Monthly Archives: March 2021

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Culture

Response to Bishop Barron’s criticism of Traditionalists

In this letter addressed to Bishop Barron of the WORD ON FIRE ministry, Fr Cipolla rightly focuses on what the Mass has become since the Second Vatican Council and the mighty cultural pressures surrounding it. Was the Council more of a political contest than a religious one?

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“A Response to Bp. Barron’s Criticism of Traditionalism”: You can’t Evangelize the Revolutionized World With a New Mass Locked in the 1960s Revolution — A Letter by Fr. Cipolla

Rorate Caeli, 10 March 202

Dear Bishop Barron:

I have written many Letters to the Editor in my lifetime to the New York Times and to the Wall Street Journal—bona fide credentials of my moderate and centrist persona—and now I feel compelled to write this letter to you to respond to your recent article called “The Evangelical Path of Word on Fire”. I am a Catholic priest, soon to be an octogenarian. It would seem more prudent at this time in my life to lay aside those things that threaten the peace and equanimity that one should strive for at this stage of my life. But alas, my Southern Italian genetic makeup does not make it easy to live a laid- back life at this time when I should give oneself over to contemplation and remembrance of things past.

I have followed your career in the Church for some years now, with a good deal of admiration for your stand against what you call liberal Catholicism.  St. John Henry Newman, that great opponent of liberalism in religion, would approve of your battle against “beige Catholicism”.  Your many instructional DVDs show clearly that you understand the important role of Beauty in the Catholic faith.  You are obviously of man of real faith who loves the Church.

Your brief article refers to two types of Catholics that manifest themselves at this time and that you consider to be aberrant, for very different reasons, from your understanding of Catholicism , which you speak about as Evangelical Catholicism. The first is “liberal Catholicism”, which has predominated since the years after the Second Vatican Council.  You describe this type of Catholicism as “culturally accommodating…unsure of itself..a Church that had allowed its distinctive colors to be muted and its sharp edges to be dulled.”  You agree that, in the words of Cardinal George, that liberal Catholicism is “a spent project”.

Read the rest here…

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Culture

A day in the life of a Traditional seminary

The St Aquinas Seminary is the seminary of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) in America. The SSPX is an order of priests whose purpose is to guard the content of the Catholic faith by preserving and promoting the traditional Latin rites and the traditional unadulterated priesthood. A few years back, they posted a video which shows what daily life is like for an SSPX seminarian: A Day in the Life of a Seminarian – St Thomas Aquinas Seminary.

It gives an intriguing picture of seminary training before the radical changes to the priesthood that followed the Second Vatican Council. I speak from experience. From 1959 to 1962, I attended a junior seminary in Australia. The routine of that junior seminary was pretty much the same as that depicted here in America in 2016.

Recommended viewing.

Catholic Church, Culture, Feminism, Political correctness

Moving towards a Feminist Church?

On The Bridge, the blog of the National Centre for Evangelisation, one finds this post: The Women of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. The unidentified author does indeed talk about the women of the Australian Catholic Bishop’s conference, but central is the boast below:

‘For many decades now, we have known that women make up the majority of those attending Mass and participating in parish ministries. Data from the 2016 National Church Life Survey shows that women hold 65 per cent of all leadership and ministry roles in parishes. These roles include lectors, special ministers of the Eucharist, leaders of prayer, youth or discussion groups, members of parish councils and so on. Overall, 42% of women who are part of parish life have a leadership role, compared with 38% of men. Recent data from Catholic dioceses reveal that significant percentages of women also have roles as chairs (56%) and members (45%) of pastoral councils and as members of safeguarding councils (49%).[1]

‘The contribution of women is not only limited to voluntary roles in parishes. Within the Church, there are over 3000 organisations that employ more than 220,000 people, and 77 per cent of these roles are occupied by women.[2] This is significant when compared with Australian society in general, where females make up only 46 per cent of the Australian workforce.

‘Across all the sectors, the presence of women is largely seen in education, health and aged care. But dioceses and parishes remain places where women contribute significantly. Around 78 per cent of all those employed in this part of the Church are women. Overall, within all Church organisations, women contribute not only through administrative roles but also as professionals, where 61 per cent of all professional roles are held by women… It may also surprise some to know that 47 per cent of the key advisors to the Bishops Conference are women.‘

Information about the National Centre for Evangelisation says the centre is ‘at the service of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in Australia.’ Indeed, the key purpose of evangelisation. But I wonder.

The women must be congratulated for their success. Perhaps it’s not just a boast. Behind the statistics lurks an imbalance of power and position between male and (lower-ranked) female executives, suggesting a correction is required – on moral grounds. I leave aside here a question of logic. Philosopher David Hume famously (and debatably) said you don’t get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. However so, there is no necessary logical connection between the factual observation of an imbalance and an alleged requirement to correct it. 

But let’s allow the moral prescription. What then? Well, if you rigorously work out the prescription, you arrive at female ordination and episcopal consecration. Is this in the mind of the author of this blog, and those cited as female leaders? On the evidence here, I don’t know. Female Catholic leaders elsewhere are more explicit.

How many men could or would want to be part of a feminist church? Or am I getting too far ahead of myself?