+ JMJ The reactions to the July 2026 Episcopal Consecrations continue as the media storm subsides. I guess the most interesting news this week is Tim Flander's decision to stop his support of the SSPX. There's a lot of comments about this and while I've only read a little of his reasons, I came to one conclusion - everyone seems to get tripped up on some ancillary issue or event without looking at the whole picture and the key principles. One thought that occurred is that this isn't about jurisdiction, schism or any of the other dozens of opinions. Rome has already stated what it is about multiple times and it is about the New Mass and the Second Vatican Council. Any canonically regular religious organization that has made a move towards the Tridentine Mass or even pre-conciliar thinking gets persecuted by Rome, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate are one example that did both. In the same era, the Knights of Malta also were punished. The persecution of any and a...
+ JMJ I am not a 'cradle' Traditional Catholic. In fact, one of my earliest 'church memories' is of the pews in my family's first parish. Specifically, how they tasted. I remember a lot of people standing up around me as I got as much of the pew in my mouth as possible. At that moment as I reached the sweet spot, an older lady caught my eye and I got the impression she was less that impressed that I had achieved the maximally effective amount of pew in my 4 year-old mouth. Looking back, I realised that the parish of my youth was a haven for Conservative Catholics. The Pastor had succeeded in isolating the parish from much of the madness of the 1970's. The result of a conservative parish with doctrinally sound teaching, catechesis and confessions was a parish packed to capacity. The downside, as I heard decades later, was that when a young member of that parish moved into another parish, he found a completely different Church from the one in which he had grow...