and to Christ.
Shame! Shame on us! By our silence, our fear of being disparaged by “other Catholics” for the sake of Christ, we condone this travesty — are complicit in it ... even promote it!
What will motivate us to recognize, and to redress, this frightful and ultimately deadly state of affairs?
There are, after all, other contenders in this world for the souls of men ... seen and unseen! As our own wick smolders, others blaze! The burning Crescent of Islam, poised like a scimitar, and every bit as deadly, glows and grows in the east, and with it, not an ethnic, but a Religious Cleansing to which the world remains indifferent — an expunging of every vestige of Christianity in partibus infidelium. And even Islam has its secular collaborators: the European Union — once a continent raised up from utter barbarism to a civilization formed and ennobled by its Catholic heritage — will no longer tolerate the inclusion of its indissoluble Christian heritage within its Constitution. Not only does it thoroughly repudiate its own Christian cultural heritage — it prohibits it — even banishes it! This is nothing less than self-loathing. And perhaps it ought to be.
Surely, then, in our effort to remedy this impending state of dissolution, we will first turn to our bishops, since they are, preeminently, the “Teachers and Guardians of the Faith”. But more often than not — much more often than not — in the well-appointed office at the end of the corridor we do not find a shepherd of souls but a deeply sequestered, occasionally avuncular, and predictably remote ... “administrator.”
Relegating his prime responsibility as Teacher and Promoter of the Faith ... to others, in the form of Lay committees and subcommittees largely “chaired” by liberal Catholics more concerned with social issues than the salvation of souls, are we confident that the patrimony of our faith will somehow percolate through this strata of already contaminated soil and reach our children authentically and intact? Is our fear mitigated ... or further exacerbated ... by our bishops’ resolute lack of diligence in being attentive to what Catholic colleges and theologians in their own dioceses are really teaching — and who are teaching the teachers ... who, in turn, are teaching our children?
Do you think that your bishop actually — that is to say, cognitively — is aware of, or even concerned with — what the teachers themselves are actually teaching?
Not in this diocese. Not in Boston. In fact, the former Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley had routinely feted, praised, and held up as exemplary, the clueless “Catechists” who churn out our children to the Sacrament of Confirmation — with no clue whatever of that in which they are being confirmed. By comparison, even the dismal failure of our public schools in Boston must be deemed a stunning success.
For most of us — especially in the Archdiocese of Boston, but no less elsewhere — the answer is, as they say, a “no-brainer:” it is a universally resounding no. Most of us find, to our growing dismay and deepening cynicism, that our bishops appear to have “more important,” more ... “pressing” things to do ... than to communicate the Faith to the faithful ... especially the children.
Really, we beg the question:
if no one teaches the teachers — who, then, teaches the
children? If they are not brought the faith by those to
whom it has been entrusted — the bishops, the episcopacy
— who will bring it to them?
Will they — how can they — acquire the Faith ...
if no one brings it to them? Saint Paul is very clear about
this:
“How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent ...?” (Romans 10.14-15)
Ask yourself candidly: do you know more ... or less ...
of your Catholic faith than your children? Very likely more
— although, in all honesty, it is probably little. You politely
assent to the now quaint Catholic notion that “parents are
the primary teachers of their children,” but knowing little
of your own Faith, you simply shell out $175.00 per child
and pan off this grave responsibility to others of whom
you know nothing, and who themselves largely know nothing
of the faith they presume to teach. You go through the motions
as careless of what your children are taught in their 10
years of “Religious Education” as your bishop is of what
the teachers teach. 10 years later, and $1500 poorer per
child, you scratch your head and wonder why Johnny still
does not know God, and why Judy never goes to Mass — and
yet we have agreed that you know more than your children
...
What, then, we must ask — with growing apprehension — will
your children teach their children ...?
What will they — who know even less than you
— teach those who know nothing?
Total Ignorance
The momentum, as we see, is inexorable — until it culminates in total ignorance: every generation knows less of their faith than the generation preceding it. It is, in the end, the devolution from doctrine to legend, from legend to fiction, and from fiction to myth.
That is not just a poor, but a stultifying and ultimately deadly patrimony.
This default — at every level — in transmitting the authentic Catholic faith intact ... leaves Jesus’ question very suddenly very real.
“Recently, a Gallup poll was taken on Catholic attitudes toward Holy Communion. The poll showed serious confusion among Catholics about one of the most basic beliefs of the Church. Only 30 percent of those surveyed believe they are actually receiving the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.”
The problem is more than mathematical;
as we have seen, it is exponential. 70% of Catholics do
not possess this most fundamental, this most essential understanding
of the core article of genuine Catholic doctrine: that
“Unless you eat of the flesh of the
Son of Man, and drink His Blood, you have no life in you.”
Heavy stuff!
It is not just a matter of the greatest concern, but nothing
less than a matter of the gravest dereliction that most
Catholics do not realize — do not know — that the very
Mass itself is an abbreviation of “The Most Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass”, and that it is really a Sacrifice,
the actual re-enactment of Calvary before their very eyes!
This failure of understanding ... culminates in a failure
in Faith. It possesses, in significant ways, the remorseless
characteristics of mathematical certainties. Not understanding,
grasping — having never been taught — the most elementary
features of the faith, how can they be understood to possess
what they have not acquired, and how can they transmit,
pass on, what they do not possess? It is inescapable.
Prognostication, of course, is for fools.
But the words of Christ are certainties that will come to pass.
“Weep not for Me, but for your children,” 5 Christ told the sorrowing women on the road to Calvary.
Jesus’ question, then —
“When the Son of Man comes will He
find faith on earth?”— is not a “rhetorical
question” at all; it is a question fraught with enormous
significance ... the frightful answer to which appears to
be unfolding before our very eyes ... but that is if you
take Christ at His word — and given Jesus’ track record
on things yet to come, we would do well and wisely to give
pause for more than thought.
Are you worried now ...? Not nearly enough.
And this is all the more frightening still.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Semen est sanguis Christianorum (The blood of Christians is the seed of the Church) Tertullian, Apologeticum, 50
2004 Roman Martyrology by Month
|
September 15th in the Year of Grace 2026
This Day, the Fifteenth Day of September Memorial of the blessed Virgin Mary of Sorrows, who, standing beside the cross of Jesus, was most intimately and faithfully associated with the saving Passion of her Son and became the new Eve, so that, just as the disobedience of the first woman brought about death, so too her wondrous obedience would bring about life. 2. At Rome, Saint Nicomedes, martyr, whose body was laid to rest in the cemetery on the Via Nomentana, which Pope Boniface V honored with a sepulchral basilica. 3. At Tournus on the River Saône in the region of Lyon in France, Saint Valerian, martyr. 4. At Tomi in Scythia, the holy martyrs Stratonis, Valerius, Macrobius, and Gordian, who are said to have suffered under the emperor Licinius. 5. On the banks of the Danube, Saint Nicetas the Goth, martyr, who by order of the Arian king Athanaric was commanded to be burned to death because of the Catholic faith. 6. At Lyon in France, Saint Alpinus, bishop, who succeeded Saint Justus. 7. At Toul near Nancy, also in the region of Lyon in France, Saint Aper, bishop. 8. In the monastery of Jumièges in Neustria, Saint Aichadus, abbot, who, a disciple of Saint Philibert, was placed in charge there by him. 9. At Córdoba in the region of Andalusia in Spain, the holy martyrs Emilas, deacon, and Jeremiah, who, during the persecution of the Moors, after a long affliction in prison, at last fulfilled their martyrdom by the beheading of their necks for Christ. 10. At Busseto in the territory of Fidenza in Emilia, blessed Roland de’ Medici, hermit, who lived in harsh and solitary places of the Alps with the greatest abstinence, conversing only with God. 11. At Genoa in Liguria, Saint Catherine Fieschi, widow, notable for her contempt of the world, frequent fasts, love of God, and charity toward the poor and the sick. 13. At the place called Santo Domingo Xagada in Mexico, the blessed John the Baptist and Hyacinth of the Angels, catechists and martyrs, who, because they refused to venerate idols in place of Christ, were cruelly beaten, imitating the Passion of Christ, and earned eternal reward. 14. At Vienna in Austria, blessed Anthony Mary Schwartz, priest, who, for the pastoral care of apprentices and young workers, and to defend their rights, founded the Congregation for Christian Workers of Saint Joseph Calasanz. 15. In the village of Llosa de Ranes in the region of Valencia in Spain, blessed Paschal Penadés Jornet, priest and martyr, who, during a time of persecution, through earthly struggle attained the fullness of eternal salvation. 16. Near Munich in Bavaria in Germany, blessed Ladislaus Miegon, priest and martyr, who, taken from Poland under a regime hostile to God and humanity, was detained in the concentration camp of Dachau and, because of his faith, through torment attained the glorious crown. 17. At Naples in Italy, blessed Paul Manna, priest of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, who, having left the missionary work in Burma due to poor health, worked greatly for the cause of evangelization and devoted himself with utmost zeal to the preaching of the word of God and the promotion of Christian unity.
__________________________________________________________________ Omnes sancti Mártyres, oráte pro nobis. ℟. Thanks be to God.
|
The 1956 edition below, issued during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, is a revision of the typical edition of 1749, which had been promulgated by Pope Benedict XIV remained the foundational text for later updates throughout the 18th–20th centuries up to 2004 — the English translation of which remained the sole source of the Martyrology until the present translation of the 2004 Roman Martyrology by the Boston Catholic Journal in 2025.
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1959 Roman Martyrology by Month |
|
1959 ROMAN MARTYROLOGY
Tuesday September 15th in the Year of Grace 2026
This Day, the
Fifteenth Day of September
The Octave of the Nativity and the
Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
Response: Thanks be to God.
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Why the Martyrs Matter
Each
day we bring you a
calendar, a list really, of the holy Martyrs who had suffered
and died for Christ, for His Bride the Church, and for our holy
Catholic Faith; men and women for whom — and well they knew
— their Profession of Faith would cost them their lives.
They could have repudiated all three (Christ, Church, and Catholic
Faith) and kept their lives for a short time longer (even the
lapsi * only postponed their death — and
at so great a cost!)
What would motivate men, women, even children and entire families
to willingly undergo the most evil and painfully devised tortures;
to suffer death rather than denial?
Why did they not renounce their Catholic Faith when the first
flame licked at their feet, after the first eye was plucked
out, or after they were “baptized” in mockery by boiling water
or molten lead poured over their heads? Why did they not
agree
to offer incense to the pagan gods since such a ritual concession
would be merely perfunctory, having been done, after all, under
duress, exacted by the compulsion of the state? What is a little
burned incense and a few words uttered without conviction, compared
to your own life and the lives of those you love? Surely God
knows that you are merely placating the state with empty gestures
…
Did they love their wives, husbands, children — their mothers,
fathers and friends less than we do? Did they value their own
lives less? Were they less sensitive to pain than we are? In
a word, what did they possess that we do not?
Nothing. They possessed what we ourselves are given in the Sacrament
of Confirmation — but cleaved to it in far greater measure than
we do: Faith and faithfulness; fortitude and valor, uncompromising
belief in the invincible reality of God, of life eternal in
Him for the faithful, of damnation everlasting apart from Him
for the unfaithful; the sober realization of the
passing of this world
and all within it, and the pledge of everlasting happiness
in Heaven in the life to come.
We are the Martyrs to come! What made them so will make us
so. What they suffered we will suffer. What they died for, we
will die for — if only we will! For most us, life will be
a bloodless martyrdom, a suffering for Christ for the sake
of Christ, and for the sake of the Church in a thousand ways outside
the blood-soaked arena. The road to Heaven is lined on both sides with Crosses,
and upon the Crosses people: some set ablaze by the contempt
of the world, and some consumed with the fire of divine love
unknown to the world but known by God. Catholics living in partibus
infidelium, under the scourge of Islam. Loveless marriages.
Injustices on all sides. Poverty. Illness. Old age. Dependency.
They are the cruciform! Those whose lives became Crosses because
they would not flee God, the Church, the call to, the
demand for, holiness in the most ordinary things of life made
extraordinary through the grace of God. The Martyrology we celebrate
each day is just a vignette, a small, immeasurably small, sampling
of the martyrdom that has been the lives of countless men and
women whom Christ and the Angels know, but whom the world does
not know.
“Exemplum enim dedi vobis,” Christ
said to His Apostles: “I have given you an example.”
And His
Martyrs give one to us — and that is why the Martyrs matter.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Boston Catholic Journal
Note: We suggest that you explore our newly edited and revised “De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus — The Torments and Tortures of the Christian Martyrs” for an in-depth historical account of the sufferings of the Martyrs.
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* Those early Christians who renounced their Catholic Faith in times of persecution. When confronted with the prospect of torture and death if they held fast to their faith in Christ, they denied Him and their Faith through an act of sacrificing (often incense) to the pagan Roman gods and in so doing kept their lives and/or their freedom and property.
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Totally
Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted
to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
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